Lemon Pizza

I can’t find the recipe for this I ran into on the internet,
but I think all they did was sautée the lemons (sliced very thin)
and garlic in olive oil and use it as topping.

I haven’t been quite that minimalist either of the times I’ve
made this — both times I added some thinly sliced onions and put
parmesan cheese on top.

The one I liked better, I added a teaspoon or so of honey to
the sautée and cooked it long enough that the onions were starting
to caramelize.

That time, I had a Portuguese vinho verde in the
refrigerator, which was exactly the right level of sweet, tart,
and lemony to go with the pizza.

I got Cooking
for Geeks for Christmas, and one of its recommendations for
pizza in a home oven is to cook the crust for 5 minutes before
adding the topping. I’ve been doing that, and it does indeed make
for a better baked crust.


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Tooth and Claw

This
book by Jo Walton is a Victorian novel set on a world where
the biology actually supports the assumptions about gender
roles embodied in the Victorian novel. The characters are all
dragons, and dragons have a sexual dimorphism such that
females have hands and males have claws.

Walton acknowledges that she took the plot from Anthony
Trollope’s Framley
Parsonage. In both books, the plot is a bit contrived —
the antagonist goes on fighting the protagonist until the
right number of pages has happened, and then gives in. This
makes the 300 page twentyfirst century book more readable than
the 400 page nineteenth century one, but they both describe
societies pretty alien to the modern reader.

If you enjoy both nineteenth century novels and world-building
science fiction, you will love this book. The electronic
version is on sale for $2.99 for a limited time.


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Report on the January 11, 2011, meeting

We played:

Schedule

We will meet as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Starting in March, the meetings will be limited to people who
want to perform with us, but until then they will be open to
people who want to drop in.

NEFFA

We have been scheduled to lead a workshop at NEFFA (New England
Folk Festival of the Arts) on the music of Thomas
Ravenscroft. The description says:

Thomas Ravenscroft was one of the first people to
collect and publish English Folk Music, including rounds and
ballads. This workshop will be a chance for participants to sing
(or play) some of this music.

We’re tentatively scheduled for Middle School Rm. 108 on
Saturday April 16th, 9:00pm to 9:50pm.

What this means is that between now and April 16 we need to put
together a booklet of Ravenscroft tunes, with 50 minutes of easy
stuff and maybe half an hour of harder stuff. We’ll also need
several people to commit to coming and helping pass out booklets
and set up sections and sit next to people who might be insecure
without someone who knows the music to sit next to.

One implication of this work is that the Walk for Hunger program will
probably have lots of Ravenscroft on it. This means we can have the
rehearsals in March and the beginning of April open to people who
want to play with us at either or both of NEFFA and the Walk for
Hunger.

Report on the January 4, 2011 meeting

We played:

Schedule

We will meet as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Another knitted chair seat

[chair seat]

Chair seat

The pattern for this one is St. Brigid from Aran
Knitting by Alice Starmore. The yarn is the Camilla
Valley Farms 8/8 (worsted weight) cranberry. (They got the
color better than my photography of the piece.) A chair cover
uses most of a one pound spool.

[central motif]

Central motif

Speaking of color, does anyone know why when you take a picture
of a person wearing a sweater, the color of the sweater is usually
pretty close to the real color, but when you try to take a closeup
of a piece of knitting, it’s always a different color from the
real thing?

[rope cable]

Rope Cable

The yarn has a pleasant feel. Like most cotton yarns, it
doesn’t have the same stretch as wool, which I think is an
advantage in this application. You have to get used to not
splitting it as you knit, but I did OK after the first pattern
repeat. I was worried about the cost of shipping from Canada, but it’s
quite reasonable if you order enough at once.


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A Tale Dark and Grimm

I’m glad Adam Gidwitz wrote this
book, because I’m sure lots of people have thought about
writing something like it. It’s one of the natural reactions
to a body of work, like the pre-bowdlerized Grimm fairy tales,
that comes from a point of view that’s foreign yet completely
recognizable.

He strings nine or so of the original tales together so that
they happen to one family, and form a story arc about two
children who leave home, have adventures, and return older and
wiser. The actual text of the tales is pretty much a
translation, but the interstitial matter is in several
completely different voices, some of which (like the one that
keeps saying how awesome everything is) are pretty
irritating.

