going up

It seems like we get more than our share of teeter-totter events around this area. Maybe it’s the Beltway and the politics that bring out the disobedience in the youth, maybe not. Over the weekend we had our second round of silent dancers doing a memorial (I think the last occurrence was a few years back at the Lincoln Memorial). I’m mixed on the idea: silent dancing vs. interfering with others? The debate seems to be multi-faceted in that it’s hard to sort out whether the issue with police is really about protest, or a lack of a permit to protest. Maybe those are the same thing. I guess that if you’re silent, and not blocking or inhibiting anything, you shouldn’t need a permit. You can read the two posts at dcist.com (here and here). If push came to shove, I have no problem with silent dancing. If I were doing a tango or a waltz, that’d be okay, wouldn’t it?

One more thing for everyone to discuss. I have major issues with our slow and crappy elevators at school. Primarily: people who get on at floor 6, push the button for 7, and we already have 8 and 9 activated. Dude, fucking walk. Go to 8 and walk down a flight of stairs. That way you won’t even have to walk up the flight of stairs you should have walked up before pissing me off. Or, 8 of us get on at the ground floor and the first three floors selected are 6, 8, and 9. Some dude getting in with us hits 7 – and I punch him in the face. This doesn’t matter, does it? Of course, I work on the 12^th floor so stopping at every, single floor is beyond painful.

clearing out the house

I was adding a dinner party invite to our Google calendar this morning and I noticed this nugget sitting in the middle of Wednesday evening: Futon Person. That’s it; a complete entry.

I’ve spoke of the New School, where L. is at, in the past. From the first time The Eleven walked in about three years ago, I hoped I could go back in time and spend four years of H.S. there. I’d love to teach there if I had the skill set. A few weeks ago I was talking about Annapolis with a co-worker (Academy grad), and planning a visit, and as he drew a map he described the triangle that includes the Academy, some other corner, and St. John’s College. I’d never heard of St. John’s – at least this one – but the description sounded fantastic. Wow. If I were younger, and much more dedicated to college than I was in 1983 (and I am now), this would be the place. Simply amazing. Take a look. Now I have a H.S. and college in mind for my time-machine travels.

My company completed our move last weekend so we’ve settled in the new place (it is quite nice) over this first week. I’ve split driving and riding the bus this week, but the bus will be the long-term plan. It’s cheaper, takes longer, but ensures I can avoid any traffic flare ups.

About two weeks left in my current quarter at school, a short break, and then back into cooking classes. I’ll be working in the school’s restaurant Monday – Wednesday evenings. Half my time in the kitchen, half of my time spent in the front of the house. That should go well…

in session

I’m not a teacher. I have done quite a bit of instruction and training in the military and developed courseware while in the service and in civilian life; I have some idea on how information is absorbed. I have a very spotty academic record over my lifetime: strong in high school, horrible in college in the 1980s, very good in class work over the last decade. I’ve created a little ‘academic’ approach ideal that I gave to L. while she was here and passed along in less depth to some fellow (younger) students at AiW*.

What brings you this post is an e-mail about students and dropping out of school that was sent to Andrew Sullivan from a teacher/professor in California. Anything I might or could say about privilege (I had mine), economic standing, neighborhoods, family life, or learning issues would be mostly anecdotal and no doubt off base. My approach, which is mirrored in the professor’s grading process for remedial courses, is this: 70-80% of your grade is showing up. (I think 70% of life is simply showing up.) Those numbers aren’t necessarily a direct ratio to your can being in a chair, they are a combination of being present in mind and body. Trust me when I tell you that the number of students in my culinary program who routinely miss class is mindboggling: and this is an almost purely laboratory-based program. Also trust me when I tell you that my attending class record during my academic downfall was as bad, if not worse, than what I see now. I guess gray hair and wisdom help. Back to the percentages and what qualifies as “showing up”. Just for a few sentences I’m going to bypass how homework fits into this equation and address the time-and-place portion. If you’re in a class that will be meeting 30 times over a quarter (what I have right now) or 10 times in 10 weeks then your presence, the ‘attendance’ grade, can only be met by you having your sweet ass at class when it’s in session. The byproduct of that ‘attendance’ grade is that if you are there for every session of instruction, and you’re paying attention, you’ll learn the vast majority of what you need to know to pass nearly all of the assessments – and by passing I’m only talking about a number around 70%. With that 70% and your 100% attendance you’ll be just fine when a final grade is publish. (Consider a course where your grade is broken down this way: 25% from attendance and 75% from assessments [quizzes/exams]. If you have 100% attendance and a 70% average on assessments, you’re final grades is a 77.5%; that equates to a C+ on most standard grading scales.) When passing a course and moving along in an academic career is the goal than you’d be hard pressed to find a simpler method than simply showing up to class.

