kblincoln

God is not a white man

Fri, 10 Feb 12 13:03:00 UT

I'm often hesitant to speak about religious beliefs (though I self-identify as Lutheran) But you can boil my theology down to a conversation I once had about religion with my dad. I asked him what he believed about god. He said "God is Love."
That sounded good to me.
Gungor sings it pretty well, too (how God loves even Pat Robertson and Lesbians) with felt animation!
(cross-posted to Facebook)

Book Review: The Taker (3/5 stars)

Mon, 24 Oct 11 12:16:00 UT

The Taker by Alma Katsu

The Taker is a book about the uneveness of love between two people. How often there is one person in the partnership who loves all-consumingly, to the detriment of their self, and the life of their love object, whose love is an owning and jealous one.

Ostensibly set in a small town in modern Maine, the story is told to an ER doctor, Luke, whose failed marriage preps him to respond to a young woman brought into the ER by the police, suspected of murder.

He abandons his entire life and runs away with her, compelled by her disturbing and unbelievable story.

There is little I can discuss about Lanore, the young woman, without giving away parts of the mystery, and since uncovering the mysteries in this story; what Lanore is, how she got this way, what happened to her true love, Jonathan, it would be disservice to discuss it.

The mysteries, and the appalled fascination I felt discovering along with Luke the manipulative sexual and humiliating treatment Lanore was victim to, is what drew me along the story.

Unfortunately, I never really connected with Luke, or Lanore or Jonathan, although I wanted to be sympathetic to her. While the things that happened should have viscerally horrified me, I felt a little estranged from the narrative and from Lanore by the narrative conceit of the story, as well as a curious lack of emotional connection to Lanore I can't really pinpoint the cause of.

The person that engaged me the most was Lanore's tormentor, and the roots of his horrific behavior, while somewhat explained by his all-consuming desire for blind love, was never fully revealed to us in the story, and thus I was left without a basis for building my love/hate relationship with this mesmerizing character.

While definitely worth a read for people not turned off by unconsensual sexual relationships and dominance/submission issues, I was left at the end feeling somewhat unsatisfied by the emotional journey I followed reading this; it should have been epic and tormenting, and sometimes I was a bit bored.

This Book's Food Designation Rating: A delectable looking Cioppino chock full of mussels and shrimp that end up being tough and gritty on your tongue and a bit bland.

Healing Waves: A charity anthology for Japan

Tue, 20 Sep 11 19:21:00 UT

Healing Waves A Charity Anthology for Japan is now available.

My story "Exposure at Dejima" is in it. Featuring Lily, a cook's daughter from Medieval Japan who masquerades as her Lord's handmaiden.

There are pirates! and gender issues!

Only Slightly Guilty: Healthified Carrot Cake Truffles

Thu, 12 May 11 10:22:00 UT

Wherein I tried to jump on the Cake Pops bandwagon glorified by Bakerella and now available in any Starbuck's (Tiramisu flavor, yum.)

But, of course, I can't stand the thought of all the refined sugar (170 calories in Starbucks' version), so the only way I could justify making cake pops is to make some changes. And I was too lazy to go to the craft store for lollipop sticks, so I decided to make cake "truffles" instead. Here's the major changes:

Honey for sugar.

Greek yoghurt instead of cream cheese.

Carrot cake so I can claim it's a "vegetable."

To make cake pops, basically you make a cake, crumble it to bits, mix in something to make it mush together, form the balls, and then dip in chocolate with a stick attached.

I just skipped the stick part.

First you take any basic carrot cake recipe. I used this one .

I made a 1/4 of the recipe and ended up with a dozen cake pops. Of course I swapped honey for the sugar, whole wheat flour for the regular flour, skipped the nuts, and added in a 1/4 cup of oatmeal and chia seeds (high in omega fatty acids and antioxidants!).

After you bake the cake, let it cool for a bit. Then, crumble into bitty, bitty bits into a bowl. Instead of the cream cheese frosting traditional in this case, I used half a container (single serving size, not ginormous family pack) of plain, greek, non-fat yoghurt, 1/4 cup of honey, cinnamon, and some vanilla. Mix this glop into your bitty bits of cake and stir until it is mushy.

Form little balls. (Press it together into tight balls, you don't want them to break apart later. If they seem a little dry or loose, add a bit of milk).

