The Summer Shadow: Behind the Scenes

The past few months, I've been preparing for my summer project. Here's a sneak peek at a few quotations that I hoped to tack somewhere on the website, but they just didn't fit. They work with my theme and inspired me as I prepare for this summer:

“We are yet too young to know what we are fit for.” 

John Jay, Federalist #2

“When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence—that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of reality.”

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“I learned that the future will never be predictable and that mutual dependence in daily life is the truest form of safety.”

Hansen, Vogue July 2017

“It is the duty of all, as far as they can, to improve their own mental faculties, because we are commanded to love God with all of our minds, as well as with all our hearts.”

Angela Grimke, An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South

“The heart of hospitality is about making space for people to feel seen and heard and loved.”

Shauna Niequist, Bread and Wine

THREE

three

The Summer Shadow: The First Manifestation

Last summer, I sent this as an email to Breadwinners, a restaurant in Dallas. It's a mess, and it didn't get a response, but as I look back, I see it as a step that brought me closer to 2017's manifestation of The Summer Shadow.

Hi!
          My name is Madeline, and I'm a junior Creative Writing major. This past school year, some of my friends interviewed people who have their dream job. I hadn't seen the accessibility of reaching out to strangers with a shot at getting a response. This realization led me to an idea.

          I'm in Dallas for the summer and am hoping to learn about different jobs, people, and experiences. I had the idea to contact different businesses and ask to follow someone around—a combination of an observation and an interview. My interest isn't solely in the work, which is why I'm interested in being matched with an individual, and it isn't solely in information, which is why I'm not interested in just an interview. 

          What exactly do I want? Well, there's not a template I'm looking to perfectly fit with this experience, if you even decide that you can say yes. I'm not looking to conduct an interview. I'm not looking to come for 20 minutes, look around, and leave. What I'd really like is to get to follow around one employee, at whatever level of employment, from groundwork to management or administration, do their job with them or watch them do it, and talk to them about work, their opinions about work, and their thoughts about the world. I'm a creative writing major, and I'd love to write about what I've observed and learned.

          I realize that this is out of the ordinary. I realize that it won't bring you publicity (my sub-par blog exists only for my writing practice). I realize that it's strange to be contacted by a writer and asked to hang out. I realize that it'd be easier to say no than to say yes. 

          But I'm still asking, because I think that the work you do is valuable, and I'd like to learn about it. I'm asking because I love the spontaneous, unconventional side of humanity. And I'm asking because I love people, and I'd love exposure to new people and new situations. 

          I'm only in town until the first of July, so there's your deadline if this thing is going to happen. I work Monday-Friday 9-5, but I'm free any other hour of the day. My lame little blog is charlielovelace.blogspot.com (it's a pseudonym I use:). 

That's what I've got.

Now, it's time to show me what you've got.

Madeline

p.s. sorry that send-off was so weird. trying to be motivational, ya know?

Recommendations: Vogue Review (Dec. '16 & Jan. '17)

Here are some thoughts and favorite moments of recent Vogue magazines—December 2016 and January 2017:

1. The section advertised on the cover as "creators, artists, and activists pointing the way ahead" delighted me. You all know that I love options, whether between types of ice cream or types of occupations. When I see many different people doing many different things, I am delighted and overwhelmed and inspired. This section of Vogue was like a journalistic interpretation of the options-loving part of my soul. It looks at people and places value on them for things they value in their life. In detailing their pursuits, it gave them a platform to publicize what they care about to other people. It also tacitly validated their pursuits, just by deeming them important enough to put in the pages of Vogue. When I got to the one entitled "Power Brokers," about DeRay McKesson and Tracee Ellis Ross, I noticed something that I, as a writer, loved. Whoever wrote the columns on each topic was hardly speaking at all. The columns were the voices of the people they were about, quote after quote, the writer only peaking in to organize and provide speech tags. This kept the attention exactly where it belonged, on the subjects of the column.

2. Annie Kevans. 
Check out her art. Read about it. She's killer.

3. Mi Golandrina
My aunt introduced me to this brand when I was in Dallas this summer, so finding them in Vogue was so cool. I have a dress from them, and I've loved it. 

4. Michelle Obama. 
Everyone loves her, and the article says all the reasons why, but the thing that struck me the most was the writer's commentary on the diversity introduced into the white house staff: first (black) woman to be chief usher, first Asian executive chief, and more...ballin. Let's go, America, keep it up.

