Aqueduct

Posted by amy at November 20th, 2007

Just one of the things I miss most about the television show “Friends” was their annual Thanksgiving episode. There was little sentimentality, lots of acknowledged dysfunction, and I tended to laugh my ass off when I watched. While I love my family, and enjoy spending other holidays with them, the process of reclaiming my thanksgiving as a day of choice and not obligation has been wonderfully liberating. We’ve been trying to talk our children out of the big “turkey with all the trimmings” propaganda, proposing a menu of foods were thankful for but they will have none of it. When I read our shopping list to my 4 year old today, he circled “lobster” and wrote “NO” - he learned to write his own name a little over a week ago, so I took his objection seriously and left it off the final list. I’m willing to bet lobster was actually on the first thanksgiving table, but I won’t press the point this year.

After the feasting has finished and our guests have returned, I thought I’d head out to two exhibits on Saturday. The first is LEDs Are Pretty at Greylock Arts in Adams. I’ve seen a couple of pieces from the street and it looks really cool. The first (and only?) LED exhibit I ever saw was a Jenny Holtzer (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Jenny Holzer, Dec. 12-Feb. 25, 1990.) Holtzer opened a new exhibit at Mass MoCA this past weekend, so a trip to the big museum will round out my afternoon. There are giant bean bags to sit on while watching the projection, which is a great way to view modern art, don’t you think? On place you won’t find me this weekend is at the Mall.

I usually put off Christmas shopping to the last day, not because I’m lazy or procrastinate, it just seemed more efficient. This year though, something shifted and I wrote out my recipient list - I think the sheer length shocked me into action - and after a night of online credit card abuse, I’m almost done.

How are you with your list? Haven’t started? Haven’t a clue? Looking for ideas? I’ve got a few.

Starting close to home, Danny-O is having a sale on his 2007 Red Sox prints. If you aren’t familiar with Danny-O’s fantastic collages, please click on over and just browse. Most are done on album covers, are inexpensive and easy to frame. He has a huge collection (regional, holidays, seasons) so if heaven forbid you have a Yankees fan on your list, you could cross the divide and offer up a memory of better summers in the Bronx.

I think I’m going to splurge on at least one of these new flip video recorders this christmas. This looks like a great present for the technically challenged (but not phobic) grandparent on your list.

I fell into a really cool site the other night and took care of most of my shopping. ETSY is a site for people who hand make things, and before you roll your eyes and click away, trust me on this one. My biggest caveat with the site is that I found it really helpful to look with a person or an object in mind. I found myself browsing and liking a lot of items with no idea who to give them to. If you are willing to dive in, start with the homepage and their list of hand picked items, want to shop locally, try the geolocator or search by color. The variety, quality and price will surprise you.

Once inside, I needed to work pretty quickly through my list - I like giving fancy soap, and pairing it with a hand made dishcloth, because if it isn’t your cup of tea, you can easily regift it and if it is your cup of tea, then you’ll appreciate it. Shine Your Hiney Soap Company had a beautiful collection of holiday inspired soaps.

Despite living in the digital age, there are still times when I want to send a real card. I’m hoping other people on my list feel the same way and have selected a couple of hand crafted card sets.. Pick a complete set or work the category sidebar and give someone a backup collection of cards for when they get caught off guard without a graduation or birthday card. Practical, fairly inexpensive and not more plastic crap made in China.

Have a Martha Steward wanna be on your list? How about a beautiful apron with matching tea towels. They have camouflage ones for hunter on your list, which in the Berkshires could be half your family. If they are better with a fishing rod than a riffle, this mousepad may be more fitting.

There is always one drunken uncle who can handle a mildly inappropriate gift, how about a bb game?

If your wife is in my knitting circle (or wishes she was) don’t miss the selection of hand-painted sock yarn. Maybe if you pick a color you like, she’ll even make them for you.

Finally, I’ve been told that there are people who still listen to cds, for those people on my list, I’m planning on burning a show or two from the Internet Archives.

So how did you do? Are you close to finishing your list too? Please leave a comment if you found something to share!

Posted by amy at November 6th, 2007

Posted by amy at October 9th, 2007

I love when a comment spurs a real post.