Let the balls set up in the fridge for a couple hours.

Meanwhile, melt some chocolate (I chose white "coverture" chocolate, as the normal white chocolate chips don't melt in my microwave so well.)

Take a ball and use a spoon to "bathe" it in the chocolate. When it's all covered, somehow wrangle it out of the bowl and put on wax paper to set. IMMEDIATELY decorate (if you so choose, and I choose sprinkles) if you so desire with sprinkles, nuts, grated carrot, or whatever before the chocolate sets.

Mine kind of turned out looking like Make it or Love it's
.
More or less. Okay, mine were a bit bumpier....

Basically you're done. Just try to keep them uneaten for more than one day, I dare you.

Close Proximity to Tragedy

Tue, 15 Mar 11 07:47:00 UT

If you are reading this, then you probably already know my connection to Japan.

Tokyo Husband. Years living there. Biracial children.

I am heavily bound up in so many ways with Japan and Japanese and Japanese-Americans that I could not list them for you in one journal entry.

And you probably already know of the earthquakes and tsunami and continuing nuclear scare, the worst of which is/was happening where many of my extended family live.

But I am here today to tell you something, in the words of insightful author John Green, about tragedy.

We live our lives in close proximity to tragedy.

Reading this, you are in close proximity to loss and fear and rolling blackouts and husbands in cities without train service and children waking up in the middle of the night because of aftershocks and school closings and wondering how to rebuild entire cities.

Because I am in close proximity to this.

As we are all in close proximity to other, less mentioned and sensationalized tragedies.

My mind keeps circling around to this one idea.

I found a quote somewhere attributed to Mr. Rogers, of all people, "Wherever there's a tragedy, look for the people who are helping. There's always someone trying to help."

You've already probably read somewhere that Japan is as prepared a country as one could be for devastating earthquakes and tsunami. I still remember sewing the bag for girl1's earthquake padded head cover when she attended preschool in Tokyo, and the constant announcements from the public address systems all over Japan. Here's another American's eyewitness take on how Japan's preparedness helped during the earthquake.

But you can't ever be prepared, can you?

We all feel the devastating anxiety and shock as we watch those videos and read those accounts and keep CNN on tv to see eyewitness recordings of water swirling around houses and trucks like they were toys.

Life is pain. (anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something). We can't prepare against pain.

But we can take that pain and let it sharpen us, and clarify things for us, and make us remember that we are alive, now, and ARE NOT HELPLESS.

So I challenge you, right now, to turn off CNN, and stop reloading the news updates constantly.

I don't mean shut yourself off from important information, just don't revel, drown yourself in those images. Yes, we have pain. Yes there is suffering.

I challenge you, right now, to DO SOMETHING about it. Contribute to the Red Cross , globalgiving.org's Tsunami Relief Fund, or even your local food bank.

Or even go out and buy some jugs of water in case tragedy strikes closer to home.

Or confirm with your children that they know where to go or how to contact you in an emergency.

Because technology can never really bridge the gap between us, but it can help alleviate suffering if we don't allow it to mesmerize us into complacency, but use it to help us help others.

The people in Japan are my neighbors, and if you are reading this, they are yours. See their tragedy and pain, and make it into a testament to the cruel and awesome beauty of human life by contributing money or making your own world just a little bit more prepared.

Only Slightly Guilty: Japanese-style individual ham/spinach/cheese breads

Tue, 25 Jan 11 06:20:00 UT

As long as I don't live in Japan, I will be on a quest to recreate the many, individual savory and sweet breads available there.

Here's one I've healthified from an Allrecipes.com recipe.

The main substitutions here are honey instead of sugar, whole wheat flour, adding wheat germ and dried milk powder, and using spinach instead of pimento or other non-girl1 and 2 friendly foods.

I also made individualized portions as if they were offered up in a Japanese bread store, which helps on controlling the intake as well as giving you more crispy crust! :)

My recipe calculator says this is about 150 calories each, with lots of trace minerals including folate and vitamin A from the wheat germ and spinach.

Of course one could easily omit the ham if one were vegetarian, or if you are an unabashed carnivore, I reccomend substituting bacon for the ham....

This makes about 8 fist-sized portions.

