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The Cool Aunt Makes Cookies with the Kids

December 22, 2008 / Katie L. Carroll

One of the blessings I have been able to count on this holiday season is that my nine-year-old nephew still thinks hanging out with his old aunt is fun. We have movie nights, we cook together, we talk books. It’s all good, but I know it won’t last. He’ll be a teenager soon (too soon!), and teenagers don’t think their aunts—even not-so-old ones—are cool.

We recently got together at my sister’s house to make Christmas cookies. Surprisingly, my three-year-old niece and two-year-old nephew abandoned their Christmas video to come help us.

My little nephew got a bit anxious as we were cooking and decorating the cookies. A gingerbread woman and a gingerbread man were the only raw cookies left on the table. While I helped my niece with the sprinkles and my sister helped my older nephew with the frosting, my little nephew helped himself to the gingerbread lady.

He boldly proclaimed, “I’m gonna lick the lady!”

Now, my little nephew speaks very clearly, and my sister and I both heard him and understood him. At any given time in my sister’s house, one of the kids is bound to be making some noise. Usually it’s quiet singing or talking to no one in particular, but this time my little nephew was actually making an announcement. My sister and I made the mistake of not taking his announcement seriously. So, sure enough, he licked the gingerbread lady.

Then he said, “I’m gonna lick the man!”

Before my sister or I could stop him, he leaned over the table and licked the gingerbread man. Well, there’s no sense in wasting licked cookies, so we cooked them up and wrote his name on them with edible gel.

Here’s a few of our creations:

Seeing An Upside-Down Frown Face in the Sky

December 13, 2008 / Katie L. Carroll

Lately the evening sky has been offering up many spectacular views. On December 1st, the world was treated with the sight of the crescent moon, Venus, and Jupiter in close conjunction. My pictures didn’t really come out, so I will refer you to this link (clearly this Brian Combs is way better at taking night pictures than I am!). His pictures show about what it looked like from my neck of the woods, but here’s a great gallery of what people all over the world saw.

As you may remember from my Rainbow Connection post, I enjoy watching the sky for natural phenomena. Not everyone cares about this, but my circle of friends/relatives also seem to enjoy these wonders. I know because my mom called me to tell me about the celestial conjunction (my dad had told her about it) to make sure I didn’t miss it. I did have to kind of coax my husband off the coach to head to the beach with me, but he was a good sport about it and he did thank me for showing him the unique sight.

A few days later, I hung out with my nine-year-old nephew. I asked him if he had seen the conjunction. He said he had seen it and that it looked like an “upside-down frown face” (again check out Brian Combs’s photos to see what he means). I laughed because that was exactly what I had said. My husband was like, “You mean a happy face.” And I was like, “No, I mean an upside-down frown face.”

I was actually quite pleased to learn my nine-year-old nephew and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to looking at the world. After all, much of my writing is geared towards kids exactly his age. (And, in my defense, he is quite bright!) He also showed his perceptiveness and dry wit when he asked me to guess what “grandma” (my mom—don’t be mad, mom, I write this with great affection) said about the conjunction. He told me, “She said, ‘I’ll be dead the next time that happens!'” That’s such a thing that my mom would say—probably half serious, but with a bit of humor as well—that my nephew and I just cracked up about it.

And last night, I was treated to an awesome sight while driving down I-95. Amidst a scene of black asphalt and cold steel, I sensed a light peaking out of the clouds. Only the light was on the opposite side of the setting sun. As I stared at the clouds, a humongous full moon emerged from. It was so low in the sky, I swear if I had kept going straight, I would’ve driven right onto it.

I called my husband to tell him to check it out. He was also on the road and saw it too. He was (pretended to be?) as impressed as I was…he really is a good sport! When I got home, I grabbed my camera and headed to the beach. The moon wasn’t quite as low and huge anymore, but I still got some decent pictures of it emerging from the clouds. It was very cool, despite the fact that a full moon on a Friday night is something we should all be wary of.

