robert frost(ing)

for this month's mystery box cupcake challenge, i honour the one-hundred and thirty-seventh birthday of robert frost, whose poetry has inspired and haunted me. it even made its way into my high school yearbook write-up.

whose cakes these are i think i know.
his bakery's in the village though;
he will not see me stopping here
to watch his cakes fill up with snow.


my filigree must think it queer
to stop without some fondant near,
between the trees and frosted cake,
the darkest chocolate of the year.


he gives his fragile limbs a shake
and some of them begin to break
the only other sound's the sweep
of easy mint and sugar flake.


the cupcake's lovely, dark, and deep,
but i have promises to keep,
and miles to go before i sleep.
and miles to go before i sleep.

the winner of march’s mystery box cupcake challenge will receive prizes from:

• Angela's Images; a selection of handmade crafts
• Bake It Pretty; a $5 online gift card
• Beanilla; a $7 online gift card
• Miss Kitty Creations; a handmade cupcake charm of your choice
• Simply Caked; 600 brown greaseproof cupcake liners
• Sweet Cuppin Cakes; a $5 online gift card
• Tundra Books; a selection of 3 very sweet children's books

Thank you to all our prize sponsors!

what is this?

is it necessarily the case that the fellow on the left isn't a feminist? isn't it possible that he is, but that he's also a jerk? kinda like a lot of other feminists?

being a feminist doesn't mean you're always a nice person, just like being a skeptic doesn't mean you're always rational.

it's funny, though. i'll give it that.

the choosy warrior

i recently abandoned an on-line forum that i'd been a part of, on-and-off, for about four years. it wasn't easy to walk away, but it's been a long time coming, mostly because the atmosphere was very divisive and toxic. the political landscape in the united states is such that some americans seem to be willing to consider any tactic that might undermine their opponents. they're also quite reluctant to concede any ground to said opponents.

that's not the kind of "discussion" i'm interested in. i'm also not into being bulldozed over and interrupted whenever i try to make a point. and, finally, i've been tapping into some newfound maturity on the matter: recognizing that in some cases my contribution is either redundant or unlikely to be fruitful... and then choosing not to make that contribution.

i've also become more aware that, when it comes to real debate, i'm often most critical of people with whom i generally agree, but who are making particularly awful arguments at the moment. this is because i think they're making my fight harder by misrepresenting me and my cause. when a feminist is anti-science or a skeptic offers a facile critique of religion or a liberal calls conservatives "the reich wing," i want to puke and rebuke. i hate misogyny and blind religion and conservative rhetoric, but it doesn't burn the way bad feminism or bad skepticism or bad liberalism can.

anyway, all that to say, i'm working on being better at picking my battles. as always, thanks for listening.

p.s. here's a snippet from a recent discussion about progressive enlightenment: if a misogynistic, racist, homophobic, classist idiot stops being classist, that's a step in the right direction.

five things

pick five things that you want to achieve this month. they can be related or quite distinct, serious or fun, permanent or temporary. but they should be concrete.

my five things for december are:

1) lose five more pounds.
2) complete the december cupcake challenge with time to spare.
3) read a novel not written by agatha christie.
4) blog twice a week.
5) talk to new people at the holiday parties i'm attending.

what are you doing this month?

good grammar can improve airport security!

while waiting in a long, long airport security line at lester b. pearson international airport today, i saw a sign warning unruly passengers that they may "be denied boarding and/or prosecuted."

oh, and/or. apparently, you're not as straightforward as i imagined you to be.

i'm pretty sure this particular sign used "and/or" wrong, because it implies that there are two possible punishments for being unruly: (being prosecuted) OR (being prosecuted and being denied boarding.) thaaaat's fairly silly. if they're going to prosecute you, i really doubt they'll let you board! but that's just my gut talkin'.

the sign should probably read: "unruly passengers may be prosecuted and/or denied boarding." subtext: being a jackass won't help you get on the plane faster. not even if you're a cabinet minister.

don't you dare let yourself believe that this issue doesn't apply to you! pondering such grammatical nuances has effectively diverted and distracted me as i've stood in long, long airport security lines. were it not for those distractions i may have become unruly!

and we all know what happens when you become unruly in an airport. or we would, if the sign was clearer.

thesised!

my thesis was due yesterday... and i submitted it on friday! woo-hoo! i've already found things to correct, but i'm ok with that.

