Maddening Men

Mad Men is a bundle of complicated, self-conscious contradictions. What really draws in viewers, more so than the cute clothes, the clever dialogue, the top-notch filming and editing, the sex appeal, or the humor, is this paradoxical representation of the 50’s in our contemporary time. Strauss and Howe say that millennials are a more intelligent, knowledgeable group. We’ve concluded in class that we know how the game works, and therefore appreciate complexity, honesty, irony, and inventiveness. Mad Men brings all this to the table, along with bloody marys.

The pilot’s issue on how to continue marketing cigarettes in the growing fear of cancer perfectly illustrates my point. As millennial viewers, we know the history of the cigarette and tobacco industries, and the truth that smoking is addictive and often fatal. I think the percentage of smokers in our generation has actually decreased since our parents. Watching this episode, I laughed at a lot of the dialogue, like, “I’m not selling guns, I’m selling tobacco!” The characters aren’t trying to be funny; they’re trying to be dramatic. But the lines serve as black humor for the viewers, who know retrospectively just how silly and wrong some of these opinions are. I’m pretty sure tobacco kills more people each year than guns do in the US.

Gender roles also add much to the black humor in the show. The women clearly exist on a lower social rung than the men, who get to make sexual comments and moves on the women who work for them. The business men cheat on their wives and the doctor reprimands the women he gives contraceptives to, for having loose morals. Even the women subject themselves to this sexual harassment within their own gender, judging each other by how thin their ankles are and the sweaters they wear. These sex and gender comments made me laugh to, but more in an “I can’t believe they just said that” way. Here, again, Mad Men grabs the viewer through shocking contradiction, showing us just how bold and sexist their characters behave in such a backwards time.

Then again, I wonder how contemporary men respond to the gender roles – do they see the same complexities I, a millennial girl, does? Or do they just respond, “yeah, man, get some!” After Tyler’s presentation yesterday where he tried to prove that the song “Violate that Bitch” by Lil B pushes gender norms, I’m guessing the latter is more likely.

Paperjam!

If you're like me or I'm like all of you, we've got so much to do before finals week. Papers, check. Last-minute meetings and interviews, uh huh. Still figuring the summer out, oh yeah. More papers, yep. Declaring a minor and thinking about the year after graduation and choir concerts and more papers and storage and more papers? AHHH! On top of that the weather's nice.

I don't have time to take pretty, kick ass pictures. I hardly have time to shower these days. But here are a few links, some of them useful, some of them fun, some of them totally bizarre, that may or may not get you through this last week of school.

http://oed.com/ Maybe the British are know-it-alls, but our english comes from their Chaucer and Milton, so you gotta give it to them for the OED. Rule of thumb: Don't use a word in an academic paper that doesn't exist in the OED. Break this rule occasionally, in an ironic, thoughtful way. Site this source - teachers will love you.

http://foodporndaily.com/ Click. Drool. Repeat. What a great slogan. And since their are no recipes (that I'm aware of), you can't get too distracted.

 http://www.tastespotting.com/search/grilled+cheese/1 TasteSpotting on the other hand has tons of recipes, since every picture leads to a different food blog. Let this page full of grilled-cheeses inspire you in Proctor Dining Hall. My suggestion is to branch out from the official panini bar. Get thick rye bread from the soup station, thin apples slices from the fruit bowls, cheddar and swiss mix, a little cinnamon from the teas...

http://wordreference.com/ Tu cherches un mot, cheri? Voici, la solution!

http://fuckyeahcutehair.tumblr.com/page/1 If you're one of those people who can't get work done unless you feel cute and done-up, (hey, don't tease), but your mind's too fried to think about hair right now, check out these pictures for inspiration.

http://www.lilycat.net/taurus.html Everything you've ever wanted to know about yourself from your horoscope. Trust me, this is the real deal. Even my ailments were correct. Makes you wonder if the planets really do affect your birth.

http://niccageaseveryone.blogspot.com/ There are no words for this.

