a late summer walk

A few days ago, I went out on a little walk with "the big dogs." It isn't how I would have it in my own home, but my dad continues this separation between inside dogs and outside dogs. My siblings and I would like to have these doggies inside during the winter, but between my mom's allergies, dad's insistence that they are for "outside" and a general obsessiveness about keeping things clean, it will never happen. When I have my own house I will always have dogs that can snuggle up with me on the couch at night for a good lot of trashy TV.

Anyways, Sven is more of a poser for the camera than Ole is. Ole tends to run or look away, like you're trying capture part of his soul if you point the camera at him, while Sven will sit and stare at you--mildly interested.

This was one of the last gorgeous autumny-summer days. Now, if we're lucky, we'll get a few summery-autumn days before things start to freeze. The temperature shifted down to the sixties quite abruptly after this, and it has been wonderfully gray and rainy. As someone who carries a sun umbrella and doesn't in any way enjoy being overheated (on a beach towel or otherwise) this has been a most welcome change.



You can see the corn fields in the distance turning gold, and there are these matching wild, sunflowery coneflowers everywhere now.



Our grove is full of these jewel-like plums, but they aren't quite as full as in years past, as we've had some pest problems. (Is that a little bokeh? Yes?)



Have I captured the way these fruits bunch and suspend themselves in the branches like so many round red ornaments? I hope so. It is impossible not to reach out an arm and watch them fall while you give the branches a shake or two.



Behind the plums is a row that has these great bunches of decorative blueberry-like berries. I don't know what they are, but I am quite certain that they are not edible.





More of the plum trees, some without fruit but with autumn colors shining through. I think these must be the ones that produce the white flowers in the spring.



Our soybean field soaking up the last of the summer sun.







Again, these miniature sun flowers are absolutely everywhere, but if you look closely you can see the variety of wildflowers that are about. Most, however, are also yellow.







A sunset over the "lake." Or is it a pond?



Anyways, sunset pictures are a dime-a-dozen during the summer, moving on.

We have this great, squat juniper (?) variety tree right on the edge of the property, by the lake, and it is currently completely laden with these wonderful berries so that it is a whole shade lighter than its greens. Unfortunately the failing light wouldn't let me take a proper picture of the whole thing.



I adore the way the light shines through these brambles-- it is a little sinister and dead looking, and very, very fall.



Of course, the dogs are still around! They were getting impatient with me stopping and taking pictures. I was, admittedly, being eaten by mosquitoes as well.





Ole says, hurry up!





We have two apple trees that grow closer to our house and it is currently the off-year for the one that actually produces big green apples. How it does this, and the other doesn't, I don't know because neither have ever been properly taken care of or pruned. This one is spindly and sort of pops out a handful of tiny red apples every year that are inevitable worm eaten by the time you see them. Pretty though.



Apparently the farmer's market isn't selling apples yet because we had a frost on mother's day this year and it set everything back. When we DO get some nice ones, though, I really want to make apple jellies again. They're like portable apple sauce cubes. You don't need a spoon!

the garden as it is

My parents, always a good subject, have been obsessed with the concept of this garden for years. They call it the "walled garden," presumably to keep out deer and wind (we live in such a windy place that they're building turbines less than a mile from us, which we are not that thrilled about).

It was built entirely by my dad and brother, and as it was a scramble to finish it between winter and the growing season, we didn't have enough time to plant very many things, or plant very nicely. It is sort of a mess.





We only have successful crops of beets, zucchini and green beans so far.



My wonderful mother planted about six packets of various vines in a corner that could have been more than filled by a few seeds. The result, it seems, is a lot of vines and very few fruits growing. I've found a few pumpkins to put boards under but there appear to be a LOT of these ornamental gourds.



Which aren't good for anything, really. It is all a big cross pollinated jumble that will have to be tilled over next spring.

The growing season here is so short (it may freeze any night now) that it took this long to get zinnias.



