Photo of the Week--6/27/11

Now this is what we're talking about! You probably can't see that Boy has a smile on his face—a rarity on our later trips—but it's definitely there because we found a trebuchet! Treb-oo-what, you may wonder? It's an old-fashioned siege engine, sort of like a catapult but using counterweights to fling projectiles through the air. It was just one of the things that made our visit to Urquhart Castle in Scotland such a fun time, although we did not detect a monster in the Loch behind the castle.

Photo of the Week--5/16/11

Nighttime, lights, water, reflections: all things I love when I'm taking a photo. This one was during our trip to Budapest, Hungary, back in fall of 2001. The Chain Bridge is a major landmark of the city, bridging the two parts split by the Danube, and at night I couldn't resist the lovely sight of it glowing over the river.

Photo of the Week--3/7/11

We traveled around England quite a bit during the summer of 2000, and Canterbury was a great place to visit. The historical cathedral, with the memorial to the matryrdom of Thomas a Becket; a Canterbury Tales attraction with re-creations of the 14th century; and this lovely building, one of my favorite kinds of places in the world: a library! We didn't see this style of building as often as you might think, because these lovely wooden facings are susceptible to fire damage. London suffered a huge fire in 1666, so there aren't many lovely wooden buildings like this any more. Just one more reason to enjoy our trip to Canterbury.

How do I love thee, Library? Let me count the ways...

You've probably noticed I haven't been very active on the blog recently. I think I already said it's because I'm writing a historical reference book, and it's requiring a LOT of research. But I thought I'd take a little break from my recent immersion in stacks and stack of history books to write an ode to the place that is making this job possible: my local library.

My local library is one of the biggest single-branch libraries in the state, with a wonderful collection of books, videos, and I borrow items regularly just for my own entertainment. But my library is also part of a state-wide consortium, the Michigan e-Library (aka MeL), that lets me borrow books from any member library ... for FREE. So when I'm working on a major project like this one, I search the MeL database, put in a request, and they mail the book I want to my local library, where I pick it up as I would a book from my home library. For this project, I've received books from libraries at Oakland University, U of M Dearborn, Grand Valley State, MSU, Wayne State, West Bloomfield, and St. Clair Shores, among others. I can't imagine how I'd get access to those books otherwise.

The library also subscribes to various databases, so that I can search them for biographies, reference books, and newspaper articles that might be useful--and they will be, when I get around to writing the biographies for this book.

But wait! There's more! I recently got an e-reader, which I love and call Shiny (because it is shiny and I love it). My library belongs to another consortium which lends e-books and audio files, so all I have to do is log in and download something to read. Last week I "checked out" my first e-book, read it comfortably in one hand while using the exercise bike, and "returned" it.

Now I must end this love letter to my library, as it's time for a visit ... I need more books! Research materials! Audio books for a long drive! And maybe a treat from the in-house coffee shop! Swoon! I'll see you soon, my love!

Don't Fear the Springform

Another holiday, another party, another round of "Diane, this cheesecake is awesome!" Although I've always had a love for baked goods (for more evidence, see Cookie of the Month), it took me a while to attempt a cheesecake. Part of it might be that I was never that wild about cheesecake, having only been exposed to it in restaurants, where it was usually plain, dry, and accompanied by fruits I didn't really like. I have to admit, though, that a big reason I didn't attempt a cheesecake was the pan. That's right, I was intimidated by the springform.

I mean, look at it. It's got some kind of mechanism on the side. If it looks  complicated, I reasoned, it must be tricky to use. I bet the recipes must be tricky, too. Why should I bother to play around with tricky pans and tricky recipes when there are so many cookies and cakes I could make instead?

Well, I finally broke down and got one at the first Pampered Chef party I ever attended. You go to those things and eat the food or sample the wares and feel like you should buy something. I was living in England at the time and had a tiny oven, and the springform was cheaper than stoneware anyway, so I bought one. And lo! It wasn't that hard to use. And guess what? Fresh cheesecake, made with interesting flavors, is pretty damn tasty. I became a cheesecake baking fiend. So I am going to share some of my cheesecake baking tips with you, along with a recipe that never fails to get compliments.

