Something Shiny! » Gainesville

Pins and needles

emily — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:01:25 +0000

I’d planned on this being my big HELLO blog post, after nearly two weeks away. I’d planned on looking back wistfully on 2010 while looking forward optimistically to 2011. But the best laid plans being what they are… well, you know. We came home in the wee hours of the morning to find a note from our pet sitter: our oldest cat, Edgar, has been missing since the 28th. I don’t blame her for not calling us; after all, what could we have done from over a thousand miles away? We looked for him last night, flashlights in hand, and I’ve been looking again today. I’ve posted an ad on Craigslist and put up signs in the neighborhood. In my heart of hearts, I know he wouldn’t keep me waiting this long. But I keep looking up every few minutes, expecting to see his face at the cat door or to hear him scrabbling over the back fence. He’s been my friend these many years and I miss him dearly.

Church mad libs!

emily — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 03:10:29 +0000

I always get a kick out of reading messages on church signs. They range from the obscure to the funny to the completely bizarre. And, sometimes, the perplexing. There’s a church in Gainesville that we pass fairly frequently and recently their message has been baffling me. It says, “Bought a blog with a steeple but we are non religious.” I’ve mulled that one over many times in the last few weeks and I still don’t get it. I have a hunch that it’s a dig, but damned if I can figure out who it’s about. And I Googled it and everything!

Kale!

emily — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 01:02:50 +0000

At this time of the year, when everybody else around the country has already put away their garden for the season and said farewell to their farmers markets, our second growing season is just getting underway. Our CSA has ramped up over the last couple of weeks, and this week our bag was brimming with salad greens, radishes, turnips, bok choy, and… kale. Do you get kale in your CSAs or at your local markets? Here we’ve got kale out the wazoo. Dinosaur Kale, Red Russian Kale, Tuscan Kale, and so much more. Have you tried kale? It’s what I would charitably call an “acquired taste.” Bitter and tough, it’s a bit hard for me to stomach. And oh, we’ve tried to stomach it. We’ve sauteed it, we’ve baked it, we’ve even blended it into a kale smoothie (I wouldn’t recommend it). And I just can’t get behind it. But then I read these food blog writers who talk about how much they love kale, and I figure I must be missing something. So, if you’ve got a kale recipe that just can’t be beat, drop me a line and tell me everything. Kale: it’s what’s for dinner?

High fashion

emily — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 11:38:16 +0000

One thing that’s supremely strange for a Midwesterner living in the South is the fashion. I’m not suggesting that what people wear down here is vastly different from what people elsewhere wear. Rather, that they get dressed to the nines for occasions you wouldn’t think would warrant it. Witness: women’s fashion at college football games. Turn on any SEC game this weekend and you’ll see college women in short, formal dresses. Prom dresses, really, though stores in Gainesville (and elsewhere, I’d wager) advertise that they sell “gameday dresses.” And I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine an outfit I’d be less comfortable in while at a football game. Well, one of these, maybe. Maybe. That might be a tossup.

In which I display my complete ignorance about religion

emily — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:40:11 +0000

I wasn’t raised in a religious household. I’m not a religious person. I haven’t read the Bible. So my credentials here are shaky, at best, is what I’m saying. But here goes. Certainly you’ve heard about a church here in Gainesville that plans to burn the Quran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It’s made national and international news, after all. [Insert rant about how researchers at UF who are doing groundbreaking work in their various fields can't even make local news, while a church that spews hatred and vitriol manages to get the world's attention.] Of the many things I don’t understand about this particular church (the same ones who printed “Islam is of the Devil” t-shirts and sent their children to school in them), certainly one of them is this: isn’t at least part of organized religion a message of love and kindness? From the little I know about the Bible, I understand that it has been used to justify a great number of things (among them, in this country, slavery). But aren’t there also injunctions to love thy neighbor? And edicts to ‘do unto others as you would have others do unto you’? How is spreading this kind of contempt productive in any way? Or do they just want attention?

Get me out of here

emily — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:30:16 +0000

I. Just. Don’t. Belong.

Courtesy of the Gainesville Sun

Oh hai

emily — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:09:04 +0000

Apologies for the utter lack of blogging the last, well, week. We had a visitor. No, not this guy. My brother was in town visiting and oh, what an awesome time we had. We took him to see the alligators on campus at Lake Alice, we visited the bat houses across from the lake, saw big turtles and tiny turtles and in-between turtles, and looked far and wide for the elusive pileated woodpecker. (John and I hear pileated woodpeckers all. the. time. when nobody’s visiting, but as soon as we have visitors in town, the woodpeckers get all shy.) About the only thing we didn’t do is race frogs although looking back on it, that would have rounded out our animal-world experience nicely.