We have big plans for the garden next year though. If I am still around (which I more than half hope that I am not because it would mean I still don't have a job) I intend to move the pumpkin patch to the hillside where it was before and just do my best to keep away whatever was eating the pumpkins. I'm also very intrigued by the idea of planting colorful fingerling potatoes, onions and garlic. People in Minnesota, sadly, do not use garlic (Scandinavian foods have very little seasoning in my experience). Ah well, there is always the farmer's market until then.

a domestic weekend

Last weekend was rather unusual-- the parents had left to move Anders back to college and I had the house to myself for three days while they were in Chicago. I'm not sure that this is entirely normal, but I was really looking forward to this as there is something completely wonderful about living out a few days on completely your own line. When there are people around they tend to budge in here and there and change the way you would go about things or keep you from doing them entirely. Most people are more flexible than I am, so they don't seem to mind this deviation from their natural course, but I really NEED some respite and I barely ever get it now that I live at home.

So, I was rather upset when I found out that my twin would be coming back from the cities to stay for two days because of a baby shower. Steph is completely delightful in her own habitat (which happens to be the cities) but she is one of those people who never clean up after themselves and tend to make a lot of messes. When I woke up last Saturday, I found her laying on the couch looking disheveled and complaining that she needed food, saying that Mom had told her I would make her dinner. Well, this is her house as much as it is mine, so I told her she could make her own food. But she was so bleary-eyed and obviously hungover (wearing makeup from the night before, quite nice for a baby shower) that I eventually gave in when I went out to the garden and found these beets.



I completely forgave her the trouble of peeling and chopping because they were so satisfying to pull up. I tossed the pieces in a bit of olive oil and seasoned them with salt, pepper, red pepper and fresh thyme. Baked at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes until they were tender when pierced by a fork.



After I did this, however, I remembered that it is much more fun to make food for other people than yourself (especially when you are on a diet) and went on a little baking rampage.

We have the most ridiculous patch of zucchini that had been neglected and had produced zucchini that nobody really wanted to eat because they looked like limbs. Steph and I went back out to the garden, bolstered by the idea of eating food freshly picked, to try to salvage one to make bread.



Ole and Sven got the rejects, as Steph convinces them that they are new toys.





They didn't need much persuading. They like to play with things from the garden and will even pick vegetables for this purpose.

Such clever dogs.



I selected the smallest zucchini we could find and grated it for the bread.



Even though it was small, I still only used a little over half of it to get the two cups required by the recipe. This is the one I used, with some adjustments. I added the nutmeg from Smitten Kitchen's almost identical recipe. Being on the health-food kick I am, I didn't feel like adding a whole cup of oil-- might as well make a proper cake if you're going to add that much, I thought, so I substituted about 3/4 cup honey greek yogurt instead (not very low fat anyways) and a bit of milk to make the batter. I did two of the three cups of flour with wheat flour, decreased the sugar a bit and added chopped walnuts.

Making things like this healthy is really less fun, but I figured that-- what with three eggs and fatty yogurt-- that it would taste pretty good anyways and it was quite moist. Of course nothing is as good as it would be with a cup of oil, but it was very tasty nonetheless, especially after it had been wrapped up in plastic for a few days.



On a different tangent, I blame Steph, in part, for making me bake healthy zucchini bread. Our sister Anna was married this summer and I defy anyone to see pictures of themselves like this and not want to lose a few pounds.

Steph, fashion diva that she is, has no idea how to dress body shapes that are unlike her own. She is tiny and petite and I am like Joan Harris in a dress that was marketed to petites to create the illusion of hips and bust. I weigh 135 pounds and still look like a lump. I can only think that Steph was trying to be part of the great tradition of buying unflattering bridesmaid dresses. (The professional photos, which we just got this week, are a completely different and incredibly infuriating story. Is there anything worse that paying a lot for pictures of a wedding and getting back eight blurry shots of the ceremony from the back of the church and none of the couple walking down the aisle or even of the bride and her family? Ughh! Where are Mom and Dad?)



Since this photo was taken I've lost ten pounds-- a real ten pounds, not the I've-been-on-a-liquid-and-laxative-diet ten pounds (I could never manage that anyways). I've been going to the gym for an hour of cardio five times a week, eating healthier meals and trying not to snack. Sometimes I do yoga videos on hulu while constantly watching the stairs in case anyone comes up to gaze on my embarrassing poses.

