- Christmas cookies: I like the thick ones that rise. Usually they do not make any stops, besides quick intervention with a frosting knife, between cooling rack and demise.
- Decorating the tree: The tinsel is a mess this year, all scrappy and stuff. Also, only two of our light strings worked…and they are both short and are of different sizes. Oh well.
- Christmas lights: This year, at the third-grader’s request, and our recognition of just how high two-story eaves are, our front yard decorations included, and were limited to, two very large and fancy reindeer with moving heads, and several strings of large-bulb lights in a small fir-like tree in the yard. It’s pretty nice, actually.
- Baking: especially when I don’t have to do it. Gingerbread men, 7 layer bars, rum balls, pies…I won’t even go on. I don’t want to exacerbate current hunger.
- Fighting over the stockings: See, my mother made five stockings several years ago. Each has a different pattern: teddy bears, horse heads, Noah’s ark, etc. Preferences are strong and competition is steep (especially since there are now six kids and someone has to get some other reject that was neither homemade nor a near heirloom).
- Dogs eating christmas ornaments: On second thought, cleaning up a mess of reddish waxy remnants mixed with pine needles is not my favorite.
- Midnight mass
- Arguing about who will open the next gift
- Cleaning up, laying about satisfied. Watching relatives leave. Eating leftover pie.
In light of recent efforts to study for finals, time spent on social media and subsequent news reading has been on the rise. Here is what I found most worth sharing.
The Obama administration will allegedly propose new regulations including wage protection for home health workers. I don’t know the financial ramifications, but I do know that home health workers are paid very little for what can be a demanding but critically important job that offers many types of treatments otherwise not available outside some kind of medical establishment. I am no expert, but on the face of it this seems like it would be a very important and beneficial effort.
I’m not the only one! ACA brings health coverage to 2.5 million young adults. I know that this made a significant financial impact in my life, as I received better health coverage than offered at my school for a much lower cost (this year no cost, actually, since my parent’s plan has one cost for covering all children). I wonder if this will change rates for insuring children? They are a pretty healthy group. Either way, I think this is an example of a strong benefit from the Affordable Care Act that came at little cost to anyone — well, cry me a river, insurance companies.
Seriously BIG money: Lipitor goes generic and manufacturers of a new generation of the Pill come under controversy for misleading advertisements. Big money = big chances for anything from slippery business practices to outright dihonesty. It’s a scary world out there…
I don’t only read about health care. Thanks to someone who popped up in my news feed, here is coverage of “The seige of Wukan:” residents of a small village in China fight back after continued attempts to sell their land to developers.
Top Google searches of 2011 went up. (but it ain’t over ’til it’s over, right?) We sure love our celebrities is all I can say (not that I am criticizing). Also noted is that one quarter of Google searches are unique in Google history.
This is fun: Compare US Google searches to United Kingdom list. They are pretty similar. My favorites: ‘how to snog’ and ‘what is probate.’ Talk about diversity!
Winspear Opera House, Dallas, Texas October 21, 23, 26, 29, November 6, 2011
Review by Dean M. Cassella, Ph.D.
“She seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch bagpipes re-echoing over the moors. . . She gave herself up to the flow of the melodies, and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were being drawn over her nerves. Her eyes could hardly take in all the costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted trees that shook whenever someone walked, and the velvet caps, cloaks, swords—all those imaginary things that vibrated in the music as in the atmosphere of another world.”
Thus Flaubert describes Emma Bovary’s experience of hearing Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in a theater in Rouen. When Madame Bovary was first published in 1856, Donizetti’s greatest work was a mere twenty one years old. Today, it is an opera-house mainstay throughout the world, and a sine qua non of the coloratura soprano repertoire. Lucia is usually a sure bet with opera goers, and TDO’s current production is no exception. Friday night’s performance was marked by outstanding performances by all principals, and lush, vibrant conducting by Graeme Jenkins.
Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) stands as one of the “Big Three” of nineteenth-century Italian opera composers (the others being Rossini and Verdi). The work swells and swoons with beautiful melodies and rich orchestration that drives the plot to its tragic end. If you find yourself attracted to Verdi’s middle operas (Trovatore, Traviata and Rigoletto) you’ll love listening to Lucia. The story has all of the stereotypes of Italian Bel Canto opera: evil villains, obsessive, co-dependent love affairs, a maudlin juxtaposition of suicide and Christian piety, murder. . . the list goes on. This is all a good thing, especially when the music is as beautiful and satisfying as Donizetti’s is here.
