an interview with anne from beyond ramen

i met anne through the (sadly neglected since we moved) cooking blog - domestic sensualists - that i share with bee. anne's blog is mostly gorgeous food that she makes in order to prove that not all students survive on ramen noodles, hence the name, beyond ramen. i've gotten to know anne even better through the blog camp 365 flickr group, where she has been slogging away on a photo a day with the rest of us. along the way, via twitter, if i recall correctly, i learned that not only is she quite literally a rocket scientist (or at least a physicist in training), but she also went to the U of C! having gone there myself (shh, don't mention the war, i think i got away with it once...), i had to ask her about going to the school with more nobel prize winners than any other on the planet. oh, and if you weren't hungry before this started, you will be when it's over...

1. what do you miss most about hyde park?

The atmosphere. Not the weather--I can do without hot and humid summers, thanks--but the bookish, tweedy, "let's go on a date and spend it studying at the Reg," impossible-to-find-a-seat-in-every-coffee-shop atmosphere. I suppose I'm conflating UofC with Hyde Park, but I felt so at home there--not just on campus, but in the neighborhood as a whole. And that leads into the second question...

2. did you go to the U of C on purpose or was it your second choice? ;-)

UofC was absolutely my first choice. Cheesy, but true: when I visited (twice), I felt like I belonged there, and I still feel that way.

3. what is the best part of being a girl rocket scientist?

Well, there's this saying about what it's like being a girl in physics: "the odds are good, but the goods are odd." Ha! Somewhat more seriously, probably the look that some people get when they learn that I'm a physicist. There's the basic surprise that male & female physicists both get, but it seems like there's something extra to it when the physicist in question is a girl. I feel like I'm being all subversive, and that's fun.

4. what's your super power?

I can fly! Okay, not really. But I do have a pretty great sense of direction, which sometimes feels as useful as a superpower.

5. which kitchen appliance/utensil would you not want to live without?

Oh, this is a tough one. I suppose my chef's knife? I use it more than any other hand tool in the kitchen. Runner up is my big Le Creuset Dutch oven--I can do just about anything in that pot.

6. white or red wine?

I like both, but probably red (as long as it's not Zinfandel). I find a lot of whites too sweet for my taste, so I tend to be pickier about them.

7. your best piece of photography advice?

I don't really feel like I'm in a position to be *giving* photography advice, so I've struggled with this question. I suppose it would be: take advantage of the fact that with digital cameras, we have the luxury of taking tons of pictures without having to pay for developing them. We can play around with framing, exposure, composition, depth of field, etc. and learn about what works and what doesn't, and we don't have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars developing roll after roll of film. That's not to say that I don't think there's a place for film, but for someone (especially someone on a budget) who's learning, trying to find his or her style, etc. I think digital photography is a great development--no pun intended. So, in short: take lots of pictures. LOTS. The more you shoot, the more you'll figure out what works for you.

8. what is your ultimate dream camera?

One of the Canon 1D Mark whatevers. At the moment, I don't care all that much which one (though the III or IV would be very nice indeed), because any one of them would be an enormous step up from the camera I'm using now. When I get a proper job, one of the things I'll be saving up for is a 5D. The 1D (or whatever the equivalent is when I get to the point of being able to afford one) will have to wait until I win the lottery or get tenure or something.

9. three ingredients/foods you always have in the house?

I don't always-always-always have all three of these things in my house, but they're probably the items I keep most consistently. Parmigiano Reggiano. Rice. Chocolate. I suppose jam, too, but that's more because I make so much of it than because I eat so much of it.

10. what do you do to unwind?

I suppose I bake, take pictures, look through other people's pictures for inspiration. I might have a better answer for this one after the whole defense thing is done. :)

* * *

i had such an urge to keep jumping in with responses of my own to all of these answers! i do have to share one thing two things - i felt exactly the same way after visiting the U of C - like it felt like home and i just knew i had to go there (i was choosing between U of C and USC at the time - can you say opposites?). and what i miss most about hyde park is walking along 57th street on a crisp, sunny fall day, kicking the leaves and heading for the seminary co-op bookstore. bliss.

thank you so much anne for taking the time to do this even tho' you're in the throes of that thesis!

go. check out anne's flickr photostream and blog, but please tiptoe, she's working on her thesis.

ten years ago...

i heard on the radio yesterday that it was ten years ago that the columbine tragedy (i was gonna link to it on wiki, but i can't really bring myself to do so) happened. i have a clear memory of standing in a little studio apt. on the north side of chicago, watching oprah talk about it with tears in her eyes. just as it did then, it feels remote from me now. i can't even relate. it's incomprehensible to me and so far from anything i can imagine. i feel for those people, but i cannot even wrap my head around it.

but what it does make me remember is that ten years ago, i was teaching a course in 20th century russian culture at the U of C. i made the mistake of proposing the course together with a fellow graduate student who was taking his exams that quarter. it was a mistake in the sense that taking your Ph.D. exams at the U of C brings you to the brink of a nervous breakdown. and by to the brink, i mean over the brink into a full blown nervous breakdown that you yourself don't notice, but everyone else does. so i ended up teaching alone, which was ok, it just wasn't what i expected.

since i lived in denmark, i also foolishly accepted my fellow graduate student's offer that i could live with him at his place, since it was only 3 months. but living together with someone who has had a nervous breakdown that he doesn't really notice himself is, to describe it lightly, not healthy, so i got my own temporary apartment on campus.

that turned out to be a good thing, because it was in that little bitty apartment, within a block of The Reg, that i learned to make risotto, which is a skill i still enjoy. tho' it took several tries. i had no t.v., which was also wonderful. i also ate a lot of paté on crackers. because that's what i imagined that a graduate student at the U of C should eat. i still haven't decided if that was true or not, but it was decidedly part of my own engagement in bourdieu's cultural capital (attempting to raise mine, undoubtedly).

as for The Reg, i spent so much time there in my study carrel, that i began to glow in the dark. (that's the standard U of C joke, since The Reg was built over the bit where they did the Manhattan Project.) but seriously, being left alone teaching a course (albeit undergraduate) at the U of C, is no small project. luckily, we had modeled it around matei calinescu's five faces of modernity, which meant that we covered modernism, avant-garde, decadence, kitsch (my fave) and postmodernism (my REAL fave, at least at the time), which was an ingenious idea (even if i do say so myself). but my very, very favorite was sneaking in alcoholism, because of its importance in russian culture. vodka is a diminutive of the word for water, which illustrates its importance as a life force in russia and russian culture, because what is language if not the manifestation of culture?

it was both a great time and a stressful time, and i'm sorry that it took columbine to remind me of it, but sometimes you have to take the good with the bad. i'm grateful for the opportunity to say i taught at the U of C, it's not everybody who has done that. but i did. and so did obama. he's, of course, done a little better than i have, but i'm cool with that.