We’re back! And a bit jet-lagged and generally confused. Further thoughts later — though perhaps not until Monday — but in the meantime, two amusing, vaguely Halloween-relevant links:

Animals in costume

Don & Betty Draper = Darrin & Samantha?

Have you been reading anything particularly noteworthy in the blogosphere (not necessarily seasonally relevant)? Add your link in comments.

Teabag tag says:

The only tool you need is kindness.

Robin says:

If kindness is all you have, you’re a tool.

For the history of the teabag-tag wars, go here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Here’s a Halloween-themed post for you all. I’d gotten into a horror-fiction kick a while back, and noticed that every New England gothic that deals with the human or supernatural evil of some little farming town — it’s always about corn. From “The Lottery” to Children of the Corn to Harvest Home. Corn is the basis of the community, the source and/or excuse for the evil. So I figured, hey, I know someone who manages a farm, I wonder what Verena would say about this. I mean, get two women together, one of whom did a dissertation on literary genre and one of whom is a farmer, and surely we could figure out this “evil corn” thing, right? I had a few ideas of my own, so I shot them off to her. Here they are, and her responses:

1. Coincidence. Corn is a native crop to New England, which happens to be where America’s literary horror tradition got started. If the tradition had started in the midwest, it would have been “Children of the Wheat.”

Verena replied: That seems plausible. Corn’s native to the whole continent though (including Central America). Wheat was introduced from Europe, and doesn’t do well in the N.E. climate (fall rains come in just as the crop is ready). Wheat is also much shorter (not quite like lettuce, but still short). Wheat is romantic (“Days of Heaven”). You can’t really romp with your lover in the cornfields like you can in the wheat. Wheat is soft.

2. Structure. Cornfields are taller than people and make a scary rustling sound and you can hide in them, so you can set cool plot sequences in the cornfields that might not be possible in other agricultural settings. You pretty well have to be Peter Rabbit to get a lot of suspense going in a lettuce patch.

Verena replied: I think you’re totally right that big cornfields are easy to hide in and get lost in. That’s pretty scary. And unlike woods or mountains, there’s a man-made uniformity to a cornfield, so you can’t get your bearings. A corn field does have this weird human-like quality to it…hayfields are tall and uniform, and make rustling sounds, but you never feel like you’re standing in some kind of vegetable army.

Okay, doesn’t the phrase “vegetable army” just freak you out right there?

3. The Uncanny Valley. It is easy to make disturbingly human-looking poppets and fetishes out of corncobs and husks.

Verena replied: Yeah, kids love that! We always do husk doll making with little kids and it’s a blast. They all turn out so amazingly different.

That was pretty much all I knew about corn and why it might be scary, so I went on to ask her, “Is corn so important that in a given farming community it might not be just a crop, but the crop, much as potatoes were in Ireland? So that the needs of the corn become paramount and it’s treated in a sort of idolatrous fashion?

“Is corn so temperamental and hard to grow that a human sacrifice now and then might not seem like a bad idea? (I mean, do you sit around with your farmer friends and talk about ‘The Lottery’ and joke, ‘Well, of course it would be wrong, but don’t say you’ve never wondered if it would actually work …’)”

And that’s when it got really scary! (Okay, I’m cuing the music and holding the flashlight under my chin now.) She said corn isn’t really hard to grow, and that up until modern times there wasn’t an issue with monoculture that would lead to the kind of dependence I was wondering about … but then … she wrote …

sacrifice – here’s a thought – Blood has a lot of nitrogen in it (remember those school stories about how Native Americans planted a fish head at the base of every corn mound). Great fertilizer. You can buy “blood meal” as an organic fertilizer – it’s just dried blood and it’s the best thing you can get. A sacrifice that spilled blood all over your corn WOULD actually make it grow better.

So how about that!

The first one is for the ConductMom, because she likes pictures of laundry lines:

This is a big fancy palazzo:

This is a mosaic around the fountain of the big fancy palazzo. The mosaic went all the way around it and was made of long stones, which Mr. Improbable said (and I agree) is an impressive feat of engineering:

… can be found somewhere in the vicinity of here.

