Summer, again. Not a Greek island.

It is has become apparent that that Summer Amanda is back and up to her all her old tricks. Unlike Rest-of-the-Year Amanda, Summer Amanda wanders around her parents’ house in her pajamas all day, languishes in bed, and doesn’t brush her hair. This is rather unfortunate as Summer Amanda is now also Recently Graduated From College And Supposed To Be A Grown-Up Amanda.

Remedies (aside from the obvious goal of Getting A Job Already)

1. I will become a MASTER DUMPLING CHEF. On my own. In the kitchen in my parents’ basement.
2. I will set up a desk in my parent’s basement. (And, please, let’s take  a moment to appreciate how much dignity that prepositional phrase gives to my endeavors: in my parent’s basement. I am living the dream, people.) If you would like to know what I plan to do at this desk, please see Number 3.
3. I will write some stuff.
4. I will stop watching television. Mostly. Well, I’ll stop watching TLC reality television and the GOLF CHANNEL (???) and Keanu Reeves movies.
5. I will go to the library ALL THE TIME and READ SO MUCH THAT MY EYES FALL OUT. I will start by reading My Family And Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. Mostly because it is a book about a family who decides to completely uproot and transplant to a Greek Island. And I wish I were on a Greek island right now. Or All The Time. Let’s talk about that in Not A Numbered List.

Why I wish I were on a Greek Island

When I was eleven I spent all summer at the public pool. (The pool was called “Ray Edwards,” and so my then BFF Brittany Nielsen and I had a lot of silly phone conversations during which we asked each other how we felt about “Ray Edwards.”) I got very sunburned, ate frozen twix bars from the snack counter, and listened to a lot of Savage Garden on the pool loudspeakers. Especially the 1997 classic, “Truly Madly Deeply,” which features this killer chorus:

I want to stand with you on a mountain.
I want to bathe with you in the sea.
I want to lay like this forever.
Until the sky falls down on me.

(These lyrics are, by the way, courtesy of a website called Lyrics007. I think you might appreciate that their motto is, in fact, “WE DO BETTER THAN JAMES BOND.”)

A few years later, Ray Edwards got filled in with cement and now there’s a big shiny water park on the other side of town with eight slides and a little cafe and a bunch of giant foam sea animals anchored in the deep end. I think summers kind of lost their glittery sheen as I got older. But I still kind of wish I could go somewhere with mountains and sea all around like that stupid song. Like a GREEK ISLAND. When I was in Mexico studying coastal ecology there were lots of mountains and there was sea all around. Sure, we weren’t allowed in the water right beside the site because there was a chance we would get TB from fish cannery run-off, but it was wonderful all the same. Also, ahem:

It goes without saying that I love  A Room With A View. And I particularly love this scene, in which a peeved Lucy Honeychurch hatches a plan to run away from her cozy roost in Windy Corners–and  her ruined engagement to Cecil Vyse–to Greece. Unlike Lucy Honeychurch, I am not fleeing  the social tension left in the wake of a scandal. But like Lucy, I am peeved and cranky and would rather leave than buck up and deal. Being at home turns me into an unmotivated lump. I had cold pizza and cookie dough for breakfast, and I want to go to a Greek island. Don’t make me quote Savage Garden again.

Dear friends, this is Listen Hear!

So I have this job where I’m news director for my college radio station. We put together a little show called Listen Hear in which we tell a lot of stories about a lot of things. I love this little show. A whole lot. I talk about it all the time and probably drive my friends bonkers.  Sadly, the rollover for getting the podcast out and into our subscribers’ podcatchers is a little behind right now. But we’ve aired five episodes so far! I swear! So here, below, you can listen listen listen to the thing we do do do. All four completed audio files, pre-official-podcasting! You lucky bunch of rascals.

(This nifty splashcast player opens at the most recent episode. Click on the little “more shows” button to see them all.)

Also! Look at the picture before you click the start button! Check out that kid with the fat old braid o’ hair! That is me. I keep forgetting that until very recently I was the long-hair sort of girl. And that I could have probably carried a bag of flour with my braid alone. These days, though, I’m shaven and shorn. Mostly I am in love with it.

The Diary of Rosa B. Armentrout.

The whole “this blog is my summer project” thing kind of went out the window. Things like work and sleep and MY THREE-MONTH UTTER LACK OF MOTIVATION got in the way. Here we are now, days away from midsems, and I’ve nothing to show for it.

But! Here is the culmination of my summer research! It’s the audio diary of Rosa B. Armentrout, who grew up in a farm in the land of Ioway back when there wasn’t any internet or global warming or EVEN ANY POLYESTER. She was a cool kid. I spent a lot of time leafing through her diary at the Iowa Historical Society. Take a listen. (Now with not-broken player! It should work this time. Sorry!)

(My little sister Lah does all the reading.)

(Also, if you want to find out who Rosa ended up marrying, check out this. Search the page for “Indianola.”)

Little Sandwiches and A Sauce That You Put On Them.

Last week my mom grilled some black-bean veggie burgers and asked me to make a sauce for them.

“Mustard,” she said. “But not mustard-y. You know?”

My mother and I usually understand each other without sentences or actual clauses, even. I knew exactly what she meant.