A Personal Reaction to Vincent Van Gogh’s THE STARRY NIGHT

December 4, 2008 / Katie L. Carroll

The next—sorry to all of you who were hoping it would be the last—installment of the over analyzation of Van Gogh’s paintings features The Starry Night at the Yale Art Gallery. (See “A New Perspective on the Classic Van Gogh Painting SUNFLOWERS” and “A Study of Vincent Van Gogh’s THE NIGHT CAFE” for others.)

My initial reaction to The Starry Night was that it is, in a word, small. Now, Van Gogh is known as an impressionist who created relatively small works, but really, The Starry Night isn’t much bigger than the medicine cabinet in my bathroom. My theory is that because Van Gogh was so poor most of his life, he didn’t have the money to buy enough paint for larger paintings. If you’ve ever seen one of his works in person, you can see that he really did glob the paint on the canvas. I mean, we’re talking about a guy who couldn’t afford to buy food (and supposedly ate paint for nourishment on occasion), so it’s no surprise his masterpieces are kind of small.

The colors of this painting didn’t strike me the same way the colors of Sunflowers eventually did. The setup of the display didn’t really allow viewers to get too far away from the painting, so that could have had something to do with it (I had to get three rooms away from Sunflowers to see it properly). Still, I had been hoping the yellow of the swirling stars would pop off the dark blue sky a bit more. The painting was mounted on a yellow wall, and this may have altered the colors as well. At the very least, I found the wall distracting.

I asked the usher about the wall, and he said something about how a lot of thought went into choosing the background color, blah, blah blah (I don’t think he really had any idea why it was yellow)! The background may have actually taken away from the way the stars were supposed to pop off the blue sky. My experience with Sunflowers taught me that an unlikely color (like one not in the painting or one that is just hinted at) might work better than one that is already dominant.

This thought led me to take a closer look at the other featured painting called Cypresses. This is a view of the same cypress trees that are in The Starry Night, but it shows them during the day and in a slightly different viewpoint. These colors really popped off the canvas (much like the colors of A Wheatfield, with Cypresses did when I saw it in The National Gallery in London). Cypresses was mounted on a yellow wall as well, and frankly it didn’t do much for it at all. I decided a pale pink wall would’ve really amped up the colors. (I mentioned this to a pair of ladies who were also at the exhibit, and they wholeheartedly agreed with me.)

Then I began to wonder how The Starry Night would look with a pale pink background or even an off-white one. Colors that aren’t really in the painting, but ones that wouldn’t match or clash with it, ones that wouldn’t distract me so much, ones that would have made for a much more subtle background. Too bad I’ll never know…unless The Musuem of Modern Art in N.Y.C. has it on a pale pink background (I doubt it!).

Now, one of my favorite things about The Starry Night is the little village down the hill in the bottom right-hand corner of the painting. It’s dark out, but there’s a few lights shining from the village, indicating a few folks are still up and about. Whenever I see prints of The Starry Night, the village seems so alive to me. I can almost hear the sounds of it echoing up the hill. Seeing this painting in person took a little away from the liveliness of the village.

I’m not criticizing Van Gogh for this because I think it had to do more with the way the painting was framed; you could see the edges of the painting, where the paint ends and the canvas shows. I’m not sure why someone would frame it like that. Maybe so none of the painted part was covered at all. It disappointed me, though. Instead of feeling like I was really there myself—or maybe peering out a window from a little cottage up on the hill—I was just looking at a painting. It took a little of the magic out of it.

Still, the painting was amazing. I definitely glad I finally saw it in person. I can’t wait to see more Van Gogh works. I’ll even settle for going to London again to see Sunflowers!

