Author Archives

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A year with Penelope

My dear readers–as of yesterday, this blog is one year old!  In celebration of this milestone, I invite you to revisit some of our favorite (your favorite and my favorite) posts from the past year.

  • My most viewed post of all time: A review and listening guide of Mumford and Sons’ first album, Sigh No More.  Hmm…maybe I should do one for Babel.
  • Post that elicited the most interesting comment: After I jokingly suggested that Penelope Clearwater Revival would be a great name for a Southern-inflected wizard rock band, a commenter who’d Googled the phrase wrote to say that she had started recording music under that name!
  • Several readers’ favorite post: Some of my most loyal readers told me that they enjoyed this zany stream of consciousness about pandas, punctuation, and Coldplay more than any other post.
  • Facebook fun: My blog made a social network appearance when my mom shared this post about two of the loves of my life, Samwise Gamgee and Neville Longbottom, on her Facebook page.  Next time you see something you like on my blog, I’d love it if you shared it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or a personal website!
  • Christmas cheer: Now that advent has begun, you might like to check out some posts from last year on Harry Connick Jr.’s When My Heart Finds Christmas, Handel’s Messiah, and Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

I’d like to thank you all for a wonderful year.  I wouldn’t keep this blog going if I didn’t know that you were out there reading it.  Please let me know what topics you’d like to see me address in the coming year!

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Gobs of fun in the kitchen

Tonight I thought I’d be all domestic and try out a new recipe.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  Here’s how it actually went down: On Monday, my co-worker who directs the Foreign Language Lab was going around asking people from Canada, Korea, etc., to contribute desserts to tomorrow’s International Candy and Dessert Tasting.  When she approached my office, I quickly attempted to ward off the question by saying, “I’m an American!  You don’t want my food!”  But apparently the United States is a nation, which means it’s included in “international,” so my excuse didn’t work–which was fine, since I do like to bake.  In keeping with the educative nature of the event, I decided to contribute a regional favorite from Pennsylvania.  I had always thought it was a specifically western PA specialty until I learned in my research that it’s also popular among the Amish.  It also exists in New England, but under a different name–read on.

I’m speaking of the gob.  The term gob, like hoagie (i.e., a sub) and steamer (i.e., a sloppy joe), is a word designed by Pennsylvanians to confuse other English speakers.  Most people, if they are aware of this delicacy at all (and I’m finding that a lot of people aren’t) call it a whoopie pie.  Regardless of what you call it, it consists of two large, soft chocolate cookies (really more like cake rounds) with marshmallow creme or another white icing-like substance between them.  Invariably, they are served in plastic wrap (because they tend to stick together), which makes them great for bake sales.  The best thing about gobs from my standpoint as a dilettante baker is that they don’t have to look good; they just have to taste good.  Also, please note: If you’ve had a Moon Pie or one of those Korean Choco-Pies, you have not had a gob.  Similar concept, but the store-bought ones are pale imitations.

After a brief evaluation process, I decided on a recipe from this website, which not only details the history and geography of the gob (the site favors the term whoopie pie, unfortunately) but also provides several variations of the recipe.  I went with the Amish Whoopie Pie, figuring it would be the closest to the experience I wanted to capture.  If you don’t have an electric mixer, though, go with one of the other two recipes.  I don’t have one of those fancy stand mixers that’s pictured on the site, but my bright green Kitchen Aid hand mixer (a birthday gift from my parents, who are probably tired of buying me kitchen appliances) works just fine.  

That’s about all I can tell you right now because I haven’t assembled my gobs yet; I’m still waiting for the cookie part to cool.  Well, I can tell you that the batter tastes really good.  I’m a little nervous, but since odds are that most of the people at tomorrow’s event won’t know what a gob is supposed to look or taste like, there’s not much pressure, I guess.  I have some extended family members who would probably destroy me in a gob-baking contest, so perhaps next time I’m with them, I can watch them at work and try to learn their ways.  Meanwhile, give the recipe a shot and let me know what you think.  And if you’re in Lynchburg on Wednesday, November 14, stop by Liberty University’s Center for Writing and Languages and try one of mine!

