Tag Archives: food

May 10, 2013

Friday Link Love: Online Slacktivism, Be a Poet, and Everest Gear Then and Now

3 Replies

Hello friends!

It’s Thursday evening and I am just back from Birmingham, where I had a book event and also preached at the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley. I’ll post that sermon to the NEXT Church website early next week and link to it here. It was a fun trip—got to hang out with Elizabeth, one of my favorite seminary peeps and a dear friend. So I’m happy, but tired.

But… the Link Love must go on! 

Climbing Everest, Then and Now — National Geographic

A comparison of the tools used to climb the world’s tallest peak. Boots, 1963 v. today:

everest-boots_66612_600x450

 

Oxygen systems, then and now:

everest-oxygen_66620_600x450

Let’s be honest: P90X or no, I’m pretty sure our forebears could take us.

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Does Online “Slacktivism” Reduce Charitable Giving? — New Scientist

Looks like it’s a hybrid effect. Click the link for a study relating to attitudes about gun control.

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Collected Wisdom of Great Writers — Brain Pickings

Maria Popova has compiled advice from several writers she’s highlighted on her blog, so it’s all accessible in one place. Vonnegut, King, Allende, Sontag and more.

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Cook Dinner, Save the World — Dinner, a Love Story

Love this quote from Michael Pollan:

To cook or not to cook thus becomes a consequential question. Though I realize that is putting the matter a bit too bluntly. Cooking means different things at different times to different people; seldom is it an all-or-nothing proposition. Yet even to cook a few more nights a week than you already do, or to devote a Sunday to make a few meals for the week, or perhaps to try every now and again to make something you only ever expected to buy — even these modest acts will constitute a kind of vote. A vote for what exactly? Well, in a world where so few of us are obliged to cook at all anymore, to choose to do so is to lodge a protest against specialization — against the total rationalization of life. Against the infiltration of commercial interests into every last cranny of our lives. To cook for the pleasure of it, devote a portion of our leisure to it, is to declare our independence from the corporations seeking to organize our every waking moment into yet another occasion for consumption. (Come to think of it, our non waking moments as well: Ambien anyone?) It is to reject the debilitation notion that, at least while we’re at home, production is work done by someone else, and the only legitimate form of leisure is consumption. This dependence marketers call “freedom.”

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Antonia Larroux — Obituary

Not since Hugh Gallagher’s infamous college essay for NYU (the laws of physics do not apply to me) have we have such an exuberant accounting of a life! This part really clinched it though:

The funeral will be led by Rev. Curt Moore of Orlando, Florida, a questionable choice for any spiritual event, but one the family felt would be appropriate due to the fact that every time Toni heard Curt preach she prayed for Jesus to return at that very moment.

On a last but serious note, the woman who loved life and taught her children to ‘laugh at the days to come’ is now safely in the arms of Jesus and dancing at the wedding feast of the Lamb. She will be missed as a mother, friend and grandmother. Anyone wearing black will not be admitted to the memorial. She is not dead. She is alive.

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Smart Cities: Sustainable Solutions for Urban Living — BBC

H/t The Dish, which highlighted this piece that I found astounding:

How a group of 12-year-olds in a Calcutta slum improved their community:

Like so many slum neighborhoods, the notorious Nehru Colony doesn’t officially exist, meaning it has no access to government services such as sanitation and electricity. The youngsters set out to literally put themselves on the map. They went door to door, taking photos with their mobile phones, registering residents and detailing each child born in the colony. Information is then sent by SMS text to a database that links the data to a map hand-drawn by the kids, which is overlaid to GPS coordinates. By registering their existence on Google Maps the group has doubled the rate of polio vaccination from 40% to 80%, decreased diarrhea and malaria rates in the slum, and is lobbying for electricity.