1. Digestive biscuits make a better crust/base than graham crackers. I learned this out of necessity, as  digestive biscuits are native to England while graham crackers are not. They are made from wheat flour and wholemeal, and have a denser, grittier texture than graham crackers. This makes them great for a cheesecake base, as they don't collapse under moisture like graham crackers do. I usually find them in the international section at the grocery store, or at specialty stores like Cost Plus World Market.
2. You can reduce the fat/calorie content by judicious substitution: neufchatel or light cream cheese instead of the full-fat stuff, vanilla yogurt instead of sour cream. I've used all these with success, although you might need to adjust baking times (see number 4 below).
3. I can't stress enough how much a real mixer can make the cheesecake. It's just too hard to get cream cheese blended by hand; a powerful stand mixer will take care of all those lumps. Making sure you let your cream cheese soften before mixing is helpful, too.
4. Don't trust your recipe when it comes to baking times. I often have to leave my cheesecakes in for longer than recipes say to make sure that the center gets set. This time can be 10 or even 20 minutes longer than a recipe's baking time, but cheesecakes are so dense that it's hard to overbake them. Fail to bake them enough, though, and the center will be too gooey. (Not that anyone will complain, it still tastes great, but it's hard to serve a gooey cheesecake.)
5. Experiment with flavors! I've had success with chocolate, Bailey's (or both!), peppermint/candy cane, pumpkin, cranberry, triple berry, M&Ms ... lots of things lend themselves to cheesecake, because the cream cheese base is so bland it mixes with any kind of flavor. I simply Google "cheesecake recipe" to find something new and interesting to try.

And now, one such Googled recipe that gets great results with a relatively simple instructions.

Cranberry Cheesecake with Walnut Crust

1½ cups graham cracker/digestive biscuit crumbs

½ cup finely chopped walnuts
¼ cup butter, melted
1 can (16 oz.) whole cranberry sauce
3 packages (8 oz. ea) cream cheese, softened
¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup flour
3 eggs
8 oz. dairy sour cream
2 t. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325F. Combine crumbs, walnuts, and butter. Firmly press crumb mixture into the bottom of a 9-in springform pan. Bake until golden, 5 or 6 minutes; remove from oven. Cool slightly. Spread with cranberry sauce and set aside.

Reduce oven temperature to 300F. Use mixer to beat cream cheese, sugar, and flour until smooth. Beat in eggs, sour cream, and vanilla until well-blended. Pour evenly over cranberry sauce. Bake until a knife insert1 to 1½ inches from edge comes out clean, about 1 hour [or longer, if necessary--D]. Turn off oven; leave the cheesecake in over with door ajar until top is firm to the touch, about 30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack about 1 hour. Cover and refrigerate until cold, about 4 hours. Just before serving, remove cheesecake from pan onto a serving plate.

Serve and receive compliment!

Where I write

Inspired by the divine, charming, elegantly foul-mouthed Rejectionist, whose industry blog I read religiously, today I describe for you my writing space, where I toil day after day breaking records in Bejeweled Blitz writing for your education and entertainment. This is my main desk area, which I present to you in its cleanest, most organized state. I must admit it only looks this pristine maybe two weeks out of the year:

It's very nice: printer and supplies to my right, along with a window to the outside world where I can watch birdies on my finch feeder (or even better, watch my kitties watch the birdies). File cabinet, cameras, and media supplies to my left, and plenty of room to spread out research folders, books, and miscellaneous scraps of paper listing other things to be done. [edited to add: I am a bad daughter. Please note the very nice "I Heart CATS" cross-stitch my mom slaved over. See it above the desk, where Hearted Cats usually knock it out of alignment?] Plus, I have books!

