Experiments in Cooking

The cookbook Down to Earth: Great Recipes for Root Vegetables has been tempting me for some years with its Green Onion and Gruyere Bread Pudding recipe. Not that I ever particularly intended to make the recipe as presented, since that would be alien to my character, but the notion of doing something savory and useful with stale bread has always been appealing.
I finally got around to it, which makes sense given that I should have been working on my book proposal, preparing the midterms, or at least scouring the sink.
My result, which is not all that much like the original beyond being a savory bread pudding, proved edible. I'm not entirely sure what one does to make the pudding avoid the standard drowned-bread stickiness, but it's true I didn't follow the recipe's direction to squeeze the soaked bread "as dry as possible" since the recipe indicated that the bread would be re-inundated and I believe in cutting out unnecessary steps.
Basically, I did the following:
Submerged about 10 smallish slices of bread (which already had baked-in nuts and cheese bits) in about 2 cups of "milk." The recipe called for 4 cups, but all I had was some half-and-half and some vanilla soymilk, so I combined these with water and hoped 2 cups total was enough. It certainly was. I don't know what would have become of the other 2 cups of milk. Probably a deluge.
Meanwhile (as the oven heated to 375), I beat 3 eggs.
I then chopped up a smallish onion and threw the pieces into a buttered 9x12-ish pan.
Getting more adventurous, I added four leftover olives of various types (chopped), quite a few capers, about half a jalapeno (given the tame nature of Pennsylvania jalapenos, it could probably have been 2), some walnut pieces, quite a bit of Parmesan cheese, and the remains of some Swiss cheese and an unidentified soft smoked French cheese.
I mixed all of this stuff together with wild abandon in the baking dish and shoved it into the oven, where it baked for about 40 minutes until the knife came out clean from the center.
I think it could have had more olives and cheese, and perhaps a few capers fewer, but other than the inevitable semi-sogginess, it was pretty good.

More Coffee?

I'm not one of the world's champion coffee drinkers. Many of my friends are, but I'm usually content with one or two cups in the morning.
On the other hand, I do find a good cafe to improve my overall productivity, because I tend to thrive on an occasional change of scene. If I work for a few hours at home, for instance, I usually need to go somewhere else if I expect to work for a few more hours. Back when I first returned to school and was taking classes at San Francisco State, I wrote one of my papers in some sort of marathon that involved 1) several hours at the UC Berkeley library; 2) several more hours at a cafe (I believe it was Coquelet, which has been in existence since before I first moved to the East Bay and shows no sign of disappearing these many years later--in fact, it's open 24 hours); and 3) a final frenzy of composition at home sitting on my bed. While one need not drink coffee in most cafes, it is what one does usually get unless a confirmed tea-drinker. (I drink tea more as a change of pace, or herb teas.) Thus, there arises that nagging question of whether I drink too much coffee.
My coffee-obsessed friends have been pleased to note that the medical world is no longer stern about the evils of coffee. Numerous recent studies seem to indicate that unless you really, really drink lots of the stuff, it is probably even good for you. The New York Times recently ran an article claiming to demystify the conflicting claims, though as far as I could tell it was only citing the favorable studies as a corrective to the previous anti-coffeeism.
I am a little skeptical of all this. I'm quite willing to believe that coffee is not bad for humans unless taken in huge doses; after all, people have been drinking coffee for quite some time without there being any discernable terrible effects. I am glad not to have an addiction to the stuff, since I hear unpleasant things from people who try to cut down their caffeine intake, but as addictions go, it is pretty benign, and I am sure coffee is much better for people than the various forms of cola. But given the size of the American coffee industry, I think there are quite a few people with a vested interest in seeing studies that promote the benefits of coffee. I wouldn't be at all surprised if many of these studies were funded at least in part by the coffee industry.
Having said all this, I feel obliged to add my voice to the many that protest the Starbuckization of America and the world at large. I do not, in fact, detest Starbuck's; it has brought decent coffee and pleasant places to drink it to many remote parts of North America. If I am driving across country, and don't see a promising local coffee house, I am perfectly happy to visit Starbuck's. I am opposed, however, to the chain's habit of opening new branches right near thriving independents or local chains. In some neighborhoods this doesn't cause a problem--any place that can accommodate three or four cafes in one block obviously isn't endangered by a Starbucks--but in others, it drives the competition out of business. But perhaps this is no longer happening; I gather Starbuck's is closing some stores.
I dislike, however, the way that other cafes feel they have to imitate Starbuck's menu. I don't care where I am, I am going to order a small coffee (unless, like Tazza d'Oro, "small" truly means small and not big), not a "tall," because no matter what it's called, it will be more than I usually drink and I don't want to encourage tallness. And, apart from getting the occasional latte or cafe-au-lait, I am not about to spend my small cache of disposal income on fancy coffee drinks that will just make me fat and broke. I don't know what most of these are and I don't think I want to know. I first heard of "Americano" in Prague, as that seemed to be what I began hearing American tourists order, circa spring 2007. Whatever Americano is, I now hear it constantly in American cafes as well.
In the Berkeley area, total coffee devotees have gone to Peet's for a very long time. The original Peet's locations seem to have kept their extreme-coffee ambiance, which was always a little too coffee-worshipping for me, but which I respected. Mr. Peet has now retired and Peet's has expanded quite a bit. I regret to say that the El Cerrito Peet's is pretty much a clone of Starbuck's, even including being too chilly to sit in for any length of time. (El Cerrito does not have a climate that requires air conditioning more than once or twice every five years, so why must Peet's be so cold?) Still, it is not a bad place in general, especially since Fat Apples, which has memorable coffee and pastries, is more a restaurant than a cafe.
Having rambled on at length about coffee, I think it is time to gather my projects and remove myself from the temptations of the internet.

New Trends in Farming?

Kristen, who is a more devout cook than I am, and even a more fervent recycler (although I recycle anything I think I can get away with putting into the recycling bags), has been finding some interesting articles on urban and sustainable farming.
As a descendant of farmers, and as a person who is very familiar with the high quality possible in home-grown food, I'm delighted to see more and more mainstream coverage of organic foods on small farms and in gardens. And, as this author suggests, the rising price of oil may prompt more farmers to choose to get away from agribusiness-style farming.