Just as Tudor-era Englishmen had a fascination for stories about Italy, Italians were particularly fond of tales hailing from Britain (consider Donizetti’s trio on Elizabeth I). The story of Lucia concerns life of a noble court in Scotland around 1700, and is based on a novel by Sir Walter Scott. Lucia, the sister of Enrico Ashton, of Lammermoor, is deceived into believing that the man she has pledged her love to, Edgardo of Ravenswood, is unfaithful to her. This Enrico does in order to bolster his family’s worldly ambitions by an arranged marriage to Lord Arturo Bucklaw. At the very moment Lucia signs the marriage contract, Edgar appears on the scene to disabuse her of her disillusionment. His rejection of Lucia proves to be just another step on the road to her losing her sanity, wherein she murders her groom on her wedding night, and appears to the members of the court, covered in blood and hallucinating. She subsequently dies in her sorry state. In the final scene, Edgardo kills himself in an attempt to be reunited with Lucia in heaven.
All of the principals in this production are making their TDO debut. Foremost among these is Romanian soprano Elena Mosuc, who does an outstanding job in the role of Lucia. Apart from brief appearances by her companion Alisa (well sung in this production by Charleston mezzo-soprano Cynthia Hanna), Lucia is the sole carrier of the feminine registers for the entire work. Mosuc’s voice is has a soft, hypnotic timbre whose apparent gentleness is deceptive, for it definitively cuts through the orchestra, seemingly without effort.
Lucia’s “mad scene,” in many respects the quintessential exemplar of the genre, was what made Joan Sutherland a superstar at the Metropolitan Opera back in the sixties. The scene is deftly handled by Mosuc, whose intimacy with the role is palpable, and her masterly vocal performance is beautifully matched by her acting. There’s nothing like a petite coloratura to further engender sympathy already established by a sweet, lyric voice.
The voice of New Orleans tenor Bryan Hymel (as Edgardo) has a lot of panache. His voice has a more piercing quality than that of Mosuc, perhaps a reversal of soprano/tenor stereotypes. He and Mosuc sing well together, but Hymel naturally comes into his own in the finale, wherein he kills himself.
San Marino Republic baritone Luca Grassi, who makes his US debut with this production, was in many ways a show stealer. His dark, brooding voice is a perfect match for the role of Enrico. Enrico’s is the first principal role to be heard in Act I, and Grassi convincingly sets the tone for the whole opera. I would love to hear him sing the lead in Don Giovanni. Keep your eyes and ears out for him in future American productions.
Tenor Scott Quinn, who hails from Marshall, Texas, and has been a mainstay at TDO for several years’ running (including two seasons as Young Artist in Residence), performs wonderfully in the role of Raimondo, a court chaplain. To my ear, he is a dramatic tenor. The boldness of his voice (he has no problem filling out the theater) is counterbalanced by a supple smoothness that is reminiscent of Mosuc’s. This makes him an ideal candidate to sing the role of the pastor. After this production, Mr. Quinn will set out to join the Houston Grand Opera Studio.
The sets were designed by the late Henry Bardon, who was commissioned to build them for TDO back in 1972. The central design consists of a group of large, dilapidated gothic pillars, which serve as the foundation for a variety of indoor and outdoor scenes. The story is very dark, and the sets effectively enhance the mood. Garnett Bruce’s stage direction seemed a bit flat, especially in the first two acts. This is all the more noticeable, given the uniformly high caliber of the signing.
On the whole, this is a very strong start for TDO’s 2011-2012 season. It may be a bit much for very young children, but teens will eat it up.
Next up: Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, arguably the most influential work in the opera repertoire, and one not heard at TDO for almost two decades. I, for one, am excited!
from a press release by the City of Fort Worth:
Movies That Matter: A Human Rights Film Series. December 8, 6:30 p.m. (reception), 7 p.m. (program and film); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St . No admission charge. Movies That Matter is a quarterly program of the City of Fort Worth Human Relations Commission . This screening — presented in partnership with the Fort Worth Library, the Modern, Multicultural Alliance, the Fort Worth Independent School District and the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau — will feature the award-winning film, When I Rise.
