Finished enough

Ah, happy day. The study is finished enough for us to relax... well, no. It's finished enough for us to turn our attention instead to the yard, and the myriad chores left to do there. One of which is to find a lawn mower to borrow. Ours has decided that it has better things to do than start. You will not believe how grumpy we are about this.

However, let's talk pretty, happy things.

Our adinkra looks wonderful behind the desk. It makes me so happy to have the cloth up, even though I can't find the "cheat sheet" we brought back from Ghana to tell us the significance of the different stamps. This cloth, with its incredible detail and geometric patterns, was our first purchase together after we had decided to make a home together upon returning stateside. For fifteen years it has been in storage. Now it makes me giddy every time I look at it.

And here is one of the most colorful blankets that we brought back, looking right at home behind the sideboard that is decorated with toys made from tin cans. The motorcycle, train and vespa are all from Togo, as is the clay pot in the center. The two wooden figurines are from Benin, I believe. The wire airplane on the shelf is from Zimbabwe.

And last, but definitely not least: the craft hutch. Bracelet and necklace ideas are tacked up on the doors, and the former keyboard shelf is now home to my bead board and the felt pieces I use to lay stuff out while I'm playing with ideas. I have three fabric-collage bookmarks that I've been playing with tacked up in front. And storage beneath. There are places for most of my stuff ~ although I still need a separate rolling storage bin for ribbons, trim, purse handles and other various things.

There are still things to do in the room: re-upholster the two side-chairs (I'm thinking claret red velvet would be so cool), put up a few more things on the walls (pictures, a clock, etc.), and find some place for at least one kente strip. But it definitely feels homey and comfortable as it is.

Last night Gabi and I were both in here, she planning her week (AP Physics is as hard, if not harder, for the teacher as it is for the students. Send my sweet girl happy thoughts, please!), me playing with beads (although I was too tired to anything more than lay them out and look at them. The ideas came at 5:00 this morning). It was nice, listening to music and being in our new space, and the house still smelled like baked chicken and squash from dinner. A lovely end to what Gabi called, "the fastest weekend in history."

Paint and other short-term delights

So, here I am, looking out the freshly-painted window of our study at the grey and chilly garden outside. It's nearing Halloween and we haven't mowed up leaves, cut down lily stalks, cleaned up perennials, emptied and winterized the rain barrels or taken in the fountain. No, we haven't done any of that very, very necessary garden work, because we've been painting.

This is what we started with: old bedroom furniture, green walls, and a paint-effect-sky ceiling that came with the house (the best part was the glow-in-the-dark stars).

Honestly, I don't know how the HGTV shows do it, when they come in with three artsy designer folk and repaint, remodel and rejuvenate a room in a day. Seriously. Do they have a small army of house-pros in the background? Ten nimble-wristed painters just aching to cut in trim? And the part that adds insult to injury: they have time to design and make these fun fantastic decorator elements. Not enough cash to purchase a work of art for that wall? No sweat! The nice guy with the dark hair will throw something together... just some MDF, willow branches, a jig saw, paint and some funky copper nails and *voila* you have an original masterpiece you can tell all your politely dubious friends about.

Say good-bye to green and hello cafe au lait.

For us, unfortunately, there is no army and I'm no longer particularly nimble-wristed (I am, however, aching in some interesting places). But, the painting is done. We have successfully transformed our lovely green spare bedroom with the little computer hutch into a study and craft space: cafe au lait walls with white trim, a new desk and sideboard from Ikea, and that old computer hutch is in the process of becoming my craft hutch. I haven't had a chance to do much to it except claim the space by putting my sewing machine where the computer used to be. I have big plans, but so far have been too tired to actually do much with it.

Did I mention just how much trim there is in this relatively small room? Crown molding, a picture rail, two windows, two doors and baseboards all around. Lots o' trim.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I am the biggest instigator of all this exhaustion and achiness. I do love to paint: we paint at least one room a year. I'm so hopelessly caught up in this cycle that, in spite of my better judgment, I'm already starting to plan how to redo the bathroom next year. And, we haven't even finished the study yet.

The painting is done, with the exception of a small amount of retouching on the closet door. This is so big. The trim is done. We are known for not finishing the trim. I can't overstate this. We have rooms we painted two years ago that have paint splotches on the trim because we never went back to that. We almost never finish the second coat on the trim. We just get used to the splotches and uneven paint job and figure that we'll be repainting the whole room in a few years and, well, we'll get to the trim then.

But not this time!

My sense of accomplishment is enormous.