Syllabi and Other Amusements

After a couple of weeks of intensive work on syllabi and class presentations, I think the main thing that can be said is that this sort of project does not incline one to spend much time on a computer for other things. This results in a lack of inclination to blog, although on the plus side I've read more novels lately.
One of my goals for the summer is to accomplish pretty much all the prep for next year's teaching before the fall semester starts, and as I'm not teaching summer school, this should be quite doable. It also provides a nice break from certain other academic projects, which we can only hope will be beneficial to the end product.
I don't, actually, mind working on syllabi and presentations just now. Mentally, it is rather enjoyable. It gives me a chance to root through articles I haven't read in years, in order to decide what might make suitable reading for undergrads. Sometimes this is fun, sometimes it's a little frustrating.
For example, it looks as though in the fall I'll be teaching one section of Intro to Modern Art and one of American Art. I've taught Intro to Modern before and it went well, so there the question is what ought to be improved (Kristen and I are trying to think what would be a particularly good supplementary reading on Russian modernism, and I am unsure which readings on surrealism would be best, as I am too close to the subject).
I've never taught American, but I've had good preparation for it and am basing my syllabus on the one used by our department chair, which is set up in a way I like but requires some shifting around as his areas of expertise are rather different than mine. (Yes, I will be including city planning and public monuments, but I will have more to say on genre painting and early 20th century art.)
On these introductory courses, I like to combine readings from a survey text with readings that are more challenging and specific, so I was delighted to rediscover just how interesting and accessible that essays in two of my American art anthologies were. I managed to find six essays in each one that fit themes we will cover. There are very few more readings to come up with for this class (anyone want to suggest one on the rise of American history painting? a favorite on colonial/early 19th-century women's art and design?), so I am mainly working on my images for this class now.
Um, yes. Images and presentations. We have pretty much switched from slides to digital images, but this isn't to say our slide collection has really been digitized. Some of our slides were, but for the most part it seems as though each instructor is on his/her own hunting down images. We subscribe to ArtStor, so this is somewhat helpful, but for various reasons I am finding it very slow and tedious to assemble my American presentations, and have only gotten as far as (in a rudimentary fashion) early 19th-century landscape. This reminds me how, when I first taught Intro to Modern, I spent a good part of each week hunting for the images for that, which I felt left me little time to think about what I was going to say in lecture. (Fortunately, the sight of the pictures generally cues me on what I want to say about them.) The advantage of the digital presentations is, of course, that once they are made, you have them and can revise them in a leisurely way from year to year, so I am making small changes in my Modern presentations but not having to make them again from scratch. It will be nice once the American presentations reach that stage.
Meanwhile, it is probable that sooner or later I will teach a course on Czech modernism--maybe even as soon as Spring 2009--so that's more gradually underway. The presentations for that are much more fun to craft. As I have gradually been scanning more and more Czech modern art over the past 4-5 years, I have a very usable personal collection of images. While it is strongest on Czech surrealism, there is enough of everything else to get a good start on things. Rather than having to be logged into ArtStor and doing painful searches for Copley and trying to decide which Copleys to use and which photo of each painting is clearest, then downloading them and gradually incorporating them, I tend to think "Ah, Emil Filla needs to be included. These two will work for his Munch-like period, these are early cubist works, and these are examples of his (in my opinion) slavish imitation of Picasso." Or "These five views of one of Chochol's cubist houses will give a very nice idea of the building as seen from the street, so which one will be shown large and which ones will be supplementary?" And I realize that yes, I have enough Špála to show for a class, but that I should scan more because four Špála paintings are not really enough. It would be nice to have some of his controversial illustrations for Babička. And well, much more symbolist and decadent art needs to be scanned, and somewhere I need to come up with some examples of Mánes and Aleš.
This sort of thing easily takes up the whole day and wears out my computer-tolerance.
But, for amusement, I have visited Bingo and the other Animal Rescue League rabbits (there are currently several, not just Bingo, that I would really like to take home--Ms. Spots is deeply interested in the scent left on my pants). And last night our medieval Scandinavian specialist held a party celebrating the Norwegian national holiday syttende mai (Constitution Day) and I am very sorry I didn't take my camera along to photograph the elegantly iced cookies she made in the shape of the Norwegian flag, conifers, and moose. The soundtrack for the evening was a somewhat bizarre mix of Norwegian rap music (it exists and it's really strange to listen to), Norwegian-themed songs, and the occasional bit of ordinary party music. We were transfixed by a peculiar song about going out to plunder... I said I would have to give her my mp3s of Scandinavian traditional music--hardanger fiddle and so on--to round out the collection.

Restaurant Dining and Its Oddities

My friend Dirk and I went out to lunch the other day, and settled on a nice little Japanese restaurant in Berkeley. We were quite content with the food, but two things struck us regarding American restaurants (Japanese-cuisine or not).
First, why is it that restauranteurs imagine that one wants TV while dining? I can understand that a sports bar ought to have a large-screen TV, but a restaurant that is tastefully decorated and laid out to encourage conversation? Not only were we disturbed to note the existence of televisions when we walked in, but after selecting a corner table where neither of us faced them, we realized that the mirrors on the walls forced us to watch all sorts of distracting movement. Neither of us like to be in the same room as a TV unless we plan to watch it. (I grant that Czech restaurants are no better than American in this respect.)
Second, why are waiters and waitresses in the US so obsessed with asking diners whether everything is all right? I am all in favor of being asked this once, but only once. I do not want to be asked this before I have taken the first bite, and I do not want to be asked this repeatedly throughout the meal. The wait-staff at this particular restaurant were so determined to ask whether everything was all right and to offer us refills of unwanted tea that it was difficult to carry on a conversation. They were so obsessed with asking that they were apparently incapable of attending to anything we really did want. For example, I had to ask twice for a fork (I can eat with chopsticks but the noodles in my soup defied them). And, of course, if the diners indicate four or five times that they do not want more tea, perhaps it would be a kindness to stop trying to press more tea upon them. Dirk and I finally concluded that the degree of solicitousness shown by our wait-staff indicated a serious insecurity about the food. I much prefer the Czech system, where the wait-staff silently removes empty plates and does not obsess about whether everything is okay.
In short, when I go to a restaurant with a friend, I would like to converse with that person, not have to deal with constant intrusion by TV screens and restaurant staff.