The film tells the inspiring story of a gifted black music student at the University of Texas who is thrust into a civil rights storm that changes her life forever. Barbara Smith Conrad is cast in an opera to co-star with a white male classmate, fueling a racist backlash from members of the Texas legislature. When Barbara is expelled from the cast, the incident escalates to national news, prompting unexpected support from a pop superstar. This small-town girl, whose voice and spirit stem from her roots in East Texas , emerges as an internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano and headlines on stages around the world. When I Rise is an inspirational journey toward finding forgiveness within oneself.
Seating is limited for this FREE event which will include a special guest appearance and performance by Barbara Smith Conrad. A moderated discussion with Ms. Conrad and Dr. Don Carleton, the film’s executive producer and Executive Director for the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin will follow the film. Tickets for the event will be distributed on a first come, first served basis beginning at 6:30 p.m.
To tie up the juice fast thread — my resolve gave out on the evening of day 6, giving me an accomplishment of six and a half days’ fast. But now, that was just me. Dean is now on day 17. Hard to believe, especially since he’s been making his own juice for the last ten days or so. He has lost about 15 pounds I think, looks noticeably thinner and I have no idea where he gets the will power. Just thought I’d update so anyone checking the thread would know the conclusion. I’ll update again when he finally goes back to eating food. That may be another ten days or so, because his goal is still a few pounds away and he shows no sign of stopping!
On day 6 we had a couple of challenges. Social events. First we had to attend a class where snacks were provided. We sat there and watched others eat crackers and cheese and drink coke. We drank carrot juice. And watermelon juice. How did it feel? Well, the not eating crackers and cheese was bad, but not as bad as one might expect. The juice tasted good, really. Just not as good as crackers and cheese would. And the bottom line is, we’re still fasting. Even after the second challenge, which was my son’s 15 year old birthday party. Dean made the pizza, even though he wasn’t eating any. I thought this was a heroic moment, for sure. I made frosting for the cake, and frosted it — without enjoying even one bit. Now that was hard. But again, not as hard as you’d expect. Some discussion occurred about what would happen if you put a piece of pizza into the juicer, but of course that came to nothing, and no one tried it.
Watermelon juice has become a favorite. I decided to check this morning on various calories for juices to see how much I was actually consuming these days. A cup of watermelon juice is 71 calories. A cup of apple is about 100. Cucumber juice is 34, while celery juice is 40; carrot juice clocks in about 130. So if I drank about 8 cups of juice yesterday, that’s probably less than 800 calories. Not much, really. And I feel it, especially at the end of the day. The only thing that will set me right after 5 is Mean Green juice. And going to sleep. Somehow, you can go to bed slightly hungry and wake up all right. One more of the strange vagaries of the human digestion system.
Day Five was when I hit “the wall.” My stomach was grumbling and I began to think more about food, toast, eggs, hamburgers, apples that hadn’t been through a juice machine … everything really. We tried making V8 juice from a recipe I found online but to be quite honest it was none too palatable. I think it was the beet that ruined it, though it was in the recipe. There was too much beet, not enough tomato, the garlic gave it a strange kick and the kale had an off taste in that combination.
Dean had said that he got stressed in the eveving and began to rationalize: why not wine while you are on a juice fast? Wine is made out of grapes, and grapes is a juice. I was thankful to hear that he decided against this, at least for now.
Part of the reason we’re hanging tough is that when you’re this far into a fast, you can’t easily bail out and start over later. You’re already this far in; quitting now has a huge cost, the cost of going through the five five days over again later or admitting “I couldn’t hack it.” This keeps me going. Also I’ve got a couple of spiritual requests in with God and I’m using this fast as a type of prayer, an offering, if you will, for my intentions, my requests. If I quit half way through the fast, I figure God is going to say, “you couldn’t even get through the ten day juice fast. Well, clearly you’re not serious enough about your request. Denied.”
This may show a whacked out spiritual mentality to some, but hey, I’m just putting it out there.
