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February 28, 2006
Networking for Dummies
Wow! Diber just sent me a terrific link to an article addressing the ins and outs of how to network as a grad student. As I read it, I realized it was much more than that: it seems more like a survival manual for grad students as they metamorphosize into professional scholars. I wish I had this years ago!
Networking on the Network:
A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students
Posted by Tim and Jo at 7:04 PM | Comments (0)
Wagner remakes
Last week in our "Wagner Ring Cycle" class, a music critic from our local paper came in as a guest lecturer. He spent much of his time describing and showing us clips from really awful Wagner productions, including:
-A chubby Siegfried who when he pulls off his outer garments, reveals a too tight T-shirt with "Siegfried" spray-painted across the front.
-The giants as mafioso characters with briefcases.
-Instead of an eye-patch, Wotan has a pair of sunglasses, with one of the lenses knocked out.
-The Walkyries as tough police broads, all in black with the clear shields used when controlling mobs.
-Scenes which take place in a trailer park
So, a couple of us came up with our own ideas for Wagner remakes...
"The Andy Griffith Ring Cycle"
*Starring*
Andy Griffith as Wotan
Barney Fife as Mime
Opie as Siegfried
Aunt Bea...perhaps Erda the Earth Mother? A nagging Fricka?
The city of Mayberry as Vallhalla
"The Dental Hygiene Ring Cycle"
We haven't worked out the parts for this as fully yet, but we know that Wotan is The Dentist who carries around a giant toothbrush, and Siegfried is a tube of Crest. Fafner the Dragon could symbolize the bad breath that will befall you if you don't brush and floss regularly.
Posted by Tim and Jo at 9:14 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2006
Stuffed Chicken Breasts
I tried this last week--I was running out of time before I had to leave to teach my classes in the morning, so I improvised a bit. A little roasted garlic in the chicken breasts, and herbes de provence I brought back from Paris sparked it up a little bit. Kalamata olives were really good in it, too.
Stuffed Chicken Breast with Feta, Spinach and Tomatoes
Posted by Tim and Jo at 11:03 AM | Comments (1)
February 20, 2006
All Hail the Orchestrion
Prelude to this entry:
"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock ..."
This is a quote spoken by Orson Welles' character Harry Lime from an excellent old movie we watched recently - The Third Man.
Today Joanna and I did a tour of the Henry Frick mansion (Clayton House). Frick ("The King of Coke") was an entrepreneur in the late 19th century/early 20th century who made his fortune running coal mines and selling the coal to Andrew Carnegie to fuel the latter's steel mills. Frick (who became a millionaire by age 30), liked to spend his money on nice things; nice things such as Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, a 1914 Model T Ford, a 1914 Rolls Royce, a fabulously ornate mansion, and (my favorite) a Swiss-made Welte Orchestrion. Some people have little wind-up music boxes that sit quaintly upon their dressers. Imagine having an 11 feet high, 8 feet wide (and LOUD) "music box" dominating your parlor room! Mr. Frick would amuse his guests by saying "would you like to hear my own private orchestra?" He then would rev up the orchestrion and the guests would have themselves a chuckle.
The orchestrion grew out of the musical box which grew out of the Swiss peoples' expertise at clockmaking. They are a combination of a music box and a player piano and are a precursor to the jukebox. The monstous contraption in the Frick mansion is a wonder to behold, and hear! It generates music that brings together so many "worlds" of sound. Circus music, carousel music, marching band music, German beer hall oom-pah music, French accordian music, Polish polka music and Jewish klezmer music. The music seeps into the subconscious, welling up images of little Austrian kids riding on carousels, organ grinders standing outside French cafes churning out popular tunes, and people going to the World's Fair in Chicago or New York to see these magical new machines. Contrary to what Mr. Welles said, the Swiss are famous for much more that just the cuckoo clock!
Posted by Tim and Jo at 9:11 PM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2006
Funny Bunny
Anyone want to buy a bunny?--Spike Jones
Here's a little bunny who likes to hang in our front yard. I hadn't seen him for awhile, so I thought he had disappeared. But one morning I woke up and there was an unsnowed on spot in our yard, just the size of a bunny butt, and little paw prints in the snow leading away from it.
Posted by Tim and Jo at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2006
Bob Dylan ramblings #1
Joanna: Soooo....a little on my new found obsession with Bob Dylan. I just discovered him about two years ago, thanks to Tim. It's hard to believe that I never came in serious contact with his music before then, since I've always liked folk-song/singer-songwriter kinds of music, Simon & Garfunkel, Peter, Paul & Mary, etc.
There's the perennial Dylan dilemma: how can he sing so "badly" at times, and yet communicate so powerfully? Last year, I played his "Blowin' in the Wind" for the music appreciation class I TA for: his version of it, and a video clip of Peter, Paul and Mary singing it at the 1963 Civil Rights Rally in Washington, D.C. This opened up incredible discussions, of the symbolism of the song as read through the events of its time, and of the timbre of the song itself. Year after year, I'm amazed at the articulate insights that my students have about music, even without any kind of musical training. Basically, though some students thought that the harmonies of P, P & M brought a new dimension to the song, they thought that their version was too polished. They felt that the rawness of Dylan's voice gave an immediacy, poignancy, and passion to the song that was lacking in the other version. Basically, that his "bad" singing was what gave the song its power.
In the Silver Eye exhibit we went to yesterday, John Cohen had a quote saying that Dylan's is somewhere in between a folk ballad and Symbolist poetry.
My favorite Dylan song at the moment is Chimes of Freedom Flashing
The images are brilliant, especially his mixture of sound and visual images—Chimes ring all the time in songs, but how many times do you see chimes flash? I want to describe it more (lightning, thunder, storm, suffering), but I know I can’t say it as well as he does. Here, instead of Symbolist poetry, the poetry reminds me of a drawn out, complex metaphysical conceit.
