Minnestrone Soup

from a package of Goya's Small White Beans (Habichuelas Blancas)

1/2 lb. Goya dry Small White Beans
1/2 lb. Goya dry Chick Peas
4 slices bacon, chopped
1/4 cup onion, chopped
1/2 cup carrots, diced
1 cup zucchini, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup fresh peas or cut green beans
1 cup plum tomatoes, diced
2 Goya Beef Bouillon Cubes

Soak beans and drain. Combine 10 cups water and beans in a 6 to 8 quart pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 1 hour. Meanwhile, in a skillet, cook bacon until crisp; reserve for topping. Drain bacon drippings, leaving about 1 Tbsp. in pan and cook the onion, carrots, zucchini and garlic until tender. Add mixture into beans in pot. Stir in remaining ingredients and cook until beans are tender. Serve with reserved bacon and Parmesan cheese, if desired. Serves 8.

Äideistä parhain (Mother of Mine)

What a spectacular movie in every way! I loved the views of the open rolling Swedish hillsides and the winter scenes shot amongst the slender grey-white Finnish birch trees. Color was used to great effect to create atmosphere and also to delineate the past from the present; interestingly, the present was filmed in black and white and the past was filmed in color.

I chose this movie because I like good movies and I also like listening to foreign sounds. I also find it interesting to see what different countries might consider important to their history and culture. Mother of Mine takes place in Finland and Sweden during World War II. During the War, Finland fought off Russian invasion and while this was happening, some of the Finnish children were sent to neighboring countries and placed in foster homes in order to protect them from harm. As can be imagined, many of the children were separated from their parents unwillingly. A young boy, Eero Lahti, struggles with being uprooted from his homeland and leaving his mother behind while adapting to a new way of life and foster mother, Signe Jönsson. In turn, Signe must learn to deal with issues from her past in order to fully accept Eero into her life.

The Results Are In

I'm just about recovered from the stresses of this past semester. I was really happy to find that I didn't do as badly as I thought this semester:

Gothic Art (A)
Early Greek Art (A)
Italian Renaissance and Baroque Architecture (A)
Women and the Law (B)

I was not very optimistic about Early Greek Art and I was a bit more optimistic in Women and Law, but I guess it all worked out in the end. Terror always strikes around finals.

I took Women and the Law to fulfill an elective requirement as well as to get a feel for what it would be like to study law since it was one of my career options after graduation. Although studying appellate cases is interesting, I don't think that I would be satisfied with being a lawyer. At this point, I am even more certain that I would like to continue my education in Medieval Studies.

In order to further that goal, I'm hoping to take the GRE exam this summer. I have not touched mathematics for many years now, so I will need to start brushing up on it soon!

Finals are Finally Over!

I'm so relieved that finals are over...at least for this semester. I'm looking forward to reading some books I have picked out for summer reading:

Paganism & Christianity -- 100-425 CE, MacMullen and Lane
Warriors of God, James Reston, Jr.
The Mongols, Morgan
The Cult of the Saints, Peter Brown
The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen
The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand
Lost Scriptures -- Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament, Ehrman
Presentation S.O.S. -- From Presentation to Persuation in 9 Easy Steps, Mark Wiskup
The Crystal Cave -- Book One of the Arthurian Saga, Mary Stewart
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
Montaillou, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Selected Poems, W.B. Yeats
The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels
Inventing the Middle Ages, Norman F. Cantor
Saladin, Lyons and Jackson
Brisingr, Paolini

I wonder if I can get through them all... I got most of the books through trading books that I didn't want through BookMooch. Unfortunately I didn't have time to read them because of school, but now I'm going to indulge in books I want to read instead of being made to read assigned books. Yay!

Why, oh why !?

Why did I ever decide to take three art history classes this semester!? I had vowed never to take more than one per semester since I would rather have more time to study a subject in depth than to take on too much information only to know the subject superficially. I guess I was a bit greedy in choosing to do two majors, but I felt that it was a shame to have so much time invested in school and art history classes not to come out of it with a degree in art history. Everything just seemed to have fallen apart around midterms. With all the extra work in Gothic class, there seemed to be little time for everything else. This semester I felt that I was constantly putting out the fire in one class or another as projects, exams and papers were due and by doing so, dropping the ball on the other classes. It was a real balancing act. No, strike that, it was a real juggling act and I'm the clown. In addition, this year I signed up for the Certificate in Historic Preservation so I have a few more required classes I need to take before I graduate, hopefully, with a degree in Medieval Studies, Art History and a Certificate in Historic Preservation.