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This Ad Has a Secret Anti-Abuse Message That Only Kids Can See — Gizmodo

This made the rounds, and rightly so. The billboard displays a different message depending on how tall you are:

The secret behind the ad’s wizardry is a lenticular top layer, which shows different images at varying angles. So when an adult—or anyone taller than four feet, five inches—looks at it they only see the image of a sad child and the message: “sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.” But when a child looks at the ad, they see bruises on the boy’s face and a different message: “if somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you” alongside the foundation’s phone number.

The ad is designed to empower kids, particularly if their abuser happens to be standing right next to them.

What the kids see:

anar-lenticular-02

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How Can You Become a Poet — David Lose

Or a theologian:

Eve Mirriam, a native of Philadelphia, captures something of the beauty of not just poetry but also, I think, creativity itself.

She invites us to consider making two moves: the first is attentiveness. Trace it’s shape, pay attention to its movement, follow its life, chew and smell and see and feel all you can about that thing that fascinates you.

The second move is courage, fearlessness…

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Apr 12, 2013

Friday Link Love

9 Replies

First off: I have several good friends who’ve published books recently, and while I’ve mentioned them around the Internets in a piecemeal way, I wanted to make sure y’all knew about them. In most cases, I’ve read the book and can recommend it; in all cases, I can recommend the writer. These all came out in the last few months:

Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land by Ruth Everhart

Drawn In: A Creative Process for Artists, Activists and Jesus Followers by Troy Bronsink

The Girl Got Up: A Cruciform Memoir by Rachel M. Srubas

Hopes and Fears: Everyday Theology for Parents and Other Tired, Anxious People by Bromleigh McCleneghan and Lee Hull Moses

Making Paper Cranes: Toward an Asian-American Feminist Theology by Mihee Kim-Kort

RIDE 2: More Short Fiction about Bicycles edited by Keith Snyder

And now… away we go:

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The Rubber Barber: Make a Mistake and Give Your Eraser a Fancy Haircut — Colossal

Delightful. Makes mistakes fun!

haircut-2

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Givers, Takers and Matchers: The Surprising Science of Success — Brain Pickings

Last week I linked to an article about Adam Grant and was intrigued by what I called his radical generosity, even as I pointed out the stay-at-home wife who helps make such generosity happen. Here is an article that looks at the book’s findings, apart from the personality of Grant. “If you’re a giver at work, you simply strive to be generous in sharing your time, energy, knowledge, skills, ideas, and connections with other people who can benefit from them.” Takers, by contrast, get more than they give, always trying to find what’s in it for them; matchers try to keep the ledger as even as possible.

It’s not surprising that givers often end up on the bottom of the career ladder. But guess who rises to the top? Read the link to find out.

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Mary Oliver Reading Four Poems — Englewood Review of Books

Including “Wild Geese”:

Happy National Poetry Month.

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How to Talk to Kids About Healthy Eating — Dinner, A Love Story

An excellent resource for those of us who are trying to equip our kids to make good food choices:

Focus on health not weight. And emphasize function over form. Remind your son that a healthy body is what allows you to do all that you do in the world. Think of something your child likes to do – whether that is a sport or otherwise – and point out how it’s his body that does that. If your child is an athlete, he or she probably gets a lot of reinforcement for this idea. But even if what your child most likes to do is to sit quietly and read or draw, you can reinforce the concept. You can say, “Your body is what allows you to do [fill in your child’s favorite activity]” to foster your child feeling good about his body’s capability.

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And speaking of health and diet:

We Should Measure Our Food in Exercise, Not Calories — Fast Company

1681708-inline-labels-that-translate-calories-into-walking-distance-3I love this:

A study by researchers at UNC’s medical school, published in the journal Appetite, showed the kind of choices people make when randomly presented with different types of menus with differing levels of nutritional information: one with no nutritional info, one with calorie info, one with calories plus the minutes of walking required to burn the calories, and a fourth with calories plus the distance required to burn off the calories.