Dropping Homemade Apple Pie

November 30, 2008 / Katie L. Carroll

While perusing Lisa Yee’s blog, I came across her post about spilling rice pudding all over the streets of NYC. Alas, this made me think of the time my mom and I were making apple pies. Now, I play soccer and consider myself a pretty coordinated person, but when it comes to cooking and holding breakable things, I am a bit of a klutz. My mom once had me carry a giant glass bowl filled with salad to a party. It never made it there. I dropped the bowl and spilled the salad all over the road while I was trying to close the car door. Another time I mixed (not with the electric mixer, mind you…I was mixing with just a wooden spoon) a ceramic bowl full of cookie dough right off the table.

These little incidents were nothing compared to the apple-pie debacle. So my mom and I had peeled, sliced, seasoned, and placed the apples in the crusts. I believe she was making one pie and I was making two. I also believe some of the apples were ones that I had picked with my own two hands (apple-picking is a great New England activity for the fall). The pies were baked, and all I had to do was take them out of the oven and let them cool. Then I would be able to eat my awesome delicious homemade apple pies. Easier said than done.

Because we were making three pies, there wasn’t enough glass pie pans for them all, so one of my pies had to go in a tin pan. So I’ve got the big awkward pot holders in my hands, I reach into the oven, and I pull out the pie in the tin pan. I have to walk maybe four steps to the kitchen table to place the pie on the cooling rack. Well, somewhere during that four steps the pie pan decided to fold in on itself, slip through my hands, and fall on the ground. Now this sucks, but a squished apple pie still might be edible (and really yummy!). Only the pie pan somehow flipped upside down and deposited my apple pie on the floor.

I pretty much lost it. A hot mess of apple mush on the kitchen floor is not exactly edible (though still potentially yummy…but possibly with some kitchen-floor extras in it). I growled in frustration and stomped into the living room. I know I’m a klutz when it comes to breakables, so I was being really careful with the pies. How was I supposed to anticipate that the pie pan was going to fail me? It wasn’t just that I wasn’t going to be able to eat the pie, either. I had spent all that time and energy on these stupid apples; my hand were still aching from all the slicing and peeling, and it was all a waste. The pie was a mess on the floor and not a delicious treat in my belly.

Thankfully, my mom cleaned up the mess, so I didn’t have to deal with the pie any longer (thanks, Mom!). I ranted for a little while about calling up the tin pan company and complaining about their faulty products, but of course I never actually did that. This taught me the important lesson of never using cheap, crappy tin pans for something as important as homemade apple pie. Luckily, this year’s apple pies have all ended up where they were supposed to (i.e. in someone’s belly). Although, I may never get over losing that one pie!

A Study of Vincent Van Gogh’s THE NIGHT CAFE

November 21, 2008 / Katie L. Carroll

So here it is (finally!): the beginning of a follow-up to this post about Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting. You didn’t think I had forgotten, did you? Sometimes I just need a little time to ruminate/procrastinate before the literary genius is released.

Anyway, I finally visited the Yale University Art Gallery to see the special Van Gogh exhibit, which included The Starry Night, in the Modern and Contemporary Art section.

This area is also home to my very favorite Van Gogh painting The Night Café. The bright reds, greens, and yellows are almost harsh to the eyes; the colors both contrast and compliment the lonely, ghostly themes of the painting. At first glance, the painting is simple, but the more you look at it, the more you notice the odd proportions and angles of the room and its contents.

The people are hunched over. The ceiling lamps mimic stars, but they don’t have the same warmth of the stars in Van Gogh’s night skies. The bouquet at the far end of the room is in full bloom, but behind it the table is full of amber bottles of liquor. The clock reads that it’s very early in the morning as if the inhabitants of the painting have nothing worth going home to. The drape in the back doorway falls in the shape of an eerie figure, who is watching—maybe judging—the others in the room. I could go on forever about this painting (clearly I’ve spent way too much time thinking about it).

It was to this standard of (over) thinking that The Starry Night was held. Alas, I must leave you with a cliffhanger here as I ruminate/procrastinate a little more! I know, the suspense created by impressionist art is overwhelming you, isn’t it?