Season 2 of Baked in Vermont is coming!
6 years ago
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
top 10 May 2010
Just a random list this time, because I've neglected it for so long. It's been a busy spring, and that's just fine.
"new" 1790 house!
I'm in the throes of renovating a 1790 house on the coast of Maine. Lots of work, lots of choices. Lots of money, time and sweat! Still, every time I look out my kitchen window at the ocean, I get energized. Cabinet doors in the kitchen were functional but tired, so I've had them refinished and painted. When I get the kitchen painted, it will begin to look "new" - although my image for it is a retro, 50s type kitchen, all blues, greens, cream, Fiesta, Fire King. There's never a dull moment. I like that. I'll post pictures soon.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
a cookbook review
"Week In, Week Out" - Simon Hopkinson
I'm not the least bit ashamed to admit that I am totally a sucker for "food porn." That might sound funny to anyone except food nerds. It's actually not that scary (in most cases), but actully refers to gorgeous food photography, the sort of thing that makes you immediately ravenous. "Week In, Week Out" has utterly beautiful pictures by Jason Lowe, but more importantly, delicious and effective recipes from Simon Hopkinson for every week of the year, representing seasonal cooking at its finest. It is a wonderful cookbook for accomplished home cooks and those who are meticulous about following directions. It's probably not the best cookbook for total beginners or for people who find, say, Mastering the Art of French Cooking "hard to follow." Every recipe that I've tried has turned out well, and all of them sound yummy. The potted salmon, for example - salmon pate for the rest of us - is easy, fast, and a huge hit at parties. Mr. Hopkinson's other books, "Roast Chicken and Other Stories" and "Second Helpings of Roast Chicken," with wonderful essays and delightful illustrations by Flo Bayley, are equally recommended.
Look for these books at your local INDEPENDENT bookseller (ahem) or order them there or from the fabulous Rabelais Books in Portland, Maine.
I'm not the least bit ashamed to admit that I am totally a sucker for "food porn." That might sound funny to anyone except food nerds. It's actually not that scary (in most cases), but actully refers to gorgeous food photography, the sort of thing that makes you immediately ravenous. "Week In, Week Out" has utterly beautiful pictures by Jason Lowe, but more importantly, delicious and effective recipes from Simon Hopkinson for every week of the year, representing seasonal cooking at its finest. It is a wonderful cookbook for accomplished home cooks and those who are meticulous about following directions. It's probably not the best cookbook for total beginners or for people who find, say, Mastering the Art of French Cooking "hard to follow." Every recipe that I've tried has turned out well, and all of them sound yummy. The potted salmon, for example - salmon pate for the rest of us - is easy, fast, and a huge hit at parties. Mr. Hopkinson's other books, "Roast Chicken and Other Stories" and "Second Helpings of Roast Chicken," with wonderful essays and delightful illustrations by Flo Bayley, are equally recommended.
Look for these books at your local INDEPENDENT bookseller (ahem) or order them there or from the fabulous Rabelais Books in Portland, Maine.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
assessment in arts education
A long one this time.
As I have said elsewhere, I am fascinated by learning and teaching creative process. I am far less fascinated by the way creative process is too often taught in schools. Creative process is by its nature exploratory, experiential, and experimental, not unlike science. We become curious about something, we try some things out, they either work or don't work or somewhere in between, and we assess our own work and try something new. Yet as the arts are too often taught in school, and as current assessment requires, the only worthy goal would appear to be a "successful" product according to a highly arbitrary standard. Excellent teachers do manage to find ways to work within a broken system and guide their students to a high level of creative exploration which I would call artistic success. Yet because the ways of arriving at this success are often wildly outside the accepted norms for "educational assessment," the process for teachers and students is too often much harder than necessary or desirable. There is the requirement to teach the arts like any other intellectual, academic subject, assessed in the same concrete ways. The value of arts education, however, is that it is different from other academic subjects, that it uses different skills and cognitive process. We hear a great deal of lip service to "differentiated education" while arts education, inherently "differentiated" for individual students, is not seen as fitting the accepted model of teaching style.
The fact is that we learn creative process - and I would argue that we learn anything - by trying stuff out, seeing what works and what doesn't, and by trying again. We need to not be afraid to "fail" but our current educational model is set up to avoid anything resembling "failure" at literally any cost. Because it avoids "failure" at its most literal and base level, it cannot truly nurture the much-touted "Higher-Order-Thinking-Skills" or as they are labelled "HOTS." Never mind, for the moment, that the so-called "LOTS" are also essential for daily life, but higher cognition, "valid cognition" as it was called by Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche is not likely to be achieved by facility in mastering standardized tests.