Tirade over. Back to the baking, if you are still with me. Steph, unlike me, actually has a job and mentioned that she didn't have a lot to pack for lunch. I offered to make her bread for sandwiches (I make wonderful breads!) but she said she'd rather have something italian-like with herbs. I usually make wheat bread with milk and molasses so this was rather different for me. Suffice to say I was feeling a bit lazy because I must have just googled "herb bread" and used the first recipe with Parmesan instead of Romano cheese. (Steph later told me it tasted like pizza but I thought it smelled very good.) I also made a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies for her lunch and her boyfriend, who loves them. I add walnuts and cinnamon but forgot the coconut, though they were very delicious anyways. It was quite late when it was all finished.



Anders has been on various diets for his digestive problems all summer (no gluten, then no sugar or gluten, then no yeast no sugar no gluten, then some flour and lots of sugar) and I hadn't been able to bake anything without feeling very guilty, so this was a nice change.

ITOL- Lecture 3

(I keep swearing to myself that I will start making regular posts WITH PICTURES, but somehow it never happens.)

This lecture had either a more followable narrative than the other two, or I just understood the subject matter better-- it was more focused on one subject than the introductory ones. There is always something satisfying when the quotes used are ones you remember and the lecture reinforces the lines of thought you created by reading the text, instead of just correcting them.

Hermeneutics! I mentioned earlier that this particularly interests me in a very vague way and I have wanted to know more about it. The history that Prof. Fry gave at the beginning of this lecture about eighteenth century writers who "took meaning for granted" and were instead interested in evaluation and moral questioning and then the progression to hermeneutics during the Romantic era and into the twentieth century, seems to me rather parallel to the way literary education progresses through a person's life in the US (though I can really only testify to my experience). Grade school, for me, was never concerned with Literature in any sense and was appropriately called "Communications". If we read, it was in an effort to learn by emulation. The word "Literature" didn't appear in the titles of courses until 11th or 12th grade, and, I think, were courses that only college-bound students were expected to take (the others kept on with "Communications"). I don't know exactly what was taught in these courses, because I never finished ninth grade, but judging from the general ignorance of my siblings about anything concerning literary theory, I think it was a whole lot of horrible reading journals and close-reading for the sake of close-reading. Most people, I heard, never wanted to do the reading and I know my sister leaned heavily on online summaries and interpretations like Cliffnotes. I don't think it was that the concept of plagiarism was necessary misunderstood, but the fact that the teachers were probably getting their materials from similar sources and the concept of interpretation and ways to go about it were never properly explained, so that the students were left with the idea that Cliffnotes was the only place where they could find the one right answer. As if there was one correct answer.

Some of these students end up in English classes in college and find that original interpretation is expected and probably don't really know how to go about it. Some of them, like me, perhaps stumble into ways of interpreting that are sponged up from reading articles that use various traditions, and interpret without any consciousness about what they're doing. New Historicism seems to be a very popular tool in this respect. Before taking a course on theory this problem of interpretation was completely maddening to me and, though I found I was pretty good at writing papers, I felt like my classes were all a joke for accepting my drivel and that there was some big secret that nobody was letting me in on.

The point of this is that (if I am to try to bridge my historical horizon with the one mentioned above) moving on from simple clarity in communication, as taught in grade school, to interpreting literature in college requires a consciousness of hermeneutics and the existence of theories that are often inherently at work in a student's literary essays. I don't profess to have any adequate knowledge of hermeneutics (yet!) but after being exposed to literary theory I started to feel the legitimacy (even if it does feel a bit contrived sometimes) of English as a subject. Maybe I wasn't listening properly in "Introduction to Literature" but I don't think hermeneutics was mentioned, though now I feel that it should have been-- in simple terms.

So, this was one of those (commercially exploited) "ah-HA!" moments that I love about English, and that I experience as I explore and understand more about the structure of the subject. If you had told me four years ago that there were constructs in place about how to comprehend understanding and interpretation in literature, I would have very relieved. YES I had the internet, but "hermeneutics" isn't a word that is very descriptive to the outsider and, truthfully, I was very insecure about what I could do and what there was out there to know. I didn't want to ask stupid questions. I was just getting by.

