Iggy & Pappy Swap Recipes

Location: Watching the Meat Thermometer

Well, it's that time again...for country ham. The real thing, Yankees: not some water-and-smoke-juice-injected mild ham but a smoked-in-the-smokehouse-by-rugged-and-somewhat-tipsy-Virginians ham.

Rule one for all-day cooking, such as that required for perfect ham: keep the drinks handy.

At the recent VWER holiday party, both Iggy and his ol' pal Pappy Enoch showed up to cut the rug and do some ice skating.  Pappy tried to give out Iggy's recipe for a perfect Martini, but Iggy needs to restate it here for those who could not attend. If you visit Richmond, you'll have to go to Thai Diner Too with us, so Yoko and her husband Jack can mix you one of Richmond's finest drinks (and best-kept secrets). Iggy's recipe is a pale shadow of theirs.

Ignatius' Almost-As-Good-As Yoko and Jack's Martini

• It's best to begin with liquor, shaker, and glasses that have been in the freezer or at least in the refrigerator. Cracked ice is better so, after shaking, one gets little icebergs in the mix...yum.
• Do not cheap out on the olives. They lose their savor fast, so look for gourmet ones with pimentos...do not get yuppie with Kalamatas, please. Spanish olives such as those from Serapis have been Jack's secret for a while.The company has an olive museum: 'nuff said.
• Per drunk: 2 oz top-shelf Gin (Tanqueray and Hendricks are Iggy's faves). Heretics may substitute top-shelf vodka (and if so, use more pearl onion than olive on the skewers. Martinis are not meant to be sweet).
• I rarely make a "dirty" Martini, but if so, I tip in some of the olive brine in the next step. Do not add more than a splash.
• Add liquor to shaker, where about 8 cubes of ice made from filtered water lie in ambush.
• Allow Gin and ice to become acquainted for 30 seconds or so, while gently agitating the open shaker.
• For very dry Martini, pour in a splash (perhaps a teaspoon) of dry Vermouth. My version of "dry" is about a tablespoon, but some tipplers add even more. I prefer merely tipping the Vermouth bottle in homage to the Gin and ice.
• Install the shaker top and check for leaks. They can be a heartbreak. Then shake it like it's a '72 Chevy Vega driven at 70 mph on a washboard road.
• In your glasses, add a skewer with at least 3 olives or, for Iggy's favorite, two olives with a pickled cocktail onion in the middle.
• Pour the martinis. Repeat at own risk.

"Well, that am some rite good city-boy White Lightnin'," Pappy notes, "But a natural-born human bein' man gots to eat too. Write 'er up, boy."

You will find these smoked hams, ones that can store without refrigeration until sliced, in country markets and gourmet shops (they do exist!) throughout the South.  Yankees and other unfortunates can order them and when prepared properly, as the chef at Edwards shows us in the video, the results are dramatic and delicious.

Our chef does not consider how to soak the ham. Doing this loses much of the salt but keeps in the smoky flavor. It may still be too salty if you slice it thickly, so practice thin-slicing on some lesser meats, then proceed.

Here's my advice for this year for getting yonder ham ready:

• After scrubbing any mold from the ham and rinsing, store it in a cooler. Cover with water and close.
• For at least two days, but no more than three, change the water twice daily. Flip the ham over when you do.
• For the last turning, add 2 liters of Doctor Pepper to the water. This is the Pappy Enoch way, y'all.  Then you are ready to follow this gent's advice:

Pappy: "Whee Hoo! Let's eat!"
Iggy: "What he said. Where are the olives?"


The only ham I've had that I prefer to real country ham is Jamon Iberico de Bellota, and that costs $30 per pound, if it can even be found in the US. Jamon Serrano is close, and vies for my love of ham, but I digress. Must be that Martini!

Boxing Day Update: the ham was astounding, the best in years despite overcooking to 165 degrees. Several pounds have been hoovered up by hungry Southerners. Note to self--new meat thermometer, then recheck near end of cooking time with my digital one.

Awry in a Manger: Merry Christmas, Y'all

Location: Checking Baby Jesus' Head

It is time for Rebar Jesus again. Welcome to a journey not to Second Life or OpenSim, but just down my street.

I will not name the local church, but they set out a series of stick-figures, apparently made of welded metal rods, drape them in Biblical costume, and poke their pointy bits into the ground. The entire ensemble of Wise Men, shepherds, and proud parents flutter in the breeze to show the lines of the metal skeletons beneath. The manger, such as it is, looks like a soccer goal with a few 1x6” boards strapped across.

It is not Scroogey of me to deplore this Yuletide atrocity to one of the world’s great monotheistic religions. My disdain comes not from a lack of Christmas Spirit: our house features window-lights that go up on Solstice night, the longest of the year, to remind us that the light will return. I pick a cedar and we cut ourselves each year, with my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s ornaments placed lovingly there. put it up on Christmas Eve, the old-timey date for putting up a tree, and take it down on King’s Day, January 6, when the Melchoir, Balthazar, and Caspar laid their gifts before the baby Jesus.

