Weekly Challenge: Sun

 

Barbara Gavin-Lewellyn 

 

 

 

 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Two

Magnolia Trees at sunset in the Arboretum Longnecker Garden, Madison, WI.

Barbara Gavin-Lewellyn

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Arranged

Modern sculpture from native rock Mifflin and Carroll Street, Madison, WI.

Barbara Gavin-Lewellyn 

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Relating Across a Cultural Divide

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.   
~Doug Larson

Yesterday’s meeting with Jeong Sun/Alice was interesting and fun. I think we will fit well together but that is for her to decide at this point. My impression of her was that she is very intelligent, not really shy but somewhat reserved by American standards, soft-spoken, thoughtful, kind, and a very beautiful young woman.

It was not at all hard to get a conversation with her started which was good. She asked me questions too. In the past, I have had a hard time getting a conversation started with WESLI students. I chalked that up to a variety of reasons but primarily I think it probably was the fact that we were not a particularly good match because we could not find any mutual interests. I think I went through meeting four students before I met Mari, the Japanese woman who essentially became part of my family while she was here. I don’t think that will be a problem in this case.

She has a pretty good command of the English language, in my opinion. Pronunciation was off in a few cases—for instance she was trying to tell me her impression of the food at a local Korean restaurant and I didn’t understand what she meant until I realized she was trying to say the word salty as in the food was too salty.  She has good inflection and tone which is nice because sometimes people who have learned English in a foreign country sound really wooden when they speak. I didn’t notice any glaring mistakes at all.  But that’s exactly why she wants an English conversation partner—to correct minor errors in grammar and pronunciation.

I got a chance to ask all of my questions and then some so here are the answers:

 

Why did she choose the English name Alice? Does it have any special significance for her?

 

A friend chose this name for her. She wanted to use Roadie (I don’t know if I am spelling that right) because she thought it sounded funny. <grin> The girl has a sense of humor!

She was pleased that I was able to pronounce Jeong Sun properly. YAY me! I left the issue of whether to call her Alice or use her Korean name to another time.

She likes my name, Barbara, because the brushes she used to buy for painting in Korea were the brand name Barbara. She showed me how to write both of our names using the Korean alphabet and explained a little bit about the Korean alphabet to me.

 

Why did she come to the US and Wisconsin, in particular, to study English?

 

She wanted to travel and study so decided to learn English first. She came to Wisconsin because she heard that Wisconsin speakers have the best pronunciation with the least accent in the USA! She also heard that Madison was safest amongst the major cities with ESL schools. Finally, WESLI gave her a 10% discount on their tuition fees to entice her to come here.

 

How long has she been here? When will she go back to Korea?

 

She has been in the USA six months and this is the first time she has lived away from home. She’s not really homesick but she has had to learn how to take care of herself for the first time because her Mom did everything at home such as the cooking, cleaning and laundry. She thinks American children are much more independent than Korean children and was shocked when I told her that my daughter had gone to Germany when she was barely 18 and lived there for almost three years.

She is learning to cook Korean foods since her experience with the Korean restaurant was dis-satisfactory. I asked her about Kim chi and expressed an interest in trying it. She said that making Kim chi was something that required the skills of an older more experienced woman and she did not know how to make it. I told her that I had seen it in the stores here and would like to try it with her and she seemed pleased by that. She told me that Kim chi was like yogurt and had a lot of health benefits.

She has no plans to return to Korea and hopes to stay in the USA and pursue a new career. She was an Art Teacher in Korea but wants to go to some kind of technical school to learn new skills she can use here.

 

What does she like most and least about Madison?

 

She likes: Shopping at West Towne! State Street! The diversity of people she comes into contact with.

She said there wasn’t anything she really dislikes but said that it is very different from her home.

 

Does she have brothers and sisters? Are they older or younger than she is?

 

She has an older sister and a younger brother. Her father owns a small to medium sized factory that produces things like screws. He grew up in the country but relocated to Inchon as a young man. (I think that is what she said–I couldn’t quite understand this part because I don’t know how to pronounce Korean place names but she told me there was a big airport there and Inchon has an International Airport.  I asked her if it was near Seoul and she said yes.  Her eyes widened at that question but I’m not sure why.)  Her mother is a housewife.

