A Few Laughs

10 Best Books

Check out the 10 best books of 2006
according to the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/books/review/20061210tenbestbooks.html?ref=books

Borat Bandwagon

Jump on the Borat Bandwagon.

York Times Review, November 3, 2006

NPR Review

The Unofficial Borat Homepage

45th Wedding Anniversary

My parents emailed us with the announcement: They had planned a tour of their six children to celebrate their 45^th wedding anniversary. This trip would take them a few miles across town, hundreds of miles across the prairie, to Northern Indiana, the East Coast, and the Rocky Mountains within a week. They asked us to pick out a nice restaurant for each night of their weekly weddinganniversarypalooza.

I met them in Chicago and took them to a little place I had discovered a few years ago. It is a Russian restaurant, Russian Tea Time, with old school red velvet drapings, samovars, and nesting dolls. Lots of mirrors and attentive waiters. When I was sixteen, I convinced my parents to let me become a People to People Ambassador. I flew to Moscow and studied biology in Sochi along the Black Sea Coast. I viewed Stalin’s mummified body in great solemnity. I visited a tea plantation and ate fresh raspberries atop a mountain.

I was a sixteen-year-old Kansas girl serving as Ambassador of Peace. It was 1991 and political upheaval was the rule, little did I fully realize as I went about selecting the perfect black-lacquered box as a memento for my treasure chest back home.

So the selection of Russian restaurant to honor my parents’ 45^th anniversary was no accident. They gave me Russia, and I thought it would be nice to share a Russian meal with them.

We started with a flight of vodkas—bilberry, cranberry, and plain. These vodkas, served with dark rye bread chunks and pickles, go down like velvet. A fine way to start any long, long lunch.

We decided to share a sampler meal because we couldn’t decide between all the delicious options. Borscht (served hot, the traditional way), beet caviar, stuffed mushrooms. Followed by stuffed cabbage, Moldavian chicken meatballs, a breaded chicken delight, beef stroganoff, kashi and rice.

The finish must be handled with care. We managed it properly by drinking endless cups of deep amber Russian tea (available for sale on their website) and a selection of strudels, cookies, and cakes.

A hearty almost three-hour celebration.

The restaurant is located a few steps from the Art Institute, but the day was too mild to ruin by going indoors. So we headed to the Millennium Park to watch kids and adults splash in the Crown Fountain, a public art fountain. If you haven’t visited this park, go now. It is really one of my favorite parks in the world. Very well done. Especially worth it on a mild, sunny, and breezy day.

It was a brief world wind visit. I hope they do the same for their 46^th anniversary!

Welcome Message

Click here for a welcome message from Schamber Line's press agent.

Some Images

My Lawn

August Poem

To kick things up a notch, here is a lovely poem to savor:

American Life in Poetry: Column 071 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

William Carlos Williams, one of our country's most influential poets and a New Jersey physician, taught us to celebrate daily life. Here Albert Garcia offers us the simple pleasures and modest mysteries of a single summer day.

August Morning

It's ripe, the melon

by our sink. Yellow,

bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes

the house too sweetly.

At five I wake, the air

mournful in its quiet.

My wife's eyes swim calmly

under their lids, her mouth and jaw

relaxed, different.

What is happening in the silence

of this house? Curtains

hang heavily from their rods.

Ficus leaves tremble

at my footsteps. Yet

the colors outside are perfect--

orange geranium, blue lobelia.

I wander from room to room

like a man in a museum:

wife, children, books, flowers,

melon. Such still air. Soon

the mid-morning breeze will float in

like tepid water, then hot.

How do I start this day,

I who am unsure

of how my life has happened

or how to proceed

amid this warm and steady sweetness?

Poem copyright (c) by Albert Garcia from his latest book "Skunk Talk" (Bear Starr Press, 2005) and originally published in "Poetry East," No. 44. Reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

En Route: Janet's Update

Today begins my summer travels to Hungary and Transylvania. My 6 am alarm buzzed me into a frenzy of last-minute packing and by the time I arrive in Budapest my internal clock will have done several cartwheels and backflips. As soon as I board my O'Hare flight, I will refrain from all temptations to monitor a clock. I submit to the jet lag gauntlet.

