Hello! So, true to my word, I am indeed starting a blog. See?
I’m actually pretty excited about this. In the spirit of democratic media, I hope to establish a forum where we can have discourses on ham (which is better: prosciutto or serrano?) and Javier Marias (why do YOU love him?). You know, important things like that. It’ll be like Athens only without the androcentrism. (Aside from that, really, the two are indistinguishable.)
I’ve been back in Minnesota for Thanksgiving, easily my favorite holiday. It’s so pure and harvest-y. Being back for this week has been marvelous. As much as I love New York, I have such an extreme fondness for the Twin Cities. Even people who are actually from Minnesota think that it is strange and a little excessive. I make no apologies. I love Minneapolis’s neat, clean skyline that looks like one cycle of a soundwave. (I always feel like I am looking at a graph of something when I look at it.) I love its coffeeshops and its lakes and its Jessica Deutschs.
Part of my time here in the Midwest has been spent researching local vineyards and wineries for an article I’m writing for class. Poor me, I know. I clearly selected my topic based on the entertainment-value of its research. Sadly, wine does not a productive Megan make. (I have yet to find what DOES make a productive person of me.) Many of you have received faintly drunken afternoon rhapsodies in e-mail: this is proof of how digressive I become when I decide to fortify myself with wine. (I’m always somehow convinced that it will help me work…) It’s really not that I drink very much: half a glass is enough to blur my edges a little.
This past week I’ve visted a vineyard in Vernon County, Wisconsin and a winery in Stillwater, Minnesota. It’s a little bizarre to me that these things exist in the Midwest, where they have to engineer grapes to survive the cold, but there is actually a certain degree of local interest and enthusiasm. It’s sort of charming to hear former tobacco growers talking about “terroir.”
3 Comments
November 28, 2006 at 12:29 am
oh megan, you are so cute. i want a drunken rhapsody in email. hehe just kidding. but dude! you were in mn and you didn’t visit? oh no you didn’t girlfriend.
November 28, 2006 at 6:20 am
I miss Minnesota so much right now… people say that Christmas is over-commercialized back home, but in Japan it is ONLY commercial. New Year’s is the family holiday; Christmas is when you go out with your boyfriend or girlfriend and hit up a love hotel for a night of Hello Kitty -themed bondage rooms.
Or, as one of my students summarized: “Christmas is for everyone. This day, Christ was born. So we eat strawberries, and sometimes I hate men. But I like presents.”
November 28, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Ah, Amanda, that’s an Engrish t-shirt! Or perhaps an Engrish Christmas card.
Give me your address in Japan and I’ll send you a (normal) card. How long does it take for mail to get from here to you?