And at last, renewal!

And Zap! 

ZAP!  Another year flies by!

Just like that, another academic year has flown by. Last Friday was the last day of classes; I gave my final exam today. Most finals exams occur early in the week, so while exams don't officially end until Saturday, the big exodus from campus is clearly underway.  

At long last, I think old man Winter has really left us. He held on tenaciously this year, but spring finally prevailed. We are not experiencing glorious sunshine yet; so far it wet, soggy and the flowers are late, but nonetheless, I think Winterzeit ist kaput! Thank goodness. When summer turns to fall, I feel a bittersweet melancholy as I know the relaxed pace and warm sunshine will fade under the strict taskmaster that is the academic year. But the arrival of spring brings me nothing but happiness. I know I will be warm for the next six months, I know that I'll be able to linger over a second cup of coffee on the deck in the morning, and best of all, I know I can put away most of my business suits for the summer.

As a  university administrator, I have  to dress like a grown-up. This means lots of suits, skirts, pantyhose and lady shoes. I don't actually mind any of these clothes, but for the last few weeks,  I have walked into the closet each morning and just stared at the clothes hanging before me. There is nothing wrong with any of them. I just don't feel like getting 'deaned up' everyday. Once dressed for the day, I am fine.  It is just morning inertia, borne from the fact that I am weary of the uniform of my career.  Maybe just weary, period.  I am sure that if I worked at Starbucks, I'd be sick of the polo shirts and aprons too. My suits, Starbuck's aprons, the cute little dirndls at the Bavarian Inn-- they're all costumes, worn to enhance our credibility in the roles we play. I am comfortable with my role at the University and really enjoy it, but that it is only one part of who I am. And, the rest of me really does not want to wear suits everyday! 

 But finally, the seasons are changing.  I am glad that the university is more relaxed in the summer, even in terms of dress. Maybe especially in terms of dress. 

It just took so long for spring to come this year.  Yet, looking back I see that the late spring did have some advantages.

If you are my Facebook friend, or a repeat reader of this blog, you know I did a lot of whining about low temperatures, wind, snow and sleet. And I am not the only one. EVERYONE I know was tired of winter and EVERYONE I know spent a lot of time complaining about the lousy weather.

Well, not quite everyone.

I was talking to a graduating senior the other day and made a comment about the snow flurries that I saw out my office window. Her response? “I am really glad the weather has been rotten. I have had so much work to finish for my classes and projects. Late spring really kept senioritis at bay.”  

Yes, I guess so.  I hadn't thought of that.

I got a haircut the other night. My hairdresser's car had broken down and was in the shop. The repair was taking longer than expected, and she was worried about getting it back before the weekend, because her kids' Easter candy was in the car. But, as she said,”At least with the weather so cold, I know it won't melt.”

True enough.   I hadn't thought of that either.

I am not completely oblivious to silver linings where they can be found. Here is one thing I did think of.

The last two weeks of the semester are a blur of retirement parties, award ceremonies, symposia, concerts, plays, senior presentations, and so on. I just checked my calendar and I had 49 meeting and/or events last week. Not surprisingly, in those last weeks of the term, I get so busy I forget to notice the world around me. And usually, that means that I totally miss the hundreds of daffodils that bloom in my yard. But this year, they waited for me. They are just blooming now, on days that I actually get home before dark and can take a few moments to admire those sunshine-yellow trumpets. Ah, yes. Renewal.

So, today despite my fussing about our late spring, I am grateful for the delay.  I am glad I will get to enjoy the full blossoming season of my favorite springtime flowers.   I love gardens in the summer, but I need them in the spring. What joy!

Dinner for Four

Occasionally over the last fifteen years,  during various mid-life crises or self-indulgent stretches of navel gazing, I have fantasized about opening a restaurant or bed and breakfast. I enjoy cooking and entertaining guests so much that it seems like it would be an ideal next career. I have romantic visions of simmering pots of aromatic vegetable stews made with local produce and homegrown herbs. I would bake bread until my heart's content and not have to throw it away stale or moldy.  I would spend every day playing in the kitchen and finally prepare all those recipes that I have been wanting to try and there would always be plenty of people to eat my efforts.

That's the fantasy. The reality is a little different.

First of all, I love my day job. Leave university life?  Not likely.

Second, the restaurant business is a tough one. The hours are long, tiring, and success can be elusive. But, there is a much bigger problem.

