Poetry & Pushpins

~ The Writings of S.L. Woodford

Poetry & Pushpins

Monthly Archives: February 2015

Jello Molds and Midwestern Womanhood

25 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Cooking, Feminism, Philosophy of Cooking

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cooking, Midwest

I made my first jello mold over the weekend. And it was beautiful: a strawberry gelatin filled with fresh blueberries and elegantly rounded by a 1950s bundt pan. In forty minutes, the gel, whose main ingredient was xanthan gum, (believe me, no horses were harmed in the making of this chilled salad) congealed and agreeably slipped out of the metal pan and onto a waiting china plate (English, of course).

There it was, in all its scalloped glory, free from the confines of the bundt pan, gently wobbling on my kitchen table. Watching it dulcetly wiggle gave me an odd feeling—though this was the first time I’ve made a jello mold, this crafting of gelatin salads is a tradition much older than me. It is a foodstuff straight out of my Midwestern childhood. Molded salads, made by my mother and grandmothers and great-grandmothers, wriggled through my recollection of every family dinner. The women of my family served jello molds on china plates and out of sensible plastic Tupperware. They used colorful powders, tasting of strawberries, cherries, and limes, to flavor the base, and filled each wobbly delight with canned fruit, Cool Whip (giving the gel a mysterious cloudy color), and sometimes, marshmallows.

This molded dish signified comfortable wealth in my family, especially for my great-grandmothers and their mothers. To present your guests with a gelatin salad meant that your husband made enough money to purchase a sizeable icebox, and then a refrigerator,when those became popular at the turn of the century. And for my grandmothers and mother, it represented an unofficial passage into womanhood. If you made a jello mold, it signified that you were having dinner parties, which meant that you were a hostess, a married woman, a wife, a mother.

Maybe that’s why staring at the mold gave me such an odd feeling. Making a jello mold signified Midwestern Womanhood, and the only marker of that state I currently display is that of a hostess. Perhaps my subconscious, shaped by Midwestern upper-middle class values, got really confused. What was I doing? How dare I make my first jello mold without a ring on my left hand and children running about! I was clearly messing with the order of things. This is simply not how it’s done.

But, if I bewildered my subconscious, my immediate cognitive thought patterns didn’t seem to mind. In fact, they were elated. Here I was, admiring my first jello mold, which I got to make on my own terms. I earn enough money, doing things that I love to do, to afford a refrigerator. I host parties and extend hospitality at my discretion. And, I didn’t have to wait for a husband and children to mold me into an adult woman. I have the wonderful and scary privilege of doing that on my own, accompanied by beloveds of my choosing, who see me as a library director, a writer, and a reasonably lovely person, not just as a body who will run one’s household and have one’s children and fit a certain beauty aesthetic.

I reach out and gently poke the jello mold. It dances beneath my touch. I roll my eyes. We sometimes see ourselves in the strangest of things, and now I see myself in this round of strawberry gel. Our pasts were molded by unyielding shapes that confined and controlled, but, we both have willingly slipped away from those molds. Though our past structures still give us our basic form, we take that form and move it, wriggle it, just as we like. And that wriggling is glorious. It gives life. It gives permission to do things differently—-like making your first jello mold whenever you bloody well want to.

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An Unmade Bed: Living the Messy Process

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

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cozy apartment, friendship, human nature, the creative process, writing

About a month ago, my friend Kim wrote an excellent blog post about writing in the morning. I read it at the beginning of January, on a train ride from New York to New Haven. The post was full of luscious descriptions of gourmet oatmeal and the pure joy of putting together sentences. The whole piece was a pleasure to read, but one line stood out in particular to me: Kim wanted her readers to enjoy their morning drafts, to revel in their messiness, to take delight in slipping outlandish ideas and sentences into their work before their inner editor woke up. “Much of life” she wrote, “is messy process folks, not product.” This line made me laugh hysterically, startling the reveries of my fellow train passengers, but I didn’t care. I laughed because her words felt so damn true.

It turns out that my friend’s line was a prolific harbinger, giving shape to my next thirty days. My January was quite messy—full of chaos, lessons, and growth. It was a time that stretched my understanding of life, essay writing, librarianship, and human nature. And during that month, I was rarely able to make my bed. My mornings before work found me on my laptop, typing in a sea of blankets, before throwing on work clothes and running out the door. During the day, no bedspread calmed this unruly sea. The blankets stayed rumpled and exposed, with grammar and theology books hiding in their folds.

Not having time to make my bed felt odd. It’s one of those morning rituals that makes me feel like I have life in order. That I can be just as flawless and put together as a smooth bedspread and artistically placed pillows. But I wasn’t this past January and didn’t have the time to make believe that I was. There was nothing finished about January—I was in a process, growing and creating. And a made bed is a product. But a rumpled, unmade, bed is a space of possibility, a place to live into an ever changing life.
The right companion for a messy process.

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Broadchurch: Snap Judgements and Scottish Accents

11 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life)

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cozy apartment, England, human nature, making mistakes

In last week’s post, I mentioned that I couldn’t watch Broadchurch because, in it, David Tennant lacked his Scottish accent. I do not like to live my life in such broad and ridiculous judgments, so, my sentiments bothered me for the next few days. What sort of shallow, silly girl stops watching a show because she only finds the main character attractive if he’s rolling his r’s and blurrily calling people “little madam” in a slightly sassy way? Apparently me. Oh, add to that a script that is stunted and awkward, and one’s interest in a show goes to hell.

