What am I going to do with all this kale?

Curly Kale, photo by Rasbak

Kale wasn’t a staple of my diet growing up.  It was one of the odd cruciferous vegetables out.  We had cabbage in particular dishes, like holapki.  Broccoli was a constant, usually boiled el dente.  But we didn’t go in much for swiss chard or kale.   Maybe it’s for the same reason that we avoided spinach: it could inflame my Dad’s gout.  Really though, I suspect we didn’t eat kale because we weren’t sure what to do with it.  It was the dark, brusque leaf of the lettuce aisle, but clearly not a lettuce that lent itself to being dowsed with Caesar salad dressing and tossed with artichoke hearts and strips of salami.  When we went shopping together, my Mom got Romaine lettuce, but that was all, at least until I she began indulging developed a strange obsession I had with radishes.

So I didn’t get my first taste of kale until I went to Oberlin, and joined the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association (OSCA). The most radical coops seemed to be on a mission to ban anything with flavor or the most dubious ties to unethical practices.  I once managed to get chocolate banned in one coop (not one I dined at), solely on the basis of a rumor.  Less radical coops merely outlawed meat (except for the occasional free-range lamb or pig roast) and glorified and proselytized in support of kale. Coop chefs insisted that it was not only packed with nutrients and fiber (as though fiber were lacking in the OSCA diet), but also that it was hearty and delicious on its own merits, to the point where it could serve as the main course of a dinner, virtually without spice. 

Well-intentioned amateur chefs stir-fried it with soy sauce.  The burned aroma clung in the air like the opposite of ambrosia.  They tossed shredded up hunks of it into watery soups.  They rinsed it with dubious vigor and then tore it up into abrasive handfuls and doused it with oil and vinegar... in other words, they had no idea what to do with it either. Rather than tempering its intensity, they enhanced it, so I got the sense that I was eating some leafy metallic machine, gritty, and often oily.  I started to avoid meals where I knew there would be kale, and when co-opers praised it, I often judged them in other ways, assuming that this lack of taste spread to other avenues of their life.  Occasionally someone would suggest that it made a great smoothy, and the image frothy green kale was enough to force me to leave the conversation and head immediately to Gibson's Food Market and Bakery for an antidote in the form of a heavily malted chocolate milk shake.  I once went on a date with a girl who proclaimed fervent kale-love, and I mumbled something about it being okay, but couldn't bring myself to go on another date with her. 

That was many years ago now, but it turns out those co-op cooks were cutting edge: the last few years there’s been a kale-splosion, supposedly because kale is a superfood.  Blueberries are also a superfood, and you can make pie out of them.  “Kale pie” sounds like a cruel joke.  But one week, when they were out of clamshell plastic boxes of fresh baby spinach, and there was a sale on baby kale, I bought it.

Like all the babies I’ve ever eaten, including lamb, veal, and baby bok choy, baby kale is significantly better than its more world weary older counterpart.  First, it’s more tender, making it feasible to mix into a salad.  At least if that salad is primarily made up of other greens, and perhaps has some sautéed squash, goat cheese, and beets to provide sidekick support to this superfood.  The same goes for the taste.  Second the taste is less intense: still strong, but not confrontational.  My personal strategy for dealing with baby kale is to drizzle some honey over it and then caramelize it briefly in a dry frying pan.  I’ve tried the same with adult kale, but the more mature leaf requires more subterfuge.  More honey, and perhaps some fat: fried vegetables are even more super, right?

With a controlled amount of kale, as a break from my usual leafy greens, this can hit the spot.  But there’s only so much honeyed kale I can eat, so when I got my first CSA share for the summer, featuring pounds upon pounds of the stuff I could feel my past fears kicking in.  I tied off the bags, and put them deep in the crisper, but eventually the more friendly veggies, like squash and carrots were gone.  Something had to be done.

There’s now a whole region of the internet dedicated to kale recipes.  Some, particularly those that dowse the kale with some type of sugar, or make it a small part of a larger dish featuring shrimp sound like they could work, but others seem to have been posted by former coop-chefs’ with little idea what to do.  Few call for cooking the kale, and many require special treatment.  For instance, before mixing a lemon-kale salad with Parmesan (sounds pretty good, except the kale), you are invited to gently (oh so gently) massage the kale; I assume to relieve any stress it might be feeling, and loosen knots in the crinkled leaves that could lead to the eater needing some sort of temporomandibular joint disorder therapy.

Another common preparation is the “kale chip”.  These are popping up in organic food aisles at alarming prices.  $6.00 for 3 ounces of wannabe nori?  I can’t get behind that, no matter how well dredged it is in nutritional yeast flakes or totally organic orange cheese powder.  One online recipe proclaims it “great for parties and a good conversation starter”.  Woe on me if I ever hold a party where the chemistry is so low that I need a cruciferous vegetable to get things going, but the reviews suggest that for many these chips are a revelation, trumping even pancakes in a can, or the invention of the sliced apple.  People reported calling all their friends, fooling their children (how? how could you fool a child into thinking this was anything but a leaf with salt?), and repairing their relationship with their husbands, all of whom professed doubt these would be as good as Lays (who still buys Lays?  Please let me introduce you to a kettle chip), but were filled with new found admiration for their wives, and for our nations’ hardworking kale farmers.

