Hey Good Lookin'

...I've been rounding up some spring recipes that I thought I'd share.
From Delia Online, Risotto Verde which not only sounds delicious but looks so pretty and spring-like (although I don't like the plates).
Also from Delia Online, an old fave that I haven't made for a long time - this is one of the best brunch dishes evah!
And from Epicurious, some really gorgeous sounding crostini - I'm going to make these this weekend.

Hello (again) Dolly!

Here's an extra bit of sweetness on a lovely spring day. Enjoy! (via Feministing).

Herland

Herland film and video festival is on in Calgary from May 3rd to May 10th at the Plaza theatre in Kensington.

herland is an annual, non-competitive festival featuring women media artists from across Canada and abroad. We promote and contribute to the professional advancement of and cultural exchange between independent Canadian women media artists, and foster an appreciative audience for the media arts in Alberta through thought-provoking and innovative film and video programs, artist and curator talks and workshops, and community events.

I'm looking forward to checking out at least one of the features. I'm still writing papers so free time is a bit thin on the ground but this is something I don't want to miss and want to support.
Speaking of which, the Alberta College of Art and Design 2007 Grad Show opens April 26th.

chuckle

- I like it when Ellen DeGeneres lip-syncs to that song for the 'Viewer Art' segment on her show.

Yuck Yuck

Yuck
and
Yuck

This is turning out to be a crappy week on certain fronts.

Not again

Today I was helping with the supervision of an exam. I did think while I was sitting there how open it all was. Which is how it should be.
Then I get home and hear the news. 33 dead at Virginia Tech. Jill at Feministe mentions the misogyny that has characterised other such shootings and points to the speculation that the shooter was looking for his girlfriend.
I was going to post some fluffy stuff today but I don't feel like it now. Thoughts and good vibes to the people down there in Virginia.

Changes at Rudebarbie

I've been thinking a lot about this little blog lately and I've decided to make a decision about what to do with it. I've decided to pretty much dispense with the personal-journalesque content and to really make this a blog of recommendations, perhaps some reviews, pointers to sites of interest online. Probably what Rebecca Blood would describe as more of a filter style blog. I've decided to do this for a number of reasons.
First is my growing concern with putting myself 'out there'. I've written about this before but I'll talk a bit more about it now. I do feel very inhibited in what I can say in this space. When I first started blogging and studying blogs I was hugely optimistic about the medium/genre of writing. I felt that blogs offered a way for often silenced voices to speak out, for writers who did not have the time/resources to seek traditional publishing options to be published, for like-minded people to connect. I still believe these things and have great hope for blogging. I still believe it can be all of these things to many people. However, there are also causes for great concern. This is a VERY old (by blogosphere standards) story now but remember the Tribble article about bloggers not being hired for academic jobs? More recently, the cases of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan with the Edwards campaign (read Marcotte's description of those events here), and the current discussion online about threats made against women bloggers have also got me thinking. This thinking is useful for my academic work, it's interesting and I believe it's important. As far as I'm concerned the most valuable thing about blogging (back when) was that it was free from the influences of those larger interests. Now, I'm not so sure, and that is a big concern for me.
Interesting as it is to think about and write papers about, it's time to connect this thinking with my own blogging practice. Much as I dreamed I would be able to speak my mind in this space I have found this difficult from the start and, at this point, too uncomfortable to even contemplate doing. It's not that my thoughts are really so shocking or that I believe that they are particularly important or even that they are read by more than a handful of friends, but I do not intend to take the blog down and, as such, it is a more or less permanent record. Bottom line, yeah I'm scared. I'm scared that something I might say might bite me later, personally and professionally (the two are not really so distinct). I've also realised lately that I'm a lot more of a private person than I previously thought. While there are things that are important to me to discuss, I might not want to discuss them in such an open space, with such an unknown audience. This is something quite shocking for me to learn about myself because I'm such a chatterbox (or have been told that I am). Also, and I think Amanda Marcotte gets into this in that article I linked to up-post, I've been thinking about the distance between what I say and what someone might read. Amanda nailed it when she described Michele Malkin reading her blog posts aloud:

when she videotaped herself reading my blog posts in an alarming, screechy voice, they sounded alarming and screechy.