“People who viewed the menu without nutritional information ordered a meal totaling 1,020 calories, on average, significantly more than the average 826 calories ordered by those who viewed menus that included information about walking-distance,” writes Scientific American. People who saw the menu with walking-distance info also ordered less than people who just saw calorie info.

Way to hack the brain!

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How Busy People Find Time to Think Deeply — Ben Casnocha

I’m pretty good at the Sabbath thing—setting aside time for rest, play and puttering—but my problem is I absolutely jam-pack the rest of my life. I’m working on this lately. My current tweak is listening to music while running. (I’m usually a podcast runner.)

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A New System for Reading — Robert Estreitinho

30 pages is enough. Not enough to grasp the key message, but enough to understand if it’s worth grasping. If by page 30 of a book I’m not hooked, I stop reading. A writer has to hook our imaginations, and 30 pages should be enough to do just that. Need more pages? I say need more editing.

I read so many short things (articles, essays) that when I do pick up a book, I feel like abandoning it is a sign of failure. I stick with books to prove to myself that my attention span can hack it. So this system intrigues me… But I give it 50 pages. I recently abandoned The Casual Vacancy. Broke my heart to do it—I applaud J.K. Rowling for tackling something so radically different—but I just didn’t care about the characters.

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And speaking of J.K. Rowling… the girls and I just finished the Harry Potter series. As luck and timing would have it, I found this tumblr of facts that Rowling has let slip about what happened after the series ended. Please forgive the URL; I didn’t come up with it. But there’s some great stuff here:

~Neville Longbottom worked as an Auror before moving on as the Herbology professor at Hogwarts.

~The remaining Death Eaters were killed or imprisoned in Azkaban for their crimes, with the exception of the Malfoys.

~Luna Lovegood married the grandson of the Newt Scamander, author of ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’

~Firenze survived his wounds and was welcomed back into the Centaur herd.

~Harry will never become Headmaster of Hogwarts since an academic career just isn’t him.

~Hagrid was still working at Hogwarts by 2017, at 88 years old.

~

 

Mar 29, 2013

Friday Link Love

2 Replies

It feels strange to post LL on this, the darkest day of the year for Christians. But
a) maybe it’s helpful to get a picture of this wild, crazy, illogical, beautiful world that God so loved,
b) not all of you are Christian, and
c) many of you are pastors and might need a little light. And in that vein, how about a screen cleaning?

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Trickle-Down Consumption: How Rising Inequality Can Leave Everyone Worse Off — Washington Post

As the wealthy have gotten wealthier, the economists find, that’s created an economic arms race in which the middle class has been spending beyond their means in order to keep up. The authors call this “trickle-down consumption.” The result? Americans are saving less, bankruptcies are becoming more common, and politicians are pushing for policies to make it easier to take on debt.

And a related issue:

Why the Rich Don’t Give to Charity — The Atlantic

The people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest percentage of their income. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns.

In a series of controlled experiments, lower-income people and people who identified themselves as being on a relatively low social rung were consistently more generous with limited goods than upper-class participants were. Notably, though, when both groups were exposed to a sympathy-eliciting video on child poverty, the compassion of the wealthier group began to rise, and the groups’ willingness to help others became almost identical.

One hears from fiscal conservatives that if we get rid of “big government” safety nets, that individuals, charities and churches will pick up the slack. I don’t see how, but I’d like to engage with a fiscal conservative on this topic, especially the results of the study.