The real issue is that I like entertaining and cooking for my family and friends, and am not at all sure I would enjoy cooking for strangers. As it is, I plan menus around specific people- I have a habit of remembering what my friends like to eat, what they serve me, what they order in restaurants, what they dislike and what they are allergic to. My inspiration comes from my wish to prepare culinary gifts for the people I care about and  like any gifts, the best ones will surprise and delight-- eliciting comments like, "But how did you know I would like that?"

When I am browsing cookbooks, I often read a new recipe and think, “I bet (fill in the name) would like that. Now what would you serve with it?” That sends me on a hunt for side dishes, appetizers and desserts that create an interesting meal- with lots of colors, textures, and (hopefully) complementary flavors. I can't guess how many of these menus I have imagined, but I do know that a relatively small fraction actually got cooked. Life intervenes and there are just not enough hours in a day to have guests as often as I'd like and besides, I am often shy about inviting new people to dinner. But if I know you well, I may well have imagined a dinner menu just for you!

I am intrigued by international cuisines and love to experiment. Sometimes the experiments work the first time, but sometimes not. It took three tries before I successfully rotisseried a whole chicken without setting it aflame and creating a rather dramatic mess-- a raw chicken on the inside, a charcoal briquet on the outside. The Thai peanut shrimp sure sounded good, but was an inedible gloppy mess. Al, Eric, and Ellen have always been appreciative of my efforts, and with the few exceptions noted above ( thank goodness Papa John's delivers), have been willing to eat both my successes and my failures. Fortunately, no one in this family is a fussy eater. Both of the kids have been in and out of vegetarian phases which I viewed as opportunities to work in a different medium. Sort of like watercolors and oils. I am glad they had their vegetarian periods; if they had not, I never would have tried my now favorite pizza- roasted butternut squash seasoned with fresh nutmeg and sage, toasted pine nuts, caramelized onions and smoked gouda. Or known the ease and nearly unlimited possibilities of the frittata. Yum!

The joy of cooking is twofold. Yes, the act of creating something special out of ordinary ingredients is very rewarding, but the real reward is sharing it with family and friends. I love feeding people; I know I am nourishing both our bodies and our friendship. I know I have been successful when people linger at the table in what Ellen calls “that contented haze following a good meal.”

Here is the menu I came up with today. I am thinking of using it for Easter Sunday.

Asparagus and aged goat cheese mini-souffles

Rosemary grilled lamb chops

Crusty french bread

Roasted beet salad with fresh mint and toasted almonds

Crème Brulee garnished with fresh strawberries

Grand Marnier truffles

Many of these recipes are relatively new in my repertoire. The asparagus souffles came to me through one of the Google recipe-of-the-day applications. The grilled lamb is from my new Culinary Institute of America cookbook, and the salad is my own interpretation of one I had last week in Chicago. I have made crème brulee before, but am newly motivated because I found a great source of vanilla beans online. I ordered some and they are unbelievably good.

This menu was created with my family in mind. The only problem is that the kids will not be home next weekend and the menu serves four. Any takers?

P.S.  There seems to have been some miscommunication regarding spring's arrival and the state of Michigan did not get the memo.  I was out feeding the birds this morning as the snow was falling and the cold wind was blowing hard.  However, despite the miserable weather I discovered that the trees have budded, the peonies have poked through the ground, and my daffodils are beginning to open, ever so slightly.  Apparently, while I am whining about the weather, nature just continues the steady march onward in time.  So, today I am grateful with the knowledge that spring MUST be coming, even if somehow we missed the call!

Riding circles around me

Little boys wore ties to birthday parties in 1962?

I was thinking the other day about all the bikes I’ve had over the years.  My very first “bike” was a red Western Flyer tricycle that I got for my fourth birthday.  I grew up in Connecticut and my birthday falls in the middle of January, so my first experiences of riding were in the living room.  I don’t think indoor riding privileges lasted much beyond the day of my  birthday party, but I do remember riding that shiny new red trike with a great deal of pride. 

Next in line was my first 2 wheeler—a 20” red bike that could be either a boys bike or a girls bike depending on the position of the cross bar.  In the early 1960’s bicycles were black, acceptable only to boys,  red or blue with  the latter two colors acceptable to either gender.  We didn’t even conceive of  purple or pink,  let alone  Disney Princess or Barbie themes.  Yup.  The choice was pretty much red, blue or black.  And I seemed to have a natural inclination toward red bikes. 

In fact over the years, I have loved five bikes and every one of them has been red.

Of course, my first love was my red tricycle—my first wheels.

Second was my first two-wheeler.  It may have looked like an ordinary red bike, but in my mind it was the Batmobile.    Jerry Corcoran was Batman;  I was Robin and we rode up and down Ireland Road wearing yellow plastic Bat Utility Belts, capes flying behind us in the wind. The power we needed to protect Gotham City came from baseball cards clipped to the spokes.