Well, thankfully this reflection is NOT being written for grading purposes.

The hermeneutic circle, as I understand it:

If you are to start reading a book, assigned for class (for example) and you are expecting to write a paper on it later, you are probably already aware of the context in which it was written. You signed up for "Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century" or "Colonial American Narratives" or something. These courses are already structured around certain themes that have been lectured at you, at least, if you don't already have academic knowledge of historical events, stylistic themes, similar works-- even (and especially) cultural knowledge that makes certain words, phrases, inclusion and absences seem significant in some way. Even before beginning the book, you approach it with the beginnings of understanding. Gadamer in the reading for this lecture ("The Elevation of the Historicality of Understanding to the Status of Hermeneutic Principle") calls this a fore-having or a fore-project.

You read the first sentence or paragraph and it impresses itself on you in some way. The knowledge that constitutes your fore-having, also referred to by Gadamer as your prejudice, begins to take on this impression and changes to accommodate it as you work your way through the book; always understanding as much as you have read in terms of your original fore-project as the fore-project is constantly mutating to fit with your increased understanding of the part you have read.

This brings up the question of whether you can actually come to the point of knowing the whole, in the elusive "right" way, if your understanding is always based on prejudices that are removed from the text. This question is concerned with the relationship between the reader and the text (and is complicated by the author issues in the last lecture) and whether there is really something definite that it is trying to communicate. Gadamer, like the Foucault and Barthes in the last lecture, believes that "the meaning of the text [always] goes beyond its author". As far as I can see then, because your understanding of the book that you are reading will always depend on your fore-having it will never be exactly that of another interpreter. I can't find the passage, but I think the article mentions that the possibilities of interpretation are infinite?

At any rate, as explained in the lecture with the use of the word "plastic," there are definitely some interpretations that are wrong, that are blinded by a fore-having that is not sensitive to the newness of the book. The main thing Gadamer emphasizes to combat these bad interpretations is an awareness of one's own prejudices and a "conscious assimilation" (723)* of them. (Also, an attack on Historicism based on the idea that these prejudices can never actually be removed to facilitate objectivism, so one shouldn't try because it removes the possibility of combining horizons and finding some intelligible "truth for ourselves".)

I am not sure that I entirely got the digression about classicism, but I think I've grasped enough to begin researching on my own.

I really do think that his (apparently indebted to Heidegger) description of the process of understanding is quite remarkable. Sometimes, when I feel that my creativity is completely tapped, I have to remember that this is why I like studying English. It combines, or steals, so many different concepts from so many fields and attempts to explain life. Other subjects purport to do the same thing, but my affinity will always be with the written word and fiction. Maybe I am just impressionable, but I sometimes come across theory, like this, and am incredibly taken by the writer's awareness and ability to describe such an innate process. And maybe this makes me a bit pathetic, but it makes me feel a little less alone in the world.


*I'm trying to put at least one page number in every post so that, in the inevitable case that I lose the syllabus (ie. am too lazy to find syllabus and look up the lecture number), I can later find the article in the anthology.

ITOL- Lecture 2

(from here)

Prof. Fry didn't quite connect with his audience in the way he had hoped when he began the twist at the end of Lecture 2 with "I am a Lesbian Latina," but it was nevertheless a useful lecture. I admit that I was hanging on to the sections that he started with "in other words" that promised to explain certain points. They didn't always really explain but I don't know whether this is actually an unwillingness to make bare bones of a concept or whether the concept-- so immersed in the discussion and distinctions of language-- is inexplicable. Probably the latter, but I think there is also something about being a dinosaur (in the best way) of Theory that makes one unable to describe Theory to outsiders from the inside.

So, I read the assigned passages from Barthes and Foucault. Foucault always makes me think of Discipline and Punish and the Panopticon-- which has an interesting relatedness to the suspicions talked about in this lecture in regards to the delimiting powers of the author, the emergence of the "author-function". The idea of the "death" of the author seemed to me, at first, to be part of the same notion as Wimsatt and Beardsley's Intentional Fallacy where the importance of authorial intention is removed. However--and I think that Prof. Fry's "Lesbian Latina" ending would have been more understandable had he addressed this-- Barthes begins with an significant statement that provides boundaries (can I say that?) to his argument in The Death of the Author:

As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins.