 

Does she enjoy Korean Television Dramas and comedies?

 

Yes, but she thinks that they exaggerate emotions (I figured as much.  Those dramas really manipulate your emotions!) and she sometimes does not like the way they focus on “hot button” social issues because she thinks they make things seem worse than they really are. She thinks this is true for the news media as well and talked about how all the Korean news sites online seemed concerned about was traffic statistics on their site so they only told the bad news.  I told her that was true for America too and told her the old axiom of Newspapers “If it bleeds, it leads.” and tried to explain what that meant.  She seemed to get it just fine.

All in all I think we both enjoyed ourselves and we planned to meet again next Thursday at the same time and place.

 

 

Barbara Gavin-Lewellyn  

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Meeting Jeong Sun

I’m excited because today I am meeting a Korean student from WESLI to see if we will be a fit as English conversation partners. Her Korean name is Jeong Sun (first and middle) but when she replied to my contact Email, me she told me her English name is Alice. She’s 27 years old.

I wonder if she chose an English name to make it easy for us Wisconsinites to talk to her or if she really prefers to use that name. If it is the former, I hope we can just drop it soon and use her Korean name because it is very pretty and I THINK I can pronounce it OK. I found the meaning of the name online. Jeong  means “virtuous and chaste.”  Sun means “goodness”

We’re meeting at the Fair Trade Coffee House on State Street which is a short walk from my house. I can’t remember the last time I went out for coffee so this will be a treat.

I’ve written up a list of questions I hope will be good conversation starters for this initial meeting. I’m curious about:

Why did she choose the English name Alice? Does it have any special significance for her?

Why did she come to the US and Wisconsin, in particular, to study English?

How long has she been here? When will she go back to Korea?

What does she like most and least about Madison?

Does she have brothers and sisters? Are they older or younger than she is?

Does she enjoy Korean Television Dramas and comedies? (This one is important because I am absolutely hooked on them and would like very much to find someone to watch them with me who understands the language and can explain the nuances that I think are there but don’t understand. They are subtitled so she doesn’t have to translate them for me. I just want her to explain the cultural things that are happening.)

My interest in Korean Dramas is what prompted me to contact WESLI and become a volunteer English conversation partner. I think they are wonderful morality tales and probably a reflection, albeit imperfect, of Korean culture just like American television is an imperfect reflection of American culture. On the other hand, the Korean television dramas are far better than anything I have seen lately on free American television. I don’t have cable so I may be missing some really good stuff on American TV but I doubt it if what is being talked about in the forums online is any indication.

So that’s my big event of the day. The week actually. Oh, and my daughter and son are both coming to see me this evening. We’re having a BLT salad and I am going to make them some of my spiced coffee. Sunday we’re having a family get together with everyone for my nephew, Greg’s birthday. He requested fried chicken and everyone in the family is super excited because we usually only fry chicken on the 4th of July because we’re all calorie and saturated fat conscious the rest of the year.

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Places To Go and Things To Do in the ‘Hood

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Aristotle

Last week, a group of about 10 of us from The Capitol Center Apartments went on a little excursion (about 3 1/2 blocks) to visit one of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Art Department labs. TASS Matthew Piepenbrok and his students Kristine Karlen, Bao Thao, and Sean Everett gave us an exciting demonstration of glass blowing and patiently answered our questions. It was a lot of fun and very educational.  

The Universtiy of Wisconsin-Madison at the behest of Harvey Littleton was the first college to establish a glass blowing lab in the United States in the ’60s. Above is a view of the furnaces in the present-day lab.  There are four of them and they all have whimsical names because it is easier to tell someone to use Lucy than it is to say the second one from the left.  Lucy and Joe were the ones in use while we were there.

TASS Matthew Piepenbrok (pictured left) is studying to be a professor of art and if his presentation to our group is any indication, he’s going to be an excellent one. He’s a very engaging and personable young man with a great sense of humor and seems to have a profound love of teaching others about his craft.  Examples of his art work can be found at ARTQ.net

In this picture he is showing us the molten glass he has just poured into a cold mold from one of the furnaces. What a card! Wouldn’t it be fun to have a professor like this?

