Emsarconi's Open Salon Blog

Love and Politics: Are Opposites Impossible?

Wed, 12 May 2010 22:05:32 -0400

Laura Bush (nee Welch) was on Larry King this week to talk about her new memoir “Spoken From the Heart,” and be grilled on the turbulence of her life before her marriage to George Bush and currently. From this interview was exposed to me a woman I was unaware of: Laura Bush is fairly liberal. She believes in gay marriage and not only acknowledges, but advocates, the woman’s right to choose. She identifies as a Republican, but seems to disagree with some of the core values of the current Republican party. She supports women’s rights, in 2005 suggesting to her husband that he replace retiring justice Sandra Day O’Connor with another woman– which he did. Laura Bush is a proponent of literacy and over the years gave an incredible amount of attention to the academic needs of not only America’s children but children world wide, focusing much of her work on literacy and education. She was a teacher and a librarian, the second first lady (after Hilary and before Michelle) to have a master’s degree. I have no idea what her stance on “no child left behind” was, but I’m sure she was for it (keep in mind that Ted Kennedy was also for NCLB and the program’s abysmal outcome does not reflect what was projected — one of those “good in theory not in practice” kind of situations).

Based on the pairs difference in values, President Bush seems like the last person this woman would want to spend her time with, but she did, she married the man. That must be a true testament to the charm that must be oozing out of the pours of George W. Bush.

How does their marriage work? Are certain topics taboo? Do they just agree to disagree, roll over and go to sleep? For me, that kind of divide seems like it would kill a relationship very quickly, possibly before the relationship even began. I was completely befuddled. “I could never do that” I thought to myself; I wouldn’t give a guy like that the time of day; I could never have taboo subjects with my partner; I could not disagree with them on that kind of level; A person’s moral judgements clearly reflect their personality and thus I could never fall in love with a person like that, we just wouldn’t gel.

But we could, all that is wrong and superficial and silly. You can’t help who you fall in love with. I didn’t expect to fall in love with a Canadian ( and not because I have something against Canadians) and have my life’s plan turned upside down. Clearly George and Laura Bush have a connection deep enough to get past those disagreements. Clearly, they are more mature I, who stick to my bleeding heart liberal guns until the last minute. I don’t agree with conservative values, but I hope that I could be big enough to lay those aside and give a person a chance. In a funny way, I really admire their relationship (if it is what it appears, for all I know, this could be a total fraud). Laura Bush is a much stronger woman, in many ways, than I originally gave her credit for.

Ideal Outfits: A Trip to the ROM

Wed, 12 May 2010 22:05:48 -0400

If you haven’t caught on by now, I really love clothing. In my bookmarks tab, the “buy me” folder has a list about a mile long. I have wish-lists at about a million different online stores and am constantly lusting after one piece or another (currently: a blazer, a vest, strappy sandals, new purse, oxford shoes, 1940s chiffon sundress). Unfortunately, I am a student, I have no money, and it’s really hard to buy a forty dollar pair of sandals when you know that those forty dollars could be going towards food for the week.
So, while browsing the internet the other day in an attempt to fill my day I came upon this woman and her imaginary outfits. Sheer brilliance. Naturally, I’ve shamelessly copied her.

Today Nate, Liz and I are going to the ROM- the Royal Ontario Museum. On Tuesdays, the ROM is free to all post secondary students and since we have nothing to do with our day, it seemed like the perfect way to fill time. Out of all the types of museums in the world, natural history museums are my favorite. I love looking at the dinosaur skeletons and taxidermy polar bears. There are so many worlds crammed into one space. In a perfect world, this is what I would be wearing today — something comfortable and simple. Soft soled shoes are a must in museums as to not click clack across the quiet space and I never go anywhere without my trusty notebook (thanks to Nancy Drew for teaching me that one).

[bag, shoes, pants, shirt, blazer, necklace]

No, Not The Bees!

Wed, 12 May 2010 22:05:52 -0400

There is an infamous story in my family from a million years ago when my parents where in college and they encountered the “biggest bumble bee ever discovered by man”. My dad came home on day to find my mom huddled on the couch, cowering at the bedroom door where she had trapped said bee. My dad scoffed at her, opened the door to the bedroom, closed the door very quickly and ran to go get something with which to kill, what he admits was indeed, a massive bumble bee. Apparently the bee was eventually hit out the second story widow of my parents apartment and landed on the pavement below– still visible from above, which they count as a testament to the sheer girth of this bee.