5. Wonder World: Fantastic Bests and Where to Find Them. 
Couture + Harry Potter = Absolutely. Vogue writer Hadley Freeman explains that "while the film is filled with fantastic beasts added by CGI . . . for the purposes of the shoot they are represented by models in extravagantly over-the-top couture" (249). What an idea. Incredible. 

6. Not Your Mother's Dior: 
An article on Maria Grazia Chiuri's debut as Dior's creative director. I'm a fan. Read it here, check out the collection here. One of the pieces most hyped about on social media—the "We should all be feminists" t-shirt—was inspired by a TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I'd never heard/read it before, but I looked it up—it's incredible. Check it out too!

7. Cookies: 
Vogue had an entire article on Christmas cookies. Absurd. Wonderful. Read it. 

Recommendations: Wordsworth Quote

“For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating forces of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.”

This passage is from Wordsworth’s “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.” Though of course reading one quote isn’t anything like reading the whole book, there is value in excerpting. It is important to focus on texts and share them with one another.

This quotation was chosen because it was both important in the past, and it also befits the present. These sentences from great thinkers in the past remind us that our daily situations and musings are small participations in a great tradition.

This quotation is simple enough. Wordsworth wrote it as he prefaced a book of lyrical ballads. Ballads were not the elegant, high-society poems that were accepted at that time—they were traditionally poetry of commoners. The publication of this work shifted the focus of poetry to the common people. Wordsworth not only adopted their style, but he also made them the subject of his poetry. In his introduction to these poems, he claims that his culture was over-interested in unimportant events, that removal from nature through urbanization had overstimulated the minds of people. The poems, he hoped, would return them to that, train them once again to think, be interested, and be still. 

The quotation could be read as an accurate statement about our culture. This “savage torpor,” which the quote claims is “blunt[ing] the discriminating forces of the mind,” is as much an issue now as it was in 1800, though the “forces unknown to former times” are now of a different kind. One place I see this in our culture is in overstimulation by excessive intake of media. Culture encourages our minds to become “[unfit] for all voluntary exertion,” and it is for this reason that the reading is so important. Reading brings participation in past traditions and communion with scholars from other times. It also challenges thoughts and ways of thinking. When we choose to invest in the elite opportunity to read important texts, we mirror Wordsworth’s return to nature. We return to knowledge, we sharpen our minds, and we resist the torpor that Wordsworth warns us of. 

Messay: White Paper Cuts

This is a short nonfiction story I wrote for my Nonfiction Workshop class this semester. I hope it makes you laugh. At me.