I messed around with what I could find in the fridge and came up with something that was tangy and spicy and sweet and creamy all at once. Mustard, but not mustard-y. Since I was improvising and not really measuring, you’ll have to use your instincts and your taste buds to re-create it:

On-the-spot Curry Mustard
A base of mayonnaise and plain, old yellow mustard. More mayo than mustard.
Curry powder. A lot of curry powder.
A decent amount of honey. A little soy sauce. A teensy bit of horseradish. Some red pepper. Some paprika for show.
Mix thoroughly. Should be the same color as a duckling.

It was great on the black-bean veggie burgers, but I overestimated how much we would need that night and ended up with a whole extra dish of sauce. Solution? Next day’s lunch. Observe:

French bread slathered with the extra curry mustard and sandwiching mozzarella, thin slices of green apple, and (an addition for the omnivores) Canadian bacon. Buttered and grilled till the cheese is gooey and the bread crispy and golden. If you’ve got a household as full as mine, these things will practically fly off the plate.

A Little Found Poem.

Kathryn “lovingly suggested” that I get some blogging done, as well she should. So, check it:

In 1855, John Hugh Williams, aiming to spread the word of the New Church of Jerusalem to the American frontier, moved his wife Eleanor and their six children west from Ohio to a small unsettled piece of land in Webster County, Iowa. It wasn’t long before they found life on the land too difficult, money too scarce, and six mouths to feed just a few too many. So the Williams did what many frontier farming families did at the time: they sent their eldest child away to find work and wages. In 1858, James Madison Williams, aged 21, left for Augusta, Georgia. And for years afterward, John and James wrote letters to each other–letters about the weather, about the farm, about faith and politics and the ongoing Civil War. These letters were filled with little everyday things. And you’d think I would be bored by now. But I’ve been reading them for hours and hours and some of them still jump right off the page. Here’s a bit from my favorite letter, what father wrote to son:

a little rain last night   Laid the dust   seems very refreshing
after such a drouth

I think this is poetry.

If you want to learn more about J.H. Williams and his family, you should check out “‘This State of Wonders’: the Letters of An Iowa Frontier Family, 1858-1861,” edited by John Kent Folmar. It’s where I learned all this, and it’s a wonderful read.

And if you’re confused about why I’m posting this, then you should know that my summer job involves doing research into Midwestern family papers and children’s diaries from the the late 1800s and early 1900s.

First real summer post.

Angst follows. You are warned.

I have been back home for 16 days now, and I swear I haven’t stopped moving since we pulled into the driveway. I started working full-time immediately, have already traveled long distance with the entire family to both a funeral and a wedding, and am in the midst of the most mind-numbing statistics night class in the history of the world. I get home at 8:00 or 9:00 every night, watch the weather with the parental units, do math homework, and pass out. My life is decidedly pathetic.

Now. That is quite enough whining.

These are the So Good things about my life:

1. Because I am a research intern at a museum that boasts its own one-room school house, I have been spending a lot of time reading farm children’s diaries from the 1860s and 70s and 80s. They often say things like: Today I named all the calves the following: Poppet, Elizabeth, George Washington, Harriet, and Three-Penny. Then I churned butter. Also, the baby has diptheria. Need I even explain why I love it?

2. Because we are So Cool, my friends-from-school and I are doing a long distance book club. This is fun. We are reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers right now. It is melancholy and sweet and nice, and you should read it with only one lamp on in the whole house while drinking iced tea.

3. Someday soon I am going to go see a movie and have dinner with my childhood best friend, Caitlin. As children, Caitlin and I ‘made books’ together. She had good handwriting and I was an obsessive doodler and we were the offspring of English professors. So it would make sense that we would spend whole weekends writing and illustrating natural history books about the red-throated hummingbird or historical novels about escaped slaves on the underground railroad. Right? Coming soon: excerpts!

Anyway, this is supposed to be a radio and food blog, but so far it has only been a whine blog. So I promise I’ve got some killer audio stories in line for you. Like, “Amanda records her sisters beat-boxing” and “Amanda and the whole crazy family pile into a minivan and go to their great-aunt’s funeral at which they hear a lot of Elvis gospel songs.” Listen for it, friends. Soon, I promise.

My wallet is missing.

And by wallet, I mean my p-card. Which I need to get into the dorm. This is a sad thing and means that about ten minutes ago my friend had to let me into the building at this ungodly hour after spending half an hour patiently teaching me how to run a soundboard. Also, I am posting this inane little detail from my life here because I cannot do it on Plans, which has crashed. Other things I have wanted to write about since Plans crashed: Javanese dance, my tomatoes, how badly I need a shower, how excited I am about my little sister visiting, potlucks, baby pigs, pregnant farmer ladies, how my new job at the radio station is making me a bad conversationalist in the rest of my life because it is all I talk about, and the utter and sparkling joy of new friends. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how good my life is.

This is my summer project.

So even though—or maybe because—my finals aren’t done yet and I have nine-million-and-a-half other things to get done before this little college town evacuates in 2.5 weeks, I’ve devoted several hours to setting up this blog. I think it’s because I’m sort of worried about staying not-a-vegetable this summer. So this is the deal: I will cook, I will write, I will study childhood on Iowa farms, and I will make radio all summer long. And then I will talk about it here, to keep myself honest.