Shop Class as Soulcraft

During the past week or two I've been reading Matthew Crawford's new book, Shop Class as Soulcraft. I bought the book because I read a link from Rick Saenz's blog to an article of the same name in The New Atlantis.

I'll tentatively say that I think this book makes a successful leap from article to full length book. I think there are a couple of reasons for this: One is that Crawford has a background in philosophy, and the book balances philosophy with nuts and bolts throughout. While reading, I picked up references to ideas that I'd read in C.S. Lewis, as well as a host of lesser books on classical education. The flavor is vaguely Aristotelian, if I understand Aristotle right. I'm not a scholar.

The other, I think, is that Crawford isn't primarily a journalist. He repairs motorcycles, and enjoys doing so. (He also has a job with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, which he seems to truly enjoy, unlike his earlier think tank job.) I think he's genuinely writing out of an imperative to know, so his book has something of a searching feel. I've read so many books that feel very formulaic to me--anecdotes strung together with a thin veneer of ideas. Whatever the book's faults, I think Crawford is not too glib.

That said, I felt a slight disorganization in the book. This could be because I read it in snatches, and because I'd already read the two essays/articles which are interspersed throughout the book. (A link to the second one is posted below.) And while sometimes he uses just the right words, at others he uses a lot of extra ones. This doesn't kill the interest for me, though. I'd probably like to reread it later and see what I think then.

On the face of it, Shop Class seems to be an apology for the manual trades. Most of the examples are taken from Crawford's own work as a motorcycle mechanic. (Replete with macho, as opposed to manly, talk.) But as Crawford himself says, he's not trying to get more people to become blue-collar workers; he's trying to get them to examine the received wisdom that a white collar is the key to having a job that requires thought. The book is really about how modern capitalism has separated thought from production in office jobs, resulting in a work place where no one is truly accountable for what is produced.

Some have criticized the book for unrealistically glorifying manual labor at the expense of office work, and that Crawford is a special, somehow privileged case, in having a career that spans both extremes. Well, I don't know, but I'm frankly glad someone has tried it--it's not like everyone is going to want to! These criticisms sound to me an awful lot like people who won't homeschool because not everyone does.

The reason for the mechanical anecdotes, of course, is that they add credibility to his arguments about the nature of work. I don't know the guy's whole background or how he happened to study philosophy as well as the manual trades, but it's obvious that he really does like fixing motorcycles. And I find myself hoping that he really is good at it, and not just waxing poetic, because his whole thesis seems to hang on it. I think of people I know who can talk about paintings, but can't paint. There's a lot of insight in the nitty gritty.

I don't want to try to encompass the whole book in my review, but I would like to list some points that struck me as I read, either because they were new ideas or because they made connections between things I had already thought about in other contexts:

One of the most Orwellian chapters of the book was "The Contradictions of the Cubicle." He tells the basic story in an article that was recently published in the New York Times: With his advanced degree, he once procured a nightmarish cubicle job writing abstracts for academic articles. The setup of the job was totally ill-suited for the day to day work in a way that can only happen when the upper-level managers are more concerned with efficiency than the work itself. (Think tech support.) One guy was even narcotizing his feelings of absurdity by doing heroin on the job.

Crawford uses this as an example of the futility of credential inflation. In a section of the chapter called "What College is For," he writes:

[In the push for increased college attendance] there is little accommodation to the diversity of dispositions, and of the fact that some very smart people are totally ill suited both to higher education and to the kind of work you're supposed to do once you have a degree. Further, funneling everyone into college creates certain perversities in the labor market...My very existence, multiplied a millionfold, is precisely what puts the futureologist in a rapture; we are getting to be so smart! Yet in viewing my situation from afar in this way, the M.A. degree serves only to obscure a more real stupidification of the work I secured with that credential...Is this our society as a whole, buying more education only to scale new heights of stupidity?