On the bright side, today I received an e-mail from the librarian at my school asking for book requests. I reviewed my BookMooch wish list to see if the library had any of the books related to medieval studies that I would be interested in looking into once I have time. To my surprise, they seem to be a really well stocked library. I was able to find two books which they did not have, one of which goes for about $300 on Amazon. I figured it was a good library resource for a student with little pocket money and requested that book as well as another one. The nice librarian e-mailed back saying that they have been ordered. Score! ^_^

Love of learning is the guide of life

I just thought that I should take a needed break from writing my paper for my Early Greek Art class to talk about another Greek related topic, ΦBK. I was inducted into this academic honor society on Sunday (which I almost missed on account of my trip to The Princeton Museum in order to work on my Early Greek Art paper!) and feel fortunate and honored to be a part of this organization. Their motto, "Love of learning is the guide of life", is one which reflects my own love of learning and one which I will happily adopt as my own personal motto.

Back to Greek Art! For my paper, I have chosen an Attic red-figure psykter dating from about 500 B.C. from The Princeton Museum. "What," you might ask, "in the world is a psykter?" And I shall answer you by telling you that a psykter is a wine cooler used at drinking parties, also known as symposiums, attended by men during the ancient Greek period. Wine and water were mixed in a larger krater and the resulting mixture was poured into a psykter. The psykter was then placed into a krater filled with cool water or snow to keep the diluted wine cool. There you have it, ancient refrigeration!

Now there's a Greek who likes his wine!

Class Field Trip: Cloisters

Our Gothic Art professor arranged a field trip to the Cloisters yesterday. Part of the purpose of the trip was to see some of the art works we have been discussing in class (Unicorn Tapestries, Tapestries of the Nine Worthies, the Book of Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux, and the Merode Altarpiece [which we will discuss later in class]); the other reason for the trip was so that each student could choose an object on which to write a paper. I chose the "Psalter and Hours of Bonne of Luxembourg" who was the Duchess of Normandy. The manuscript is small, measuring about 3" x 5" (76 mm x 127 mm) and the painting is exquisite; I love the delicately painted birds scattered among the colorful and leafy vines of the marginalia (I counted about fourteen of them, each one different than the other); the bunny in the lower right of the frame is also très adorable!). It is really incredible how the details in the minuscule faces were painted; the precision and control of the artist(s) is beyond belief--the book must have been painted with a magnifying glass and an eyelash!

I wish I could have gotten a better image, but it is really difficult to take a picture of a book behind glass. The scene on the top seems to be King David (who is typically depicted with a lyre; a very appropriate subject since this is a psalter and many of the psalms are attributed to him) with two other figures who are also holding instruments. The bottom depicts the same David, but captures a scene from his youth just at the moment when the stone has left his hand and is about to hit the Philistine giant Goliath (note the sway and elongation of Goliath's body which are characteristics of the International Gothic Style)

Update: Women and Law

Woo HOO! It seems that our teacher didn't show up for class tonight and so all the students left early. I'm going to use this time to catch up on my readings and perhaps get started on my second paper for Italian Renaissance and Baroque Architecture.

Should I Even Be Here?

I'm sitting in Alexander Library right now waiting for my Women and Law class to begin. I was sorely tempted to skip school today since I'm not feeling better and my congested nose really makes it difficult to concentrate during the lectures. I'm glad that I took the Early Greek Art quiz (although I arrived about 5 minutes late) and hopefully I will get a good grade on the quiz to make up for the C+ on the first quiz (for which I studied the material in the assigned books as well as read an additional relevant book on the side; I guess it doesn't always pay off) more than I did the images. For the second (B+) and third quiz (the one I took today), I made sure to familiarize myself with the images as well as read the texts given to us which are centered on Greek history and politics, more so than on Greek art. I'm expecting that he will give me a +/-B for this quiz, so it probably wouldn't matter if I took this one or not as my average would still work out to a B (the average of the 2 best quizzes out of 3). Just to vent, the professor is known to be a difficult grader and does not label any of his slides for reference. He also tends to jump around from topic to topic sometimes which doesn't help when you are trying to identify the object.

I also went to Renaissance and Baroque Architecture since I am here anyway. I definitely had a hard time breathing in class, but didn't want to miss anything important that the professor might tell us.

Tomorrow is Gothic Art class. One of my classmates has responded and has agreed to type up her notes for me from Monday. Yay! Friday we will be going to the Cloisters for our field trip, so I am hoping to catch up on all the articles she had posted for us to read so that I will be comfortable and familiar looking at the objects while I'm there.

Gotta go now... Women and Law will begin in 8 minutes!

You Know That You Are Really Sick When...

you feel terribly guilty about having to miss class. This past weekend and today has been spent nursing myself from the flu. I seem to have caught it from Christopher who caught it from Uncle Larry who returned with it from visiting Egypt and Jordan. Unfortunately I will be missing Gothic Art class today (it's probably a good idea not to run around school with the flu and the cold rain doesn't exactly help either). On a more positive note, earlier I had shared my notes with two other students (who will hopefully return the favor). And hopefully, I will have recovered enough to go back tomorrow since I have a quiz in Early Greek Art as well as two other classes to go to: Renaissance and Baroque Architecture, and Women and Law. For today, I will just concentrate on studying for tomorrow's quiz, writing a letter, and catching up with some scholarly readings.