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Maine Maple Sunday 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 03:51:00 +0000

The sap started flowing late this year, and we had good weather on Maine Maple Sunday. That means there wasn't a whole lot of maple syrup to go around, and places with big crowds ran out of syrup! Luckily, we got up early and went out of the way to those less-traveled sugar shacks, and followed them up with some tried and true favorites. Here's the run-down.

We started at Norlands, a living museum in Livermore, where volunteers dress up in period clothing and teach you how hard it was to live in Maine in the 19th century. Today we skipped the lesson and opted for a pancake breakfast (delicious!) and a walk down the hill to their sugar shack. They don't sell their own syrup, however, so we just had a little chat and then moved on.
Just down the street in Livermore is Boothby's, which is primarily an apple farm, but they have a small boiler in a trailer. They also make pottery from local clay. They grow honeycrisp apples, and are going on the list of apple farms for the fall.
A little farther south in Hebron is the Cabane a Sucre Bergeron, a Franco-American family-run operation. They have a beautiful sugar house and a separate barn where they served us crepes and sausage. I bought a quart of syrup here. Outside someone taught us to make maple taffy: boil the syrup to 250 °F, then pour onto packed snow circles about the size of a half dollar coin. Let cool, then pick up using a tongue depressor. Eat. Repeat. Amazing.
Next in Poland was the Russell farm, which we had visited for the first time last year, and remembered their maple french toast. We returned to find their sugar house almost complete, with the boiler inside and another generous spread of maple products for sale. We had our long-awaited french toast and bought some other goodies (another quart, some maple-covered peanuts, and maple bread), then headed out. Their parking was limited, not enough to accomodate the visitors.
Then in Casco we visited Sweet William's, because I remembered they had excellent maple fudge. Apparently other people remembered that because I got the last two pieces. They also had the best price on syrup by the gallon, and they were giving away syrup on ice cream.
Our last stop was good old Grampa Joe's in North Baldwin. By the time we got there (just before 3pm), they had stopped cooking, but still had a few sausages warm, and they told us to just take what we wanted. And we wanted those sausages. My mouth is watering just thinking about it now. I also picked up some more maple-covered nuts and maple jelly beans there.

My hurricane/halloween story

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 18:40:00 +0000

Saturday: We rake the leaves, start putting things away, tying things down. B is in and out of the basement, stowing stuff, idk. He's making a bigger deal of this than I think is warranted. We watch a lot of the weather channel.

Sunday: No cat this morning. I say, "She knows when a storm is coming. She goes somewhere." B says, "If it were really stormy out there, we could keep her inside." "How would you do that?" "When I feed her on the back porch, I have it so she'll come in with the door open just a little bit, even if I'm sitting right there. I'd get her to come in and eat, and while she's not looking, use a broom handle to shut the door." "She'd flip out." "Yeah, but she'd be safe from the storm."
Do all the laundry, bungee cord the 1000-lb cat house down, bring all the tools into the house, etc. idk.

Monday: It's kind of windy. A little rain. I work, B watches the news, which is all weather, all the time. He fills the bathtub with water (for drinking). Gym closes at 1pm. Emergency announcement calls from the mayor say schools are closed. No ballet.

Tuesday: That's about it. No sign of the cat. I slept through yoga, which didn't happen anyway, but the gym was open. A little rain still, and lots of media coverage. Reading in bed that night, I hear noises, like someone's in the house, but of course nobody is. We even do a cursory tour of the basement. B says, "Turn on the TV." No more noises.

Wednesday: Back to normal, but still no sign of the cat. Starting to get worried. Gym, work, etc. Halloween! We turn out the lights to avoid children, and I'm working with music on. Between songs, I hear what sounds like a meow in the hallway. But it could have been a squeaky door. More noises. The lights are out, it's Halloween, and there are strange noises coming from inside the house. B makes fun of me, but he hears them too.

Thursday: Working again, that's definitely a meow I hear. I inspect the basement, sniffing, and notice a faint eau of cat poop. Looking down, directly under my nose and on my turtle rug, a pile of cat poop. Cat must be hiding. And hungry. I put out a bowl of food at the bottom of the basement stairs and a few minutes later hear eating noises. It's HuntsBad! And she's hungry. When she had finished, I opened the hatchway and let her out, then cleaned off the rug. She's now frolicking in the backyard.

Bruce made some signs, and I made a video.

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:29:00 +0000

Maine Maple Sunday 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:53:00 +0000

Maine Maple Sunday has come and gone in a haze of maple sugary goodness, and I have yet to blog about it. Though the maple syrup I bought should last the whole year, my memories are already fading. Perhaps the most important lesson I've learned is to bring my laptop with me so I can record everything in the relaxed Vacationland setting. Luckily, I did take some notes. Here's where we went:

