I can't believe it's already been almost three weeks since I've written! It doesn't seem like so long, but it's easy to fall behind.
I think I last posted on a Thursday. The next day, I was super productive in terms of school work. I did tons of reading, some writing, and also did a good deal of planning and research for my trip to Porto, and even took a nice walk. In the afternoon, I was sitting with Katherine and mentioned that I was in the mood to do something cultural that evening... maybe a play or a concert or an art show. Katherine agreed and a bit of research turned up a few options... our favorite of which was Shrek the Musical. I'm not sure it really counts as cultural, but we both thought it sounded like fun and tickets weren't too expensive, so we went. The show is off the West End (London's version of Broadway) and so we expected it to be pretty good... but it was pretty terrible. The songs were a bit generic and the singing was pretty unimpressive. Still, Katherine and I had a good time and I'm glad I saw it.
After the musical, Katherine headed off to meet some latin dance friends for drinks, but I was tired and hadn't had dinner yet, so I headed home. I cooked for Louis and myself- and made fried halloumi, sauteed veggies, and a chickpea and tomato salad that turned out surprisingly well. We watched a bit of Modern Family together and then I headed to bed.
Saturday was a quiet day. I spent my morning chatting with roommates and drinking tea. Katherine and Louis and I managed to make an absolutely delicious lunch and just spent the afternoon reading and trying to get work done.
Sunday I did a bit of reading and then went into town to see the Book of Life. The Book of Life is an animated movie that was produced by Guillermo del Torro, who also directed one of my favorite movies, Pan's Labyrinth. He plays a great deal with a mix of fantasy/fairy tales and horror. The book of life was less of the horror, but still contained some elements of death and the afterworld. The movie focuses on the story of two young boys who are best friends, but also both fighting for the heart of a girl in their town. In the story, the guardians of the Land of the Remembered and the Land of the Forgotten place a bet on which boy will win her heart, and the guardian who wins will control both realms of the afterlife. It's a cute movie, but I think the music was a bit commercialized and it didn't embrace as much true Mexican culture as it had the potential to do. But the visuals were incredible and I've never seen an animated movie quite in that style.
After the movie Katherine and I headed to get lunch at the Modern Art Museum and then Katherine headed home while I ran some errands around town. The evening, I did more Porto planning and then watched a few episodes of Modern Family with Louis.
Monday and Tuesday were mostly Thanksgiving planning. Brittany and I hosted an NSEP Thanksgiving last year and wanted to repeat it this year. Everyone had plans on actual Thanksgiving though (races, football games, travel, etc) and so we were hosting exactly a week early. We had about 28 people RSVP so Monday and Tuesday were full of things like grocery lists, grocery orders, planning the layout of the house to figure out where to serve, where to set things up, buying a few extra pots and pans and plates, etc.
Tuesday night I also got to skype with Patrick and Clarke, two of my best friends (also two of my first friends) from Penn. I don't talk to either of them often enough, though admittedly, Patrick more than Clarke, and it's crazy that it's been so long. Patrick is now in med school and Clarke is working and also getting MARRIED in February. Thankfully, I'll be seeing them soon. The wedding will, of course, be a reunion, but Patrick and I are also planning a FL Keys trip for New Years Eve and trying to convince Clarke and Mimi (his fiance) that sun and sand trump snow and skiing any day.
Wednesday I had class and then headed home and Thanksgiving prep began! Wednesday was all about appetizers and desserts. Brittany has already made salsa and started soaking the beans for bean dip by the time I was home, but there was still plenty to do. Brittany, Merry, Todd and I all worked on various things prepping things like dips and deviled eggs and apple cake and buckeyes.
Buckeye making party!
We were super excited about these
Todd's idea and dessert!
Post actual buckeyes we just ate all the leftover peanut butter and chocolate...
Thursday was kicked off with a house circuits work out, which was actually hilarious and a blast. Then, the prepping started. We were peeling and chopping and seasoning and cooking all day. Literally all day. Everyone who was home helped and it was a really fun day. While Brittany and I somewhat directed, everyone was a huge help, including making the required 3 (or was it 4?) last minute run to the store. For awhile, it was just me, Brit and Todd in the kitchen, and 90s music was blasting and there was singing and dancing and pretty much wonderfulness.
The chefs!