Ingredients

1/2 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup dried milk powder (may be omitted if its too much trouble to obtain)
1/4 cup wheat germ
1 egg
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon oregano or basil or whatever
1 slice chopped ham
1/8 cup shredded cheese
2 big handfuls of fresh spinach chopped
1 thick slice of onion diced

Directions

In a small mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water and honey. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the yeast mixture with the flour, egg, milk powder, wheat germ, herbs and salt; mix well. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead until smooth, about 8 minutes.

Lightly oil a large mixing bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).

Lightly saute onion, ham, and spinach in just a tiny bit of butter. Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, or whatever you like. Sprinkle with cheese. Set aside.

Deflate the dough, and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Tear dough in half. Tear each of those in half again. And yet again (8 pieces)

Roll or pat the dough into a rectangle. Make parallel cuts on the two long edges of the rectangle. Evenly spread the filling mixture over the center of the rectangle. Fold the short ends of the rectangle over the filling. Starting from one of these ends, alternately stretch strips from the two sides across the filling so that the strips overlap diagonally.

Transfer breads to a lightly greased baking sheet, cover with a damp cloth, and let rise until doubled in volume, about 40 minutes.

Bake at 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) for 12 to 17 minutes, or until golden brown.

Moving on

Mon, 24 Jan 11 13:29:00 UT

Most people who read this journalscape probably already know that my husband has been in Rochester, MN since last April.

Well, our house in Beaverton finally sold. We'll be moving out of the house in March, and then to Rochester by June at the latest.

How to describe my feelings upon leaving Portland? There is too much. Let me sum up.

Mochitsuki

Tayberries

Columbia River Gorge

Portland Other Women

Survival Stout

Dark chocolate cacao nibs and chilies

Naked Pinot Noir

A thousand classes for kids from Circus Trapeze to Intergalactic Food from Star Wars Cooking Classes

Portland Japanese School

Powell's Books

Dutch Mafia

Bagpipe Sunday

Dragon Boats

Sustainable Sweet Potato Fries

Haystack Rock

The sporadic and jolting sight of Mt Hood over the trees on Sw 5th Avenue as you turn towards the Beaverton Library

And finally, last but not least, all my gaijin wives (official and honorary) peeps with all the biracial/bicultural kids available for my girls to bond and commiserate with and who provided the most amazing support network I have ever experienced in my life.

I have no words to express my gratitude for being able to walk along life's path with you all for a while.

2 Most Important Parenting Factors for Academic Success-Bar none

Wed, 19 Jan 11 10:00:00 UT

And so based on my own experience with Japanese and American public schools, and the articles in my previous post, here are the two most important Parenting Factors for Academic Success (bar none).

1) Valuing education as a key to success
2) Making sure your kids have the work skills to know how to learn and be successful

You're saying, "duh", right? But what is the difference between Japan and America? Let me tell you the difference in math scores isn't racial, it isn't socioeconomic (except for how poverty impacts parents' ability to make sure kids have work skills) it's the value of education.

It's the fact that most every person in Japan knows, understands, and continues to uphold how academic success=life/work success.

That is not true in all places in the United States. And, a kind of corellalary to that is #2, making sure the kids have the work skills to suceed. One can do that by joining the PTA, or forcing your kids to practice hours and hours of math drills or piano or whatever.

One might do that by coming home from work and making sure your child did their homework before letting them play Super Mario Bros. There are many ways this can be accomplished, but if you aren't doing it, your child may not be sucessful.

And if you have #1, but can't achieve #2 because of parental mental issues, drug addiction, poverty, or because in your subculture, hard work isn't seen as the ticket to success, then it won't work either.

Or as writer and educator Jim Van Pelt put it, "If we really want to see our schools improve, we need to work on the gallon-a-minute leak in the boat."

Where the gallon-a-minute leak would be socio-economic factors plus a person's valueation of education.

No more forced opera

Wed, 19 Jan 11 09:38:00 UT

I guess I have to stop forcing girl1 and girl2 to go to Operas. Apparently it doesn't correlate with high achievement in public schools.

This article summarizes economist Stephen Leavitt's (of Freakonomics fame) longitudinal study factors correlating to student success.