Parsons Family Farm, in Gorham. You know how the Corleones (in the Godfather) and the Kennedys had family compounds, where the grown-up kids would build their houses on the patriarch's vast property? This is kind of the same idea, only they're not mobsters or aristocrats, they're farmers. They had just built a barn that looked like it was specifically for serving our Maple Sunday pancake breakfast, but it probably housed the tractors the rest of the year. Still, the pancakes (and syrup) were delicious, and we got a good talk over the sap boiler. This year, it seems, was not a good one (bad weather, early budding): they got 3,100 gallons this year, compared to 8,000 last year. Also on the farm were a mini horse (who bites), two-week-old calves, and presumably a lot of cows, some horses, and other farm stuff. I bought a quart of syrup.
Merrifield Farm, in Gorham. This is a big farm, and they were very well-organized. They had a band playing for entertainment while you wait in line to see the boiler. Also, the staff had matching "Got Maple?" T-shirts. I bought lots here: maple smoked cheese, maple peanuts/almonds, and fudge. They also had a Maine candy I'd never seen before: maple needhams, made with coconut and potatoes (among other things) and covered in chocolate. They also had plenty of animals: cows/steers, a wet golden retriever (it was rainy), ducks, piglets, goats, and samples of ice cream with maple syrup, maple butter, maple cream, and maple smoked cheese.
Jo's Sugarhouse, in Gorham. We'd been here before, two years ago, I think. It's a smaller sugar house where they pump the sap across a pond and uphill. They had some excellent maple products: whoopie pies, lollipops, ice cream samples, maple cream on pretzels, etc., but the real draw was the grass-fed hamburgers we had for lunch. They also had a chicken tractor.
Balsam Ridge, in Raymond. I think we'd been here before, too, but I don't remember it so clearly. It's a Christmas tree farm that also makes maple sugar products. They also had a quarter horse / Arabian mix, which I'm told is a horse for riding, not for working. (It's smaller.) They use reverse osmosis before boiling the maple sap, and they had a demonstration of how to make maple cream. It's basically whipped and cooled maple syrup, so crystals form, giving it a creamy white texture. They also had fudge, candy, nuts, and needhams.
Russell Farm Maple Bakery, in Poland. Though advertised as a maple bakery, this turned out to be someone's house, where the wife has an agricultural license to sell baked goods. She had some awesome stuff, too, like maple french toast, maple-covered peanuts, zucchini bread, and muffins. Their sugar shack was still under construction, so their boiler was outside! This was their fourth year making (and selling) syrup, but their first year doing Maple Sunday.
Coopers Maple Products, in Windham. I had this on the list because it said they have 25 mini horses. But by the time we got there, we were tired and it was overcrowded, so we just drove by. Maybe next year.
Grandpa Joe's Sugar House, in North Baldwin. This was our third year visiting Grandpa Joe's, and it was a last-minute decision to go for the sausages. We didn't even bother visiting the sugar shack.

Let the sap flow ever in your direction.

For more maple sugary goodness, view my Maine Maple Sunday photo album.

2011 Reading Round-up

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:33:00 +0000

My goal for this year was to read 15 books off my to-read shelf, which contained 30 books at the beginning of the year. I managed to read 10, counting a couple of new books added to the shelf during the year. I also read 13 library books. But my to-read shelf is only down to 27 books, because Borders went out of business this year and every weekend they kept lowering the prices. So I added several.

My best books of the year were Bossypants, The Bean Trees, Signal, Into Thin Air, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I read 10 grown-up books and 13 YA books. Seven were non-fiction, and the rest were fiction.

I'm going to keep chipping away at my to-read shelf, and hope that by the end of the year I'll have it down to 20 books. Let's hope no more bookstores close.

State by State

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 19:56:00 +0000

State by State by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, eds.
Nonfiction, essays
Read July, 2011 to January, 2012
Review summary: Americans think of their states as unique, but there's more in common than we think (especially now that we've replaced most of the natural beauty with strip malls).

In the 1930's, as a way to invest federal dollars in American arts and culture, the WPA commissioned the Federal Writers' Project, which published, among other things, a series of state guides, one for each state. Inspired by this project, but without public funding, Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey decided to collect essays about each state and publish them in this book.

They didn't choose the obvious and famous writers, like Barbara Kingsolver for Arizona (or Kentucky), Carl Hiaasen for Florida, or Stephen King for Maine. Most of the writers I had never read before. (They DID pick Louise Erdrich for North Dakota. and S. E. Hinton for Oklahoma.) Sometimes the writers' families had been residents of their state for generations, sometimes they were recent immigrants to the state. But with few exceptions, each writer aims to capture the unique quality of his or her state.

The writers take several approaches to defining their state. There are several road trip narrations, like the drive through Connecticut on the Merritt Parkway or the tour of South Dakota, culminating with the disappointment of Mount Rushmore. Several stories are about the writer's coming of age in his or her state: growing up during the civil rights movement in Alabama, as an under-age dishwasher in the Florida Keys, or in a family-run pawn shop in Nevada. For the writers who moved in as adults, it's sometimes a story of finding one's place (Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Vermont). Still others are by writers who moved away, and return to find home (Indiana, Rhode Island, Wisconsin). A few writers don't indulge in their own stories, and instead focus on a defining place or event (Idaho, Louisiana, Alaska, North Carolina). Some focus on the people (Missouri, Delaware, South Carolina) or lack thereof (Montana, Wyoming). Two, Oregon and Vermont, were drawn (comic-style), and both were strongly influenced by weather (rain and snow, respectively).

Despite the variety of writers and states, there are some themes that run through the book. When a state's history is given, it almost always includes all of the following:

A massacre of the native people
Farmers or ranchers: rural people setting up homesteads
Industry (logging, mining, industrial farming, or nuclear testing/power) ruining the land
Homogenization of the area into suburbs and Walmarts.

California, Colorado, and Washington each tell part of the American conflict of nature: we want to be in and among the wilderness, to breathe its beauty, but by making it accessible, we take away the wonder. (I'm actually surprised the Wyoming essay hardly mentions Yellowstone in this respect.)

Many essays convey a sense of home, whether it's home to generations of ancestors or to recent immigrants. It's home because the people are welcoming (Minnesota) or not (Maine), independent thinkers (Oklahoma), modest (New Hampshire), or insane (South Carolina). It's home because of the landmarks of industry (breweries, chocolate factories, farms) or nature (plains, mountains, lakes, rivers, oceans). It's home because it's where your people are, or it's where they aren't.