Katherine- peeling away
Brittany and Todd prepping the mashed potatoes
Prepping carrots for the stuffing
Finally, around 6:00pm Brittany and I both rushed to shower and change, and before we knew it, people were arriving. I wish I'd gotten photos of the whole crowd, but I was so tired and full from sampling and tasting as we cooked all day, that I wasn't really very with it. Still, it was such a nice evening of food and fellowship and I am so grateful that so many people could make it. As I've expressed in past posts, this year in Oxford has been a bit of an adjustment, and to be reminded just how many wonderful people there still are in Oxford was really great. Also, an added shout-out to Andreas, Alex, and Juliana for contributing pies to the feast!
Showered, changed, and putting the finishing touches on dinner
Part of the spread of food!
Getting ready to serve!
A few of my absolute favorites. Not sure what I'd do without these three.
Roomie love.
The night ended with extreme pictionary and cards against humanity
After a fun night Thursday, on Friday I was exhausted. I'd been on my feet and running around for about 14-16 hours the day before and I just wanted to lounge. Unfortunately, I had a doctor's appointment that morning to renew a prescription. It was cold, and in typical fashion, it started pouring around the time I left the house. Still, it was an easy cycle into town and the appointment was quick and easy. Once home, I think I may have done a tiny bit of work, but I think I mostly lazed and napped.
Saturday brittany and I headed over to return some pots and pans to Juliana's. Then, Brittany needed to head to a soccer match, but I stayed for tea and pie and chatting. I stayed way longer than intended, several hours, but Juliana is someone I really enjoy talking to and don't see enough of. After leaving Juliana's I ran a few errands, and then returned to find that my clay and other crafting supplies had arrived! I had been dying to make little marbled clay ring dishes, and now that I had the supplies, I wasted no time in getting started. I had so much fun, and had forgotten how nice it is to be a bit creative and do some work with my hands that isn't typing or writing or highlighting.
Sunday was another day of work. I need to have a solid draft of my literature review for my dissertation done by Christmas, and I also have a paper due in reconciliation ecology around the same time, and also a shorter literature review for reconciliation ecology due before that, so it's just been lots of reading and some writing. That evening, Brittany and I decided to do circuits. We were halfway through some sit ups when Brittany froze, turned to me, and asked: "Do you see it?" I didn't, but I immediately knew that the only thing she could mean was a giant house spider... so I leapt up and ran to find the largest tupperware possible. After gathering supplies I got a good look at it, and it was a BABY... it was way smaller than most, but still had the same shape and markings... and when we tried to capture it... it SQUEAKED. Call me crazy, but that thing made a noise. We (ok, Brittany) caught it, and we threw it, container and all, into the front yard.
A blurry photo of the baby house spider...
After the spider incident, or more during, Merry had been making dinner for the house (spaghetti squash, homemade marinara sauce, and salad) and after a delicious dinner, Brittany and I decided to do more crafting and also make face masks... we asked if Louis wanted to join and were surprised when he said yes. So, we made a honey/lemon/cinnamon/green tea mask and then spent the evenint making more dishes.
Monday was a great day. It was also freezing. Literally freezing. It didn't get above 32 until late afternoon. Brittany and I spent the morning repeatedly turning our heat back on (it's set to be on certain hours and then cut off but we were overriding that) and crafting. We've really gone bowl making crazy. After crafting, we headed into town to do some Christmas shopping. As cold as it was, it made it feel that much more like Christmas, and I managed to get several really great presents. Brittany and I also ate at a great little deli and managed to find the cutest store ever, which all sorts of amazing kitchen and desk stuff and I'm super glad I just now found it or last year I would have been completely broke.
Tuesday was another day of working and reading, along with mapping out my time in Porto and then that evening I ran some errands, printed my tickets, checked my mail in town (at St. Antony's rather than my house) and just took care of little things like that. There was also a last bit of crafting... no surprise there.
Bowls of all shapes, sizes and colors
Wednesday was a busy day. I was finishing up work, trying to get packed (surprisingly hard considering that I wanted to bring tons of work and amy laptop and a variety of clothes since the temps were going to range from 50-70 degrees and I was flying easyjet so a small backpack was all I could bring!) Once I got packed, I cycled into town to hear a talk by Mike Mack, the CEO of Syngenta. Now, I think a lot of you know what respect I have to agriculture and farming, but I also think that environmentally, socially, and politically, it poses lots of challenges and that there is lots of room for improvement. I really hate that being against Syngenta and Monsanto somehow makes me against farmers in the minds of so many people. I went to the talk because while I do NOT like what Syngenta does, I also recognize a need to work with big agribusiness companies because I don't think they are going away AND because I think that to gain more nuance to my own arguments against these companies requires me to listen to what they have to say and engage with it.
