At school we are encouraged to do some cross-curricular planning as a team, so this quarter we planned a mini-unit based on the Olympics and implemented it in conjunction with the 2010 Winter Olympics. In English/Language Arts my students have learned and experimented with poetic devices and forms since January--scheduled into these past weeks mostly because the art and literature point of contact at my school asked me to provide student poetry submissions for this year's magazine of student work and meeting a March 1 deadline. (She knew I liked poetry, incorporated student writing of poetry into my curriculum, and none of the other language arts teachers would accept the invitation to provide any.) So, in an attempt to clump and streamline expectations, I offered to do the culminating activity for my team's interdisciplinary unit: Write a poem with an Olympics connection--mathematical, scientific, historical, and/or current events and viewing experience. We begin in class tomorrow...despite the fact that the Olympics in real time will still be in progress!
Because we (my students and I) may be approaching a poetry-sated state and "short" always appeals and we live in Japan, I decided we would write Haiku! Then, this weekend while reviewing my Haiku file--hard-copy and digital--I uncovered Haiku I wrote along with students several years ago when I taught a quarter-long creative writing class. They exist only on a piece of paper, so now I will self-publish, and there will be a digital record as well.
[Disclaimer: I do a lot of my personal writing under the influence of melancholy.]
low, gray clouds lumber
across a winter landscape
and trees wear black lace
dark and bittersweet
your chocolate breath carries
no promise but now
the rain beats against
anguished memory and drains
away your image
time is a traitor,
stealing the ache, betraying
everlasting passion
summer's memory
stirs November shadows like
marshes salted with sea
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Fiji on My Mind
I am a “Thursday’s child” with “far to go”; my mind is painted in wanderlust. Still, Fiji did not actively engage my imagination or merit an inscription on my mental “to see and to do” list until maybe ten years ago when I first saw the movie The Truman Show. When Truman, who unbeknownst to him is the star of a reality-type television show, breaks with the plan prescribed by the creator of the show and falls hard and fast for an extra in the cast—Lauren/Sylvia Garland— instead of Meryl, the chosen love interest, the executives in charge remove Lauren from Truman’s fabricated world and orchestrate a reason for him: Lauren and her family are moving to Fiji. Because Truman can’t forget Lauren, he becomes increasingly more focused on going to Fiji. He tries to explain to his best friend Marlon just where Fiji is by using a golf ball to represent the planet and two different fingers to mark where they are (USA) as compared to where Fiji is. Then Truman says, "You can't get any further away before you start coming back" And with that line, I realized I, too, wanted to go to Fiji—a place so far removed from my space on the planet that by the time I arrived there I would almost be on my way back!
When I moved from Germany to Japan, Fiji became one of those locations I regularly punched into travel search engines like Expedia or Orbitz or Sidestep or Kayak when bored or when procrastinating or when actually actively seeking a travel destination for an upcoming holiday. The cheapest airfares always showed a $3000+ price tag, an amount always way beyond my means. Until three weeks ago, that is! One evening while playing the travel search engine game with April’s spring break in mind, a game I commenced playing early in January, I discovered a Fiji flight/hotel package within the budget! And now, I wish to announce, my friend Beth and I are headed to Fiji for spring break. At moments I am nearly breathless with excitement!
When I moved from Germany to Japan, Fiji became one of those locations I regularly punched into travel search engines like Expedia or Orbitz or Sidestep or Kayak when bored or when procrastinating or when actually actively seeking a travel destination for an upcoming holiday. The cheapest airfares always showed a $3000+ price tag, an amount always way beyond my means. Until three weeks ago, that is! One evening while playing the travel search engine game with April’s spring break in mind, a game I commenced playing early in January, I discovered a Fiji flight/hotel package within the budget! And now, I wish to announce, my friend Beth and I are headed to Fiji for spring break. At moments I am nearly breathless with excitement!
Friday, February 12, 2010
Peanut Butter Reconsidered
Never a kid with any real affinity for peanut butter, my lifetime peanut butter consumption might fill ten standard size jars. Entire years of my life have elapsed without me swallowing the stuff. I don't hate it and never have; I just never developed any pressing desire for it. As a child--when my mother still made lunchtime sandwiches for her children as per their request--I ate the tuna or bologna or cheese or other savory option, never the "straight butter, honey, peanut butter" sandwich my siblings often petitioned for. Although I think I did sample a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a weak and frivolous attempt to be at one with popular elementary school lunch culture, even PB&J failed to lure me into the fold of peanut butter devotees. Any sandwich I carried to school for lunch purposes held animal protein between the bread.
In the dorms my freshman year in college I finally learned to eat and somewhat enjoy peanut butter--on crackers (I preferred saltines to grahams) and even in a PB&J sandwich prepared in the dorm cafeteria when the proffered main course lacked requisite edible traits. Before I graduated, a roommate introduced me to a peanut butter cookie recipe that I still keep on file--and occasionally bake--to this day.