here's my foreword, in case any of you find that sort of thing interesting :-)

In the weeks before the first draft of this thesis was submitted, a senior Canadian diplomat, formerly assigned to Afghanistan, made some startling allegations. Robert Colvin claimed that in 2006 and 2007 he had tried to inform his government that suspects apprehended by Canadian forces and handed over to Afghani authorities were likely being tortured. These allegations spurred a political circus, a parsing of memos sent by Colvin to his superiors, and denials by high-ranking generals. In the face of their own potential complicity in the torture of Afghani citizens, Canadians responded in a variety of ways. On 30 November 2009, one letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail implied that the quotidian lives of Canadians had nothing to do with those of Taliban collaborators. “What a non-issue,” wrote Gordon Friedrich.

Here, forty years later, was a descendant of so many men and women I had encountered in the pages of the United Church Observer and The Canadian Mennonite. While the academic stakes of this project are described in its formal introduction, the ideology implicit in that Globe letter compels me to reflect on the practical impact of my work.

The Vietnam War invited all Canadians to consider the degree to which their seemingly innocuous actions constituted complicity in the assault of vulnerable people. One need not be a Christian to grasp that our common human experience binds us to one another. Even apart from that fundamental spiritual kinship, however, we now have extraordinary grounds for leading lives defined by extraordinary compassion. We live in a complex eco-political network, and our interconnectedness refuses to be dismissed as the figment of a sentimental imagination; it is an undeniable reality, documented by copious paper-trails.

As voters, as tax-payers, as inventors and proliferators of goods and ideas, and as consumers, our decisions cause not ripples but tidal waves throughout the world and, for the first time, we can track them. The advent of modern telecommunications has given us access to an unprecedented volume of information about one another, at an unprecedented speed. None of us can lay claim to innocence on the grounds that we are ignorant: more than at any other time in the history of our species, we in the developed world are equipped to understand the suffering of others and our complicity therein. As a result, the very definition of “neighbour” has dramatically changed.

By documenting the moral crises Canadians underwent during the Vietnam War, I hope to move the discussion forward, so that as we redefine “neighbour,” we may also redefine our politics.

solo?

there's an important distinction between a monologue and a soliloquy. the former is an extended uninterrupted speech by one person, while the latter is similar, but not intended to be heard by any of the other characters. it's addressed only to the (passive) audience. it's hamlet's "to be or not to be" rather than, say, emilio's speech about how he ended up in detention in "the breakfast club" (which i just saw!). hamlet was just talking to himself, working through ideas outloud, but the jock was actually communicating. i mean, yes, he was working through stuff, but he also wanted the rest of the crew to know. and he wanted them to respond.

if you're asked to recite a monologue, either kind will do. but when you're writing a blog... you have to kind of decide which kind of "performance" it's going to be. for the record, i don't want this to be a soliloquy.

ok?

it's time to share

announcing the launch of my spin-off blog: http://gemsfrommymother.blogspot.com

it will be updated as new gems permit. :)

k is for kisses

cannot *believe* i've only been awake for thirteen hours... it's been a dense day.

i) a group session for our "carving out your discipline" position papers: two hours of peer review, with ginger cake! i still don't know how my work contributes to humanity, exactly.

ii) research on jeanne guyon: this led to general commentaries on the phenomenon of mysticism among women, which in turn led to simone de beauvoir's chapter on women mystics in "second sex." there was a great deal to process there, and i'll be reflecting about it here when i can. but, to start with: i'm not as healthy as i wish i were.

iii) cornerstone: walking home with charles, cleaning for an inspection, making a birthday card, teaching theresa how to use excel, decorating, drinking on the job, having a party, coming thisclose to trying guitar hero, almost making a med error (i blame the wine!), and helping bev get ready for bed.

iv) so tired. didn't bother going home... came straight from cornerstone to charbonneau, to sleep. trying to decide if i can stay awake long enough to laugh at jon.

vi) by the way, brian and beverly both kissed me today. plus, brian took my hand and sat me on the couch and passed me his jungle book colouring pad and some crayons. the glittery and metallic crayons are especially wonderful.

the crayons weren't really the point, though. it was the kisses that made my world all sparkly.

