In response to comments from previous post:

1. Sorry, Angela. I'm really bad at taking pictures. I don't know why I bought a camera. I should have taken pictures of the Asian people, the non-Asian people, and the mixed-breed dog, rather than just the table.

2. As Requested:

Sweet Potato Pie. Like Mom Used to Make. (Well, Still Does, Actually.)

1 unbaked pie crust (10 inch)

3 eggs, room temperature

1 1/3 cups of sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) of melted butter

1 1/2 cups mashed cooked sweet potatoes

1 5-oz can evaporated milk

1 teapsoon vanilla

1 teapsoon cinammon

1 teapsoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspsoon allspice

Directions: Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Beat eggs till fluffy. Add sugar, melted butter,and sweet potatoes. Mix thoroughly. Beat milk til foamy and fold into mixture aling with vanilla and spices. Pour into pie shell and bake for 50 to 60 minutes.

My first full week of classes is over and done, and I've got a final schedule:

1. Introduction to the Public Humanities -- Investigation into how to bring academic training and work into the public sphere; weekly visits by people like curators, public historians, performance artists, filmmakers, and academics whose work crosses over. Very practical training, directly in line with my own career goals, and the class I'll be putting the most effort into.
2. American Scholars -- Required introductory class for all first-years in AmStud. Professors in the department come in each week and talk about the people who have influenced them/their field of study.
3. Cultural Study in the Americas -- Looking at social movements/popular culture/etc. in Latin America, and the Caribbean. It's a bilingual course, so it's gonna get my language requirement out of the way, which is critical because I will *never again* use Spanish in my work. (Mainstream US filmmaking has one language, friends, and that language is English.)
4. British Cinema -- My first class in a national cinema, and the only film class because there's no Hollywood cinema courses this semester, and this is my compromise. Go, Michael Powell.

Tomorrow I have a coffee-meeting with a kid named David, who is committed to abolishing the prison-industrial complex. (This is not why we are meeting, but I feel compelled to say that, because David does, at any free moment. Really, he's very sweet, adorable, with basset-hound eyes that belie the rage that pumps through his veins.) We're meeting because I am, like the rest of the incoming American Studies students, being recruited to join the graduate students' union (GESO), which is not recognized by the university, because Yale is a bastard about a lot of stuff. GESO is mostly run by American Studies students, and pretty much all American Studies students are in GESO. Because we fight the power like that.

(And who was it that founded the union while she was a graduate student at Yale? I believe it was the woman who is the answer to all things, Mary Renda. *sigh*)

Also coming up: American Studies apple-picking event on Saturday afternoon, featuring the entire department -- students, professors, and all associated family. I've never been apple-picking, despite all that time in the Pioneer Valley. (I did go to an Apple Festival with Aislinnmarie and Sharon T. Smith in central Pennsylvania in 2004 while on fall break. That was pretty fly.) I'm wary of anything meant to be "fun" that requires you to perform labor, then pay for the [literal] fruits of said labor. There's something suspiciously Tom Sawyer about that. Further, since I won't be doing any canning in my dorm room, I'm not sure what a single woman can do with a bushel of apples. Ah, well -- one can nevertheless look forward to the reception-thing afterwards, at which there will be pie. And probably alcohol. Receptions in graduate school are the best.