I've said this many times before, but arts education teaches problem solving at both simple and complex levels, and is in itself "differentiated instruction." The assessment of higher cognition is inherently quite subjective, even if we feel that we have a good working definition of higher cognition. During the past school year, I spent a full day with other music faculty listening to the results of a rhythmic assessment which was graded via rubrics. For nearly all of the examples that we heard, the difference between "exceeds standard" "meets standard" and "sometimes meets standard" was by its nature subjective. How do you assess a rhythmic example that is generally correct, but has slight hesitation? Most of us tended to grade with leniency in those cases, but the process was really too subjective. What looks to a nonmusical administrator like a straightforward assessment is, in fact, anything but. Furthermore, such a rhythmic assessment is the least subjective sort of assessment that can be made for musical skills. This process of assessment takes complex skills, including interpretation, listening discernment, and expression, and attempts to give them specific grades. Of course, there are settings, like professional auditions, where these assessments are entirely valid. I would argue that they are not valid for elementary education and are quite difficult even for secondary education.
We are frequently told that the teacher's assessment of things like attitude, behavior and effort are "too subjective," yet these assessments are actually far more accurate and valid than "can this student play this rhythm correctly on this particular occassion?"
It is unfortunate that too few arts educators, administrators and professional organizations are willing to challenge systems of assessment which are inherently flawed and actually harmful to both teachers' and students' creative processes. It is especially unfortunate given the fact that most states have excellent standards in music. These, along with the largely parallel national standards established by MENC via NYSSMA, could be used for assessment in music education. If we truly desire to have excellent arts education be a right for every student, we must be willing to challenge and change a system that does not work, and find one that will most benefit our students. It is doubtful that this dilemma can be resolved quickly or easily, but I believe that the discussion is essential.
What do you think? Please comment, either here or via email
As I have said elsewhere, I am fascinated by learning and teaching creative process. I am far less fascinated by the way creative process is too often taught in schools. Creative process is by its nature exploratory, experiential, and experimental, not unlike science. We become curious about something, we try some things out, they either work or don't work or somewhere in between, and we assess our own work and try something new. Yet as the arts are too often taught in school, and as current assessment requires, the only worthy goal would appear to be a "successful" product according to a highly arbitrary standard. Excellent teachers do manage to find ways to work within a broken system and guide their students to a high level of creative exploration which I would call artistic success. Yet because the ways of arriving at this success are often wildly outside the accepted norms for "educational assessment," the process for teachers and students is too often much harder than necessary or desirable. There is the requirement to teach the arts like any other intellectual, academic subject, assessed in the same concrete ways. The value of arts education, however, is that it is different from other academic subjects, that it uses different skills and cognitive process. We hear a great deal of lip service to "differentiated education" while arts education, inherently "differentiated" for individual students, is not seen as fitting the accepted model of teaching style.
The fact is that we learn creative process - and I would argue that we learn anything - by trying stuff out, seeing what works and what doesn't, and by trying again. We need to not be afraid to "fail" but our current educational model is set up to avoid anything resembling "failure" at literally any cost. Because it avoids "failure" at its most literal and base level, it cannot truly nurture the much-touted "Higher-Order-Thinking-Skills" or as they are labelled "HOTS." Never mind, for the moment, that the so-called "LOTS" are also essential for daily life, but higher cognition, "valid cognition" as it was called by Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche is not likely to be achieved by facility in mastering standardized tests.
I've said this many times before, but arts education teaches problem solving at both simple and complex levels, and is in itself "differentiated instruction." The assessment of higher cognition is inherently quite subjective, even if we feel that we have a good working definition of higher cognition. During the past school year, I spent a full day with other music faculty listening to the results of a rhythmic assessment which was graded via rubrics. For nearly all of the examples that we heard, the difference between "exceeds standard" "meets standard" and "sometimes meets standard" was by its nature subjective. How do you assess a rhythmic example that is generally correct, but has slight hesitation? Most of us tended to grade with leniency in those cases, but the process was really too subjective. What looks to a nonmusical administrator like a straightforward assessment is, in fact, anything but. Furthermore, such a rhythmic assessment is the least subjective sort of assessment that can be made for musical skills. This process of assessment takes complex skills, including interpretation, listening discernment, and expression, and attempts to give them specific grades. Of course, there are settings, like professional auditions, where these assessments are entirely valid. I would argue that they are not valid for elementary education and are quite difficult even for secondary education.
We are frequently told that the teacher's assessment of things like attitude, behavior and effort are "too subjective," yet these assessments are actually far more accurate and valid than "can this student play this rhythm correctly on this particular occassion?"