[explicit]

for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me yet, my dad really wants an organized catalogue of all the movies they own. being the dutiful daughter he's always dreamed of, i've recently spent a whooole lot of time working on that. data-entry can be mindnumbing, but my boundless love for lists and categories has trumped all that.

on the other hand, definitions have been nagging at me. see, if the point is to make movie retrieval more straightforward, the system (i.e. um, me) needs to make good guesses about genre. but genres aren't always intuitive... and certainly they're not objective. case in point: the american president - drama or comedy? (it turns out aaron sorkin himself doesn't think in those categories.) what makes a movie "romantic?" what qualifies as "action?"

oh, and what is a mystery?

can't touch this

nothing insightful to read here! almost everything below is fairly obvious.

so, clearly, there are awful hugs and awful kisses and there are wonderful hugs and wonderful kisses. the difference between the yum and yuk isn't always straightforward, though... aside from cracking ribs and epileptic tongues - those are unambiguously bad signs.

earth-shattering proposition: the "who" matters infinitely more than the "what" because context really is key. and that goes for friendship as well as morethanfriendship.

i was reflecting on my affection history and expected it to be confusing, but the over-riding theme is a huge disconnect between mutual touchyness and mutual emotional engagement. (and that has cut both ways: sometimes way too much touching and sometimes surprisingly little.)

it's also appears that i think hugs end fights. that is, i think they're legitimate stand-ins for apologizing/extending forgiveness/promising never to criticize the way you do dishes again/what have you. oh, and i am really, really wrong about that.

but - k, don't laugh! - part of me really believes that words are easier to misinterpret or overanalyze. meanwhile, it's hard to parse a hug: it just means good things. yeah, i'm naive.

a more-than-a-friend-with-enormous-complications once predicted that i'd get married for the conversation.
a) this is a load of crap and always has been.
b) i posited a while ago that maybe the point of life is to notice the implicit false dichotomies all around us and intentionally reject them. i guess what i'm saying is... surely we don't have to settle for either words OR actions. we can have a healthy dose of each.

joy!

"it's not a party if it happens every night"
beg your pardon, postal service, but recent experience suggests the reverse.

things i'm celebrating:

a) getting a degree. because it's cool, but also because i finally really finished something. aces.
b) getting into grad school. because i can start making decisions and new mistakes.
c) spring. because it's warm(er). and rain, green, and flowers are good. and sun, too. sun is good.
d) going for walks with nancy, pat, kevin, and mike... going to tim hortons and listening to music and swinging and greeting strangers with them. 'cause wow.
e) staying in touch. it rocks my little world.
f) sushi and cake. four days in a row!!! (pretty sure the streak ends tomorrow)
g) getting through a mother's day without bad tears!!!! potentially the first time ever.
h) vegetables. i like them. i always have. which brings me to...
i) my parents, for better and for worse.
j) matcha. 'cause yum.
k) closure. because freedom is sweet.
l) is for the way you look at me... i mean... no that works, too. i'm celebrating unspoken things.
m) purple (toe)nail polish. do i even have to explain?
n) mangos and avocadoes. see above.
o) is for the only one i see... finding God in the midst of bewilderment and hurt and beauty.
p) touch. (angie! i miss you!!!)
q) poetry. in motion or standing still.
r) time set aside for people i care about.
s) the chance to go back to romania in two months. and to hit italy on the way.
t) rivers, oceans, lakes, and water in general.
u) nostalgia-inducing music. particularly oasis, rick astley, cranberries, and counting crows.
v) the human body, which is among the most beautiful things i've ever seen.
w) growth. my hair and my heart and my to-read list.
x) new things i'm going to see and hear and learn tomorrow.
y) because we like you.
z) sleep :-)

wonder three

when n.t. wright told me that the line between good and evil runs through the middle of all of us, i agreed, in theory. but, in practice, i see the world in binary: you're either good or bad. sometimes good people mess up; sometimes bad people get it right. still, you're basically either one or the other.

but that's not quite true, i'm discovering.

i'm where i am today because someone once compared me to henri nouwen. not in terms of insight or contribution to the growth of others or spiritual depth, but in terms of my needs. and even though i've been hurt by this person on multiple occasions, and won't voluntarily speak to him/her probably ever, something told me that this analysis wasn't off the mark. and that stuck in my head.

so, my wonderment is: how can it be that i have received wounds from those who also spoke life and truth to me? not the good wounds that lead to repentance and reflection: bad wounds, which taste like anger and death. how come fresh and salt water do both flow from the same spring? james says it shouldn't be so!