Perhaps I am interpreting this incorrectly, but doesn't this "vexing issue" mentioned at the end of the lecture-- posed by the individual speaker who wants to circumvent Foucault's and Barthe's arguments because they have always been oppressed-- become less of an issue when we consider that the "Lesbian Latina" is actually acting on reality? I don't know how literal one should take the mention of "reality" (she certainly isn't writing a sign that says "STOP") but she seems to have a definite goal in "articulating an identity for the purpose of achieving freedom". Does this mean that the idea of the author can be used positively (without delimitation etc. if this is even always a bad thing)?

Coming back to what I was saying before in relation to W&B, the idea of the death of the author seems to have limitations. The above quote whittles down the undefinable Literature to those texts which have no direct object in reality. In these works, the author/writer is suppressed in that he is no longer the "I" and nobody can really tell who that "I" is. The text is not a product of an individual genius, but the composite of "innumerable" outside influences. But when one removes the author in this way Barthes says that the "claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile"-- one can disentangle but there is "nothing beneath" (oh, deconstruction!).

I do like the way Barthes upholds the reader-- as the majority should-- in that "a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination". Too bad this sentence is followed directly by a depersonalization of the reader, as if we were already not feeling like clogs in a machine.

Foucault's What is an Author? is more expansive and though I KNOW I SHOULD I don't really want to go back over the pages to map out the argument he makes. (If I am lazy this early on...) I think Barthes more clearly explains the death of the author idea (as per his title of course) but Foucault defines the author's relationship with his text and why it is problematic, the loadedness of being an "author" and the precepts of the "author-function". I am not sure I understand entirely the concept of the author-function: "characteristic of the mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses in society" (908) as referenced in the previous pages. Is it simply that some works have the author-function and some do not, some have the name attached to them that we can take and use skeptically as the author function? So, is it this author-function that disappears, as in Barthes DOTA? Or is the author function the result of the death of the author? The last lines seem to say the latter when Foucault says that "the author function will disappear" and will be replaced by some other limiting factor in the future.

I should probably read more carefully.

ITOL- 1

Since typing the last post has given me carpal tunnel, I will make this short as there were no readings and Yale didn't include the handout mentioned in the video.

I am feeling rather guilty about not taking notes on Paul Fry's lecture, but the transcript seems to preclude the necessity, as I am not writing any papers and am reflecting here. Like the theory course I took in Spring 2009 (at the same time as this course was recorded, funnily enough) Fry begins with the idea of Literature as undefinable, though he is significantly broader in his introduction than my less experienced professor. Names, ideas and quotes from the lecture are familiar but I was also gratified that he began mentioning hermeneutics, which I have not studied but I have become increasingly in.

When I changed my major to English, I was always uncertain about what I should know and what I didn't know about Literature. I was painfully concerned with what was "out there" and what had been said already. I didn't know whether my analysis was acceptable or legitimate, and I became uneasy as I began to be successful in English courses still not knowing. The theory course I took was very insightful and I started to recognize the way my professors were teaching Literature and the reasons why the sum of my education made me produce the sort of papers that I did.

The more I understand theories, though I feel rather hopeless when I encounter a person with as in-depth an understanding as Fry, the more I question why some are more legitimate than others and I wonder at how they both enhance and remove the reader from the text-- and whether this is true at all. Hermeneutics seems to address my poorly expressed concerns. To quote directly from the transcript of Lecture One: "how do we form the conclusion that we are interpreting something adequately, that we have a basis for the kind of reading that we're doing?". This is what I would like to explore.

On a less focused note, my poor state-schooled self is just a little awed by the oratory abilities of Paul Fry. Not that I have never had a good professor (I have had two or three) but I have had a professor with a lilting radio-esque voice that pronounces "rather" ever so slightly "rawther", or one that had his lecture down pat enough to coordinate excellently polished gestures. Or, really, one with white hair who was not slobbering at the mouth (I will not name names). My professors have been young, mostly, and just learning the best way to present a course. Fry says in this lecture that he has been teaching the course since the late seventies. I guess this is what you get from an Ivy institution. Oh, and Harold Bloom.