Nate, Liz and I had a very similar experience with a very big bumble bee. I really can’t imagine that my parent’s bee was any bigger than ours, because ours was literally the size of my nose. His buzz was audible from all corners of the apartment and we all shrieked in fear (including Nathan) every time he flew towards us. I found him in the kitchen, roaming around the light fixture, buzzing furiously. I immediately called for Nate, Liz followed, and the next twenty minutes were a blur of screaming and Nathan trying to spray the poor thing with some Windex.

Then the bee flew into a crack in the wall and disappeared.

Oh fuck, we all thought, we have an infestation of giant mutant bumble bees living in our newly rented apartment.

Because it was only one bee and we really couldn’t do anything else, we all decided that it was best to let it go until we saw another bee. So commences the paranoia of bee-watch twenty ten.

The next morning at about 6:30, I awoke in my new sun-filled bedroom to the sound of buzzing. LOUD buzzing. The bee was not only in my bed, but also in my face.

“Nate it’s back, it’s back” I screamed while climbing over him.

“What?What’s going on?” he drawled at me, totally confused and freaked out by his insane and panicked girlfriend.

“THE BEE IS IN THE BED” I shot at him, still scrambling. Nate then jumped into reaction mode, trapping the bee in-between the sheets, only to look over at me and say in a very confused voice “the bee is in the bed???”. Nate patted down the covers, hoping to have squashed the monster, however upon pulling back my white duvet cover, the big bee flew out and over to the wall. I hit him a couple of times with a moccasin and watched him sputter to the floor behind the dresser. We heard no more buzzing and determined the beast to be slain. Then, because it was six thirty in the morning, Nate and I went back to bed.

Two hours later however, the bee was back, buzzing desperately against our bedroom window.The funny thing about this bee was that, although humongous, he was harmless. After all that agitation and attack, he was less interested in Nate and I and more interested in getting outside. Bumble bees, despite their size are docile little things… apparently. So, I grabbed a cup and a folder and attempted to scoop him up to take him outside, but he would have none of it — he wanted out that window. Cautiously, I pulled up on the window locks, arching my arms as far away from the bee as possible and cranked the window open as far as I could — he made a bee line (hehe) into the back yard and buzzed out of sight. We have not seen another bee in the house since, thank god.

and that is the story of Emma, Nathan, Liz and the bee.

Moving and Baking and Bees Oh My!

Wed, 12 May 2010 22:05:03 -0400

OMG moving is quite the experience. It took a little under a week to get our happy new home in order when you count activating the internet and all that jazz (thank you Bell Canada for drawing out my moving process). There is still one box on the floor of my room — filled with unloved winter gear that currently has no place (I think it will probably stay in the box but be moved to the closet). I am now, officially, moved in with my boyfriend of a year and a half — not that anything has really changed considering we basically lived together anyway. Finding a place for all of his stuff and all of mine proved difficult since we both have WAY more books than either of us guess-timated, though we still haven’t really found a place for my deconstructed Ikea bed-frame. C’est la vie I guess.

Last night we had our first friend over for a night of fun. The wonderful Adam Schoales came over for home made pizza, good log, zombie killing (more on the xbox later… and the bee) and The Wicker Man (Seriously, if you ever need to laugh really hard at something really bad, watch The Wicker Man. The part where Nick Cage punches fake Kathy Bates in the face is priceless). In the style of Kara Wheeler, I made dessert — I made s’mores cookie bars in fact. They were pretty delicious — on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being a moderately made sugar cookie and 10 being this brownie mosaic cheesecake that Kara made for someones birthday over the summer, these s’mores bars were probably about a 6: universally liked and good, but probably not a regular bake or something I’ll crave. They are a “day dessert” and would be really great to bring on a picnic or a day trip. Be warned: Marshmallow puff or fluff or whatever will get EVERYWHERE and despite appearances, is fairly delicious. Also, the whole suggestion of putting the top layer of dough in a bag and all that is rather hard to do but does work — patience and faith is necessary.