Here he is showing us the hollow stainless steel rod that the liquid glass will be “loaded” onto in preparation for blowing. It was very warm in this lab due to four furnaces that were keeping the molten glass at a temperature of around 2,400 to 2,000*.

The long sleeve on Matthew’s right arm is to protect him from burns as he loads up his glassblowing rod.  According to Matthew and his students glassblowing is a very risky business and not a day goes by when one of them doesn’t get burned as Bao Thao kindly demonstrated for us later in the session! They were very nonchalant about it, treating it as an ordinary part of their day in the lab although you could tell it hurt.

Above Matthew and Kristine Karlen are loading a glob of molten glass onto the rod. In the picture at the right, Matthew is showing us a closer view of the glass after a small amount of air has been blown into it. At right, he is using a pad made from many layers of newspaper to begin shaping the glass. Later on he showed us how the heat from the glass had burned through several layers. 

The whole time the glass is being worked the artist or glassmith must keep the rod turning in order for centrifugal force to keep the glass on the rod or gravity will take effect and the piece will slump and become disfigured.  That’s not so hard at this stage but as they continued to add glass, the piece became heavier and heavier.  We were given a sphere of cooled glass to examine and it is quite heavy. I’d guess between 10 and 15 pounds.

Little by little more molten glass is added to the piece and more air is blown in then more shaping is done to smooth the piece and achieve the desired size and contours. All the while the rod must be kept spinning to keep the glass attached to the rod. The work is painstaking and physically challenging.

The top picture  shows Matthew blowing more air into his  globe of glass. Bao Thao steps in to assist him and Matthew demonstrates other shaping tools glassmiths use to get the effects they want to produce.

Sean Everett steps in to become Matthew’s assistant and things begin to get very dramatic! 

Protruberances were added to the sphere by dropping globs of glass from a rod. To keep the glass at the right temperature, a propane torch was used. Melted glass started dripping onto the cement floor!

At this point they began to let gravity take effect and elongate the round sphere in preparation for the cold mold that had cooled by now to be attached to the piece. It took 3 people to manage that task! Clearly glass art of any complexity is a collaborative effort.

Bao Thao brushes excess sand from the attached cold mold while Kristine Karlen stands by with the propane torch in case heat is needed to keep the glass at the right temperature. The glass can break or crack at any moment if the right temperature is not maintained and in fact, did during this demonstration but fortunately not badly enough to ruin the whole thing so they would have to start all over.

The cold mold has now been attached to a solid stainless steel rod and Matthew, Sean, and Kristine detach the former sphere from the hollow rod. They will begin pulling and twisting the piece into a an elongated horn shape after adding some colored pigment.

Bao and Sean hold the tip of the horn while the piece is being turned and pulled to shape it.

Kristine applies some heat to the tip to refine the shape just before it goes into the cooling tank.  She looks wicked cool with that propane torch!

Barbara Gavin-Lewellyn

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Through

Not terribly unique but I’ve been wanting to take these pictures for awhile and have been waiting for the right moment.  Through the window screen on the 16th floor.

Barbara Gavin-Lewellyn 

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To Be or Knot to Be

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust

 

I love my friends at the Senior Center.  They make me laugh every day.

I didn’t have a microphone available to do the lunch announcements at the Madison Senior Center  today so I walked into the middle of all the tables rather than standing at the front of the room and started “talking big,” projecting my voice to be heard over the jangle of the conversations going on at the individual tables, trying to get everyone’s attention.  Every day starts with an orientation to place and time–important stuff for a lot of Senior Citizens.

Sometimes the lady who writes these announcements throws me a curve ball and gets either the day of the week or the day of the month wrong and someone in the crowd cries out the correct information to correct me.  That used to embarrass me but I’ve learned to laugh about it and will often ask in an aside if we are all on the same page on the same day.

I was going to do that today just because I was feeling silly and wanted to give the room some extra time to settle down and listen up.  I looked up to see the three people I eat lunch with on a regular basis unfurling banners that proclaimed

and totally cracked up. I started blushing when the room erupted in applause. To Mark, Eugene and Barb and everyone else, thanks for making today special.  Barb D, you instigator you, payback is merciless and painful, you know.  Just remember that I kept your birthday a big secret.