Pretty Perfect Little Liars

I must say I had higher hopes for Pretty Little Liars. I’ll go easy on the show since it was the pilot, and pilots have trouble introducing characters, plot, setting, and atmosphere all at once, so if felt a little rough. Beginning the show with music by a woman vocalist reminds me of the way Gilmore Girls also used women singers to amp up the feminist, estrogen-driven plotlines. The setting reminds me of The Vampire Diaries, with the classic green lawn, Victorian house, yellow-school-bus-high school, red-fall-trees look. Even though the town seems too pretty and stereotypically “American,” to evoke a sense of originality or geography (in contrast to Veronica Mars, which clearly depicts a very specific type of public school in California), this setting works well with science-fiction and mystery shows, so Rosewood’s generic feeling is a good choice.

But it was pretty hard to stomach all the beautiful people. Not only are they good – looking, but every teenage girl comes from the same petite, heart-shaped-face mold. I think ABC Family is trying to lure in the same crowd as Gossip Girl, which is why they picked pretty actors and trained them to all walk slowly and sexily in short skirts, but come on, at least Gossip Girl seems to have variety in body shape. Even with males, the two young love interests look like the same Prince Charming – I can tell them apart only when the talk, since one has an accent. The show misses diversity somehow even though it displays different colors of skin, which is almost more off-putting to me. That seems like a pretty bad way to help young girls accept diverse body images. The outcome of all these beautiful people in this pretty little town is an insular feeling; everything feels aesthetically homogenized.

A key difference between Lily in Veronica Mars and Alison in Pretty Little Liars is that Lily always seemed to express affection for the people she appears to. When Veronica or Duncan have flashbacks and imaginary visions of Lily, we get a sense that Lily loved her friends. This love compels Veronica to solve the mystery. So far in Pretty Little Liars, Alison seems controlling of her friends in an antagonistic, self-indulgent way, using them simply to exert control. Now in the present, “she” sends them threatening, catty, mean-spirited messages. I wonder if this opposite approach to friendship will still compel the girls to solve Alison’s disappearance. Perhaps in her absence they will become close friends, like Veronica and Logan, but this time because they’ll realize how close they can be to each other without a tyrant in the way.

I’m curious to see how this show plays out the rest of the season in terms of borrowing key themes from Gossip Girl, Veronica Mars, The Vampire Diaries, and Desperate Housewives. I don’t think this plagiarism is bad, if PLL uses themes as a jumping off point to create an original story and new discourse for the millennial viewers, but if they use these themes simply as a cheap way to pull in nostalgic fans from other TV shows, I’ll be bummed.

A Kick-Booty Easter (that's for you, Jesus)

I love Easter. I love waking up early with a bubbly feeling inside my belly because today is special, and tiptoeing into Elise’s room to wake her up, (she’s a little grumpy) and together we wake up Jessa, (she’s way too sleepy, so we let her be), and then traipsing down the stairs. Everything looks the same. But somewhere out there is my yellow wicker Easter basket, filled with eggs holding chocolate carrots and jelly-beans, pretty bracelets, and something funkier, like a glimmery mermaid comb. All I have to do now is find it.

But I’m not six anymore. (Actually, I did this all the way up to 17). And my mom can’t fly to Vermont to hide my Easter basket in the French House, or curl my hair into ringlets for church. I can’t eat my dad’s tasty rack of lamb and strawberry salad, nor play board games with the Grimes and croquet in the yard.

The weird thing about getting older is that I still miss the holiday traditions from my childhood, and reenacting them on my own out here obviously feels different, since the most important ingredient – the family – is missing. But I’ve figured out these past few years ways to keep holidays happy and meaningful at college.

1) Spend it with friends. Friends are my family out here. And they’ve probably felt the same nostalgic confusion when they faced their first father-less Thanksgiving or bubby-less Passover. 2) Pull in your favorite customs, throw in your roomies’ original twist, and don’t be afraid to revise things. That’s how you end up making your own traditions anyway, when you start a new family. 3) Call your parents. Tell them you love them.

4) Without wanting to sound preachy – it is nice to take the holiday’s message to heart. Easter is about joy, rebirth and salvation. With the school year coming to a close and spring weather seriously just around the corner, (it better be), try to have dinner with someone you thought was dead (or just buried in the library for three days), salvage your  poor grade in Botany class, and do something cheerful for the sake of good fun.

I went to mass this morning with my friend Brittany at St. Mary’s on the corner. Besides the regular townies, all dressed up in light dresses, ties, and cute crying babies on their shoulders, many college kids showed up, some with parents that must have driven pretty far and pretty early for family time. Afterward we met up with more friends, hunted for chocolate peanut-butter eggs in the damp backyard, and then headed off to Storm Café for brunch. Mmmm mmm delicious. And now as I write this I’m eating dark chocolate eggs and thinking about what a great day this is.

