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Arts & Life Columns Cooking Corner

Cooking Corner: Vegetable Soup

By Emily Fry

Staff Writer

Vegetable Soup

Fall is officially here, which means the weather is starting to get cooler.  On a cold, rainy day, what could be better than a warm bowl of soup, full of fresh vegetables?  This one is especially delicious served with freshly grated parmesan and toasted baguette slices.  Happy cooking!

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp. olive oil

1 large yellow onion, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

2 celery stalks, chopped

3-14.5 oz cans chicken broth

1 cup water

1/2 lb Yukon potatoes, peeled and chopped in 1 in. chunks

1 Tbsp. fresh thyme

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1 can drained canellini beans

1/2 cup alphabet noodles

1-14.5 oz can diced tomatoes

1/4 lb green beans in 1 in. pieces

1 cup broccoli, chopped

Directions:

1)     Heat oil over medium-high heat in a stockpot.  Add onions, carrots and celery. Cook until softened, about five minutes.

2)      Add chicken broth, water, potatoes, thyme, salt, beans and noodles.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cover partially, simmer for 15 minutes.

3)     Add tomatoes, green beans and broccoli.  Return to a simmer and cook until tender, about 5-10 minutes.

Source: Real Simple: Meals made easy

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Arts & Life Review Television

Off the Tube: ‘Desperate Housewives’

By Katie Monigan

Arts & Life Editor

Season seven of Desperate Housewives began in late September, but three episodes later, the writers have exhausted all possible ideas for plotlines.

The series has had some seriously surprising events in past seasons—tornadoes, planes crashing into lawn parties, murder and a few inconveniently-timed pregnancies—but this season is not just surprising, it’s plain strange.

Paul’s back from jail, where he’s been since very early in the series, and he’s married. The wedding took place while he was in jail, andhis wife refuses to have a physical relationship with him. She simply wants to cook and clean for him.

Susan and Mike had money troubles in season six, so Susan began teaching art to pay for her son’s education. This season, she’s taken it to a new level and now streams video online of herself cleaning the house in her lingerie.

Weirdest of all, Gabrielle and Carlos discover that a drunken nurse was working in Fairview Memorial hospital the day their daughter was born. The nurse switched Juanita with another baby eight years ago.

Desperate Housewives was, at one point, about a group of scandalous ladies with very interesting pasts who happened to live in the same neighborhood. Now everyone’s either married or just boring, and all the scandal is gone. Its family drama and unrealistic plot twists barely make sense.

Without Edie to spice things up, and now that Susan and Gabrielle are married with children, the sources of drama have switched from scandalous secret affairs to incredibly obscure character development, and the show is far less appealing. This is another series that has passed its prime. Six seasons was enough.

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Arts & Life

Secret study spots on campus

By Sarah Bookstein

Writer

While some students can focus on homework in their rooms, most have favorite alternative spots where they can crack down and hit the books.

Some of us need a cozy, ultra-quiet space with couches and footrests. Others need a secret, secluded study area. Some prefer a space with constant background noise to stay focused. In any case, once a student finds the perfect spot he or she often swears by it and hopes it remains secret.

A go-to study location is Bertrand Library, where every student can find the perfect spot on one of the five different levels. While the library itself is no secret spot, it contains many lesser-known rooms.

An area of the library that is mostly unknown is the map room on Lower Level One. The name of this room may be misleading; while it does have reference maps, it also has a computer table and a comfortable couch.

“I like the East Reading Room on the second floor of the library. I like it because it is quiet, but it is a large room and has big tables to spread out your books,” Emily Baird ’11 said.

One study spot outside the library that often goes unnoticed is The Niche attached to the Seventh Street Café. Though it’s small, it has all the nearby advantages of the café. The Niche is a quieter version of the bustling café and has a few tables and two separate rooms that are closed off from the main room.

Some students have begun to explore the potential of the new Barnes & Noble at Bucknell University bookstore on Market Street. While no longer secret, it is quite a distance from the upper part of campus. This means seniors, many of whom live downtown, often fill the tables at the Starbucks café inside the bookstore.

“The bookstore is easy for seniors because it is downtown. You don’t feel like you’re in a cave, but it is still quiet enough,” Abigail Woodward ’11 said.

Another secret spot is the Willard Smith Library in the Vaughn Literature Building. A student can spread out at one of the many wooden tables and look out the large windows at grassy courtyards. Large bookshelves with reference books weave around the room and create divided nooks for private study spaces.

Perhaps one of the most treasured spots for English majors and students of poetry and creative writing is the Stadler Center. Inside the center of Bucknell Hall is the Mildred Martin Library and Lounge. The mini-library is perfect for reading and has stacks of contemporary poetry books. The environment is comfortable and welcoming, and on rare occasions, professors offer cookies to lucky students.

