Friday, November 30, 2007

I'm making beef stew.

My students went to a country club in Temecula last night. Where? I said. Temecula, they said. Oh, I said. Tem-e-cu-la. I've driven through there. Then I laughed in a way that made them look at me strangely.

They wanted to know if I know how to "country dance." I kind of do. I can sort of square dance, but I'm better at contra-dancing, which I did in Maine fairly frequently in high school, while wearing 80s-style hippie floral dresses, even though it was the 90s. I will not go to bars and go surfing with them, and I will not teach them to square dance. I'm certainly not driving out to Temecula with them. But I want them to tell me their stories.

Today we researched film noir. My Vietnamese student gave a pretty awesome presentation on German Expressionist influences on film noir, and he hadn't even seen any film noirs. I miss my DC students, but my students here have their moments.

I sent a manuscript to Futurepoem today, but not Fence.

Bought tickets, courtesy of my father, to Dallas. I'll be there from Christmas Eve until January 3rd. Quite a while. But it's my last chance to see everyone before they head off to Adelaide. Of course I want Mark and I to visit them in Australia, but I can't count on it. I've been researching places to get fried chicken and BBQ and chili con carne. I'd like to make gingerbread houses with my sisters, but since I don't arrive until the afternoon on Christmas Eve, I'm not really sure that will work.

It rained today. A lot. It was a San Diego storm. It rained from 4 am until now, although it's only drizzling now. The roads here weren't built to drain. In the mountains I'm sure there will be floods and landslides, especially in the places that were burned.

I like some Stevie Nicks songs from the 80s, but I'm not into the 80s hippie look--hers or anyones--since I was a victim of it myself. Oh, those velvet bourrets!

1 comment:

Ian Keenan said...

I got an album of Cuban contradanzas and initially didn’t like it but later became enchanted by it. Mysterious melancholy joy with lots of horns. There is a wikipedia page for contradanzas but not linked from contra dances and not on the list of dances page, and it says that they are less popular in Cuba now. On Sunday nights old couples in Cuernavaca dance in the plaza while the band plays contradanzas in Eiffel’s gazebo, which I decided on the spot I wanted to do when I get old.

I didn’t get any BBQ or Mexican in Dallas but the farmer’s market is a rather Mexican experience although a bit pricey for produce, offering an enticing but limited pepper selection. At one stall I asked an old woman a question and she saw I had the Dallas paper and asked if she could have the obituaries, and then went on a long soliloquy about her uncle that died and everything he did right and wrong and whether I knew whether to do those things, etc. The Dallas - Ft Worth arts districts are concentrated and self-explanatory, each with 3 must see museums. I did get to Angelo’s in Ft Worth for BBQ once and that’s probably the best cue in the area, in my all-time top five. Sonny Bryan’s is the famous one in Dallas but I haven’t tried it.