Very few were steeped in religion. Utah was like an anthropologic exploration into the home of LDS by an outsider. Arkansas focused on the dichotomy of decency (church) and liberty (choice), a debate played out in bumper stickers and never resolved. But while landscapes were dotted with churches, the writers don't take us inside them.

There also wasn't a whole lot about immigration from other countries. The Missouri author interviewed Bosnian immigrants, who make up the largest concentration of Bosnians outside Bosnia, and most of whom arrived in the last 15 years. Michigan is told by a Ghanaian who attended Interlochen for three years. And Iowa is the story of migrant workers from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. But nowhere is the culture clash of wall-building and "give me your tired, your poor..."

There wasn't anything about government, politics, capitalism, the media, technology, movies, factory farms, obesity, roller coasters, hot dogs, trucks, Nascar, the military, or flag waving. Nobody tried to claim that their state was the "real" America, though Dave Eggers made a case that Illinois is the BEST state, and Jonathan Franzen couldn't even get an interview with the state of New York. They were satisfied with the identity of their state, and didn't try to claim the whole country.

I'll get to the review now. The book was long. Some essays were stories that were too personal to really communicate the state's qualities. Some essays were too scattered, trying to represent too many places. The best approach I think was when the author focused on a representative place, event, or aspect (like fishing king salmon in Alaska or the ghostly ruins of hurricane Katrina in Louisiana) and told its tale completely, through conversations and stories.

I'm not sure, after reading this, that I have a good sense of what makes each state unique. I think I have a better sense of what the states have in common. Which may be the point, after all.

Below the jump: A few words to summarize each state's essay.

Alabama: civil rights and class warfare.
Alaska: king salmon subsistence fishing.
Arizona: waste and beauty in the desert.
Arkansas: decency (church) vs. liberty (choice).
California: conflicts between humans and nature.
Colorado: where people gather in search of solitude.
Connecticut: the Merritt Parkway. "I'm leaving out the Stamford exit that heads downtown, because almost everyone in Connecticut wishes that the state had no cities, that its cities were relocated elsewhere."
Delaware: conversations with residents.
Florida: growing up as an under-age dishwasher in the keys.
Georgia: becoming a writer in the suburbs.
Hawaii: the forbidden island.
Idaho: exterminating the Tukudeka.
Illinois: the BEST state.
Indiana: misunderstanding Dad.
Iowa: migrants in the corn fields.
Kansas: not from here.
Kentucky: the crazy genius of Rafinesque.
Louisiana: ghosts of Katrina.
Maine: being from away.
Maryland: confederates vs tankers.
Massachusetts: sports, inferiority complex, and utopia.
Michigan: a Ghanaian's view.
Minnesota: failed farming, Minnesota nice.
Mississippi: retired racism and gracious pals and gals.
Missouri: Bosnian immigrants.
Montana: so few people, they tend to stand out.
Nebraska: cosmopolitan Omaha.
Nevada: growing up in a pawn shop.
New Hampshire: taking pride in one's modesty.
New Jersey: learning to be a hoodlum.
New Mexico: nuclear tests and Carlsbad Caverns.
New York: an interview with the state.
North Carolina: pig farming.
North Dakota: unchanged since 1920.
Ohio: mostly myth.
Oklahoma: far enough from cities that you can make up your own mind.
Oregon: rain.
Pennsylvania: compulsion to get out.
Rhode Island: a pass-through between Connecticut and Cape Cod.
South Carolina: halfway between freedom and insanity.
South Dakota: urbanites visit the badlands.
Tennessee: the line where property stops being priced by the square foot and begins being priced by the acre.
Texas: like a whole other country.
Utah: Mormon austerity.
Vermont: rural, plural, mountains.
Virginia: lots of people died here.
Washington: wooded wilderness and grunge.
West Virginia: a short history of home.
Wisconsin: the country's backbone.
Wyoming: more antelope than people.

Task management

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:44:00 +0000

Well, I'm back to using Remember the Milk after a few months' using Producteev. There's nothing wrong with Producteev, and there was nothing wrong with Remember the Milk when I switched before. I just feel like I need a little change. Plus, RTM now has a free and pretty Android app. I experimented with different options because I wasn't really sure what I was looking for in task management. I think I have a better idea of what I need now.

There are two phases (for me) in publishing a textbook: development and production.

In development, I work closely with the authors to craft a good chapter. I'll work on each chapter for two to three weeks (sometimes more), then send it back to the author for a revision. That happens two or three times per chapter. There are several steps that happen in that two-to-three week period, like reading reviews, revising the art, writing a memo, etc. For these tasks, it would be great to have

subtasks (the steps taken to complete a chapter's edit)
an ordering feature, where I can say, "I can only do this task after that one is finished"
templates, so I can make a task (e.g., Chapter 1), and the template will fill in all the subtasks

In production, things go much more quickly, and I'm assigned tasks by email. An organizer will send me a file with a note, "Here's Chapter 1, please send any corrections by Friday." For these, I also work closely with the author to compile corrections from various sources, like old emails or random notes (as well as my head). For these tasks, I'd love to have

a "convert email to task" function, or even better, a shared task management app where the organizer can simply forward me the task, with the chapter attached
task-associated notes, where I can store loose corrections waiting to be made, even if the chapter isn't ready for me yet
a "waiting on" function connected to email, so when I'm just waiting for an author's reply, their reply will automatically move the task from the "can't do this yet" box to the "do this" box.

Remember the Milk and Producteev are both very powerful task management apps that can do at least some of these things. But the real limitation here is that there isn't an app we're all using. We've had limited success using Google Docs for organization among the editorial staff (there's four of us) and Box.net among authors and editors for simple file storage. But until everyone is comfortable using a system, it won't work.