Until after WWII, lots of business jobs didn't require a college degree. Now we have degrees for technicians. When the college push first started a couple of generations ago, at least colleges selected for a certain self-discipline, but now recruiters are looking more for a certain type of personality. That's why the extracurriculars have become so important. They show that one is a joiner, ready for teamwork. And higher education habituates people to a certain disconnect between rhetoric and reality. That also suits the office environment.

(For what it's worth, I have worked in a cubicle before, so I have some experience with what he's talking about. But since my job was in design, at least I went to construction sites, and my measurements had to add up.)

Elsewhere in this chapter Crawford describes example after example of management techniques that are at some times reminiscent of girl cliques and at others almost remind me of Communist "re-education" camps. The point of this chapter is that "teamwork" is a vague and contentless concept that is necessarily manipulative because in a consumer-driven culture, there are no objective standards.

A good part of the [management] job, then consists of "a constant interpretation and reinterpretation of events that constructs a reality in which it is difficult to pin blame on anyone, especially oneself.

[In the context of teamwork]...authority becomes passive-aggressive, trying to pass itself off as something cooperative and friendly; as volunteerism. It is always pretending to be in your best interest, in everyone's best interest, as rationality itself.

The risk is of being deceived into thinking there is a common good where there is not one.

In contrast with teamwork is "solidarity," which is based on concrete common interests.

Solidarity with others is a positive attraction, akin to love... Its scope is necessarily smaller, its grip on our affections tighter, than that of any vaporous universal.

Another helpful chapter is entitled "Work, Leisure, and Full Engagement." Crawford posits the example of a mortgage broker whose work is not intrinsically satisfying, so he works hard to earn money for a vacation to Mount Everest, where he can feel the satisfaction of confronting a concrete, unyielding Reality. At the turn of the last century, such a banker would have possessed a community to give context and accountability to his work. He would have gone down to the local hardware store to ask the owner how likely a potential borrower was to pay back his account there, and he would have considered the good of his community as a whole if he lent the man money. By contrast (which is obvious now, but wasn't to many people as little as three or four years ago), the 21st Century mortgage system is set up to discourage accountability altogether. Not only does the mortgage broker not know his borrowers, he has no incentive to find out--not from his brokerage, which wants to rack up origination fees and immediately sells the mortgage to a third party, or from Wall Street, which wants to profit from a lending boom.

This example, of course, makes me wonder whether Crawford wrote these chapters before the mortgage bubble burst or afterwards, but banking isn't the only industry structured this way. Our entire economy is structured to discourage reality checks. This not only leads to temporary setbacks like foreclosure and housing busts, but prevents most workers, white collar or blue, from being able to work in a job that makes sense, even in the most prosperous of economic times.

At the end of the book Crawford conducts a very interesting discussion about the difference between being independent and being autonomous. I think this is a distinction that Christians would do well to recognize, just as they recognize three Greek words for "love." One frequently hears pastors extol community and preach against hyper-individualism, and I understand why. There are extreme tendencies in our society that, if followed, could lead to each person isolating himself from God and neighbor in his or her own private Hell. But sometimes our solutions, couched in management speak, produce something more like a corporate "encounter session" than hard won faith in an Incarnated God, or community with particular people who share specific tasks.

In light of this, I like to remember that there is also a form of independence or healthy skepticism, perhaps better termed human dignity, that protects people from false intimacy. Orthodox Christianity contains the right balance, the best of both individual freedom and thoughtful community, but sometimes we Christians veer to one side of the road or another in our attempts to live it out.

Here's how Crawford puts it:

[A journeyman's] individuality is...expressed in an activity that, in answering to a shared world, connects him to others: the customers he serves and other practitioners of his art, who are competent to recognize the peculiar excellence of his work. Such a sociable individuality contrasts with the self-enclosure that is implicit in the idea of "autonomy," which means giving a law to oneself. The idea of autonomy denies that we are born into a world that existed prior to us. It posits an essential aloneness; an autonomous being is free in the sense that a being severed from all others is free. To regard oneself this way is to betray the natural debts we owe to the world, and commit the moral error of ingratitude. For in fact we are basically dependent beings; one upon another, and each on a world that is not of our making.