S’mores Cookie Bars

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (approximately 7 full graham crackers)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 super-sized (5 oz.) dark chocolate bars (e.g. Hershey’s)
1 1/2 cups marshmallow creme/fluff (not melted marshmallows)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light. Beat in egg and vanilla.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture and mix at a low speed until combined. Divide dough in half and press half of dough into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan. Place chocolate bars over dough. Two 5 oz. Hershey’s bars should fit perfectly side by side, but break the chocolate (if necessary) to get it to fit in a single layer no more than 1/4 inch thick. Spread marshmallow fluff evenly over the chocolate layer.

Place remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff. This is most easily done by putting the second half of the dough in a gallon size freezer bag. Use your palms to flatten it out, and then use scissors to cut down both long sides of the bag, so it will open up book-style. Open it up carefully, and the dough will stick on one side of the bag. Then place the bag, dough side down, on the other three layers. From there peel the bag up ad spread the dough where it is uneven.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting into bars

Makes 16 cookie bars.

“and all lived happily till they died”

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:04:42 -0400

One day, when I was about ten, I browsed the shelves of my parents floor to ceiling bookshelves that now span the entire eastern wall of our study, looking for something to read as per usual. I peeked behind and around the double stacked, and in some places triple stacked books, looking for something to replace the freshly devoured To Kill a Mockingbird. As was true then and is still true now, I was lost in a sea of miscellaneous, unclassified and unknown literature ranging from P.D. James to Gore Vidal to some book on sex and family dynamics in the age of the cottage industry (I swear to God that book exists, even if I can’t find it on Amazon). I needed guidance.

“Moooooooooooooom, I need something to reeeeeeeeeeeeead.”

She thought for a moment, walked over to the involved shelving and like she had gone through years of training, effortlessly pulled An Old Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott out from behind one of Anne Rice’s post- Interview With a Vampire works. It was love at first read. The March sisters never charmed me, but Polly Milton, the outcast who grew up slowly, loved her family and had a strong sense of morals, became my kindred spirit. As I grew, the book grew with me; it’s hard cover sneakily appropriated and comfortably resting in my crowded but easily navigated bookshelf. Passages I identified with at ten gave way to different passages at twenty as my life events and perspective evolved through time. Nestled in with the one-hundred pounds of lugged brought from California, a pocket paperback edition complete with cheesy cover, journeyed with me to college and was placed on my shelf between Price and Prejudice and Ella Enchanted, and only a few books down from my course readers full of Nietzsche and Greek Tragedies.

One of the things I love about loving An Old Fashioned Girl is that my love is hereditary. My mom also took comfort in the pages of Polly, Tom and Fanny, but not the same pages that I did. For basically as long as I can remember (or as long as I have known An Old Fashioned Girl), my mom has been in search of a copy of the edition she had as a child.

“It has beautiful ink drawings” I’ve been told over and over again. Finding the book was more of a yearning than an obsession, resting quietly in the back of my mind each time I entered a used book store or a library. I casually browsed catalog after catalog — or often in lieu of a catalog, rows and rows of shelving. I remember my mother once anticipatorily ordering a hopeful prospect off eBay, only to open the cover and find Polly and Tom depicted as cherub children with fat rosy cheeks and big curls. Needless to say, the book was returned (at least I think it was. It’s entirely possible that it’s still wedged in a corner of my house un-loved).

Today, I logged onto Etsy.com as I always do when I’m procrastinating and realized that if I could find a million different pairs of Oxford shoes, princess cut coats and stationary galore, why not look for the elusive book. Low and behold, there are three different vintage versions of An Old Fashioned Girl on Etsy. Or should I say, there are now only two, because when I causally emailed the links to my mom, the last one was a hit. I am so completely and entirely ecstatic to have found this treasure for my mother. Even through email, “oh you lovely lovely child,” made me laugh and smile until I cried.

Upon arrival, I expect the book to be whisked away, not lost in the sea of shelves and disorder, but instead santified in my mother’s roll-top desk upstairs, resting with the complete works of Jane Austen, my mother’s own writing and other items of the utmost venerability.