adventures in henna

Copy-and-pasted from my own personal blog. If you're curious about my writing style when I'm not writing for class, this is it. If I had to analyze it, it would be this: Less formal, more conversational, and using a lot more media/images. I do, after all, consider it an online production, so why not take advantage of the online format?

Note I don't talk about what school I go to on my personal blog - anonymity - so Mason Day I just explain the premise of without naming.

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What happened last night? WELL YOU MIGHT ASK.

I was wandering around doing Chinese study WHEN SUDDENLY. It was sort of a field day thing for my school, in a parking lot! Complete with carnival rides, loud rock music, cotton candy, etc. I wandered around alone for a while, iffy about the long lines, meeting one or two people I knew.

And then ... I saw the henna stand.

There was one guy, with four chairs. He had a bag of henna tubes next to him on the table, and a box of cookies - probably for attractors - and was hennaing people. I watched for a bit. His patterns were very mediocre: it looked like his drawing skills were about at third-grade level. butterflies that looked like demented dogwood flowers. Loopy lotuses. All that.

I didn't want my henna done by a guy who drew like that, but oh boy did I want henna done. So I asked, "you mind if I borrow a tube and do my own?" he jsut nodded and went on drawing.

So I did. I put my stuff in one empty chair, grabbed a tube, and started hennaing.



I was absorbed in hennaing when a group of girls came up to my side of the table. "Are you open?" they asked.

I looked up. "?" and then, "oh, well I just sat down and started..."

"Can you do henna for us?"

I made a face, then looked over at the guy. He looked at the girls, looked at me, shrugged, and nodded.

"Okay," I told 'em.

After that, I became a second line. Matter of fact, I was more popular than the guy - people were coming over from his line to mine. They'd look over my shoulder - "oh, cool! guys, lookat her patterns!" and then move their friends over from his line to mine. One girl had hers done with me, while her friend's was done by the guy. "Lookat this," she pointed, "I don't even know what this is. Is it like some kinda Christmas tree?"



I was there from 6.00ish until when we ran out of henna - three hours later. There were all kinds of people - sorority girls, fraternity guys, an Indian family, a bunch of black girls who kept telling their friends to come over to my side. The only thing I regret is not taking pictures of what I henna'd - I did requests and all sorts of things, reaching from lotus patterns to leaf-patterns to lettering to LIVESTRONG to little feet on a person's ankle. You see that leaf pattern up there? A tall black girl wanted it "tattooed on her navel". She laughed about it, but when I was drawing she kept entirely still; that was the hardest one to draw, since I didn't have anything to rest my hand on and the henna tube in my hand was leaking.

I henna'd until past dark - until we ran all the way out of henna. The very last people to come up were two guys. I showed then the empty tubes and said, "sorry, we're out."

"Aw, can't you do, like, just one letter?"

There was enough henna for that. "What letter?"

"Right here," said one of them, pointing to his forearm. "Can you write, B?"

I obliged.

"So you want 'A'?" I asked the next guy. He laughed and nodded.

Feature Article Outline

I like outlines. Outlines are a good idea.

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[introductory paragraph - who is kisvakond? a scene?]

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[couple paragraphs about zdenek miler and his kisvakond/krtek creation]

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[paragraph (1? 2?) of my own experience with kisvakond - growing up and reading, etc.]

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[some paragraphs about the world and kisvakond. kisvakond in books, in translation - scan in chinese cover. Append youtube of krtek here, or under zdenek miler's description.

final paragraph about krtek being cute and having universal appeal. end with picture of krtek waving shovel excitedly.]

I've been looking at my profile all day, and still don't see anything about it I want to change. So that's that: my profile, I think, will remain as-is.

article comments 3

Title: Real Entertaining: A menu with signs of spring

In Short: A couple basic recipe ideas that nevertheless manages to sound self-important.

My Thoughts: Going into this article, I was under the impression that Hagedorn was going to discuss spring foods. He did, after a fashion - in a snooty voice, he lets the reader know how very fed-up cooks are with winter foods, and how it's about time to have spring already.

     The server announced a special entree of braised rabbit with peas, carrots and spinach ricotta dumplings, brightly noting, "The chef wants it to be spring."

     Don't we all.