I am fond of the old customs, some from times before Christianity: we even walk outside to wassail our fig tree, then come inside by the fireplace to watch the Charlie-Brown Christmas special, as we drink egg-nog and wish for peace. But there is no peace to be had from Richmond’s bad Nativity scenes. At one time, the cultural doyens of our city could rein in our excesses, so that homes, under the Spartan rigor of Williamsburg’s simplicity, featured only white lights, one to a window, and any excesses, such as real pineapples, were placed in the wreath on the front door or kept entirely out of sight. Has the reader ever spotted a dancing Santa or string of red “tube lights” along Duke of Gloucester Street? No. If such a thing were to rear its ugly head, some matron whose family went back to Jamestown would rip it down and have a man in Colonial garb burn it up in a cresset.

Now, in these fallen and consumerist times, the Misses Propriety and Prudence Decorums of Richmond are long gone, and look what has happened. Just down the street from the Rebar Holy Family who could not find shelter at Home Depot, there is “Flatland Jesus” jig-sawed rather artfully from half-inch plywood and painted well. I almost like this one, until pass it in the car. At a ninety-degree angle, the parents of the Christians’ Savior of the World vanish. The church should have sprung for one-inch plywood, I guess.

The phenomenon of terrible Nativity scenes has spawned a Web site, as all things awful do, featuring Star-Wars-Lego nativities, Peeps crèches, and Elvis mangers. My favorite, pictured: all-meat Nativity with Jesus as a Vienna sausage.

Click and you'll find that the rest are there, glittering in their foulness like the tree-lot full of abominations that Charlie and Linus navigate until they find a little green tree, still made out of wood, making Charlie realize “I think it needs me.” Christmas needs you, Richmonders of taste and restraint, to save it from your fellow citizens on the tacky-light tour. Slow down from your shopping and manic preparations, like Snoopy on Crack, to watch that TV classic again. Then act accordingly. Trust me. I know Christmas. I trod the boards in the role of Scrooge for our sixth-grade holiday play.* Other cities manage this. New York, that place of craziness at all seasons, puts on the dog, rather than looking like one, at Christmas. The nativities of Midtown, not to mention the live one in Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular this year, were magnificent in 2011. There was not a bobble-headed goat to be seen. And as for the long-legged Rockettes angels? Well, I’ll be good so I can go right to Heaven.

Yet there’s one more tacky manger story to tell: my own.

Under that big cedar we cut, I lay out my remnants of my parents’ Nativity scene. It was once nice, or should I say, they once were. The set consists of about ten different ensembles from several decades and in all sorts of scales. My late mother was rough on Christmas ornaments, including a clay Holy Family I picked up for her in Madrid. One of the Castilian shepherds is now missing his left hand, and when I went to adjust Jesus’ crooked halo last year, his neck cracked and his head fell right off. Thank God, in all His or Her names, for teaching humans how to make Gorilla Glue. The baby now rests peacefully in his little bed of Spanish straw, surrounded by old Woolworth’s plaster magi, a handmade sheep that I think comes from the late 1800s, plus a Major-Matt-Mason Astronaut and plastic Santa.

Christ’s halo rolled under the corner of a large bookcase and I’ve yet to fish it out. But that child’s smile is still as divine, as if the little baby is laughing at our follies and our scurrying rush at Christmas. Someone far older and wiser is looking through those infant eyes. Come, and adore Him.

So if a pink flamingo or cement lawn-gorilla ends up in you neighborhood’s Nativity scene, don't blame this Unitarian-Universalist. I have an alibi ready.

*Scary Factoid: Novelist James Howard Kunstler was also a sixth-grade Scrooge. I wrote Jim about this, and he assures me I'm no Scrooge. But I'd bury every tacky-light contestant with a stake of holly through their hearts! Humbug!

Usher Returns to Second Life: Adding What Students Want

 
Location: Glasgow Caledonian University

Thanks to the kindness of Evelyn McElhinney and her colleagues at GCU, I have a large and tier-paid parcel and many prims to use. A Version of the House of Usher from the Jokaydia Grid build, plus the Visitor Center from Richmond Island, is now returning to Second Life.

Though I won't be teaching Poe for some time, starting this Spring I will have the House open for others' classes if they wish to explore on their own. With some warning, I can gather the Ushers and some new characters for improvisational acting in the simulation.

I am delighted to be back on the Lindens' grid, because SL offers affordances that OpenSim does not, yet. That said, I'm a two-house educator now. I will maintain and continue to improve the Jokaydia Grid simulation, but I can bring in some features that SL offers to address a few student concerns.  In this post, I'll focus on what students said about the physical nature of simulation and its setting, rather than the preparation or execution of the tasks facing the actors and their guests. That merits its own later post.