Broken

emily — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:03:40 +0000

I’m sorry to have to be the one to say this. But shit just doesn’t work right down here. People always ask us why we don’t like Gainesville, and it’s so hard to pinpoint. Certainly one of the reasons, though, is that shit just doesn’t work right down here. Case in point: the main library on campus. I turned in a recalled book last night, a full hour before closing (yes, on the day that it was due– what are you, the police?). I brought it into the library and took it to the Circulation book drop. I didn’t turn it in to the book drop outside the library because I wanted it to be taken off of my account sooner rather than later. People, it’s still on my account. The Circ workers last night weren’t outwardly busy and yet, what, couldn’t be bothered to empty the bookdrops sitting four feet away and discharge the books? And here’s where I go all Andy Rooney on you, grousing about stickers on fruit and stuff: where’s that midwestern work ethic I grew up with?!? I worked at a university library my entire undergraduate career and let me tell you, that shit would have never flown there. If I get a library fine because of this, there will be hell to pay. And while I’ve got your attention, let me tell you about stickers on fruit, too!

NaBloPoMo: First Amendment queasiness

emily — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:12:24 +0000

The day John got laid off, we left campus in shock and in search of lunch. All I wanted was a quiet-ish place where we could gather our thoughts and come up with a plan. We decided on the cafe across the street from the History building. As we approached the corner, I saw a woman with a baby on her hip approaching the same corner from a different point. Her mother followed behind with a stroller. The young woman looked blissfully happy, her face gleaming in the sun. I couldn’t help but feel a little better just looking at her. She seemed so happy and nice. (Insert foreshadowing here.) We got to the corner at nearly the same time and waited to cross the street. Almost immediately, she crammed a flier into my hands (not an easy task, since I was carrying an armload of library books). I muttered “thanks” without even looking at it. She offered one to John and he declined. Suddenly she was talking very quickly. “Do you have a church?” I answered that we did not, and turned away. “Oh yeah? Don’t believe in God, huh? Don’t think he’s real? Well he is, you know. God’s real and he’s beautiful. You should come to our church and learn about the truth.” John’s jaws clenched. She continued. “Some people just go to church on Sundays, you know, like it’s a chance to play dress up. They don’t really believe. At our church, we believe. We know that Jesus is real and that other people are going to hell. That’s why I wear this shirt.” And she turned around to show the back of her shirt, which read “Islam is of the Devil.” At that point, I knew exactly what church she was referring to. They’ve been front-page news here in Gainesville for quite awhile now. Church members send their children to school wearing those shirts. The schools, in turn, send the children back home if they refuse to change shirts, just as they do if a kid shows up to school wearing a racist shirt, an inflammatory shirt, a shirt that encourages fighting or drug use, and (presumably) a shirt that has a naked lady on it. The ACLU is now filing suit against the schools for not allowing students to wear the “Islam is of the Devil” shirts. And I… I don’t know. I’m a big believer in freedom of speech, and I understand that speech is protected (naturally there are limits) even if it makes us angry. I don’t mind saying that those shirts make me uncomfortable. I didn’t bother taking on that woman at the corner that day, who radiated happiness and intolerance all at the same time. I don’t know what I would have said, even. We ignored her and crossed the street, headed for our quiet lunch. I thought about ritualistically burning her flier. I wound up recycling it. It seemed more peaceful.

NaBloPoMo: Our Thanksgiving Tom

emily — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:24:57 +0000

For many years now, we’ve eschewed the traditional Butterball turkey in favor of a more natural Thanksgiving. Usually this has meant ordering an organic turkey from afar and picking it up locally. This year, though, we acted early. At the beginning of the summer, I contacted a local farm and put my name on the list for a local, organic, free-range, non-scary turkey. They emailed last weekend and told me the turkey would be available to pick up on Wednesday. I’ll confess, I was a little worried: picking up a turkey the day before Thanksgiving usually spells disaster because the turkey won’t have had time to defrost properly. But we’d gotten this far and we were determined to see it through. If all else failed, we reasoned, we could always cook something else. As it turned out, we needn’t have worried. We drove down to the farm on Wednesday in a rainstorm of biblical proportions. Lee Windham, of Four Arrows Ranch, welcomed us into her house and pulled a fresh (not frozen) turkey out of her fridge. It had been slaughtered and cleaned just a couple days prior. She apologized for the weight; heritage turkeys tend to be a bit smaller than the broad-breasted freaks turkeys that Americans have come to expect. But people, that was the best turkey I’ve ever tasted. Flavorful, plump and juicy, we didn’t care that he was a little smaller than his mass-produced brethren. He was just perfect. And for that, we were truly thankful.