To live wakefully is to live in full awareness of this, our human situation. To live well is to reconcile ourselves to it, and try to realize whatever excellence we can. For this some economic conditions are more favorable than others. When the conception of work is removed from the scene of its execution, we are divided against one another, and each against himself...A humane economy would be one in which the possibility of acheiving such satisfaction is not foreclosed ahead of time for most people. It would require a sense of scale. We in the West have arranged our institutions to prevent the concentration of political power...But we have failed utterly to prevent the concentration of economic power, to to take account of how such concentration damages the conditions under which full human flourishing becomes possible (it is never guaranteed). The consolation we seek in shopping serves only to narcotize us against a recognition of the facts, even while contributing to the Giant Pool of Money.

Crawford isn't speaking from a Christian point of view, but this Christian would like to live closer to the way he describes.

Foraging for herons

A Snowy Egret. We saw lots of these. Love those feet!

We saw a Green Heron today, too

Today C.Z. and I started our volunteer work for the New York City Audubon Society. We're doing what's called "citizen science," where volunteers take down information that scientists use to learn about birds' habits. This study is on how herons forage for food. Our site is Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

It's really quite easy in theory, and with practice I'm sure we'll get much better at it in actuality, too. We have nine sites. At each site we record the weather and habitat (in percentages) and the number of each kind of wading bird. Then we do three-minute observations of what the birds are doing. We also record what other wading birds, if any, are nearby, in meters. For instance, if we're observing a spot along the West Pond, we might see open water, phragmities (a tall marsh grass), a mudflat, and shrubs. Perhaps there's a Great Blue Heron sitting on one little island of phragmites, and a Great Egret sitting on another, and a Snowy Egret walking around the perimeter of the egret's island. So we'll watch each bird for three minutes and record what he does, and how far the other birds are from him.

The tricky part, of course, is what to do when you get a lot of birds, but by the time you write them down, they've all changed. Or you were watching a Glossy Ibis, and he just up and flew away. Or you're not sure whether the Snowy Egret that just caught a fish is the same one you were watching a few minutes ago. And maddeningly, they all seem to start doing something really interesting after your three minutes are up. Are you allowed to start over?

As it was, we were there for four-and-a-half hours today, but what a lovely time it was. New York City, as those of you who live nearby know, is having an unusually cool summer. Before we left for Georgia, it was cool and it rained every day. Since we got back, it's been cool and gorgeous, with low humidity. This is a golden summer, and it's good to be outdoors in it as much as possible!

At Jamaica Bay, the high was in the seventies, the breeze was constant, and the colors were clear and bright. We saw all kinds of herons, almost every wading bird in our list! What I hoped we'd accomplish by doing this survey, besides learning how surveys work and helping conservation efforts, was to really learn how each species behaves. And we did learn some things, even today on our first trip. I learned that Snowys and Tricolors are fast foragers, while Great Egrets and Great Blues stand and wait for longer for something to come by. The Tricolors are quite aggressive in their fishing, and they tend to fish alone. Ours was on the water's edge as the tide was coming in, bay side. The ibises walk along with their heads in the water, sweeping from side to side like a blind man with a cane. And I learned that Great Egrets spend a lot of time sleeping in trees.

The survey made us more aware of the different plants on the island, too. I'd seen many of them before, but having to note them makes you pay more attention. All the flowers are in full bloom right now, and they're a riot of color. And I now know my spartina altiflora from my spartina patens from my phragmites. I always knew that I liked they way they look in the broad sweep of a saltmarsh landscape, but now I know what the different species are, too.

Yellow Warbler

And one reason the survey took us so long today was that it was a nice birding day generally, so we kept taking breaks to watch the other birds. During our rather sparse spring migration outings, I kept joking that all I wanted to see was a Yellow Warbler, so I'd know it was spring. Well, today I saw a whole family of them!

And we saw a mother flycatcher feeding her baby a dragonfly, up close. It was a huge dragonfly, and the mother had to keep taking it back out of the baby's mouth each time it took a bite, so she could change the angle. At first, we wondered whether she was going to take some for herself, but no, she never did! Then they both turned in our direction, and we beheld their satisfied birdy faces as they sat side by side on the branch. Cute! We saw so many flycatchers that C.Z. called it an "empi epidemic."