The short bookshelf is Boy's (he reads!), while the tall one is for the grownups. The bottom shelves contain many of the reference books I've edited, along with reference books I use. The middle shelf has oversize map books (my husband's), while the middle shelves hold frequently-read or on-my-list-to-read-next-no-really books. Oh, plus stuff that accumulates on the floor in the endless cycle of "I'll clean it up and put it away later." I don't mind the floor clutter, it makes my mind clutter less alarming. You might have noticed the cat artwork:

The tiger on the left is by the fabulously talented Heidi Woodward Sheffield, a Michigan artist I met through SCBWI. I acquired this print at a conference by hovering over the silent auction table, staring daggers at anyone who got too close to the auction paper. The acrylic painting on the right is from San Francisco-area artist Mary Delave. I found this little gem ("Mouse Dreams") on a trip to the area in 2000. I was enchanted with it and hemmed and hawed and finally splurged. (It wasn't horribly expensive, but since I already had plenty of feline art it felt indulgent.) I never get tired of the bright colors and wild images, even when revision gets me down. Take a closer look:

Oh, the "plenty of feline art"? On the wall next to my desk. Clockwise from the top we have a Steinlen print from a museum, a E. N. Downard print acquired at an antiquarian bookshop in Canterbury, a Foujita print (also from a museum), and a lithograph by an artist named Carl Hoffner that I got at the Ann Arbor Art Fair probably 20 years ago.

And the final, most recently added element of my workspace? This essential item, a kitty condo that makes my workspace more efficient, for instead of leaning over and falling out of my chair to pet Clio or Gigi (this is, after all, my primary function, just ask them), I need only stretch out my hand:

[Edited to add once more: I am a horrible, horrible daughter. See the other lovely cat cross-stitch above the lamp? Isn't it nice my mom made it for me even though I'm so ungrateful?] So there you have it, everything my little writer's mind needs to work, think about working, or avoid working.

Wordless definitions: greedy

I've mentioned before that orchids really like the greenhouse window TSU installed in my kitchen, and rewarded me with loads and loads of blossoms this spring. My three phaelenopses are in full bloom right now, one with about two dozen flowers, and one of my stubborn cattleyas even bloomed. So although I wasn't lacking blooms when I attended a local orchid show, I wasn't lacking extra space in my window, either. I spent a few minutes looking at the displays, but I was more interested in the sales room. I really had trouble choosing. There was this lovely phaelenopsis, white with just a blush of pink in the center ... and phaelenopsis are almost idiot-proof, so it would be a good investment. But then there was this gorgeous white cattleya with raspberry stripes ... and it had a gorgeous scent! But then the phaelenopsis was on sale! But the cattleya was so pretty! You can see my final decision, and why it suits our wordless definition:

When it comes to orchids, I can't help being greedy.

Wordless definitions: abundance

Actually, I considered using this picture for the definition "envy," because any time my mom sees how my orchids are doing she complains that her plants don't bloom like mine do. As you can see on the bottom shelf, all three of my phalaenopsis orchids have inflorescences (stems with blossoms), and plenty of them. Old Faithful on the far right, which I bought at Sam's Club of all places, blooms every year with several flowers and this year is giving me a ridiculous four branches on the same stem. My newest phalaenopsis (the one in the middle), if you look near the bamboo stalk pointing up, has a couple of buds on its stem. And you probably can't see that the phalaenopsis on the left has a second stem parallel to the floor, in addition to the one that's grown vertically to the shelf above it. Because phalaenopsis blooms usually last several weeks in my house, I'm going to have a ton of blooms soon.

Of course, the flowers that really got me excited belong to the laeliocattleya (an artificial hybrid of cattleyas) on the top shelf. Not only is it a gorgeous color, but cattleyas and their hybrids have also proven harder for me to get to bloom at home. I usually buy one in bloom, and then it sits there for a few years, stubbornly withholding blossoms, often until it withers and dies. (Mortality rate for cattleyas in my house is not good; they are not as idiot-proof as phalaenopses, unfortunately.) But this one I bought last spring, so the fact that it's blooming a year later is cause for celebration. The blooms won't last as long, but it's enough to bring some cheer into my flowerless March.

I'm with the band ... um, where'd they go?