Post-Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has come and gone in its usual unremarkable way. It is a holiday that I enjoy, yet never feel obliged to celebrate. Over the years, I have gathered that this is a rare attitude among the American populace; while one always reads of how painful big family holidays are for members of dysfunctional families who have lots of bad memories of past holidays, I have yet to meet anyone, even from an awful family, who claimed to detest Thanksgiving. It seems to be a general favorite, perhaps because Thanksgiving is often celebrated with friends rather than family.
I like to host Thanksgiving dinners, but this is not generally practical for me, so I was pleased that this year Travis took on the job for our department. As Travis is vegan, this meant I used margarine instead of butter in the sweet potatoes. But as I'm perfectly content with vegetarian Thanksgiving, it was not much of a stretch to go in a vegan direction. Most of my favorite Thanksgiving foods are not dairy-focused, or can use margarine.
We met on Friday so that more people would be able to attend, and we ended up with a pleasant group of four art historians (Travis, Kathy, Leslie, and me) and one visiting Czech psychologist, Daniela. Additional people had planned to come, but for one reason or another bowed out. The Friday timing meant that Daniela was able to experience a traditional Thanksgiving on Thursday, and as an observer of American culture, she quite enjoyed seeing both the traditional and non-traditional forms. Our most traditional foods were the sweet potatoes, mulled wine, and mashed potatoes, but only the first two turned out to have their traditional form, as Travis had put the potatoes in the food processor and this gave them an unusual consistency. They tasted fine, but they were very sticky. We have christened them Potatoes a la Travis, and Leslie says she thinks this new recipe will please her father, who wants his potatoes exceptionally smooth.
I meant to take pictures, but left the camera in the car. While we enjoyed ourselves, the main notable item other than the food was Daniela's revelation that her family has a house rabbit. This is not the Czech norm. She said that he is very patient with her younger son (who tries to treat him like a stuffed animal) and has taught her how intelligent rabbits are.

Usually I find Thanksgiving break an excellent time to get a lot done. Past Thanksgivings have seen the composition of entire short stories. I am not sure that this year will be typical in this regard, however.
It is not that I do not have plenty to do. As I sat in the airport Monday night waiting for my flight back to Pittsburgh, I contemplated the rather long list ahead of me. It involved things like writing my College Art Association conference paper, writing a proposal for the upcoming Czech workshop, writing an abstract for a book chapter that I hope to contribute, writing the next postdoc application, and fixing an article that allegedly had developed problems in the course of emailing. These all had to be done in the next two or three weeks maximum, not to mention making some progress on my dissertation for a change.
The airport happened to have free wifi, so I took it into my head to check my email, and discovered that my advisor had finally read my first two chapter drafts (she had warned me that this would happen shortly) and that as a result she had decided it was time for me to start cutting and reorganizing. No dissertation, she assures me, should be more than 300 pages.
While this news did not actually depress me, it did distract me from dealing with any of my other projects during the flight. On Wednesday, then, I bravely wrote up the chapter abstract and a proposal for next year's AAASS paper (admittedly, these were revisions of documents I already had on hand) and took care of various other things, which made me feel productive. I also cut significant amounts of Chapter 2. I felt very productive indeed!
Unfortunately, I was nearly out of printer paper, so I could not really work out many more cuts.
On Thursday, the mouse for my desktop computer began to behave very strangely. Rebooting was of no use. Changing the batteries did no good. When I tried removing it to reinstall it, it failed to reinstall. There is not much one can do with a computer without a mouse or similar device; I am pretty good at using keystrokes, but Microsoft and the other software companies make it pretty difficult to use a computer solely via keystrokes. Meanwhile, although the laptop was working, I couldn't use the internet from it since (as the Verizon software had screwed it up once and caused me to have to reinstall Windows) I don't use it with my home internet connection.
The annoying thing about such irritations is that, although one can work around them, one would rather fix them. Attempts to fix such things quickly eat up hours of one's valuable time. Nothing is convenient. One cannot simply settle down and work smoothly.
Perhaps, too, it is a bad weekend for technology. My Sibling has experienced what will prove to be either a dead motherboard or dead hard drive on his laptop, which (naturally) is the home of a major project. And this morning I discovered that an unidentified lapine had chewed no less than three cords connected to the telephone. While phone cords are easily replaceable, I may need to get a new phone if the power cord can't be replaced. It is just as well that I don't know which rabbit perpetrated this particular mischief, although I suspect Orion was to blame.

I Complain

All colleges and universities have their quirks, I am sure, regarding what is easily found on or near their campuses. It is possible that, as an undergraduate, I was simply so dazzled at having so many resources within walking or bus distance that I was completely unaware of what was missing, but it is true that I cannot come up with a list of things I felt were lacking at UCSC.
Perhaps I am more demanding these days; the lack of lunch options on and around the American University campus, for instance, may be no more severe than what I experienced at UCSC when I ate most of my meals in the cafeteria. I was, however, very much annoyed at AU's paltry range of choices, which was much exacerbated by the near-nonexistence of affordable lunch in the surrounding neighborhood.
The University of Pittsburgh is not lacking in varied dining possibilities, I am glad to say, although I have been known to complain that when the parking lot near our building was turned into a park, we lost out on all the Asian food trucks, which were replaced by some very unimpressive kiosks. (Since when do I want to pay $1.85 for a can of ginger ale? Why is the food at the Chinese-Japanese kiosk so limited and bland?)
I have concluded, however, that University of Pittsburgh is seriously lacking in any functioning method of informing the world of lectures and cultural events. I have not found its various newspapers very helpful, whereas I relied on UCSC's City on a Hill to provide me with a convenient list of everything going on during the week. At UCSC, if I missed a play, a film, or a concert, it was not because I was ignorant. At Pitt, on the contrary, it is some sort of a miracle if I hear about any of these things. Here, one must either hang out in the correct building (or floor of same), or be on the right mailing lists. In other words, since I am not spending time in the German Department, I have no idea what German films are being screened. Since I do not normally go over to the Music Building, I only accidentally found out that we have a gamelan and that my former gamelan teacher was performing with it. Since I am seldom over at the Theater Department, I am usually clueless what plays are being put on and where our theater spaces are.
I thought matters would improve when, rather tardily, the Russian and Eastern European Center got around to putting me on its email list. (This happened shortly before I went to Prague; I was completely unaware of three years' worth of events prior to that.) Apparently the improvement is slight. I do get numerous emails about lectures on political and economic topics, regarding which my interest is rather slight although I do like to know about these talks. Some weeks back, however, I heard mention of a Russian film series, which was, I believe, occurring on Tuesday nights.
In my vague and dilatory sort of way, I finally got around to checking my emails to find out the time and room number for this series.
Was there, in anything Slavic-related, the slightest mention of such a series? Certainly not! I am glad to say that I know all about the Romanian film series (both via email and because a Romanian colleague has put a poster on our TA office door), but why is the Russian series such a secret? I'm all for improving my knowledge of Russian film, which currently doesn't go much beyond Eisenstein, Vertov, and a bit of Tarkovsky. For that matter, some years I miss out on the Slovak film series, and I usually hear about any Czech series after they have ended.
I feel aggrieved about this.
On the other hand, yesterday I was able to get my muffler fixed with great speed, although at appalling expense.
I suppose one cannot expect everything to go quite according to one's inmost wishes, although one would think that proper promotion of cultural events would be an all-around winner.