This is part of why I'm so excited about things like Google+. They've taken a system of communication similar to Facebook or Twitter and improved upon it so that it can serve as a forum for conversation comparable to email, but for more than two people. (If only they'd thread comments!) I can only imagine what Google would do for task management if they tried.

My hope isn't that Google takes over social media or task management, but that they improve upon the existing formats and make them interoperable. In other words, if I'm using Google+ and you're using Facebook, we can still share and comment on each other's posts. Likewise, if I'm using RTM and you're using Producteev, we can still assign each other tasks. I can dream, right?

Homecoming

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 19:29:00 +0000

Homecoming by Cynthia Voight
YA, fiction
Read December, 2011
Review summary: the orphan narrative boosts self-esteem

These days, it seems like all little girls want to be princesses. I blame Disney, because it seemed to start when they began putting out good princess movies: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin (Jasmine), etc. But when I was a kid, it was all about orphans. Annie, the Boxcar Children, etc. It seemed like a kid's greatest fantasy was to be destitute and wild, homeless and free.

Homecoming was written in that era, and it's a prime example of what's so alluring about being orphaned. Dicey is 13, the oldest of four kids who are abandoned by their mother at the beginning of the story. Almost at once, Dicey takes responsibility for her siblings and leads them on a journey that takes the whole summer to find a new home with a relative they never met. It's an adventure story, for sure, but the adventure is cloaked in Dicey's struggle to satisfy their most basic needs of food and shelter.

So why is the orphan narrative so appealing? I read an article recently whose premise was that parents today are too protective of their children. Parents want to be their kids' best friends, and kids feel smothered. The article suggests that kids have their happiest moments when they're allowed to be independent or wild, playing outside the box and solving problems on their own. I think the orphan narrative is appealing for precisely that reason: when a reader puts herself in Dicey's shoes, she feels like she can be smart, resourceful, and independent, and even a little wild.

Charlie Woodchuck is a Minor Niner

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:32:00 +0000

Note: I am now double-posting my book reviews on Google+. I may eventually move them all there, but keep non-book posts here. Let me know if you don't want me to do that.

Charlie Woodchuck is a Minor Niner by Dayla Moon
YA, Kindle, fiction
Read November, 2011
Review summary: cobbles together two decent plots

A friend told me about the wonders of the Kindle, and how there are all these free books available for it. So I downloaded the Kindle app for my phone and set out to find one. This is what I found.

Plot #1: Upon entering high school (in the 1980's), Charlie Woodchuck uses her male-sounding first name to get into a male-only woodshop class. She isn't a tomboy or anything like that; she just wanted to buck the system. She receives a lot of flack for taking on a protest she can't handle.

Plot #2: In science class, Charlie learns that parents who both have blue eyes can't (biologically) have a kid with brown eyes. (Note: there are exceptions to this. The genetics of eye color aren't that cut-and-dried.) But that's the case for Charlie. Was she adopted and never knew it? She struggles with whether to confront her parents and find out the truth. Even when she does, her parents aren't exactly straightforward about answering her questions.

I found the character believable and the references to '80s clothes and trends funny and endearing (which is how I think they were meant), in contrast to those in _Viola in Reel Life_. The story progressed at the right rate, and it ended the way I expected it to, which is to say I wasn't disappointed in the ending. But honestly, one of these plots would have been interesting enough. They seem to continuously wrap around each other, but never intersect, like you'd hope.

Reform #3: Campaign financing

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:00:00 +0000

This is Reform #3 in a three-part series on how to make all our votes count equally.

I don't think it takes much to argue that campaign financing has gotten out of control. Stephen Colbert has made it his mission to point out the obsurdities of the Citizen's United case, which overturned the McCain-Feingold Act, and lifted restrictions on how corporations, unions, and other organizations spend money on political campaigns (among other things), effectively saying, "Corporations are people," and therefore have the right to free speech. Colbert's deliciously meta Super PAC objective is to spew propaganda that corporations are people, by exploiting the very decision that allowed the PAC its free speech.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Colbert Super PAC - "Corporations Are People"

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

Video Archive

It's no surprise that much of the money raised for campaigns comes from organizations (as opposed to individuals), and that money buys influence. This ability to buy influence in government is a detriment to equality and is the basis of many grievances outlined by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Campaign finance laws are nothing new, and they're not out of reach. In the wake of state-wide corruption, Connecticut created The Citizen's Election Program (PDF), which establishes public grants for state-level candidates who agree to specific donation and spending limits. The Fair Elections Now Act, co-sponsored by Connecticut's John Larson (my representative) similarly makes House candidates rely primarily on small dollar contributions, $100. Of course, this doesn't cover Senate or Presidential elections. Apparently nobody cares to reform that.

Reform #2: Start counting second choices

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:00:00 +0000

This is Reform #2 in a three-part series on how to make all our votes count equally.

Currently, the winner of the presidential election is the person who gets the majority of electoral votes. If we change to a popular vote system, it would be the person who gets the majority of votes. We'd still want to vote for the person we like best, among the candidates who actually have a chance.

I'm not stupid. I knew in 2008 that Ralph Nader didn't have a chance. I also knew that even if he were president, he probably wouldn't be terribly effective, given his "outsider" status, his extreme views, and his general demeanor. I voted for Nader because his views align most closely with mine, and I wanted to make it clear that neither Obama nor McCain was my first choice.