To sum up, whereas you can cheat on a regular diet, a juice fast is so radical that cheating is out of the question. You might sneak a cookie on a regular diet, but on a juice fast, eating any solid invalidates the fast.
The morning, which is when I’m writing right now, is not too bad. Sunrise papaya juice is delicious and I have high energy in the morning generally. The fast gets harder about 2 in the afternoon, as I begin to find it harder to stay positive, and stays tough until about 7:30 p.m., when my body stops complaining (after a cup of Mean Green juice, a powerful appetite suppressor) and gives up on eating for the day.
So: Day 6, I’m ready. I take as my watchword the Bible verse, Matthew 6:16 (King James Version)Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
And I’ll tell you how that works for me tomorrow.
And now it’s almost bedtime on the 4th day. The good: I rarely get hungry, if I get hungry I drink more juice. Although I was out shopping for clothes with the kids this afternoon and I started to get kind of weak and I had to tell them to hurry up and try the stuff on, it was time to get back to “the juice ranch.”
I know which juice to drink when. We now have a routine. But I’m tired of making juice, and the juice machine has developed, to quote Douglas Adams, “an eccentricity in its orbit.” Which means that it often starts to vibrate wildly, like a clothes drier that’s off balance, and then you can either put some firm stuff such as apples or carrots in the feeder tube quickly, and hope it rebalances, or you have to stop it and pull the pulp out. This may be a result of my trying to make too much juice at once. I haven’t decided.
Juicing takes time, from selecting the materials, washing, preparing them, juicing them and cleaning up it’s about half an hour. And this morning, due to some distractions, no one had gone to the store to get watermelon for the “Papaya Sunrise Juice” and I had to go get it at 8:30 a.m. on an empty juice-fast stomach. So there I was at Kroger, wheeling the cart around with cucumbers, kale, garlic, celery, lemon, a watermelon and green apples in there along with some milk and sweet rolls for the kids. I wondered again what the checker was thinking: “She’s another one of those juice fasters,” maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe not knowing, or noticing, or caring what I’m buying. But it’s a lot of fruits and vegetables, the real opposite of the typical American grocery store checkout.
Dean said he would like to try a recipe with garlic. I look online. Apparently you can combine carrot, garlic and lemon … I’d try it, though carrot juice is currently our least favorite. At least we have all the materials in the house. And that is saying something, when you can cruise through esoteric juice recipes and you already have the materials. I guess you could say we really live the juice life here, or at least we plan to for 6 more days.
I live on juice. I try to get my head around this, but as my hands are doing the work, maybe my head will have to follow this time. I begin to have a routine. How to make juice. You get the vegetables and or fruits that you plan to juice with. Since you don’t want to wash the juice machine 6 times today, like you did the first day, you now know that your goal should be 5-8 cups of juice per juicing. Because now you need to start stockpiling juice, like an alchoholic with the whiskey bottle hidden at the bottom of her laundry hamper. That way if I get weak at some point during the day I don’t have to make juice to get nutrition, I can just go to the fridge like I have my entire life.
Making juice. Clean all the ingredients, and peel those which need peeling. Cut them into juicer-sized pieces. That would be about 1 inch by 4 inches. Collect any peels or cores or seeds or rinds in the empty dishpan. Put the platter with the juicer sized pieces beside the juicer. Start the machine and run the pieces through. Collect the juice in the red bowl or the 2 cup measure or what you’re going to drink out of right now, then bottle. Now you’ve got to clean the machine. Take it apart and put the pulp in the dishpan with the peelings and rinds. It will be about 4 cups of peelings, etc. The garbage has become heavy of late. Anyway, throw all that out, then use the dishpan to wash the parts of the juicer. Put them in the drainer. Put the machine back together for next time.
Long sigh. How do I feel? Not as hungry as yesterday. But not totally resigned, either. I’m planning to eat a few things once this is over, that’s for sure. Meanwhile, snack this afternoon will be either strawberry-watermelon or carrot-celery … dinner will be Mean Green, I’ve got all the materials, but for breakfast tomorrow, I’m going to need another watermelon.
The kitchen is very clean now. Polished. I don’t know why this is, maybe some kind of reflection of the juicing mentality. I feel good. Basically. Though I still have some fleeting thoughts of cinnamon rolls. But overall, I’m good.