Dear Dr. Dennum,

Thanks for the arm chair psychoanalysis, the check is in the mail.

Actually, I think what you may be picking up on is a general shift in the direction of the blog. I’ve tried since the beginning not to be one of those bloggers who writes about all the minutia of daily lives - in the beginning, it was clearly a knitting blog, then a parent who knits blog, then an academic technology blog, and now, now it is just my blog. And as such, I use it as a space to work out ideas that I’m recognizing and or working through in real life.

I don’t deny much of what you wrote - I am an achiever, I have been focused on goals through most of my life - most of them were external (degrees, publishing dates, childbirth) and the ones I’m facing now are far more personal and far more satisfying. I feel like I’ve gotten to a point in my life where the scaffolding has come off and I’m able to fully support myself (and a family of four!) and I’m glad to realize that I still have more to discover. What you see as panic, I see as exhiliration. I love my life, I love the path I’ve carved out for myself and I am eager to explore what is in front of me.

That doesn’t mean I’m not able to enjoy the here and now - I just don’t tend to write about the small stuff - like how my eyes watered with pride that my 4 year old son figured out how to hold his pencil right after a week of crying that it was too hard, or the smile that came over me when my daughter informed that another child was not showing respect to his host at an outing at Whitney’s farm. I get the small stuff, I savor the small stuff, but I also know myself well enough to know that I need the big things as well, because, well, because that is who I am and I’m ok with that.

Posted by amy at June 14th, 2007

Ali, the top chef over at cleaner plate club tagged me for a meme, and so in keeping with the food theme, here are 5 things about me, the culinary edition.

1 - I don’t like mushrooms. I am really good at picking them out of dishes, but I did go through a period of time where I told the waitstaff I was alergic to them, to impress upon them that a mushroom shouldn’t even share the same air with my plate. Last night, I tried to get my 5 year old to try something on the table besides her beloved chicken wings with duck sauce, I even promised her I would eat a muchroom if she did, but alas, she failed to take me up on the offer.

2 - I love and miss seafood. Raw, steamed, grilled, baked in the oven or in seaweed at the beach, I love seafood - but I’m alergic to oysters. I found this out on my first valentine’s day date with my (now) husband. Unfortunately for him, I found this out after he paid the bill. The longer story is much funnier, but you’ll have to buy me a sushi role to hear it.

3 - It is hard to live with carnivores. If it didn’t roam the earth, darling DH doesn’t have room for it on his plate. The sounds of teeth on bones echos through our dining room as I’m constantly casting off my naugthy bits of beef to the ravenous horde. You’d think my husband’s family descended from a tribe of lions instead of generations of Ivy League educated humans.

4 - Until two years ago, I was not capable of eating any food with a hot pepper based spice (I could do wasabi for some reason - mustard based). Then one day, on a whim, I put one slice of a jalapeno pepper on a plate of roased veggies and my tongue exploded. Suddeny I was craving spicy, I suddenly got Indian and Thai cuisine. Life was now in color.

5. At the end of every Grateful Dead show, I roamed the parking lot looking for a “kind veggie bagel” a bagel with a thin smear of cream cheese, cukembers and sprouts, maybe onions and tomato. It was the perfect food to eat while wandering the lot looking for the perfect hair hand or beaded earings. The coolness of the cukember combined with the sweet cream cheese, softened my throat after a night of being in a smokey arena, and the bagel gave me energy for at least an hour of dancing in the drum circle back at the camp site.

I am going to tag Greg, and hope he’ll tell us five things he loves to cook …

Posted by amy at June 1st, 2007

Boston.com has a link up today featuring what they call cheap houses, houses under 300K in the Boston area. The first house they show is a 3 bed, 1.5 bath, with 1,400 sq. Listed at $299,900

For well under $250K, you can move into this home on my street, the house has 5 Bed, 2 Bath, 3,820 Sq. Ft. on 0.22 Acres, with views of Mt. Greylock, walk to school and town. That is also one of the most expensive houses for sale in town. This one, for $175 may be one of my favorites right now.

We have high speed internet access, independent coffee shops, a thriving art scene, a growing economy and great restaurants near by. We don’t have any traffic to speak of, crime is fairly low, and the sunsets are spectacular. We also have a growing number of tech jobs that we can’t fill locally.