Mushroom Season

Julia has reminded me that in Europe, fall is mushroom season. Fall has come to Pittsburgh (the mornings are cool and a few leaves are turning color and dropping, although it still hits temperatures in the 70s and 80s--Fahrenheit--in the afternoon), but as we all know, the United States is not a mushroom-hunting land. Yes, I know a few American mushroom hunters, but that's because I know an odd selection of people. My only personal experience with mushroom hunting was in the Czech lands, and nobody here brings over their booty to share (come on, can't I use the word "booty" in its dictionary sense? you know what I mean! not that anyone has brought over their slang-booty either.).
In any case, I offer up my own bit of mushroom decor in honor of the season. Mushroom Hat and his cousin Peter are Scandinavian, not Czech, but they've been good company for many a year. (It was nice of my mother to let me have them now that I'm old enough not to run the risk of breaking them while playing with them.) They stay well out of the way of inquisitive rabbits by living atop the CD tower.

Give Me Your Hummus!

Ms. Spots has always been known for her adventurous palate. Chocolate, Indian food, macaroni and cheese, bagels, and gingerbread are only a few of the items that have caused her to race around begging to be fed.
Since the weather has been hot and my stove doesn't work (yes, I will be calling the building management about this, but not until the move-in process has subsided somewhat), I have been living on things like yogurt and bread-and-cheese. Ms. Spots was very excited about one of the bread loaves I brought home from Whole Foods (rabbits prefer certain types of bread, on a very individual basis).
More recently I was varying my diet by eating pita bread and hummus. Hummus has a way of dropping off the knife onto the floor before it reaches the bread, but not to worry, the Spotted Vacuum Cleaner was on the scene.
I have not seen her quite this excited about any food other than yogurt in some time. Every time the hummus container gets opened, she shows up for her share.
Moreover, I'm not sure I'll be able to eat much of it myself. Last night I sat down on the floor to eat a bagel with hummus, and next thing I knew she was climbing into my lap to get at it. We ended up splitting the bagel and she got about 75% of the hummus.
Orion is not, apparently, deeply interested in hummus but does think that he ought to be getting something too.
Remarks on academic matters will be forthcoming one of these days as a diversion from all this domestic news.

Pears

The plums are all gone and now we're on to apples and pears. A good deal of apple pie has been made and consumed, so now with the pears ripened unexpectedly quickly (they have to be picked unripe, but they went ripe awfully fast after that), we are digging through the pear recipes. Or, rather, my mother is. I am ostensibly packing and returning library books.

Plum Pie

This evening I made the fourth of these. Assuming one has a plum tree, plum pie is easy (although extremely drippy in the plum-slicing stage). These yellow plums aren't especially tart, and I use them when they're practically liquefying, so the recipe goes something like half a cup or so of tapioca and about 3/4 of a cup of sugar, onto which one slices lots of plums and occasionally stirs the mess. Somewhere along the line I start preheating the oven to 400 (that's Fahrenheit). When there seems to be about enough glop to fill the pie shell, I pour it in, and, if necessary, add a few more plums. We've tended to have blueberries in the refrigerator, so I add some of those for decoration. All the better if they're slightly dried out, because then they can absorb some of the plum juice.
I put the pan on top of a cookie sheet to minimize the drip issue, and bake for about 40-45 minutes, then drop the temperature to 350 and let it go a little longer.
The results have been well received by my writing group and the returned Parental Units.

How We Spent the Fourth

I can't say I have any special habit regarding the Fourth of July, which, for those not familiar with US holidays, is Independence Day. If the circumstances are right, I enjoy watching fireworks, but California has not yet managed to show me a good fireworks display, and this is despite my family having moved here when I was eight years old. I'm not saying California has none to offer, but in the Bay Area the weather is always chilly at night and fog and distance generally obscure the numerous shows. About the best I've managed was to get high in the Berkeley hills and stand on the road seeing four or five tiny explosions in various distant places. That doesn't live up to my recollections of warm midwestern nights with dramatic close-up displays in the park, seen after a nice picnic on a blanket.
John, however, makes a tradition of getting together friends and going to Dolores Park to watch the San Francisco Mime Troupe. For some reason this year was the first time in our acquaintance that we were actually both in the Bay Area on the Fourth, so this was the first time I went. (I had, of course, seen the Mime Troupe on other occasions over the years.)
An excursion of this sort, naturally, requires food. Had I been a little more enterprising, I would have made my first potato salad of the season, but I did not manage to get to the grocery store. The last of the apricots had to be dealt with, so I made pie #3 in the series. The pie was too drippy and the pan too fragile to take to the park, so Cesar, John, and I ate most of it before leaving. They seemed quite taken with it, I am glad to say.
John requires sufficient coffee before embarking on any venture, so we had to stop at his current favorite purveyor before getting very far on the road. Cesar lectured him extensively about this addiction, no doubt for my entertainment. I am quite familiar with John's coffee habit, of course; even my mother knows that she can give him multiple refills late at night without causing meltdown. A second cup of coffee, John assured us, prompts him to feel a great love for humanity and an optimism about world peace. I inquired whether he thought our president is not drinking enough coffee, but he replied that some people have congenital defects.
Outside the cafe, I noticed this interesting display.
Dolores Park was filled with picnickers, a great many of them gathered around the Mime Troupe's stage. We did not get ideal seats and ended up laying out our blankets in the sun a ways behind the sound booth. More agreeably, we were near the chair massage vendor, so John bought massages for me and his friend Monica. I realized that it was probably the first time I had ever had a massage when I didn't seem to be in dire need of one. Life in Prague must have had a beneficial effect despite all that daily carrying of laptop and camera.
The Mime Troupe is a San Francisco institution. We discovered that this year marked something like its 48th anniversary, which we found mindboggling; I think we had all assumed it began in the 60s or 70s. We don't know why it's called the Mime Troupe when as far as we know it has never, ever done anything in mime. Its specialty is political theater, which is done with a lot of broad humor and wild musical numbers. This year's offering, about media coverage of the Iraq war, struck me as one of the better ones I've seen. I can't claim to be a connoisseur of their oeuvre, but John also thought it was pretty good. Cesar thought it recycled one of their favorite themes, that of the journalist who sells out and has a crisis of conscience, which I think is true, but I don't really expect anything stylistically new or remarkably subtle from the Mime Troupe. I was content to see Dick Cheney humorously portrayed.
After the show, many people gave it a standing ovation. I will say that while I think Americans are a little too inclined toward this form of praise, their expressions of appreciation after performances are weak in comparison to the Czech need to clap for fifteen minutes after every show. Applause is a fine thing, but the Czechs seem to feel that it would be insulting not to try to get the performers to do three encores and eight or ten separate bowing sessions with huge quantities of bouquets.
One thing that did surprise me at this performance, however, was the behavior of the people seated in front of us. The woman who had first staked out the spot spent most of the performance either working on her laptop (!) or reading fashion magazines. For awhile she was joined by a female friend who had a small child who skillfully managed to stand directly in front of my line of vision no matter how I moved around. After awhile mother and child departed, having seen perhaps 20 minutes of the play. The next arrival was a stocky young male in a Bob Dylan Tshirt. He appeared to be the mate of the magazine reader. While he watched a certain amount of the play, he read a book during much of his tenure on the blanket. After his departure, mother and child returned briefly, then the magazine reader apparently decided that she had saved the spot long enough and packed up and left. The play lasted at least another fifteen or twenty minutes. I grant that Mime Troupe shows don't require terribly close attention from audience members and that it is normal not to watch absolutely every minute of the show, but since there were many other parts of the park to sit, I wasn't really clear why these people wanted to be in the Mime Troupe audience if they were barely going to watch any of the show. I don't really think that going to the Mime Troupe is quite the same "go to be seen" type of event as theater was for the rich in the 18th and 19th centuries. It's true that our magazine reader was an attractive young woman who must have been quite uncomfortable in her black outfit and high-heeled sandals, but far more people would have been watching her elsewhere.
After the show, we moved to a shady spot to finish the wine and cheese, then embarked on a walking tour of unfamiliar parts of San Francisco.
Cesar had heard of a tree not far from the park where people allegedly left ribbons with wishes. We were not very optimistic about finding it, but it really does exist. People had left wishes in a wide variety of languages, and we read about desires for healthy babies, happiness in love, and so forth. The ribbon box was empty, so Cesar pulled some thread out of his backpack and we tied paper wishes to the branches. (I refrained from reading my companions' wishes.)
Unfortunately, at this point all my camera batteries gave out. I think the heat was to blame. It was unfortunate, as we encountered a great many photo-worthy sights in the next few hours. Monica took us to a hillside slide (we each went down a couple of times and skinned some elbows in the process), then further uphill to a community garden, on a visit to her landlady (who has a delightful Ruth Asawa sculpture and a lovely garden), and all over the place to various enchanting public staircases and other interesting vantage points.
Eventually we headed back to the Mission, where John showed us a couple of alleys with a vast number of murals, Cesar and Monica persuaded us to stop and listen to an Argentinian-style band that was attracting some very fine dancers (Cesar and I danced briefly but I was footsore at that point and we were not to be compared with the other dancers), and eventually we settled at John's to watch Godard's Pierrot le fou and eat pizza. Other than all of us having sustained some sunburn in the unusually warm afternoon, we were very pleased with our day.

