Susan Baldwin has been quite the inspiration lately. First the Anna Karenina project (still working on Part II), and now this. Susan's current blog posting follows up on an apparent Facebook note asking folks to list fifteen memorable vocalists. Susan's list appears on Whilst. I've always admired her taste in music, and I enjoyed reading about the vocalists who resonate with her.
In the car on the way home from the grocery store, I tried to think of my fifteen vocalists, and I decided to alter my list a bit. There are vocalists, and then there are voices, and I choose to focus on the latter. I have one or two people on my list of whom I am not a fan, but I have included the person because of talent. The singers on my list are all female, and they are all memorable for some reason. And here they are, in no particular order:
1. Celine Dion: Yeah, yeah, I know. Her heart will go on. And it's because somebody loved her. As trite as her songs are, you have to admit, this woman's got some vocal chords.
2. Susan Boyle: Another golden larynx, but in addition, she's got that fabulous Britain's Got Talent moment when she dreamed a dream and got her come-uppance against three judges who were made fun of her. Every time I watched that clip, I thought, That must have been a lot of fun.
3. Macy Gray: She sounds like she swallowed a Brillo pad, and still, she's got gold records. And I just have to clap along to her song "Beauty in the World."
4. Alanis Morissette: At the release of her first album, she was dubbed the poster child for Prozac. One listen to her CD had me in total agreement. What's more, her range impressed me, but not as much as the way she can make it sound the way my cat did when I ran over his butt.
5. Emmylou Harris: One of country music's finest. Love her.
6. Reba McEntire: Not as good as Emmylou, but in the late eighties and early nineties, when I commuted between Savannah and Statesboro and kept my radio dial tuned to the country station, I memorized all of her album For My Broken Heart (but I had the good sense to keep my car windows rolled up when I sang along).
7. Alison Moyet: Her voice is so deep and bluesy that for the longest time, when Jennifer Rowell and I sang along to Yaz, I thought I was listening to a man. I now know better. Still love her.
8. Adele: I always enjoyed "Chasing Pavement," but I'm a bigger fan of her cover of Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love." She is so young and so talented. Has her latest CD 21 come out yet? I'm ready to get that one.
9. Trisha Yearwood: I haven't listened to her lately, but fifteen years ago, I selected her "Little Hercules" as my theme song. I still have it on my playlist, and I listen to it frequently. So she warrants mention here.
Gee, if I could have thought of just one more female vocalist, I'd have an even ten. Maybe some of my loyal readers (all three of them) can make some suggestions.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Anna Karenina, Part I
When I told my friend Susan that I was also reading Anna Karenina, her first question was, "Do you have a good translation?" How smart of her to ask. Unfortunately, my answer was, "I don't know."As I mentioned in my initial post about the novel, the introductory material has some significant typos, as in World War II started in 1914. I suppose I shouldn't let editing errors cloud my judgment of the translation, but at the same time, there's a reason Simon and Schuster was giving these books away. I have a feeling it's not the best translation in the world. Other evidence supporting my hunch is the occasional poorly written sentence. Here's an example:
All the officials sitting on the farther side under the portrait of the Tsar and the eagle, delighted at any distraction, looked round at the door; but the doorkeeper standing at the door at once drove out the intruder, and closed the glass door after him.
Yuck! First of all, where else would a doorkeeper be standing? Secondly, how many times must one write the word door in one sentence?
The translator of this edition is Constance Garnett (1861-1946). Now, I haven't done extensive research on her, but what I've found so far indicates that while her translations from Russian to English use Victorian language and are therefore rather dated, there are no inaccuracies. The Victorian English doesn't bother me. After all, the novel was written in 1873 (actually, from 1873-1876 as a serial). So I guess I could tell Susan that I do have a good translation. But does that mean the above sentence is the actual work of Tolstoy? Gee, I hope not.
On another note, I'm intrigued by the number of characters--just in Part I--who are named Nikolay. Tolstoy lost his brother, also named Nikolay, in 1860. I suppose one way to pay tribute to a loved one is to name a character after him. But three? Good heavens.
Okay, here's a sixty-second synopsis of the classic so far:
Dolly's husband Oblonsky cheated on her with the governess. Oblonsky's sister Anna came to visit to smooth things over. Meanwhile, Oblonsky's friend Levin loves Dolly's sister Kitty. Kitty loves Levin but wants to marry Vronsky. Vronsky has the hots for Anna. Anna develops the hots for Vronsky but goes home to Karenin.
Stay tuned for remarks on Part II! Susan, I'd love to hear your assessment so far!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Blackberry Ice Cream
When Lawson got his ice cream churn for Christmas, my friend Tammy sent me a recipe for blackberry ice cream that I was just dying to try out. She found it on a food blog, The Pioneer Woman, and the photos and descriptions made the process look so easy (and so yummy). Last night I put the recipe to work.
