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lachrymose: sorrowful or tearful.

example: "That was a stirring speech you gave in there, Mr. President."

"Mighty indeed; we can but do our duty to safeguard democracy, Mr. President"

"...protect the peace..."

"clean it up in no time..."

"Mr. President?"

"Mr. President?"

"Mr. President?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes of course," he roused himself; "peace. We must be strong in the months ahead. Yes...such is our duty..." He looked up and I was startled. His eyes were rimmed with shadow--haunted almost, as if every brave word he recited were treading some deep lachrymose well.


We shuffled uncomfortably out, and as I closed the door softly behind me, I saw him put his face in his hands and weep.

Keeping with the theme of pumpkin, here is another recipe that I've enjoyed of late: pumpkin cheesecake brownies.

Perhaps it seems over-the-top?

It is. Enjoy it.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Brownies
recipe by Cara's Cravings

Brownie Batter
3/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon

Cheesecake Batter
6 oz cream cheese, softened
1 egg
1/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp flour
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp each ground ginger and ground cloves

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease an 8x8" square metal baking pan.

Beat together melted butter, sugar, and vanilla, then beat in eggs one at a time. Combine dry ingredients and then gradually stir into butter mixture with a wooden spoon. In separate bowl, beat together cheesecake batter ingredients.

Spread about 2/3 of chocolate batter into prepared pan, and spoon cheesecake batter over. Dollop remaining brownie batter over cheesecake batter. Swirl the batters together by running a butter knife back and forth through the pan.

Bake for 40 minutes, or until center is set. Cool completely on wire rack and chill before cutting and serving.

*This makes a good treat to take to the next pumpkin party to which you're invited. And the best part is that if guests eye the combination of chocolate and pumpkin dubiously, you'll get to take more home!

Immure: to enclose, imprison, or entomb

example: Like the rootbound basil on her windowsill which had ceased to grow, so she, immured within her sentimental recollections, had ceased to participate in the present.

As the days turn brisk, I find myself marking time by the mugful--hot coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, perhaps even cocoa in the evening. Lately, however, I have enjoyed a special concoction made for Fall: pumpkin hot chocolate. The broad, creamy flavor of pumpkin bolstered with the cloves and ginger seems to compliment the thinning temperatures perfectly.

Spiced Pumpkin Hot Cocoa
an Eggs on Sunday original recipe
serves 3
For the hot cocoa:
3 cups milk
1/2 cup canned pumpkin or pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
2 tablespoons Dutch process cocoa
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons maple syrup (I substitute brown sugar for the costly syrup)

And for an extra special cup...

maple whipped cream:
1/4 cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons maple syrup

any of the following for dusting on top: cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, raw sugar

*note: I make up a concentrate of this and keep it in the fridge. When fancy strikes, I need only add the rest of the milk and cart it to the microwave.

I've never considered the affect of the phonetic alphabet upon our culture, but Marshall McLuhan (originator of the famed "the medium is the message" concept) discusses its power to disconnect the individual from the community and one sense from another:

"This stark division and parallelism between a visual and an auditory world was both crude and ruthless, culturally speaking. The phonetically written word sacrifices worlds of meaning and perception that were secured by forms like the hieroglyph and the Chinese ideogram . . . Many centuries of ideogrammic use have not threatened the seamless web of family and tribal subtleties of Chinese society. On the other hand, a single generation of alphabetic literacy suffices in Africa today, as in Gaul two thousand years ago, to release the individual initially, at least, from the tribal web. This fact has nothing to do with the content of the alphabetized words; it is the result of the sudden breach between the auditory and the visual experience of man. Only the phonetic alphabet makes such a sharp division in experience, giving to its user an eye for an ear, and freeing him from the tribal trance of resonating word magic and the web of kinship . . . Separateness of the individual, continuity of space and of time, and uniformity of codes are the prime marks of literate and civilized societies."

("The Written Word: An Eye for an Ear" in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan)

Sesquipedalian: using long words; polysyllabic.

example: The student's sesquipedalian sentences clamored dissonantly out from the essay, and the professor ran her hand over her aching brow. A thesaurus in the hands of an undergraduate is deadly.

Dislimn: to dim or fade into indistinctness; vanish; obscure.

example: He shook his head and slapped his cheek vigorously but presently the scene dislimned into smudges of greying color and muffling sound. He closed his eyes and slept.

Celerity: swiftness.

example: His celeritous exit conveyed the embarrassment he felt over his faux pas.

a wry observation from the pages of Dorothy L. Sayers' Murder Must Advertise expressed in a conversation between two advertisement copy-writers:

"I think this is an awfully immoral job of ours. I do, really. Think how we spoil the digestions of the public."

"Ah, yes--but think how earnestly we strive to put them right again. We undermine 'em with one hand and build 'em up with the other. The vitamins we destroy in the canning, we restore in Revito, the roughage we remove from Peabody's Piper Parritch we make up into a package and market as Bunbury's Breakfast Bran; the stomachs we ruin with Pompayne, we re-line with Peplets to aid digestion. And by forcing the damn-fool public to pay twice over--once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands."

