Christmas 2023

Editor's Note: If you're following along in real time, this post is dropping one month after the big event due to general busyness of mixing family/friend time with a half-week of work over the holidays, followed by jumping into the new semester with both feet. Also, I was waiting for my new storage items to arrive in the mail, and I wanted to show them to you, because this post is dedicated to the suburban wife I have become. Cheers!

Dear Husband and I had a lovely Christmas 2023, in part because for the first(!?) time in two decades, we did not travel. Instead, his immediate family came to us. Unsurprisingly, I made very ambitious plans for cooking and activities, beginning with a great new taco place. Christmas Eve breakfast was waffles with a warm, homemade cinnamon pear compote topped with walnuts and powdered sugar that looked like something from a Williams Sonoma catalogue, but I was too busy serving and eating to photograph it.

(Moravian star visible in front window.)

(Yes, that is a flock of flamingoes; alas, their days may be numbered--

they really should have flown south for the winter, as snow and ice do not agree with them.)

Since buying our house almost 2 years ago, we have been purchasing more Christmas decorations. Last year was a reusable wreath with matching garland for the light pole in the front, and a sparkly light-up deer for the back. This year I discovered "urn fillers" for the concrete containers on either side of the driveway and scoured the internet to find a set that DH liked with battery-operated timers that didn't require a second mortgage. (Our first picks cost $170! EACH!) I also leaned into some kind of country kitsch with two oversized black metal lanterns with battery-operated candles to hang in the back yard--for ambience? DH seems to like them.

For Christmas Eve lunch (DH would already be at church by dinnertime), I decided to re-create that phyllo pie recipe. This time I made chickpea-with-spinach and chicken-(leftover from chicken soup)-with-peas, served with homemade cranberry sauce and my in-laws' German cucumber salad. Demerits for forgetting to defrost the frozen dough sheets overnight, although it turns out you can nuke them in their plastic wrappers in the microwave for 60 seconds (thanks, Alan Brown!).

Christmas Day breakfast was cinnamon rolls with grapefruit. More demerits to me for hustling us out of the house at 9am to be early for the 10am service at St. Paul's Cathedral, when actually we wanted to attend the noon service with the special music that started at 11:30am (whoops). So we gave up our spot in the parking lot and drove across town to Homewood Cemetery, where we hunted for the grave of a distant relative, then dawdled over hot drinks from the Starbucks that was open in the Jewish neighborhood. It felt so nice to give ourselves the gift of "no stress." (Kudos AND TIPS to the baristas who were working hard!) We were in good time for the brass, choir, and organ music and came home to a late lunch of phyllo pie with my MIL's raspberry pie for dessert.

There was jigsaw-puzzling, various rounds of card games, and we visited the large train set that is up in the living room of the older couple next door. The husband grew up in our house, and that train set used to be in what is now our living room.

Christmas Day dinner was London broil with this excellent marinade (not shown), mashed potatoes with my in-law's mushroom gravy, and Brussels sprouts that I thought would continue to cook while they rested on the stovetop but didn't (whoops).

On Boxing Day I took two meals off and only cooked for dinner, since DH's brother had come to town. I made this Martha Stewart "Cajun shrimp" recipe (above), except I swapped out the Andouille sausage for water chestnuts to lower the salt and fat content for my FIL, and I skipped the celery altogether, since only my MIL and I like it. I also tossed in the green pepper chunks last so they would stay crunchy. Served with roasted carrots and cumin. This filled our stomachs before we headed out to the Holiday Lights at the Phipps Botanical Garden.

Finally, this year I tired of storing our ornaments in torn, decades-old tissue paper and a mish-mash of cardboard boxes, so I invested in a set of plastic tubs and red-and-green canvas storage containers with cardboard inserts. Here you can see Rosamunda "helping" me sort everything into their new containers. There's a little space to grow, but we have more than enough ornaments to fit on a standard-issue live fir tree, so it's mostly about being able to see what you're looking for when you're decorating and feeling neat and tidy when everything is put away. 