Pie and Such

One of my initial tasks upon settling in at my parents' was to make pie out of some of the plethora of apricots in production out in the back yard. My mother indicated that she hoped it would not be as intense a pie as the one she had recently made from them, so I contemplated what might be done (other than adding ice cream to the final product). The successful offering largely followed the instructions for apple pie on the back of the tapioca box, which is to say 3/4 cup of sugar and 2 tbsp tapioca. Having mixed that with the apricots, I added pieces of one orange and a sprinkling of raspberries (which happened to be on sale). The pie has now been devoured and perhaps my mother will make some more crusts (otherwise I might have to make my own or else rely, as usual, on the premade kind) so I can make another one.


Subsequent to the pie-baking I went off to San Francisco, where Cesar and I went to hear Cuban music (Tito Gonzalez y su son) at the so-called Secret Garden (a secluded neighborhood garden). Our admission fee entitled us to go to an after-party at the Red Poppy Art House, but we were hungry and I was a little jet-lagged still, so we didn't get around to that.
I might add that on Friday morning Cesar made a live appearance reading his poetry on Lighthouse internet radio. We thought he read very well. The program will be repeated several times, but I'm not sure where I wrote down the times and dates.

Another Fine Dinner Party

I had not gotten my act together to throw any parties after Jesse's departure back in December (well, I did help John and Cesar put on the Holiday Ham endeavor, but that was in San Francisco; and I might add that they couldn't quite wait for my return but are throwing a similar shindig tonight). I was a little nervous that after months of relatively antisocial behavior I might have forgotten how to do such a thing, especially without a co-conspirator. After all, while Hubert and Alex were staying with me, they made clear that they had prior commitments during the day and would be arriving late to the festivities.
But I will say that all went splendidly. A total of five scintillating guests made their way here (several other invitees sent regrets) and we had a raucous good time eating fruit salad, Jesse's buckwheat recipe, spaghetti, and watermelon.
We did encounter some difficulties opening wine bottles, I am afraid, as some time earlier the good corkscrew had broken (being made primarily of plastic) and I managed to break the backup corkscrew on the first bottle of the evening (evidently its operative part was either plastic or was of a metal with no tensile strength whatsoever).
The method of opening the wine bottles, then, was one that involved coaxing the corks further into the bottles rather than out of them. This is not an easy task since the further one presses the cork, the more compressed the air in the bottle becomes. It is a somewhat hazardous endeavor, but we did succeed in opening two bottles without damages to anyone's person or clothing.
As can be seen from the photos, this is a team effort and involves considerable labor, physical strength, and ingenuity. Luck is also a factor. We decided to quit after the second bottle. It was not a heavily imbibing crowd, although the amount of merriment over the YouTube selections watched on my laptop might have suggested otherwise.
We gave the neighbors a rest from our antics around half-past twelve.

Pickles by Jana

I thought my mother made good pickles (and quite a few different kinds), but I conclude that our friend Jana has her beat. I'm not sure what all goes into these, but in addition to the cucumbers, I noted some carrot, parsnip, and onion slices, part of a small red pepper (not sure which variety), a peppercorn, a clove, a bay leaf, dill, and a lot of small round items that I've seen many times before but can't identify.
I'll bet Jana doesn't make watermelon pickles, though.

Scholarly Dining?