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Kung Fu Panda eats, shoots, and leaves: A stream of consciousness

Hi everyone, I’m back. I’ve done many things during my regrettably long blogging hiatus, including looking at some pandas. Last week I was in San Diego for the International Writing Centers Association conference with two of my colleagues, and we went to the famed San Diego Zoo, which has a new baby panda who’s still too young to be on exhibit. So we watched the baby on the zoo’s webcam (you can too: http://www.sandiegozoo.org/pandacam/), and we saw his grown-up friend (not his mother; she’s with the baby) live and in person. The employee working at the panda exhibit told us an interesting fact: Pandas can be very aggressive if provoked. (I know; they’re bears, duh. But they look so genial.)

This fact made me think of Kung Fu Panda, a great movie and the source of my favorite example of the importance of articles (I mean a, an, and the).  During the climactic battle scene, the evil snow leopard says, “You’re just a big fat panda.”  In response to which, Po, the title character, says, “No.  I’m the big fat panda.”  Really, that’s a brilliant piece of dialogue.  A lot of breath and trees have been wasted in discussing the best way to teach the rules of articles to English language learners whose native languages don’t have articles.  And actually, I learned at the conference last week a theory that incorrect article usage may be one of several “untreatable errors” that simply can’t be addressed with rules.  But I have the solution for everyone: Just watch Kung Fu Panda.

From my favorite example of article importance, I move to my favorite use of a punctuation metaphor in a song lyric.  Earlier tonight I was trying to read Hans Robert Jauss’s Toward an Aesthetic of Reception while listening to my iPod on shuffle.  Up came the Coldplay song “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall.”  Which do you think I was paying attention to, the song or the book?  I’ll be honest; I was dancing in my bed.  The punctuation metaphor occurs in (I think) the second verse of the song: “I’d rather be a comma than a full stop.”  Besides the fact that the British term full stop, like ginger and roundabout and a lot of other words, is inherently fabulous, the metaphor is quite apt and well-put.

At this point I was going to embark on a rant about how people should give another listen to the much-maligned Coldplay album Mylo Xyloto.  No, it doesn’t follow a neat story arc about the French Revolution like Viva La Vida does, but it still has some great songs.  Further ranting will have to wait for another time, however, because I need to go to bed.  I’ll leave you with the assurance that my next post will be more coherent, if not profound, and with this holiday wish, which I’m borrowing from a cute tin sign I bought at an antique store recently: “A merry Hallowe’en.  Scare up some fun, and have a spooktacular night.”

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Getting our loves in order

I’ve promised before that this won’t turn into a Harry Potter blog, and I intend to keep that promise.  (“I made a promise, Mr. Frodo.  Don’t you lose him, Samwise Gamgee.  And I don’t mean to.”  See?  Not a Harry Potter blog.)  But before I move on to other topics, I want to qualify the main point of my last post, in which I wrote about how one’s family is more important than one’s job.  This is true.  But are there things more important than one’s family?  As difficult as it is to say so, yes.  And tonight I grasped this truth afresh with the help of Xenophilius Lovegood.

I haven’t read a lot of Augustine other than the quick and probably shallow reading of the Confessions that I was required to do in my freshman speech class (yes, speech), but from reading secondary authors I think I’ve picked up a fairly decent understanding of his concept of the ordering of loves.  To put it in simplistic terms, it’s not wrong to love your favorite food, your favorite song, your best friend, or your mom, but these loves must be put in the proper hierarchy, and all must be subsumed under your love for God, for the sake of which you love everything else.  I can assent to this principle when I encounter it in Augustine’s terms, but I tend to resist when I read Jesus’ more stark wording in Matthew 10:37: “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

Anyone who’s read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows knows that Xeno. Lovegood’s mistake was not loving his daughter Luna but allowing his love for her to be the driving force of all his decisions.  Family is important in the wizarding world as well as in our Muggle world, but it’s not the most important thing.  Because X. made an idol out of Luna, he endangered Harry Potter, the person to whom he loudly proclaimed loyalty in The Quibbler.  I don’t think Mr. Lovegood’s support for Harry was insincere, but it fell apart when put on trial.

Now, I want to be careful in my analogy.  As John Granger points out in The Deathly Hallows Lectures (read it; your mind will be blown), Harry Potter is not precisely or always a Christ figure, but sometimes he functions as one, and I think this is one of those times.  Lovegood loved his daughter more than Harry (or perhaps more correctly, what Harry stood for) and therefore was not worthy of Harry.  And by the way, I think Luna would have understood this if she had known what was going on.  From everything that we know of her character, it appears that Luna, much more than her father, knows how to love well (or love good, if you like puns more than correct grammar).

