Chinese poetry

Chinese poetry
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

I spent a very frustrated class period with my seventh grade the other day, trying to get them interested in Chinese poetry. Many Chinese poems of the Song and Tang Dynasties consist of very long titles and very short poems, so I wanted them to write a few. It was very difficult to get them to sit still and try.

Finally, I just created this poem on the fly, and formed the branch with a bird (I need to re-read the Mustard Seed Garden Manual‘s section on birds) as a way of dealing with my own difficulties with this class. It wasn’t a bad exercise, but I wish I had a few poems of theirs to share, rather than my own.

The poem reads…

My class becomes distracted by a titmouse hanging on an icy branch at the window; angry, I wrote this poem

Bright faces
watch peak-headed
bird happily — my
fury can only point
at the clock in rage.

It’s not bad, I guess. But it’s not particularly good, either.

Sugar Roll Cookies

Sugar Roll Cookies
Originally uploaded by anselm23.

Here are the cookies from the other night. Don’t they look delicious?

Here’s the recipe:

Sugar Roll Cookies
Made experimental sugar roll cookies tonight for the dormitory. I forgot to add vanilla, but they were fine without it. A brief description of the recipe:

1. cream 2 sticks of butter.
2. add 1 cup white sugar.
3. mix in one egg and one teaspoon vanilla extract.

4. In separate bowl, mix 3 cups bread flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 2 teaspoons grated ginger.
5. Add mixture to creamed butter, sugar & egg; add 1-2 tablespoons of milk. Knead together.
6. Wrap mixture in plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge for 2 hours.

7. Preheat oven to 400° F.
8. Unwrap mixture, and roll out with rolling pin.
9. Use cookie cutters to cut cookies out.
10. Transfer to greased cookie sheets with spatula.
11. Bake 7-10 minutes, until core sets and edges brown.

The glaze — lemon-almond — did not set properly and did not form luscious coats of delicious flavor over each cookie. I do not include the recipe for it since I can’t figure out what went wrong; not measuring ingredients, and using powdered milk instead of real, may have had something to do with it. There were, surprisingly enough, still cookies left at the end of the night, though.

300! London Taxis!

The BBC took the GPS data from more than 300 taxis, and animated them with bright gold dots, and then laid the GPS data over a satellite map of London. The result is extraordinary, and beautiful.