Cool Kids' Table

Can somebody please tell me what the heck the European Graduate School is and why it is they have the dopest freakin' faculty line up?

How many f'n things can you do with polenta?

Way back when, under some inspiration, MarianEvans bought a box of polenta to make. It sat on the shelf for weeks (maybe months). Finally, I said we had to make it; it might go bad, right? So she boiled it up and that night we had the "cream of wheat" style polenta, a soft, warm mash that tastes like whatever you dress it with. It quickly hardened in the pot and ME put the block in the fridge. There it sat for another week. What to do? It was rather imposing, a little odd looking. Here was this big orange-yellow block, just sitting there. Ok, something needed to be done, lest it rot and we waste most of it.
Mission one: I cut off a hunk of it and chopped it up into 1 1/2 inch pieces, trying to minimize a geometric appearance (when hardened polenta is cut, it cuts nice and smooth). I fried these up with sliced onions, cumin, salt n peppa. Not bad, served with a side of beans.
Still hadn't made a dent in the block which lurked in the fridge. Another week goes by.
Mission two: I used my new mandolin to slice off thin pieces, about 2 inches long and roughly square. These I placed on a baking sheet, sprayed with oil, dusted with cumin, salt n peppa (sensing theme here?) and placed under the broiler. Out came semi-crisp, sort-of-like-tortilla-chips bits of polenta. Not bad as a snack with some salsa.
Yet, still, there the hunk sat, about a third of its original splendor persisting.
Mission three: Fed up, I decided to do away with it all. I grated the rest finely. I grated onion and pressed some garlic. I mixed all this together, added some cumin, salt n peppa (hey hey!), some chopped cilantro, a bit of flour and an egg, in order to make it doughy/pasty. I formed 2 inch patties and fried em. Turned out to be like polenta-falafel. Not bad, really. Went well with a side of beans n rice.

Polenta, I know I've barely scratched the surface of your versatility, but think we've had enough for some time to come.

Raucous Recess Ruckus

I was standing outside the woodchips bin, looking away toward the monkey bars and waiting a turn, when WHAM!--a slap on the shoulder, children's voices laughing, the patter of feet running off. Stunned, I turned around to survey the situation. I saw that naughty Gaunilo was the closest of the scattering group, and as he looked back smiling I realized that I had been drawn into a game of tag. Wanting to be a good sport, I stumbled awkwardly into the mulch zone, wondering who to pursue.

1. Number of books owned? I believe MarianEvans is working on that one. I'll let her do the calculations.

2. Last book I bought? Critical Theory: Selected Essays, by Max Horkheimer. Class requirement provided the excuse to get this. Do class texts count for this tag game?Well, I did want to own it eventually. Along with Dialectic of Enlightenment (co-authored with Theodor Adorno), this collection provides a great introduction to what has become one of the most influential schools of thought in contemporary criticism. Provides critical assessment of bourgeois economy and its exaltation of Reason. Also great critiques of positivism, mass culture and the hegemony of science. Though Horkheimer (and others in the Frankfurt school) exhibited a certain romanticism and elitism (eg exalting high culture over mass culture--strange for Marxist influenced theory!), these writings are still critical for gaining a vision for how cultural studies/criticism took the direction it did. For those into lit crit, this stuff influenced Eagleton, Belsey, Steiner, R. Williams, etc. For the theologians among you, this all trickled down into liberationist thought and other political theologies.

3. Last book I read. Justine by Marquis De Sade. Ahem. No, I was not looking for S&M inspiration. In part, it was preparation for reading Lawrence Durrell's quartet - I figured I should have some background. Also, I'd never read anything by the grand Marquis. It was providentially tossed into my lap by MarianEvans, after she scored it at a used book sale. Fascinating little book. He provides a number of theories undermining virtue- evolutionary, economic, naturalist, etc, all in this fast-moving tale of the misadventures of a pretentious young girl.

4. Five that mean a lot to me (I'm not reading this as top five, to ease the burden):
a. Moltmann's The Crucified God. Absolutely foundational. The suffering God. God's solidarity with the outcast and victim. The Son's experience of separation from the Father. Death in God.
b. Fragments, by Binjamin Wilkomirski. All Holocaust narratives are disturbing. This one, told through the eyes of a child, is absolutely. I only read it once, about ten years ago, but it sticks with me and haunts me.
c. Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. All heckling of evangelical pop books aside, I can't ignore the role this book played early on in my development to set me on the course I've taken. Decent biblical exegesis, some theological reflection, ok social analysis. Not scholarly, not elegantly written, but life-changing nonetheless.
d. Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God. Helped me to hang on to something.
e. Watership Down, by Richard Adams. Leadership, vision, solidarity, community-not to mention good social criticism--all done through BUNNIES!! Who can resist Hazel, Fiver, and Bigwig? The fact that Hauerwas has written about it (a piece I have yet to read) doesn't diminish it in my mind.

After a flurry of sprints and near tags, I realize there is no one left. Cyberspace, I tag you...

Random Props

Just want to give a shout out to my man Paulo Freire. Nothing prompted this other than some nostalgic reflections. Freire's pedagogical theories are nothing short of the bomb. He critiques what he terms the "banking method" of education--the notion that the instructor has the sole perspective on the subject matter, and must transmit (deposit) it en toto while the students must passively receive. In constrast, Freire sets forth the "problem posing" method that begins where the students are, w/ the instructor as co-learner, and together they push back the bounds of knowledge through critical questioning of everything. Rather than passive acceptance, active use of and engagement with tradition takes place as they seek to elucidate the current state of affairs. Freire was actively involved in literacy work and community organizing in Brasil and elsewhere. His theories are strongly influenced by Marxian critique.
His method should certainly give pause to Christian educators--in what sense are we to hang onto some non-reducible deposit to be passed on in pristine form? In what sense can theological education be transformation and not just transmission? Is the gospel a set of propositions (or at least beliefs) to be safeguarded and transmitted (Paul seems to say this to Timothy, no?) or can it be alternatively conceived so as to maximize the subversive and revolutionary potential of the kerygma?

Further thoughts on Ricoeur

Being ever-slothful, I cannot bring myself to develop fully what can be simply listed as bullet points. Nevermind the lack of clarity and greater possibility of being misunderstood, etc. I just want to jot down some themes/ideas of Ricoeur's that I have found valuable...

• interpretive arc; esp. appropriation of texts as integral to our mode of being
• redescriptive power of poetry and narrative; its subversive potential
  
• the word that comes to us from without
• mediation of Habermas and Gadamer; contextualized understanding and ideology critique
• self as externalized in text and action
• self-awareness thru interpretation of such externalized objects vs unmediated self-consciousness
• surplus of meaning; metaphor as contributing new cognitive content
• ethics as teleological yet somehow still ad hoc and non-systemic
  
• ...