If we used some version of ranked voting, votes would count even if the first choice isn't one of the two favorites. In these systems, voters rank their choices, and a computation determines which candidate is the winner. For example, in run-off voting, first choice votes are counted and if there is no majority winner, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated, and those votes are re-apportioned to the second choide candidates. This is repeated until there's a majority winner. In the Condorcet method, the winner is the candidate who, when compared with every other candidate, is preferred by more voters. I don't really care which method is used, as long as I get to vote honestly, for the best candidate, and my vote is counted.

Reform #1: Move from the electoral college to the popular vote.

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:13:00 +0000

This is Reform #1 in a three-part series on how to make all our votes count equally.

According to the Constitution, each state chooses delegates (electors) who then vote for the President. Except in Maine and Nebraska, these delegates are chosen on a winner-take-all basis. This system creates swing states, which get more attention (and more electoral power) than other states. To the candidates, votes in those states are worth more.

The simpler popular vote system would make each vote equal, but it's hard to move from the electoral college system to the popular vote system. Splitting votes like Maine and Nebraska do makes those states even less important to candidates, so I can see why states are reluctant to do that. Instead, some states have made a pact to deliver all their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, even if that person didn't win that state's popular vote. This will only go into effect when enough states have joined to represent a controlling majority of electoral votes. So the pact needs 270 electoral votes; it currently has 132, from eight states and the District of Columbia.

We need to reform campaign and election laws

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Last time on Erica's Political Soapbox: Re-electing Barack Obama wouldn't be the worst thing we could do.

It's true, Obama is miles better than any of the Republican candidates. (Though I'm not convinced Mitt Romney would really be that bad, given his record as Governor of Massachusetts.) But that's where the arguments get off-track. Nobody wants to vote for the lesser of two evils, and that's a certain way to create voter apathy, opposite of the sentiment that won the 2008 election. Perhaps worse, they go on to argue that you shouldn't waste your vote on a third party candidate because, "look what happened in 2000! Do we really want that again?" "Don't throw your vote away!"

I hate that people think this way, that the only way my vote will "count" is if it's for one of two candidates. In my very Democratic state, I feel as if my vote for a Democratic candidate doesn't matter. Indeed, even if Obama had won the state by a single vote, he would have gained all seven of our electoral votes. We need to reform the election system so that everyone's vote counts, equally.

In the next three days, I will be posting my three top election/campaign reforms:
Reform #1: Move from the electoral college to the popular vote.
Reform #2: Start counting second choices.
Reform #3: Campaign financing

Why we're disappointed in President Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:01:00 +0000

Barack Obama has begun his 2012 presidential campaign, and his supporters are starting to make arguments like this, to get you to vote for him (again). These arguments, which point out all the good things he's done, are mostly valid and good reasoning. He got the health care bill passed. He dealt with the Arab Spring well enough that we didn't see anyone over there burning American flags. He nominated two qualified women to the Supreme Court. He got rid of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and he passed a decent jobs bill. While his role in some of these things can be debated, as can the effect of his economic actions, I think few Democrats believe that they made a mistake in electing him, given the alternative. But we're disappointed because we think he didn't do enough.

During the 2008 primary season, I remember seeing Obama as an excellent speaker: he can make you agree with him without saying anything of substance. The most resonating messages were of hope and change, which worked because it allowed his supporters to fill in the specifics. He did have a platform, but you had to go looking for it, on his website or in the debates, which most people (maybe not you and I) wouldn't do. So it's not as if he didn't keep his campaign promises, it's that he never made them, at least not the ones we thought he did. His campaign set him up for disappointment, and now it has to work that much harder to earn the next four years.

He did do a lot of good, and a few of his priorities were set aside when the economy came crashing down. And when some members of congress decided to throw a tantrum instead of vote on anything progressive. Besides, there's still a lot he wants to do, if only we'd give him more time. And we probably will. I mean, look at the alternatives. It wouldn't be the worst election in recent history.

How I earned my paycheck today

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:27:00 +0000

An author wants to use this particular photo for the book. He found the photo in a 1975 book published by us, but nobody in the office could find the permissions for the photo. The photo researcher found several other, newer, beautiful photos, but the author really wanted this one.

We need a high-resolution file of the photo and permission from its owner to use it (sometimes that includes paying a fee). The author could scan the photo from the book, but we still didn't know who owns it. The book page doesn't have any source information, and furthermore, only the author has the book.

Step 1: Obtain book.
I can't check out books from Yale, but I can still get into their library. Unfortunately the library that houses this book is closed for renovations, so I had to ask a friend to ILL it. Busy though she is, she did. Check.

Step 2: Find source.
The references are listed by chapter, so I had to go through the ~15 sources for Chapter 4 to find which one originally published the photo. About 5 were available online as PDFs. About 5 more I had to find in print in the Yale library. The other 5 I couldn't get.

Step 3: Google with desperation.
I thought maybe if I could find a website for the author of one of those last papers, it might have that image, or something of use. Or at least tell us whether the owner is still alive and working. And for some reason, I decided to use more specific search terms, descriptive words from the original figure legend. And then, three screens down, I saw it. It was upside down, but I saw it, and it was beautiful. It was on a commercial stock photography site, and it included all the copyright and ordering information.

I don't want to give anything away about what's going to be in the book, but here are some similar images you might enjoy seeing.

The Seer of Shadows

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 16:54:00 +0000

The Seer of Shadows by Avi
YA, library, fiction
Read October, 2011
Review summary: Meh

Review contains spoilers

Avi really got me with Crispin: Cross of Lead and its sequel. I was really looking for the third in that trilogy, but I couldn't find it. This one was available, though, so I picked it up.