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100 Rules of Dinner — Dinner, A Love Story

DALS is a recent discovery. A fun list for people who want to take cooking beyond the paint-by-numbers approach:

11. No need to sift. Whisking is just as effective.

12. Herbs in the salad.

13. Horseradish in the mashed potatoes.

14. Cinnamon in the chili.

Also:

37. When someone says they drink “one to two” glasses of wine a night, you can pretty much assume it’s two.

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The Case for Getting Married Young — The Atlantic

H/t to Katherine Willis Pershey for this article. I agree that it shouldn’t be proscriptive, but is a good counterpoint to a lot of current conventional wisdom about waiting to marry until you’re “established”:

Interestingly, in a 2009 report, sociologist Mark Regnerus found that much of the pressure to delay marriage comes from parents who encourage their children to finish their education before marrying. One student told him that her parents “want my full attention on grades and school.” But such advice reflects an outdated reality, one in which a college degree was almost a guarantee of a good job that would be held for a lifetime. This is no longer the case. Furthermore, with so many students graduating from college with knee-buckling debt, they have worse than nothing to bring into a marriage. Indeed, prolonged singledom has become a rolling stone, gathering up debt and offspring that, we can be imagine, will manifest themselves in years to come in more broken, or never-realized, marriages.

Looking back over a marriage of nearly three decades, I am thankful that I married before going down that road. Now as a college-educated, doctorate-holding woman, I can attest that marrying young (at age 19) was most beneficial: to me, to my husband, and to the longevity of our marriage. Our achievements have come, I am convinced, not despite our young marriage, but because of it.

Our marriage was, to use Knot Yet’s terminology, a “cornerstone” not a “capstone.” …

It was not the days of ease that made our marriage stronger and happier: it was working through the difficult parts. We learned to luxuriate in the quotidian, to take wonder in the mundane, skills that have become even more valuable in our prosperous years. We invested the vigor of our youth not in things to bring into the marriage, but in each other and our marriage.

As one sociologist put it:

Marriage actually works best as a formative institution, not an institution you enter once you think you’re fully formed. We learn marriage, just as we learn language, and to the teachable, some lessons just come easier earlier in life.

Robert and I married young (22), and next year will be our 20th anniversary. Blessed be.

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and more from The Atlantic:

Ogooglebar… and 14 Other Swedish Words We Should Incorporate Into English Immediately — The Atlantic

I agree with my friend Jay: “attitydinkontinens” needs to take hold, now.

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From Puppy with Love — The Bygone Bureau

How daily photos of a couple’s dog helped them get through a long-distance relationship. I’m starting work on a second book, thinking about technology and digital culture from a spiritual perspective, so this is of interest:

Did the pictures somehow substitute for or distract from our relationship? And the answer is yes. And I think that’s why we’re still together when so many people think long-distance relationships are impossible. Instead of focusing on us – which in the context of distance so often means strain, effort, and unhappiness – we dote on our dog and his boundless photogenicity.

I’m not suggesting that pictures can make a relationship work. And I’m not exactly sure why dog pictures are more effective for me than Skype or the telephone or texts.

…At the same time, though, this dog — something very much a product of our ability to raise it but at the same time independent, separate, us mediated into dog-life — has made a huge difference.

Loving the contrast between labyrinth and cone of shame here:

grid2-02

 

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The It-Doesn’t-Matter Suit, by Sylvia Plath — Brain Pickings

Did you know Sylvia Plath wrote a children’s book and it’s charming and poignant?

itdoesntmattersuit_plath5

 

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The Two Epiphanies That Made Me a Better Negotiator — 99U

Let’s call this the latest installment in our ponderings about the Lean In movement:

When people are about to enter a negotiation, they see it as either a threat or a challenge. Studies show that people who see negotiation as a threat experience greater stress and make less advantageous deals. They behave more passively, and are less likely to use tough tactics aimed at gaining leverage, compared to the hard-ballers who feel negotiation to be more of a challenge than a threat.

This makes so much sense to me. My husband absolutely sees negotiating as a challenge. He looks forward to a good haggle. I do not. Reading about these studies, I realized that I have always seen negotiations as threatening, and just wanted them over with as quickly as possible, no matter what it cost me. Why prolong a stressful, threatening situation when you can throw in the towel and move on?

But why do I see negotiations as threats, and not challenges? To answer that, I needed…

Epiphany #2: There is more than one way to look at any goal.