"It's also surprising what doesn't matter, according to Leavitt's analysis of the data. Some of his findings upend conventional wisdom about rearing children. It doesn't matter, for example, if a child is regularly taken to museums, or if the parents read to him every day, or if the parents play Mozart at him, or if he attends Head Start. There is no strong correlation between these activities and a child's success in school."

There goes the piano lessons, too :) But read on, Leavitt's findings are really no surprise based on my experience with the girls' elementary school.

"Nor does it matter that a childâs family is intact. The data shows no strong correlation between family structure and academic achievement.

What's important, Leavitt concludes is "who you are, whom you married, what kind of life you lead. If you are smart, hardworking, well-educated, well-paid, and married to someone equally fortunate, then your children are more likely to succeed. (Nor does it hurt, in all likelihood, to be honest, thoughtful, loving, and curious about the world.)"

What else he found was that children with mothers who were 30 or older and educated did better, too. In the article it posits that this is so because the women are starting out on a better economical footing.

Reading this article came on the heels for me of reading another article about parenting (forwarded to me by my own mother) Why Chinese Mothers are Superior which was in interesting read for me.

The emphasis on working, working, working until you get it right (and the assumption that children CAN get it right with enough practice) is one that I have taken into my own psyche as a kind of balance for the more Western practice of allowing children to fail or quit because of worries about self-image.

It's one of the excuses I have for forcing girl1 to do hours and hours of Japanese homework for the last three years.

And while I don't think the traumatic piano practice session described in the article is one that I think is truly supportive of the child, it is a point of view I think parents should take into consideration.

Only Slightly Guilty: Kirsten's healthified Papaleo Pudding

Sat, 15 Jan 11 10:05:00 UT

Years ago in high school, a friend's father made chocolate pudding. Up until that day, I didn't know one could make pudding without the help of Jello, or that one actually could melt chocolate chips into a pudding.

Anyway, flash forward a few years, and I have been making a similiar version to that friend's father's recipe, only with my own, slightly less guilty modifications.

The big changes here are adding no refined sugar, skim milk, and of course the use of bananas to take up space usually taken up by pudding, as well a lending it some sweetness.

1/4 cup honey
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
two good shakes of cinnamon
2 3/4 cups skim milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
a handful of chocolate chips
One banana, chunked

Directions

In a saucepan, stir together cocoa, cinnamon, cornstarch and salt. Place over medium heat, and stir in milk and honey. Bring to a boil, and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. Remove from heat, and stir in chocolate chips and vanilla. Put chunks of banana in the bottom of several (4-6) individual small ramekins or mugs or whatever. Pour pudding over bananas. Let cool briefly, and serve warm, or chill in refrigerator until serving.

Only Slightly Guilty: Jam/frozen yoghurt torte

Thu, 6 Jan 11 18:21:00 UT

I used some pie crust to make curry pies with leftover curry (so this is a leftover leftover recipe). With the scraps, I decided to make a dessert today.

Pie crust scraps
sugar free jam
wheat germ
frozen lowfat yoghurt
sugar free chocolate syrup

After baking the pie crust scraps (about two inches square) in a 350 oven for about ten minutes, I put them on a plate

I then put sugar-free raspberry jam/spread over it, sprinkled wheat germ over the jam, put a scoop of frozen yoghurt on top, and drizzled chocolate syrup over the whole thing.

OMG. Delish. And only slightly guilty!!!!!!

Both girls approved.

Of course one could omit the wheat germ, substitute with chopped pecans or oatmeal or whatever.....

How Long Til My Soul Gets It Right?

Wed, 5 Jan 11 09:15:00 UT

When do I get to grow up?

Boy howdy do I look forward to being an "adult." To not putting down other people to make myself feel better, to speak with patience and graciousness to people who are different from ourselves or just a little behind us on the maturity path.

I would like to put away childish things.

Recently some news about the death of a former colleague came to my attention that caused me deep shame. We all have shame that we can chalk up to being a high school hormone-doped teenager or a college-aged adult crazed from our first taste of freedom from parental bondage, but this shame originates from a time in my life when I was more or less "adult."

I'm almost 40 now, but the time from which my shame comes from was when I lived in Chiba, Japan and was already 30 and the mother of a baby Girl1.

You would think, being a mother, and having experienced how it feels to be an outsider, that I would have had the compassion to reach out to people different from me.

