Easter in Newton

I decided to attempt Paska. I actually had a friend teach me to make it last year, but she mostly did the work and I watched. It turned out pretty well today---but now I need to learn how to make that cottage cheese spread.

The recipe was huge, so I shared it with some others on my street.

We have some great neighbors here on 6th street. Jane is a lovely 92 year old who still gardens and has a great sense of humor. We invite each other over for tea every once in a while. She gave me her tomato cages last year. Adjacent our backyard lives an older (70s) couple who think we're hippie-farmers because we hang laundry, grow vegetables and have dandelions---but I think we've managed to convince them that we're not crazy. Then there is the lovely sweet (deaf) widow from our church, the family from church across the street who take in our mail when we're gone, and the younger couple next door with whom we share garden tools, groceries and invited us to be part of "cow-share" milk cooperative. There's a lot of sharing and give-and-take on our block. It's nice to have a little community around you like that. I always took good neighbors for granted on Helmsdale growing up. Anyway, that doesn't really have a lot to do with Easter ...or does it?

Tornadoes and Woodchucks

This weekend was Andrea's first tornado warning. A tornado warning means that a tornado has been sighted somewhere in your county. Sometimes close, sometimes quite far away. In this case, the tornado was quite far away, and it wasn't really even that stormy in Newton. I was actually walking home from the movie store when the siren went off, and the voice calmly shouted "Tornado... Warning... Take... Shelter... Immediately."

Everyone of course ran outside to see the tornado, but they were all disappointed.

This is what it looked like outside our sun room window. Except without the tornado.

I was about a half mile away from home, and I had to decide if I was going to run or not. On one hand, running would make me look like a moron. On the other hand, I knew that Andrea had never experienced a real tornado warning before and I wasn't sure if it would scare her or not. So I tried to run casually, like I just happened to be out for a jog in jeans and a flannel shirt. I believe most people were fooled.

Andrea was fine, and had already taken some blankets, a flashlight, and her visa documents to the basement. We hung out down there until they sounded the "All Clear" siren.

The next day, we awoke to see a woodchuck in our garden shed. Neither of us had ever seen a woodchuck before. This is what it looked like:

***insert woodchuck joke***

January showers bring February flowers?

Even though we've lived here for almost 3 years, waking up to blooming daffodils in February freaks me out.

Heart Day

Ben made these for us for breakfast on Valentine's day...


Awwwwww.... What a sweetie.

He also made me this lovely card....

Luckily, this was only the first page. (;

Work & Learning

I figured I should write a post on what takes up quite a bit of my life these days, which is my job, and learning how to do my job. For the past year, and for another year and half to come, I will be taking several credits of courses each semester to learn how to become a better teacher of students with visual impairments. This is my study chair on our porch. I spend most Saturday mornings here:

My school district was nice enough (and desperate enough) to take the risk of hiring me as the district "expert" on vision impairments in the classroom. I have 14 students. 3 of whom I teach and work with in braille. My office is at Slate Creek Elementary and I work there, with one of my primary students, most of the time. It's great school and I feel really at home there. (You can click on the picture to move around.)
View Larger Map

This is a deck of beginner-braille flashcards I recently made for one of my students in first grade who is going blind quickly, but can still read print. Her teacher told me that she remembers things best when they're "pretty" and I knew she sees green on yellow best.



Come June, I will be in Winnipeg again for 7 weeks, as I continue to take graduate classes at the North Dakota School for the Blind (near UND) in Grand Forks. I write up my research project over the winter 2009-2010 and hope to graduate in May 2010.

Cashing In and Checking Out

Ben here.

I'm in a little bluegrass band right now called "The Book of Jebb". We've been playing together for about a year now and mostly just do covers of other bluegrass artists. Recently, though, we've decided to try to practice a little more regularly and expand our repertoire. This opens up some time to work on original tunes, which is exciting.

My first submission to the band is a little swing tune I wrote called "Cashing In and Checking Out". I don't know if we'll do it or not, but I made a little video of it anyway so you can hear it. The melody is pretty short, as it's meant to be a jam tune that people take turns improvising over. What you'll hear in the video is just the introduction and one time through the melody.

Here it is:

Butter.

Today's post is about butter.

Despite the popularity of butter, very little is actually known about it, and scientists often refer to it as "The Delicious Mystery." People have been making butter for centuries using a process discovered by accident in 1528 by Gabriel Silas, an elderly baker with Parkinson's disease*. Gabriel was making a batch of his famous Soggy Cake and realized that he didn't have enough milk to make it properly soggy. He walked over to his neighbor's house and borrowed a cup of milk, but in the 2 mile journey back to his bakery, something peculiar happened. When he opened the container, he saw that some of the milk had magically transformed into a paste-like substance. Upon tasting it, Gabriel discovered that it was quite good. Using his new discovery, Gabriel went on to invent the croissant.

Today butter is made in large factories by robots with robot-Parkinson's disease**. But even though hundreds of gallons of butter are made every year, we still cannot scientifically explain what causes the cream to turn into butter.


This is a gallon of unprocessed milk. We have been getting organic unprocessed milk from a local dairy farmer.

The first step in the butter-making process is to allow the cream to separate from the milk. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can kind of make out where the cream ends and the milk begins.

This is an action shot. The blurred hand and arm indicate movement.

The next step is to agitate the milk. In layman's terms, this is known as "Shaking It Like A Polaroid Picture". The milk needs to be agitated for about thirty minutes, which is why most television shows are thirty minutes long.

Once the milk has been properly agitated, globules of butter begin to form.


And finally, the miracle of butter has come again. Butter can be spread on toast, used in baking, or even deep-fat fried and eaten in chunks. It is also an excellent stain remover. The next time you do a load of laundry, try throwing a stick of butter in during the first spin cycle!***

* Andrea didn't want me to make jokes about Parkinson's, so don't let that joke reflect poorly on her.

** Yeah, Andrea didn't like that one either.

*** Everybody knows that a joke, right? Please don't put butter in your laundry.