So one is tempted to say that for good writing, you should get
yourself a good translation of the original brothers Grimm,
except that then you would start fantasizing about writing a
book like this, and you very likely wouldn’t do any better
than Adam Gidwitz. Except that maybe you would clarify the
sense in which you were using “awsome”.

And some of the modern writing is actually pretty good, and
does illuminate what speaks to the modern sensibility about
the primeval tale. For instance, here’s the commentary on how
Hansel and Gretel feel when they get home and the parents
apologize for cutting off their heads:

It will happen to you, dear reader, at some point in your
life. You will face a moment very much like the one Hansel and
Gretel are facing right now.

In this moment, you will look at your parents and realize
that — no matter what it sounds like they are saying — they
are actually asking you for forgiveness. This is a very painful
moment. You see, all of your life you’ve been asking for
forgiveness from them. From the age you can talk you are
apologizing for breaking this, forgetting that, hitting him,
locking her in the garage, and so on. So, having them ask
you for forgiveness probably sounds pretty good.

But when this moment comes, you will probably be in a
lot of pain. And you probably will not want to forgive
them.

In which case, what, you might ask, should you do?

Well, you could yell at them, and tell them about all the
ways they’ve hurt you. This is a good thing to do once, because
— believe me — they need to know. But this is the first step
on the road to forgiveness. What if you’re not even ready for
that?

You could pretend to forgive them. This I would not
recommend. It’s sort of like sweeping broken glass under the
carpet; the floor still isn’t clean, and somebody’s going to end
up with a bloody sock.

Finally, if you don’t want to forgive them, and you don’t
want to fake it, you can always go with Ol’ Reliable: Changing
the subject.


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Micmacs

Moliere would have liked this
movie.

There isn’t really anything nicer than that to say about a
French farce. If you’re thinking that it’s virtuous to watch it
because of what it says about the international arms trade, you
are mistaken. What it says about the international arms trade is
that enough people find it distasteful that you can make the arms
traders the butt of the farce without making the audience
unsympathetic to the “good guys”.

Moliere used old men who are forcing themselves on young women
in that role; in this century we can use arms traders. But you
wouldn’t watch Moliere to learn about sexuality in the elderly,
and you shouldn’t watch this to learn about arms trading.


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Report on the December 21, 2010, meeting

We played:

  • Praetorius, In Dulci Jubilo
  • pieces from Eric Katz’ Christmas songs from many
    lands
  • Praetorius,
    Psallite
  • Tchaikowsky-Ward, Dance of the Sugar-plum Fairy
  • Pieces from Carols for parties
  • Second movement from Festgesang,
    Mendelssohn’s cantata celebrating the 400th anniversary of the
    Gutenberg Bible, with the tune later used for Hark the
    Herald Angels Sing
  • Great
    Tom is Cast

Schedule

There will be a regular dropin meeting next week, and every
Tuesday for the next couple of months, starting at 7:45 PM at my place.

Everyone have a merry, joyous, happy, peaceful Christmas, New
Year, and whatever else you celebrate.

Report on the December 14, 2010 meeting

We played:

  • Pieces from Jacobean and Restoration Music for the
    Recorder
  • Tomorrow shall be my dancing day
  • Morley Canzonets for 3 voyces, XIIII through
    XVI
  • Vecchi and Arcadelt, Il bianco e dolce
    cigno
  • Purcell, ‘Tis Women
  • Ravenscroft, To Portsmouth

Schedule

The party will be this Sunday, December 19 at 5:30 PM. Please
note the later than usual start time.

I forgot to discuss whether to meet next week after this week’s
meeting, so we’ll have to do it by email. If you’ve been coming
regularly and would prefer not to come, let me know. If you would
particularly like to have a place to go play Renaissance music on
Tuesday, December 21, let me know. If I don’t hear that anyone
wants to come, I’ll cancel it, since I’m sure I’ll have lots to
do, but I’m happy to meet if people want to come.
I’ll let you know by Monday morning.

In any case, we will meet on Tuesday, December 28 and
subsequent Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Party

I don’t require RSVP’s, since there will be plenty to eat and
drink, especially if everyone who comes brings some. But if you
know you’re coming, and what you want to bring, it would be useful
if you tell me, because people ask me what to bring, and it gives
me more idea of what to tell them.

Please invite people you know who might enjoy the party,
especially if you think they might be interested in joining the
group. You can point them to all the information.