Two old chairs that Gabi found at Savers in Minneapolis a couple of years ago look right at home next to the new sideboard from Ikea. I will re-upholster the chairs ~ eventually.

Next step: bring out the textiles that we've had in storage ever since we got back from Togo. We brought back these lovely things and then discovered that their fabulous yellow, orange and green colors just really didn't go with anything. So last year we decided that we wanted them out, dammit, and we designed the study around them. The neutral walls and white, sort-of-contemporary furniture, should be a great foil for the colorful blankets and wall hangings.

We'll pick up some curtain rods to put on the two open walls so that we can hang our beautiful adinkra from Ghana as well as a bridal blanket from Mali. We also have some kente strips ~ some vintage ones that we picked up at the blow-your-mind-it's-so-big market in Kumassi, Ghana. Also, in the process of digging out all our textiles I found a beautiful little piece from Pakistan. It was given to me by a friend of mine who worked in the embassy in Lome, but had been stationed in Islamabad before that.

All work was supervised, of course, by Rosie.

So, now comes the cleaning up and the putting away of painting supplies until next year. I'll share pics of the completed room as soon as the pretty stuff is up.

Tip 'o the billfold to Bachmann

Ah, dontcha just love campaign season...

We are giggling tonight in spite of our fatigue (busy weekend redecorating our spare room, but more on that when we're finished). It seems our embarrassment of a representative, Michelle Bachmann, went on Hardball on Friday to blast Obama. She suggested that he might be "anti-American" and that voters should get to know him better.

Her ridiculous statements have resulted in $450,000 in donations coming in for her DFL opponent, Elwyn Tinklinberg.

What strikes me about this is that in the news Bachmann's campaign just reiterates the same line about voters needing to get more information about Obama ~ that they should know how he would lead the country. However, Bachmann and her campaign spokespeople don't seem to realize that the problem is that Bachmann is suggesting not simply that Obama would have very different priorities than McCain. No, she's suggesting that he's anti-American because he has different priorities. It's the same thing that I wrote about last week ~ making your campaign tactic the tarring of your opponent as an enemy. This is wrong. Theoretically, we have a democracy. So doesn't that mean that there are people who will disagree and that we should all be able to voice our opinions without fear that we will be scapegoated and hung out as traitors?

Seriously, of course Obama has different priorities and would lead the country in a different direction. And we should be having a vigorous debate on whose policies and priorities would best serve the country in these troubled times. That's sort of the point of the whole campaign thing. But it's just beyond ludicrous to suggest that either candidate is unpatriotic, anti-American, or a similarly dangerous threat to the welfare of the country.

I think that the surge of donations to Tinklinberg would suggest that many Americans, like myself, are just disgusted by these divide and smear tactics. That is what is making me truly hopeful right now.

And, I have to say, I apologize for the political shift lately. I have no desire to have a political blog. But it's hard not to be thinking of these things right now when we are getting hammered by campaign ads ~ I'm so fed up with Coleman, Franklin, Paulson and other ads that I can barely stand to watch TV. Just over two weeks to go, and then they can start fundraising for 2012.

A little media analysis

Thanks to TiVo we just watched the October 10th episode of Now with Bill Moyers. In this episode, Moyers talked with one of my favorite media analysts, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, about the untruths and deliberate misrepresentations in attack ads by both Obama and McCain. It's a very informative and revealing discussion, andI would highly recommend it to one and all. It's not about partisan politics, but about holding candidates and their campaigns to basic standards of ethical behavior. Very, very good.

You can find the discussion here. (Sorry, I couldn't find a way to embed the video into the blog.)

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Little sweet things

So, going with a little less gravitas today...

I have two discoveries to share with you my friends and readers. The first is a musician who I just discovered thanks to Pandora, Playlist, and our always-sensational Great River music collection. Vienna Teng is a brilliantly talented musician with a gorgeous voice and phenonmenal talent on the piano.

Go check out Teng's "Lullaby for a Stormy Night". I'm sure you'll like it.

My second great discovery was a little cookbook I found on clearance at Barnes and Noble. The Daily Soup Cookbook is divided by primary soup ingredient (tomato, rice, corn, nut, bean, etc.) and peppered with fun bits of trivia and whimsy. These include music to play while cooking soup, periodic table of the soups and letters sent to staff at The Daily Soup. The recipes look healthy, yummy and full of fresh vegetables, herbs and spices.

