A Few Notes About Blogger

I have received questions about a few of the less intuitive functions of Blogger, so for today's update, here is a quick how-to.

Commenting:

To post a comment on any blog entry, scroll to the bottom of the entry and click the link that says "[however many, typically 0] comments." It'll take you to a page with a text field and a drop-down menu. On the menu, the easiest thing to do is select "Name/URL" and simply fill in the name field -- it doesn't care if you supply a URL. Then click "Post Comment" (not Preview, which may have been the cause of some of the trouble people have been having). That should work! If it's still not behaving, please let me know.

That's all for now, actually, although I intended to cover Following as well. If anyone is interested, leave a comment, and I'll update with instructions.

Also, after some thought, daily entries might be a bit much -- especially if you're receiving my updates via email. Instead, I'll be updating on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays after Fall Break is over. During break, however, I've been informed that I don't eat if I don't blog. (I think Mom was joking. But I can't tell.) So expect one a day until Sunday, when I take off for the open, wild West!

Home Again: the Weekend

Dear Readers,

I have been remiss. Midterm week, various papers and actually having friends have gotten in the way of updating my loyal public on the goings-on about Keep. I'm on Fall Break now, with a little more time on my hands, and I'll tell you at least a little more about daily life and work. Expect shorter entries from now on -- I think it better to update briefly and often than never really find the time.

I'm going to try and shoot for very short daily entries, which will include the menu from my favorite meal, best moment in class, and miscellanea. For now, I'll just tell you a bit about my first weekend home, and then backtrack to a better picture of how this whole cooperative thing works. (Spoiler alert: we do regularly have toilet paper.)

The ride home was long, but uneventful -- even pleasant. I had answered an ObieClassifieds ad for folks looking for a ride to NYC and was rewarded with $80 round trip transportation for Fall Break. (To compare, the shuttle service, also from Oberlin - NYC, is $150.) We ate up miles and completed the eight-hour trip to Summit, New Jersey in seven. Don't do the math.

At Summit, I debarked with my friend and hallmate Brenna, who had signed up for the same car before we knew each other -- how's that for serendipity? I had arranged to stay the night with her family, in case I wasn't able to reach Penn before the trains stopped running. Her parents were really lovely people and over the moon to have their daughter home. I also met the Dogs. Lucy, a labradoodle, had learned that Sit would get her more loving than jumping all over people, and was pretty well-behaved after the first ecstatic leaps. Milo, a bronze Goldie, was just as ridiculous. In the morning they drove me to the train station, where I caught the first of a series of trains home. The best part: because of her dad's new job, Brenna and her family are moving to Branford or Guilford! Serendipity indeed.

My first day home was pretty quiet. Everyone was out of the house and I spent the afternoon with Allie and Karlie, just hanging out. I also practiced guitar for about ten minutes, which was an improvement to my practice time over midterm week (zero). Saturday night was also quiet -- we played Mario and they slept over, then went to church with me in the morning.

Church was really excellent. I had looked forward to coming to my own home church since my first week in Oberlin, and everything I'd imagined was so. We sang How Firm a Foundation, which is one of my top three favorite hymns, and Sharon's Eucharistic singing made me tear up. But even better than the service was seeing some of my favorite people, irreplaceable in Branford or Oberlin or anywhere else. I was saying good morning to Nanci Henchcliffe when Miz Pat turned around and saw me and light just filled her face. She always shines, and of course she thinks I'm just flattering an old lady when I call her gorgeous, but I'll go ahead and be terribly un-Episcopalian and say that I see Spirit in her. I saw Steve Sharma, the Seibyls, and Liz Melvin. Kris was serving as chalice bearer, and there is something transcendent -- as well there should be! -- in receiving Christ's blood from someone you love. Pastor Sharon remembered me, which was both impressive and affirming, and we talked about the glorious suffusive energy in the church that day (but not in those words, I don't think). She makes me want to be a pastor. I suppose it's either too bad or just as well that Oberlin closed its divinity school in 1966.