It is unfortunate that too few arts educators, administrators and professional organizations are willing to challenge systems of assessment which are inherently flawed and actually harmful to both teachers' and students' creative processes. It is especially unfortunate given the fact that most states have excellent standards in music. These, along with the largely parallel national standards established by MENC via NYSSMA, could be used for assessment in music education. If we truly desire to have excellent arts education be a right for every student, we must be willing to challenge and change a system that does not work, and find one that will most benefit our students. It is doubtful that this dilemma can be resolved quickly or easily, but I believe that the discussion is essential.
What do you think? Please comment, either here or via email
Thursday, December 31, 2009
blogger ethics!
I've signed the eGullet Ethics code for online writers about food. Good stuff including the right of readers to expect honest disclosure of any compensation or possible conflict of interest in sites that I might review. The full document can be found here:
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/124044-eg-ethics-code-for-online-writers/
I feel kind of strongly about this because I tend to write mostly positive reviews, and some might wonder if they are accurate and unbiased. This is my promise to readers that they are that.
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/124044-eg-ethics-code-for-online-writers/
I feel kind of strongly about this because I tend to write mostly positive reviews, and some might wonder if they are accurate and unbiased. This is my promise to readers that they are that.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
It's cold. It was about 10 degrees F this morning, and the wind is just howling. I cleaned out the woodstove in the living room, so we have a cozy spot to sit, play Scrabble, watch movies.
We went to dinner in Portland at Street & Co. which was really excellent. The menu is ONLY fish - pretty bold! - done beautifully. Simple and perfect. Nice wine list, too.
Less than two weeks til Christmas. This year, I have a service to play on Christmas Eve as well as one on Christmas morning! I'll need to be better organized than usual in order to avoid uber-stress. Is there anything worse than a frantic holiday? I don't think so.
I'm glad that there's snow on the ground. It doesn't feel festive if there is no snow. It would be wonderful to be able to go cross-country skiing on the 26th, to have a nice, calm day out in nature.
We went to dinner in Portland at Street & Co. which was really excellent. The menu is ONLY fish - pretty bold! - done beautifully. Simple and perfect. Nice wine list, too.
Less than two weeks til Christmas. This year, I have a service to play on Christmas Eve as well as one on Christmas morning! I'll need to be better organized than usual in order to avoid uber-stress. Is there anything worse than a frantic holiday? I don't think so.
I'm glad that there's snow on the ground. It doesn't feel festive if there is no snow. It would be wonderful to be able to go cross-country skiing on the 26th, to have a nice, calm day out in nature.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
When I listen to or watch the news too much, I seem to lose the ability to pay attention to the world around me. I can remember when news was much less subjective, more a presentation of something more like facts. It seems to me that now everything gets spun, and trying to find the truth behind the fabrication, behind the construct, gets more and more difficult.
To me, the root of creative practice is the ability to pay attention, to have pure and direct experience which fuels the creative process. If I can't have an experience that is unexpected, that surprises me in some level, I have no source material for my creative work. I suppose that I could use the stuff that gets in the way as source material, but it only feels weird and unnatural for me. Mostly that stuff - for example, "reality TV" - is just boring. It is not so much that it is mindless and of the lowest possible quality, not that it is unpleasant and stupid, as that it is dull.
Pre-digested "news" and "reality TV" and all manner of voyeurism set us at a remove from true experience. My use of the word "voyeurism" may shock the reader, but it is an accurate description of our celebrity-crazed culture. All of this is a poor substitute for authentic presence. Perhaps it is because we are overwhelmed by circumstance for whatever reason, but it seems to me a kind of escapism that is far from healthy. On some level, I think that a momentary impulse to escape, to be temporarily mindless, is perfectly wholesome.
"Be here now."
To me, the root of creative practice is the ability to pay attention, to have pure and direct experience which fuels the creative process. If I can't have an experience that is unexpected, that surprises me in some level, I have no source material for my creative work. I suppose that I could use the stuff that gets in the way as source material, but it only feels weird and unnatural for me. Mostly that stuff - for example, "reality TV" - is just boring. It is not so much that it is mindless and of the lowest possible quality, not that it is unpleasant and stupid, as that it is dull.
Pre-digested "news" and "reality TV" and all manner of voyeurism set us at a remove from true experience. My use of the word "voyeurism" may shock the reader, but it is an accurate description of our celebrity-crazed culture. All of this is a poor substitute for authentic presence. Perhaps it is because we are overwhelmed by circumstance for whatever reason, but it seems to me a kind of escapism that is far from healthy. On some level, I think that a momentary impulse to escape, to be temporarily mindless, is perfectly wholesome.
"Be here now."
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