The Seer of Shadows is told by a boy in New York City in the late 1800's. He's a photographer's apprentice. A society woman hires the photographer for a portrait, she says to put on her dead daughter's grave, so her daughter's ghost doesn't miss her so much. The photographer decides to use a double exposure (using a painting of the daughter) to trick the woman into thinking her daughter's ghost is hovering over her shoulder. But without the photographer's tricks, ghosts begin to appear, and the apprentice teams up with the woman's servant girl to investigate. Nothing is as it seems.

I was hoping a rational, non-paranormal answer would be revealed at the end (like in Signal_), but no. In this book, ghosts _and angelsexist and they're going to follow you around until you die. Sorry. Oh, and this kid is the only one who can see them. And his camera. I read it all, and it wasn't boring, but it also didn't mean much to me. It was nonsense. It wasn't even trying to convey something through the nonsense. Which is a shame because the protagonist started out being such an interesting character, raised on rationality and empiricism. He should have been able to solve this mystery without mysticism. Oh well.

This World We Live In

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 01:51:00 +0000

This World We Live In

This is the third book in the strangely page-turning trilogy based on a preposterous event: the shifting of the moon. By this time, we're just supposed to accept that the world is changed, an atmospheric layer of volcanic ash blots out the sun, and yet people are still surviving. On canned food. Whatever. This episode introduces Alex (from The Dead and the Gone) to Miranda (from Life as We Knew It), and as you might expect, there's a little love connection made there. It's hard to believe, though. I don't see their motivation, besides that there are so few people left alive, maybe you just fall in love with whatever appears at your doorstep.

I've begun to think of these books as YA versions of The Road. They're really a series of events, and the characters are dulled at the horrors: one day Miranda rides her bike past a pile of dead bodies. Another day, they find some canned food at a house they break into. I still don't know why I read them so quickly, but I'm kind of glad there aren't any more. Without commenting on the ending, I can say would want to read more, if there were another sequel. And yet, they're pretty trashy books. The premise is unbelievable, and they're pretty depressing. But I wonder how they can possibly survive any longer, with no sun (and therefore no crops, and no food).

So You Think You Can Dance: Tour

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 03:52:00 +0000

So You Think You Can Dance came to Foxwoods last weekend, on their nationwide tour, and we got to see it. Overall: good show. Those kids work hard and have fun, I can tell. While the whole experience wasn't great, the show was.

What went wrong:

The theater is the biggest I've seen in the state, but there wasn't enough staff to sell refreshments (so long lines) before the show, and the parking lot only had one exit lane, which ended in a stoplight. Foxwoods has a lot to learn from Disneyland in terms of service.
There was a couple behind us who brought their 5-ish-year-old son, who was sick. He spent the first half coughing, then puked at intermission. First, he was too young for the show (see Piece of My Heart), second, he was sick. Bad parents.

What went right:

The whole show was high energy and great dancing. I can't complain, and I loved seeing even the dances I already knew done live. There was just so much excitement in that room. When Melanie did that flying leap [this one has poor quality video due to copyright restrictions], the room went wild. I also noticed that the dancers danced more freely. They're better practiced, more confident, and not being judged. They're having fun. And that's good to see.
They grouped numbers together sensibly, and added smooth transitions, so it wasn't just number after number. It was well done. They also lengthened some of the shorter pieces and each of the top 10 contestants got a long solo. (I'm always mad about how short the TV solos are.) And they added dancers to some pieces! I was happy to spot Melanie, Ricky, and Jess, along with Tadd in Another One Bites the Dust. I still missed Lauren, but the other three make up for her absence, in that dance, at least.
We were pretty high up in that theater, but I could see the whole stage. They also had screens showing closer live camera work from a cameraman at stage level. It's nice to see the dances without all the crazy camera work on the show. (Too much spinning and close-up, you don't get a feel for their use of the stage.)
After the opening number, they did the familiar introductions (these are your boys, and here are your girls, etc.), but Marko was missing! According to Melanie and Sasha, who had microphones right after, he had an injury but would be on stage later in the show. He was, about 10 minutes later, no sign of injury. But while he was gone, who filled in for him? Kent! I decided there must be at least a boy and a girl all-star touring with the top 10, sitting backstage, waiting to fill in when needed. It's hard to miss Marko, when you get Kent in his place.
When I'm watching the show, the dancers seem so important to the character and execution of the dance. But as far as I could tell, the all-stars weren't going to be part of the show. How could they possibly do Misty Blue without Twitch? Answer: Ricky danced it with Sasha instead. Ricky also filled in for Neil in Total Eclipse of the Heart with Melanie, and for backstage Kent in the wall dance with Sasha. Caitlyn filled in for Allison in Marko's regret dance. In perhaps the strangest substitution, Mitchell and Clarice did Please Mr. Jailer, originally danced by Ashley and Chris, neither of whom made it to the top 10. The results of all these substitutions are:

Several dancers were more comfortable in their styles (e.g., Jess did Love Story with Melanie instead of Tadd). Melanie and Sahsa, though, can do anything.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who was dancing, especially challenging, given our distance from the stage.
I had to realize that they're all great dancers. Total Eclipse didn't work just for Neil; Ricky did a great job in it. They're all all-stars now.

They also had some non-top-10 dancers, Missy and Nick, as a big part of the show. They were each in several numbers, and both got to do solos as well. I think this goes to show how strong they are as dancers, and I'm happy to see them with the tour (even if they're not being advertised).
They only did one number from the last competition show, the Grease-inspired Tadd strip-tease (which went over well). I'm glad because that show, which I had waited two weeks to see, thanks to Fox suddenly deciding to postpone streaming for 10 days instead of the usual 5, was utterly disappointing. Even the stand-out favorites, Sasha and Melanie, had poor dances in that episode (the disco was a particular disaster), and though the Grease dance wasn't anything special compared to other dances this season, the crowd loves it when Tadd goes shirtless. That last episode left a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm glad the producers admitted it wasn't worth re-hashing.
This was the first time I liked that Coldplay song. I still don't like the geisha dance. Or pretty much any of the group dances from this season.
They didn't do one of my favorites, the hip-hop where Melanie and Marko kiss, but they did just about everything else I was hoping to see.