But I didn't.

And I am deeply ashamed and disappointed in myself, the same heat on my cheeks and sinking sensation in my stomach when I hear girl2 call the ESL kid in her class "weird" or calls a behaviorally challenged boy "bad".

Because I wasn't aged in the single digits when I made the same kind of judgements myself. I wasn't even a teenager. I looked at the outward appearance of a person, a person who had different ways of interacting socially then the ones society determines is "cool" and consigned that person to a lesser status.

And it's a shame that a death is what makes me sit up and take notice of what a jerk I am. But that's what the news does.

How long? How long until that stuff becomes matter-of-course and not a struggle?

How long til my soul gets it right? Does any human being ever reach that kind of light? quoted from Indigo Girls' Galileo.

A New Year

Sun, 2 Jan 11 08:55:00 UT

My family got up before the crack of dawn and drove Naoto to the airport for his long trip back to Rochester.

It was a strange way to spend the beginning of a new year...in the soft quiet of dawn, on grey, blurry streets empty of souls but for other hardy souls driving for some necessity like us.

And as my mother also left for Hawaii on that same morning, I felt a bit untethered as I drove home from the airport, as if there was barely anything holding us to this place.

The girls and I returned to our house and slept a little, and then woke up to a series of phone calls, from Naoto, from my brother, from my stepmother, from a friend, from my sister-in-law....

....and I was reminded that while a place may not tether me, wherever I am, I am held together by my family.

Book Review: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (Small-town British Fiction) *****

Sun, 19 Dec 10 10:40:00 UT

crossposted to Goodreads.com

This book is definitely recommended for my mother and stepmother.

Major Pettigrew lives in the small town of Edgecomb and is a staunch, utterly British major tinkering away his final years in small town society.

Then his brother dies, and he finds himself floundering. Not only are the relationships that formed the basis of his well-ordered world changing, but he will be forced to take place in the changing structure of the village itself as Pakistani-British history and current ethnic tensions are brought to the fore with the elite gold club's bungling Maharaji-themed ball.

There is a lovely, slow, lyrical development of a relationship with a widowed Jasmina Ali who runs the village shop. There is a long-standing enstrangement between the Major and his son, a literal symbol of the materialistic world outside the village, and an illegitimate child that forces the Major to confront his own ideas about pride and honor.

Underneath the dialogue is a constant strain of deathly polite irony and humor that is a pleasure to read. I also was fascinated by a glimpse into how small town village life in Sussex has still to shrug off layers of caste and privilege and blatant racism that seems odd to my American brain.

Regardless of the wonderful themes and dialogues, I fell in love with Jasmina and the Major, and was very sad to leave them on the last page.

This Book's Food Designation Rating: A cup of Earl Grey tea and a lovely pistachio-topped basmati rice pudding for the bracing quality of the Major and the creamy lusciousness of the relationships and peek into small village life.

A letter to girl1 in the midst of the holiday crazies

Sat, 18 Dec 10 21:14:00 UT

Dearest Girl1:

I see you come home from school today, grumpy, needy, wanting more attention than I can give you, your sensitive heart so swollen and beating against the cage of your ribs.

And I ask you, what's the matter? And you cry out, I don't know.

I don't know.

You don't know, but I think I do.

I know what it feels to be in a group of friends, and feel like the fake. The outsider. The one just barely tolerated.

Not loved quite enough. Not quite the specialist one. And then to come home and hope that finally, ah, yes, here at least I will be the specialist one, the shining one, and my swollen, thirsting, needful heart will finally get what it needs to shrink down to a manageable size....but mommy's busy with dinner and girl2's practicing piano and...and...

So you're grumpy and whining, and plop down on your bed in your room because it's easier to be alone in truth than to bear the pain of being alone amongst other people.

But it gets better, dearest one. It does.

Oh it will take a long, long time, and you must hack a path with bare teeth and broken fingernails through hormones and romance and expectations until your heart all but bursts with the pain of feeling.

But it will ease back on its own because you will find something that you like or are good at, and maybe you will never be the specialist one, but you will love and be loved, and sometimes that's enough.

And until then, just remember that when you come home so antsy in your skin you can't even sit down and I tell you, do your homework or else, what I really mean is, I love you and it gets better.