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Arts & Life Restaurants Review

Smiling Chameleon Draft House adds tasty bar food to Lewisburg

By Ashley Miller

Writer

Downtown Lewisburg has had a new and pleasant addition to its restaurant list since Aug. 28. The Smiling Chameleon, as the name implies, is sure to surprise you.

When I first walked in to the Chameleon, it was a bit cramped with just a bar and a single row of half-booth seating. Once I sat down and got comfortable, the restaurant became cozier. The wood paneling and dark lighting enhanced the feeling, along with the old-fashioned décor. Apart from the three plasma screen televisions, everything about the Chameleon is somewhat quaint.

The Chameleon has NFL Sunday Ticket, a television channel that enables patrons to see every NFL game on Sundays. This makes the draft house the perfect place to go when your favorite team is playing.

Service is excellent. Since there is limited seating, the waitstaff has much more time to devote to each customer. You won’t find yourselfwaiting very long for your food, and the staff is personable.

The menu selection, however, is limited. Only four platters are available for each meal, along with appetizers such as tortilla chips, salad and the Chameleon’s homemade soup.

“I enjoyed my quesadilla, but I was a little disappointed by the limited options,” Sam Ferebee ’14said.

The dishes are a bit classier than you might get at a pub, and therefore a little bit pricier. But it is still definitely affordable and well worth the slight price increase. The house salad was large and fulfilling, and the sandwich was simple but tasty. Everything the Chameleon serves is perfect for “conversation food,” as the menu says.

If you like something on the menu, you better have it as much as you can. The Chameleon’s owner, Tedd Biernstein, explained the significance of the name.

“As a chameleon changes, so does our menu. We’ll have the same pork dish for a month and then completely change it up,” Biernstein said.

But don’t worry: your favorite dish is sure to be replaced by something equally interesting and delicious.

“We make our food fresh every day, no preservatives,” Biernstein said. He even said patrons can choose varying levels of spiciness for their salsa because the staff adds the peppers themselves.

While the food is good, the Smiling Chameleon is first and foremost a bar. The choices for beer and wine are extensive and take up more of the menu than the food. The alcohol choices change as often as the food. If you’re looking for a particular ale, you will most likely find it under the Chameleon’s roof.

The Smiling Chameleon is a perfect addition to the town. Typically, you can find fellowstudents there after 10:30 on weekend nights, but it is also open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. for lunch. Whether you are going to sit down and have some lunch or bring some friends to catch a game, be sure to stop by and check out this new spot. It will definitely be worth your while.

Info Box:

Smiling Chameleon Draft House – 235 Market St

Phone: (570) 523-7777

Categories
Arts & Life Books Review

‘Never Let Me Go’ a must-read

By Brenna English-Loeb

Senior Writer

Booker Prize Winner Kazuo Ishiguro (for his 1989 “The Remains of the Day“) has come to the fore of the literary scene once more with his striking “Never Let Me Go.” Ishiguro’s delicate, precise prose is again at work with his trademark style of novels based on reminiscence. The memories of Kathy H. flow from one scene to another practically seamlessly, transporting the reader through her short life, each scene raising just as many questions as it answers about Kathy’s strange world. “Never Let Me Go” moves along so swiftly, readers will be totally engrossed and wish to finish the novel in one sitting.

It is hard to give even a brief account of “Never Let Me Go” without giving away one of the novel’s integral conditions, but the slow realization of this specific plot point is part of what makes the work so masterful. Kathy H. tells the dreamlike and somewhat disjointed story of her youth growing up at Hailsham, a boarding school-esque establishment in England in the 90s. She has two very important friends from Hailsham, Ruth and Tommy, who grow together and learn to navigate harsh realities of their situation. The unsettling conceit is that Kathy, Ruth and Tommy’s experience of the world is not quite like ours, though it is parallel to it.

The characters of the three protagonists are revealed in poignant episodes without being obviously sentimental. There are several influential teachers at Hailsham, notably Miss Lucy and Miss Emily, who have a somewhat ambivalent role in the protagonists‘ lives and yet also remain sympathetic.

Part of Ishiguro’s success with his characterization stems from the solid background of this parallel world he has created. Every detail is specific and meaningful, full of a personal lore deeply entrenched in his main character’s personality. Sometimes, due to the limitations brought on by the first person narrative, the reader can wish for more concrete information rather than passing remarks.The world Ishiguro has created is clearly a rich one, but somehow it remains outside the complete grasp of the reader’s comprehension, somewhat frustratingly mirroring Kathy’s own incomplete understanding.

