Bloggers Who Inspire Me (and a Recipe, and a Few Stray Thoughts)

I’ve been promising for a while to do a ‘bloggers who inspire me’-type post, and as I have a few minutes to rub together this morning, now seems like a good time.

I intend to do a series of these over time, because if I try to cram all the inspiring bloggers out there into one post, it will be sixteen thousand pages long and nobody in their right mind will read it.

As such, I’ll start with just a few who happen to come to mind at the moment, in no particular order.

• Kloppenmum: A New Zealand Mum who is the kind of parent I hope I will someday be. Many of us talk about respecting children, letting them be children, and so forth — Karen Van Der Zwet shows us how it’s done.
• Life in the Boomer Lane: Renee is thoughtful, insightful, and hilarious. She has a gift for finding the sweet spot at which humor balances the weight of some pretty meaty issues. She is also a ‘former hula hoop champion,’ which I totally respect because I have never been able to operate a hula hoop in the prescribed fashion (I could, at one time, hula-hoop using my wrists, ankles, and neck — no, not all at the same time — but never, ever, ever my waist, which seems vey much like being able to make icing but not cake — which is, come to think of it, another of the challenges I face in life).
• Wonder in the Woods: A blogger I discovered through comments on Kloppenmum’s blog, Cori posts about parenting, homeschooling, knitting, and what I might describe as ‘growing into a more complete person’ (might I recommend a recent entry?
• Stupid Ugly Foreigner: A young Canadian teacher living and working in Incheon, South Korea, Michael Em is another of those insightful-and-hilarious types. Perhaps just as importantly, he makes me feel better about my inept attempts to be something like vaguely resembling an adult. I will admit to something resembling ‘pathetic fanboy’ status with regard to Mr. Em and his blog.

So! On to the promised recipe.

Recently I discovered a delightful thing known as ‘turkey ham,’ or as Denis refers to it ‘faux ham.’ I like turkey ham because ham is roughly the only pork product I remotely like (okay, besides bacon, of which I like a few — but not most — iterations), and I like the turkey version better. Since I am still fumbling towards some semblance of kosherness, I am rather happy that I can have my ham and eat it too and that I like the turkey version better than the pork version.

I have also discovered that one can do amazing things with turkey ham. Like this:

Step 1: Gather…

• One cup of turkey ham, cubed.
• Four eggs.
• One tablespoon of olive (or another suitable cooking) oil*.
• A quarter cup (or more) red onion, diced.
• As much baby spinach as you can handle (or, if you’re Denis, none), chopped into strips.
• Salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste (I recommend a half teaspoon each of salt and pepper and a tablespoon of garlic powder)

.

• One cup biscuit mix.

Step 2: Mix
I usually mix everything but the biscuit mix together, then mix in the biscuit mix.

Then pour it all into some kind of greased baking dish. I find that a deeper dish makes for a better presentation (the tradeoff is longer cooking time).

Step 3: Bake
…At 375 for about 25 minutes, or however long it takes based on the format of your pan. Basically, pretend it’s a giant, savory cupcake and stick a toothpick in the center every now and then. When it comes out clean, you’re golden.

You can add cheese if you’re neither worried about kashrut nor lactose intolerant.

You can also stick some asparagus spears on the top to dress it up a bit.

…And now for the stray thoughts.

I think I may have mentioned my ongoing wrestling match with spiritual expression. Note that I use the word ‘expression,’ and not ‘belief’ — I know what I believe and I am comfortable with my beliefs; I’m just trying to figure out where to take them in order to get my worship on with people of similar beliefs.

At this point, it’s a question of being brave enough to say to a whole lot of people who care about me and like having me around, “I love all of you guys, but I don’t feel like I belong in this particular house of worship. When I’m here I feel like I’m lying.”

This isn’t to say, by the way, that anyone makes me feel unwelcome — in fact, they are some of the most welcoming people I’ve ever known. Rather, it is to say that the more aware I become of my own beliefs, the more I want to participate in a style of worship and in a religious body in which they fit better. I would like to be able to say, whole-heartedly, that I agree with the meat of what I’m saying in prayer and worship services. At the moment, I don’t.

It’s also a question of visiting different houses of worship of different varieties and finding out where Denis and I both feel comfortable and where we both feel that we are challenged to grow spiritually and engage with G-d. We may, for all that, wind up in Unitarianland, though I haven’t really felt at home there thus far.