When I got there, I ran into Saher, who lived with us for a few weeks in September, and it was great to see her and catch up a bit. The talk itself was lots of PR and not overly informative, but there were a few gems tucked away in the things that Mr. Mack was saying and it was valuable to hear about syngenta's goals for the future. I'd say that my main criticism would be that he failed to acknowledge or concede that lots of the chemicals they use for fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides are environmentally unfriendly and contributing to climate change... in fact, he tried to say that he didn't feel that there was very much evidence of this. He did acknowledge that his company does not really engage much with the food system and solving feeding people not by producing more but by wasting less and working on more access and better distribution of food. While he made a good point that Syngenta doesn't work on this because they focus on the production side and while they acknowledge that a great deal of hunger is not really a production problem, that they are working on the area that they can.... I also think the attitude is largely the root of the problem when it comes to food- that is, the idea that production, distribution, access and waste are not interlinked and we can focus on one to address feeding the world, but exclude the others.
After the lecture, I hung around because I wanted to press Mike Mack on a few issues. Whenever people brought up the health, safety, or environmental issues of Syngenta's products, he would simply point out that everything they produced had been approved where they were selling it and that if we had a problem with the products, what we really had was an even larger problem of not trusting our government regulators to keep us/our environment safe. I pulled him aside afterwards and asked him which regulators do we trust? Syngenta trusts whichever one rules in each particular place... but that means that they sell a product in some places that is not approved, or even banned in others. I brought up the case of atrazine, which I pointed out has been banned in the EU for 10 years now but is still commonly used in the US. I didn't get far with that example, because Mr. Mack pointed out that technically, atrazine wasn't banned in the EU, rather, but rather, is no longer registered (and excluded from re-registration) because they have been unable to demonstrate that if used, atrazine could be kept out of groundwater and found at low enough levers to meet EU environmental standards. Mr. Mack did correctly point out that the EU now uses a chemically similar herbicide, terbuthylazine. To be fair, this is a technically correct answer, though I think it misses the larger points: 1. that even if not banned atrazine still does not break down and is found in high levels in groundwater where used (for which there IS evidence, and multiple controversies surrounding this issue) that is could negatively impact humans and definitely negatively impacts amphibians. And 2. it misses what my question was really getting at: why is syngenta not meeting the highest possible standards across the board.... bascially if he is telling us to "trust our regulators," then why is Syngenta trusting the lowest level of regulation in each place.
I re-phrased and asked again, and Mr. Mack was able to give an example of a case in which a government said a product was safe but they felt that it was not and chose not to sell it.... however, the example he gave was something that China feels is safe to sell in gel form and they think the gel s much harder to apply than liquid and more likely to come in contact with human skin so they refuse to sell the gel and therefore have opted out of the Chinese market... not exactly the example I was hoping for since, to be honest, Chinese environmental and health standards aren't exacting exemplary.
After I felt like I'd exhausted the question, I cycled home at breakneck speed and got changed into more formal clothes for a formal dinner at St. Hilda's. Cody had invited me and Lizzie along, and while I don't see either one of them nearly enough, it made for a super fun evening. St. Hilda's was an all girl's college at Oxford and the feel/architecture/decoration is very different than at some of the more traditional colleges. The dinner started with champagne, and also included a roasted veggie salad, some sort of vegetarian curry, and an amazing dessert- sort of a caramel cake type thing. Conversation ranged from research, to families, to the all time best youtube videos and it was great to spend time with both Cody and Lizzie- I need to get better about seeing them on a regular basis.
Me, Cody, and Lizzie: a few lovely MPhil ladies
On my way home I texted Mom because I hadn't gotten an update about Grandma all day, and on a weekday, that's unusual. Mom replied that I should skype her when I got home, and I immediately knew. It was a whole mix of emotions, and talking to Mom once I was home made it even more mixed. On the one hand: it was time. Grandma wanted it to be time and from what I've been hearing, she was suffering a good deal these past few months. I'm glad she's at peace, and I'm glad that she's no longer in pain. But it's still sad. It's sad that she'll never meet whoever I marry, or see my kids, her great grandkids, and it's even sadder that Mom lost her mom, because mom's are amazing and I can't imagine being without mine. I cried some, and hugged my roommates, and laid in bed remembering all sorts of things that I didn't remember forgetting... like chicken foot and the okra patch and the time that stupid rubber rat showed up in the composting bin that grandma and granddad were given as a gift. I remembered teacakes and trash and those frozen yogurty fruit cup things. I remember Christmas mornings and afternoons in the camper and Grandma assuring me that no, they did not want to play another round of "memory" because they were over 80 and their memories just weren't that good... but of course playing anyway.