Ishiguro does not weigh down his prose with pages of exposition, which greatly aids the novel’s flow.Ishiguro successfully avoids the pitfalls of many dystopian novels where characters improbably attempt to lead a cultural revolution. Kathy, Ruth and Tommy do not try to do any such thing. They just try to live.

“Never Let Me Go” has recently been adapted into a movie, directed by Mark Romanek and starring Carey Mulligan as Kathy, Keira Knightley as Ruth and Andrew Garfield as Tommy.

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Sports

Roethlisberger returns from suspension

By Justin Cohen

Contributing Writer

Before this wild 2010 NFL season began, most people looked at the Steelers with disinterest as their starting quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, would be on the bench for six games due to a sexual assault case at a Georgia nightclub. The Steelers would have a six game period, including their bye, where they could go under .500 without their star quarterback. Most people were already awarding the division to the Ravens, who looked like a much better team on the offensive side of the ball while maintaining their usual defensive stinginess. This year did not look like it was going to be a good year for a city with six Super Bowl titles, and, if they were going to save themselves, they would need to rely on their defense more than ever to even keep them in the divisional race.

Fast-forward five weeks and the Steelers are 3-1, coming out of their bye in solid contention in their division. Oh, and Ben Roethlisberger is coming back. With the help of backup quarterbacks Dennis Dixon, Byron Leftwich and Charlie Batch, the Steelers won their first three games of the season and lost the fourth in an extremely close game against the Ravens. The Steelers have never looked better on defense with their hard hitting linebackers and Troy Polamalu making spectacular plays. Rashard Mendenhall is also averaging 102.8 yards per game, which is second only to Houston’s Arian Foster.

Although their defense and rushing attack have been outstanding, the true star has been Roethlisberger, who hasn’t even played a down in 2010, as he managed not be a distraction for the team while he was suspended. His suspension could have hung a cloud over the Steelers and undermined their quest for a successful season, but now they are poised to take the NFL with full force, and, with three divisional games in the last five weeks of the year, they will rely on Big Ben to lead them to a possible postseason berth and maybe to even greater heights. During his first couple practices with the team, Mike Wallace could not remember Ben throwing a bad pass. The Steelers realized from the moment he took his first practice snap that “Ben was back.”

Roethlisberger has handled his suspension with class as he constantly worked out on his own over the first four weeks of the season. Commissioner Roger Goodell reduced the suspension to four games after Roethlisberger showed good behavior and remorse over his actions in Georgia. Roethlisberger returns to the lineup on Sunday when the Steelers face the Cleveland Browns. It will be exciting to see how Roethlisberger fares in his first game of an already wild 2010 season. Ben’s return to the league shows Goodell’s crackdown on the personal conduct policy has been working and that it has taught the players who make foolish choices to be truly sorry and not to make them again in the future. Roethlisberger will make an immediate impact on and off the field.

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Sports

Swim club: new beginnings on campus

By Eric Brod

Senior Writer

When Spencer Whalen ’13 came to campus last fall, he knew he wanted to continue with the sport he grew up with: swimming. After competing on his high school, club and summer teams throughout his youth, Whalen knew it would be hard to adjust to life without a swim team.

When he found out there was no club swim team at the University, Whalen became determined to set up some type of club.

“I ended up going to the pool and doing workouts on my own for the first couple months of the school year,” he said. “I found it difficult to get myself to go to the pool by myself, so after a while I got my roommate from last year [Matt Szymanski ’13] to join me for some light workouts. Then I came up with the idea of making my own attempt at a club swim team.”

This summer, Whalen decided shared his idea of starting an on-campus swim club with Recreational Services, but then decided to take matters into his own hands, first sending out a message through the Message Center and then creating a Facebook group titled “Bucknell Swimming Enthusiasts.” Within a few hours, the group had 20 students in it. The group is now up to 40 people, and more have expressed interest.

This year, Whalen’s main goal is to make some noise and hopefully get the University to recognize them as a team. Currently, they offer practice twice a week. Whalen keeps attendance in a notebook.

“I am responsible for organizing everything at the moment, workouts attendance, etc., and it would be a lot easier if we could get a paid coach on board to get our team headed in the right direction,” Whalen said.

Although Whalen feels the Enthusiasts are a long way from competition, his main focus is on getting recognized as an official club.

“I am hoping that our goal of being recognized as a club team comes to fruition soon because it is something that we all hold as a true passion of ours—it is also something a school like Bucknell needs, too,” he said.

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Sports

Men’s golf ninth at Joe Agee

By Cooper Sutton

Sports Editor

The men’s golf team participated in the Joe Agee Invitational on Saturday and Sunday and in the Richmond Intercollegiate on Monday and Tuesday. William & Mary and Richmond hosted the tournaments.

