In many western yoga practices, the word namaste is used to open and close a session and is roughly translated as, “the light (or spirit) in me respects the light in you.” I’m well aware—to the dismay of the romantic in me—that much like “hello” in the English-speaking world, it actually bears no deeper meaning other than acknowledging another person exists. It is originally derived from two Sanskrit words that modern Westerners have extrapolated into a more spiritual meaning but there’s no evidence to suggest that this was ever the case in India.

But. I wish it did mean what Westerners say it does. Or, rather, I wish that such a word existed. I think there’s a hole in our language, and maybe our behavior too, where a little respect for the good parts of others could go and we would do well to remember it as often as we say “hello.”

“I don’t care what you believe in, just believe in it.”
—Shepherd Derrial Book, Joss Whedon’s Firefly

Last spring I had the singular pleasure of teaching a college class. No, I don’t have a Ph.D., and in fact, I’m not even a teacher at all. But I work for Oberlin College, an institution with a long history of supporting the teaching endeavors of students, community members, and other laypeople through a program called the Experimental College (ExCo). Each year ExCo offers a list of subjects not found in the regular curriculum. Sometimes ExCo courses are on serious topics like social justice organizing or introductory Swedish and other times the courses are about Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Calvin and Hobbes. Either way, it’s a codified system by which members of my community can swap their knowledge and it’s awesome. 

So, to get on with the story, last spring I co-instructed a class on Joss Whedon’s short-lived television show Firefly.

Before I continue, if you haven’t watched Firefly and have any interest at all in westerns, science fiction, or human nature, run, do not walk, to your nearest library and borrow the complete season and watch it. Don’t worry. I’ll still be here when you get back.

Teaching the Firefly ExCo was quite possibly one of the most rewarding experiences of my life to date. This is not entirely surprising. I teach piano lessons in my spare time and am very passionate about education in the United States. Planning the curriculum, choosing appropriate readings, and working to find discussion topics that would be challenging and fun ways for my 18–22-year-old students to explore big social issues was an exciting adventure. But what I wasn’t entirely prepared for was how much I learned from thinking on my feet and hearing what my students had to offer. We went places in our discussion sessions that I never anticipated, we bantered, we learned.

So, this spring my friend Jonas and I will be teaching another ExCo, this time on Doctor Who. For those familiar with the show, we’ll only be teaching from episodes featuring the Ninth and Tenth Doctors; there’s just too much content to cover the entire series in one semester. The event during which students will sign up for our course is in just over two weeks now and I’m so excited. I can’t wait to meet the people I’ll be spending a semester exploring the universe with.

Josh Ozersky, who writes the Taste of America column over at Time.com, recently wrote a post entitled “Why The Martha Stewart Show Had to Go,” regarding the Hallmark Channel’s decision to cancel Stewart’s show after seven years on the air.

But as America gets poorer, and even the cramped kitchens and half-full refrigerators begin to look like less of a guarantee, maybe the Martha Stewart lifestyle seems less like an aspiration and more like a cruel mockery.

I, quite frankly, think we need that kind of aspiration. I can’t afford a Stewart kitchen, decked out and impeccably designed, but I can certainly acquire tools that will make my cooking projects a little bit easier, and I can aspire to be an expert in my field, even if that’s cooking at home with low-cost ingredients.

Ozersky goes on to say that if forced to choose chef role model between Martha and Rachael Ray, he’d choose the latter.

I aspire personally to cook like Ray — fast and intuitively with stuff I actually have in the house; but I wish I could do the grand old recipes, the poached halibut and foie gras terrine, as well as Stewart does. In fact, I couldn’t see myself doing it at all. Her baking seemed especially terrifying to me. I live in an apartment; my table is filled with unpaid bills, take-out menus and cigarette papers. Where am I going to start putting mixing bowls?

This characterization is unfair. In addition to foie grass terrine and poached halibut, Martha Stewart’s magazine and website feature recipes for meatloaf, red velvet cake, and sloppy joes. I’m pretty sure that none of those things are the fancy-schmancy, time-intensive recipes Ozersky insinuates make up the bulk of Stewart’s offerings, and which is not to mention either that Ozersky’s unpaid bills, take-out menus, and cigarette papers have less to do with Martha Stewart’s relevancy and more with his unkempt house.

The assertion that Stewart is only relevant to older women, rich women, or skilled chefs is patently untrue. I’m 26 and find Martha’s recipes far more useful than most television cooks’ as I begin to learn the difference between a roux and a roulade, saffron from sage. I guarantee you that Rachael Ray isn’t going to teach you that and she’ll annoy you with the repetition of juvenile words like “yumm-o” and “EVOO” in the process.

With the industrial revolution, America lost its taste for homemade. Goods could be produced more cheaply by machine and were shinier, seamless, and dare I say it, without much character. I’m pleased to report that while most households still buy everything at the store, the movement toward homemade is experiencing a bit of a revival.

Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, Yvette van Boven's Home Made, and Jodi Kahn's Simply Sublime Gifts

It beleaguers my mother to no end that I prefer to make at home what could easily be bought at the store—gift tags, whipped cream, and fancy cakes—but I like to do it, even if the cost savings aren’t terribly significant.

My current obsessions include making gourmet cupcakes and creating homemade solutions to organizational challenges like my need for a storage solution for holiday gift wrap. I also recently finished making my own light tent (the one you see in my recent Barbie photography post) which saved me a ton of money and which I’ve already used several times to take pictures of cupcakes.

On the less good homemade front, I’m the the throes of a fight with my stand mixer. Over the holidays, the motor on my trusty Sunbeam stand mixer gave out. I’d wanted to upgrade to a KitchenAid for some time before that but couldn’t justify the purchase, and was secretly a little pleased when the Sunbeam broke. Off I trotted to Macy’s to check out the after-Christmas sales, picked up a mixer on sale, and hauled what seemed like 100 pounds through the mall and back home. Upon walking through the door and checking out the Internet, I found that I could get a professional-level KitchenAid for a cheaper price than I’d just paid for my standard mixer, and so, I packed said mixer back up and returned it to the store.

The fancy, schmancy pro machine with all the bells and whistles arrived from Amazon this Friday and upon unboxing it and using it once, I discovered that it’s damaged and doesn’t quite work right. Today’s project is to pack it back into the box to be dragged to the UPS store on Monday. I really, really hope that the replacement they send will actually work and I can get back to baking.

I have two younger sisters, one who recently finished college and is living in Dallas and the other who is headed off to college next year. The childhood toys that we treasured most are now long since packed up and put away for our own kids but over our holiday vacation, we pulled out our collection of Barbie dolls and gave them a photoshoot in my newly-built lightbox. Our dolls number well over 100 and lived in a place called Barbie Town—original, I know—regularly swapped husbands due to the dearth of male dolls that we have, plus suffered regular natural disasters to switch up the ho-hum, day-to-day operations of the Town. My sisters and I played together, mostly peacefully, for years, well into the time when it would have been thoroughly uncool to mention it at school.

The dolls you see in this post are pictured with their “families,” and have long, silly backstories that I can’t even begin to explain here. They’re definitely not the dolls of some Barbie collector; they’re well-loved, sometimes to the point of the Velveteen Rabbit. While I know that there will be shiny new Barbie dolls by the time we have our own children, I hope they enjoy these ones as much as we did.