Unfortunately I got so flustered I forgot a vital part of the set-up and  flubbed the lame joke of the day. It really, really was lame.  Pity that.  It’s actually a good joke.  So I’ll tell it here.

A string was thirsty one day and decided it wanted a beer so it walked into a bar and ordered a draft.  The bartender looks at the string and sneered “Get outta here, we don’t serve your kind!”  So the string left, feeling hurt and dejected.

However, the string was still thirsty and it still wanted a beer so (this is the part I forgot)  it ties itself in a knot, messes up its hair and goes back into the bar and orders a beer again.  The bartender looks at him with pure disdain and asks “Aren’t you the string I just threw out?  I told you we don’t serve strings!”

The string draws himself up indignantly and says, “No, I’m a frayed knot.”

Bada bump…

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More Kitchen Adventures: I Have to Clean the Oven? Today? Seriously?

Nope, my good girl, Kerryn, came to my rescue! Since she voluntarily came to clean my oven for the stupid HUD Inspections, I made her a simple supper of Salad, Omaha Steak’s Pork Loin Cutlets (a gift from one of my neighbors), and Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Cauliflower which she had never tried. The Pork Cutlets were really, really good. Thanks, Richard!

 The mashed potatoes and cauliflower combination is a fairly new discovery for me and Kerryn liked it so just for her, here’s the recipe for six to eight servings:

Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Cauliflower

Cook until tender:

1 head of cauliflower broken into small florets

4 medium-sized unpeeled Yukon Gold potatoes cut into 1 inch cubes

I usually start this process with the potatoes in a pot that has a steamer insert and put the cauliflower in the steamer until the potatoes are beginning to get soft. Then I dump the cauliflower in with them and finish them together.

While that is cooking peel, smash and mince 3-4 good-sized cloves of garlic and saute it in 1 TBS of butter until it smells good and is tender. Do not brown. OR if you’re busy and rushing things, use 1 tsp garlic powder in the next step. More if you like garlic.

When the vegetables and garlic have cooked put them in a food processor with a bit of the cooking liquid and add:

2 (or more) TBSP butter

1/8 cup of whole milk to start.

½ tsp salt

A few cranks of the pepper grinder

Turn the food processor on and let it do its thing until the potato peels are still visible but the potatoes and cauliflower look like mashed potatoes are supposed to look in your world. I like mine a bit lumpy. (What can I say, my mother was not into doing whatever it took to make smooth mashed potatoes when I was growing up so in MY world mashed potatoes are a little lumpy with chewy little chunks of potatoes in them.)

Turn it out into a serving bowl and stir in 1 TBS of parsley. Fresh is a nice touch but I seldom have fresh on hand so I use the dried stuff. Plop about a TBS of butter in the middle and crank some pepper over the top. Good with beef or pork gravy on it, too.

If I was going to make this dairy free I would substitute a good margarine for the butter and use plain soy, oat or almond milk instead of Cow’s milk. Maybe coconut milk.  I’ve been reading good things about the health benefits of coconut oil.

Since I live alone I halve this recipe and I’m inclined to use instant potatoes. Just follow the recipe on the box for 2 servings and dump everything into the food processor with half the cauliflower. It keeps well in the refrigerator for a few days

That’s Kerryn.  She doesn’t look much like a kitchen drudge in that picture does she?  But let me tell ya, she can clean an oven and not make a mess of the floor.  I don’t know how she does it. 

Thanks for helping me out with that odious chore, Sweet Pea. You rock!  Love ya a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck!

Addendum:  It is 9:30am. The inspectors have come and gone.  I got the bathroom and kitchen mostly done, the windows washed, and my bed made.  I had the couch pulled out and the equipment and cleaning supplies to vacuum and steam clean the pet messes on the carpet (wouldn’t you know one of my brats puked on the carpet in two different spots yesterday) scattered around so it was obvious I was getting to them. 

They weren’t even going to look in the oven or refrigerator but I insisted they look at the oven since I stressed over it so much and Kerryn made a special effort to help me.  Jill said it was obvious that I kept up with the housekeeping so she just checked things off her list.  I guess that’s a compliment.  They did test the fire alarm and made sure all the other mechanicals were working–flushed the toilet, turned on the fans and all the lights. I pointed out that I cleaned the windows because if the windows are clean and the kitchen counters are cleared off, the dishes are put away, the kitchen floor is mopped and the carpets don’t have a bunch of crap littering them,  then the house looks clean to me.  The dust can be an inch thick but if those things are done, it looks clean.  Just don’t look too closely.

