I am happy to announce that we have a new member! This person filled the last spot in our book club. This new person did not find out about the club until after our preview meeting but could not make it to the second meeting. She has been reading along at home so I am glad she could finally attend a meeting! Her nickname is Hollywood. She chose this name because she likes stories about old Hollywood. After introductions, we were caught up on her answers to the two Sharing Jar questions she had missed. This was nice because we had an opportunity to get to know her a little bit better. She liked Beatrice Potter Little Rabbit books when she was younger. And she has an appetite for “wine and a good party”. Hollywood als brought each of us a gift. It is a darling purple feather duck pen. They are adorable! Thank you Hollywood! That was very nice of you! A new item this time was the Progress Chart I created. It is similar to the posters of a thermometer that are colored red only part of the way up - displaying how much money was raised compared to the goal amount. Instead of a thermometer, this is a picture of a stack of ten black and white books. I colored in 4 of them showing we are 4/10 or 2/5 of the way through the Julia Child book. I don’t think anyone else was as impressed with it as I was!
On May 21st, 2011 the third meeting took place. Again, our meeting ran a little long. Again, I apologize! But, just like last time, a lengthy but great discussion took place! We started out with the Sharing Jar question. The index card in our supply box stated, “Julia seemed to have a good memory of the meals she ate. Think of one meal that you remember clearly. Describe it here.” There was some confusion at first when half of the members started looking in the book. The other half of the members were puzzled as to why they were looking in the book. These members interpreted the directions as “describe one of Julia’s meals that you remember clearly from the book (or Julia remembered clearly)”. Rabbit said that the Mushroom Swiss Thickburger from Hardees was a memorable meal because it tasted sooo good since she doesn’t eat meat that much anymore. Hollywood said that she remembers eating a baked potato with butter and sour cream, filet (medium well), a lettuce salad with Thousand Island dressing and a roll with butter. Dead to the World said she remembers eating lefse (Norwegian potato flat bread like a tortilla) with hard-boiled eggs with her entire family. She also noted on the index card that the lefse is best when it is newly made, the eggs are still warm, and when you add a little butter to the lefse. Sookie remembers the first time she ate “real” Chinese food in Chinatown. There was a baby squid and the meat was boiled instead of cooked in a wok. I remembered when I ate at the Melting Pot in the Twin Cities. It was very expensive but worth it for a once-in-a-lifetime meal. I explained how I recreated it at home for my significant other and another couple. It took 6 hours to eat the meal because we would stuff ourselves at each of the three courses. I also remembered a romantic meal that my college boyfriend made for me – tuna salad sandwiches and rice. The reason why it was romantic is because of the candle in the middle of the table! I also remember eating Czech food in Prague but I didn’t care for the food. I was disappointed since I am half Czech. Romantix had lobster ravioli at Napoli’s for Mother’s Day.
To begin the meeting, I passed out the recipe for Tempura Asparagus (the appetizer I made last time). I also handed out copies of an article that I found in the free HyVee magazine that comes in the mail. It discussed types of asparagus, how to choose the freshest ones in the store and different methods of cooking asparagus. Since several of us, at the last meeting, expressed how much we loved asparagus, I thought this would be helpful. I also gave Rabbit some information about John Alden (of Mayflower fame) and Henry Alden who is the founder of Alden, Iowa (Hardin County). She had originally thought that the John Alden that was mentioned in the book might be the founder of Alden. Rabbit tried to read the articles to see if Henry Alden is a descendant of John Alden. It was not mentioned in the articles but they still may be related. She is planning on researching it more. We then discussed the homework sheets. See a later post for the details of the homework sheet discussion. This time Romantix was the lucky one to be chosen to read the definitions from the dictionary. She was kicking herself for making eye contact with me! Just like last time, we moved onto the Bloom’s Taxonomy worksheet to answer two questions from each of the six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. See a later post for the main points of this worksheet.
After the discussion, because we were hungry, we decided to eat. While we were making our tacos, I verified that Romantix was the one who suggested the idea of everyone bringing an ingredient or two for tacos. Dead forgot she was to bring tomatoes and brought cheese instead so we had a lot of cheese! I didn’t miss the tomatoes though. Sookie made a strawberry pie. She said it was really easy to make – just whipped topping, strawberries and yogurt. It was really good. Thank you BookMarks for bringing your taco ingredients! While eating, we discussed what we should bring next time for food. We are grilling out. This was my idea. Hopefully, it won’t rain like it has been! I am supplying the hamburgers. Sookie is bringing the brats. Rabbit is bringing chips and a dessert. Romantix is bringing macaroni salad and Hollywood is bringing the fruit. Dead is providing the hot dogs and buns ( both types). I can’t wait for this barbecue!