I eyed Broadchurch every time I looked at my Netflix queue over those days of questioning. Surely, I’m better than this. Friends, who have sensible and discriminating taste, liked the show a lot. Maybe I should give it another go. Maybe I was too hard on an American accented David Tennant.

I pressed play and was immediately thrown into a confusion. The first episode’s overall aesthetic was grainier than I remembered, while across the screen paraded cup after cup of tea and awesome English actor after awesome English actor. Many whom I recognized from London stage productions and Dr. Who.

I pushed pause. Wait. What was I watching? The Broadchurch I was writing about last week was a distinctly American show, David Tennant was talking like a cowboy and he had a sexy blond sidekick. This show had tea and people skulking about on rocky beaches and in back gardens. This Broadchurch was definitely English. Plus, the cinematography was gripping, and the acting and writing, beautifully nuanced.

I calmed my confusion with a quick google search. Apparently, I had mixed up Broadchurch with Gracepoint. Gracepoint is the American spin-off of Broadchurch. Both star David Tennant and center around the murder of an eleven-year-old boy in a sleepy beach town. It was Gracepoint, not Broadchurch, that had so bummed me out earlier this year.

Well…this show of tea and beaches and English stage actors could still bum me out. David Tennant had yet to grace the screen. I pressed play and rolled my eyes. I was holding my breath in anticipation. I am ridiculous to care about this…but, will he or won’t he?

Finally, David Tennant’s angular face, framed by floppy redish hair, appeared in a closeup shot. He glowered at the camera and opened his mouth….

I delightedly squealed.

YES!!! DAVID TENNANT HAS A SCOTTISH ACCENT!!!!

I made a huge mistake. I’m going to like Broadchurch after all.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: My Show for All Seasons

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Feminism, Pushpins (Daily Life)

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fiction, history, human nature, MIss Fisher, PBS Dramas

My Netflix habits are stupidly predictable. Every time I open up my laptop, or power up my PS3, the same sequence of inane ritual ensues: I stare long and hard at my current video queue, mostly containing television shows my friends recommended and intellectual films I found compelling, at least in theory, when I hadn’t had a busy day at work, or, been chasing after a lively three-year-old who was happily determined to vanquish all of the monsters in my apartment (they live in the upholstery, apparently). Should I watch the American House of Cards? No. I’m not in the mood to watch people be crafty, amoral, douche-canoes to each other. How about Broadchurch? Oh God, no. David Tennant without a Scottish accent makes my heart melancholy (seriously, the world is a much sadder, blander place if Mr. Tennant isn’t gustily rolling his r’s). War of the Buttons? Le Sigh. Not at all. I’m too tired to struggle through the French and watch people, especially young children in Nazi occupied France, be horrible to each other.

Media, media everywhere, but not a thing to watch.

I then quickly scroll through the other suggestion lists that orderly present themselves on the screen. I’ve watched pretty much everything from the “Period Drama Featuring a Strong Female Lead,” section. Heck, I’ve been watching and reading stuff in that category since I was twelve. The same goes for ” Film Based on a Book.” Usually, I’ve already read the book and don’t want the film to ruin it—or, I’ve already watched the film, because I read the book. “Quirky Independent Films” are never quirky or independent enough for me and “Action and Adventure” only catches my eye when the Marvel Universe or Neil Gaiman are doing the storytelling…or, if Daniel Craig is running around being James Bond.

I sigh. Media, media everywhere, but not a thing to watch. Then I laugh. There, in my “Watch it Again” section, is the face of a high-cheekboned women with a black bob and a white cloche hat.

“Well Miss Fisher, it looks like I’ll be watching you—yet again.”

If you aren’t familiar with Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, I highly recommend that you look into it (or at least watch the above trailer to see if it’s for you). Shown on both the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and PBS, the show’s two seasons follow the adventures of the Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher, modern woman and clever lady detective, and her circle of lively, eccentric, compassionate, friends and colleagues. These adventures take Miss Fisher and the viewer through the decadent and difficult world of 1920s Melbourne, complete with jazz clubs and anarchists and couture fashion and rum smugglers and post World War trauma and lots and lots of glamorous parties.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is my show for all seasons. It’s writing and visual aesthetics never fail to engage me, no matter how tired my brain is. If my brain is completely shot after a long day, I can enjoy Inspector Jack Robinson’s expressive, grey-blue eyes, Miss Fisher’s stunning Art Deco wardrobe, and all the handsome fellows Miss Fisher sensitively and unapologetically makes out with. But, if my brain wants to be more engaged, I can marvel at the show’s fastidious historical detail, allowing my imagination to enter the world of 1920s Melbourne and experience its joys and worries as my own. And, if I am in full possession of my faculties, I can contemplate the beautifully written, real, complex main character. As a main female character on a popular television show, Phryne leaves me breathless. She is how women should be written—as capable, yet vulnerable human beings, full of strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. This is a character who is the sum of her experiences, and those experiences are pretty horrific: a sister murdered in her childhood, the horrors of WWI (where she served as a medic), an abusive relationship in her early twenties…yet, she lives her life with joy in the face of the trauma and the grief. Sometimes, those experiences paralyze her, but those experiences also make her compassionate, generous, and courageous. One of the things that keeps me coming back is watching her struggle with her past while boldly propelling herself into her future, determined to learn and to live life to the hilt.

Wild Jazz begins to blast from my speakers. Unlike an American sounding David Tennant, watching an episode of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries for the fifth time doesn’t make my heart melancholy. It makes my heart pretty darn happy.

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