les pensées de la fleur

I love research. I spend hours online chasing information and moving through the web of connected facts (no pun intended). When I get a book from the library or a bookstore, I always check out the shelf around it to see what interesting information might be waiting for me nearby. Reading news articles sparks journeys into weather patterns, cultural histories, imports and exports of foreign nations, languages spoken, religions practiced, and - of course - what is eaten.

No, my writing problem is not in the research. It is in the argument. I struggle to get from "hey, look at this cool stuff I found" to some sort of meaning. It is not that I don't make connections and synthesize the information that I love to gather, I do. But articulating the connections I see, and the kicker - proving them textually, that is hard for me. Maybe it is because I am such a non-linear thinker, so research webs work for me, but an organized argument cuts off all these really cool possibilities. Or maybe it is my lamentable tendency to feel that if I can see it, every one can see, and why should I have to prove the obvious?

Sometime I think it might be easier if I wrote fiction instead, but I don't really think it would be. In fiction, there still needs to be a narrative arch. So much of the cool information that leads to building real and believable characters never makes it in to the story. At least with academic writing you get the footnotes for tangents. Either way I am still left with the problem of turning a fascinating matrix of thoughts and information into a clear, progressive argument or narrative.

So, weeks after I had planned to I have finally put together my PCA national conference paper proposal. I am really excited to write this paper, as I have been increasingly interested in the connections between food and religion. I think as I talk about some of my other paper plans you all might see a trend...


Many religions involve the use of food both on a symbolic level and on a practical level. After celebrating the Eucharistic meal, Catholics meet in the fellowship hall for coffee and doughnuts. The Passover Seder combines ritual and nourishment to create community with Jews from centuries ago. Baptists’ Wednesday night bible study follows a potluck supper. Wiccans record their Sabbat ritual spells along side family recipes in their Book of Shadows. Food is used in all these cases to both cement common beliefs and to establish and maintain community. These elements of a shared belief system and community are necessary elements for an emotionally satisfying and believable love story. The religious aspects in Nora Roberts’s Three Sisters Island Trilogy demonstrate food as an integral part of the foundations of community and belief. She also shows food to be just as essential to the relationships that develop over the course of the books.

Roberts sets the three love stories against a background of a struggle for good and evil. This timeless conflict is acted out in terms of three good hereditary witches facing progressively stronger evils, and the community of couples fighting evil forces comes together over food. In this paper I will look at how and why this group comes together over food. What is it about Modern Pagan Witchcraft that lends itself to the incorporation of food? What do these stories tell us about why people share food? I plan to explore the questions of how food factors into their struggle to win over evil and how it shapes the relationships that develop along the way.

What do you think, sound interesting?

Daylight savings time, in addition to making it feel like winter is really here, has for the first time ever succeeded in completely ruining my lazy sleep schedule. So much so that I wake up, without the benefit of an alarm before 8 am. I wasn't even sure a before-8-am existed prior to this - I thought it was a myth. This change has been wonderfully constructive, and I am going to attempt to keep it up. A fitting resolution for the Celtic new year. I have actually been getting things accomplished, and I want to spread that productive spirit to this thought repository.

So, in a fit of creative determination, I have decided to combine the two blogs that I have created. I update with lamentable infrequency, and spreading those posts over two blogs reduces their numbers even more. So from now on there will just be this blog. All my food post will be here, all my scholarly posts, all my pop culture posts, all my random posts... well, you get the idea. This does shift the theme of my postings somewhat, but really it fits with this blog completely - food and books and pop culture and complete randomness are what les pensée de la fleur contain, and as such are what should be reflected here - not divided and relegated to a separate space. And sadly I am no longer feeding the flock, the flock has scattered, everyone going their own ways and starting their own enclaves of irreverence.

This change will hopefully let me be less splintered in both my writing style and my online presence in general, though I don't delude myself into thinking that it will make me an internet celebrity or anything like that. Which is fine. I have always said that I would rather be rich than famous anyway, and I don't think that bothersome fame will arise out of these nebulous future posts. And the reality is blogging is not what makes you rich, sad but true.

Instead I will - hopefully - get a creative outlet, and - again hopefully - this outlet will help me to focus and create a more disciplined writing habit. Now those of you who know me probably just laughed out loud to see discipline in reference to me (if you've stumbled here by mistake, it's true - I am a slacker of the first order). However, I do want to write - papers for my classes, articles, eventually my dissertation, and maybe a book some day. These all require that I write with some consistency, possibly even regularity. So I think that creating a writing habit will be easier, and let's face it- I am reliably all about easier, if that habit had a locus, a central depository. I am not going to make any wild promises about increased updates or daily posts, but I am putting my aspirations out here, publicly, in an attempt to motivate myself to achieve those aspirations. Goals, not guilt...

Well, we'll see...

ETA: I imported the posts from my food blog, so all the food and recipes are on here now. I am in the process of going back through the archives and working out the duplicates. I also plan on working out a recipe list page.