When homework is added to the equation then it simply becomes another cog in ‘showing up’ – a part of attendance. L. had some classes last semester that included one homework assignment every week, due on Fridays. Usually it was a ten problem/question worksheet but could have been a reading assignment that was the basis for classroom discussion (Oh! The attendance issue again). As those weekly chores were added to the grading scale there are severe penalties for not showing up: even at a 10% contribution to a final grade, if you only do half your homework then you’re dropping a half-grade from your final score by simply not showing up: turning in or doing that homework being part-and-parcel to being ‘in’ the class.

My point? Who knows, but it makes perfect sense to me. Why? Well, my Baking and Pastry class – when we are in the kitchen every class sessions – is 30 class dates over ten weeks. Our final grade is based on 2.5% for each class session: showing up, in the correct uniform, on time, and participating. That’s 75% of the final number and if you attend even 28 of those 30 classes (and get the aforementioned 70% on assessments) then you’re a lock for a B+ (87.5% - I won’t do the math again). Even with this knowledge from our syllabus and first night in class, at least half the class will end up with grades lower than what they think they deserve and will try to corner the instructor and ask why they didn’t get an A. And finally, any additional work you do beyond showing up, paying attention, and turning in your homework is simply a benefit and additional ammo if you are looking for a higher grade. Can you miss a class? Sure, but if you do, you’ll have to do twice as much work – based on that miss classes percentage – then you would have had to do if you’d simply showed up.

I’ve gone on long enough. If you got all the way to the end, and read the linked letter, then you’ve shown up and you get an A.

t

*AiW being the Art Institute of Washington. And, the shorter version of my speech is this: “Show up to class, dude.”

sing along

I have a lot of stuff rolling around in my head.

I have a dream of some project that will marry up some of my favorite songs to some of the art here in D.C. Consider it a podcast kind of thing that can be downloaded for viewing on your computer or added to your iPod for walking around town and thinking of me. It’s probably something that’s too big to get engaged in but I’m going to give it a try. It manifested itself while I was watching It Might Get Loud, a documentary with Jack White, The Edge, and Jimmy Page talking about guitar-ing. It’s a long(er) story of how it developed in my head and that’ll have to wait until I have a good go on the project.

We had dinner last Friday night at the Greek Taverna with the CorKat and enjoyed an outdoor table. They have a trellis (?) / deck cover that has wine grapes growing on it so I inquired about stealing a bunch to start a natural bread dough starter at home: just flour, water, and grapes. The grapes provide the local fungus that gives the starter its lift/yeast but you have to give it three or four days of growth to get it rolling. I’ve been feeding it each morning on the way out the door (30g of flour and 30ml of water) so I suddenly feel as if there’s a dog I must walk each day. I’ll give it another four or five days before making a first loaf and then work/feed it on and off to keep it alive and happy. (It can be refrigerated for two or three days at a time without feeding.) I’ll keep everyone updated because this is surely something that will slide you onto the edges of your seats.

I have my B & P midterm tonight and tomorrow with not much worry: brioche, biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, pie, and yeast rolls. We’ll prep everything tonight and bake tomorrow night. What’s that you say? No laminated breads? Correct. You can’t really ask four-week-in ‘bakers’ to rack out croissants and pastries at a mid-term. My team will do just fine. Did I tell you that we did ballotines and galatines in Garde Manger last week? Don’t see that everyday…

The homestead is still quiet, sans children, so our evenings are at peace.

I could open up a pile of rage at these days’ events but I’ll hold it in for now.

Who needs it?

t

vegetables. people.

I wanted to throw in a bit on knife cuts (for culinary students) and triage. What we get at mid-terms and finals is some variant of the eight primary cuts and a couple of other, specialized cuts. Last night we were give 2 oz. each of large, medium, and small dice; batonnet, julienne, and fine julienne; brunoise and fine brunoise; some rondelles and four tourne potatoes. Aside from the potatoes, all the other cuts were from carrots. We were only given 15 minutes, including peeling, to get product on the table for grading. A few things have to happen if you’re going to make it. First, you need a plan for the order of cuts – don’t get into your medium dice before doing your julienne and smaller cuts. Second, you will have to sacrifice the 2 oz. portion of the outline if you’re going to have any chance of getting ten cuts on display. As long as you get a goodly stack of each on your tray – even if not 2 oz, particularly when you aren’t in a fundamentals class – you’ll be fine. You have to know your chef instructor and know that he’s simply going to finger through the piles briefly and give you a grade. Once you have everything in line, start rolling, don’t panic, get product out. Lots of students in my class don’t work the triage idea and either don’t do the planning, or are too focused on absolutely perfect fine brunoise; these are 1/16” squares cut from the carrots. (Tallying 2 full ounces of fine brunoise alone, in 15 minutes, is nearly impossible). One student spent so much time measuring her stack of julienne carrots that she only ended up with two cuts on the board – not a great score. I got all ten with my tourne potatoes ripped out in the final two minutes; I always hold them for last. She got 2/10, I got 9.5/10. Lots of others didn’t get through the cuts and that’s always a problem because the planning and managing of your is pretty important. Maybe they’ll learn. Maybe I just recognize it better because that type of prioritization comes fairly naturally to me.