The Barn Swallows we saw looked like this. I think they were babies.

We saw two Barn Swallows just sitting still on a branch outside the Welcome Center. I'd never actually seen a Barn Swallow sit still before. In fact, I was so startled that I had to look them up in my Sibley Guide to make sure that's what they were. They were bigger than I'd thought! And I saw the brightest House Finch I'd ever seen in my life eating mulberries out of a tree. He really looked as though he were a sparrow who'd stained his feathers with bright red berries. And of course, there were Song Sparrows singing everywhere. They really add to the ambience of a bird sanctuary.

Oh, and once, as we were walking along the path, we stopped right in our tracks because, just thirty feet away, we saw a terrapin digging a nest. That was last year's volunteer research project, the one that got us to interested in doing more, but Dr. Burke is in Italy this year studying lizards. We sat on the trail for about five minutes, trying to be utterly still and quiet so our terrapin could finish digging her nest, but I think she got scared and scuttled off. It was right on the trail. We saw terrapins in the water, too, and dozens of marked terrapin nests, both real ones with cages, and fake ones without. They're to fool raccoons--Shh, don't tell!

Cedar Waxwings really like berries. They're fairly common, but aren't they beautiful?

Here's our full list, for whomever follows these things:

Mute Swan

Double-crested Cormorant

Great Blue Heron

Great Egret

Snowy Egret

Tricolored Heron

Green Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Glossy Ibis

American Oystercatcher (flocks)

Greater Yellowlegs

Unidentified plovers and sandpipers

Laughing Gull

Great Black-Backed Gull, which pulled a huge fish out of the water and proceeded to eat it!

Least Tern

other terns

Black Skimmer (love these!)

Empidonax flycatcher (mother, baby, and others, still not sure which kinds)

Tree Swallow

Barn Swallow

Gray Catbird

Northern Mockingbird

Brown Thrasher

Cedar Waxwing (eating beautiful translucent red berries)

Yellow Warbler family

American Redstarts

Common Yellowthroat

Song Sparrow

Red-winged Blackbird

House Finch (eating mulberries)

American Goldfinch

This is ever so much more fun than going to classes, I must say! And this weekend we're going to help with an Eco-Cruise. Who says New Yorkers can't get out in nature? Of course, it took a two-hour train ride to get out there, but who cares!

(All images from Wikipedia Commons)

Summer in pictures

We did so much during our ten days in Georgia that it defies easy description.  So I thought I'd just post some pictures with a little commentary.  This is a little hard to do while respecting the privacy of all of our various family members, friends, and one daughter who got a haircut. But I hope this will do the trip justice...

9 p.m.*, June 27th.  Bob's parents' house north of Atlanta. We played game upon game of spoons, which eventually evolved into a new game called "Extreme Spoons," in which the number of spoons gradually diminished until blood was drawn.  We also played "No Way!," a bluffing game which really has another name, but we don't call it that.  And "Outdoor Clue," a kind of tag in which no one knows who's "it." And badminton. A certain family member became extremely punchy during "No Way!" and laughed a lot at his own antics.  "Challenge me!"

We ate breakfast every morning on the screened porch, and made mint chocolate chip ice cream for dessert one night.  And C.Z. got in a little target practice.  Her grandfather think it complements her violin skills nicely to be a good shot with a revolver.

Taking the fishing boat out onto the pond on Bob's parents' property.  The area has been built up a lot over the past twenty-five years, but it's still pretty private where they live.  Does this photo look as hot and humid as it feels to me, or am I just such a Georgian that I can sense it in all that green?  Don't forget to plug the boat!

We also went ice skating, indoors, which of course is the only way you can go ice skating in Georgia, even in winter.  I didn't take the camera.  As it was, I had some trouble with the popsicle-like surface of the indoor ice, which kept catching on my rental skates. I really hate it when I look up through a lot of white dots and see people staring at me and looking all concerned!  But at least I wasn't wearing flip-flops...