I enjoy that Prof. Fry defends the idea of a survey because theory seems to me to be one of those holes that you can never reach the bottom of and can never understand until you do. A course like the one he describes on de Man assumes a knowledge of other theories, though it wouldn't like you to have a survey to teach them to you. Where is one supposed to get this knowledge? From my need for a teacher, I have evidently failed at naturally building a foundation for myself.

When I think about writing a statement of purpose for applications, I have formed ideas of what I don't want-- there are theories that I am not very interested in exploring (psychoanalytical ones, for example)-- but what exactly I want is always just out of reach. I need to be able to communicate exactly how I read Literature, how it poses significant questions to me and how I can answer them.

because I am a follower, deep down

I've been feeling a great loss since May and graduation. Perhaps it is a testament to a person's inability to know truly what they need (or just my inability) rather than what they want--Rolling Stones, natch-- that what I've been waiting for and crazily working after (graduation) leads precisely to a disorder that I am finding difficult to live with. It took a long time for me to get used to being a student, but my overactive (with anxiety) mind was really quite calmed, in the end, by the fact that I had a syllabus and that all I needed to do was written on it. At the end of the day I could fall asleep and feel that I had done what I should, having finished my work for the day. I had a whiteboarded schedule, a planner, and distinct stacks of books that I could pick up, read, and check off. I felt like a good person. Far away from my beginnings as an autodidact, I began to feel the same comfort about attending classes. It was an almost smug sense of purpose.

In an effort to not succumb to the ennui that I've been feeling since graduating-- though because I have always been so scrappy in my academic life I feel now that I've been ejected from college, or something much less positive than graduated-- I've decided to try to keep being a student in a deliberate way. So, I am trying to do this course, "Introduction to Theory of Literature," which is opencourseware from Yale.

I won't pretend that I wasn't very happy to find this course because it is actually exactly what I wanted and is impeccably produced. I have taken and paid for online and distance courses from the University of Minnesota that don't touch the quality of the courses on Yale's Open site. I've taken classes with absolutely horrible lecture video quality, streaming from a horribly slow server, read by a man with an impossible accent. One came with a package of CD lectures that sounded like someone had put a pillow over my speakers (and the UMN merely said that they were taken from old tapes and offered to refund my money). Two others were "taught" by nonexistent professors who were not in touch with the courses they had created and graded accordingly.

So, yes, a person aught to be very happy with the high quality videos, the perfect transcripts, the thorough syllabus and PDFed extra readings that come with the courses on Yale's site. For free.

I did buy the text that is listed on the syllabus for about $65. (I have not gotten a copy of Tony the Tow Truck"-- I am not sure whether it will really be necessary.) If you were taking the course as a passing fad, you might get the main text from the library, but I am hoping that I can use the course's readings to give a new dimension to the writing sample that I am working on should start working on soon for graduate school applications.

I am still haven't put my heart completely into the idea of attending graduate school for English, mostly because I don't have any confidence about being accepted to any programs. But I think that refreshing my knowledge of theory is a step in the right direction and couldn't hurt. I do say "refreshing" but I only took one Critical Theories course in college, and this was a while ago, so that I have a vague idea about the big names and movements in theory, but I would be extremely hard pressed to converse about them. I began the summer trying to check books out of the library to begin learning about points that I wanted to investigate, but it was hard to know where to begin when I couldn't remember what I was supposed to. At any rate, I have become so used to being a student that I felt no satisfaction reading (theory) on my own-- picking up a new book was like moving a rock from one place to another, not knowing where it should go or how many rocks I should move-- so I found this alternative. Maybe this is a coffin nail in my eligibility as an English grad student, but I always felt like an impostor during college, so it feels good to be following a legitimate path. Also, I am unemployed.

Since I will not be doing the papers (here is something I do not entirely miss) I intend to write reflections on each lecture and the lecture's reading, though I won't hold myself to a very high standard. Long or short, it doesn't matter. I know the value of remembering enough to write in digesting material.