JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Lenn and Melissa’s son has arrived!

We are learning all about sleep deprevation and other fun first time parenting things. He is healthy, happy, and super cool to be around. I am just in love with him and am having a great time getting to know him. He has my ears and my strange way of holding my pinky when I grab things, we notice something new about him every day.

Go take a peek!

Last month, Robert Scoble commented on a post and encouraged me to share my Northern Voice slides using PhotoStory. I’d never considered creating a photo story until I read his comment. Since his suggestion, I’ve started planning a couple potential pieces and researching software. I can’t use PhotoStory itself because my machine doesn’t run XP. We are thinking about upgrading my situation but waiting to make a decision. So I’m treading water at the moment.

Two separate incidents today continued to convince me of the power of photo stories.

An article in Thursday’s Seattle Times Seattle students share sights, sounds with kids across globe highlighted Bridges to Understanding, a local nonprofit that provides mentors in communities around the world, helping adolescents document their lives and share movies with each other through the website.

BRIDGES to Understanding gives voice directly to children around the world.

Our interactive online program connects middle school students in the developed world with their contemporaries in indigenous communities. Central to the program is digital storytelling mentored by professionals and created by students. We provide the tools and training that enable them to tell stories from their own lives and communities.

The girls and I watched a few of the student documentaries, mostly still pictures with voice overs in Quick Time. Seeing Kenyan children using laptops in the midst of what appeared to be simple huts with mud floors amazed me. A movie made by a Navajo boy who visited Seattle described the Northwest in wonderful ways. He had never touched a sea star. He had never seen a body of water as large as Lake Washington. As a native of Seattle I found his observations valuable, spinning my mind with new appreciation for what I take for granted after growing up here. Connecting children across cultures and continents through digital photography and the Internet is an excellent idea, one that any communities could copy by using blogs.

Later tonight I noticed updates in John Porcaro’s blog feed. He doesn’t post every day but it had been a while, for a good reason. On March 5, he was burning a leaf pile when he added the wrong kind of fuel and caught himself on fire. After time spent in Harborview’s burn unit, he appears to be recovering quickly. His post is free of pity and instead filled with people who cared for him and the community rallying around his family at this time. I’ve never met John, although we’ve missed meeting each other (we were both at Scoble’s birthday party earlier this year). Yet looking at the pictures he posted and the PhotoStory he made leaves me speechless, tears in my eyes. It’s hard to see someone as wrapped in bandages as John was. I wish I could do something to make his situation improve. John’s written story had power but it was the pictures that hit home for me what had happened to him, in a way I couldn’t deny or disconnect. The images stay in my mind long after I’ve stopped looking at them.

Pictures leave me without words.

Final Update: problem solved

I examined my list of banned sites and discovered that somehow an empty space “” was entered into my Blacklist earlier this week. Oops!

As soon as I typed the sentences above, I received a nice comment worthy of banning…oh well..

Please do comment. If you have sent me a comment earlier today I will try to post it later tonight. Thanks!

Update: Ted told me this is a problem with MT-Blacklist. I won’t have time to resesarch it until tonight.

__________________

I don’t know what has happened in the past two days but it seems now my blog is rejecting comments based on content, any content at all.

Comment Submission Error
Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:

Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: he

Please correct the error in the form below, then press Post to post your comment.

I was not aware that this blog had a filter for comment content so I am surprised. Ted is busy preparing for an upcoming conference and neither one of us knows what is wrong.

So in the meantime, two options for feedback are:
1) write it up and post it with a link (create a blog at blogger.com)
2) write it up and send an email to harrowme AT yahoo.com

Sorry for the inconvenience.
Thanks to those who have let me know it was broken and sent comments by email.
Thanks for understanding.

Inspired by Amanda Witt’s multiple limerick posts this week in honor of St. Patricks Day, I decided to compose a few poems myself, one for each member of our family…

There once was a girl who loved books
Through pages she wanted to look
reading stories of girls,
history ’round the world
and recipes that she could cook

On the trampoline she jumped so high
To the gymnasium she said goodbye
she went up into space,
smiled at the moon’s face
and came back home in time for pie

There once was a girl who liked duckies
In her family she was very lucky
They gave her a soft fellow
with orange beak and fuzz yellow
In her bed each night Ducky was tuckied.

There once was a man from MIT
To his love he proposed on one knee
In the woods of New Hampshire
He promised to marry her
She said yes and they kissed ‘neath the trees

When I saw Barrett’s post in the multi-authored-blog Too Many Chefs titled Curds and Whey – Indian Panir/Paneer – Easy Cheesy, I knew I had to try it, especially since the subsequent recipe for Palak Paneer – Indian Spinach and Cheese – First Version is one of my favorites to order in a restaurant. Making cheese made an excellent experiment for the girls as we cooked and curdled the milk, conducting chemical changes.

Using heat and lemon juice, we separated the milk proteins. As a child, I first heard of curds and whey in Miss Muffet’s classic tale of arachnophobia. I think this was one of the first times I have consciously cooked with curds and whey. While I stirred, I read to the girls simplified snippets from Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, explaining what was happening to the milk. Susan Kitchen’s post earlier this year reminded me of the wealth in that book.

Following the blogpost instructions, I removed the white chunks of curd and wrapped them in cheesecloth, hanging the bundle from a cupboard knob in the kitchen, catching the dripping whey in a bowl.

Opening the cheesecloth package three hours later, I discovered cheese, the size of a softball.

I put the cheese in the refrigerator overnight. Today I made the Palak Paneer, taking an extra trip to a large grocery store in order to find garam masala. I didn’t make ghee but chose to save time and use butter. It was delicious. The girls agreed.

Our menu tonight:

Palak Paneer
Leftover Chicken Curry with potatoes, tomatoes and peas
Hot white rice
Orange slices
Bits of gingerbread
Pineapple coconut juice mixed with seltzer

The crew of Too Many Chefs + Harold McGee make great instructors together, inspiring me to want to try more kitchen experiments with the kids…