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God is With Me – Practicing Families

This is a wonderful site, full of good practical ideas for incorporating faith and Christian practice into everyday life as a family.

When my kids were small, aged 6 and 3, getting out of the house in the morning was the worst part of the day….

I decided to write a litany for our mornings, and say it with them every school day morning for the year. These were the words that I hoped would help them in the most difficult parts of their day.

Parent: When I’m scared,
Kids: God is with me.
Parent: When I’m happy,
Kids: God is with me.
Parent: When I’m having a hard day,
Kids: God is with me.
Parent: When I’m having a super day,
Kids: God is with me.
Parent: All day long, every day,
Kids: God is with me.
All: Thank you God for being with me.

You could get playful with this: When my mommy forgets to pack a dessert in my lunch… When I forget to ask ‘mother may I’ at recess…

On the darkest day of the Christian year… God is with me. And you.

Peace.

Jan 25, 2013

Friday Link Love: Science Videos, Memoir Writing, and Gratitude

2 Replies

First links first: Presby-peeps, have you registered for the NEXT Church National Gathering in Charlotte? It’s going to be a fun, creative, hope-filled gathering.

Go register now, because early bird rates end next week. I’ll be here when you get back.

OK. Away we go:

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Is Atheism a Religion? — New York Times

A variety of perspectives from lots of smart folks, including Phyllis Tickle and Diana Butler Bass.

He’s not quoted here, but I am a fan of Alain de Botton and his School of Life for Atheists. (I linked to him yesterday in my post about why atheists need holidays.)

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Salon’s Guide to Writing a Memoir — Salon.com

H/t to Katherine Willis Pershey for linking to this wisdom recently.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

Accept the limitations and boredom of your life as the challenge of writing. Accept your profound lameness as the wages of your craft. The problem is never that your life isn’t interesting enough, it’s that you aren’t looking (or writing) hard enough.

Sabbath in the Suburbs is memoir-ish, and I gotta say, I’m pretty sick of myself. My next book will not be a memoir.  But I still love reading good ones. Good ones.

Avi Steinberg:

If you’re not sure about the difference between publishing a story and therapy, you especially should find a good shrink.

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50 Life Hacks to Simplify Your World — Twisted Sifter

The most useful list I’ve seen. OK, posts like this don’t solve world hunger, but they give me a weird sense of hope. Human beings are so resourceful:

life-hacks-how-to-make-your-life-easier-29

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Why Is There a Gap Between What We Feel and What We Express When It Comes to Gratitude? – Science and Religion Today

A recent study sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation found a dramatic gap between the gratitude people say they feel and what they express. In the large and demographically balanced survey, fully 90 percent of respondents said they were grateful for their immediate family, and 87 percent were grateful for their close friends. But when it came to expressing it, the numbers dropped almost in half. Only 52 percent of women and 44 percent of men said they express gratitude on a regular basis.

So why the big gap? Several factors come into play. Many people assume that those close to them already know how they feel, so they don’t need to state their appreciation. They are, of course, quite wrong.

More at the link.

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Australia Banned Assault Weapons. American Can Too — New York Times

I was elected prime minister in early 1996, leading a center-right coalition. Virtually every nonurban electoral district in the country — where gun ownership was higher than elsewhere — sent a member of my coalition to Parliament.

Six weeks later, on April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant, a psychologically disturbed man, used a semiautomatic Armalite rifle and a semiautomatic SKS assault weapon to kill 35 people in a murderous rampage in Port Arthur, Tasmania.

After this wanton slaughter, I knew that I had to use the authority of my office to curb the possession and use of the type of weapons that killed 35 innocent people. I also knew it wouldn’t be easy.

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How to Write a Muffin Recipe — Deb Perelman, Slate

I’m a big Smitten Kitchen fan and a HUGE muffin fan. Muffins are the perfect food. They are easy to make, bake up quickly, come in infinite varieties, and have built-in portion control. The recipe for Plum Poppy-Seed Muffins looks wonderful, but just as delightful is Deb’s description of her trial and error and her basic formula for create-your-own muffin flavors. This is kitchen improv at its finest.