My take is that he's an orator who uses every tool--melody, harmony, instruments, even at times flat, raw, scratchy, scraping notes--to shape his poetry. Especially in his "folk" style. I have a theory about his electric stuff that I'm still working out--at times, I think he deliberately sings wretchedly in some of those songs as a shield to protect himself from the hordes of people adulating him.
Continue reading "Bob Dylan ramblings #1"
Posted by Tim and Jo at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2006
Bday/Vday extravaganza
Wow...these past few days have been a whirlwind of fun and excitement. Actually, December through February is our clump of exciting events--Christmas, Tim's birthday, the anniversary of our engagement, my birthday, and finally, Valentine's day. Phew!
On my birthday, we went out (thanks to ma and pa) to Joe's Crab Shack with our favorite crab, Rachel K. Heehee! Tim enjoyed having me don the requisite pirate's hat while employee's sang. Too bad it's nearly a year till his next birthday. But a pirate's revenge is never forgotten...
I had lots of fun presents this year....
Continue reading "Bday/Vday extravaganza"
Posted by Tim and Jo at 9:46 PM | Comments (1)
Happy Valentine's Day!
Posted by Tim and Jo at 9:19 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2006
Dal or Dhal
Just found a great site with Dal recipes, Indian lentils.
http://www.mendosa.com/chanadal.html
Dal is
-Economical: .50-1.00 a pound, which goes a
-Nutritious: easy to digest, lots of protein, etc.
-Tasty: I love Indian spices!
and
-Simple to make with a crockpot (maybe even without one).
The site also has an interesting recipe for an Indian tomato soup.
Posted by Tim and Jo at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)
February 7, 2006
Steeler Madness!
Wow, this town has been crazy over the last couple weeks! 250,000+ fans at the Steeler parade downtown yesterday (we missed that one, but saw it on TV--unbelievable, a quarter of the population of Allegheny county was there). We've never seen a city so completely loyal to its football team. We were not immune to the madness around us. We picked up a strange addiction to going down to the Strip District (our favorite part of town at any time!) over the past few Saturdays to imbibe the chaos of happy, excited people. Here are a few pictures from our last outing. Watching the boisterous fans was just as exciting (if not more so!) than watching the players on the field!
This guy got so excited his head turned into a football.
In Pittsburgh, there was no middle ground as far as reactions to the Super Bowl. Either you were for the Steelers, or you were strangled with Terrible Towels after being boiled in vats of molten Iron City Beer.
A classical musician making a little money out in the streets? Nope. How many times can you play "Here We Go Steelers, Here We Go" before losing your embouchure?
Joanna: I found out that a professor acquaintance of mine had the same habit of visiting the Strip on Saturdays, purely for the sociological fun of it. Watching the reactions of different people was one of the best parts:
a) If you're part of academia, you analyze culture by observing the madness around you. You can detach yourself slightly from it, but you can't completely disengage from the excitement. But you can make intellectual comments about the Super Bowl, such as the ways in which the blue collar fans feel tied to blue collar-ness of the football teams (you can also make cynical comments about the multi-million dollar contracts belying this blue collar image of the players). Also, you can create profound metaphors such as "cans of beer vs. cups of latte" to describe the teams.
b) If you're a car mechanic, you call up your best pals in between providing new brakes for a busy grad student who has waited most of the morning to get her car done. You engage in critiques of the players, past, present, and in the world to come.
c) If you're a middle-aged woman you:
-wear handmade Steeler regalia (mini-Terrible Towels, Steeler barrettes, etc.)
-don't wash your Steelers garments or make any other unexpected moves, just in case you might jinx the game and feel guilty for the rest of your life
-discuss the off field attire of your favorite players (Big Ben shouldn't wear light blue--he's much too large for that).
-sob every time the Steelers make a great/terrible play
-make plots with your other middle-aged lady friends on how to get the most eligible bachelor of the team (Big Ben again) to marry your daughter. "If only I could get in touch with his mother..."
d) If you're a kid, well, look at the previous post featuring the Little Steeler Fan.
Posted by Tim and Jo at 9:23 PM | Comments (0)
February 6, 2006
Steelers are da Best!
Joanna: What a cute little fan! Someone was around for the Steeler-mania of a previous unnamed decade. When was the last time they went to the Superbowl?
More Steeler fun to come!
Tim: This picture is from 1978 when dem Stillers won their 3rd Super Bowl 'nat (I was ten years old). You might notice my profound knowledge of the English language at this tender age. The perfection of the sentence structure, the delicate balance between the subject and predicate, the adroit succinctness of the phrase. They are all here in this sublime utterance.....
Continue reading "Steelers are da Best!"
Posted by Tim and Jo at 3:38 PM | Comments (1)
Cute little twinsies!
Here's a picture of my brother's new adorable twins!
Still trying to figure out the best way to upload pictures here, but it's good practice.
Awww...they're just so cute!!
Continue reading "Cute little twinsies!"
Posted by Tim and Jo at 3:17 PM | Comments (0)
February 3, 2006
Dumpster Diving for Dummies
Joanna: Weird!! Who knew that dumpster diving would become a fad? I've heard of vegans, but "freegans"?!?
http://www.epicurious.com/features/news/dailydish/020206
Hehe...I do remember my brother had some pals who would dumpster dive at the local Krispy Kreme while they were at college. Eww. I've never dumpster dived for food, but I do remember a time as a kid when our local craft store was going out of business and trashing all of its unsold merchandise. So, mom took us back at night, and we found enough nice crafty stuff to last us for years.
I wonder if anyone else has dumpster diving confessions...
Posted by Tim and Jo at 8:00 AM | Comments (2)