Peroration: a formal speech often characterized by high, haughty language.

example: "Well now I think this here is none o' your business, I do, and another thing..." The man stuck his thumbs in his tattered lapels and commenced a grand peroration in which he proclaimed the evils of the judicial system, the savagery of the free market, the oppression of organized religion, and the general unpleasantness associated with having to wear shoes when he entered the station.
"...like two left feet, that's what, and I says to the bobby I says, here now what kind of a scam are you runnin'? It's a conspiracy...
"... and I can't 'elp it if...
"... I mean the popes and the cardinals and the senators are all in it together...
" ...she threw me out; literally tossed my bag ..."

Obviously his beer-bathed eloquence would get me nowhere. I turned the corner and hailed a cab.

The year relents, and free

Of work, I climb again

To where the old trees wait,

Time out of mind. I hear

Traffic down on the road,

Engines high overhead.

And then a quiet comes,

A cleft in time, silence

Of metal moved by fire;

The air holds little voices,

Titmice and chickadees,

Feeding through the treetops

Among the new small leaves,

Calling again to mind

The grace of circumstance,

Sabbath economy

In which all thought is song,

All labor is a dance.

The world is made at rest,

In ease of gravity.

I hear the ancient theme

In low world-shaping song

Sung by the falling stream.

Here where a rotting log

Has slowed the flow: a shelf

Of dark soil, level laid

Above the tumbled stone.

Roots fasten it in place.

It will be here a while;

What holds it here decays.

A richness from above,

Brought down, is held, and holds

A little while in flow.

Stem and leaf grow from it.

At cost of death, it has

A life. Thus falling founds,

Unmaking makes the world.

Wendell Berry

Sabbath Poems 1983:II from A Timbered Choir

If you have a bit of time on your hands, please do take a look at this blog, Cold Antler Farm. It's one of my life's inspirations and secret aspirations to be like this young woman who went from web-designing city girl to homesteader. Her blog traces her experiences frankly and poetically.

And she has a book, Made From Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life, which I've put on my to-read list. You can find it here.

do it today and you'll be ahead.

Here is a video that is at once dark, intriguing, and stimulating: it's called Epic 2015. Have you seen it yet? It looks at our use of the internet and the blurring boundaries between personalization and power. Go see it--it's only about ten minutes long.

What did you think?

Media does influence the way we work and think, and it is good practice to consider how the internet affects us now and how it might affect us in the future. For example, consider how the telegraph changed our discourse and the way we relate to information (see Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman for the original presentation of this concept). News was no longer limited to proximity, in a sense resulting in the “annihilation of space,” as Postman calls it. By and by, information became delocalized, more abundant, and, consequently, less relevant (frankly I’m not as affected by something that happened to someone I’d never heard of who lives somewhere I’ve never been as by reading about something that happened to the woman I see every week when I buy my groceries). This video addresses that problem we face of information inundation and trivialization with its focus on the fabricated “Googlezon,” a merge between Google and Amazon that allows for total customization of content that, in a sense, makes irrelevant information relevant again. Its intriguing presentation seems to address the need for balance between customization and privacy.

A little bit of peace in a hectic world

when all that remains is to watch and wait

and to turn over and do it again.

I'm slowly getting into the swing of things around here--seeing a little bit more of campus day by day, browsing more local shops, gaining familiarity with public transport. Life here is feeling smoother.

Nerves are starting to set in for classes, however. It's been over a year since I was in school, and I feel my thinking powers and time management skills have gotten rusty. That, and my computer rebelled against the new school year yesterday by contracting a virus; poor thing is now at the computer help center for a couple of days undergoing a manual cleaning. I'm just grateful it happened before things really pick up. Really grateful.

But here's to a fresh week, a fresh semester, and a fresh computer.

I think M and I have everything we need to make the apartment feel like home--to both of us. We hit up Charlotte today for a round of Ikea, Bed Bath and Beyond, TJ Maxx Home Goods, and Target and returned to Carrboro with the little car packed full of furniture and bedding and mirrors and kitchen accoutrement. I can hear her hammering away at her dresser now.

I'm terribly excited about my purchases as well: quart-size coffee press (now more than one can enjoy coffee at a time!), Misto oil sprayer (no disposable aerosol spray can for me), and a full length mirror (so that's what those shoes look like with that dress...). It feels good to have all the errands completed and the time to settle down to a cup of hot tea and a cookie.

Well, I'm back online and back in NC...and now I have roommates! One is a cat, both are delightful, and I think we'll all get along well.

So what's up for the next few days? Finishing up that ever-present upholstery job is hitting the top of the priority list as well as scheduling a nasty Td booster shot with campus health...oh and buying textbooks because someone says I have classes starting up soon? Seriously?

But I'm so excited to begin studying again. M and I walked around campus yesterday and it really is gorgeous--I'm especially excited about Manning Hall, where all of my INLS classes will be. As I didn't bring my camera I haven't got any photos to share, so you'll just have to take me at my word that it really is picturesque.

Oh and should you come to visit anytime soon, we'll have to get frozen yogurt at the Yogurt Pump off Franklin. That's really good stuff.

Welcome to

my little place

in Carrboro.

here's a close up of one my favorite spots in the whole apartment--complete with my ever-present clear glass canisters and mixing bowls and things I love to use.

I still have much to do before I'm finished dressing up these various niches, but I couldn't wait to share what I've done thus far. I think I was made to set up house.

Later on this month (when I have internet at the Little Place), I plan to give you a proper tour, replete with details and chatty household tips. Stop on by in about a month!