Preparing the berries was easy enough. I simply heated them with some lemon juice and sugar. Then I pushed them through a mesh strainer to separate the pulp from the seeds, leaving me with a small bowl of blackberry juice I wanted to drink right there.
The recipe is custard based. I'd never made custard before, and I have to say, I had to go back to the blog (especially the photos) a few times to make sure I was following the recipe correctly. Lawson helped me separate the egg yolks and then left it to me to temper them before adding them to the heated half-n-half/sugar mixture.
The hardest part was, as Tom Petty says, the waiting. Custard takes a long time to firm up. But it finally did, and then I had to strain it. I'd never pushed custard through a strainer before. That was interesting. Then I added all the ingredients to 1 1/2 cups of heavy whipping cream and then poured the mixture into the churn.
Again, more waiting...
The result? A beautiful lavender ice cream that tasted nothing like blackberr
ies. Maybe I need more berries next time. Or maybe I should have pushed the berries a little harder through the strainer so that I had pectin and juice. I don't know. Maybe Tammy can fill me in (or the Pioneer Woman). The ice cream tastes like custard, though, which is delicious. And it is the creamiest ice cream I have ever put in my mouth. So tonight I'm going to make some brownies to eat with the custard flavored purple concoction. That should be mighty tasty!
Preparing the berries was easy enough. I simply heated them with some lemon juice and sugar. Then I pushed them through a mesh strainer to separate the pulp from the seeds, leaving me with a small bowl of blackberry juice I wanted to drink right there.
The recipe is custard based. I'd never made custard before, and I have to say, I had to go back to the blog (especially the photos) a few times to make sure I was following the recipe correctly. Lawson helped me separate the egg yolks and then left it to me to temper them before adding them to the heated half-n-half/sugar mixture.
The hardest part was, as Tom Petty says, the waiting. Custard takes a long time to firm up. But it finally did, and then I had to strain it. I'd never pushed custard through a strainer before. That was interesting. Then I added all the ingredients to 1 1/2 cups of heavy whipping cream and then poured the mixture into the churn.
Again, more waiting...
The result? A beautiful lavender ice cream that tasted nothing like blackberr
ies. Maybe I need more berries next time. Or maybe I should have pushed the berries a little harder through the strainer so that I had pectin and juice. I don't know. Maybe Tammy can fill me in (or the Pioneer Woman). The ice cream tastes like custard, though, which is delicious. And it is the creamiest ice cream I have ever put in my mouth. So tonight I'm going to make some brownies to eat with the custard flavored purple concoction. That should be mighty tasty!
Sunday, January 9, 2011
A Long-Distance Reading Venture
Like most Facebook users, one of the things I've enjoyed most about the social network is that I've been able to reconnect with old friends from high school and college, some to whom I haven't spoken in more than twenty years. One of those friends is Susan Baldwin, a dear high school chum. I learned quickly that Susan and I still have much in common, including an affinity for reading and writing. Like me, Susan keeps a regular blog, titled Whilst, which I check regularly, and in one of her latest posts, she mentioned that she is reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
As it turns out, I recently attended the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, where the Simon & Schuster representative gave me three copies of the book. To English teachers, getting free books is like winning the lottery, so I was one happy educator! So I had this goal to begin Anna Karenina, just as soon as I finished reading The Devil in the White City and Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty. I've finished the former and am halfway through the latter, but when I read Susan's posting, I decided to go ahead and start this Russian classic. I e-mailed Susan and suggested we read it together. She signed on at once!
Susan is about 50 pages ahead of me, so I'll have to read fast. I'm only on page 25, but that's because before I began reading the novel, I read the introduction, the chronology of Leo Tolstoy's life and work, and the historical context of Anna Karenina. I felt those textual supplements were necessary because I'm ashamed to say that even though I've taught literature for 20 years and I have a PhD in English, I've never read a Tolstoy novel (But I did try when I was in high school. I just couldn't get through it because I was expecting it to be about Anna and I couldn't get through the parallel plot about Levin. As a more mature reader, I'll have patience for Levin this time around).
I do know the story, though. Like all modern students, I watched the movie. Twice, actually. I saw the Vivien Leigh version. Wasn't she gorgeous? I enjoyed that film so much because it ignored Levin altogether. And the story was so good that, even as a 20 year-old viewer, I didn't even mind watching it in black and white. Shortly after Davis was born and I was home with more TV time, I watched the Sophie Marceau version of the film. I remember very little about it, which says much about the quality of that iteration.
So now, at 44, I embark on the novel again, and what I've learned about the author helps me to make sense of the story. For instance, Tolstoy was orphaned as a youngster, and he was then sent to live with relatives, who shortly thereafter died as well. Poor Leo! Her certainly knew about loss. I guess that unhappy childhood stuck with him, as evidenced in this photo.