I'm pretty much recovered now from my long weekend chaperoning the marching band at Nationals Competition. It was exhausting, but amazing to see how hard the kids worked. They had a great run in prelims, getting one of their best scores of the season and one of the top ten of 91 bands at prelims. They were pretty tired for their semi-final run Saturday morning, though, and barely missed out on making Finals. Still, 13th in the country is pretty damn good, especially when some of the competition has half again as many musicians in their band. And no one had as cool a show as PCMB this year: watch the video below, and the last 60 seconds will have you shaking your head and wondering, how in the world did they do that? (Click the square box in the lower right to see it full screen.)

In praise of libraries...

I wasn't really thinking of writing in the blog today; I have a deadline Friday and I wasn't feeling particularly inspired, but then I read this in an industry blog: the Free Library of Philadelphia has announced it is closing. Philadelphia is a city of over 1.5 million, although, like Detroit, it has lost about half a million residents in the past 40 years and is in poor financial shape. Now granted, the library could be (and probably will be) rescued by last-minute financing from the state of Pennsylvania, but to me the thought is unimaginable. No library? No free access to books and movies and magazines and newspapers for 1.5 million residents? No reading programs for kids, no afterschool activities, no school or day care visits? No computer classes, classes for small businesses and job seekers, no visits to senior centers? No space for community meetings, GED classes, and ESL classes? No internet access to reference databases (without which I couldn't do my job)? Seriously, no library?

I know the financial situation is dire ... but I also know from talking to librarians and people in publishing that when the economy goes down, library use goes up. More people seek out free entertainment or use the free internet or take classes to improve their job skills. So seriously, no library? It's like roads or police services—everybody uses them. Everybody should be willing to pay for them, you would think. I don't want to get into the politics of library funding, since there are always some who complain we're taxed too much as it is, government should cut waste, blah blah blah. I don't care if that's true: some things are worth the money, and public libraries are high on that list. Ben Franklin founded the first public lending library in the U.S.; what's more democratic, more American, than the library?

No libraries? That's like no music, or no air.

Wordless definitions: Naptime

Awwwww, aren't they cute? I wish I had time for a nap, but I have a few details to manage before we leave for vacation on Saturday: review and invoice a job, do the laundry, get my haircut, donate blood, shop for supplies, pack for the trip, update the SCBWI website, leave instructions for the cat sitter, make sure Boy packs, clean out the fridge.... Good thing I'm going on vacation, I'll need it just to recover from the preparations. If I can manage, I may leave a few funny pictures to post automatically while I'm gone. If not, this blog may be quiet for a while. But I haven't really had any time off this year (one of the disadvantages of working from home, you're always at work) so keeping my faithful readers* entertained is not high on my priority list. So I'll be back in about ten days, hopefully with more pictures and stories to share.

*all six of you, half of whom will be at camp with me

Wordless definitions: Anticipation

Mmmmm. If I'd gotten a picture of me, going out to water in the morning and staring at the tomato plant, then that would be the definition for impatient. You can't see it, but the cherry tomato plant to the right is also chock full of teeny tiny green tomatoes. C'mon, sun, do that ripening!

Making up for lost time....

It's true what they say about your tastes changing as you get older—not just your preferences, but your actual sense of taste. I was a bit of a picky eater when I was a kid*, and even into my twenties I had a long list of fruits and veggies I didn't really care for. A few of those foods I now really enjoy, like spinach (raw), tomatoes, blueberries, honeydew melon, and onion (although I can't eat it raw). My biggest conversion, though, has been into an eater of strawberries.

When I was growing up, my folks kept a strawberry patch along with the huge garden on their property. There were many nights when we had strawberry shortcake for dinner: a tasty shortcake, warm from the oven, covered with crushed strawberries that had been lightly sweetened. I'd eat the shortcake happily, but avoided the strawberries, unless I could get some pulpless juice to put on one corner. I wasn't wild about the taste of strawberries, but I especially disliked the texture and would pick off any threads of berries that got caught on my shortcake.