I had to set this up before I left, so I don’t have the exact link. Sorry! Anyway, in today’s column, I refer to one of my favorite quotes from Jewish texts. I write about this in Mind Over Manners, too:

When ethical matters are at stake, only the individual concerned can decide how serious the issue is, and whether conviction, compromise, or caving in is most appropriate. Those of us who are not saints cannot live out each ethical principle to its fullest in every moment of the day. Rather, because time and energy are finite, most people have a few pet values (virtues, ideals, causes) into which they pour their energy: sometimes you Save This Child, sometimes you turn the page. Calvin may be a superb father but a standoffish neighbor; Kathleen may devote time and money to animal rescue shelters, but do little for the environment, even though she believes it is important.

If other people’s ethical balance sheets aren’t quite the same as your own, it doesn’t necessarily mean they lack values, just that they are allocating their limited time, money, and energy in a different way. As the Pirkei Avot, an ancient text of Jewish wisdom, states, “It is not upon you to complete the task, but you are not free to desist from it.” The task referred to is that of repairing, or perfecting, the world. I find this a helpful saying to meditate on: we must all do something, but no one needs, or can, do everything. Therefore, try to avoid quibbling with the ethical priorities of others, or laying guilt trips on them because their causes are not your own. They are tending to their gardens, and you to yours.

Don’t let all this online adoration give you a big head, Milo.

Tomorrow is Milo’s fourth “Gotcha Day” with us! I wrote a little essay about him on his second, and a poem for him on his third. Digging through some old computer files, recently, I found something I’d written a couple of months after we got him, that will suffice as this year’s celebratory post:

Much as I often type “teh” instead of “the,” I’ve discovered–since the arrival of Milo, our adorable mixed-breed rescue dog–that I usually type “god” when I mean “dog.” I always manage to notice this and correct it, usually with an obscure feeling of guilt. However, if I hadn’t, here are some of the things I would have written in various e-mails to friends in the past month:

• If you’re really not up for having a god in the house along with the new baby that’s perfectly okay.

• He is a great god, bra fetish notwithstanding.

• And we have a new god, who is a constant source of puzzlement and delight, and who appears to find us much the same.

• He’s a gentle god but “calm” is not a word I would use to describe him.

• We are working on “quiet god” right now.

• My husband and my god like each other.

• If anyone is afraid of or allergic to gods be assured that he will be crated and upstairs during our meeting. If anyone likes gods you can go meet him after we’ve concluded our business.

• The important question is how are you doing these days, and the really important question is when are you going to come admire my new god?

• And can I force you all to admire the attached picture of my new god, bravely defending us against an evil, scary bunch of bananas?

• He doesn’t feel the need to mark his territory as male gods often do.

• On the upside, I LOVE MY NEW GOD! He is the BEST god ever and we just signed the adoption papers today.

Happy Gotcha Day, little man. While your humans are cavorting in Italy, you are staying with a friend in the country, and I hope you are having a wonderful time. We are probably looking at all of the Italian dogs and saying to ourselves, and sometimes each other, “That dog’s not as cute as Milo.” You remain a source of puzzlement and delight to us, and it appears we remain so to you, as well.

And here, for anyone who cares to see it, is the picture of Milo the second night we had him, defending his new home against that sleeper cell of terrorist bananas (he’d been barking at them, so we put them on the floor and let him investigate):

Mr. Improbable and I are off on a much-needed trip to Italy. I will be very glad of this. The past few months have been a long haul for me of minor but debilitating health problems (allergies and back problems in addition to the “sick” I blogged about earlier) and work stresses. I feel I’ve been just managing to fulfill the barest of my responsibilities — getting the columns done, though never in advance, and the blogs kept more-or-less up to date, and my Harvard Business School job more-or-less under control.

Things will be better when we get back, I hope: I have reason to think my health problems won’t bother me so much for a while, and the Big Project at my Harvard job is almost entirely done, and I’ve made a few decisions that ought to lighten the load for me for a while.