These past two weeks in South Bend, IN were spent unpacking from the move and then packing for the trip. Somehow the house is still filled with boxes despite all opened boxes left out for the recycling truck. Boxes will wait.

A highlight of the week was Book Club, which I hosted at my house. We discussed Pat Conroy's "The Prince of Tides." It is an epic tale with elements of magical realism, as pointed out by one reader. It is long. And filled with lyrical passages laced with metaphor. I must go to the Carolinas. I plan to return to the book after our summer trip to glean some of its colorful vocabulary and memorable phrases.

For the plane ride read: the current New Yorker, the 2006 O'Henry Prize Collection (short stories), The Road from Coorain, and the current Harper's.

In my suitcase: approx. 10 pounds of books, including the biography of Duchamp (his second round trip to Transylvania) and my Hungarian language textbooks; our tennis rackets; and a Gwen Stefani CD requested as a gift from a young fan in Csikszereda. Did you know that Shakira will tour Romania this summer? It is a smallish world made smaller by pop stars doing their thing.

Strong Female Chararcters

A friend sent me this video and I thought it was worth a mere 8 minutes of your life....

IRS Joke

Conan O'Brien

This week, Washington, D.C., received a foot of rain and part of the I.R.S. building was flooded. The bad news? Part of the I.R.S. building was NOT flooded.

Matt's Update from DC

For those who didn't know, I've been on "vacation" all week because my office has been shut down after the flood on Sunday night. It was crazy--the six-block area centered around the IRS was the only area with major flood damage in downtown DC. They finally issued a public press release, and it looks like they're finding new places for us to work (darn)....

IRS Employee Emergency News

STATEMENT ON IRS HEADQUARTERS BUILDING STATUS The IRS Headquarters Building at 1111 Constitution Ave. NW in Washington, D.C. is likely to remain closed for at least 30 days due to flooding and electrical outages. The building sustained extensive damage to the infrastructure, office furniture and supplies. The subbasement was submerged in more than 20 feet of water. The subbasement holds all of the building’s electrical and maintenance equipment such as electrical transformers, electrical switchgears, and chillers. Although these systems require closer inspection, they appear to be 95 percent damaged or destroyed. The basement was flooded with five feet of water. The fitness center, food service canteens, offices, systems furniture, carpet, ceiling tiles, computer equipment and servers, and vehicles garaged in the building were all destroyed. While an assessment of total damage will not be completed for several more days, costs are expected to run in the tens of millions of dollars. Water is continuing to be pumped from the subbasement. Between six and twelve pumps have been running since Monday to clear the water from the building, and it is expected the subbasement will not be completely emptied until Friday. An initial clean-up and decontamination crew began cleanup efforts in the basement level Wednesday. By Friday, two crews of 50 will be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week until cleanup is complete. Repairs to the headquarters building will not impact the IRS’s service and enforcement operations during this period. All IRS business units have extensive business resumption plans that have been executed. The 2,400 employees who work at the headquarters building are being relocated to the other 12 buildings IRS occupies in the metro area or into temporary space, and some will telecommute as appropriate. Commissioner Mark Everson has committed that employees will not reoccupy the building until it is safe to do so. All appropriate inspections and testing will be completed prior to reopening. Any employee assigned to the headquarters building who has not been contacted by their manager should initiate that contact. Employees can call the Employee Emergency Hotline at 1-866-743-5748, option 3, code 32; check IRWeb; or check IRS.gov, key word “employee emergency” for further updates.

Janet's Update

The two-day drive home from Boston was relaxed and delicious.

We stopped in Buffalo, NY where we ate buffalo wings at the restaurant that invented them, the Anchor Bar. I am not a fan usually, but these wings were meaty, crispy, and just-right spicy. Next time, we have to remember that hot is too hot for us. We are medium wings people.

The next day we decided to detour into Cleveland, OH to visit the pastry shop that had baked our wedding dobos cake. A perhaps little known fact: Cleveland is the largest (or was, at least) Hungarian city outside of Hungary. The shop has been located in the same spot since the 1950’s on a street used to be lined with pastry shops, but I believe Lucy’s Sweet Surrender is a last holdout now. The baker is an American married to a Hungarian from Romania and he very generously gave us a tour of the shop, showing us where they make the strudel and all the other baking machinery.