When he grew up, he studied Eastern languages and law, but he left the university before graduating to return to his home town of Yasnaya Polyana (which sounds a lot like Yoknapatawpha County) , where he volunteered in the army. As everyone knows, he wrote several noteworthy books of fiction and non-fiction, but I was unaware that he started a school for the children of Yasnaya Polyana, that he married an aristocratic neighbor, Sofia Bers, that later in life he and his wife organized famine relief programs, or that he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church. Apparently, he was also excommunicated from the local barber shop.
Ironically, Tolstoy died in a railroad station, just like his title character Anna Karenina (although the deaths varied--he died of pneumonia. She had a fight with the train--the train won).
I also learned that, much to my surprise, World War II started in 1914! I think I know why Simon and Schuster gave me three copies of this book.
Typos aside, the introductory matter has been informative, and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens when the adulterous Stephan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky has a visit from his sister, Anna (I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the Arkadyevitch tree). In later postings, I'll write my impressions of the novel so far, as well as what Susan and I have to say about it in our online discussions.
As it turns out, I recently attended the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, where the Simon & Schuster representative gave me three copies of the book. To English teachers, getting free books is like winning the lottery, so I was one happy educator! So I had this goal to begin Anna Karenina, just as soon as I finished reading The Devil in the White City and Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty. I've finished the former and am halfway through the latter, but when I read Susan's posting, I decided to go ahead and start this Russian classic. I e-mailed Susan and suggested we read it together. She signed on at once!
Susan is about 50 pages ahead of me, so I'll have to read fast. I'm only on page 25, but that's because before I began reading the novel, I read the introduction, the chronology of Leo Tolstoy's life and work, and the historical context of Anna Karenina. I felt those textual supplements were necessary because I'm ashamed to say that even though I've taught literature for 20 years and I have a PhD in English, I've never read a Tolstoy novel (But I did try when I was in high school. I just couldn't get through it because I was expecting it to be about Anna and I couldn't get through the parallel plot about Levin. As a more mature reader, I'll have patience for Levin this time around).
I do know the story, though. Like all modern students, I watched the movie. Twice, actually. I saw the Vivien Leigh version. Wasn't she gorgeous? I enjoyed that film so much because it ignored Levin altogether. And the story was so good that, even as a 20 year-old viewer, I didn't even mind watching it in black and white. Shortly after Davis was born and I was home with more TV time, I watched the Sophie Marceau version of the film. I remember very little about it, which says much about the quality of that iteration.
So now, at 44, I embark on the novel again, and what I've learned about the author helps me to make sense of the story. For instance, Tolstoy was orphaned as a youngster, and he was then sent to live with relatives, who shortly thereafter died as well. Poor Leo! Her certainly knew about loss. I guess that unhappy childhood stuck with him, as evidenced in this photo.
When he grew up, he studied Eastern languages and law, but he left the university before graduating to return to his home town of Yasnaya Polyana (which sounds a lot like Yoknapatawpha County) , where he volunteered in the army. As everyone knows, he wrote several noteworthy books of fiction and non-fiction, but I was unaware that he started a school for the children of Yasnaya Polyana, that he married an aristocratic neighbor, Sofia Bers, that later in life he and his wife organized famine relief programs, or that he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church. Apparently, he was also excommunicated from the local barber shop.
Ironically, Tolstoy died in a railroad station, just like his title character Anna Karenina (although the deaths varied--he died of pneumonia. She had a fight with the train--the train won).I also learned that, much to my surprise, World War II started in 1914! I think I know why Simon and Schuster gave me three copies of this book.
Typos aside, the introductory matter has been informative, and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens when the adulterous Stephan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky has a visit from his sister, Anna (I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the Arkadyevitch tree). In later postings, I'll write my impressions of the novel so far, as well as what Susan and I have to say about it in our online discussions.
River Trip Photo
While boating and camping on the Altamaha, one has little time for photography, but Davis took a moment to snap this one. Their first day at camp, the group found the remnants of a dead oak tree, the eight-foot stump of which was hollow. They decided to set a fire inside it, and it turned into a giant, wooden chiminea.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
They're Back
My husband and older son are back from the annual river trip. The showed up around 3:00 this afternoon with whiskers (yes, both of them) and bed head, stinking of mud, sweat and smoke. They dropped their duffel bags at the door and headed straight for the shower. Stephen graciously soaped up twice before emerging with a clean, close shave and combed hair. Then I got a kiss hello.
I'm sure I'll h
ear for the next six months stories of fires, ducks, guns, boats, vodka, and dirty jokes. But one image captures the long weekend in a nutshell.
This is what happens when, after breakfasting on vodka and grapefruit juice, two grown men try to plow a motor boat through a sand bar.
I'm sure I'll h
ear for the next six months stories of fires, ducks, guns, boats, vodka, and dirty jokes. But one image captures the long weekend in a nutshell.This is what happens when, after breakfasting on vodka and grapefruit juice, two grown men try to plow a motor boat through a sand bar.
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