June 30th, noon. Seven of us went trail riding (on horses) near Dahlonega and then hiked up Amicalola Falls.  The orange object in the foreground is a flip-flop, which can only mean one thing, Susan.

And what trip down South would be complete without catching a few crayfish in a stream?

Or spotting a newly molted cicada?  

Other sounds, and some bird highlights:  A Chuck-will's-widow at night, a Belted Kingfisher over the Apalachee River, and a Pileated Woodpecker knocking on an old pine. 

Next up, Athens, Georgia, where we ate potato salad and cantaloupe, drank sweetened iced tea, and then did a lot of swimming, at my parents'.  Just before we left for Athens, C.Z. got ten inches cut off her hair for Locks of Love.  It looks great, but she won't let me post a picture!  

July 2, 6:45 p.m., outside Athens in an 1870s farmhouse.  Some good friends invited us over for dinner and kayaking.

Just what every child needs: a fishing hat with a bit of rope stuffed inside, and a good stick.  But a tin-roofed hunting shack with taxidermic animals is also nice to have nearby.

Apalachee River, 8:45 p.m., from a kayak.  We're learning to pole around fallen trees.

A neighbor's woodshop, 9:15 p.m.  A radio was blasting slightly dissonant orchestral music as we entered through the open barn doors and saw the shapes of ancient power tools, with their old oil smell, looming in the dark.  I felt for a moment as though I was in a slightly eerie movie as my friend went to switch on the lights.  I later found out that her neighbor kept NPR turned on all night to keep the deer out.  The owner of the shop, like me, is reading Shop Class as Soulcraft.  And he built his house after A Pattern Language, too!  I love it when I meet people who like the same things I like.  

July 4, 7p.m. Athens, Georgia.  My sister's veggie burger and my niece's dinner invitation.  My nine-year-old niece also made an American flag cake, and my six-year-old nephew made lemonade. I also really liked my brother-in-law's grilled andouille sausages!  I won't say how old he is.

7:45 p.m.  Roger is caught red-pawed, licking off the plates in the dishwasher.  

10:00 p.m., a strip mall parking lot in Athens. Two six-year-old boys examine a really cool first-aid kit after watching fireworks (below) from a local park.  Also included in the evening's entertainment:  Hoola-hoops.

Happy 4th of July!  And then we went home. 

One more mental picture:  On the way home, on the train in the Atlanta airport, a tall, thin, tanned and pretty (but not model-gaunt) young woman with dark hair and eyes, in 4-inch heels and a black mini dress. In one hand she carried a clear, unscratched plexiglass box with a tiara inside. Underneath the tiara was a green and white silk sash, folded carefully so that the word "Georgia" was clearly visible. She was with her mother, I think.  

Next to Miss Georgia on the train was a seven-year-old girl with a pink suitcase and similar complexion, gaping open-mouthed in admiration.  What a perfectly Southern way to end a trip to Georgia!  

*All times are "ish" times, to quote a certain six-year-old.

Away for a bit

Someone left these flowers in our neighbor's rental apartment, and they were allergic to them, so they gave them to us.  Nice!  Obviously, this was before the sun went away for a month.

Just posting to say I'll be away for a bit, visiting family.  Since I went to sleep last night to the sound of helicopters (no doubt over the Apollo Theatre) and a car stereo on the street below blasting Michael Jackson's greatest hits (which sound remarkably quaint now compared to the current street fare), I think our timing couldn't be better.  Tonight we'll sleep on twenty-five acres in rural Georgia.  And we're quite ready for a break from anything resembling school, too.  The flowers reflect my happy mood!  

Twelfth Night

Despite this June being one of the rainiest ever, and every morning since the 5th cloudy, we somehow managed to slip in between rain showers last Friday to see Twelfth Night at the outdoor Delacorte Theater.  