The Orange and Blue took ninth place out of the 14 teams in the Joe Agee Invitational, finishing with 605 in the two rounds of play. Old Dominion held the lowest score of the weekend with 578.

On Sunday, the five golfers combined to shoot a 310 in the first round. The team shot a 295 in the final round Sunday, which raised it one spot on the leader board.

Jon Hartman ’13 put up the best numbers of any Bison in Fairfax, hitting a combined 144 over the two days. He tied for the seventh-lowest individual score at the tournament.

The Bison struggled at the Richmond Intercollegiate, coming in 11th place out of the 11 teams there. Richmond won the tournament at Independence Golf Club in Richmond with a total team score of 855. The Bison trailed significantly with a score of 928.

Although the score seems like the team played very poorly, the conditions of the course played a factor.

“Richmond was one of the tougher tournament fields that our team will see all year, so although we didn’t play as well as we expected, our low finish was a bit misleading,” J.J. Szmadzinski ’12 said.

Szmadzinski led all Bison in scoring in Richmond, posting a total of 223. He tied for 29th in individual scoring.

“I kept the ball in play and made quite a few birdies over the course of the tournament which always helps,” Szmadzinski said.

The team will not play again until November when it takes part in the Kiawah Island Intercollegiate.

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Sports

Women’s golf takes third

By Cooper Sutton

Sports Editor

The women’s golf team had a solid showing this weekend at the Zippy Invitational, hosted by Akron at the Rosemont Country Club in Fairlawn, Ohio. The Bison played through tough conditions to come in third place out of 12 teams.

The hometown Zips came in first, followed by Grand Valley State. The race for first place was tight; Akron finished only four strokes ahead of Grand Valley State. The Orange and Blue finished 15 strokes behind that with an overall score of 969 for the tournament.

The low score of the weekend belonged to Kasha Scott ’14, who scored a 79-79-83 over three rounds. This strong showing put her in 12th place in the tournament for individual scores.

“I think I had the lowest score this weekend because I tried to maintain a positive attitude, and I just kept grinding after a bad hole and kept fighting to post a good score,” Scott said.

Scott’s good score was not a tribute to any dazzling play on the golf course, but rather her ability to stay fairly consistent throughout the tournament.

Going into Tuesday the Bison trailed second place by only four stokes.Without a single player in the 70s on Tuesday, the team fell further behind Akron and Grand Valley State. Brittany Rendell ’12 scored Tuesday’s top score with an 81.

Tough conditions caused high scores across the board this weekend.

“The conditions were tough. We played 36 holes the first day, which can always be hard since it is such a long day and it was really windy on that day,” Rendell said. “It was a tough course, if you didn’t hit the ball well, especially in the fairway, you would find yourself in a lot of trouble with water, out of bounds and trees guarding every fairway.”

“I know that the team could have played a lot better, and we are going work really hard to play to our full potential in our last two tournaments for this season,” Scott said.

The Bison look to improve on their solid performance this weekend at the Rutgers Invitational.

Categories
Sports

Water polo loses 7-4 to Princeton

By Chris McCree

Writer

The men’s water polo team struggled this past weekend on the road, losing 7-4 to Princeton. With the loss, the Bison extended their losing streak to six straight and fell to 0-4 in the CPWA Southern Division. The Tigers came away with a similar three-goal victory earlier in the year at the ECAC Championship in Boston.

The Bison offense scored a season-low four goals against the Tigers and did not have one player with a multi-goal game. Beau Caillouette ’12, Richie Hayden ’11, Howie Kalter ’11 and Paul Reamey ’11 all scored for the Orange and Blue.

“I would say that we came out a little flat against Princeton. Our team is still trying to establish chemistry, and as individuals we have not yet found our roles to best serve the team,” Sean Coghlan ’11 said.

Recently, the Bison have struggled on defense, letting up double-digit goals in each of their last three contests. This time, the Bison stifled the Princeton offense, allowing only 10 shots on goal. The Bison sprinters had a good day, winning all four sprints. Brian Barron ’13 won three sprints and Spencer Richley ’12 won one.

After the loss, the Bison have an overall record of 7-8. The team has a great opportunity to salvage its season this weekend as it will host league rivals Johns Hopkins, Navy, George Washington and Princeton. The Orange and Blue have lost to every one of these teams this season, but they are optimistic about their chances this weekend.

So far this season the Bison are 3-7 the road but 4-1 at home. The Bison, who have played nine straight away matches, hope to benefit from home-pool advantage in their pivotal games this weekend.