Will Schuster and Glee lessons

Will Schuster is kind of an anomaly. He’s a late Gen Xer, probably in his early thirties. He’s trying to relive his high school glee days, and relate to millennial kids that he coaches, which sometimes means even acting like a millennial. He dances, looks, and talks like a boy bander, a type of celebrity singer popular when I was in middle school.. Justin Timberlake, anyone? (I just checked. Justin Timberlake was born in 1981, so he’s a Gen X’er too, who’s fanbase was from the generation after him). 

I suddenly realized during our screening that Will represents those people that don’t fit into these perfect millennial cycles Strauss and Howe depict. Sometimes it seems like our whole course is based on the presumption that a millennial generation exists* but I don’t think Will Schuster fits into the Gen Xer status or the millennial status, since he’s a blend of both, and what’s more, he chooses to be this blend. He got agency, acting on his desire to relate to kids and get along with his peers. He doesn’t fit the mold, he makes his own.

On a separate note, Doty’s article criticizes the “easy liberalism” of Glee – that it pretends to be liberal, proposing all the easily accepted ideas of the millennial generation, like racial and sexual diversity, without really going beneath the surface. In the first episode, only Rachel and Fin get their childhood stories told. But Mercedes does bring up the point that she doesn’t want to be “Kelly Rowland,” so at least the show doesn’t always ignore its biases.

In season 2 episode 16, I didn’t notice a whole lot of the improvements in letting the marginal characters have more of a voice… but I do think things have changed. Kurt’s story is just as important as Rachel’s, but I hated the scene with the three judges where they discussed gays – it felt too forced, as if the real millennials out there watching Glee don’t understand how to be open to homosexuality unless the program feeds it to them. We’re young, not babies. When TV proposes an issue like sexuality, and then provides the answer, there’s no room for discussion. So I think even though Glee is paying more attention to the lessons in season 2, it did a better job creating dialogue by remaining a little ambiguous in season 1.

*in class we’ve discussed how these cyclical generations cannot be proven and aren’t even relevant sometimes to the real world. Nevertheless, certain trends do appear.

H20 Polo with the Purple Cows

On the surface everything glistens with the drops of tiny water molecules that spray the air as girls pass the golden ball, calling out names and positions. Underneath the water is a whole other story. Sharp claws dig into calves and heels kick spleens in an attempt to inconspicuously drown the adversary and steal the ball under the eyes of the white-garbed refs. If each sport had an equivalent jungle fray, water polo would be the ultimate catfight – both are swift, powerful, aggressive, and curiously feline. And women play dirty.

This weekend I went down to Williamstown to watch my sister’s water polo championship tournament. Luckily Middlebury doesn’t compete in the same league so I fully aligned myself with the purple cows. My sister the co-captain plays set, the roughest position on offence, and unfortunately had gotten kicked in the chest earlier in the week. She toughed out the first two games on Saturday even though it hurt to lift her arms. I wouldn’t have known any better – in their second game she scored 3 of their teams 9 goals, beating Boston University by a point.

By nighttime she was done for. It turns out she had cracked some cartilage and had to sit the rest out, frustrated that she couldn’t help her team out this morning, or even cheer since it hurt too much. But on the bright side, there’s always next year, when another teammate won’t have mono. I think they’ll become even more competitive. Meanwhile, the men’s water polo team doesn’t have enough players, so Elise and some other girls train and compete on their team too. Girl-power, man.

I had a great time avoiding homework, watching sports, and learning more about the kick ass-ness of water polo. Elise explains, “On defense it’s all about doing illegal things and trying to get away with it, and on offense, it’s all about pretending that your defender is doing illegal things to you.” Basically, if you’re not breaking the rules, you don’t know how to play.

Noir is Back

After reading Stein’s article about Millennial Noir, I started picking up on specific differences between types of noir in the Veronica Mars episode and the Gossip Girl Episode. Stein says that noir today is either nostalgic or connotative.