I'm no drama expert, but may I just say that I really, really appreciate Shakespeare in the Park?  I think it is my favorite event in New York City, perhaps even more so than the NYC Marathon. You go camp out in line for tickets hours before the show. Sometimes you get in (we usually do), and sometimes you don't, but it's free if you do. Sometimes it rains during the middle of the play, and you have to go home and try the whole thing again another night. And once we got an understudy for Brutus, in Julius Caesar, who was painful to watch as he struggled to remember his lines.  But usually, despite a little suspense, we take a picnic, play card or board games in the line, get our tickets, and enjoy the show.

With any Delacorte Production, there are certain hallmarks you expect: Creative staging, unconventional costumes (this year's were English Regency, i.e., Jane Austen), well-known actors in at least one or two main roles, good music, and the bawdiness played up in the comedies. Thankfully, in this production, the bawdiness tended mostly to the male bathroom sort. It was blatant enough, but given the subject matter it could have been much worse. Now for the other matters.

We saw Twelfth Night last in 2002 with Julia Stiles as Viola.  She was flat, and the staging was contrived.  But this year's production, with Anne Hathaway in the lead role, was a winner.  I think it's my favorite of the Shakepeare comedy productions the Public has done.  (Even more so than last year's Midsummer Night's Dream, which had the funniest rendition of the Thisbee scene I've ever seen.)  Anne Hathaway was a skilled and sincere Viola, but she didn't steal the show.  She played the (literally) straight woman that the play needed in the role. The other main characters were competent, if not stand outs. Audra McDonald was occasionally too exaggeratedly feline as Olivia, but I did like her.  And Feste had a touch of pathos, like a jester in a Velasquez painting.  

The characters who stood out were Malvolio, Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew.  Malvolio's character wasn't a detestable hypocrite, but more like a pathetic Kelsey Grammer. Maria was a shrewd and savvy accomplice.  Sir Toby made his entrance, in silhouette, in an outsized Napoleon hat that echoed his considerable paunch.  He was played by Jay O. Sanders (last year's Bottom from A Midsummer Night's Dream). But it was Sir Andrew who had our group laughing helplessly. Hamish Linklater played him like a cross between the Mad Hatter and a character from This is Spinal Tap.  His hapless delivery suggested vast spaces between the synapses.  All the characters, but especially his, were made more effective by excellent stage directing. For instance, when all the rejected suitors make their exits, with their luggage, at the end of the play, Malvolio stomps off in a huff, but Sir Andrew offers his leather saddle gratefully to Sebastian. Two acts ago in a moment of cowardice, he had promised his horse to Cesario not to fight him. He's perhaps still a little confused about which person is Cesario, but a deal's a deal.

The music (Twelfth Night is the most musical of Shakespeare's plays) was played Irish-style, with a whole band of musicians who alternately paraded around the stage or sat off to one side. During the wedding at the end of this Shakespearean comedy, I wanted badly to dance, but alas, it wasn't appropriate to the venue.  If I could find a recording of it, however, I might just dance around my own living room.  

***

Update:  Here's the NY Times review.  They like it, too!

Planning for next year

That silence was the sound of C.Z. and me finishing up the year and planning the next one.  But I thought I should post today because there will be another silence soon while we have visitors and then go visit family.  Despite the constant rain and cool temperatures, summer is almost here.

Here's what next year looks like so far.  It's C.Z.'s first year of high school:

Once a week outside classes:

Literature and writing class at a local tutoring place

Biology class at the same

Geometry using Jacobs, with a weekly enrichment session at our co-op

Saturday all-day music program with violin lesson, orchestra, chamber, theory and ear-training

Possible tutors:

Italian (with the rest of the family, because Bob wants one) or Latin (with one other girl)

Writing (We've been having the co-op math tutor, who is a published playwright, talk with C.Z. once per week about creative writing.)

At home:  

History, which may be a Teaching Company series, or just free reading, if she's motivated. Possibly some grammar brush up. The usual side interests in music, trips to museums, cooking, and other reading.

Other:  

This summer we're going to be doing some volunteering for Audubon that may extend into fall. We have recently attended a knitting circle that contributes to a local homeless shelter. And there may be other volunteer opportunities that may arise later in the year.