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100 Best YouTube Videos for Science Teachers — Boogie Man Journal

Science teachers, and parents:

16.) Earth-Building Wounds
Scientists are studying the unique geological properties of Iceland in order to better understand how tectonic plates form and shift to permanently change the shape of the planet.
17.) The Wright Brothers Discover Aspect Ratio
John D. Anderson at the National Air and Space Museum provides an interesting talk on the Wright Brothers and their indispensible contributions to the history of human flight.
18.) Through the Wormhole: DNA
Morgan Freeman(!!!!!!) narrates a brief clip on the structure and importance of DNA. Short, but soothing. Also educational. Also Morgan Freeman.

Much, much more at the link.

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Have a great weekend, everyone. I’m off to Windy City tomorrow, where I’ll be leading a pastors’ retreat on Sabbath-keeping. Once I get back I’ll be preparing for Preacher Camp. So blogging will be light next week. Peace!

Nov 26, 2012

How Not to Have a Gut-Busting Holiday… I Think

8 Replies

Two things:

1. I’ve been trying to maintain a weight loss for the last six months.

2. I adore holiday food.

I am a moderator, not an abstainer. Some people need to swear off sugar/meat/gluten in order to be healthy. That’s not my path; I just try to eat less. In the next month, there will be pralines made from my mother’s recipe. Coffee cake from the Cafe Beaujolais cookbook. Gingerbread cookies from Cooks Illustrated. Etc. So what’s a weight-conscious gal to do at Thanksgiving and Christmas?

I may have stumbled upon a bit of wisdom this weekend, and it was thanks to a tardy pecan pie.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, but it’s tough. I love the side dishes, and I want to sample everything. But I hate that “I’m gonna pop” feeling. Besides, it doesn’t feel very mindful or grateful to eat the way I often have on Thanksgiving. (I know others who love the sense of overindulgence, of throwing moderation to the winds. Eh. Your mileage may vary.)

We were hosting friends with little kids on Thursday, so we didn’t get fancy with the feast. Turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts, storebought rolls, pumpkin pie. Fruit salad and cheese and crackers for the little ones. That’s a banquet by most of the world’s standards, but it’s a pretty low-key Thanksgiving meal for us.

And I’ll admit it: I missed the sweet potatoes. And the dressing. And some kind—any kind!—of casserole.

Meanwhile, I’d found out on Wednesday that the pecan pie my brother was sending me from Texas (I won a bet) wouldn’t arrive until Friday. I pouted for a few moments, then realized it gave me a perfect excuse to make one of those beloved side dishes I’d been missing. So on Friday I made a sweet potato dish, which we ate with our leftovers… and pecan pie for dessert, of course.

The success of Thanksgiving Part II made me wonder how long I could keep Thanksgiving going. I love a good squash casserole, so we roasted two acorn squash over the weekend which I will use to make this offbeat carbarrific beauty.

So here’s what I’m wondering. Instead of blowing the wad on a single gut-busting meal, why not make the feast last for a few days? Why not celebrate that thing you love to eat by making it the centerpiece of the meal?

That way each dish can be truly savored and enjoyed on its own terms, not relegated to a teeny corner of your plate. Remember, one of my approaches to weight maintenance is to “make friends with food.”

Now, will this approach keep the pounds off? Who knows? I just think it’s more satisfying (and I suspect, maybe healthier?) than a day of binging followed by several days of guilt and austerity.

So far so good with the bathroom scale. I sure felt better on Thursday evening. And I’ve had a ball each day since then, wondering “What can I make today to keep Thanksgiving going?” That’s a spiritual question in addition to a culinary one.

Would love to hear your tips for getting through the holidays without digging out your fat pants…