Let’s take a look at Veronica Mars first. I loved the scene where Keith comes into the kitchen and starts imitating Humphrey Bogart’s rough, low drawl. Veronica calls him “Phillip Marlowe,” making a reference to the 1920’s detective that Bogart embodies in “The Big Sleep.” (It’s a great example of a traditional noir, full of black shadows, many sexually ouvert women, gunshots, and dirty money…). This kind of noir is obviously nostalgic, and not only does it make viewers like me feel intelligent about the reference, and thus feel more intimately connected with Veronica and Keith, but it also legitimizes the teen detective show as following in the same tradition, 60 years later.

In Gossip Girl, Chuck goes on a hunt for a mysterious femme fatale woman who ends up double-crossing him. This also represents the nostalgic noir, especially lighting-wise: Chuck’s only memories of the previous night are dark, shadow-filled glimpses of a rich mansion lighted by candlesticks.

A good example of the connotative noir – noir that calls on old noir techniques in order to enhance the intrigue – is in little details of the Veronica Mars episode: constant ambulance sirens float through the windows of Keith’s office, which through green and red lighting has a gritty, ugly, and almost surreal feel to it. Wanda invokes the double-crosser by hiding an ugly, corrupt side of herself from Veronica while simultaneously pretending to save the miserly. And Logan represents the corruption and confusion of the rich, by being both the snobby, superior classmate who uses his fame to get what he wants, and being victimized by the affects of the money that has corrupted his parents.

College Community Chorus

One thing I’ve missed most since leaving home for college is singing. I’m definitely not an American Idol, but I’d taken classical singing lessons in high school, joined the Chorale senior year, and even had my own solo singing a Negro spiritual. And after swim practice, I always sang in the shower. It helps relieve stress, I swear.

Freshman year I got placed in the women’s Glee choir, but (and here I may ruin your fantasy of the glittery, energy-injecting Glee club Fox presents), I just didn’t dig singing old songs on school nights from cold benches, trying to make my sore throat land extraordinary A sharps. I missed my voice teacher, the wonderful Cathy Goto, and male tenors and basses who would have smoothed out the shrill Rachel Berry-like soprano next to me. (Every choir has one).

Even singing in the shower was out; I doubt anyone on my hall would have appreciated my rendition of Mick Jagger’s “Miss You.” So when my friend Sam asked me this semester if I wanted to join Middlebury’s College Community Chorus, as skeptical as I was about singing with old fogeys from town, I said yes.

And I love it. Every Sunday night, I pack myself into a group of mostly 50 -70 year-old men and women, and sing away. Madrigals from the 16^th century. Traditional folk songs like Shenandoah. My favorites are three Morten Lauridsen songs from Nocturnes—as smooth as honey, I imagine they drift out of the cracks of Mead Chapel and then are sucked swiftly away by the darkness.

Besides the gospel song (why oh why do choir directors think gospels are fun? The repetition feels I’m slowly drilling a screw into my head), I love wrapping up the week this way, letting sound waves carry away whatever heaviness and stress I’ve been feeling. It doesn’t matter how good any of us are, cause believe me, I’ve definitely heard better. But we’re not bad. And that’s really not what it’s about for us. I’m inspired by watching these Vermonters who come to every rehearsal and find a way to be a part of the community – they’re still young at heart.

emBODYed in twilight

I thought the Twilight article on sexuality was pretty interesting to read, which made some insightful interpretations from the book about the message of the female body and sex. However, I have a hang-ups with one argument:

In the 4^th book, Bella, who has wanted to become a vampire ever since she started dating Edward, finally transforms. 

McGeough explains, “Underneath the theme of romance is the story of a girl who wants to belong, and through bodily transformations, Bella is able to find her place of belonging…. Bella’s easy transition into a new body suggests girls can grow into their bodies and have positive experiences with, through, and because of their bodies.

Is McGeough serious? Are we supposed to believe that in becoming a vampire, which is a violent, painful, near-death procedure reminiscent of all-over plastic surgery gone wrong, Bella finds belonging? I doubt young girls take this as a message of learning to grow into their bodies. Instead, I think this message tells a story of a teen doesn’t ever learn too embrace her body nor see the beautiful in it that others can see. Reversely, she may encourage young teens to buy into plastic surgery, bio-cosmetics, tanning booths, diet pills… in order to “fix” what they think is wrong about their bodies. In fact, Bella’s obsessive desire to become a vampire in order to “belong” with Edward shows that she probably places far too much emphasis on appearance instead of personality. She doesn’t comment much on how she feels about Edward’s own damnation – she simply thinks something that looks that good must be good to be with.

