Author: girl

A December sampling of arts in DC

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December is always busy for us, and this year is no exception. If anything, our choice to celebrate the season by attending performances of various kinds has heightened the schedule-juggling.

Our first event of the month was The Trumpet of the Swan, a reading of the book set to music that debuted at the Kennedy Center. The Trumpet of the Swan is one of my favorite books, and the actors and musicians did an excellent job of portraying it. I was excited to be able to see Kathy Bates and Fred Willard, and Washington local Edward Gero was perfect as Louis’s father. Attending this performance was my (early) birthday present, and I was glad to be able to share it with my partner, who had never read the book as a child.

The following Tuesday, we returned to the Kennedy Center to see the Martha Graham Dance Company perform Clytemnestra. Although I’ve seen many of the great modern dance companies perform at the Kennedy Center in recent years, I had yet to see a Martha Graham production. While I began to suspect that her version of Clytemnestra is something like the Ring Cycle of modern dance—by which I mean to say that we may not have risen to the level of knowledge or appreciation of other members of the audience—we were both fascinated. I found it particularly interesting given that it was first produced in 1958; I commented to my partner that you would have had to be terribly fashionable to attend this performance in its first run, as it was somewhat avant garde even for contemporary productions. The costumes and choreography were wonderful, and of course the dancing was superb. And now we can say that we’ve seen a show created by the mother of modern dance!

Following close on the heels of this performance, we went traditional on Friday and attended a reception at the Swedish embassy celebrating Santa Lucia Day. A highlight of the evening was Mats Carlsson, a ‘rather well-known up-and-coming Swedish opera singer’ as we were told by one of our fellow guests, joining the girls for a lovely solo. Our hosts were very gracious, the hors d’ouevres were excellent, and the Glögg was wonderfully potent. Maybe next year we’ll get invited to the gala and I’ll have a chance to wear my wedding necklace! (A girl can dream.)

The next night we headed back down to Foggy Bottom to see the Christmas Revels at GWU. We don’t go every year, but this year’s program had a French-Canadian theme that I just couldn’t pass up. We had a wonderful time; there’s something about being knee to knee and elbow to elbow with strangers while belting out holiday tunes that creates an incredibly festive atmosphere. The evening had the added bonus of exposing my partner, who never studied French in school, to the joys of Alouette, complete with popping out of our seats to point at the various body parts as they became relevant (et le bec!). We particularly enjoyed the operatic flourish with which the young child a few rows in front of us bowed at the completion of the last round of the song.

We wrapped up all of this celebrating by hosting our now-annual holiday cookie party on Sunday night. It’s always fun to sample the variety of confections, and this year was no exception. We had quite a mix of styles and cultural origins this year, with a nice representation of classics in the form of chocolate chip, oatmeal, and sugar as well. Word of a party with nearly unlimited access to sweets appears to have gotten out among the under-8 crowd, and the children-to-adult ratio tilted quite dramatically this year. We are pleased to report that our friends, colleagues and neighbors are doing exceptionally well at instilling manners in their (many) young offspring; our household fabrics thank you, and you and yours are welcome back any time! In addition to being just a general good time, the party spurred us to finally deal with all of the furniture and household goods displaced through various acquisitions and basement trouble this year. After a whirlwind of preparation, it’s wonderful to look around and see shelves, tables, and sideboards in their proper places, and to have boxes of our family treasures stored in tidy piles in the (clean!) attic rather than in the center of our offices. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have tins of cookies on those tables, either.

Our plans for the coming week are quite tame compared to all of this. We’ll be celebrating the solstice with our gift exchange on Sunday, and I have a couple of surprises planned as part of our weekend festivities. (They’re surprises; you will have to wait to learn of them.) In the meantime, I will enjoy quiet evenings that involve neither dressing up nor rearranging furniture.

A December sampling of arts in DC

Buy Nothing Day

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Today is international Buy Nothing Day. I encourage you to celebrate it this year in remembrance of Jimmy Damour, if for no other reason.