Well-Dressed at The Frick Pittsburgh

A girlfriend and I made a date for the Saturday after Thanksgiving to try a new restaurant for lunch (Hemlock House: great mocktails, food almost too salty to eat) and then take ourselves to the Frick Museum. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that while their special exhibition on The Great Migration in the automobile section, and of course tours of the house itself, require tickets, the art pavilion is now free!

In front of the museum is Of Thee We Sing (2023), a new installation from vanessa german (1976- ) of Marian Anderson, in a blue-bottle gown, surrounded by flowers and hands reaching up from the mass of Black Americans who relocated from South to North to realize their dreams in the early 20th century.

My friend wanted to see The Red Dress, which is the product of 380 embroiders from 51 countries over 14 years. The brainchild of English artist Kirstie Macleod, who started it in 2009 by wearing the dress and sewing on it as performance art, it became a way to connect women as artists, immigrants, entrepreneurs, refugees, and survivors of many kinds of violence to showcase their hopes, dreams, and selves. Each was paid for her time and continues to receive a fraction of the exhibition fees.

There are all different styles of stitching in a rainbow of colors, women, animals, birds, flags, flowers and vines, stars, and creative abstract designs in thread.

As part of the exhibition, the Frick commissioned a local piece, The Calico Dress, which includes pieces from people of all ages and abilities who live here. Among the designs on it are one of the yellow Three Sisters bridges, the Frick building, a Steelers logo, flowers, a seahorse, a peacock, fancy fish, a rainbow, hearts, a cat, smiley faces, and big black buttons for contrast.

We also got to (re)visit Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave's exquisite paper sculpture based on Peter Paul Ruben's Portrait of Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, Princess of Conde, which hangs in the same gallery.

While there, we enjoyed some Chinese vases and a nice little exhibit on Shakespeare's Folios on the 400th anniversary of the printing of the first one, from the Carnegie Mellon University Library. I thought my maternal grandfather and -mother would have particularly liked this one, although probably they already knew that John Milton's first publication was the dedication in verse to Shakespeare in the Second Folio (1630).

I made that!

I've been a busy bee and want to share some of my "honey." 

First up is a special issue of a German-studies journal that I co-edited with a colleague at another institution. Neither of us had edited anything before, so we figured out together how to write a call for papers, publicize it, sift through the abstracts, and select a group of papers to shepherd through the writing, editing, and publication process. The two of us wrote the introduction and selected artistic images for the cover and between the essays, which is why I was disappointed not to receive the finished product initially. Finally, after the annual meeting, I reached out to the press, and they mailed us our paper-back copies. It's so pretty! And now that it's done, I can devote my precious writing time to turning my dissertation into a book.

Second is a trio of balsa-wood nightlights that were an impulse buy at the craft store. I picked out the moth, the brain, and the ribcage with flowers. They are colored with paint pens, and I haven't decided yet whether to keep, gift, or donate them.

Third, I finally finished the second copy of the Princess Bride cross-stitch sampler I was working on. I received the first copy for Christmas last year, but it was missing some of the thread, so the Etsy seller sent me a whole new kit, which had enough supplies to finish both. This one is on the side table in the entranceway but will probably eventually be hung in my office. A woman at church made the knitted cactus, which I just love. 

Montreal, Take 2

Way back in early graduate school, I attended a history of medicine conference in Montreal. However, to my lasting regret, I only left the hotel once, to get drinks with a group, and I never saw the city itself. I rectified that lack of curiosity at the most recent German studies conference, arriving early to have a half day of sightseeing, and planning my schedule to leave time to catch up with friends new and old.

The conference hotel was in the more-English-speaking part of downtown Montreal, and it impressed me as an urban space (with a Metro!) unlike Pittsburgh, which seems gritty in some specifically American way, whereas this is clearly a European-inflected place, from the architecture to the buskers.