That really got me thinking - anyone who reads this could make assumptions about my tone or 'voice' that are far from my intented tone and voice. I have no control over that. I guess that is true of any writing or any 'text', but it bothers me a lot more here than it would, say, in an academic paper.
Bottom line - the idea of blogging a lot about myself and 'what I think' has become something that I don't want to do, that makes me anxious. This is, quite probably, a weakness in myself. I've come to terms with it.
So, I'm going to concentrate on what I actually have been enjoying about blogging - recommending things! Recently I've had a few incidents where I've recommended films and video clips and even food and friends have really responded positively. I think I have great taste so I'm going to focus on sharing it! I'll try to post something at least every other day. I'm also going to beef up and sort out my blogroll so that it might actually be a useful resource. I feel good about this change. Let me know what you think!

Hey teach!

Check this at Faux Real Tho.
I'm very tired and going to the last class of the semester. The last class of the academic year. Possibly the last required class of my graduate-student career. Weird.

Enough already!

The past few weeks have been a see-saw of snow + freezing temps and spring-like weather. It seems that we have a day or two of the latter and are then plunged back to the former for five days. I am really ready to put my snow boots and winter coat away. Last night it rained all night (rain, fancy that! it was nice to hear it outside the bedroom window and I hope the trees and grass had a nice drink) and now it is snowing again.
Nothing else. Just wanted to whine a bit.

Shut up and Blog

I just watched Shut Up and Sing and, well, wow. So many things - first, they seem like really lovely real people. I would very much like to hang out with them. Wicked music too. Of course, it was strangely (isn't it funny how, when you're thinking about one thing, things keep matching up) connected in theme (the silencing of particular voices by particular forces) with the paper I'm writing. Or at least that's how I justified taking time out from the writing of said paper to watch it. There's a good review of the film here. I now officially regret missing the Dixie Chicks in Calgary last year as much as I regret missing Velvet Revolver in Ljubliana in 2005 and Nirvana supporting Sonic Youth way back when. Yes. Really. Okay, maybe the Nirvana/Sonic Youth thing burns a bit more (but only a bit).
Things I learned from the film - I should really try to make nice less often. Rick Rubin has a really cool looking home. The drummer from the Chilli Peppers looks like Will Ferrell. I want to live in the countryside within the next ten years. The Dixie Chicks rock!

Morning class

I was looking through a bunch of photographs from Taiwan the other day and I found some pictures of a woman I used to teach. Well, I mean teach in the loosest sense of the word because her English was excellent so it was really just conversation practice. I won't use her name here or post the pictures but I was stuck by seeing them again and I thought I'd write a bit about it.
We had class for about two years in total I think. Twice a week for about forty-five minutes (her lunch break) at the University where she worked (in a long office with two rows of desks and the air con always cranked). I loved the brief walk through campus on the way to her office. Of course in summer it was stinking hot but off the main thoroughfare, the campus buildings were littered with leafy courtyards and plants and trees were everywhere. I used to park my scooter at a side entrance and savour the stoll (in the shade) to her office, stopping for a drink at the water fountain on one side of the tiled verranda. A knock on the door and she always answered quickly. Anyway, we would drink tea, very good tea, and often there were delicious cookies or fruit or other snacks. Whenever she went away to another town in Taiwan I got to sample the snack this place was 'famous' for. It was really neat because, by myself and with my crappy communication skills, I often missed this kind of information. We talked about pretty much everything under the sun - the experiences we shared and those we didn't - politics, religion, relationships, food, education, family... When I was looking at the pictures, so many small details jumped out at me - the teapot, the chair where I always sat, and of course the woman herself. A smart, compassionate, person who made much of the opportunities available to her and who struggled with those not so. She is about the same age as my own mother, and has a daughter in her twenties, so we often talked about mother-daughter relations, always with a lot of humour, and always with a recognition of just how important that relationship is for both of us. I remember snapping those pictures one of the last times we met and I'm so glad I did. They conjure up wonderful memories!