On a separate note, over the past few weeks I’ve fallen into a blogging black hole, for which I sincerely apologize to my loyal reader(s). No excuse, really, just a busy month. I have several posts on deck, most of them about food, as I’ve spent much of the past few weeks processing food in various ways. So I’ll get to those and fill in some of the dead space and hopefully have new things to write about this coming month.

Buy Nothing Day

the last word on Joe Lieberman (I promise)e

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Here’s the thing about Joe Lieberman that I keep coming back to. Well, there are a few things about Joe Lieberman, and I will do my best to say them, be done, and never mention them again.

Joe Lieberman did not ‘earn’ the committee chair position he currently holds, he bargained for it. Joe Lieberman got primaried out in 2006 because he no longer represented his constituency. Joe Lieberman is no longer in the Democratic Party. Joe Lieberman was needed in the Democratic Party caucus from 2006 through 2008 in order to secure majority control of committees. The party with majority control gets more staff, more offices, and the ability to determine the course of the bills in the Senate: what they’re about and whether they ever move out of Committees to the floor for a vote at all. This was, obviously a valuable contribution that Joe Lieberman could make to the Democratic Party, this shift to majority control, and it is (1) why he was needed in the caucus and (2) why he was able to barter for an important committee chair position in return.

The democrats do not need Joe Lieberman anymore. They do not need him for majority control, as they have a clean majority without any independents caucusing with them, although I recommend they keep Bernie Saunders because he’s a respectable human being more in line with the party platform. I will not be the first to assert that the line about Joe being with the dems 90% of the time is just that, a line of bull, nor will I be the first to point out that the 10% divergence rather markedly coincides with the topic of the committee he currently chairs. Beyond pedantic arguments about which of his votes are or are not in line with the party, he actively campaigned against a fellow Democratic senator as the candidate for President chosen by the party he caucuses with. It seems like the most basic function of a Democrat (even a self-described pale shadow of a former one like Joe Lieberman) would be to support the party’s candidates, if not in all state-level and national races, at the very least in the instance of the presidency.

Which brings me to the summation: (1) Joe Lieberman is no longer needed in the caucus, (2) his chair position was payment for keeping him in the caucus when he was needed, and (3) he is totally off the ranch and is no longer a Democrat in either form or substance. Which means his committee chair position can be given to someone else, he can stay or go, and we can close this sorry chapter in American political life. Frankly, I don’t really get what the problem is. Are the Democrats afraid to acknowledge that they bartered with Joe to gain control of Congress? Do they think their voters will shun them for demonstrating a pragmatic grasp of the workings of government and accurately assessing the cost of the greater of two evils — continued control of the Senate by Republicans with a Republican president — and choosing the lesser? I don’t think so. I think that the country has pretty much agreed they’d rather have the Democrats running things, and they accept the reality of what has been done. Up until now. Now, they are looking to see that the Democrats are not, for lack of a less sexist term, wusses. They want to see that the Democrats are able to make a second, arguably more important, pragmatic choice and take away the chair position from Joe Lieberman now that they no longer need him. It is not the responsibility of the Senate Democrats to prolong Joe Lieberman’s political career for as long as humanly possible while he does his best to tank it.

Everyone except Joe Lieberman seems to understand that the Democrats no longer need him, which makes his positioning a bluff, a situation which I am again not the first person to characterize in this manner. It is in Joe’s best interest to remain in the caucus, and he will likely not walk away from it. Which doesn’t matter and solely affects him and his own career because (I can’t emphasize this enough) the Democrats no longer need him. Offer him another less important chair position, one where he maybe, I don’t know, actually holds Democratic Party opinions with regard to the topic area. If he doesn’t take it, he doesn’t take it. Oh well.