I don’t have a daughter or a son, but I do have a father and a mother, and Jesus talks about them too.  I also have siblings, whom Jesus mentions in similar passages in the gospels.  As weird as it may sound, we can sometimes make idols out of our brothers and sisters (I do this when I worry inordinately about my siblings), and I think Deathly Hallows has something to say about this too, when Harry and Hermione almost have to physically restrain Ron from vengefully chasing after Deatheaters, rather than following the predetermined plan, after Fred has been killed.

Just so we’re all clear (especially because I know my parents will be reading this): I love my family very much.  But I hope I love Jesus more.  I also hope that I never have to be placed in a situation like Xenophilius Lovegood’s, in which the ordering of my loves is tested.

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Weasleys at work

This is the fifth and final post in our series on lessons for young professionals from recent movies.

Note: This blog is a bit schizophrenic–usually “I” means Tess Stockslager, but sometimes it means Penelope Clearwater, and this post falls into the latter category.

5. “Remember who you are” (Mufasa) and “hold on to what you believe” (Mumford and Sons).

I (Penelope) have often thought that my ex-boyfriend Percy Weasley would have saved himself and his family a lot of hurt if he had frequently repeated to himself the following truths: “I am a Weasley, and I am not a pure-blood supremacist.” To generalize these truths into a universal dictum, no job is more valuable than your family and your principles–even if the job makes you feel really important. Cornelius Fudge (fill in your boss’s name here) may flatter your dignity, but he doesn’t love you. And when your job requires you to help advance policies you know are morally reprehensible, it’s time to quit and go home to the people who do love you. This sounds simple, but it’s so easy to forget.

I’m not talking about physical proximity, by the way. Bill and Charlie Weasley managed to accomplish from Egypt and Romania, respectively, what Percy was unable to do from London–maintain a good relationship with their family. And this is closely related to the fact that their jobs didn’t require them to repudiate their family’s deeply-held beliefs.

And while we’re on the topic of Weasley careers, Fred and George’s joke shop is a good example of competent, customer-driven entrepreneurship. Not all of us will be able to start our own business inventing and selling items we enjoyed playing with as children, but if you have a particular skill and see a particular need in the consumer populace (e.g., “Fred reckons people needs a laugh these days”–Ron), go for it; don’t feel like you need to follow in your older siblings’ footsteps by entering more traditional industries, such as banking, politics, and . . . er, animal behavior.

Well, there you have it, young professionals. This concludes the series, but I (Tess) would love to hear your good and bad examples from movies and books–and even real life–of professionalism, workplace ethics, and other career-related issues.

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How to lose friends and make a bad impression on people

This is part 4 in my series on lessons for young professionals from recent movies.

4. True professionals respect people.

I need to begin this post as I did the last one, with a disclaimer: I realize that the legal documents that inspired The Social Network were subjected to some Aaron Sorkin alchemy, and therefore that the film is not to be taken as a nonfictional account.  Thus, this post is not about Mark Zuckerberg the person but about Mark Zuckerberg the persona, the character played by Jesse Eisenberg in the movie.

It’s disturbing to me that people are starting to use Mark Zuckerberg along with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as an example of that “you can accomplish anything you put your mind to” brand of philosophy.  It’s disturbing, firstly, because I think that philosophy has some serious intrinsic problems; secondly, because it’s way too soon to tell whether Mark Zuckerberg will have the same kind of lasting impact that the other famous entrepreneurs have had.  Thirdly, it’s disturbing because until he publishes his memoirs, the narrative version of Mark Zuckerberg most accessible to role model-seekers is the one in The Social Network, even if that isn’t the “real” Mark Zuckerberg.  And the guy in that movie is incredibly unprofessional.  This has nothing to do with the fact that he wears sneakers, jeans, and hoodies to important meetings.  In many industries, particularly ones like Internet startups, dress code is becoming increasingly irrelevant, and I believe the impression caused by bad clothing choices can be overcome by a good work ethic.  (I’ve experienced that myself.)