Some people might disagree about this, but it seems to me that while the Czech Republic does have a certain regard for tradition, it also likes lightning-fast change.
How long was I away from the Národní knihovna? Surely not more than a week, between being sick, the ski trip, and recovering from same. And what did I find when I returned? Lo, they have not only taken the card catalogues out of the hallway leading to the bathroom and installed new light fixtures (which are more attractive but make the hall needlessly bright), but they have converted the former Scholars' Reading Room into a cafeteria!
Now, I grant that the transformation into a cafeteria did not take place entirely in one week's time. The reading room was closed some time back. But last time I glanced in before leaving town, there was no indication that it was turning into a cafeteria or that it would be in use within the foreseeable future. All I could tell was that the furniture had been removed and some degree of renovation was in progress. And I do walk by that door at least twice a day when at the library.
The cafeteria looked appealing, so I decided to give it a try for lunch. Would it be better than the bistro by the main entrance (which smelled overpoweringly of hot grease two weeks ago and may or may not still be there)? Would it be better than the café at the Městská knihovna, where I usually go for lunch?
The entrée advertised on the door was gone by the time I asked for it, so I resorted to fried cheese instead. While the fried cheese was not actually hot, nor were the accompanying potatoes, it tasted all right. It is my suspicion that the bistro by the door has merely moved inwards to a more appealing setting which it will shortly fill with the smell of heavy grease. So long as it doesn't smell like grease, I will probably eat there rather often, but let's just say that the café at the Městská knihovna normally has more than one or two entrées plus a selection of chlebičky, baguettes, pastries, and palačinky, and I am used to their staff.
On the other hand, I am glad that the library has not gone in for too much gentrification. One of my main lunch haunts of last year, which had a good selection of simple, satisfactory dishes eaten by students and other ordinary people, transmogrified over the summer into what appears to be just another downtown tourist trap. It was always busy last year, but when I stuck my head in the door in September, it was absolutely devoid of customers.
The library seems to be remaining silent about its upgraded eatery. I see no reference whatsoever to it on their web site, and certainly no photos. But then, they don't seem to like to publicize all the renovations that are occurring in the Klementinum. Perhaps they are afraid this will bring too many people into the reading rooms, and that even more of them will have laptops and want to use the wi-fi.

Food and the Academic Life

Fortunately, we managed to complete our conference panel. By July or August, we should be finding out whether it has been accepted. Of course, by July or August we may all have expired, or forgotten about the whole thing.
Once I had gotten the submission uploaded, and finished investigating a book on Roman Jakobson (it does not seem to be possible to read about Jakobson's theories on aesthetics without wading through a lot of highly technical linguistics material, which is tiring for those of us whose interest in linguistics is not supported by any actual coursework), I concluded that all I wanted was a hot meal and bed rest.
My preferred hot meal would have been a buckwheat-and-egg recipe Jesse taught me, but apparently there is a shortage of buckwheat in the Czech Republic this week. The local market was out of it on Monday night and last night it was not to be found at Tesco either.
I must say that despite the switch to capitalism here having taken place quite some time ago, Czech stores do not seem to operate with any kind of real plan regarding their stock. There is always a lot of merchandise to be had these days, but the mere fact that the store had an item you wanted last week is no guarantee it will ever stock it again. One needs to practice, as in the days of yore, a hoarding strategy for long-lasting goods like buckwheat and boxed tortellini, which are on the shelves just often enough that you expect they will always be there. (I ended up making a sandwich and falling into bed at an absurdly early hour.)
Anyhow, I am relieved to have finished assembling the panel, but will now have to turn my attention to inventing a proposal for a conference on Central/Eastern European modernism. This has been hanging over me for a few months now, as clearly I ought to submit a proposal, but I am drawing a blank as to the precise topic. For awhile my conference papers were a bit thin on dissertation-related material; now they are heavy on Toyen so I am branching out to topics that are still dissertation-related but more loosely so.
Unfortunately, at this stage of the game I need to beef up my publications, since so few of them are recent or remotely related to art history or my dissertation. I do not look forward to this--not because it would be so hard to write the articles, but because scholarly articles, like fiction, are submitted as completed works rather than as proposals (one generally writes fiction because one can't not write it, but one writes scholarly articles solely in the hope of publication). Worse, each scholarly journal tends to have its own special style for citations and other things, which one's bibliographic software may or may not offer a template for. And, worst of all, in art history one generally has to provide images and pay the permissions fees to use them. The thought of trying to find the rights-holders for one's images, never mind spending what could be a few hundred dollars on the permissions, makes one feel very much like crawling back into bed.
That said, here is my version of Jesse's buckwheat recipe:

Sautee an onion and some garlic in a flattish pan
Add mushrooms
Pour a quantity of buckwheat into the pan (it will enlarge somewhat but not vastly while cooking). In the Czech Republic, add plenty of water and half a chicken bouillon cube. In the US, add a can of broth and some additional water.
Stir from time to time.
Once the buckwheat is cooked (chewable) and there is no more liquid in the pan, crack an egg into the mixture and stir thoroughly to coat the buckwheat.
Add pieces of several kinds of cheese. Swiss, parmesan, and blue cheese tend to be good. It is preferable to have at least three types of cheese in the mix, but the question is, what's in the refrigerator? There are many excellent Czech cheeses, but I have not seen most of them elsewhere.
Of course, one cannot go far wrong adding additional vegetables like peppers.

The result looks hideous, but everyone I have fed it to claims to like it.

On Holiday Time (or not)

While the rest of the world (mostly) has gone back to work, my brain is still largely on holiday time, which means my mind is on food, conversation, walks, and other simple pleasures. Thus, the leek-and-potato soup was made and has partly been eaten (there was a lot of it), I won a game of Scrabble, and Jesse and I watched Divoké včely and Pupendo. (Which I should describe, but am too holiday-like to bother.) This afternoon we decided to finish off the pie before Jesse caught the train (or bus, as the case may be) back to Brno.
Unfortunately I seem to have allowed a chip of plum pit into the pie; there was a great CRUNCH and next thing I knew, I felt quite certain that I had cracked yet another tooth.
This put a damper on my mood, as it seemed much more significant than the piece I had lost before Christmas and was planning to have fixed in the New Year.
I had to decide where to take my crumbling mouth. My mental preference was to go to an ordinary Czech dentist of some sort, but on an emotional level this just didn’t work. I can’t stand novocaine, which seems to exacerbate any existing pain rather than numbing it, and I’ve been going to the same dentist since I graduated from college. I felt an English-language dentist was required.
And so, I’ve been to the dentist and learned—just as I suspected—that I finally have to get a crown. She was a little skeptical of going without anesthetic, but when I told her that I had had nearly all my fillings done without it and had a wisdom tooth pulled in the same manner, she said we could give it a try.
We will see if I can manage not to break any more teeth before I go in for my crown on Friday.