We'll probably buy into in our local support group's discount ski package again next winter.  C.Z. wants to ice skate, too.

***

Now, you're likely to notice what I noticed when we were making this plan, and you may possibly even have the same reaction:  This isn't homeschooling!  It's private tutoring run amok!  What about unschooling?  What about the simple life?

Honestly, it's not what I would have chosen, either.  But it's what C.Z. chose when I allowed her to decide, with the possible exception of the foreign language. And after hearing her reasons, I saw maturity in them. She's at an age where it's important for her to feel competent. She's never liked textbook learning or formal writing, but she wants to make sure that she can at least do that. The implication is that once she goes through the paces, she can take off on her own.

I suspect that the music program has something to do with it, too. Once you enroll in one outside program, it tends to take priority, because it has its own deadlines. And she loves her orchestra and chamber programs. So she felt she needed something more formal in academics to make sure the other subjects got done.  

One of my friends whose daughter is doing a similar schedule said, "So, how does it feel to be an administrator this year?"  I knew that she was half-joking, and I laughed along with the joke, but the other half of me felt slightly deflated.  I don't think of myself as an administrator.  For one thing, I'm not very good at it!  But also, my reasons for homeschooling have a lot more to do with promoting freedom and intimacy than in making sure things get done.  

By outsourcing, are we losing those good qualities of freedom and intimacy?  I don't think so. For one thing, next year's schedule isn't really so different from this year's.  We're going to do fewer co-op classes, and it wasn't like Latin was going so well under my tutelage anyway.  In fact, it was something of a bone of contention.  

C.Z. is positively excited about the literature class.  I think she sees it as a chance to have something interesting to discuss with other homeschoolers her age.  

And besides, in the indomitable spirit of the long-time homeschooler, I can't help looking up a few interesting supplemental books and ordering them.  I'll be reading along, and discussing, because I just can't resist!  I can spend my time with C.Z. doing the fun stuff.  She can do the administration. I find that very appropriate.  C.Z needs to be responsible for some kind of outside work that she finds important, but both of us still want the intimacy of a strong family life.

Of course, knowing the way homeschooling goes, this may all change by Christmas, but for now, I'm going into the summer feeling hopeful about the coming year.  And one of the things I'm feeling hopeful about is that once she tries this "outside" sort of year, she'll feel more confident about working on her own at home as well.  And even if she continues this way, it will have been her choice.

Going downtown for Thai groceries

The coveted, frozen lime leaves, and some galanga

Since winter, I've been wanting to cook Southeast Asian food from Hot Sour Salty Sweet, but all the recipes that intrigued me most had ingredients that I couldn't find in my neighborhood. We have two Japanese groceries here, several Thai restaurants, and one store that claims to carry banana leaves, but I've never seen them there.  

So once we had a decently free week, I Googled "Thai grocery Manhattan" and we set off to Chinatown. I had several places on my list, but as it turned out, all I needed was Udom Grocery on Bayard Street. (The link goes to a photo tour of Chinatown, which includes Udom, but it's copyrighted, so I didn't post the photo directly.)

We approached Udom from across the street, under threatening grey skies that made all the buildings look tired. The storefront looked dingy and cluttered, as did the interior once we entered. The whole store was about twelve feet wide including freezer cases, shelves, and the checkout counter, but there are many such tiny grocery stores in Manhattan, and I've grown to love them, because the proprietors are often the owners, and they are friendly and knowledgeable.  

C.Z. and I ambled down the narrow aisle, which was stacked with boxes in front of the shelves, familiarizing ourselves with the tiny, unfamiliar storescape. Most of the foods were the packaged type, with labels that weren't slick like American ones or artfully pop like Japanese ones.  They were labelled in both Thai and English.  Many of the items, as in Japanese groceries, were sauces, noodles or instant meals combining the two.  But everything on my list was produce, and I didn't see a shred of leaf or pepper anywhere.  As we were the only people in the store, I'm sure it was obvious that we were confused. 