I highly recommend ordering a dobos torte online. He will deep freeze it and then overnight it--very tasty and very authentic. (It is better to do this in the winter to avoid summer temperatures melting your torte en route.)

I spent one night back South Bend before I headed out for a quick trip to St. Louis. I drove the six hour trip straight down Illinois in perfectly clouded skies. A long drive to be sure, but stops in Odell for pie at the Wishing Well Cafe and Towanda at the diner make that jaunt satisfying.

St. Louis always manages to surprise and delight. This time I got a tour of the botanical gardens to see the Chihuly blown-glass exhibit. More importantly I spent lots of time on the couch making googly-goo faces at baby Henry.

Now I am at Lula’s, THE café still in South Bend, despite several new ones that have arrived over the years. They still do not have wireless, however, which I support. It is always good to isolate myself from the Internet when I want to work on my writing.

We leave in a week for our “vacation” in Transylvania, our usual summer trip. This time my parents will join us for a week—it will be their second trip to Budapest, but their first to the Carpathian mountains and villages of Transylvania. I look forward to showing them life lived in the Székely way.

Free Books!

I learned today about the Project Gutenberg, a 35-year-old nonprofit based in Illinois. They have a mission to "break down the walls of ignorance and illiteracy." To aid in this fight they are launching an effort to make thousands of classic books available for free in downloadable form.

Volunteers began typing and scanning books into a database thirty-five years ago, decades before the Internet and the ability to distribute texts electronically became a reality. Now those efforts are bearing fruit as the project plans to host the World eBook Fair. Between July 4 and August 4 over 300,000 books will be available for free download. The fair will be repeated annually.

The majority of books are no longer protected by copyright. For a small percentage of the books, the copyright permission was granted for their inclusion. There will even be a limited number of classical music files as well.

Free books. This enterprise is legal. And my Dad always said there was no such thing as a free lunch. Just think: schools could download copies of The Odyssey for free!

For more information read today's article
in the Boston Globe by David Mehegan:
Free chapter added to saga of e-books

Download your free books (to your laptop, ipod, etc.) at the World eBook Fair: www.worldbookfair.com
(The site is currently under construction. Annoying.
I assume it will be up and running in time for the July 4th start date!)

Learn about Project Gutenberg AND download free books now:
http://www.gutenberg.org/
(about 20,000 titles ready for download)

What Janet is Doing These Days....

A few days ago I attended a reading by Curtis Sittenfeld. Her first novel, Prep, was a runaway best seller and was chosen by the New York Times as one of the top ten novels of 2005. (See the link in the sidebar.) The narrator, Lee, in Prep is an angst riddled teen who convinces her parents to let her move out of South Bend to attend a boarding school out East. Being from South Bend (sort of), I was attracted to the story line. The novel was smart and just dark enough for my tastes to make it stand out from a crowd of novels with young female characters.

I was also attracted to Sittenfeld as an author. She was teaching ninth grade English at a private high school for boys at the time the novel reached publication. After the novel hit the charts, I read one (or two?) essays by her describing her experience writing, getting published, and being marketed. She seemed smart and witty, but not in a snarky way. She was articulate and insightful.

Sittenfeld read from her latest novel, Man of My Dreams. The narrator is also a young woman, Hannah, but Sittenfeld insists that she is quite distinct from Lee. Lee's story was told during her high school years. Hannah's story spans fourteen years and she gets to mature into her late twenties. Lee said not-so-nice things because she was filled with bile. Hannah also gets verbally callous, but her roughness comes more from naiveté instead of nastiness. These are Sittenfeld's descriptions, as I have yet to read her new work.

Sittenfeld is tall. Tonight she wore black slacks paired with a black v-necked top. Her shoes: black. She looked cool. She looked like she writes: forthright, natural, and comfortable. Hhhhmmm...not sure those are the best adjectives. Alas. Or perhaps I should avoid any connection whatsoever between her writing style and her fashion style?

Sittenfeld shared with us her pleasure to be a guest author of Brookline Booksmith, where she used to shop when she lived nearby seven years ago. After a few opening remarks, she read several pages from the new book, and then took questions.