I hear that other old increasingly out of touch Senators feel for Joe and fear that his fate will be theirs, too. Maybe. Probably it won’t help their cause to take Joe’s side on this, though. If they are looking for a way to show their goodwill toward fellow long-term Senators outside their party, I recommend lobbying for Dick Lugar to get a cabinet position. Joe is a sinking ship, my friends. Reassign his chair position, give him his choice about remaining in the caucus, and let him be the architect of his own fate. Seriously, this is way past overdone and requires some actual senate leadership, Mr. Reid. Get it done, and deal with your personal feelings on your own time.

the last word on Joe Lieberman (I promise)e

food : chicken with pac choi

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I have this recipe that I found on the internet last year, for chicken with bok choy. I pull it out when I get bunches of pac choi from our farm share, which is a couple of times a season. It’s a tasty recipe, in a salty soy sauce kind of way, but it’s written terribly. The ingredients are in a weird order and the instructions about what you combine with what else when are completely unclear. I thought I’d written sufficient notes on the paper last year to be able to start a bit ahead this year, but I still struggled. So, I’m rewriting it and recording it here for posterity. If you follow my instructions it will be good (but not at all authentic, do not make the mistake of attempting to serve this as actual Asian food).

Chicken with Bok Choy (or Pac Choi)

Ingredients

3 skinless, deboned chicken breasts (chopped)
2 tbsp. soy sauce
2 tbsp. corn starch

4 tbsp. safflower or other high heat oil
1 lb. bok choy or pac choi, including stems (chopped)
1/2 c. water
1/4 tsp. salt

4 tbsp. safflower or other high heat oil
1 tsp. grated or minced fresh ginger root
4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbsp. oyster sauce or soy sauce
1 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. corn starch
1/4 c. water

Toss chopped chicken with soy sauce and cornstarch until coated; set aside. Heat oil in wok or large fry pan. Stir fry bok choy with salt and water until limp, then remove from heat and set aside. Heat oil in second wok or large fry pan. Stir fry ginger root and garlic until fragrant, then add chicken and stir fry until cooked. Mix together oyster sauce, soy sauce, sugar, corn starch and water; add to chicken and stir quickly to mix. Add bok choy and stir together. Remove from heat and serve immediately (with brown rice that you’ve already made in your rice cooker).

Enjoy!

food : chicken with pac choi

garden log : cleaning up for winter

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The lavender bush, blooming in autumn.


The lavender bush, newly planted in spring.

This weekend we engaged in a superhuman final push to get the yard cleaned up for the winter. ‘Cleaned up’ is, of course, a relative term. We did not, as I’d hoped, prepare any beds for the transfer of rose bushes in the spring. Nor did we plant anything, move any bulbs, or cut the ivy back off of our neighbor’s trees. We didn’t even mow the lawn one last time before the cold rain of November descended for real (oops).

Even without meeting any of those goals, we accomplished a lot in the yard this year. Much of that work took place in the spring and early summer: digging up the liriope, relocating plants that were being suffocated, planting new azaleas in the front, putting in a new bed in the back, cutting back the ivy, and pruning the quince trees. Nonetheless, we pushed on and were able to find more to do. We dug up (even) more liriope, filling about three contractor bags with the stuff. I cut back the holly trees, to allow us to walk under them and to give the recovering crape myrtle (ours) and magnolia (our neighbor’s) some breathing room. We pulled oodles of dead vines down from the back trees and cut the mulberry back from the garage. I raked all the leaves, and we transferred them via the tarp method to the back beds where the great multi-year weed-smothering process continues. I was extremely glad to see that a decent layer of leaves remained from last year in many places, such that the leaves from our own yard should be sufficient for this year’s efforts. The tarp method, in contrast to last year’s wheelbarrow method, also went quickly and allowed us to move larger piles of leaves at once.

All in all, it was a satisfying clean up and I’m pleased with how our yard is looking. It’s conceivable that what remains to be done — ivy, liriope, and sapling stump removal — can be accomplished in the spring without much effort. Okay, with a lot of effort, but in plenty of time to allow me to actually plant things throughout the summer. Imagine: gardening that involves futzing around moving things here and there rather than mass killing.

garden log : cleaning up for winter