Trinity makes me despair of ever finding a home like it again. I suppose it's not a terribly special or uniquely enlightened little church -- that is, it is special and filled with light, but no more so than any other person's little church. But it's mine, and wonderful. Maybe I'll just come back to Branford and go to church here and live in this silly old beautiful house.

Just kidding.

Anyway, we hung around Sunday afternoon, ate at the 'Non, and went for a walk on the Branford-East Haven trolley trail before I dropped Karlie off. Al and I made some dinner and talked -- it's so good to see them both! -- and I spent Sunday night trying to do homework but mostly messing around with iTunes instead. I went to bed at around midnight, maybe a little after, and that's exactly what I intend to do tonight.

So adieu, loyal readers, good night!

(P.S. I also finished an entry about Stone Soup that I had written ages ago, but I'll post it tomorrow so as not to hit you with too much text all at once. Look for it below this one by tomorrow night.)

Stone Soup

I've been asked to talk more about KEEP CO-OP and the scrumptious food we make and consume, so I'll start with Saturday's Special Meal, which I helped plan and cook.

First, a little backstory: Special Meals are special because there's no head cook on rotation, meaning co-op members can sign up to help cook the meal of their dreams. They usually involve expensive ingredients and lots of different dishes. One of my friends is planning a Southern Wedding special meal for later this semester. We're going to propose to Harkness and celebrate with grits, (veggie) hush puppies and other delights, including a wedding cake.

This special meal, however, was too early in the semester - only just out of interim, no one was sure of ingredients or plans and no one wanted to take responsibility for a not-very-special Special Meal. Only Tommy was signed up to cook and we had no head cook at all! Elizabeth and I stepped up and started exploring the options for a folk-tale based stew. (If you're not familiar with the story, click here.)

We walked down to the herb garden to find basil and parsley, but found only perennial herbs -thyme, rosemary, sage and mullein - which wouldn't do at all. I did gather a handful of onion grass for flavor and effect, seeing as Keep was out of onions; and when we went back to the walk-in that stores our produce, I found parsley and lots of hidden vegetables to use in the stew.

I spent the next hour or so gathering ingredients. I picked the last of the healthy leaves from my faithful basil plant, which, although a little bitter, would be good filler herbs for the pesto. I moved armfuls of zucchini and bags of little potatoes and spent the next hour chopping.

More or less, this is how kitchen shifts generally work: Generally, there are two KPs, who start chopping and preparing food three hours before the meal begins and works for an hour. Then the first hour cook and the two-hour cook arrive and take over from the KPs. The head cook is also expected to show up at about that time; they will assign tasks to the cooks, thank the KPs, and get going. An hour before the meal, the second hour cook arrives and the first hour cook leaves. The main dish is usually in the oven or on the stove by this point; salad has probably been chopped and is mixed. Dressings, sauces and side dishes like kale chips are usually prepared while the main dishes are cooking. By the time the meal is served, hungry OSCAns are already thronging the dining room, ready to descend on the delectable creation.

Head cooks are elected, while KPs and other cooks are assigned by preference and availability to weekly shifts. With some exceptions, such as co-opers with elected positions (like me!) or Time Aid, everyone does five hours of work in the kitchen. In addition, everyone must cook for one Special Meal each semester, and crew on either a Friday or Saturday night -- no one should have to clean up after a Pizza Night or Special Meal.

Anyway, Tommy and I were essentially KPing at this point. I went over to Harkness, using the Keep flag as a poncho, to borrow some sliced tomatoes and vegetable oil. By the time I got back Tommy was halfway through the chopping, and Elizabeth showed up soon after.

After that, the chopping and cooking is mostly a blur. However, unexpected angels descended upon us. Eli, who wasn't scheduled to work and might have just come into the kitchen with the munchies, ended up making very garlickly basil and parsley pesto to go with the soup. We used the last viable leaves from my basil on the porch. What a last hurrah!