Well, things are a bit different now. I learned to appreciate strawberries the way I learned to enjoy several other fruits: mixed in a fruit salad, or even dipped in chocolate. A few years ago we stayed at this wonderful B&B in Arizona and they served a delicious breakfast dish that was berries, yogurt, and granola. I liked it so much I started making it at home. I found other uses for strawberries, like making a tasty dessert with angel food cake, yogurt, whipped cream, and berries. When they got a little mushy, I'd freeze them and use them in smoothies. Take a can of fruit (peaches, pineapple, even pears), a big handful of frozen strawberries, and a little fruit juice, and you can blend up a tasty tasty extra big serving of fruit. (I'm not sure where rum falls on the food pyramid, but sometimes I add a little of that to the smoothie as well.)

So when my mom asked me to pick her strawberry patch while my folks were out of town, I said sure. Here's my share of today's haul, which I split with my cousin. I've got maybe 9 or 10 quarts of strawberries, and I'm going to have some with honeydew for my afternoon snack, berries and yogurt for breakfast, a few quarts to contribute to my TKD team ice cream social tomorrow, and some to freeze. In any case, I've still got quite a few more strawberries to eat to make up for the first 35 or so years of my life, when I didn't eat my share.

*My mom might take issue with the "a bit of" qualifier, but I was never as bad as some kids I've met who wouldn't eat macaroni and cheese because the pasta was the "wrong shape." I just knew what I didn't like, and that list included quite a few things.

I M Lazee

Lots of things going on this weekend, so I'm being kind of lazy today. Not much work going on; maybe I'll sew a bit and finish the book I'm reading. It's spring break, so I'm looking forward to a week and a half without the 6 am wake up call.

I can't leave you without something fun, though. Unfortunately, I can't embed this video, ABC won't let me. But I promise if you click through and play it, it will make you smile.

Aaaaahahahahahaha hahahahahahaha!

The Word Nerd Sez: K is for ...

kiwi

Kiwi fruit, that is. Yum. I'm on a bit of a fruit kick lately, as I'm trying to improve my diet (reduce cholesterol, etc.) and also lose weight for the upcoming State AAU Taekwondo Tournament. (Lower weight class=less competition, plus it's always better to be the tallest in your class rather than the smallest.) Right now I'm munching on some pineapple and honeydew. Yum. But kiwi fruit is also very tasty, as well as very convenient. All you need is to cut off the top, take a spoon, and scoop out all the tasty tasty flesh. Kiwi fruit has lots of vitamin C, almost as much potassium as a banana, as well as antioxidants and fiber. All in a tasty 45-calorie capsule that tastes a little like pineapple, but not as tart or fibrous.

It's also not in my dictionary. I was browsing the "K" section, thinking about what to write for this entry. I noticed lots of African, Yiddish, and Greek words, as well as many more "kn-" words than I would have thought. (I recognized most of them; I just didn't think there were that many.) Then "kiwi" caught my eye, with two definitions. One: a flightless New Zealand bird, genus Apteryx. (That's a very cool name, and they have it all to themselves.) Two: a native/resident of New Zealand. Nothing about the fruit, or even a separate entry for kiwi fruit.

What gives? I've been eating kiwi for twenty years now. I looked in the front matter of my Webster's, and noticed two things. First, the name inscribed there was my maiden name, written in what looks like my mother's handwriting. I'm rapidly approaching the date (sometime this summer) when I will have been married longer than I was single, so you know that's quite some time ago. I checked the copyright page: (c) 1980. Ouch. I think I need a new dictionary. There's a big old stain (of unknown origin, and I don't want to know) on the back, and it doesn't even list kiwi fruit, let alone internet or cell phone or anything about our digital age. And don't tell me I can look words up online, I know I can, but that's not as fun as browsing the pages of the dictionary. (Didn't you read my first Word Nerd post?)

Maybe Webster's can be forgiven for not including kiwi fruit in my dictionary. After all, they weren't even called that until 1960, when New Zealand growers decided they needed a better name than Chinese gooseberry. The kiwi fruit is native to China, but isn't related to the gooseberry at all. It was a good marketing decision; over a million metric tons are grown each year. The world's largest exporter of kiwi? Not New Zealand, but a country which doesn't even have the letters "k" and "w" in their alphabet: Italy. Yum. Another reason to eat Italian!

Mission (impossible) accomplished!