I love the music of the Episcopal church. If I miss anything about the Episcopal world, I think that will be it. Then, there is great sacred music in many traditions — one might even argue that all music which moves the soul is sacred.

I can’t speak highly enough of Saint Andrew’s in Louisville, Kentucky. I wound up there because my best friend’s Mom works there, and it has been a good place to think and grow for the past couple of years. I am happy I have spent a great deal of time immersed there — in no small part because a portion of coming to understand my own faith has been learning what I don’t believe; learning what doesn’t resonate, what feels ‘off’ somehow when I say it.

So I suppose now perhaps I will drag Denis around to visit Adath Jeshurun and Keneseth Israel and The Temple and First Unitarian and Thomas Jefferson Unitarian and so forth. Depending on the congregation in which we eventually take root, I may have to (GASP!) join a choir-not-affiliated-with-a-religious-institution or something to get my choral music on.

I’m okay with that.

Notes
*I do not recommend motor oil.

The Calm Before the Storm

I’ll try to be brief, though I’m not very good at it.

Tomorrow, at last, is the pinnacle of my Spring semester: Organ Juries.

This semester, I’ll be playing three pieces (technically, four, but we’ve rolled two of them into one) and some pedal scales. I’m pretty excited about the pieces in question, since they’re a lot more complex than the stuff I was playing two semesters ago when I did my ‘mini-jury.’ That time, I played the ‘Musette’ that will be familiar to anyone who has ever lived within earshot of a budding Suzuki violinist — with a glorious pedal part consisting entirely of the D below middle C, on which I simply parked my left toe for the entirety of the piece — and a couple of other nice, simple little pieces with no pedal bits at all.

I just finished another two hours of practice, and I’m feeling pretty confident about everything. I am pretty certain that the piece I’ll be playing second is my favorite, even thought the closing piece is the most dramatic. The second piece is a prelude based on a tune called ‘Blaenwern’ which is actually pretty well known.

You can find a pretty nice recording of it here:

The arrangement I’m playing is really quite nice.

I don’t know if I can get a recording made of my jury, but if I can I’ll post it.

This semester has actually turned out pretty well. I struggled in voice for the first half of the semester, and then suddenly everything my professor had been telling me ‘gelled,’ and I became a much better singer. Having been a treble of rather fine quality until a couple years ago, when I opted to pursue hormone therapy to get my growth plates to close and so forth, I found myself rather self-conscious about learning to use my voice after it changed. I am now feeling quite comfortable in the countertenor range and also in the lower ranges. I should be able to manage a solid three octaves with little difficulty. I’m an early music buff; that solid three octaves will give me a comfortable high A and with it the opportunity to sing just about everything I want to sing.

I also got a haircut. I’m still not sure how I feel about it, really. I think I like it, but it’s different. It’s a layered ‘K-Pop’ (reference: Rain) kind of haircut specifically for the wedding. Inevitably, once the July heat hits, I’ll get it cropped close in the back, but I’m thinking I’ll leave the bangs and stuff the way they are, or something along those lines. Or I’ll let it grow out yet again, because DD likes it long and I have lately come to like it long.

Anyway, I’m really excited about my jury right now, so here’s hoping it goes well. If you happen to think of it, I could use some thoughts and prayers or whatever around 1:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time tomorrow

(Still) Not Dead Yet!

I must apologize to the Innertubes once again for my extended absence. I swear I have some posts in the can, but it’s The Last Two Weeks Of The Semester and I’m bushwhacked right now, not to mention up to my eyeballs in organ music and wedding plans.

Took my first exam today. Remaining exams and organ juries will be next week. Then I can breathe for a minute, and I have a bunch of thoughts in the pipe for then — in particular, a look at the many bloggers who continue to inspire me, the unexpected urgency and weirdness of an imminent marriage, and a recipe for turkey-and-onion quick-n-easy casserole.

For now, though, I’m just going to grit my teeth and hang on tight.

Or should I close my eyes and think of England…?

A Minor Oversight

I am not the world’s most socially-savvy person, nor am I all that inclined to participate enthusiastically in the social-networkification of modern life (though Google+ has gone quite a ways toward getting me on that train).  I don’t decry social networking as evil or as the end of human socialization — indeed, socialization has been evolving as long as we have been human, and (the evidence would imply) for a good long while before that — I just don’t get all that involved.