I hated the film’s decision to cast Kristen Stewart as Bella (back when I actually was into the book series…). Mostly I found her far too apathetic and disengaged. I couldn’t place myself in her position – Stephanie Meyer wrote Bella as someone detailed enough to be sensitive, proud, and sad, but also vague enough that most girl readers could become Bella momentarily as they read from her point of view (and thus why so many girls fell in love with the symbol Edward Cullen). But Stewart doesn’t have enough charm.  

Body-wise, she seems to lack one – I don’t mean to say that girls aren’t allowed to have stick-straight legs and pointy faces, but book Bella says, “I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete.” This Bella lacks the softness that could add sensuality, but I especially wonder if the filmmakers played on this generation’s unhealthy obsession with skinny models as examples of beauty, in order to present an appealing Bella to teen girls.

But to end on a positive note: In the film’s make out scene, Bella shows her desire for experiencing sexual pleasure, much like in the books, as McGeough points out. Bella says she’s less “strong” than Edward since he stops first, controlling himself so he doesn’t bite her. But I always took these types of scenes in the books, and more obviously in the movie, as a way of showing Bella’s power, and therefore strength, over Edward, in being able to so easily seduce him, and make him worried about going too far.

Jet Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag

Three hours of sleep since friday

                 too much sun exposure

                                 missing the tamtameroonikins,
not to mention my pads, the beach, warm humid air
I physically can't write anything more than this: moi moi

Roaches, Pedis, and Cults

None of my friends from high school are back on the aina this week for spring break. But here is the reason why it’s worth flying through 6 time zones, on 3 separate planes, with 1 major jet-lag, to get home for spring break: the fam.

You doubt me? Fine, I’ll admit that not everyone has pads* like mine. Did you’re mom come running into the kitchen this morning to kill a three-inch cockroach with a paper towel and her bare palm? Probs not. But here are some ways to make a family-filled weekend an ass-kickin’ fiesta.

My sis and I kicked off our first day back by kicking off our slippas** and getting pedis with the maj. I had no idea pedis involve back messaging chairs. Now I have a jewel on my toe for the first time and I can’t stop staring. (Shout out to Quan my boy, a midkid who’s mom owns the nail salon. Quan, you rock).

Last night we went to a do-it-yourself wine bottling place, Oeno Winemaking, where I learned how to fill, cork, seal, and label pinot noirs. Greg, the owner, let us taste his specialty chocolate-flavored ports before we left for dinner. These would taste great with cheesecake, especially on a 21^st birthday that happens to be coming up…

This morning sis went off gallivanting with her Williams home girls so I had the pads to myself, and we went on a beautiful hike up Olamana ridge. Naturally, none of us brought a camera. But at the top a nice middle-aged guy took a picture of us with his iphone and emailed it to me right there. (Who’s the millennial now, huh? (Why am I so tech-deficient?)). This picture doesn’t capture the amazing 360º view of the jagged Ko’olau range and sparkly blue ocean.

Along the trail I found out that my town has its own cult. Funny, since I just watched the Veronica Mars cult episode. (Don’t you love that feeling, when your reality starts mimicking the surreality??) Ours is a surf cult. (Mmm hmm. Only in Hawaii). All I know is there’s a “queen” who sits out on the red zodiac while her “servants” surf. She wears a long sleeve rashguard, hat and gloves – no one can see her skin. And they all live in a few houses on a compound in Lanikai where all the windows are boarded up.

And on that note of beachy mysteries, where did that old boat in front of our beach path wash up from? And why did it say “Kapu” on the side above a skull and bones? Dun Dun Dun…

*Short for padres.

**Never say flip-flops in Hawaii if you don’t like beef from a 375 pound moke***

*** A moke is a huge Polynesian guy who talks pigeon (“eh braddah, try move outta da way. Or I go make stinkface atcha auntie”).

**** translates to forbidden/sacred in Hawaiian

Religious enemies... angels and pregnancy

Supernatural and The Secret Life of the American Teenager take two pretty different approaches to using religion as a theme in their millennial representation, but I think they were both fairly effective and intriguing.