t

start your engine

I broke out the old Jacobsen mower this afternoon for the first hell-and-down-and-up our yard for the new season. It didn't want to start up so much but managed to finally turnover and keep 'running' at about half-gasp for long enough to cut the mountain. A few things to consider from your mechanically-handicapped author: the mower was rolled in the shed at the end of last summer, the gas wasn't emptied, the oil was - well, who knows - the blade ain't never been sharpened in 2+ years, I think the Holley double pumper 750 is gummed up, and well, it's just a $20 used thing that I'm hoping gets through one more summer. It used to be propelled, long before we bought it, so I'm pushing a non-propelled, heavy-ass beast up and down the hill on The Hilltop. In betwixt my sets of 10 engine cord pulls and my resting (it's both aerobic and anaerobic!) I was taking a good, solid look at the mower - eyeing it up-and-down, bending low to check on the shocks, pushing this and pulling at that wire, messing with the throttle, and adjusting the catching bag. Anyone driving by would certainly have thought me a man of tools and means. Of course, what was going through my head was a memory of when Buzz (and I, observing) worked on a two-stroke mower back in England (are all mowers two-stroke?) Buzz was pulling plugs, checking carbs, and generally explainin' to me all the tricks of, what he dubs, "the World's simplest motor" - as if that meant diddily to a dolt like me. I also thought that it would be great to have Buzz down the street to come over and fix my shit. That's what I really wanted; I didn't give a rat's ass about knowing how to do something. Maybe if he pops over he can give me a haircut, play a saw, lose at Yahtzee, and then knock out four of five games of NHL 2000 on the computer. Well, none of that happened and I mowed the grass with a wheezing, sputtering, non-propelling relic of the 80s.

I'm back into class beginning tomorrow night - Tuesday through Thursday nights this round - but I'll have my weekends off for sleeping in. I was able to buy two of my textbooks via Kindle (I'm borrowing L's) so I save a load of cash. I'm in Nutrition (online), American Cuisine, and Latin Cuisine. Looking forward to another round.

The screened in porch is about 90% complete with one more weirdly-shaped roof panel and one screen remaining. Once that's done we'll do some sealing between pieces and call it summer.

I have interesting issues to bring up on Obama and drilling, most of which is stolen for X, but that'll be for another day.

By the way, that's not my mower up above, I'm just too lazy to go take a digital picture at 9pm

t

freaky old shows...and people.

We got back to quiz night last night and did better, point-wise, than normal but so did everyone else. My claims to fame are two-fold, as they would be if they are claims: first, I made X and Phil stick with the Faye Dunaway answer on the "who is this" picture round (it was a 50s or 60s black-and-white photo). I only claim stubbornness and not knowledge on that one. My second point was during the 'Life and Times of William Shatner' round when the question was something along the lines of "on this 1965 show that included blah blah and talking trees, William Shatner played a dancing onion." I immediately came up with H.R. Pufnstuf, to which they both looked at me as if I were radioactive; they'd never heard of it. Of course, what else in 1965 could have talking trees and dancing onions? Yep, I was solid gold.

Last Saturday night we had a bit of a D.C. blizzard and there was some wonder on whether or not I'd have class. We were scheduled to finish up soups with a shrimp bisque, New England clam chowder, and a consomme. In the end, only 7 of the 20 showed up and so we worked 10 lbs. of shrimp into two gallons of bisque and two gallons of chowder. Once we got that sorted we finished the other 4 lbs. of shrimp into scampi and a very light breaded shrimp. I was shrimped out at the end of the night but it was a great class - loads of room in the kitchen and the chef instructor seemed to really enjoy the time. We're moving into poultry and some butchering this week (this a one-quarter, eleven-week, classical techniques course that runs about 11 hours per week.)

Both gals in the house are knocked down with sickness. L is reading in her room and X is laid out on the other living room pillow area. Both will get doused with NyQuil and sent to bed any moment.

Love to all.

t

P.S. I suspect all will be home tomorrow as we have another 4-6 inches of snow in progress.