Filed under:
Prague Czech

Silvestr at Karla's House of Pleasure

New Year’s Eve is celebrated in the Czech Republic much as in the United States, but by the name of Silvestr. A great many people do nothing in particular beyond staying home and watching TV (endless Silvestr specials featuring every Czech entertainer imaginable, with flashbacks to Silvestr specials from the distant past). Other people, however, go out to restaurants and parties and suchlike. I gather that Staroměstské náměstí and Václavské náměstí become a seething mass of international drunkenness.
It occurred to Jesse and me, however, that New Year’s Eve would be an ideal time to prepare another feast in my kitchen. After a visit to the grocery stores for ideas, I formulated a menu of leek and potato soup, roasted vegetables, risotto, cranberry sauce, and a plum, apple, and cranberry pie. Several other Fulbright grantees were bound to be available to join us (as indeed they were).
The soup was put off on the grounds that it looked like there would be a massive amount of food without it, but everything else went together without any problem, despite the fact that Jesse’s train was delayed significantly (permitting him to watch a dog fight at the Brno train station and consider acquiring Jehovah’s Witness information on Armageddon to pass the time). When he arrived, I put him in charge of the pie crust as presumably this one would not self-destruct (it did not).
Dawn was the first guest to arrive, as she had another engagement to attend, so round one of the dinner was eaten.
Shortly after her departure, Hubert arrived. He had been slaving over a string quartet and required a break from the rigors of composition, so I began to tell him about the interesting museum Megan and I had visited the previous day.
Megan then called from the tram stop for further directions, so, as my hands were covered with plum, Hubert picked up the phone. “Karla’s House of Pleasure,” said he. (Megan had to give the rest of the details of the museum herself.)
Phase two of dinner was successful and suitably merry. Jesse had found a remarkable volume in a Brno bookstore, the Hudební atlas hub (musical atlas of mushrooms), whose author has composed music for each of numerous types of mushroom. We examined this singular work and also played selections from the accompanying CD. Unfortunately the CD player on my laptop was being a little finicky, but the pieces sounded listenable.
Hubert had brought along some DVDs, so we then watched Kalamita, an older Věra Chytilová film starring the ever-popular Bolek Polívka. It was pretty good, although I gather it was very different from some of the director’s other films. The ending was a bit dull in comparison to the rest.
At that point, it seemed about time to head over to Vyšehrad, which Věra had told me was a popular place for less crazy Silvestr celebrations. The Vyšehrad fortifications are about a mile north of my apartment—a nice walk, generally. There was a bit of precipitation of the rain (versus snow) variety, but not enough to warrant umbrellas. Some of the streets in Podolí had Christmas decorations up, and as we approached Vyšehrad we came across others headed in the same direction.
Up on the ramparts there were lots of people looking out over the city, many of them shooting off fireworks. I am really not accustomed to being in close range of fireworks, but on the whole I felt much safer than I would have expected, as the fireworks (many of them the kind I would only expect to see at a municipal display) were mostly set off into the distance. People on other high ground around Prague were doing the same, so the show was quite impressive until fog and smoke took over the atmosphere. Even then, it was still worth watching. People were animated but, as Věra had indicated, not wildly out of control.
Decorations in Podoli

Fireworks on the way up to Vyšehrad

Up at Vyšehrad

The police watch fireworks

When we began to head back, we found that the cobblestones had gotten really icy. While we made it safely back to my apartment, the journey was a bit hazardous and there were a few falls and near-misses.
Under these circumstances, it seemed pointless for Hubert to go home, so I had three overnight guests. This certainly called for prompt deployment of Hovoříme s hostem, but I didn’t think of that, merely of which bedding I could bring forth. (I am glad that Sandra owns what would usually appear to be a surplus of pillows and pillow cases, so no one had to go without these.) The living-room supply of Cosmopolitan provided bedtime reading matter for those who had not brought their own or who were not in the mood for volume 3 of Karel Teige’s writings on art.
In the morning, I fed my guests coffee, tea, and a ten-egg omelet or frittata (there was some discussion as to which it was). Hubert proved to be a most meticulous onion-slicer.
Megan told us that she had run across a blog with a photo of a most peculiar fountain, which we agreed we ought to make a resolution to find and photograph that very day. Megan was able to find the blog with the photo, but no precise address was given. There was, however, a link to the artist’s website—it proved, not surprisingly (to me), to be a recent work by the Prague sculptor David Černý. (Černý is one of the best-known contemporary sculptors here, and does pretty interesting and often satirical stuff. I got to hear him talk about his work when my Czech course visited him in 2003. On the whole, I like what he does. He is especially known for having painted a statue of a Soviet tank pink.) We thought that as it sounded like the sculpture was on the Kampa, we could probably find it.
Off we went. The Kampa is not large, although it is somewhat labyrinthine. We explored the section south of the Charles Bridge exhaustively without finding any sign of our quarry. Perhaps it was simply in greater Malá Strana and not on the Kampa. We left the Kampa and found Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, which met with our approval. We then saw another sign for Kampa and followed it. Eventually, in the courtyard of the new Kafka Museum (I am not sure how many Kafka Museums there now are in Prague), we found our statue. Unfortunately, it being winter, the fountain and mechanical parts were not in use. We did, however, take quite a few pictures, after which it seemed like time for more food.
After this meal, Hubert decided it was time to return to his string quartet, and the rest of us met up with Dawn to watch Corpse Bride in Smíchov. The tickets were exorbitantly priced, but the movie was rather fun.
Megan really did have to get back to Kutná Hora, so after bidding Dawn adieu, Jesse and I accompanied her to the Hlavní nádraží. We did this not because Megan cannot get to the train station by herself, but because the three of us had formulated a plan for anthropological observation of the train station’s clientele. Not the ordinary travelers, of course, but the seedy characters who spend lots of time there. On this expedition, however, we did not see anything too remarkable. One homeless person had brought his own lawn chair to sit on, which I expect was more comfortable than the slab his companions were seated on. Unfortunately capitalism has brought its evils as well as its benefits to the Czech Republic, and thus there are now homeless people who need a warm place to stay on winter nights.
We are not very thorough anthropologists, however, so shortly after Megan’s departure Jesse and I returned to my apartment and watched Balada pro banditu. This classic musical was filmed in the 1970s and is still performed as a stage play (See Jesse's review of a recent instance) but neither of us had seen the film. While the story is set in Ruthenia during the First Republic, the film has a rather sweet and very 1970s counterculture ambience. Even with the English subtitles, I thought most of the plot and exposition had evaporated; without Jesse’s greater knowledge of the story, I would have been baffled. At the same time, we found it very enjoyable to watch and listen to. It has a nonrealistic, poetic atmosphere (imagine Robin Hood and his Merry Men out in the forest, but at a 1970s Renaissance Faire), and Bolek Polívka gives a memorable performance as Mageri the Jew. It made a pleasant end for New Year’s Day and the music at the end of the DVD loops so skillfully and is so lulling that there is no need to turn it off immediately, especially if (as is normally the case in my living room here) the film is being watched by candlelight. You can just sit there and watch the candle flames and listen. Thoughts of archival research have retreated far into the back of the mind, as should generally be the case over the holidays.
(And now: you are growing v e r y s l e e p y…)

The water wheel at the Kampa

Note: You can see a photo Dawn took of us here.
And Jesse has now written about Silvestr, also with photos.
And Megan also writes about Silvestr, using some familiar photos.