You might remember that almost two weeks ago, I confessed to being a total mess. I said, give me a week, I'll have it all straightened up. Well, I had another couple of assignments interrupt, but I have finally waded through the mess, cleaned out (and dusted) my shelves, thrown out old documents, CD programs, and manuals, and straightened the pictures the cats keep rubbing against and moving out of alignment. And I'm not making it up! I have proof!


Hey, you can see the floor! There are big empty spaces on the desktop! The knickknacks aren't sneezing from all the dust! As a reward, I'm taking some "me-time" and sending out some queries today. Why shouldn't an editor say yes this time? After all, if I can clean up my desk, anything is possible!

In praise of blueberries....

I'd thought of several things to write about today: the letter J, how I have too many things to do this month, how I might go stark raving MAD if the weather doesn't get warmer, how irritating it is when someone makes an appointment with you and then doesn't show up or even call, how the cats are trying to sabotage me ... but I got distracted. Right now, I can only think of one thing:

How did I ever not love blueberries?

They're sweet with just the right hint of tartness. They're firm and round and squish with a burst of flavor when you crunch them between your teeth. They're tasty raw and fresh, and they're just as tasty baked into something warm that makes the house smell great when you bake it.

When I was younger, I wasn't a fan of blueberries. I wouldn't spit them out and gag, but I wouldn't seek them out, either. If I had a choice at Thankgiving, I'd pick apple or pumpkin or maybe even peach before I'd take a slice of blueberry pie. I'd go picking with my grandparents, and while they threatened to weigh my grandpa before and after entering the blueberry patch, those fresh berries would be safe from me.

With age comes wisdom, I suppose. (Getting older is good for something, at least!) Now I love blueberries any way I can get them: dried in my cereal, frozen and then nuked with my oatmeal, fresh by themselves, baked in pies, crisps, cakes. When I go to the store in the depths of winter and see a big old pound box of fresh blueberries staring at me, I forget all about global footprints and local cuisine and I grab that box of berries that came all the way from Chile. Fresh blueberries! In winter! I must have them!

And so I did today: raw and tasty on my cream of wheat, and baked into a tasty crumb cake I made this morning for my no-show guest, to disguise the smell of last night's fish dinner. I had a piece, and it was tasty and delicious. And low-fat, so I will share the recipe:

2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup stick butter, softened
1 t. vanilla
1 large egg
1 1/3 cups flour
1 t. baking powder
1/4 t. baking soda
1/8 t. salt
3/4 c. lowfat buttermilk (or take 1 T lemon juice and add milk to make 3/4 c.)
1 cup blueberries
3 T. sugar
3 T. flour
1 T. stick butter
1 t. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350F. Coat a 9-in pan with cooking spray. Beat sugar and margarine until smooth; add vanilla and egg, beat well. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add flour mixture to creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mix. Stir in blueberries. Pour into pan.

Combine 3T sugar and remaining ingredients into bowl; mix with fork until it resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle over batter. Bake at 350F for 40 minutes or until wooden pick in center comes clean. Cool and EAT. Yum.

Confessions of a Knitwit

The first step to overcoming a problem is admitting you have one, right? Well, I'm not so sure I really have a problem. Really, I'm just being productive. Keeping my hands busy. I can stop at any time. [Looks down at photo.]


Sigh. Hi everyone. My name is Diane and I'm addicted to knitting scarves.

Can you really blame me? Yarn is so colorful and shinee. Yarn is soo soft and fuzzee. Yarn is so cheap: I can make a scarf for under $10, and often under $5. And scarves are so easy to make. Unlike the sweater I started two (three? four?) years ago that is only half-finished, scarves require no thought, no row counting, no planning. Just knit knit knit (and occasionally purl purl purl) and before you know it, I have a scarf. (Or sometimes you have the scarf. I often get too much yarn and make an extra or two.)