After I outgrew the 20" bike and childish Batman games,  I had a couple of nondescript girls bikes. The first was a blue girl’s one-speed that my Dad later painted orange.  In late high school I got a greenish gold girl’s 10-speed bike, much like a present-day hybrid.  Both were fine bikes and I used them to ride to my friends’ houses, to school and to the library, but they were simply transportation.  I rode to get someplace, not for the joy of riding.

That changed when Al and I were in graduate school.  Al had done some fairly long distance rides with friends in high school and college, but it was as graduate students that we began to take our riding seriously.  Fifty or sixty mile rides were common summer Sunday events, usually involving pancakes at the Etna Firehouse, where for a couple of dollars a couple of kids could fuel up for a long day of riding in the steep  hills surrounding Cayuga Lake.  It wasn’t just us either; many  of our friends were cyclists.  None of us was interested in racing—it was about distance and touring.  I was still riding that greenish gold hybrid bike, but by then Al had purchased his first racing bike – a red Motobecane Mirage.   In my second year of graduate school, I joined the ranks of the cool bikers and bought a red Fuji Sports 10—a 10 speed racing/road bike.  And I was in love.

We rode hundreds, probably thousands, of miles on those bikes.  All around Nova Scotia, day trips in the Finger Lakes, around the Thousand Islands.   We lived in Ithaca, New York at the time;  I was a chemistry doctoral student at Cornell, and Al was earning his MBA at Syracuse University.  We lived a just a couple of miles from Cornell, making it easy for me to walk or ride my bike to campus, while Al used our only car to commute the 60 miles to Syracuse.  One summer day in 1982, I had ridden to school, but for some reason, I walked home.  Al’s bike was locked to a railing outside our second floor apartment and that night, someone cut his lock and stole the bike.   We notified the police, but it never turned up. 

By then, biking had become a very important part of our lives.  We loved the freedom of riding- that wonderful rush of riding like the wind.  In  “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Robert Pirsig wrote about the difference between traveling  by car and on a motorcycle.  He notes that traveling by car forces you to see the world through the frame of the windshield and that the world thus framed is just more boring TV.  But on a bike (he means motorcycle, but even more so on a bicycle) you can experience the world surrounding you.  On a hot day, you can tell when there is a stream nearby, even if you can’t see it because you can feel the humid cool air.  You can feel the heat of the road, and smell the dank dampness of the woods.   Bicycles are quiet enough that wildlife does not flee upon your approach—we have seen wolves just a few feet from the side of the road,  felt the snap of bird wings a few feet from our heads.  Instead of just seeing the world outside the window, you experience the world fully and directly and it is simply delightful.

(Ok.  Time for a reality check.  Al read that last paragraph and thought it a bit romantic.  He reminded me of the night we rode north from Halifax as dusk was falling.   The traffic was very heavy and the shoulder was very narrow.  Under those less than bucolic conditions, we  heard the snap and felt the crunch of bones breaking as we were forced to ride directly over a long dead cat.  Fully experiencing the world?  I suppose so.  Simply delightful?  Not so much.)

Anyway, Al  clearly needed a bike.  So, off to a local bike shop we went, and found a really nice 12 speed black Lotus racing bike.  After a test ride, he was so enamored with it that I sold  my  Fuji Sports 10 and bought a red one almost just like his. 

And our love for bicycling grew.

And the miles piled on.  

We rode those bikes from Seattle, Washington to San Francisco, CA, crossing the Cascades several times.   We rode to Mount Ranier, Mount St. Helens, Crater Lake, the Redwoods and south along beautiful coastal  Highway 1 in California.  We rode those bikes around Newfoundland, did a winery tour of the Finger Lakes region, and countless day trips.  In fact, almost 30 years later, we still have those two bikes.

But lives change.  We had kids and didn’t get out on the open road very often. As the kids learned to ride, our biking was pretty restricted to short rides on rail trails.  I no longer enjoyed the stiff harsh ride of a road bike, and got lower backaches from being hunched over.  So about 10 years ago, I bought a very nice white hybrid bike.  At first, I really liked the upright posture and softer ride.   In truth, I had gotten a lot softer too and no longer felt so inspired by long distance bike riding.