First of all, Supernatural is clearly a magical world where the fantastical is accepted on a daily basis, even though it doesn’t stop sneaking up on the characters in new types of creatures. In the article Renegotiating religious imaginations through transformations of "banal religion" in Supernatural, Peterson says that shows like Supernatural take mainstream Western religious myths and reshape them. Building on and distorting institutionalized beliefs appeals to the viewers, keeping them entertained by the new and in the loop.

Here are some of the myths I noticed Supernatural revised: Deans memories of hell involve red and black, colors often associated with the devil in religious iconography since probably even before the Renaissance. It takes an angel to raise Dean out of hell, much like it took an Angel (Beatrice) to get Dante out of hell in the Inferno, written back in the 1400s. The angel still has wings, although now they’re black. The setting feels pretty western for being Illinois, with all the plaid, gruff men, and cowboy-like speaking. This rings true since the rural west has traditionally been a coming together of Christian ideals and the unexpected, unruly wild.

Another interesting twist to religious representation is the intertwining of technology, which we millennials will relate. The tv turns on when demons and angels are nearby. An ipod replays a car stereo. And the angel’s voice sounds like static.

In The Secret Life of the American Teenager, religion does not deal directly with biblical figures – it’s sort of twice-removed because people practice it in their daily lives (prayers, church, chastity pledges) instead of encountering godly manifestations. Yet it does become very confrontational.

Religion’s biggest enemy here is sex. All the kids are obsessed with it, or with not doing it, or by the problems it causes… pregnancy. The show’s protagonist is purposefully a good girl, and not in an overly-showy way like the cheerleader Grace. She’s cute, nice, a hard worker, and doesn’t deserve to have a jerk knock her up. This show’s message right off the bat tells millennials that teens, no matter how Christian, or how innocent, will make mistakes. I’m interested to see where religion goes on this show: it’s unclear to me if religion will become more positive or negative, or continue to have a mixed effect on the characters’ morals.

Meet the Macaron

I keep swearing my next post will not involve food. Even though I’m a college student, I do more than eat, homework, eat, sleep, and eat. Did I mention eating? No really, I have a life. Like last night, I went to the Anaïs Mitchell concert – she’s a doll. And a toga party. And I started synchronized swimming. But it’s hard to act natural with a D40 hanging from your neck in a bathing suit or bedsheet. So alas, here’s another food post…

My study abroad experience could be called: Kaylen in Paris: A 5-month Critical Investigation into Every Single Patisserie Shop in the City. (Forget criminals, Veronica. This is the real stuff). I spent so much time in Pierre Hermé, the god of the macaron, (sorry Ladurée), that I started getting free macarons from the cute assistant. (I thought he had a crush on me, until I brought my whole family in and realized he was just relieved to see I had friends. How embarrassing).

What is a macaron? It’s a French almond-based cookie with a buttercream or jelly filling that comes in every color and flavor imaginable. Chocolate passion fruit. Hazlenut truffle. Chestnut green tea. Figue fois gras (should have steered clear of that one). My tried-and-true favorite rose. (It’s pink!). I can’t even describe the delight of biting into one – so many different textures exist in such a small, delicate beauty.  

This weekend my copaines of La Maison Française and I made Chocolate Salty-Caramel macarons. The recipe wasn’t too hard to follow, but apparently macarons are finicky things – they need to be shiny and ooze the right way as batter, must be whapped and left alone in peace for some precise time before put into the oven, can crack in humidity, become overly hard if they aren’t taken out at the right time, must be turned after precisely 3.5 minutes, and should be firm but sort of jiggly afterward. So it takes a few tries, or a Cordon Bleu student (it pretty much rocks that I have a pastry chef living upstairs) to master them.

All in all, ours came out delicious. What made the event kick ass was the fact that I decided to neglect homework and spent the sunny afternoon in the kitchen, actually speaking French while making French pastry with my French-loving ladies. I’ve promised myself I’m going back to Paris one day. But til then, I’ll be making macarons.