It started simply: I thought it would be nice to have a maize-and-blue scarf to wear to Michigan football games, especially the really cold ones in November. I bought some feathery yarn—feather/fluff/chunks mean you can use big needles and thus fewer stitches—and voila! Matching M scarves for my mom and me. I picked up a couple of ombre patterns (the changing colors mean you get a multicolored scarf without fussing with changing yarn), and I was off! I'm particularly susceptible to clearance yarn: the scarf on the far left was only $1 a skein, and one skein was enough for a scarf. Well, after a bit of reknitting. I have been known to unravel everything and start over, changing the pattern or size. With my most recent addition, the extremely soft blue scarf fourth from the left, I used almost the entire 100g skein before deciding it was too short and I should start over with fewer stitches. So what if I ripped up all that work—I got to reknit the whole thing!

It's fun! It's cheap! It's pretty! So don't tell me I have a problem. At least not if you want me to knit you a scarf.

Untitled post about music

Actually, I had a couple of potential titles for this blog entry, which is in praise of the pipe organ. But I thought heading my post with "I love the organ!" might attract the wrong kind of indexing on Google. Same with "I love the pipe!" {Sigh.}

I'm not sure why I decided to write about this today. Maybe it's because I'm seeking escape from all the Chicken Christmas music that is inundating the air. By this weekend I will have played in two Christmas concerts, and Christmas Eve I'm spending playing at my friend's church. And that's a nice way to spend Christmas Eve, but it would feel more special if I hadn't been stuffed full of holiday songs for the past month. Even the usually reliable XM "Symphony Hall" classical channel is filled with Christmas oratorios and other things too unbearable to mention.

So I guess I felt like turning to the one kind of music that always moves me to turn up the volume: the pipe organ. If you read my review of the film Battleship Potemkin, you know a big factor in my enjoyment was the live organ music that accompanied this silent film. One of my favorite pieces of classical music is Saint-Saens's Third Symphony, whose final movement is grandly completed with pipe organ. (They used this movement's musical theme in the film Babe, strangely enough; but the sight of James Cromwell dancing for a pig to this music wasn't enough to dampen my enjoyment of the piece. Hearing it performed live, a couple shades too slow, was more of a disappointment.)

Occasionally pop music has made great use of the organ; Elton John's "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" is another favorite of mine, and to hear it live in a huge arena was a highlight when I saw him in concert around 20 years ago. Of course, the organ is meant to be heard in a grand space, and I've been lucky enough to hear the organ performed in some of the most beautiful churches in Europe. On a visit to Bath, England, in 1990 we were lucky enough to hear a whole concert of organ music. While living in London, I also took the opportunity to catch the occasional organ recital, including one at the St. Albans Cathedral and Abbey, parts of which date to the 11th century. One time I was even lucky enough to perform with pipe organ, when the honors band I was in played Weinberger's "Polka and Fugue from Schwanda, the Bagpiper" in a grand hall.

So I do love the pipe organ. And here is one of my favorite pieces, Widor's Toccata from his Symphony for Organ #5. It's not the kind of sound quality I prefer (ie, turned up to 11 on my surround-sound system), but it gives you an idea:

An Ode to Pie

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I won't be around for the rest of the week because I'll be too hopped up on turkey and pie to bother writing in my blog. Thanksgiving is a major holiday in our family: we usually have 20-25 people on Thursday, then close to 30 on Friday. We do not know the meaning of "leftover turkey," and we love our pie. So here is a very poor ode celebrating a very tasty dessert:

O cherry, pumpkin, apple, peach!
I will have a slice of each.
And berry pies (of black
and blue) I shall not lack
Tho' some may blanch, I think I'll try
A míxed rhubarb apple pie*
I really love pecan
(So does the whole damn clan)
Two crusts, or pie with none on top
When eating pie, I cannot stop!
A pie that's a la mode
Could merit its own ode
And coconut, banana cream?
I'm only eating in my dreams
(And neither is there orange;
'cause nothing rhymes with orange!)
Of every pie I'll have a slice
Fourteen kinds; that should suffice
(at least for the first day;
don't worry what you weigh!)
And when the pastry's all devoured
And the plates have all been scoured
I'll burp a fond good-bye
And dream of Christmas pie

Have a great holiday, everyone!

*Not really. Rhubarb={shudder}. But it's called poetic license for a reason.