the thing is... it is so! that's james' indictment: we go around, praising and cursing with the same mouth. (james 3:10-12)

oh, to be able to discern light from shadow, truth from fiction, life from death... within and without. to speak and hear only goodness, and to let the rest fall to the ground.

just one

there was this one time that william booth wanted to send a telegram to all his salvation army folk all over the world. but, you know, it's the army, so there wasn't a lot of money kicking around. he decided to send a one word message.

what would you send?

newsflash: you can't have it all

i've babysat aidan for about twelve hours in the last twenty-six, and i can say this with confidence: working and having children at the same time is impossible. i couldn't give him the attention and energy he deserved because of the other things on my mind - papers, presentations, etc.

children deserve fidelity, just like spouses do.

savage

what did the words exactly mean? he only half knew. but their magic was strong and went on rumbling in his head, and somehow it was as though he had never really hated p before; never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him. but now he had these words, these words like drums and singing and magic . . . they gave him a reason for hating p; and they made his hatred more real; they even made p himself more real..

~~~

one of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punshments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.

~~~

we haven't any use for old things here.
even when they're beautiful?
particularly when they're beautiful..

~~~

Christianity without tears - that what soma is..

~~~

we prefer to do things comfortably.

but i don't want comfort. i want God, i want poetry, i want real danger, i want freedom, i want goodness. i want sin.

in fact, you're claiming the right to be unhappy.

all right, then, i'm claiming the right to be unhappy.

not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.

[there was a long silence]

i claim them all.

off the fridge

above this opaque din
is
light
make haste to woo it

i have beauty you know nothing about

sanctify me

i am curiously mortal

lazy here

tempted there

oft questioning

almost melancholy

please

slather on grace

sound friends do seek thee
in this torment
they shalt reach here
ere that fould & loathsome winter is o'er


from the abridged works of miss mobach:
you damn vulgar miscreant torpid boor
your caterwaul deceived the saucy maiden
who elucidated her mind
only to have you cunningly abscond with her herculean love
farewell drunk lover whose acid manner enervates the above woman
thus making thee a pariah
alas methinks he is a villainous man
a cod piece
and so he is too
his perilous death would soon come
but for mercy


from the works of mr. hill:
Leaves blow in the wind.
Trees are green.
Chocolate tastes good.
Steve has character.

Mara talks lots.
Homework awaits.
Spring now fades.
Summer soon dawns.

Think upon these things.

PS
Mara has a crush on every boy. :o

no wonder i don't know what i mean half the time

borrowed this . . . it's fun:
you can babelize stuff by translating it in and out of various languages. or you can get this site to do it for you. par example:

my new favourite song loses some of its . . . charm when i need this old train to break down becomes i have the necessity of this old rupture of the series ignited here

and jane austen may have seemed complicated before - it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife - but it seems to survive babelization: the recognized truth is one, man simple in the possession of the great wealth to be must an internal demand of the part of a woman.

and theology can get messed up, too: i am saved by grace, through faith becomes they had happened with the beauty, of that the faith he them aids. ahem.

and the theme verse for residence this year - the reality, however, is found in Christ - might not work as well if it claimed that the truth nevertheless is like the Christian! the truth would be in very grave danger were that the case! (it's german, by the way, that changes "Christ" to "Christian" . . . troubling.)

this is too fun for words. it is safeguard of equally for the words.
i'm going to stop now. hour i apprehension.
see you later! they see more later! (ooh . . . they do?! crazy!)

a tender moment

if it isn't apparent from previous posts, let me state it here, in no uncertain terms: i simply love aidan, my 2-year-old friend. he's amazing, even when he's cranky. he always greets me with a smile, he loves wrestling, exploring, watching gravity at work, and talking about animals, trucks, and tractors. on saturday i babysat for ten hours, many of which he spent asleep. he hadn't had much of a nap that afternoon, so i kept things low-key: closed the blinds, kept my voice low, and watched the heffalump movie (which i adore). after i changed him into his sleeper, he stood in front of me as a i sat on the floor. he reached out and touched my hair, which he loves to play with. whenever i give him a ride on my shoulders, whether it be for a walk or so he can see over the fence, he always messes my hair up. well, this time, he reached out and touched my hair, and said . . .

"eew, yuck!"

there are no words . . . only giggles.

it's beautiful and i love it. and i get the day off work.

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
~ R. Frost