Filed under:
Prague Czech food film holidays art music blogs

Year-End Roundup of Interesting Posts

It is that time of year when magazines and news programs like to compile their lists of the "best" of everything. While I would not say that I exactly have a Ten Best list, it has occurred to me that the 2005-2006 Fulbright blogs of my acquaintance (along with Julia’s Kolo Kolo blog) have now been underway for long enough that there is a lot of material to go through if you have not been reading them regularly. Consequently, I felt prompted to pick out some favorites and/or items that struck me as particularly likely to interest my readers, and so here they are in a vaguely thematic arrangement, perhaps forming a sort of anthology. (Naturally, these are not the only worthwhile bits, but I could not include everything.)

Photo Essays
You can get into the mood for a trip to the Czech Republic with Jen and Deborah’s photos, of which these are some choice samples :
Jen, week of September 4th
Jen, week of October 2nd
Deborah: Favorite winter prague sites

Architecture and Cityscapes
These posts will give the armchair traveler a more architectural and urban view of Moscow and the Czech Republic:
From Kylowna:
I AM IN LOVE!!!!!!!
From Deborah:
Watching the world from my Ostrovni neighborhood
From Kristen:
Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Blog
Strange Phenomena
From Jesse:
The Walls of Communism
Waiting for the Tram, Functionally Speaking
Some People Can Make a Bar Out of Anything
Žďár nad Sázavou
From this blog:
Days of the Dead
The Café Life
The Villa Tugendhat (mostly)
The Žďár nad Sázavou Adventure (Part II)

What Life is Like (for some of us)
Here are some posts relating to our experiences of life abroad. As you will have noticed, each of us has our own extremely individual outlook and favorite sorts of topics. I’m afraid I mostly left out posts about holidays since there have been so many in the last three months.
From Deborah:
views to the bridges
City comparisons
From Kylowna:
Day of the Dead--Nov 2
From Kristen:
I Love Her, I Love Her Not
The "Wild" Dogs of Moscow
Rain and Other Gloomy Things
Banya!
Transportation
On Kopecks
Perspective
From Jesse:
Tram Culture 101: Tickets and Customs
Bad Karma, or Karmic Heat Wave?
From this blog:
The Good
More Signs of Apparent Czechness
Vánoční trhy 2005
Lower Your Phone Bill! (Yeah, Right...)
From Julia:
The foggy season, or "smutné" times in Prague
Not from around here - double locked doors
St. Martin on a white horse - winter rides in
Just don’t call him that - the slippery slope of house shoe parlance
Mikulaš eve, Celebrating St. Nicholas in Prague

Language
Of course, there are many aspects to daily life, and the struggle to become fluent in Slavic languages is on our minds more than we really like to admit:
From Jesse:
České jazykolamy
From Julia:
Pronunciation – Help!

Laundry
Laundry and its intricacies could not be left out:
From Kristen:
The Joy of Laundry
From this blog:
Laundry

Adventures Shopping
Shopping is another of those things we often try to avoid thinking too much about (although you will note that posts under other topics also deal with our efforts to purchase this and that). It appears that I found the most striking discussions of shopping on Kristen’s blog, although I know I have also had my say here and there, as have Jesse and Julia:
The IKEA Adventure (and then some)
Searching in All the Wrong Places
Warm Fuzzies?
My Shopping Bag
Orenburg Lace

Food and Adventures in Dining
The most important thing one generally shops for, of course, is food. At times we find food in restaurants, and at times we bring home the raw ingredients and actually cook. The latter can be quite a challenge, and our blogs have many more intriguing posts about cooking than I could bring myself to list.
From Kristen:
Bovine Dining
Vinigret
Notes on Russian Cuisine
From Jesse:
The Adventure of the Peanut Butter Cookies
Nudli 3: Brno Hybrid
From this blog:
And Now We Celebrate
From Julia:
Find a turkey, track down that yam: Thanksgiving in Prague

Products and Their Display
While food is not everything, it is the primary subject of these amusing examples of packaging. Kristen also has some excellent photos of Russian products tucked away in posts about other topics.
From Kristen:
Fattening Up the Ranks--Via Capitalism and Otherwise
No Comment
Red October
From Jesse:
Nudli 1: Dej si "Superpauzu"
Cat Got Your Tongue?
Does Your Beverage Match?
Ancient Czech Blend
Big Americans

Concerts and Film
And, of course, we live not by bread alone, nor even by ingeniously packaged chocolates. From time to time we go out and attend performances and shows of one sort or another.
From Jesse:
"Bronze Reverberations of Gongs": Czech Gamelan
Morava: The Concert
Moravian Girl on the Town
From this blog:
Toyen in Film
Premiere of the New Švankmajer Film

Politics and Sociological Observations
At times we also analyze what’s going on out there.
From Kristen:
Genes
From Jesse:
The Eve of Tomorrow
The "Czech Family" in Crisis, and Other News of the Weird
Music and Protest
"Czech" Verbuňk Recognized by UNESCO

Curiosities
And, ahem, some of us take particular pleasure in finding, discussing, and/or inventing weird stuff (you will have gotten a taste of this in the product packaging section). It was difficult to keep this section to a manageable size. My blog has much more weirdness than this, and Kristen’s has no shortage either. Jesse, however, has written up quite a few individual bits of weirdness, so he gets many links here.
From Jesse:
Another Plus for Brno
The Fashion Police is Out
More Czech News: Are We Living in a Tabloid?
Those Prams Again!
Dear Little Jesus: Have You Seen My Kitchen Lately?
No Posting!
Pizza, Go Home!
From this blog:
We Speak with Guests
Hospodářské noviny and the Case of the Roman Bikini

Research
Last but not really least, some of us do write about our work. Deborah, Jen, and Kylowna actually say quite a bit about their work, but it is spread all over their blogs and I did not really see any very specific posts that gave the full flavor. (In truth, I’m not convinced that my own readers are all dying to see photos of Jen and Kylowna’s students and co-workers, excellent though these may be in their own way.)
From Kristen:
Archive Blindness
From Jesse:
Music, Anyone?
You Play a What?
From this blog:
Explanations
More About Nezval
Figuring Out Handwriting
The Archival Life
Bohuslav Brouk
The Library Life

Filed under:
Prague Brno Moscow Czech architecture food shopping Toyen Nezval surrealism research art music blogs