Mirror Mirror

When I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix I was already in love with Sirius Black, the moody, brooding young man (Harry’s parents were only 20 when they had Harry, so by book number 5 Sirius would have only been 35. That’s not too old!), who had a bad reputation and a heart. So I was basically devastated when his cousin Bellatrix kills him. So much could have prevented his death – I think Harry and I both kept thinking, “If only…”

If only Harry had learned how to keep Voldemort out of his thoughts, he wouldn’t have thought Sirius was in trouble. If only Sirius hadn’t disobeyed his order to stay hidden, he wouldn’t have gone to the ministry to save his godson. If only Kreacher hadn’t been racist and spiteful, he would have told Harry that Sirius was safe. If only Harry remembered that he had the two-way mirror, he could have spoken to Sirius and known he was safe….

I think the two-way mirror frustrated me the most. Why did J. K. Rowling give Harry this awesome magical tool, a “tech magic” as Sheltown would call it, if Harry was just going to forget about it? All the other tools that are given tend to imply something important, like the sneak-o-scope warning the boys that Scabbers was actually Peter Pettigrew, an intruder. Even non-magical tools come in handy, like the flute that Hagrid gives Harry in book one, which lulls three-headed fluffy to sleep. Why couldn’t the mirrors save Sirius’ life?!

Reading Shelton’s article actually helped me come to terms with this (not that I’m still in mourning, I swear!) She argues that Rowling seems more gung-ho on technology than fantastical author-predecessors like Lewis and Tolkien. Why shouldn’t she be? She uses technology in a way that really connects to the millennial generation, because she keeps it current, relevant, and fun. The wizards are much like us, in the way that gadgets. Instead of using sparks notes to finish homework faster, Harry and Ron use magic quills…

However, Rowling makes a big point that technology is an artificial, weird concept in general. It may make life fun and easier in day-to-day business, but it ultimately doesn’t have the power to shape who someone is, how they morally live, and how they are going to die. Harry’s world like our own is pretty complicated. It’s not good vs. bad all the time; it’s not dualistic in the technological sense either that the more apt one becomes at magic the better the person they are, or the more they deserve to live. A silly mirror, much like a walkie-talkie in our own world, isn’t enough of a force to save Sirius’ life.

And death, ultimately, “is the next great adventure,” as Dumbledore puts it. Sirius lived his life the way he wanted to, risking his own many times, at first to feel what life really feels like, and then more so in order to save the ones he loved. He took death into consideration like Ciaccio says Rowling wants her characters to, and didn’t hide when it came time to die.

*This sounds awkwardly emotional. I promise I'm over it!

**also, I’d like to note that there’s a big distinction between the handsome Sirius of my imagination, and the not-so-much Sirius of the movies. The illustration is some fan’s version of Sirius back in his own Hogwarts days.

A Chilly Day for Chili

Today Was Middlebury’s 3^rd annual Chili Festival. For those of you number loving folks:

10^th:  top winter activity in Vermont

50: vendors from here to Montpelier selling chili

80: different types of Chili

Obviously and luckily I didn’t get to try everything, even on an empty stomach, or I’d be writing this from a hospital bed with an IV stuck up one arm. But boy I tried a lot.

Some of my favorites were: the Swift House Inn’s venison chili – great meat. Inception Studios vegetarian saffron chili – subtle and satisfying. Middlebury Bagel’s “kitchen sink” chili – best chili flavor but so hard to describe, with a soft piece of cornbread plopped on top. But what was probably my most favorite was Costello’s Market’s red wine and chocolate Chili. Delightful, surprising harmony, with a smooth aftertaste.

I made the executive decision that chili by itself is a no-no. Please be creative, have a bowl of sour cream to dollop, a sprinkling of queso fresco or parmesan, and hand me one of those warm corn-bread cupcakes, please.  (And thank you Woodchuck cider, for the free chapstick).

But I promise this wasn’t all about the food. The Middlebury Mamajamas were singing on the bridge around 2pm when I got there, sounding pretty snazzy. Props to the one kid on the side eating chili while singing.

With

Main Street

so lively, I suddenly understood what it feels like to be Rory Gilmore at a Star’s Hollow festival, with Taylor Doose directing traffic and Kirk selling pumpkin popsicles to kids in a pilgrim costume...

Some pretty interesting townsies turned up. One girl in a chili costume. A group of punks, including, I’m pretty sure, Bucky, the kid who kept stealing laptops from campus last year. Fire-twirlers. Lots of folks in Mardi Gras beads, which turned into a flash mob, breaking out some dance moves to Billie Jean. And two guys near the Two Brother’s Tavern tent with pigs on leashes. Which only begs the question: were they sampling the pork chili?