Winter Break!

Winter in the Finger Lakes is an especially beautiful place and time.  As we bid farewell to the fall semester for 2012, the librarians have compiled some fine winter traditions to share with you.  

Fox & Geese on the first snow!

This game needs at least 2 people and is better with more. Someone walks in a giant circle in the snow and then walks a line through the middle and then another line in the opposite direction, so that there are 4 pieces in the circle. Walk 2 more diagonal lines so that there are 8 pieces in the circle, which makes it look like a pie. Next walk a small circle in the center of the pie. 
 

One person is the fox, and the rest of the people are the geese. The fox chases the geese around the circle. If you go out of the lines, you automatically become the fox. The little circle in the center of the pie is a “Safe” zone. Essentially it’s tag, with one person “it”, the fox. The only rule is to stay in the lines of the circle/pie. 

Rum Log Cookies:

1 c. butter
2 tsp. rum extract
2 tsp. vanilla
3/4 c. sugar
1 egg
3 c. flour
1 tsp. nutmeg

Cream butter, sugar and extracts, add eggs. Add sifted flour and nutmeg. Shape dough on lightly floured board into logs 1/2 inch in diameter. Cut in 3 inch logs. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. Frost with rum-flavored butter cream frosting and add colored sugar to the top.

Full Moon Ski:

Gather friends for a cross-country ski at night during the full moon, heading to a bonfire afterwards. Someone always brings their guitar for a group sing-along. 

Maple Syrup Snow:

Pack as much fresh snow as you can into a baking tray. Pour pure maple syrup over it. Eat with spoon.

Hot Buttered Rum Toddy: 

In a cup or mug holding a liquid cup or a little less, fill 2/3ds with water.  Add small spoonful brown sugar to taste, a pat of real butter (preferably unsalted), and as much rum as your system wants to tolerate.  Microwave to a reassuring temperature, stir to dissolve and distribute, imbibe.

Happy and safe travels over the winter break!

Credits: Thanks to Juliet Boisselle for the backyard photo.   

Thanks to Katie Lamontagne, Emily Hart, Joseph Chmura and Jennifer Nace for their winter traditions.

New Arrival: Gaga Feminism by J. Jack Halberstam

The author of Female Masculinity, J. Jack Halberstam, comes out with a brief but infinitely quotable treatise on the politics of suppression and the liberation strategy of going gaga. 

From the text:
What if we gendered people according to their behavior?  What if gender shifted over the course of a lifetime-what if someone began life as a boy but became a boygirl and then a boy/man?  What if some males are ladies, some ladies are butch, some butches are women, some women are gay, some gays are feminine, some femmes are straight, and some straight people don't know what the hell is going on? ---p.8
And:
If we can figure out how to stop policing children's sexuality, we might also be closer to understanding how to disrupt the transmission of moralistic and inadequate narratives of sex, love, and marriage from one generation to the next. ---p.15

This is one of those books that makes you understand your own prison; it is like a quivering bird that follows you to the exercise yard and compels you to climb the walls.

~Jennifer Nace, Research and Instruction Librarian