Meryl, a friendly and sociable vocal/undecided Double Degree, also showed up. She was accompanied by the equally-affable Rebecca, who isn't even a Keeper! They made mint and ginger tea to help combat our collective fall sniffles. I hadn't known you could make tea in a pot, but it came out quite good. They also mde cookies, deemed "Woodland Spice Drops," which were a little like Snickerdoodles but not as sweet. They turned out to be a crowd favorite - the perfect desert after Stone Soup accompanied by our pesto and Annadamma bread.

Our Stone Soup, in the end, contained:

potatoes

carrots

diced tomatoes

black and pinto beans

celery

sweet potatoes

other various veggies

lasagna

onion grass

one sanitized stone

We went from an overwhelmed cook shift of two to a contentedly buzzing kitchen of six, cooperative in every sense of the word. Yes, the soup was a little late, and we were in despair until the last minute, but there was plenty to go around -- and plenty of praise for the chefs. I think our little village lived up to the fable of magic Stone Soup!

Three Cheers for the Weekend - Cheer Number One

I just had my first real Oberlin weekend - that is, a weekend that did not include at least one night spent sitting in my room with Whitman gazing at our respective screens. (Although it might yet. We'll see.)

I'll summarize it chronologically, rather than, say, alphabetically, which would be a lot of work and not very enlightening for any of us. Therefore, Friday night:

The curtains open on me, in a fairly comfortable chair reading Jared Diamond; Sam, on the couch, reading some other, indubitably less prestigious book; and Whitman, in one of the lopsided wing chairs, staring pensively at nothing. He and I began a game of chess, but were interrupted by Brenna 2*, Kelly and the glimmer of a plan. We'll fast forward to the four of us (sans Sam, still studying) climbing up the stairs to the astronomy tower to take advantage of public stargazing night. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. As well as the dome telescope, trained on a ring nebula, there were four smaller scopes set up to view other celestialities. Once we'd seen everything, we stood on the edge of the deck and talked about fall break, and home, and homesickness.

We next headed to Slow Train for a performance by Isabel Roth and Friends. The highlights included two songs she wrote as a freshman: "Fearless," a reaction to the then-new admissions campaign; and one whose name I didn't catch, but included the lyrics:

"You are wonderful all of the time / but I just don' t have all of the time. / And if I'm honest with myself, it's probably / better for my health / if you and I take some time for ourselves."

Her upbeat, catchy tunes are still stuck in my head. Less pat, though, was The Hurt Locker, which we decided to watch in our room. The experience was a study in contrasts: four college students, cozily wrapped in fleece, then thick walls, then campus security. We are protected from war by borders and oceans and parents who love us. We sat on my bed and watched men die, silently, horribly, and did not move or speak except to arrange the blankets.

And then it was midnight so we turned the movie off. We got granola from the kitchen. Whitman and Brenna went off to bed, and Kelly and I did Midnight Crew, and I went to sleep and forgot all my dreams in the morning.

I woke up in a wonderful mood! I ambled around the internet, then downstairs to sniff out breakfast. After a few lazy hours I biked to Wilder to get a package of mine.

Well, that was the plan.

I went around back to one of our bike racks and my bike, Jeffrey, was gone.

Now, I always have to qualify that "my" right there, because Jeffrey isn't actually mine. It belongs to the bike co-op, and was supposed to be my temporary bike before they opened. I was going to rent a bike that was a few inches taller, and could brake in the rain. However, they were a little short of rentals this year, and so Jeffrey has just stayed mine. I'm sure I owe them hours for compensation. We'll work it out.

Anyway, that doesn't change how I felt: Jeffrey was gone, and I was devastated. I knew I should have locked it up. But I never did, and now it was gone, and it was awful. Whit let me borrow his bike and I cruised North Campus, searching for any sign of my beloved. I made it down to Wilder, the Student Union here, before picking up that package at the mailroom and heading back.