One person asked her about her readership: men, women, girls? Sittenfeld receives letters from readers of every ilk, but she surmised that many of her readers are women. She laughingly remarked that her audience consists of her family, her high school advisor, and a few strangers. Sure enough, she took questions from "Aunt Nancy" and "Aunt Sue."

The reading was held at the Coolridge Corner Theater, where sounds from surrounding theaters occassionly provided a soundtrack for the reading. After the Q & A we were all invited to the book store for a signing. This time I decided to pass. Not sure why. I suppose that the reality of packing all my books for the move back to South Bend is growing more present in my mind. I have accrued boxes of books already. My copy of Prep is back in South Bend and I wasn't quite ready to buy her latest. I will keep it in mind, however, as a future read.

Useful Links

Curtis Sittenfeld Official Website

May 22nd Time Article by Lev Grossman
Prepping for Love:
With The Man of My Dreams, novelist Curtis Sittenfeld
puts the literature back in chick lit.

Fnuny Stfuf

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht
I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid!
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a
wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat
ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses
and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae
the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef,
but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas
tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

posted by Janet

Cuernavaca, Mexico

Hello All! Just thought I would put a little sun into this cold March day! Here is an account our recent trip to Mexico (my first time there!).

L. and I visited Chile last year over the winter holiday. The summer sun was intoxicating. We vowed to head South during the winter months whenever possible. So when L. got an invitation to give a lecture in Cuernavaca, Mexico, we booked our flights. We even used frequent flyer miles.

We left Boston last Wednesday and returned Sunday night, flying in just after the huge blizzard that had shut down the airport for most of the day. Good timing.

While Chile is gorgeous, I found Mexico to be even more interesting. The food, the food, the food. Did I mention how good the food was? We ate well. And the tequila was almost too good to be tequila. Our favorite meal was at a roadside restaurant where we ate handmade tortillas cooked right before our eyes, grilled meats, family-style beans, cheese and salsa. We asked our driver to take us there after we visited the Xochicalco ruins.

Cuernavaca may not have a beach, but our hotel was paradise. The city is filled with beautiful gardens, a stunning cathedral, and there are several worthwhile side trips. Our trip to the ruins was outstanding. We even got a tour deep beneath the ruins inside an ancient observatory. Luckily we had a Spaniard with us who could provide translation.

After just a few days, we headed to Mexico City where we spent Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning. We dropped our bags at the charming La Casona hotel and taxied down to the historic center. There we toured the cathedral and then saw the Diego Rivera murals in the National Palace. We ran into a Hungarian tour group viewing the murals and got to listen in to the descriptions. Small world. As it was Saturday and market day, we also got to stroll through the chaotic and teeming outdoor markets near the main square.

After a nap that evening, we again headed toward the historic center. This time we wanted to eat and then find some dancing. Even though the salsa club we had heard about "did not exist" we pushed on through the eerily empty streets toward the Plaza Garibaldi.

It was near 11pm when we arrived and the square was packed with fully decked out mariachi bands. Food stands surrounded the square and smelled divine. People were singing, dancing, eating and having a really good time. We stopped in a club (one of the many surrounding the square) and even did our own special brand of salsa dancing until 2am.

Sunday morning we strolled through the Zona Rosa, near our hotel. It is packed out with a more "refined" crowd and tons of very elegant stores and places to eat. It must have been lively there too Saturday night, but we are glad that we ended up hanging with the mariachi instead.

A few days in Mexico is not enough and I hope to return some day. Preferably during January or February!

Kelley-Barabasi Wedding Party April 22

Hello All,

Hopefully by now you have gotten my notes in the mail. L. and I are very excited to invite you to the celebration of our vows. We will have a small wedding Friday night in Hutchinson. Then on Saturday, April 22nd. we would like to celebrate with our entire family and our friends as well at my parent's house. We will roast an entire pig and even have some Hungarian foods. Please join us and help welcome L., his son (who is ten and a half), and his family who will come from Transylvania for the occassion. Let me know if you have any questions! Check out our wedding website linked in the sidebar (on the right).

Best,

Janet

Save the Date!

The Kelley Family is having an Open House and Pig Roast on April 22nd!

Save the date! More info. to follow.....