No, the reason Mark Zuckerberg (the character) is unprofessional is that he treats people like crap.  He doesn’t deliver promised services; he ignores email correspondence unless it’s convenient for him; he’s insolent toward those in authority, and he drives away his best friend.  This last is not only a bad interpersonal move but also a potentially stupid business decision, since the friend has business and math savvy that even Mark lacks.  Also he’s Andrew Garfield–how can you look into his gorgeous face and break his heart?  But I digress.  My point is that a large part of professionalism is summed up in the Golden Rule: Treat people well, and they probably won’t care what you’re wearing.

In the final post of the series, Penelope Clearwater talks about some young professionals she knows personally.

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When is it ok to take work home?

This is part 3 in my series on lessons for young professionals from recent movies.

3. Total objectivity is impossible and overrated.

I need to start this post with a disclaimer: Boundaries between teachers and students, therapists and clients, and other parties in professional relationships are important.  In the examples I give in this post, the professionals in question respect the legal and ethical boundaries while allowing themselves to become emotionally invested, to a healthy degree, in the people they are helping.  Philosophers and psychologists tell us that complete objectivity is impossible; we all bring biases and baggage to whatever we approach, including our careers.  That’s not a bad thing, and in the two examples below, I hope to prove that it can even be beneficial under the appropriate circumstances.

First, we return to Anna Kendrick.  In 50/50, she plays a mental health counselor to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, who has cancer.  At first (and I think this has a lot to do with how young she is, and feels) she is overly vigilant about maintaining professionalism, which makes the counseling sessions tense and awkward (and, admittedly, very funny).  A breakthrough occurs when she gives her client a ride home and he gets a chance to see her as a real person with a very messy car.  At this point, she begins to open up about some of her own personal worries, which allows the therapeutic relationship to become natural and unforced.  Ultimately, the counselor learns just as much as the client does, and in the end (AFTER the counseling sessions have ended, I must stress) she gets a really great boyfriend out of the deal.

A similar principle is at work in The Woman in Black, in which Daniel Radcliffe plays a widowed lawyer with a young son.  (If you’re having trouble picturing that, remember that this is a late 19th/early 20th century period piece–people died earlier back then, so they had to get started earlier.)  I believe that his grief for his wife’s death and concern for his son’s safety, far from interfering with his work, endow him with the emotional intelligence and perceptiveness necessarily to solve the spooky case he gets caught up in, which involves the death of a woman and a young boy.

In the next post, we’ll begin to look at some negative examples.

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Working for an audience of one

This is part two in my series on examples of young professionals in recent movies.

2. Please your boss and ignore the naysayers.
If you’ve been following my blog recently, you know that this summer I wrote a paper about Moneyball. During the research process, which consisted mostly of watching the movie over and over, I found another inspiring young professional in Jonah Hill’s character Peter Brand, a mid-twenties economist whose unorthodox ideas and lack of sports experience make him unpopular with the establishment–i.e., the Oakland A’s scouts and coaches, who call him (disparagingly) “the kid” and (irrelevantly) “Google boy.” Peter makes the smart choice to ignore those people and concentrate on continuing to impress the person who’s actually his boss, Billy Beane. He does his job and lets Billy take care of the jerks. This story demonstrates that often all you need is one person to see that you’re doing good work and thus to champion your cause. It is helpful, though not absolutely necessary, if that person is your boss.

Next post: more Anna Kendrick, plus lessons in professionalism from a horror movie.

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Advice for young professionals

Do you ever feel like you’re too young for your job? I do. Actually, let me clarify: I know I’m quite capable of doing my job, but I worry that others think I’m too young, which in turn negatively affects my work. Fortunately, recent movies provide a number of good (and bad) examples of young professionals doing their thing. Today I’m starting a series of posts on lessons I’ve learned from them.
1. Anna Kendrick is a great role model.
I was born the same year as the Up in Air and 50/50 actress, which is one reason I feel an affinity with her. I also take inspiration from her age-appropriate, realistic portrayals of sincere and capable but sometimes fumbling young professionals. (She also played a high school student in Twilight, but I give her props for breaking out of that mold earlier than many actors her age.) In a great example of the circular process by which life imitates art which imitates life, both Anna Kendrick’s characters (one of which I’ll examine more closely later in this series) and Anna Kendrick herself, who was nominated for an Oscar for Up in the Air, have earned the respect of their older colleagues by doing their jobs well.
Next post: Please your boss and ignore the naysayers