I also sent around an e-mail to some of my friends who had really helped me out, or listened to me rant, or been gracious when I canceled plans on them for the third time in a row because of some health or work emergency. People really are there for you, you know. When they say, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do” — you can, if there is. We all want to be independent and self-sufficient, but sometimes it’s good to remember that other people will put up with your nonsense, because they love you.

Even when you’re covered in bees!

See you in November! I’ve got a couple of posts scheduled to go up while we’re gone, but posting will be light. If you leave a comment and you haven’t commented before, it won’t go through until I moderate it, which might not be until I get back.

I’ll be chatting today from noon to 1pm Eastern time here. If you can’t join us for the chat, you can read the transcript afterward.

More on ASP’s “The Taming of the Shrew” …

The big question with any production of “Shrew” is how to do Kate’s final scene, in which, at Petruchio’s command, she gives a speech about the obedience women owe to their husbands. I saw a brilliant all-female production of the play several years back (the women played the male characters as men, just as in Shakespeare’s time, female roles were played as women, by male actors) in which this monologue was very dramatic and clearly very difficult for Kate, and during which Petruchio’s attitude went from a macho boastfulness, to embarrassment, to complete shame and horror at what he had done to this woman and incredible gratitude and humility in the face of her extraordinary grace. It was a deeply Christian reading of the scene, reminding me of nothing so much as Jesus washing his disciples’ feet.

Melia Bensussen, who also directed last year’s wonderful “Merchant of Venice,” took a much simpler tack with it, and yet one that I’ve never seen or heard done before. The three husbands in the room — Petruchio, Lucentio, and Hortensio — have all agreed to wager on their wives’ obedience. They send the servant Grumio to call their wives from the other room, and Kate is the only one who comes. (Given that it is well established that Kate hates her sister Bianca, and has already been gratuitously insulted by the other woman, her eagerness to join her husband speaks less of obedience than a wholly rational desire to escape the Mean Girls.) Petruchio then tells her to go get the other women, bring them into the main room, and TELL THEM.*

And here is the brilliant, obvious, perfect thing that Ms. Bensussen does: she puts the money on the table. This is a wager. The audience sees the pile of money, lying right there, and so does Kate. She knows the score. Does she believe what she’s saying? Oh, probably, partly. It’s hard for anyone, even someone as verbally dextrous as Katharina Minola, to lie convincingly and on the spur of the moment for 40 lines. But she’s doing it for the money — the same reason Petruchio married her. The fact that she swoops down on that pile of bills like the hawk she’s often compared to makes that clear enough. She and her husband jam the cash into their pockets and beat a quick retreat! (I must blushingly confess that this scene charmed me enough that I actually wrote Shakespeare fan fiction this weekend, imagining Kate and Petruchio on the way home to Verona, laughing at having pulled a fast one on their friends and family and deciding what to do with their winnings.)

So often, in productions of Shakespeare, the money is treated like a metaphor. Seeing Ms. Bensussen’s take on two of his most difficult plays — “Taming of the Shrew” and that which is often called “Taming of the Jew” — has convinced me that this is a mistake. It’s not a metaphor. It’s money. And people will do a lot for money. My God, what won’t they do for money.

More subtly, the production, though set in a vaguely defined present-ish moment, is staged with recurrent images of Queen Elizabeth — on the stage floor, on the cover of the pub’s dart- and gameboard. Which reminds those of us who know our Bard that he, too, was doing it for the money. Shakespeare, that great artist, was also a great mercenary. And he wrote by the leave and at the pleasure of a woman — his Queen — just as Kate speaks by the leave and at the pleasure of her husband. The Queen protected and supported him, too, as Petruchio protects and supports Kate. Shakespeare was no more free than Kate, and no more oppressed.

We all make compromises, which sounds very mature. We are all compromised, which sounds very dirty. But both are true.

*I’m delighted to report that the creator of the “Oh Snap!” flowchart, originally found here, bears the wonderfully improbable name Sharif Kellogg, and is a friend of a friend of mine. Say what you will, the internet can be a fun playground sometimes.