Al maintained his bicycle fitness much better than I did.  He kept up by riding in the 150 mile bike ride for Multiple Sclerosis each year, but didn’t ride all that much at other times.  He is not the sort of guy who buys new toys readily.  He thought his bike was adequate—after all he had been riding it for nearly 30 years and it had served him well.   Two years ago, I was riding behind him on a rail trail and noticed that the crank made a disheartening clunk on every stroke.  I seized upon the malfunction to convince him that he should get a new one.  (Actually, I told him I was going to buy him a new bike and he had a choice of picking one out himself or leaving it to me).  He test rode a number of bikes and finally bought a beautiful white Trek road bike. The technology certainly has changed.   The frame is so much lighter, and the components are so much better.  Shifting happens on the handlebars now, not low on the frame.   It was a remarkable improvement. 

And lives change.

About three years ago, I decided to improve my overall fitness and lost a bunch of weight.  Two years ago, I started riding the MS150 with Al, and found that I enjoyed it again, at least mostly.  It was hard to keep up with him—partly because he was in better shape and partly because he was riding a light nimble road bike and I was riding a heavy wide-tired hybrid.  The hybrid was more comfortable, but I NEVER  felt that exhilaration of riding that I felt on my old Lotus road bike--the feeling that the bike was working with me, that  the wheels became my wings and  the effort disappeared and I was flying.    The feeling of riding like the wind.    Of being the wind.   On my hybrid, biking was usually fun, but it was never amazing. 

I wanted amazing.  But, I remembered the lower back pain of the racing bike.  I wondered if I could get used to the dropped handlebars again.  After all, I am 50 something years old; a middle aged mother.

But I wanted amazing.

I did some research and discovered that many manufacturers are now making road bikes proportioned specifically for women.  I read that the nagging back pain I experienced was probably because my trusty red Lotus was the right height for me, but the reach to the handlebars was too long.  And I decided to try again.

I rode the Lotus toward the end of last summer to see if the racing position was even possible and I was surprised to find myself adapting to it easily.  And this year, I decided to try out one of those new fangled, high tech women’s road bikes.

The end of this story is predictable.  A new Specialized road bike, proportioned for women, light and nimble, joined the family last week.   I took it out for a pretty good test drive and fell in love with cycling all over again.

And of course it is red.

Now if they could only do something about those seats!

Today I am grateful for all the wonderful experiences we've had on our various road trips (except, of course, for the dead cat incident) and am looking forward to many more.

Dad, me and my first laptop!

All my life's a circle

Red trike to red bike

I started blogging early

when I was a little tyke...

(but that is another post....)

Thingish Things

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

                                                        - T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

I ran into a poet friend of mine the other day in the corridor outside of the campus Starbucks. We chatted a little bit about day-to-day things-- students, grading, family and so on. Soon the conversation wandered to a comparison of science and poetry. She surprised me by saying that she thought the intentions of the scientist and the poet were pretty much the same, a view that I suspect is not shared by many scientists or poets. I had a hunch that we were in agreement but just to be sure, I asked her to describe the intent of a poet. She replied “The poet tries to go someplace new and discover what is there.” (I am trying to recall her exact words; that is, no doubt, a paraphrase)

Interesting.

That is pretty much exactly what a scientist does, although a scientist would probably use different words. Maybe something like, “A scientist probes the physical world to determine the underlying principles.”

As my friend was elaborating on her ideas, it occurred to me that my intention as a photographer is exactly the same as her poet and my scientist —to look at something in a new way and discover what it really looks like.

And then a new thought occurred to me.

Here it is:

The basis of all creativity is the quest to discover something new in the world that we inhabit everyday--to look beyond the obvious and see what lies just beyond our normal vision. And then to make something out of it, partly to preserve the discovery and partly to share it.

I have no idea if this concept is even remotely original, but I just thought of it and it feels correct.  Still, I can't help wondering if you are rolling your eyes or tsk-tsking at me, as in "Tsk-Tsk, Deb. You really just thought of that?"  I am reminded here of one of my favorite quotes from Winnie the Pooh, "When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."  This may be one of those moments.  Maybe my new Thing is not so very Thingish after all.

Whatever.


Al and I went to see the great guitarist, Jeff Beck, last week. It was an amazing concert; amazing for both the quality and variety of the music.  Time and time again, he took a familiar melody to new places and discovered something completely unique. Sharing that discovery with the audience, he gave us the opportunity to hear the song in a totally new way.  Sounds familiar, no?

We humans seem have a penchant for exploration and discovery and the drive to create things that reflect our perceptions of the world in tangible form. The great intellectual, artistic and technical achievements are just different manifestations of that drive.  No one better than the other.  Much more alike than different. 

Everything's different, but it's all the same.

Today I am grateful for all of those manifestations of the very human need to create.