Grandma at age 18 and me, also age 18, in one of her dresses
For those interested, here is her obituary:
Carlene Clapham Cotton
With sadness, but with the fondness of many loving memories, the descendants of Paul and Carlene Cotton announce the passing of Carlene Cotton on November 26, 2014 in Durham, North Carolina, at the age of 95. Carlene, born to Carlos and Mattie Teer Clapham and raised in Lyon, Mississippi, lived most of her life there. She had the greatest good fortune to have been married to and partner of Paul Cotton for seventy years.
With sadness, but with the fondness of many loving memories, the descendants of Paul and Carlene Cotton announce the passing of Carlene Cotton on November 26, 2014 in Durham, North Carolina, at the age of 95. Carlene, born to Carlos and Mattie Teer Clapham and raised in Lyon, Mississippi, lived most of her life there. She had the greatest good fortune to have been married to and partner of Paul Cotton for seventy years.
Carlene lived a life of servant leadership. She was a source of strength and optimism to all who knew and loved her. She possessed the ability to inspire, work with, and accomplish family and community tasks with and through other people. Young and old sought her counsel and she mentored and assisted many through difficult life challenges. She was a housewife and partner extraordinaire, raising a family, leading Girl Scout and Cub Scout units, organizing community, church and public school activities, and serving as a founding member and pillar of her Lyon Methodist Church. She served many years as Assistant Post Mistress of the Lyon US Post Office. Carlene loved quietly and quite fiercely when the welfare of her loved ones was as risk. When Paul barely survived a massive heart attack at age 42, Carlene was overheard asking him as they drove home from the hospital if he remembered the taste of the cigarette he had smoked just before the attack. When he replied yes, she said, “Good, you hang onto that memory because that is the last one you are ever going to smoke.” Compliance was the best option when dealing with Carlene, so he stopped cold a twenty-year habit and, never smoking again, lived a full and active life to age 91.
Carlene loved to fish. Her knowledge of fishing served her in good stead when, as a new graduate of the Clarksdale High School Class of 1937, she interviewed for a secretarial job with Mr. R. D. Peay, a Clarksdale realtor. To the surprise of all applying, the interview included baiting hooks with a minnow, a cricket, and a worm. Carlene won the job, and for the duration of her time in the job spent Wednesday afternoons taking the elderly Mr. Peay fishing.
Late in life, Carlene and Paul relocated to Wharton, Texas, to be near their son Carlos and his wife, Carolyn. There she attended Wharton Methodist Church and was a member of the knitting group providing prayer shawls to the community. After Paul’s passing Carlene relocated to Croasdaile Village Retirement Community in Durham. There she served on numerous committees and crocheted many preemie baby caps for Duke Hospital newborns.
Carlene’s and her husband Paul’s legacy lives on in the lives they enriched and in their children, who carry them in their hearts and values. Descendants and family who carry Carlene’s and Paul’s ethos into the future include children w/spouses - Norris Cotton and companion Tracy Mancini, Carlos Cotton and wife Carolyn, Paula Vaughn and husband Dan; sibling - brother Curtis Clapham and his wife Carol; grandchildren w/spouses - Alicia Butler and husband Ryan, Blake Cotton, Reverend Seth Cotton and wife Ann, Doctor Taylor Cotton and wife Ann, Doctor Travis Cotton and wife/Doctor Jacquelyn, Sarah Vaughn and Andie Vaughn; great grandchildren - Jackson, Gates, and Finn Butler, Carter Cotton, and Caroline Cotton; nieces - Elizabeth Clapham with daughter Zoe and Jennifer Clapham with sons Riley and Carlos Appel; grandniece – Penny Jones and husband Jeff; great grandnephews - Justin and Joshua Jones.
Near the time of her passing, Carlene uttered “Gotta make straight.” When asked what needed to be made straight she replied, “What’s crooked.” Carlene lived a life of community and family service by “making straight” life problems. As John Stennis, the late Mississippi Senator of her time, would have said, she “plowed a straight furrow down to the end of her row.” Her community, friends, and family will be less for her absence, but she will live on far into the future through the lives of the many people she touched. Emily Dickinson: “If I go while you are still here, know that I live on … just whisper my name in your heart. I’ll be there.”
Visitation at the Meredith Nowell Funeral Home 5:00-7:00 PM Saturday, December 13th. Graveside services Sunday afternoon, December 14th at Coahoma County Memorial Gardens.
Memorials may be made to the Lyon Methodist Church.
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