Gadamer, Qt #1

I'm liking Gadamer, so a new series of quotations ripped out of context seems appropriate:

"To be situated within a tradition does not limit the freedom of knowledge, but makes it possible"

- Truth and Method (2nd rev'd ed, 2004), p. 354

Birthday Fashion - for family only

Thanks to Mom and Dad, I now have two years of Mars Hill Audio coming my way through cyberspace - yay! highly recommended - you can download a sample edition by going here. Other lovely gifts from family include (from Dom) the hilarious book Watching the English and the cd, Raising Sand, a collection duets by the unlikely duo Alison Krauss (usually paired with Union Station) and Robert Plant (of Led Zeppelin) produced by T-Bone Burnett. Also, Pancho's Mom and Dad funded some shopping for summer clothes (which I rather needed), so to give them the pleasure of seeing what they made possible, I thought I'd do a wee fashion show for them. So if you're not them, there is simply no need to watch. Seriously. I mean it. I was not made for modeling.

Zotero to the rescue!

If you haven't yet heard of Zotero, watch this. It's a free, open-source bibliographic tool that operates from within Firefox, but can be accessed on- or offline. Zotero can "see" bibliographical material on webpages--say, within an online library catalogue, or on an Amazon page for a book recommendation--and grab it, store it, and export it properly formatted for a few mainline bibliographical styles with the click of a single button.

Highlights:

• It can also be used as a web archiving tool, as it can capture "snapshots" of pages
• you can annotate snapshots with highlighting and notes that are saved to your hardrive along with a copy of the page. Wow. That is way cool.
• it organizes information into an adaptable, drag-and-drop, hierarchical folder system - again, better than Endnote
• you can put the same references into different "collections" without copying and pasting and risking not updating
• you can create links between references/files
• you can add as many separate notes as you like, and be as long-winded as you like, and attach them to whatever reference/snapshot you like
• you can attach other files to the references/snapshots -- e.g., other snapshots, or pdfs, or your essays...
• your library can be portable and not confined to one computer
• you can export and import in all the major formats (BibTex, RIS, Endnote, etc.)
• you can export properly formatted citations in some styles (Chicago, MLA, for example)
• it can and will replace Endnote, which I really don't want to have to shell out $300 for to get updates that fix problems instead of offering better features.

Also, a perfect tool for blog-cruising of wanna-be public intellectuals...

Neologism: Upbraision

I began disgruntled with the following sentence from Chapter 2:

This passage in Thomas Hoccleve’s remonstrance to John Oldcastle has generally been read as a blanket condemnation of argumentative Lollards who dispute interpretations of the Bible.

"Remonstrance" just doesn't ring. It's there because some of the 19th c. titles of the poem identify it as "Remonstrance to Oldcastle" and so the word was the first my mind (or perhaps my fingers, which have typed the phrase several times) chanced upon.

I was casting about for a better word, and the first I came up with was "upbraiding". Now, I've in general set up a new policy: the avoidance of gerunds and participles as far as possible, since they almost always (1) make syntax more confusing for the reader and often (2) make sentences less clear. E.G., with "upbraiding" the sentence would read:

This passage in Thomas Hoccleve’s upbraiding of John Oldcastle has generally been read as a blanket condemnation....

Clearly, not an improvement. In fact, it sounds a little like Hoccleve is braiding Oldcastle up into a blanket...eek.

But then I realized the perfect word: upbraision. Thus enabling:

This passage in Thomas Hoccleve’s upbraision of John Oldcastle has generally been read as a blanket condemnation....

Ahhh, the creation of nouns from verbs - what's not to love? So what if our consciously archaic Spenser was one of the last to use upbraid as a noun? (nb. the noun form was used in Early Middle English, esp. in didactic literature)

SPENSER F.Q. III. vi. 50 Faire Psyche to him lately reconcyld, After long troubles and vnmeet vpbrayes.

-- F.Q. IV. ix. 24 Through lewd vpbraide Of Ate and Duessa they fell out. (OED)

Interesting that both instances of upbraid in FQ are "unmeet" and not earned. But let us exploit that in the connotative potential of my word. Upbraision is better than upbraid. First, the sounds are better: "pbrzn" is metonymically onomatopoetic (i.e., it sounds like a rug-burn of the spirit, if the spirit were physical). It also sounds like blowing a raspberry (as they say here in the UK), an expression of contempt. And consider the homophonic potential:

His upbraision really rubbed me the wrong way
That was some upbraisive sermon this morning!

I was advised (by a grad student) to create a Wiki article for it and then cite Wiki if challenged. Hopefully, that is not evolving into "scholarly practice"???

Sunday Conundrum

A typical Sunday morning

• wake up (late) and get ready for church
• worship
• start to feel peckish while talking afterwards
• start to feel a bit hungry (at least 1/2 hr. later) while finally thinking about making a move
• chased out of the sanctuary by deacons (themselves now positively hungry), you realize, hey I'm hungry

At this point, you have a choice:

1. Invite the people you've been talking to for the last hour to go out to lunch with you
   
2. Go home hungry and wonder why there isn't much in the store cupboards (namely, because it's Sunday and the budget week starts on Monday)
   

Choice 1 gets pricey sooner or later (usually sooner). Choice 2. comes with kicking yourself for not thinking ahead and having something at the ready. But then you think to yourself, "Wouldn't it be great if waiting for me at home was a sizeable cooked lunch (so that you could invite over on the spur of the moment) that I could sit down and eat in a chilled-out 30 min. or less?"

The probem is, of course, that you've been out of the house for the last 3 hours or so. The typical <30 min. options are things that often require last-minute hustle and bustle, so that's out. All you really want to do is slide things in and out of ovens or microwaves or rice cookers. A small amount of measuring and garnishing is acceptable.

So I'm looking for recipes for Sunday post-church lunches with the following qualities:

• stretches easily to accommodate 2-4 unanticipated guests
• not just those listless variations of pot roasts with onion soup mix
• filling and warm - this should be the main meal of the day, paired with a light meal / snack at supper. Pancho can't just eat salads, I'm afraid.
  
• small amount of AM prep (e.g., browning) and moderate amount of Sat PM prep ok
• modest cleanup - not loads and loads of sticky pans!
• affordable on a modest budget
• ready in less than a leisurely 30 minutes from arriving home from church
  
• well-balanced, nutrition-wise
  
• and (do I have to say it?) delicious - this should be something we look forward to, not sigh about!

What could work:

• Slow-roast lamb shoulder, served with couscous and yummy garnishes and salad
• Carnitas?
• Artisan bread in five minutes a day (including pizza dough) - but then the oven is taken up...which may or may not be a problem
  

What doesn't work:

• Standard 1 1/2 hr roast chicken with trimmings - too much last minute faff and too many pots and pans, and it roasts too quickly to put in before church and too slowly to put in after. Otherwise, it's perfect.
  

I would like to make a collection of suitable recipes, starting with my slow-roast lamb and then possibly adding Jamie Oliver's 3-hr pork goulash. Slow-cooked cheap-cuts of meat seems like the best strategy, but I don't want lackluster pot roasts (which is what you're directed to if you google "sunday lunch church") and slow-cooker specials that all taste alike. I'm also interested in collecting quick and easy side dishes (especially if they can be prepared and served in the same dish). Here's the rub - I just know there's stuff out there that families do, or at least used to do, in order to avoid being consumed by meal preparation and clean-up on days of worship and rest. I just don't know where to look for the recipes! Any ideas or tips would be very welcome.