The Nerd Wound
         All athletic people are alike; each unathletic person is unathletic in their own way. I have never been athletic, but I have never really cared. I grew up running around the textbook publishing company my grandfather started, sneaking donuts from board meetings and accepting quarters from employees for punching the button for them in the elevator. I was in third grade when my parents sold the company, and by then I was running around the classical school they’d started, where I read the Iliad in fifth grade and wrote nine thesis papers before I graduated. College came next; I chose a small liberal arts university in Alabama, where I ran around rereading all the classical texts in the school’s honors program. I hadn’t realized the program was a big deal until I arrived. It wasn’t actually that big of a deal, I knew, but it had my favorite books, a place to discuss them, and people who liked discussing them too.
          I was indeed unathletic in my own nerdy way—classically trained, and content with my prowess fully in the classroom and not on the court. I have never been athletic, nor have I been seriously injured, and the two are, of course, correlated. Growing up, my friends would sprain their ankles or break their collar bones or lose a limb, whatever. I wouldn’t. So when I got out of the shower one afternoon, home for Christmas break from my sophomore year of college, I was startled to see blood all over my towel and arm. I traced it back to the side of my hand, which was bothered, apparently, and had decided to throw a fit.
        Though I saw the blood, I didn’t feel it. It was all up and down my right pinky, sliding to my wrist, dripping onto the white tile floor. I pride myself on my stoicism, so I didn’t scream and didn’t faint and grabbed a tissue and wrapped my finger in it. By the time I had put clothes on, the initial Kleenex was soaked through. I had only seen this much blood in movies—the amount that happens when that one character gets shot and bleeds all over their green uniform, and someone presses a white cloth to the wound (always white, to accentuate the blood), and by that time, the poor soldier dies looking like a christmas tree, the white of the bandage replaced with a vibrant red. The doctor gets there too late to know what to do, so he does nothing, and then the soldier never makes it where he was trying to go.
        I was not on a battlefield, though. I was not in a movie. I was in my childhood bathroom: light green wallpaper with butterflies, two mirrored walls facing each other, white floor and white sink and white towels. But according to the movies, they wouldn’t be white for long. So I tossed the juiced tissue into the trash, held my finger over the porcelain sink, and watched blood drop and drop and drop into the sink. I looked at the opening on the side of my finger. This was not what fingers are supposed to do. I didn’t know much about anatomy, but I knew an inordinate amount of blood when I saw it. Something was very wrong.
This bleeding went on for the week before Christmas and continued the week after. Every day, my finger would bleed for about ten minutes. I would stand at a downstairs sink and stare at the soup stain on the kitchen tablecloth or the dog bed in the corner covered in small white hairs. I would redden a dozen tissues if I tried to leave my station. The wound—I always used this word, because it might be the only time in my life I’d get to—was about the size of the end of a pencil. It didn’t look much different from a blister or a callus, or a cross between the two. It was nondescript—I didn’t notice it except for 10 minutes of the day—and it was threatening to ruin everything. This is not what fingers are supposed to do.
          This routine was fine with me. If I was going to bleed out, there wasn’t much I could do. But my parents were concerned. Their concern was fine with me, but its manifestation made me concerned: I could not go to the doctor. if I took this to the doctor, and it became a big deal, then I might not be able to get on my flight. It was the week after Christmas, and my flight took off in three days. And my flight was my wages, my payment for the job whose work had given me this bloody finger in the first place.
Pinky fingers don’t matter. They’re at the end of the list, not even good for delivering insults or holding love promises. Being on the end means that they’re on the edge, the closest finger to the rest of the world. And until I had an impact-activated blood fountain attached to mine, I never realized how often pinkies run into things. Doorframes, tables, any hard surface. But until this strange wound surfaced only one surface mattered—the page.
I write. I write for my sanity and for my GPA and to keep the postal service in business, and most of it begins on clean, white paper. I have always been a good student, and I hold my pencil exactly how Miss James taught me in Kindergarten and Mrs. VandeBrake re-taught me in first grade. Still. But still, apparently I write too much or too hard or have pinky fingers that weren’t made for such stressful working conditions—my poor little finger just gave out. I had hurt my pinky from writing too much. And I had written too much for all my days and days spent doing homework for the honors program, the program that was going to take me to Italy.
All thirty-seven of us had been waiting for months. Since we got our letters in March, letters that said we, the forty of us, could have the classrooms with coded doors and could register first for classes—ever since that day we had put Italy on the back burner and left the stove on red. The deal was that the program would fly all of us to Italy after our first three semesters. After the first one started, we didn’t know if we’d make it that far. One semester in, almost all of us dropped out. The second semester over, two of us actually did. The third came and went, and we lost one more with it, but thirty-seven of us had reminded each other of Italy enough times during late-night study sessions and failed papers and shelves of reading that thirty-seven of us had made it. And now I was three days away from flying to meet my friends in Atlanta, and my pinky was in my way.
        I wanted to ignore it, in case it was cancer or something that required a four-day treatment, but my mom made me go to the dermatologist. My dilemma was not the P.A. who looked young enough to still be in undergrad—she was competent and seemed nice enough. My dilemma was my flight, one day later, which would take me to Italy. I had earned that flight, and I was not going to miss it for some damaged vein or tumor or whatever was going on with my finger. I still didn’t know. I just knew that in three days I would be in Rome, even if I had to bust out of this office and a three-day treatment, even if they had to amputate my pinky to get me on the plane in time.
Turns out, all she had to do was laser it and burn it and stitch it and I was fine. Just a long sniff of burning flesh, just a small white bandage, and just one stitch left in my finger to take out once I got there. What the heck.
I didn’t care. I didn’t have cancer. I wasn’t going to be kept from Italy by an injury to the most insignificant part of my body. Three days later I was on the plane. A few more days passed and I took a deep breath and snipped a stitch, alone up in that hotel bathroom in Rome.
I knew athletes got hurt a lot. They walk into the cafeteria with ice wrapped to their arm or leg and the blase attitude of having earned their pain. Even their limping looks like a saunter with the matching backpack a punctuation on their forms. I, on the other hand, looked like a Victorian wash-up, with my pinky extended, waiting for a teacup as imminent as Godot.  I looked at my pinky a few weeks after I got back. My hand had done its job, gotten all my papers written, but even then my pinky finger had tried to make a mess of it. Right where my skin dragged the page was a blood vessel, and after enough writing it burst like a broken fire hydrant. The thing that got me to Italy almost kept me from it. Nerds get wounds, too.
I don’t mean emotional wounds. At all. The story of my pinky finger does not matter to me or to anyone else. Nerds get actual, literal wounds. And as it turned out, the nice P.A. had been a little too nice, and I had to go back to get it fixed another time, and she still didn’t fix it, and the third time I had to go to the real doctor. The last time, when the older guy did it, my finger looked like a zombie had taken a bite out of it—the hole was deeper than a pea and as black as charred squash. After a few weeks it turned white again, and I ignored it until last week, when I hit it on something, looked down, and caught my breath. But then I let it go, because I didn’t have Italy to get to, just class.