Yes, Hagedorn, we do, but your complaining isn't going to get us anywhere. Additionally, for the parts of the audience that are not familiar with food's availability patterns, this exchange is not only boring, but senseless. It takes a cook or a gardener to know that peas and carrots are late-summer/early fall vegetables, easily preserved and often in winter foods, and that spinach comes in two forms: fresh (when you can't hide anything about it) and cooked (when you can stuff it into dumplings and pretend it's fresh).

I, personally, still can't see anything wrong with serving rabbit.

But so Hagedorn's article goes. He goes on to dictate his own menu of a Sunday evening dinner, giving boring recipes in paragraph form, praising his cleverness in "cut[ting] baby spinach leaves into thin chiffonade strips and serv[ing] the stew atop them as if they were noodles." Well done, Hagedorn.

Overall: Overall I was not impressed. The tone of the article was less informative and more complaint/self-satisfaction - neither of which I want at the table.

Link: here.

feature article comments 2

Article Two: Mid-size Dairies Win Consumers with Less-processed Milk

In Short: General article about Snowville Creamery and its founder Warren Taylor.

My Thoughts:

With a purely-functional title like "Mid-size Dairies Win Consumers with Less-processed Milk," the average person might not read further. But see the lead:

     "Oh, my God. The cream! You gotta taste the cream!" said Warren Taylor. "It's pale yellow. And it's got this amazing smell. You have to get some."

     To say that Taylor, the founder of Snowville Creamery, is excited about dairy products is an understatement: "If you cut me, I bleed white," he likes to say.


Black, the author of this article, front-loads her good quotes, which I can't call a bad idea since they do get a reader to continue. In comparison to the last article, where much is discussed but nothing detailed, Black picks her subject and sticks to it. She takes Warren Taylor and his Snowville Creamery as her focus. Occasionally she veers off into other creameries and other tangents, but, overwhelmingly, she keeps her information relevant, topical, and interesting.

And interesting it is. Even for people who do not closely follow the milk industry (99.99% of readers), Black makes this particular milk industry accessible. By the time we've finished the article we know not only about Taylor, but about how his facilities are (clean, compact, efficient, and with a small carbon footprint), what the milk they sell is like (flavorful, grassy, twice the price of regular milk), and what the history of Snowville Creamery is and its humble beginnings. Black, by keeping ehr subject small and her ideas focused, gives us a concise and clear picture of Snowville Creamery, and, I daresay, convices some readers to try and find Snowville milk in their local store.

Overall: A well-written, concise article. Recommended.

Link: here.

feature article comments

Forgot to pick up a copy of the Washington Post Magazine. The Food Section, however, is online and available!

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Article One: Tasting Tel Aviv, Israel's Culinary Capital

Subject: The food industry in Tel Aviv is fairly new; despite its youth, it's burgeoning with new and interesting developments.

My Thoughts: A good article on the food culture of Tel Aviv. Not perfect- the faults I will point out below - but it introduces the idea nicely, and uses much imagery, and many many taste-sensory 'images'. On the other hand, the article could have covered the idea a great deal more: it mentions many things briefly, but goes into detail on none of them. I could have stood to hear more about the cooking methods of the populus, or the spices that are in current use, or details on that makes kosher food "inventive". Instead the author, as stated before, mentions a great many ideas briefly, and does not examine them in any great depth.

Some of the phrasing is awkward. One quote exemplifies this: "Twenty-four seven, you can have a bite." Perhaps it accurately shows the cadence of Tel Avivan English, but it sounds a bit odd to the American ear. (I would have picked another quote.) Possibly the most awkward line is the ending: "Who knew that the land anciently advertised as flowing with milk and honey would take this long to develop its gastro tourism?" This, while getting its point across, is almost painful to read - it ought to be broken up and rephrased, or at least strongly reconsidered.

On the positive side, the article is chock-full of food descriptions, and in a food feature, I cannot commend that highly enough. The author accurately conveys the sheer variety of foods by, over and over, mentioning what people are eating, what can be bought where, what she is having, what her friends offer. She dwells lovingly on color and flavor, and reaffirms her theme of variety and taste by mentioning so many things.

Overall: A good article for basics, but could have gone deeper into detail. On the other hand, commendable focus on food and the variety thereof.

Link: Tasting Tel Aviv, Israel's Culinary Capital

re: feature article: ideas for places.

Note: feature articles will most likely be drawn from The Washington Post Magazine, since it's the only print venue that I read on any semiregular basis.

(All the rest of my reading is online, and I could easily find feature articles there, but they'd be from differing sites.