Last night I want to see The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later. It was an experience that was both moving and surreal. I was not in Laramie when Matthew Shepard was killed. I was one of two students from Wyoming at a small, Catholic college in Ohio. I spent weeks saying that is not what we are like in Wyoming, not everyone hates and for sure, not everyone is murderous. It was a frustrating experience, because I knew that the small Ohio town I was in was not anymore “ok” with gay people than the state they were vilifying, the small Catholic college was not “ok” with gay people either.

When I moved to Laramie, long before I met, became friends with people who knew the man, the effects of the tragedy of Matthew Shepard’s death were apparent. Hate was not ok – in certain pockets of safe space - but it was not always silent, either. The “it’s time to move on” contingent was already making noises in 2001. It’s time to move on – without passing legislation that prevents hate crimes, without educating people about this type of violence, without facing the fact that prejudice lives among us – it’s time to move on. This voice was balanced, partially, by non-violence pledges and candlelight vigils, but even just a few years after, it was there.

Hearing that voice expanded and mainstreamed in editorials and interviews was one of the hardest things about watching last night’s performance. The frustration of so few quantifiable changes is hard to balance against the lives that were changed so drastically, and, even when it was for the better, out of such tragedy.

It was also extremely surreal to watch actors perform people I knew, whose voices I could hear in the words – but not in the sound of the speech. For me, this act of theatre gave these words even more power – both positive and negative – because it made them more universal. Yes, these were things that my friends had said, sometimes things I had heard them say in person, but they were also the voice of a movement towards justice and human rights. In the case of the more negative comments, they were also things I had heard people say, and in some ways that was even harder – because they are the blocks to progress and prevention, they are the reason that hate crimes have increased, not decreased, they are proof that it easier to ignore tragedy than to be transformed by it, and they break my heart.

Ultimately, I am very glad that I went to see this landmark production – a production that was performed simultaneously in over 100 theatres around the world. Here is a link to the “trailer” on YouTube for a peek at some of the interviews and here is information about the project itself. If you get the chance to see this play performed, go. And think about how you construct your history. Because this is a play about more than just Laramie, it is about all of us.

This came in the mail today:

"FREE Take Home Coffee Mug. Come worship with us, stay for coffee and fellowship and receive a mug as our gift too you."

Apparently, religion has learned from public radio fund drives - if you give people free stuff they don't mind giving to you as much. Is bribery really the best way to establish a spiritual community?

Also, if you go and get the mug, be sure that you don't blog about your awesome new church, as that would be a violation of the new FTC blogging regulations. Not kidding. Info on them here and here.

So the votes came in on Twitter and Facebook and I decided to make Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes for my evening class this week. Everyone kept saying we should bring food, so I thought cupcakes might be a good initial offering. I found a recipe that fit what I was looking for on Cupcakes Take the Cake. Being constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone, though, I had to tweek it a bit. So, here you go - tasty, easy, and even kinda good for you - in terms of cupcakes, anyway...


2 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup oatmeal
1 3/4 cups pureed pumpkin
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup brown rice syrup (if you can't find this, use white sugar and add an extra 1/2 Tbsp molasses)
1 Tablespoon molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup canola oil
4 eggs (or egg replacer - flax seed would probably be particularly good)

1 Preheat an oven to 350°F. Line three 12-cup muffin tins with decorative cupcake papers.

2 In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices and salt. stir in the oatmeal.

3 In a large bowl, whisk (I used and electric hand mixer) together the pumpkin, syrup, brown sugar, molasses, vanilla and oil. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking after each addition.

4 Add the flour mixture in three additions, stirring with a large wooden spoon until just combined.

5 Fill the muffin tins about three-fourths full. Bake until the cupcakes are golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer the tins to a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes, then remove the cupcakes from the tins and let cool completely. Makes 3 dozen.

...

The frosting I used was a complete improvisation. I wanted cream cheese frosting, but didn't have cream cheese, so I went with sour cream instead - similar tangy flavor to offset the spice in the cake.

1 stick butter (or Earth Balance), softened
4 oz. sour cream (or Tofutti Better Than...)
1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar

Beat ingredients together, adding the sugar in thirds, so as to not powder your whole kitchen. Add additional sugar to bring frosting to your desired spreading consistency. Spread on cooled cupcakes with a frosting knife or spatula.

Today marks the beginning of Banned Books Week, "an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment."

I think that censorship is one of the most debilitating crimes against freedom in a modern society - and not just because I love to read. Reading and education fosters critical thinking and debate - both are key to intellectual (and spiritual) growth and fair governance. I know that just reading, without the thinking, doesn't always work this way - but I do think the more you read, the more you exercise your thinking muscles - whether you mean to or not. Reading broadens horizons, allows you to encounter new viewpoints, opens worlds of possibility. Reading is a human right - reading what I want to is a human right. No one should have the right to determine what is ok for me (or anyone else) to read. Banning books bans free thought.

So, celebrate your right to read what you want - go read a banned book this week. Here's a list of the 10 most challenged books in 2008*, in case you need a place to start:

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
   Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group
2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
   Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence
3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
   Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
4. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
   Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence
5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
   Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
   Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group
7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
   Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
8. Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
   Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group
9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
   Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
    Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group

*from the Amarican Library Association (ala.org)