The package contained Virginia salted and chocolate-covered peanuts, which brightened my mood considerably. (Thanks mom! Made my morning!) I went out for one more round before giving up for the afternoon and giving Whitman back his bike. And I found him! (I mean, found it.) Jeffrey was in front of the dining hall, about fifty yards from Keep's back door. The thief - borrower? - had left my water bottle in the holder and neglected to use a lock, so I ran home tugging Whit's bike with one hand and mine with the other. 

"I promise to lock you all the time from now on," I told Jeffrey, loudly. Some passing girls didn't even look up. This is Oberlin, after all.

In the Interim ...

I have a post about my weekend in the works, but while you're waiting, here are some cute animal pictures!

As I type, Beatrice is having a great time checking for treats in my hair. This next one, from the Ginko Gallery, is a little less current:

Hope you're all having a spectacular week! I'll check in soon.

All in a Day's Work

So my co-op is in its third week of interim, but almost all of our elections have been taken care of, and the chaos is generally sifting out into a kind of lopsided order. I have been elected to one position each in Keep Dining Co-op and Keep Housing Co-op (which are two separate entities, because we have dining members who do not live here, and also because the health department cares a lot more about our food than where we live). The first of these is KitchPoCo, and this is what we do:

The three of us help run Commando every Sunday, which has a lot more to do with this than this. Along with a rotating crew of co-op volunteers, we scour the kitchen from top to bottom; we sanitize the fridge, de-lime the Hobart, and empty the greasetraps (which actually only entails throwing out the old greasy tinfoil and putting in new tinfoil, but you can imagine a grislier scenario if you prefer). We have to do occasional walk-throughs to make sure we're pretty much up to health code, and check the fridge temperatures once a day to be sure they're not running hot and ruining our food. We also get emails from the All-OSCA Cleanliness and Maintenance Coordinators when they inspect Keep. (These are students like ourselves, so although it is possible to fail these inspections it is intended as a learning experience.) Finally, we go to the All-OSCA Non-Foods Coordinator with equipment requests: a metal spatula, for instance, or a squeegee to use on the Hobart tray. This last job would probably be easier if she held hours more than twice a week.

Cleanliness Coordinator is a housing job, and it's a lot more low-key. There are four of us, three of whom run cleaning shifts and one of whom inspects as necessary. Every Keeper - except those with other jobs, such as Non-Foods Buyer - has to do one cleaning shift a week. We scrub toilets, clean sinks, and sweep, vacuum, and mop, as well as make the lounge presentable and occasionally dust. ... Who am I kidding? We never dust. We do do a pretty great job though.

So, those are my jobs. I've also KP'd and crewed, since everyone has to help out during interim, but talking about cleaning things is almost as tiring as actually cleaning things. I'm going to go grab a snack and maybe see if Beatrice is out. Ciao.

Cockatiels!

This is Beatrice, and she is lovely.

Heather, the other human in the picture, is also quite lovely - she's a member of ECO and plays organ and piano for Taize. Heather, however, does not to the best of my knowledge live in the language lab, so I'll focus on Beatrice for now.

She is one of at the three cockatiels who live in the Cooper International Learning Center. (I am also fond of the other two, Iago and Flaubert, but Beatrice is my favorite.) She perches, nibbles, CAWrs and preens, all of which would be really weird for a human being but suit a cockatiel perfectly!

The language lab is my new favorite place, although the Ginkgo Gallery might give it a run when I finally get down there. (They have kittens.) CILC, however, has giant Macs, light, air, and cockatiels ... I can (and do!) read my ERes docs with Bea on my shoulder.

Of course, I do have a special bird shirt, which usually goes right in the laundry when I come "home." It's a small price to pay.

If y'all ever do visit Oberlin, come with me to the language lab. Meanwhile, enjoy this adorable picture of Heather and Flaubert:

I guess she goes for the mohawk.

(This is how the situation would have looked if I'd said that.)