I have a dream that our town, the birthplace of Susan B. Anthony, will someday become a haven for lesbian couples with children, that I’ll see rainbow bumper stickers on the back of subaru wagons lining the streets, but I would image that more straight couples would be welcome here as well.

How much house are you getting for your dollar? What kind of life would you live if you weren’t working just to pay your mortgage?

Posted by amy at May 24th, 2007

“I hereby announce the formation of WEstern MAssachusetts Total Territorial Equity Regiment.
That’s right: WE MATTER”

Mortar Bend has a great post up about living in the hinterlands of Massachusetts, you can read it here.

---

Chris Brogan - one of my new blog crushes - has a post up today about a DIY autobiography kit. He encouraged his readers to post this form, fill it out, and then leave a comment back. Feel free to read his page, swipe the list and leave me a comment if you are so inspired.

A Quick Sketch Biography of Amy

The thing most people know me for is my job - I tend to be a bit evangelical about the power of the internet to bridge divides and nurture community.

The people I associate the most with are migratory - people who have never left their hometown scare me.

People who have influenced my life are… my family and former teachers, I can’t think of a major professional influence up until my current boss.

One challenge I took on and overcame was… I wasn’t working in a field I wanted to be in, so I took a year off to retrain myself for the career I wanted, not the career I had.

My early years, before you probably got to know me were spent trying to find a way to reconcile my penchant for being outrageous with my deep seeded need to be accepted.

You might not know this, but I am adopted.

I’m passionate about my children, my marriage and not living life by default.

In the next year or two, I hope to climb to the top of Mt. Greylock.

Posted by amy at March 11th, 2007

100 Miles by April 1st - I’m at 86.5 miles with 20 days to go.
***
Back to the blogroll and the outer circle of the Berkshire blogs. I found Karen Christensen’s Berkshire Blog last fall when I was putting together a website for a conference that went along with “African American Heritage in the Upper Housatonic Valley”. That text was published by Christensen’s Berkshire Publishing Company.

As a historian, I’m always wary of the potential for ghetoization when we start to look at one distinct American experience. Frances Jones-Sneed, a History Professor at MCLA, proposed that by looking at those distinct American experiences in relation to “the local” one could build a curriculum that exposed students to African American narratives in their own back yards. The Shaping Role of Place Curriculum project is a collection of curricula by local k-12 school teachers based on Jones-Sneed’s seminal thesis.

I bookmarked the Berkshire Publishing Company’s site and included it in the website I was building, but it was months before I had a moment to go back and dig around. Berkshire Publishing Company specializes in reference books, and Christensen’s blog is a refreshingly readable and intellectual, and her social media savvy is apparent. I’ve never met Karen, as she travels in the South County circles, but when our paths do cross, I promise to report tales of me being totally tongue tied and awestruck.

Tangentially related by both geography and history is GreenmanTim, who writes at Walking The Berkshires. GreenmanTim is an avid student of the Civil War and often blogs about his own genealogy projects, in addition to random tidbits of South County life.

***
I am hiding at my parent’s house on Cape Cod for the week. Tomorrow, I will retreat to their in-law apartment, unpack my milk crate full of books on 1960s social protest movements and try to flesh out a few elements of my book. This time, I’m particularly interested in the Berkley Free Speech Movement, Columbia University’s Student Strike, COINTELPRO and The FBI, Drug Use and Life in the Closet. Watch this space for any ideas I may need help working through.

Posted by amy at March 7th, 2007

Citizen Amy Stevens on Teen Pregnancy in the Berkshire Eagle.

Web Communications Manager Amy Stevens on MySpace in The North Adams Transcript

Posted by amy at March 6th, 2007

Some bloggers get one template and wash their hands of the process, their identity becomes entirely wrapped up in their template - would Bitch, Ph.D. be the well know blogging bitch that she is without that wonderful image of the two young girls caught in a truly bitchy moment?

For me, templates are like clothes, and if you are one of the three people who have visited my site in the past year, you may have noticed that I’m on my 3rd or 4th template. I began a knitting blog in 2001 called SSP (cleverly named both for Slip Stitch Pass, a knit stitch, and a Phish album.) My blog style then was minimal, always a white background. And even though I changed many templates since then, I always maintained a white background. Yesterday, I broke with tradition and voila, we’ve got a crazy brown template thanks to It Could Be This One. What do you think?