Honestly, I don’t know why they send that damn letter telling us that we have to do this long list of stuff to pass these things if they aren’t going to check to be sure they are done.  On the other hand, I still have nightmares about living at Shirley’s House of Recycled Virgins on Whitewater Avenue in Fort Atkinson when the kids were young.  What a PITA that stick-up-her-butt woman was when she did inspections.  I guess I won’t complain about the young ladies here and try to remember they aren’t Shirley…

Wikipedia: floor definition: the level base of a room. →

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Life at the Three Threes: HUD Inspections

Life at the Three Threes is ummm…interesting to say the least. I love living in downtown Madison and having the University so near. The energy of so many young people roaming the streets and patronizing the same business establishments I patronize is exhilarating. Living on the 9^th floor of one of the tallest buildings in the city is excellent. I’ve got a view! Having the Senior Center where I volunteer and socialize keeps me from becoming socially isolated. As an extrovert with introvert tendencies I really need and enjoy that outlet.

And then there is the Three Threes (the building street address is 333) itself. This building is HUD Housing meaning the rent I pay is based on my income and the rest is paid by a federal program with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The residents are either senior citizens or disabled in some way.  The staff here is primo! We couldn’t ask for nicer and better folks in the office or on the maintenance staff. They all have an excellent sense of humor and are kind and helpful to the inmates err…residents.

Jill, in the front office, reigns with a quiet fair-minded benevolence. Gina, the resident activities coordinator and Jill’s assistant is creative and enthusiastic as well as fun to hang with. Erica, the Services Manager (she helps us get the social services we need to stay independent and healthy) is the BEST! I want to hook her up with my son.

The building is extremely well maintained and if you ask for something or there is a problem Vern and Scott are Johnny on the spot. Eldegard (I may have misspelled that—it’s Spanish) keeps the common areas spotless. They are all pleasant and nice folks.

BUT…(you just knew there was a but in there, didn’t you?) there are some things I (and most everyone else here) don’t like about living in HUD housing. Yearly inspections are one of them. A lot of people hate it with a purple passion but I’m generally pretty stoic about it. It forces me to spring clean which is a good thing and I sort of appreciate the push to do what I should be doing anyway.

But I don’t like it. It’s stressful. It takes all the fun out of spring cleaning which is that I do it because I feel like opening and washing the windows and as long as there is fresh air let’s get rid of all those pent up winter smells that accumulate. I’m in the mood and energized. Bring on the Pine Sol!

Besides that, I don’t particularly like young, healthy, physically active people coming in and judging my housekeeping skills. It doesn’t matter how nice they are. It’s unnerving.

Inspections take that away from me for the most part but whatever… I can deal. However, this year I am in the “hating it with a purple passion” camp. I have been incredibly busy for the past 4 weeks running to the chiropractor, the vet, and today I have to go see my GP. My son’s birthday was last Sunday. That may not seem like much but for me, it’s exhausting.

When I got the notice last Friday that they were going to be doing inspections THIS Thursday (that’s tomorrow), I was horrified. I was baking a cake on Saturday. Saturday night I was going out of town until Sunday evening. I had a Chiropractor appt Monday, Bridge on Tuesday, Dr’s appt on Wednesday. I need naps every afternoon. Serious two-three hour naps or I get sick. Just when was I going to find time to clean? Especially since they want the oven, refrigerator, bathroom, and carpet looking good. Oy…

If I fail this inspection then they will put me on horror of horrors quarterly inspections. Good gawd…

Don’t get me wrong, I think I am one of the luckiest people I know to live here in affordable housing that is well taken care of. I try to remember to count my blessings and not bitch a lot. Today I’m bitching.

Bless her heart my daughter is coming over tonight to clean the oven because that always triggers an asthma attack for me and needs its own day all by itself. And I’ve taken on the attitude that what gets done gets done. If they put me on quarterly inspections I’m going straight to Erica and asking her to help me find some housekeeping help. I’ve always wanted a maid.

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