Though I’m very much a child of the innertubes, and have been participating in internet-based social stuff since grade school, I was decidedly not an early adopter when it came to facebook.  In fact, I stringently avoided getting involved in facebook until a little more than a year ago: I just didn’t think it would add much of anything to my life.  …And, while I did enjoy my time on facebook, that turned out to be largely correct.  I used it rarely enough that it really just frustrated my friends and frustrated me.  (I am significantly more enthusiastic about G+, and I make reasonably extensive use of it — in part because it’s much more convenient: I’ve also been using gmail and google docs since their inception, so G+ is right there anyway.)

I did, however, use facebook to issue a general wedding announcement to the Universe in the form of changing my relationship status to ‘engaged.’  When I got on G+, however,I didn’t think to make any kind of wedding announcement there.

Needless to say, then, it came as a bit of a shock to a couple of my friends — people I actually know IRL, but don’t see often and communicate with primarily via G+ — when I mentioned earlier this week that I had successfully ordered a wedding cake and had not died (in case you’re wondering, I have serious anxiety about talking on the phone, especially to strangers — so that’s kind of a big deal).  Not a bad shock, but a shock nonetheless!

Anyway, I think all the people in my life who know me personally (and a bunch of other people — hi!) now know that I’m getting married, so I think the announcement phrase is pretty much sorted.  We have found an officiant, ordered a cake, sorted the site, found the food … hm, this is becoming alliterative.  I think all that remains at this point is to line up a photographer.  We’ve even taken measurements and ordered our clothes.

I make note of all this because ours has, up to the point, probably ranked as one of the most disorganized weddings of all time, and it’s all starting to come together now.  I’m feeling pretty optimistic about ours being a beautiful wedding.

Of course, ask me the day before said blessed event and I might tell you otherwise — but right now things are looking good.

It’s surprising how much one learns about one’s self when attempting to plan a major life event.  In the process of planning this wedding so far, I have learned that I still have a lot of holes in my social algorithms.  I have also learned that I am more capable of planning stuff like this than I would have guessed.  I’ve learned that even my ‘casual friends’ (a totally new category for me) have a stake in this — that a marriage really is both public and private.  I have learned that even people who might not necessarily agree with the idea of gay marriage in the abstract sometimes feel very differently when the question concerns someone they actually know. 

I guess that last bit shouldn’t surprise me: it’s not the abstract that changes hearts and minds; it’s the concrete and personal.  This is why I believe in the power of anecdotal evidence: yes, it is imprecise, messy, sloppy, and flawed.  However, the human heart thrives on connections and stories, and the shape of any given heart is determined largely by the story its owner is — subtly, unconsciously, and constantly — telling herself or himself about the world we all share.

Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There!

I don’t think one would be particularly hard-pressed to establish credible support for the theory that America is a nation obsessed with productivity.

In fact, I’m going to go so far as to say that America is a nation pathologically obsessed with productivity. Never have so many people worked so hard, with such diligence, to accomplish so much, for such obscure reasons. One might argue that slaves in the ancient world (and the not-so-ancient world) did much more work, but I’m sure they would have been happy to take a good long break if they’d had the opportunity. Likewise, one might argue that the Japanese are at least as relentlessly productive — but the Japanese also know how to take a break.

Simply put, we don’t know how to relax. We have lost the knack.

Today I read a nifty post on how to have a productive Spring Break. It was thoughtful, well-written, and upbeat — but still, in the end, I found myself asking, “Why?”

Not why is this specific WordPress blogger posting this specific advice (in fact, the blogger in question does point out that breaks are for relaxing) but why, as a culture, are we so very obsessed with productivity?

Fact: if the laundry doesn’t get done right now, it’s okay. It’s not going anywhere, and once one of the laundry-doers in the house realizes that he or she is completely bereft of clean socks, trust me — it will get done (or said laundry-doer will just switch to sandals, if it’s warm enough).

Fact: if you choose to take a walk or a bike ride right now instead of doing homework, your homework will still be there when you come back. You just need to leave yourself enough time to get it done.

Fact: the most precious moments of our lives will not wait while we’re focused on ‘more important’ things that will wait.

