Le Sigh

It's the end of an era, Jessie is going back to school. yessss........ However, this means that I started to get the baking itch, I wanted to send her back with some cupcakes. Now, to back it up a little, Star and I were in Portland the other week and she took me to Powells to see The Book. The Book is the ultimate (in my world, that is) book of cupcake recipes, also appropriately called Cupcakes!. She'd gotten one a while before and now I had to get one so that we could bake the recipes together, even though she's two hours away. I'd already baked Cinnamon Sugar Puff Cupcakes (p. 64, Star) and something about their warm cinnamoniness plucked a few heart strings. Everyone loved them. Afterwards it was deemed that the Cinnamon Sugar Puff Cupcakes were not in fact cupcakes proper because they didn't have any frosting (a. This was said with a bit of an eye twinkle and b. I don't like frosting which made this recipe even appealing) so it was decreed by the less than silent masses that I make another batch of real cupcakes, complete with frosting. Thus the White Christmas Cupcakes were born (p. 128, also Star). I didn't use their frosting because I didn't have any of the ingredients. The Joy has plenty of sugar/butter/egg based frostings that are pretty easy. I think I blew the frosting anyway though because it came out on the liquid side of things. Ah well, I'm not going to be eating these, and they sure look purty.

Here are your cupcake pictures Star!

So Jesus, What did You Learn in School Today?

I've had this article open in the background of my computer and every once in a while I accidentally click on it, bringing it to the front of everything. I've been meaning to post about it... any meaning to and meaning to some more. I think it's a great article, but more importantly, I think the man (David Campbell) it focuses on sounds like a great teacher. I can't imagine what it would be like the teach high school kids in general (NOoooooo THANK you!) not to mention attempting to squeeze ideas into their heads that they really, really don't want to hear. After watching movies like Nanking and A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash while I've been home alone for two-three weeks and feeling sorry for the general state of the world, the ending to this article has made me feel a wee bit more optimistic about the state of things. But not much...

Welcome to Evergreen

I had my first day of my Doing Research class tonight. We came up with some rough and vague topics for research for the next five weeks:

- Women in Washington State Legislature
- Bipolar Disorder
- Transgendered parenting
- Pack behavior in canines
- Organizational Change
- Lost years of Jesus/Historical Jesus
- Spanish Civil War
- Deaf Culture
- Self-help Books
- Food insecurity in America
- Marketing

RRRRrrrraaaaaaaaaannddoommmmmmm.

Now, these are the topics we came up with during the first 4o minutes of our 4 hour class. We kind of messed around with them, did some exercises and I wound up with the slightly narrower question "How is language used within the education system?" More specifically, I want to look at the words the school officials use to define deafness and how that shapes their policy with dealing with children with disabilities within their schools. In the Puget Sound area, and in many places within the U.S. there are deaf schools set up. Deaf students from the surrounding school districts are sent to these schools, however, once the schools realize how much money is spent on the transportation, education and the materials for these students that could be spent within their own schools, the children are usually recalled back to the public schools. Only deaf students with behavioral problems are sent to special residential schools. Anywho, that's what I came up with after four hours. I have five weeks to change my mind and mess about with it some more.

Classes Pour le' Printemps

I registered on Monday. I thought, wrote down and then set an alarm that said I was to register on Wednesday the 12th, not Monday the 10th. So I was diddling around in class, when I noticed on the website that my time ticket was for that day at 8 a.m.! I paniced and registered for the two classes I knew I wanted to take and then threw in the closest relevant class I could find which just happened to be the only class that works with the other two time slots. What luck. Plus I think the research class would be good to have if I do go into library science or something. We'll see. Anywho, here are the classes.

The Fifties, Fab and Fraught. (8 credits)
6-9:30 Mon & Wed.

"Popular culture has recast the 1950s, creating a picture of stability, predictability and tradition in the decade that preceded the turbulence of the 1960s. Students in this program will study the history and culture of the 1950s in the United States , examining a more complicated picture of the decade. The Civil Rights Movement changed American lives, the Cold War shaped politics, music helped define new identities. Only a few years after the end of WWII, the United States was involved in the brutal conflict in Korea . Constitutional guarantees were challenged by the House Un-American Activities Committee, with Joseph McCarthy (and Richard Nixon) assuming lead roles. Artist and writers pushed conventional boundaries while television enshrined the conventional. Students in this program will read fiction of the decade, history, and cultural analysis. We'll study film, television and music. We'll explore the decade within the context of its own history and time-and think about how it has influenced us today."
(This class will be fun. I've already taken two of Susan Precsiso's classes and I love her, and this quarter she's team teaching with the choir instructor Marla Elliot so it'll be a combination of music, history and all sorts of fun things from the 50's).

ASL (American Sign Language) II (4 credits)
3-5 Tue & Thu.

"Students will focus on broadening their vocabularies, conversation skills and using appropriate and accurate ASL grammar, with emphasis on the non-manual aspect of communication. There will also be continued study of deaf culture and invitations to deaf events in this area. "

Doing Research (2 credits)
5:30-9:30 Tue. April 1, 8, 15, 22, 29

"Students will learn how to translate their deepest interests into viable research projects, bring order to their thoughts, formulate good questions and hypotheses, develop promising strategies, and use traditional and electronic sources. Work will include writing several sections of a research prospectus and learning how to use the marvelous fund of information and expertise in the college's library. The aim is to cultivate both the skills and motivation to do research on a long-term project."

For a total of 14 credits (I didn't realize the research class was only two, which means I'll have to take at least 10 credits this summer to graduate).
So for Spring quarter I'll have class on:
Monday: 6-9:30
Tuesday: 3-5 and 5:30-9:30
Wednesday: 6-9:30
Thursday: 3-5