Recommendations: "First Impressions" by Charlie Lovett

I read a book recently called First Impressions. I don’t remember where I initially heard of it, but I was drawn to it because the author’s name is so similar to mine. When I read the blurb on the back—a re-engagement with Jane Austen’s writings featuring love, mystery, and bibliophiles—I was sold.

I got it for my birthday in August and read it in December. It was a quick read, only a few hundred pages, and it only took me a few weeks (that’s fast, for me!). Each chapter focused either on Jane Austen or on a young, twenty-first century woman named Sophie, who lives in  England and works in an antiquarian bookshop. In the sections about Jane Austen, Lovett imagines a mentoring relationship between Jane Austen and a kindly older man. The author did a good job of melding the two different times in history, and the story that connected them was inventive, interesting, and unfolded over the course of the novel. The novel exhibited a love for the written word, which I always appreciate.

The evil character was generally well-developed, although I found him a little weak at times, and Sophie, though usually interesting and believable, was sometimes a bit empty or boring. I wonder, though, if that’s just realistic. One scene at the end of the novel I found to be unrealistic—picture the evil character setting a fire and delivering a maniacal evil laugh, to give you the vibes without giving away too much—and I didn’t buy it. But at that point I was invested enough, and I was willing to let Lovett have that one. When I made my “good/nah” list to help write this review, let’s just say that the positives outweighed the negatives by at least double. Lovett gave the reader varying and likable characters, intriguing action, and a lovely setting; I’d recommend this as a fun read that’s light without being empty, and fun without being stupid. Check it out if that sounds like something you'd like!

all da luv,

Charlie

Fashion: Vogue Reflections (Dec. '16)

Here's some thoughts as I enjoyed Vogue's December 2016 issue. Think of it as my zine of the issue.

1. Dad, Interrupted. 102-6. by Jeanne Darst.
I don't know who Jeanne Darst is. I haven't heard of her or read her book, which she writes about in this article. I hesitate to "review" her article because it would be unnecessary; I would say something like "Darst writes with concision, wit, feeling, and success." That tells you nothing—if she couldn't do that, she wouldn't be published in Vogue. Instead, I'll tell you what I heard in it. I heard the difficulty of family, not in the cliche way but in the way that everyone who's reading hears something that resonates with them. I heard a recognition of the all-too-regular failing of parents and children to grow into adult life together, though her situation was colored by a more identifiable issue—the publishing of a book she wrote about her father. Finally, I heard a woman who had used the written word to write about something that she had no other way to say—"maybe unconsciously I did know that a book was the only way to say these things without being interrupted"—but that writing had left her with a second situation which she could get out of no other way but by writing yet again, this time in the pages of Vogue. She opened and closed the article by speaking about Christmas, wishing that her holiday would include her father and their relationship the way it had been before the book. The irony was all too strong that, though the article was a sure means of expression—one published in Vogue, no less—the interaction with her father was uncertain, and the redundancy of the issue of person vs. publication comes as a warning to me as I seek publication.