Thinking more about my post on Genesis, I’m hoping that the atheists and unaffiliated among you can get over the religious language. (And that more conservative religious folk can get over my somewhat irreverent take on the scriptures.) Here’s what I’m wanting to hear from you: when have you created something that turned out to have a life of its own?

Over the weekend, three of my friends posted about creativity on Facebook, although they might not have defined it that way. One simply posted some pictures of beautiful pastries he and his wife had made — the kind of thing that might turn out well, and might not at all. They did turn out well, and he seemed proud of them in a way that almost appeared to give the pastries themselves credit. Another posted about an astonishing new vocabulary word his son had learned (one of the new words you are glad to see your children learn, I hasten to clarify). Another chronicled her struggles with a writing project that, at the end, turned out to be something very different from what she had originally intended.

The creation ultimately breaks away from the creator.

This is all I meant to say, for those of you who couldn’t make it through the God talk.

When has something you created — a pastry, a painting, a person — shown you that it has a life of its own?

Tell me your creation stories.

My talk for Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s production of “Taming of the Shrew” last week was terrific fun! We’d seen the production the night before — I’ll review that, too — and it gave me an idea for a great opening.

ASP is staging the play in The Garage in Harvard Square, which they’ve done up to look like a divey bar circa early 1980s or so. It’s the first play I’ve ever seen that incorporates the senses of taste and smell — an actor passes around popcorn during intermission (warning everyone who takes some “You can’t sue us”) and Grumio, Petruchio’s servant, cooks sausages on an electric fry pan, filling the space with their savory aroma. Shakespeare in Smell-O-Vision! Only ASP, I’m telling you.

Anyway, the dive-bar setting, and the extremely violent staging of the play, got me thinking about this year’s Ig Nobel Peace Prize winner: a team of Swiss scientists who won “for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.”

So before the talk, I made sure Mr. Improbable had a seat up in front, right where I would be talking. And I got a bottle of Sam Adams and a mug. And this, more or less, is what I said:

“‘Taming of the Shrew’ teaches us that a woman should always put her husband before herself, so before I begin my talk, I’d like to ask my husband, Marc Abrahams, to stand up and take a bow.” (He did) “Marc is known in my column and blogs as Mr. Improbable — for many reasons, the main one being that he publishes the Annals of Improbable Research and produces the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.

“When we saw the play last night, it made me think of this year’s Ig Nobel Peace Prize winner” — which I then described as above. “Now, this is what might surprise you: you can actually do far more damage with an empty bottle of beer than a full one. An empty bottle is a better weapon. Counterintuitive, no? After all, a full bottle is heavier, by the weight of the beer.

“But here’s the thing. A full bottle of beer already has so much pressure inside it, from the thick, foaming, raging beer, that it takes much less external pressure to make it shatter. When you’ve emptied out all that beer” — and here I poured the beer out and served it to Marc with a dramatic “Milord,” and I must say he was an awfully good sport about basically being used as a prop — “you have a much more effective weapon.”

“Just like Kate, when she empties out all that rage, when she stops holding in all that pressure, becomes a much more strong and focused person. And a much more effective weapon, as her sister and the Widow can attest!

“And now I will stop being Mrs. Improbable” — turning to Marc — “and you can start being Mr. Conduct. Because as ‘Taming of the Shrew’ really teaches us, a happy marriage isn’t about one person being in charge, or about everything being equal all the time, either. It’s about knowing when to take the spotlight and when to give it up to your partner.”

It went over pretty doggone well, I must say. More on the play proper later, but in the meantime, here‘s a print interview I did for the ASP website.

Whether they are Reform or Orthodox, all religious Jews are literally on the same page: we all read the same section of the Torah every week, broken up so that we read the entire Torah (i.e., the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) every year. Each Torah portion is named after its first word or phrase. We finished the Torah, this year, on October 10, and started it again in Genesis this past Saturday.

Genesis begins with “In the beginning,” which in Hebrew is Bere’shit, so that is what we call it. Four years ago, I’d started writing a little essay on Sundays, a personal reflection on that week’s portion. Because I couldn’t find anyone interested in publishing these, that didn’t last too long. But I thought I’d share the one I wrote on Bere’shit with you. Even if you’re not religious, I think it speaks to something about the nature of creativity and otherness. Or maybe it will leave you cold. I don’t expect every post to hit home with every reader.