After eating, we settled into two activities dealing with metaphors. Before we did this, we defined the term metaphor. This is our definition: “one thing in terms of another; a replacement of one thing with another thing; alternate description that you have to figure out; two nouns in comparison” While reading the latest section, I noticed that many metaphors were used to create imagery. In the first activity we each had a set of eight strips of papers. Each strip contained a metaphor from the reading. Each metaphor had a reference of the page number and paragraph number. We each chose one metaphor that we wanted to explore. When it was our turn, we explained what two nouns the metaphor was comparing. Then we also had to state the relationship between the two nouns (so pretty much we explained the meaning of the metaphor). Then we passed each set of metaphors to the right and chose another one out of the remaining seven. My intent was to go through all 48 metaphors but I could tell that we would all be bored soon (I was even getting quite bored.) I am sorry to say that this activity didn’t work out so well. I think some of the metaphors were a tad bit difficult to explain and several of us read the paragraph from which the metaphor was taken. This was good but it took up more time. See the Metaphor Activity sheet on the Activities page of this blog for a list of all 48 metaphors. Part 2 of the Metaphor Activity went more smoothly. I wasn’t sure how this activity would work but it turned out great. Each member wrote down one noun on each of four index card strips they had in their supply box. Some nouns that were written were: tacos, mall, Sammy-the dog, volleyball, transformer, horserace, Cedar Rapids, shoe, siren, insulin syringe, sliced bread, cat food, iceberg, bosom, chestnut, duck, art, alien, vampire and strawberry pie. We put the cards in the Sharing Jar. On our turn, we chose one of the 18 nouns that were listed on the sheet (see this sheet on the Activities page of this blog). The nouns listed on this sheet were related to the book. After we chose a noun from the sheet, we drew a noun from the jar, therefore, forming a metaphor. Then we had to explain the relationship. I was worried that some of these words would be so different from each other that it would be hard to connect the two. I was impressed by how creative everyone (except me) was in making a connection between the two nouns. Here is an example of one that turned out really well: Sookie chose “Paul is a” from the sheet, then she drew out the word “vampire.” So she created the metaphor, “Paul is a vampire.” She related these two ideas together by saying, “they both suck the life out of Julia.” Here are some other ones that worked well. “The war is a strawberry pie.” Rabbit said that they are both red (blood red). She also related it to the movie Strawberry Fields. “The ending of the war is an insulin syringe” because they both inject goodness. “Weather (in China and India) is cat food” because they are both gross. “The house parties overseas is a siren” because they are both loud. “The wedding (Paul and Julia’s) is a transformer” because it changed their friendship to a marriage. “Dysentery is a duck” because they both quack! "China is a taco" because they both have dog meat. We had just been talking about how taco bell only has 30% meat in their tacos and was wondering what the other 70% was! And I know that in Korea they eat dog meat but I am not sure about China.
The next part of the meeting was the visual. In the reading, there were several pairs of concepts that seemed to be almost complete opposites of each other. Some of these pairs are Paul/Julia, China/India, and Smith College/the OSS. On a wall in three different rooms of my house, was a Venn diagram with one of these three pairs. If you are not familiar with a Venn diagram, it consists of two or more intersecting circles. One circle is labeled with one concept and the other circle is labeled with the other. For Paul and Julia, we brainstormed ways that they were alike and wrote those similarities in the overlap of the two circles. Then we wrote ways in which Paul was unique (or different from Julia) in the circle labeled Paul. Then we did the same for Julia. We worked together in partners to fill out one of the Venn diagrams. Then we rotated to the next room and added to the existing ideas of another Venn diagram.
For show and tell, each person was supposed to bring a kitchen item (not food) and obviously not something huge like a refrigerator! We used our kitchen items for the game. I brought out a cotton ball and put it on a chair. Each of us had to pick up the cotton ball and carry it across the room to the TV using only our kitchen item. Everyone succeeded with the cotton ball so the next level was a softball-size squishy exercise ball (thank you Dead for letting us use it.) I failed this level because I was too cocky with my plate. I worked too fast and it rolled off the plate. The next level was a volleyball. Rabbit, Dead and Sookie were all eliminated in this round. The volleyball was too heavy for Rabbit’s mini-teaspoons! Dead to the World wanted to poke the ball with her bottle opener since it was her ball but we wouldn’t let her. Sookie, with her egg separator, didn’t defeat the volleyball. So, Hollywood and Romantix were left. I brought out a huge exercise ball for the last round. Neither of them could lift the ball with their utensils. So, we went back to the ping pong ball (this was supposed to be the second round but I accidentally overlooked it). Because the ping pong kept rolling off the vegetable cutter that Hollywood was using, Romantix won with her garlic press. Congratulations, Romantix. She unwrapped the prize to discover Fourth of July patterned bag clips. Since Rabbit forgot to bring her camera, the photos of this game were taken the next day with Rabbit demonstrating the game with my mini-teaspoons!
For the craft, we made bookmarks. I found this website, linked to Oprah’s Book Club and Books website, http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Oprahs-Book-Club-Bookmark-Maker, where you can personalize bookmarks with your name and a saying. I created personalized bookmarks for each member using our nicknames and our real names. We then cut them out, cut out cardstock of the same size, and then adhered the two together with rubber cement. We paper-punched a hole in the top so we could thread embroidery floss through to make a tassel. Thank you Rabbit for letting us use your embroidery floss. I was pleased to see how creative we were with the floss. Some of us braided it. Some of us used more than one color of floss. And some of us punched two holes and tied a bow at the top! At the table, Romantix suggested that we come up with a logo for our book club (maybe incorporating all our nicknames somehow) and Sookie could design it since she is an artist. Romantix has recently shared an idea with us on our facebook group. She is thinking that we should have six books between two bookends and the spine of each book displaying each of our nicknames. I really like this idea. We also talked about the next meeting. It looks like we will be meeting in three weeks since our summers are looking fairly busy. I forgot to mention the show and tell at the end of the meeting but it is written on the homework sheet. We are to bring an eating utensil (like a fork, spoon, etc.) The Learning/Enthusiasm Matrices averaged out to “I liked it!” and “I learned a lot!”