If the clips linked here aren't enough, here's a good tour highlights reel I found. And if you have some hours to spend, here's a playlist of my favorite SYTYCD pieces, from all 8 seasons.

Every Soul a Star

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 01:42:00 +0000

Every Soul A Star

I really like Wendy Mass. This book reminded me of Criss Cross in its quiet, pensive narrative. The story is told by three characters, Ally (a very sheltered homeschooled kid with a love of astronomy), Bree (an aspiring model whose parents suddenly move her into the middle of nowhere), and Jack (an overweight loner who doesn't really do school). The story and the characters come together to solve a problem and witness an eclipse, but the story is really about the challenges each character faces in self-identity.

The story is well-told, and while there is a little teen romance, it's not a focus of the story. Each of these kids is easy to understand, even Bree. They all have their strengths and their insecurities. So it's nice.

City of Angels

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 02:21:00 +0000

Friday, we saw City of Angels at the Goodspeed Opera House. It wasn't the best show I've seen there. I was surprised to find that it was written in the 1980's by Cy Coleman, when "he suddenly realized that
no one had written a ‘40s bebop and big band-infused crime fiction musical." What an omission! The story was a little muddled, mixing the film noir screenplay story (complete with a flashback within a flashback, AND too many scenes in the morgue) with the screenwriter's story (he's a sellout, and Hollywood is full of bozos).

Then there were the women. Sure, there were plenty of female characters, but they were all bogus. The detective's assistant was a good character, ignored by all the other characters. The woman who hired the detective was a sexy gold-digger; the woman she hired him to find entered the story through a strip tease and didn't do much after that. In the screenwriter's story, he cheated on his wife (who forgave him too easily), and he treated his mistress like a toy. If this were a 1940's musical, I could forgive this. But it was written in the '80s!

The good part was the music. It was mostly swing, and there was a quartet at the beginning that made beautiful harmonies. The composer (Coleman) did something sneaky with some of the songs: he wrote them so that the vocals sound like instruments. I don't know how, but it has something to do with the rhythm and the melody... You get a taste of it near the end of this clip, but the song ends much stronger. Also, K and I sang this song in our chorus a few seasons back.

Common Ground Fair 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 02:03:00 +0000

Last weekend we went to the Common Ground Fair! (Note that the front page of that website linked right there shows a great picture of Charlie/Fred.)

Below are some pictures, and here's a list of hilights:

Sheepdog demonstrations, of course.
Oxen and draft horses never cease to amaze me with their size.
There was an Irish band playing "Cool Waters," which my chorus sang (in small group) a few seasons ago.
Maple sugar candy goes well with apple cider.
I discovered the Fedco tent, where I bought a ton of seeds for next year, as well as bulbs (which I planted today).
The bunny barn.
Alpacas.

Common Ground Fair 2011

Bossypants

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:24:00 +0000

Bossypants

Not only is this a "grown-up" book, it's timely. At my business dinner last night, two of the other four people present had also just read (and loved) this book.

If you know and like Tina Fey, this is more of her good stuff. It's a memoir, but geared toward her status as a rare woman in charge of comedy. She was the first female writer on Saturday Night Live, and during her tenure there women began to get more attention and parts (because of her). Now at 30 Rock, she runs the show (literally), and also spent some time moonlighting at SNL (playing Sarah Palin). She's not a magician, and she's not a monolith: she gives most of the credit to people who gave her opportunities (Lorne Michaels), helped her out (Alec Baldwin), or otherwise supported her with friendship and camaraderie (Amy Poehler).

It's clear that while she is quick to point out her imperfections, Tina Fey has her own talents, most notably a brand of humor different from other comedy writers. If you watch 30 Rock, you get a sense of her style, but it really comes through in her 30 Rock Ask Tina clips (Google it). Her improv background shines through with witty quips perfectly delivered. This is what her book was like. So, good.

Where the Red Fern Grows

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 21:04:00 +0000

Where the Red Fern Grows

I got some flack for reading this book. Yeah, it's a kids' book, but it's a Newbery Award winner, and it's supposed to be good. A classic. So I picked it up. It's fine. It's not for me. And I hated the ending.

If there's one relationship dynamic I'll never truly understand, it's a boy and his dogs. That's the entirety of this story. He spends several chapters wanting dogs, and working hard to earn money to buy the dogs, then getting the dogs, then teaching them to hunt, then hunting with them. There's a lot of play-by-play of them hunting. They hunt "coons" by sniffing out the trail, running them into a tree, and then the boy scares the coon out of the tree, and the dogs rip it to shreds. And then the sell the skin.

Every time I read a book like this, it makes me think about how hard authors and publishers must think it is to get boys to read. So many books are distinctly boy books. They're about boys who do boy things and make no effort to appeal to typical girls. I can't decide if they're sexist for that, or if they're truly serving this limited--and sometimes reluctant--market. On the other hand, there don't seem to be many distinctly girl books, except the Judy Blumes. To me, most (good) books are universal enough to appeal to both sexes. I'm thinking of Holes, Maniac Magee, or The Wednesday Wars for boys, and The Wanderer, Hattie Big Sky, or Criss Cross. Sure, the kids in those stories are of a definite gender, but I feel like anyone would be able to relate to them.