2. The X Factor
Xiamena Caminos (read who & what here) is a visionary. People like her, who share her vision and understanding, are the future of contemporary art. I say this not because I know anything about contemporary art, but because she convinced me that I could engage with and access contemporary art.

3. Crashing the Party
I'm beginning to wonder if this month's Vogue was written for me—this article was about a man who wanted to be a writer, decided to get a job rather than trying to make money off of fiction, and ended up working for people who organized ritzy charity balls of NYC's high society.
This man, Adam Haslett, is looking back to write this piece—the article fills this month's "Nostalgia" section—but what I find interesting is that it doesn't say what he's doing now. He graduated from college with a degree in Philosophy, worked in NYC for a while, the had to get away from it so he went to Scotland, where he lived for only two months, and the story ends.
And I love that, because I think about this so often: first job. How important is my first job out of college? How similar will it be to what I do for the following ten, twenty, thirty years? Do I want to make money or work in education or gosh I don't even know. But thanks to this guy, I'm reminded that I can just do something for a little while, something crazy, something fun, something kind of weird, and look back on it later with detachment and appreciation. And that's freeing: I don't have to change my life with my first job. I don't have to change my life, I just have to live it.

4. Oliver's Twist
If Vogue is seeking to inform me of new things and make me care immensely about them, at least for the amount of time the article continues to ring in my mind before I go on to the next one, then they are absolutely succeeding at their job. (Brb, telling Vogue that they have my approval. #congrats) This article was about Oliver Theyskens, who has been designing for Theory for the last five years but just recently released a line under his own name for the first time since 2002. I don't have anything deep to say except that I love luxury fashion and I like this guy. I just looked through the 25-look collection and it amazed me (the nicer way of saying it made me angry because it was so good). Check it out on that second link!

Recommendations: Donut Shops in Birmingham

Everyone who knows me knows that I love donuts. It's one of those personal characterizations whose distribution has outpaced the original sentiment, so people tend to think I love donuts much more than I actually do. Yes, I appreciate donuts more than most people. Yes, I eat a donut in every city I visit (see: Donuts of the World). But no, I don't eat donuts every day (as if!), or even every week. I don't actually eat donuts that much, I just appreciate their existence, and I love to share them with others. 

Today's post is going to review my top two donut shops in the Ham. The list is, of course, arbitrary, but I'll tell you why I've listed them this way.

1. YoYo Donuts, Etc.

This shop is nestled in the corner of the ugliest strip mall in cute SoHo, and its location (squeezed next to a mattress store and a food store, near an eyeglass shop and a Subway) epitomizes the vibes you'll get from this funny little shop. The inside is 1/2 low-budget (read: perfect) donut shop vibes, 1/2 empty loft and strange spacing. The first time I went in was before the Harry Potter redecoration, which has since been taken away. I had tried to visit in February when they were closed (it was Sunday), so after much anticipation, I got to try it in June, the next time I was in the Ham. The donuts are delicious and huge and so fun. The owner is sweet and enthusiastic, and she served us our donuts and helped us pick them out.

My three favorite choices here? Cinnamon Sugar Cake, Powdered Sugar Cake, and Chocolate Sprinkles (yeast, not cake). Best best best.

2. Heavenly Donuts

If you hear about donuts in Birmingham, this is the place you will hear about. It's been in books I've read about donuts, it's the first thing that comes up on Google, and it's in an area easily accessibly by family-oriented neighborhoods. They have a special on Friday and Saturday night—from 11pm to midnight, one dozen donuts is $3. Their Chips Ahoy donut changed my life, but they're all good. Red Velvet, Apple Crisp, and Sour Cream are a few more favorites.

Baking: Cake Towers

Here are two more cake videos. Hooray!

I made this first cake when I got new cake tools for Christmas. I had about two hours of footage, but I trimmed it down to 41 seconds for you (#selfcontrol). It's probably the best cake I've ever made; especially the exterior. The inside is buttermilk cake, which I've never even heard of, and it tasted incredible. The recipe (here!) is from Vanilla Bean Blog. I made honey-cinnamon frosting, and it was too sweet, so it ruined the cake. But the cake itself and the outside were fun.

https://vimeo.com/196974275

I made this second cake for my roommate's birthday. I invented the frosting recipe, which was the first recipe I'd ever made up completely on my own! The cupcakes are for allergy friends, and we bought them from Gigi's.

https://vimeo.com/196920823