cakes

Drunken Pumpkin Gingerbread Snack Cake

Drunken Pumpkin Gingerbread Snack Cake
Drunken Pumpkin Gingerbread Snack Cake

Mike and I sometimes play a game where we list all the places we’d love to live. We both gravitate towards big cities with great public transportation (or walkability), great food, and lots of things to do. Topping my list are San Diego, San Francisco (in its cheaper days, please), and Florence! Wouldn’t it be nuts to live in Florence?

One thing that baffles us during these discussions is how people live where it’s cold. A huge chunk of our nation’s population lives where it’s cold for, like, half the year! Where they have to dig their cars out of snow to go to work starting in October! Where things like ice fishing and snowshoeing exist! You might be sitting somewhere right now where it’s already started snowing. I need to understand.

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Pumpkin Maple Pecan Rolls (with Pumpkin Cream Cheese Icing!)

Pumpkin Maple Pecan Rolls (with Pumpkin Cream Cheese Icing!)
Pumpkin Maple Pecan Rolls (with Pumpkin Cream Cheese Icing!)

Technology is amazing, and if you can get it into kids’ hands, it can be a tremendous democratizing educational tool. It can also monopolize kids’ attention and suck their brains out through their eyeballs. That’s just my observation as a layperson, but I’m pretty sure it’s scientifically accurate.

The other day we were reading aloud in class, not really using our computers at all. Kid after kid was mumbling through the reading, so I decided to ask them to project their voices a little better. “Can we turn up the volume, please?” I asked. Not one, but like seven different kids reached over and actually tick-tick-tick-tick turned up the volume on their computers. Once they realized what I’d meant versus what they’d done, we all died laughing. It occurred to me at that moment that our computers have almost become natural extensions of ourselves.

And actually, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing in general.

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Quick and Easy Maple Candied Pecans

Quick and Easy Maple Candied Pecans
Quick and Easy Maple Candied Pecans

My students have been immersing themselves in Japanese cultural experiences as they learn about the Heian Period of Japan and The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, an amazing 10th century diary. While listening to traditional music and burning incense, we’ve experimented with ikebana, the art of flower arranging; shodo, or calligraphy; meditation; walks through nature; making tea; origami; and more. They’re adorably engaged with all the opportunities to appreciate art and literature from various time periods in Japanese history.

One of my favorite opportunities is learning to write haiku. Lots of us learn what I jokingly call the “baby haiku”: a simple three-liner, 5-7-5 syllable pattern, no problem. But (permit me a geek moment) haiku is actually this incredible mental and spiritual discipline that tunes in to nature while creating an asymmetrical experience for the reader. Traditional haiku don’t have the 5-7-5 pattern we’re used to, but instead are comprised of 17 Japanese on, or sound units. The closest we could come when creating a form for English haiku was the idea of a 17 syllable poem, but that’s not exactly right.

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