Mindfulness meditation demands that we learn to sit there and “do nothing.” To the average American mind, it’s a spectacularly alien concept. We believe that we should do something with our time — and, when we don’t, we feel badly.

If you’re reading this blog and you don’t already do so once in a while, I’d like you to try an experiment. Set aside an hour — even two — to be flagrantly unproductive without feeling guilty about it.

Make note of all the stuff you need to do — all the mail that’s piled up on the loveseat (um, that might be an example from my own home, heh), all the bills you need to pay, all the dishes you need to address, all the ‘work’ that ‘needs’ to get done — and then put it all aside. For an hour or two, sit on your porch, or chillax with your kids, or play with your pets, or go ride a bike slowly and unproductively. Turn off the TV. Put away the edifying literature. I’m not saying you have to spend the entire block of time you’ve set aside meditating — rather, just take some time to kick back and just be. Let the moment take you where it will.

Just as in mindfulness meditation, you acknowledge intrusive thoughts and then let them go, when intrusive worries about productivity arise, acknowledge them and let them go.

The first time you do this, you might find that such thoughts intrude frequently. However, as you begin to make a habit of it, you’ll find that you’re noticing instead of worrying: noticing the blossoms on the trees, the color of the grass, the scent of the damp earth. Noticing the texture of your cat’s fur, or how your dog makes that funny face when she scratches behind her elbow. Noticing the deep and abiding stillness that underpins even our frenetic world.

It is in these moments that many of us find it easiest to hear the voice of G-d, not to mention our own still, small inner voices.

If you still struggle with feelings of guilt, know that taking a break and getting out to experience the now will help you be more productive when you head back to your desk or your laundry room or your kitchen or whatever. The mind needs rest just like the body does.

I promise the dishes will still be there when you get back.

Right there, beyond the mail, is a beautiful afternoon that will never come again.

The Burden of Proof

Once upon a time, even in the halls of academe, we humans struggled with the notion of ‘burden of proof’ (we still do, but that’s another entry).

Instead of asking those making extraordinary (or even ordinary) claims to back up their words with hard evidence, we had it backwards. “Well,” the claimants could crow, “You just prove I’m wrong.” Meanwhile, folks with perfectly credible theories were left banging their heads against walls (assuming they got to keep their heads, that is) because — though they might possess all the evidence in the world to support their claims — before they were permitted to do so, they had first to disprove the oft-unfalsifiable claims of the establishment.

Today, things have largely improved in the academic world. Academics are asked to ‘show their work,’ so to speak. Likewise, in the United States at least, when one is accused of a crime, the burden of proof falls not on the accused, but on the accuser. One does not simply waltz into Harvard, declare that the world is flat after all, and then wait for everyone else to prove it isn’t; nor can one simply say, “Pat stole my wallet” and expect Pat to be summarily trotted off to prison without at least the semblance of a reasonable investigation into the evidence at hand.

By now you may be wondering why I’m prattling on about empiricism, especially since I so often operate in the realm of the decidedly un-empiricisable and also since I regard our obsession with the empirical as something more than a bit short-sighted. This is not to say empirical evidence isn’t important — but I think our modern tendency to think it’s the only thing that matters is, in a word, silly: now I suppose you want me to back that claim up with evidence, but I know what you’re about, and I’ve been down that rabbit hole before, and — wait, where was I?

Oh, right. That whole burden of proof thing.

So!

Burden of proof.

As an intersex person, I have from time to time been subject to the opinions of others as to what my gender “should” be and/or how I “should” express it. Such individuals like to make claims about who I’m supposed to be — and, most often, when I ask them to show me the evidence in favor of their argument, there simply isn’t any. Their answers generally resemble the classic, “Well, just prove I’m wrong!”

Pardon me, but last I checked, few — if any — of us are even remotely qualified to tell other people who they’re supposed to be. Moreover, when we try, few if any of us can come up with any real evidence to back our claims.

I’m sure there are quite a few out there who — should they happen to stumble across my blog and actually read far enough to get any sense whatsoever as to who I am — would argue that my sense of ‘gender identity’ is wrong. I haven’t yet heard from one (ever, actually), but to those who might be thinking it any just not saying it, I say: “Back it up.”

I mean no disrespect, of course. Undoubtedly, many of those who think I’m in the wrong here are kind and thoughtful people who just want what’s best for me. I simply want them to show me their evidence: why is it, for example, wrong to be an intersexed person with an intersexed sense of self, but not wrong to be a female person with a female sense of self or a male person with a male sense of self?