This week’s Torah portion, Bere’shit, contains one of the oddest and funniest scenes in the Torah. In Genesis 2:18-21 we read, “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone, I will make a fitting helper for him.’ And the Lord God formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts; but for Adam no fitting helper was found.”

Now this, to me, clearly indicates that HaShem* may not have known exactly what it was He’d created when he made Adam. The issue of God’s omnipotence and omniscience, as well as the entire question of how we can have free will if God already knows everything we will do—that I will leave to theologians. But taking a purely literary or theatrical approach to the passage, there is no doubt that HaShem is, at this point, a bit confused about what he might have on His divine hands, if He seriously thinks that He can find Adam a suitable mate from all the animals in creation.

It’s a scene I’d love to see the old Monty Python crew perform (John Cleese as God, of course, and Michael Palin as Adam). “All right then, Adam, let’s get you some company, my boy. Giraffe? No, no, too tall. A tiger, perhaps? Erm, might be a bit dangerous, that. Sheep? No, you’re not from New Zealand, are you … Bother, I’m not quite sure what is going to work here …” And when He does finally decide He’d better just make another human, He creates her from the original model, as though He’s not quite sure what might happen if he tried that “breathing life into dust” thing again.

To suggest that God may have been a bit unclear about the nature of His creation is not to take away from His authority or wisdom. Parents, and artists, can all attest to the “shock of the new,” the awareness that this thing you made has a life, and a spirit, entirely of its own. I think this is what’s going on in Parashat Bere’shit, and it shed light, for me, on why, perhaps, God created us.

Here’s what I think: I think He wanted to be surprised. Look at verse 19, in which God brings the animals before Adam not just to see which might make him a suitable mate, but “to see what he would call them.” What’s he gonna do? That’s what God is asking Himself. I feel a sense of play, of experiment, in HaShem at this point. What will Adam make of all of this? It’s the same delight you see in a parent giving her baby a new toy. Will he like it? Will he be afraid of it? Will he do something utterly surprising and funny, and take my breath away with delight?

Of course, as the Canadian folk singer Jane Siberry so wisely noted, “Everything Reminds Me of My Dog.” And I suspect having gotten a new dog—on Simchat Torah, no less—is strongly influencing my reading of this passage. Milo pleases me when he obeys me. But he delights me when he surprises me—by doing something so purely and ineluctably him, that for all my superior wisdom and learning I could never have predicted it. When he jumps straight up in the air, almost as high as my shoulder. When he decides for his own obscure canine reasons that he must, right now, protect us from the evil, menacing bunch of bananas lying on the kitchen shelf. When he puts the side of his head on the floor and rotates himself around in a circle like Curly from the Three Stooges. His obedience pleases me, his affection warms me, but his ability to surprise, to always be the unique creature that he is, breaks me out of myself and into sheer joy.

So obey God. And love God. But just as importantly, always, always be yourself and hope that somewhere up there He is laughing in delight at you.

*HaShem is Hebrew for “The Name,” and is one of the ways we refer to God. So please, people, if you’re trying to be all interfaith and tolerant, stop writing things like “Whether you pray to God, Allah, or Yahweh …” For one thing, Allah is God. It’s the Arabic word for “God.” Arab Christians pray to Allah, too. It’s not like some whole different character. For another, no one prays to Yahweh, at least no Jews do. If you want to come up with a Jewish way of saying “God,” it’s “HaShem.” We don’t say “Yahweh,” and we don’t say “Jehovah,” either, except when we’re quoting “Life of Brian.”

These recipes in today’s Globe magazine for vegetable enchiladas sound delicious.

is online here.

I always do the best job I can, but sometimes I’m particularly proud of what I got handed and where I was able to go with it. I feel that way about both questions in this column. This, by the way, is why I was asking for great tough-guy lines a while back. Also, the phrase “that voice I do” should be in italics. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of incurring that voice I do can tell you why.