After checking in, I took myself to lunch at the Jean-Talon Marché, named for the first French administrator, Jean Talon (1726-1694). Marveling at the stalls with their produce, cheese, meats, books, flowers, etc., somehow the cartons of tomatoes, potatoes, lemons and limes, or onions were equally beautiful whether there were arranged with like colors or in alternating bands. I thought of Emile Zola's novel The Belly of Paris (1873) and hoped there was a lot less despair and intrigue. It certainly helped that it was sunny and above 80F/30C.

I had a salmon pie for lunch, picked up apples and clementines for snacks and breakfasts, and selected some baclava for dinner with a friend the next night. With a strategic purchase from Starbucks so I only had to stand in that long, snaking line once, granola bars from home, cookies from the airplane, and free tea from the hotel, I hoped to have to buy myself lunches and the occasional dinner, depending on the robustness of the evening receptions.

Then I made my way to and through the Old Town (Veaux Ville). There was a brass band playing in the middle of Place Jacques-Cartier, at the foot of the monument in the middle of this shot. I stopped by the Chateau Ramezay, the first historical building in Montreal which had served as governor's residence, business headquarters, army billeting, courthouse, normal school, university, and coin museum. 

I had planned to catch the 2pm tour in English, but a colleague wanted to meet at the Ferris wheel (La Grand Roue de Montreal) in the Old Port at 3pm, so I just buzzed through the gift shop and walked the garden (pictured). 

Old Port of Montreal

The leaves have started changing colors, but the sky was blue and the temperature warm. We caught each other up on our lives since our joint publication came out in February/March while enjoying great views of the city and port beneath us.

Then we walked to the Notre-Dame Basilica. It was built in the 1820 and the interior redecorated in the 1870s. Inside the brilliant blue ceiling stands out, but all of the walls are painted and gilded, and there are statuary everywhere, even Ezekial and Jeremiah carved into the base of the pulpit, which hasn't been used since Vatican II. Here's also a photo of the 1891 Casavant Freres organ for Dear Husband; has 7,000 pipes from 1/4 inch to 32 feet feet tall. It was quite dark inside, and we wondered how the congregation could have seen or appreciated all these details with sunlight through the few windows and then candle or gaslights. Now the cathedral hosts a music and light show in the evenings for twice what we paid to see the interior during the day. 

The alter has Jesus on the cross at the center and is flanked by 4-5 other "altar scenes": Moses prays over the Ark of the Covenant, Aaron immolates a lamb, Abraham sacrifices Isaac, and Melchizedek offers bread and wine, and below all that is The Last Supper. 

The stained-glass windows from the 1920s (and some of the statues) feature important citizens in Montreal's past, including a number of women.

Then we joined the rush-hour traffic on the Metro back to the hotel for the opening reception, where I bought a couple of books and chatted up the representative of the junior-year-abroad program through which my parents met and which is still going strong in Munich.

Finally, I joined Arts Night, a very good presentation about a new graphic novel about 4 children's Holocaust stories, illustrated from survivors' stories. I bought myself the book and read it during down times at the conference.

But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust

20-ingredient salad from Siam [Thai Restaurant]

It truly was wonderful to feed the scholarly and friendship parts of my soul. Somebody I had just met asked if I didn't attend very often because this is (no longer) my primary job, but I told her that, on the contrary, it was that much more important for me to do. I attended panels on women in interwar Vienna, diversity in language instruction, domestic design in the early 20th century, Asian-German comics, how to hold an  accessible conference, non-White embodiment, ETA Hoffman's fairy tales, medieval illustrations, and 21st-century German streaming "tv."

Not pictured: baklava that was worth waiting to eat.

Progress on a new "miscounted cross-stitch design of a brain and flowers"

The one regret I have is that the representative from the University of Toronto Press did not bring hard copies of the journal issue I co-edited that was published early this year. Because my dissertation / book project has been on the back burner for so long that it threatens to evaporate, I wanted to have a photo of proof of my productivity, as a URL just isn't the same. No luck.

I delivered the commentary on one of the last panels of the day and then left before the last question had been answered to make it to the airport for the last flight toward home.

Next year: Atlanta. Maybe I'll have a(nother) book by the time we get back to Washington, DC?