So this is my latest idea: I will go on a juice fast. First question: Where did I get the idea? From a movie I found on Netflix streaming, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, about two guys who loose a bunch of weight and have a whole new lease on life through fasting, eating nothing and drinking only water and fresh-squeezed vegetable and fruit juice. I remembered how years ago a friend of mine said she had been cured of various illnesses and felt a lot better through drinking fresh carrot juice (along with her regular food). Then there was a woman at work who told me that your spiritual life could get a boost from fasting. I have put on about 7 pounds since school let out, probably mostly just from eating toast and toast with cinnamon.
Now I will tell you this is probably not a great time for me to go on a fast of any type since we are buying a house and that is stressful. But this is the last chance I have to try this before school starts, at which point I will be extremely busy and as they say, “all bets are off.”
So I got a juice machine, an Omega 1000, from a lady in Corinth who didn’t think she needed it any more and who had advertised it on Craigslist for $60. I picked the machine up on Saturday afternoon, did a trial juicing (carrots and celery) on Sunday afternoon and on Monday morning, it was J (Juice)-Day.
Day 1
The first day of the juice fast is one of novelty. Learning to work the juicer, combining various vegetables and fruits and seeing what you get, it’s all very interesting. I didn’t feel hungry all day, due to drinking juices that included apple, papaya, celery, carrot, and watermelon. But in the evening Dean, who had decided to try the fast with me, said “I’m sick of all these sweet juices. We need something savory.”
“You need to go buy some spinach, then,” I told him. He went to the store and came back with two bunches. I looked up a recipe which involved a bunch of spinach, half a lemon and a tablespoon of honey, then got everything washed and peeled and began to feed the leaves into the juicer. Out of the spigot came a dark green juice with light green foam that smelled of the earth and of leaves. One supermarket-sized bunch of spinach yielded about 1 and a half cup of juice.
The kids came up to watch. “What is that?”
“Spinach juice,” I answered, pouring it into two glass cups. This is going to be the punch line of a joke for years, I thought. The day mom and dad tried the crazy fad diet, the diet which demanded drinking the juice of a spinach. I was making myself into a kind of latter-day Popeye the Sailor. But it was too late to think of my image. Down the hatch, as they say.
Now spinach juice is not as bad as the children’s cold medicines that I remember taking back in grade school. It’s also not very palatable, even with lemon and honey. But we drank it, and it had the desired effect of putting off the feeling of needing food. Our hunger pangs satiated, we went to bed. We got up the next morning without fainting or giving up on the fast. And the morning and the evening were the first day.
Day 2
Juice almighty, I thought as I got up. I made tea, which I decided to allow myself during the fast, then I got the breakfast juice ready — a combination of papaya, apple, watermelon and strawberry. It was really good. But by 11 o’clock I was beginning to feel like I wanted food. I looked longingly at the butter dish, the milk, the cereal in the cupboard. “Eight and a half more days,” I thought to myself.
Dean seemed unfazed. “I can do anything for ten days,” he told me. By afternoon I felt tired, irritable, like the guy in the “Fat , Sick … ” movie who in the first days of fasting just wanted to go to bed and stay until the fast was over. But I got up and went around to my tasks, mostly paperwork and phone calls about the house purchase, and drank some leftover watermelon juice. In the evening I decided to try to make “Mean Green,” a juice mentioned in the movie, made of celery, cucumber, green apple, ginger, lemon and kale leaves. I made the recipe I found on line (everything about this project was found on line — the initial interest movie, on Netflix streaming, the juicer, from Craigslist, and the recipes. But wait, the actual fruits and vegetables came from Kroger). Okay, the Mean Green juice, it’s green. Light green, and tastes like ginger, lemon, and the other vegetables I put in it. It’s better than the spinach with lemon juice, no doubt. But still not as tasty as, say, cinnamon toast, mashed potatoes, Cheerios, oatmeal, cheese and crackers, yeah. It’s not completely easy to go to the store to get vegetables either, you have to cut past the deli cheese, the deli appetizers, the sandwich shop, and the bread displays, including cinnamon rolls.
But I’m drinking my mean green. I looking to realize my goals: weight loss, spiritual experience, greater health through vitamin saturation … we’ll see. More tomorrow.
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