Finally the owner spoke up from the register:  "Help you find anything?" He had an accent and left the articles out of his sentences, but he was easy to understand.  

"Do you have lime leaves?" I asked, thinking I'd go for the item I wanted most.  

"Lime leaves expensive,"  he responded.  Uh, oh, I thought.  If he didn't have them, who would? 

But just as I thought this, he went over to two household-type refrigerator freezers and started pulling something out. Then I realized that, of course, coming all the way from Thailand, all produce had to be kept frozen. "Lime leaves $10," he continued, and gave me an explanation that I don't remember.  "Smell."  I did, and instantly got a whiff of that distinctive Thai food smell that inspired me to cook Thai in the first place. The fact that I was quite hungry added to the experience, no doubt.

Then he reached into the freezer again and started pulling out everything that was on my list, without my asking! "Here. Banana leaves.  Here. Chilies." 

 

The other man who worked in the store grinned.  I looked at him and pursed my lips. "What? Are they hot? How are they compared with jalapenos?"  

"Same as jalapenos, but very hot." I gathered that he meant they were smaller, thus more concentrated.  It turned out when we used them that that's exactly what he meant. They were so overwhelming to the taste that I may cut down the recipes by half a pepper, even though I like hot food.

The owner kept on pulling things out:  Frozen chopped lemongrass, which I didn't need, strictly speaking, because I could buy fresh, but I was so enchanted with the place by this time that I thought I'd try it.  And galangal.  "Not same as ginger," he advised.  Close, but not the same.

After pulling some star anise from the spice rack and starting to pay, the owner pointed to some banana leaves tied with raffia which were lying next to the register.  "Sticky rice, very good. It's dollar seventy-five."  Did I mention that I was starving?  They were wrapped in twos, so I bought one package and thanked the owner.

Star anise tastes a little like fennel seed

Thai chilies (use with caution!) sitting on a pack of frozen banana leaves

As we walked out onto the street, it was starting to rain, so we popped out our umbrellas on the narrow sidewalk and I started fumbling with the wrapper as we set out towards SoHo.  C.Z. and I laughed because even though I'd handed her the grocery bag, I was trying to hold the umbrella, cross streets, and unwrap a seemingly endless length of banana leaf all at the same time.  Of course I was getting wet.  

But by the time we got to Centre Street, I had found the edible center of sweet sticky rice dotted with red beans.  It had a distinctive, handmade taste that made a favorable impression, as new foods usually do when you're hungry.  At first, C.Z. offered to give me hers, but I suggested she try it and she changed her mind by the time we arrived at our next stop.  

By comparison our second destination, Sur La Table, which I'd been to before, was ordinary, even yuppie.  I found the same bowls I'd purchased from Tongin Mart on our last trip to Chinatown, but they cost $9 instead of $5.  We wandered around for far too long, finally leaving with a pizza stone but no peel, and a mortar and pestle.  What was I thinking, buying two of the heaviest items in the store to take home on the subway at rush hour? I get like a deer in the headlights when faced with so many choices.

The train was so crowded that C.Z. and I got separated on the car, though I knew she was there, and when I found her again a couple of stops later, she was talking to someone whom I didn't recognize at first.  Turns out it was a former babysitter from co-op and King's College student, whose marvelously alternative Christian wedding I'd heard much about last year.  She and her husband were visiting the city before moving to Albuquerque.  

By the time we arrived home, we were exhausted, but we proceeded to attempt a pizza on the new stone.  Turns out we needed a peel after all, or at least more flour, because it turned into a calzone en route from the pan to the stone.  But I don't think I'm going back to that store this week. We'll try scones instead until we get this figured out.

Last night I made fish coconut curry with lime leaves from Hot Sour Salty Sweet, accompanied by Yunnan cabbage with star anise.  By the time I got to the cabbage, I'd realized how hot the curry was going to be, so I used less chili pepper in the latter.  The result was delicious, if a bit overwhelming to the flavor of the curry, but we sweated and enjoyed, and now I know where to get Thai ingredients when I need them.  And we had a nice adventure without going far from home.