Once I began teaching school, peanut butter sporadically figured into plans and activities with students. I remember one time when a lesson included a tasting activity, and my students informed me that the peanut butter sample provided tasted OLD. I had no real measure in taste memory to evaluate the freshness of peanut butter, and I had never before considered that peanut butter might have a shelf life! No doubt the culprit peanut butter came from a jar dating back to at least the previous year's tasting activity!
Over the ensuing years I have consumed--and enjoyed--a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on certain rare occasions. I eat peanut butter cookies--those baked according to the instructions on the recipe from that former college roommate and those other people bake with a Hershey's Kiss pressed into the middle. And I absolutely love peanut sauce (especially with chicken sate and other Asian entrees) which, even I must admit, has a close relationship with peanut butter.
In December I skied three days in a row. On days two and three, my ski buddies and I chose to carry sandwiches to the slopes instead of paying premium prices for sub-standard fare at the ski lodge. And, yes, we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! I can't remember anything about my lunch on day one except that it cost a shocking amount and was utterly disappointing gastronomically. But I do remember lunches on days two and three, and they were supremely satisfying: PB&J sandwiches, apples, water, and Coke Zero.
I got sick in January, had little appetite, and wandered the commissary aisles in search of something that might tempt me to eat. And, yep, I ended up buying peanut butter, grape jelly, and bread! In the last two months I have eaten SIX peanut butter and jelly sandwiches--likely at least five more than I consumed in the previous decade of my existence, especially considering I had never eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich since moving to Japan until the two I ate while skiing in December. I suspect I probably lunched on at least one peanut butter and jelly sandwich sometime during the eighteen years I lived in Germany.
Then, Thursday night of this last week I arrived home with a mean craving for those no-bake cookies made with cocoa, peanut butter, and oatmeal. (Truly, the fact that this kind of no-bake cookie showed up for refreshments at a church youth activity a couple of weeks ago and the reality that I currently have a jar of peanut butter residing in my home have to bear some of the blame.) I looked up a recipe on the Internet, cooked up a batch, and could scarcely contain my nibbling to allow them sufficient cooling time. Such a divine assuaging of rapacious desire!
In the dorms my freshman year in college I finally learned to eat and somewhat enjoy peanut butter--on crackers (I preferred saltines to grahams) and even in a PB&J sandwich prepared in the dorm cafeteria when the proffered main course lacked requisite edible traits. Before I graduated, a roommate introduced me to a peanut butter cookie recipe that I still keep on file--and occasionally bake--to this day.
Once I began teaching school, peanut butter sporadically figured into plans and activities with students. I remember one time when a lesson included a tasting activity, and my students informed me that the peanut butter sample provided tasted OLD. I had no real measure in taste memory to evaluate the freshness of peanut butter, and I had never before considered that peanut butter might have a shelf life! No doubt the culprit peanut butter came from a jar dating back to at least the previous year's tasting activity!
Over the ensuing years I have consumed--and enjoyed--a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on certain rare occasions. I eat peanut butter cookies--those baked according to the instructions on the recipe from that former college roommate and those other people bake with a Hershey's Kiss pressed into the middle. And I absolutely love peanut sauce (especially with chicken sate and other Asian entrees) which, even I must admit, has a close relationship with peanut butter.
In December I skied three days in a row. On days two and three, my ski buddies and I chose to carry sandwiches to the slopes instead of paying premium prices for sub-standard fare at the ski lodge. And, yes, we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! I can't remember anything about my lunch on day one except that it cost a shocking amount and was utterly disappointing gastronomically. But I do remember lunches on days two and three, and they were supremely satisfying: PB&J sandwiches, apples, water, and Coke Zero.
I got sick in January, had little appetite, and wandered the commissary aisles in search of something that might tempt me to eat. And, yep, I ended up buying peanut butter, grape jelly, and bread! In the last two months I have eaten SIX peanut butter and jelly sandwiches--likely at least five more than I consumed in the previous decade of my existence, especially considering I had never eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich since moving to Japan until the two I ate while skiing in December. I suspect I probably lunched on at least one peanut butter and jelly sandwich sometime during the eighteen years I lived in Germany.
Then, Thursday night of this last week I arrived home with a mean craving for those no-bake cookies made with cocoa, peanut butter, and oatmeal. (Truly, the fact that this kind of no-bake cookie showed up for refreshments at a church youth activity a couple of weeks ago and the reality that I currently have a jar of peanut butter residing in my home have to bear some of the blame.) I looked up a recipe on the Internet, cooked up a batch, and could scarcely contain my nibbling to allow them sufficient cooling time. Such a divine assuaging of rapacious desire!
Friday, February 5, 2010
Addendum
I commenced the previous post on January 22 and never completed it. Feeling poorly all that weekend, I surrendered to Season 3 of House, courtesy of Netflix. The following weekend was the end of Quarter 2 and Semester1 for me; grading and grades demanded my attention. So, I finished the post today, but the auto-format of Blogger maintains that "Appetizers" at Chili's is a January 22 posting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