After all, the argument, “Well, there isn’t an ‘intersex’ gender category — people are either men or women,” is itself a pretty extraordinary claim. Most of us accept the binary gender system as a given, but the fact that the majority accepts a given notion as Truth with a capital T doesn’t make it so.

Take, for example, the Christmas story as so many of us know it from the Bible: An angel announces to a young woman — Mary — that she’s about to miraculously become pregnant with one important kid. Her fiance Joseph wonders whether he should quietly break off the engagement, but the angel appears to him and says, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” or something along the lines. Then the young couple heads off to Bethlehem to register for a census, and when they get there, there’s nowhere to say, so Mary gives birth in a stable. An angel announces the miraculous birth to some shepherds “in fields where they lay,” and then three wise men follow a star to the manger. The wise guys are told by King Herod to reveal to him the location of the child, but they decide against it and instead warn Mary and Joseph that their child is in danger. Mary and Joseph flee to Nazareth to escape the impending tragedy.

Everyone knows that Bible story.

Right?

Except that particular story doesn’t appear anywhere in the Christian scriptures at all. Instead, it conflates elements from accounts from the various gospels, some of which are mutually exclusive if read side-by-side.

Likewise, once upon a time, most of us believed that the universe revolved around the Earth (today, we all understand that was quite wrong, and that it actually revolves around Charlie Sheen).

Every one of us entertains certain cherished suppositions. I certainly have mine. However, the fact that I cherish them doesn’t make them right — it just makes them harder to relinquish when it’s time to let them go.

How Not to Plan a Wedding

DD and I got engaged nearly a year and a half ago (no, that wasn’t a mistake), around Thanksgiving 2010.

At the time, we looked at May, 2011 for a wedding date, then decided we needed more time to plan.

The problem is, neither of us is all that good at dealing with time. DD is much better than I am, and I am somewhat better than your average golden retriever (but worse than your average Jack Russell or cat).

Thus, most of the year-and-a-half intervening passed before we realized, “Oh, crud, we’re getting married in like three months!”

Since then, we have been running around like chickens with our heads cut off, trying to plan a wedding while he works a bazillion hours a week and I attempt to survive an insanely busy spring semester.

Oops.

This is all one big, fat learning process. The problem is, it’s the kind of big, fat learning process that doesn’t extrapolate to much of anything. How often does one get married (well, excepting, perhaps, Liz Taylor and so forth)?

As such, I’d like to offer a few words of advice, ill-advised though it may be for me to do such a thing.

Onward.

When planning a wedding, do not:

1. Freak out.
   
   It’ll be okay. Really. You’ll make it to the finish line, or the altar, or whatever you’re supposed to make it to when you get married.
2. Worry too much about the Grand Visions of those who aren’t actually getting married.
   
   Everyone will have an opinion, but you know what? It’s your wedding. If they don’t like your vision, they can address that when they have their own darned weddings, thank you very much.
3. Fail to pay attention to your own Grand Vision or that of your betrothed.
   
   DD pointed out to me early on that there I can’t be *entirely* without opinions about what kind of wedding I want. He’s correct (of course). It just so happens that I have no idea how to articulate my vision, or where to find the unicorns, so I’m fumbling my way forward and it’s working out all right.
4. Get too obsessed with your Grand Vision or that of your betrothed.
   
   That way lies damnation, and also Bridezilladom (or Groomzilladom). Understand that everything may not come off exactly as it did in your sparkly, misty-edged vision of paradise, but that it will probably be all right.
5. Spend too much.
   
   I have never heard someone lament the fact that they had a small, intimate wedding and didn’t go into debt. Meanwhile, I have heard horror stories about big, elaborate weddings gone horribly awry. Remember: the fewer the moving parts, the fewer the potential points of failure.

I will say that the pieces are beginning to fall into place. Perhaps we got our save-the-dates out a few days (or months) later than would really be ideal, but you know what? Nobody died. Nothing terrible happened. The earth did not quake, nor did it open up and consume us.

Like other things, weddings happen. Even the worst planner in the world (Hi!) can put one together with the assistance of a few capable friends…

…And, honestly, if that fails, there’s always a Justice of the Peace around somewhere.