While I was tweaking under the hood, I attacked a project I’d been meaning to do for a while, which was to update my blogroll. At first I wanted to add a few of the local bloggers who I’ve met either online or know through work. They are listed geographically because that is how I’ve come to know them, even though most of them are not local blogs.

For tonight’s episode, we’ll breakdown the Little Rascal’s:

While I’m sure that this collection of men are not actually women’s haters, there are times when I am the only woman posting in the comment thread. Most likely it is my feminist training that makes me aware of being the only one in the room without a penis. The talk circles around local politics and culture, with a drop of good old fashion gossip. Wes, over at Walk In Brain was the first local blogger I met and you can often find him commenting on Ross’s Berkshire Sense blog. Ross often gets grief from the local old guard for being a sushi eating snob, but I know from his amazing wife that he doesn’t actually like sushi and I think preferring to eat your food off a plate rather than out of a take out bag may qualify you as a snob in the eyes of the old guard. Speaking of old guard, I haven’t met Southview of It’s Your Dime, but I already love him. He comes across as a crotchety old wise ass, who I can easily picture yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his sidewalk, and yet, he is a 61 year old retired construction worker who blogs, be still my beating heart.

I’d been commenting for weeks over at Northwest Corner before I realized that our daughters go to school together. Although I did realize through the comments that we had a mutual friend in common - that being Tom from Mortar Bend, who not only was on my hiring committee, but was instrumental in one of my first professional podcasts. Funny enough, it was in the comment thread for a blog post about that very podcast that I first met MCLA Blazer Blog.

If you happen to stumble upon their blogs and look up old posts, I’ll be the one commenting in favor of casinos, strip clubs and against teenage pregnancy. I know, I’m deep like that.

Widening the ring out a bit, we have Jen at Breed Em and Weep who may be one of the most popular bloggers in America, among mothers of young children. Jen’s ability to tell a story is breathtaking - whether she is talking about a “clogger” or that one time she flipped her hair and the universe laughed back. Be warned, by clicking through to her site, you will find that hours have passed, your handy box of Kleenex are empty from laughing and crying, and you will have nothing to feed your family for dinner. Good thing Jen introduced a whole lot of us to Ali, at the Cleaner Plate Blog , who writes about finding healthy, yummy foods your family will actually eat, we haven’t tested her parsnips yet, but I did take her advice to stop using plastic Tupperware in the microwave. One post from her had a far greater impact than seven years of gentle nagging from my husband, who got his own category on my blogroll. DH is a man obsessed with ornamental horticulture, and WoodedPaths was were he showed that passion off. Now that it isn’t gardening season, he too has linked in with the He-Man Women Hater’s club and can be found commenting on their blogs, in addition to thousands of others dealing with national politics.

There, the circle is now conveniently connected.

Posted by amy at March 4th, 2007

Around this time of year my mind begins to turn to sweeter things as I watch the weather hoping for warm days and cold nights. My eyes stay alert for the signs: taps on trees, buckets and tubes, posterboards annoucing pancake breakfasts. Our family loves to find a local farm where we can stock up on real maple syrup - we may go through a gallon, maybe a gallon and a half in one year. We weren’t running low just yet, but I couldn’t resist the call of the sugar shack, so we headed out to Ioka Valley Farm in Hancock, MA - on the other side of the mountain from us.

We ordered pancakes, waffles and french toast - all of which were clearly homemade - and we poured plenty of fresh maple syrup on our plates (the baby corn muffins were good too).

The we toured the sugar shack, and met this nice man who tends to the fire and is quite proud of his set up:

We restocked our syrup supply, picked up a jar of maple barbeque sauce and one of maple mustard and were back on the road in no time, off to a northern berkshire blogging convention, under the guise of a kick ass five year old birthday party.

ps - hat tip to Morter Bend’s Lovely Wife for the wine tip - West’s on Rt. 2 in Williamstown. We picked up a great, low priced bottle of a Spanish red - Mano a Mano - that went well with tonight’s beef stew.