This book I had a hard time relating to, and it makes me cringe to think that this is required reading in some schools. I had to read Old Yeller and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 7th grade. In 8th grade I had to read The Hobbit and Good Night, Mr. Tom. The girl books I remember were Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and To Kill a Mockingbird. Good, but not enough to make up for the boy books. That's about the point I started reading V. C. Andrews and romance novels. Reading choice is SO important to keep kids interested.

Moving on.

Here's where I have to comment on the ending. SPOILER!
...

...

...

The dogs die at the end. Of course they do. When reviewers compare a book to Old Yeller and mention something sad, you know at least one of the dogs is going to die. So yes, it was sad, and touching, and all that. But I hated the way the book dealt with it. These two loyal-to-the-end, world-class coon-hunting, best-friends-a-boy-could-have dogs give their lives, and the kid is appropriately torn up, and his mother comforts him how? She says it's God's way, that they died for a reason. And that reason is so that they could move to the city. THE CITY. The same city (town) where the kid went to pick up the dogs, where other kids beat him up for being a redneck. The city the kid HATES because it's too crowded and there's no woods to play in. NICE, MOM. So I'm supposed to feel better about the dogs dying, and them moving away from the childhood heaven that is (for him) coon-hunting in the woods with his beloved dogs, because there's a frickin' red fern growing next to their graves? Whatever.

Google Reader Integration

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 23:19:00 +0000

I haven't written a non-book-review post in a while because I'm wary of writing too much about Google+. Sorry if you're sick of that. If so, move on now.

I'm astonished that Google hasn't yet integrated Google Reader into Google+, or even updated Google Reader. It even still has the old blue clunky interface. I'm holding out hope for some smooth new updates, and I've figured out what I want them to look like. The idea came to me when I realized that I've been using Reader less, and Google+ more.

Because most people never really caught on to RSS feeds. I love them because I love getting articles pushed to me, instead of having to visit each of my favorite websites to check for updates. Reader adds to this with a social component: I can easily share articles with my contacts who also use Reader, and we have our own little comment thread.

A couple problems with Google Reader:

Not everyone uses Google Reader. In fact, only my Google-lovin' friends do, and that's an extremely limited (and geeky) cohort.
Content is limited to what you find in your RSS feeds, and not all sites have RSS feeds.
There are some usability bugs that seem to have been ignored. For example, if a friend and I are subscribed to the same feed, we can each separately share the same article, and start two separate conversations about it. That's dumb.

Now, Google+ has a cute little feature for bringing content into the Google+ conversation, Sparks. But it's woefully inadequate. I had a spark set up for "So You Think You Can Dance", and it occasionally picked up articles about the TV show, but it also picked up some random nonsense. And it never picked up what I really wanted, which was YouTube clips and episode reviews. It's as if Sparks used a worse search algorithm than Google. Dumb. Don't get me started on what happened when I tried "west coast swing."

But when I think about it, there are two types of websites: those that change, and those that stay the same. And I want to be able to share them both.

Bookmarks
Whenever I come across a website I like, or think I might like to visit again, I bookmark it. If I want to share it with someone, I can copy the link and paste it into an email or G+. But I want them to go one better: I want my profile's +1 tab to serve as my bookmarks. I want them to be organized, sortable, and searchable, and I want each to have the same sharing preferences as a G+ post (private, limited, or public). And when I add a new bookmark/+1, I want the option to post it to my stream with those sharing preferences.

Articles
Reader should be converted into a G+ tab (like the games tab) for outside content sources. It would really be RSS or Atom feeds, but the average user doesn't need to know that. Here's how it would work: I go to a website or blog that is regularly updated and has a feed. Through some button, extension, or plugin, I click on something that adds this feed to my outside content sources tab. Maybe it pops up a dialog box that says, "Track this page using Google+?"

Then when I go to my outside content sources tab, it can present all the latest updates from those tracked sites. I should be able to organize them (perhaps by topic), sort them (for example by most recent or most shared), and search (all posts with "iOS") and filter (no posts with "iOS") them.

Most importantly, I should be able to post articles to my stream, and share them with all the same sharing preferences (to one circle, all circles, public, etc.).

Small improvements, big results
With Google Reader and RSS feeds already widely used, I don't think this would be too difficult to implement. It's mostly a matter of improving the sorting/tagging of links/feeds, adding filters, and adding an interface. But the result would be huge: Google+ users would have a much easier time getting content to share. Instead of cutting and pasting links, we'd have a whole tab of original content to draw from. And of course, more quality content means more activity.

The Dead and the Gone

noreply@blogger.com (Erica Champion) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:51:00 +0000

The Dead and the Gone

Nobody's going to nominate this book for a Pulitzer (or a Newbery), but like the first book in this series, I had a hard time putting this one down. It's a car crash book, where things just keep getting worse, and you can't look away. Though the first one wasn't literary genius, I kept remembering it, and I knew there was a sequel, so when we started preparing for "Hurricane" Irene, I decided it was time to pick it up.

This book is concurrent with Life as We Knew It, so it starts when the moon is hit by an asteroid, moving it closer to the earth and causing natural and other disasters. This time we're following Alex, a Puerto Rican boy in New York, and his family. When the book starts, his parents are already missing, and he becomes responsible for his two younger sisters. As the book progresses, he has to make decisions about their welfare, and obviously, he ends up regretting some of them.

The Dead and the Gone fits the same formula as Life as We Knew It, with the same gradually worsening conditions, and the same kind of teenager coming-of-age-in-a-time-of-emergency plot, and the same contrast of hope and despair. I've put a hold on the third book in the series.