• More interactive content for more immersion. Students wanted easier navigation in places, and more confusion/claustrophobia in others. In the earlier SL sim, I'd learned that the House's Crypt was too straightforward, but even with the OpenSim build, some students noted that the rooms were too large and the layout too easy. Only one asked for a map. I will also add more moving walls, trap doors, and cul-de-sacs. Students wanted more of a sense of danger, too. As Jake said, "Adding more animated noises and trap doors would add to the whole enveloping experience." 
• Simpler movement: One problem singled out were the spiral stairs to Madeline's chamber. I was quite proud of them at one time, but once put inside a tower these proved hard to climb for non-gamers, now replaced by Enktan Gully's 1L Elizabethan staircase (shown below). 
• More gloom: Others noted that lighting was too bright, and rooms too large to match the oppressive feeling of Poe's tale. That's easy to remedy, with some new walls, doors, and dead-ends. Griffin, who regularly plays games, enjoyed the sandbox nature of the simulation but suggested that the island did not seem dark enough. The SL build will be inside a huge, starry bubble and the lighting will be as dim as possible.

• We need to die, Prof. Poe's characters are often in mortal danger, and at least half of the 15 respondents said in their final exam: give us a combat system. Elon claimed that "giving Roderick true ways to threaten his guests would make the experience exponentially more fascinating. What should be done, ultimately, is that the user should feel that they might 'game over' or that their avatars can die."  
• HUD time: I am looking at purchasing some content to provide a HUD and, in one or two places around the house, a scripted ancient weapon or two for the avatars to use if the simulation demands it. SL's many roleplaying HUDs provide opportunities to be drowned, burned to a crisp, shot full of holes, or impaled on pointy things. Something like the Spellfire system would be perfect.
• Fashion! Three of fifteen respondents mentioned that they wanted to be able to customize their avatars more.
• Quote the Raven (but just in text chat). Tucker stated what he and at least three other classmates felt about text-chat, noting "As practical as the chat system was, I believe that it would create a greater sense of immersion if we had headsets on and were able to private chat through typing instead." 
• More special effects: A lack of sound was lamented by five participants. Other than creaking doors, I did not have time to record the variety of sounds I had planned for the Jokaydia Grid simulation. In SL and OpenSim I will add them, plus some stock sounds for the SL build that we used in 2009 and 2010. As Lauren put it, "lightning, rain, thunder, screams, ghoulish noises, creepy piano music would have been a nice addition to the setting the virtual realities of the Ushers."

OpenSim Exam: Cautionary Tale, Happy Ending

Location: Jokaydia Grid, Virtual House of Usher

With some glitches along the way, six groups of students completed their final exams, or at least the immersive experience upon which they'll base a take-home essay exam.

It all began very poorly, and that's a warning to those working in OpenSim for classroom work critical to students' grades. The first day, the grid would not load, but I was in luck: the one student in the lab happily delayed his journey to the House of Usher and joined a group later in the week.  Jokay Wollongong, our grid manager, was thenceforth online for every exam: thank God. We had a serious crash later in the week, but Jokay restarted the region and we all relogged.  In fact, we roleplayed the disorientation within the scope of Poe's story, and odd things do happen to Poe's characters.

The culprit for our crash may be the old server software that runs Jokaydia Grid. Jokay cannot fix that, but the owners of the servers at Reaction Grid can. The good news is that Reaction Grid plans an upgrade next week. I'll hold them to this...I want to restore hypergrid availability to our build.

A word about the talented folks at Reaction Gird: the company has switched emphasis in recent months to Jibe virtual world technology. Jibe is promising for ease of use and the ability to run inside any Web browser. On the other hand, it's not for those who wish to build collaboratively in-world and in real time with students. That's a killer app for my use of virtual worlds. Jibe's protocols for 3D object design, like those of SL's recently introduced Mesh technology, are beyond my and my students' skills; Richmond lacks enough advanced arts students who might wield Maya or Blender.  And there is no incentive for faculty here to learn.

On the other other hand, prim-work in OpenSim or Second Life are within my skills set and those of the student-builders I train, often in teams working together, so that's where I'll stay.

As for getting hypergridding back? It offers special affordances for educators. That, after all, is how edutech works: we share and link to each other.  Even Blackboard, the course-management behemoth, is now moving to a more open model with the arrival of a "share" button.

The closed-grid model, on any platform, is that of the video-game world. It protects IP and functions for gamers and socializers, but it's not best for many of my colleagues in education. I give my own content away with Creative-Commons licensing or in the Public Domain. We are even considering whether we have tech support, locally, to host an OpenSim grid on our campus, as schools such as the University of Bristol are doing as they pull their work out of Second Life.

As we move forward to new engagements in an OpenSim grid or Second Life, I still need more data. From my students' essays, I plan to gather data for an article about effective educational roleplay and types of student roles. But I've already learned one lesson: without Jokay Wollongong's hands-on help, I'd never have trusted Reaction Grid's old version of OpenSim for something as crucial as a final exam.

Next up, I'll finish the Usher series from Jokaydia Grid with reflections by the students, from their exam essays. And a surprise twist right out of Poe: Usher is coming back to Second Life!