The Daily Soup Cookbook is where I found a recipe for the latest version of seriously tasty Mulligatawny soup to be added to my favorites file. Mulligatawny soup is an anglicized version of the Indian tamil, or pepper broth. It is described by FoodReference.com as

"a rich curried soup originally made with peppers, hence the name. It has changed to suit differing tastes in Western culture, and has gone through many variations at various times and places. It is usually based on a chicken stock (also mutton or vegetable stock) and curry, with cream , pieces of chicken, onion, celery, apples and almonds and garnished with rice. The cream was very likely, originally coconut milk."

I've seen mulligatawnies with apples and/or cream ~ or neither. Different kinds of curry powders are used for various versions. Some are vegetarian and some emphatically not. This one has garam masala, almonds and saffron, a combination that is always sure to get my attention. I adore saffron. Just a few threads into a big pot of broth and potatoes and the flavor is sweet, deeply nuanced and absolutely lovely.

The Daily Soup Mulligatawny

The original recipe is vegetarian but I used chicken broth and added about 3 cups of chunked, roasted chicken. Also, because I used boxed chicken broth I did not add any extra salt.

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 large Spanish onion, chopped
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons garam masala
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1 (28-ounce) can whole tomatoes, drained and diced
6 cups vegetable stock
6 medium Idaho potatoes, peeled, halved lengthwise, and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup sliced almonds, lightly toasted
15 saffron threads
1/2 cup chopped scallions

1. Puree the ginger and garlic together in a blender or food processor.
2. Heat the oil in a large stockpot over medium heat. Add the onion and ginger puree and saute for 4 minutes, until tender and golden brown.
3. Add the sugar, garam masala, coriander, salt, turmeric, and cayenne and stir to coat the vegetables. Saute for 2 minutes to cook the spices.
4. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes.
5. Add the stock and potatoes and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce heat, partially cover, and simmer for 20 minutes, until the potatoes are tender.
6. Meanwhile, combine the heavy cream, half of the almonds, and the saffron in a small saucepan over medium heat. Simmer until the liquid is reduced by half.
7. Puree the almond and cream mixture in a blender until smooth.
8. Stir the almond cream into the soup and simmer for 2 minutes.
9. Stir in 1/4 cup of the remaining almonds.
10. To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and top with the remaining 1/4 cup of almonds and chopped scallions.

Too much thinking... or not enough?

Oh good grief. I've been wanting to blog for days, thinking about little things like the amazing mulligatawny stew I made the other day, or the yummy birdseed bread...

and thinking about big things, like mitzvot (commandments) and all the obligations we are called upon to think about during the High Holidays. One of the greatest mitzvot, sort of the heading underneath which many of the better-known ten commandments fall, is simply: give a damn about how your actions impact those around you. Every day, in every way, big choices and small, we are creating the world we live in. This is so fundamental to Judaism. We are not stewards of G-d's creation, no, we are co-creators. We are here to add our bits, our colors, our weavings, our songs, to the grand spectacle of this world, this life. G-d has given us the materials to work with and the rules for how to use them, and through our actions and our mistakes we are culpable, responsible ~ every little thing we do is linked in ways we can or cannot see to everything else around us. Even when we are wronged we play a role and are responsible for it.

I did so much thinking... and so far too little writing. But the thoughts are there... banging away inside my head. Bees and flies and ladybugs caught in the bottle of my mind.

And I've been thinking about other big things, like dirty, mud-slinging campaigns and why anyone would think it would be a good idea to treat your opponent like an enemy and link him to traitors and terrorists... and what have we become, this country, when the puppet masters pull the strings and we froth at the mouth so much it seems we could never come together to solve anything. At the library I work with good people from across the political spectrum. We all get along well. We all find good things in each other. We all smile and stand a little taller when it's a warm sunny day in the fall. We all cringe at the thought of winter heating bills.

Even when we all know we vote for different candidates.

But you'd never know this from watching television. No, there you find the news-makers and news-shriekers, stomping about like so many adrenaline junkies, willing to do just about anything to raise the ratings and key up the horse-race with their daily doses of outrage.

I shake my head. I have to wonder why we can't seem to do any better than this. This isn't news. That isn't a campaign. This is the WWF. That is theater, over-acting, big hair and winking for the camera and the guys who would laugh at VPILF jokes. Whip up the mob and send 'em running off to the voting booths.

And while this may make for great ratings and fundraising now, where, seriously, will it leave us on November 5th when the votes have been counted, the dust has settled, and we as a country have to turn our attention from the mesmerizing horse-race to digging ourselves out of this hole?

It's beyond sad. It's a disgrace.

Sad day

Oh, woe is me.

Yesterday I wore long pants, closed-toed shoes, and we had to turn the heat on.

I am fundamentally not ready to let go of summer.