When I announced to my family via our daily email that I would be making kale chips, my mother wrote “Kale chips.  Yum!”.  When I responded with my own doubts she amended “The yum for kale chips was, um, a question.” Honestly, that’s the response that makes the most sense to me, but still I decided to give it a shot.  After all, I had a lot of kale in the fridge, and I don’t know what happens when a superfood goes bad.  What if it was too super, too strong? I can only assume it would free itself from the crisper and then smother me in my sleep, before laying waste to Pittsburgh.

I cut the stems off the kale, rinsed the leaves, and then tore them down to chip-like size.  I dredged them in olive oil, a little pink Himalayan salt, and put them in the oven for 10-15 minutes before removing my handiwork.  To say the kale melts in your mouth would be a lie, but I ate one of the crinkled crisps, then another, and soon was piling handfuls of chips, as well as the limper, less well baked pieces into my mouth.  The kale chips were gone in under 10 minutes.  I made another batch, this one baked longer and with some garlic powder, and then another with garlic powder and rosemary.  So it’s with some chagrin given my previous, anti-kale stance, that I must admit that kale chips are delicious and addictive.  Partly, it’s a vehicle for whatever flavors you put on it while it bakes, but it also retains a reminder of kale’s signature strength.  Also, it’s lighter and crisper than a potato chip, with a seductive whisper, rather than crunch.  I have no pictures, because I ate the chips too fast, and in fact, I have no kale remaining in my crisper, and I’m considering the previously unthinkable: buying more kale.

In the most recent CSA pick up there was no kale, but instead several pounds of swiss chard.  If there is any leaf I’m less interested in than kale, it’s swiss chard.  Kale’s taste is strong, and for a leaf, has a certain meatiness to it.  But swiss chard tastes like sweet dirt. tossed in a roux with a little cream and nutmeg, this earthiness finds its voice, but now I wonder whether I can save myself by making chips.  “Chard chips”, despite the alliteration, doesn’t sound that great, in part because it could be confused with "charred chips", which I don't recommend, but maybe it could work.  Some how I’ve got to answer the question “What am I going to do with all this swiss chard?”.

More Thoughts on the Biomechanical Aspects of "Writing Process"

Earlier this month I posted an involved literature review tracing the history of the phrase "writing process".  I turned my nose up somewhat at the early concept of writing process, which referred to how we physically write.

Perhaps this reflected my own struggles with dysgraphia. Learning to write was a struggle for me, and prevented me from attaining the honor roll many times from 3-6th grade, at Northwest Elementary School in Leominster, MA, where at the time, cursive handwriting was still a graded class, and where I never earned a grade higher than a C+. 

These days, I rarely break out my cursive skills.  I haven't written a check in months, and I choose print for handwritten postcards and letters.  In fewer than 100 words, my hand begins to cramp, and I find myself wondering why I persist in this archaism.  Usually it's a romantic endeavor; a throwback to the days when "letters to a young poet" represented a personal commitment of an afternoon, would rather than 15 minutes typing an email, while also clicking Upworthy videos, and chatting with three people.  Other times the romance is more literal: there's still something to be said for receiving a handwritten note from a lover, that's unmatched by typed missives. 

Several years ago, I participated in a forum on another blog, where I championed the act of writing love letters.  Indeed, I even wrote some letters and notes in the last year, while wooing my fiancee, and intend to write her letters when she heads on scholarship to Lithuania later this summer, just as we wrote several more years ago while I was doing the residency mentioned in that blog.

Despite these things, there were few reliefs greater to me than when my family moved from Leominster, to Amherst, where not only did the Amherst Middle School not grade me on my cursive, but instead they recognized that every student should learn how to word process.  Previously, I hadn't bothered with typing.  When I turned in a portfolio of poems for a 6th grade English class, my Dad took out his blue plastic clad typewriter (I think a late 70s Smith Corona) and typed the poems for me, using two fingers to peck out the work.  And for a while, just as I had struggled in my cursive class, I also fell behind in typing class.  But this was due to lack of familiarity, not physical impediment.  I played the typing games, where one must type a certain number of words per minute, somehow motivating a tiny digitized runner to lope across the screen, gaining speed as you type more words per minute.  Many years later, when I registered at a temping agency in Iowa City, I was able to clear 70 wpm, and was somewhat disappointed I didn't get more.

With a new, functional smart phone, I've even begun using the note-taking feature to write down ideas for stories and poems.  But despite that convenience, I still carry with me a small writing pad, which I whip from my back pocket, not always, but for certain ideas.  For things that I feel the need not just to note, but to write down.  As though writing it and then returning to it in my very particular, stunted chicken scrawl might make a difference in my creative process. 

I was pondering that just this week, as I unpacked yet another bundle of tiny notepads and began flipping through them.  Surely there must be something special to the physical act of writing, something that transcends the speed we gain on a keyboard.  And reading the New York Times today, I came across just such an article, one suggesting that experts in Composition, and writers would be well served to occasionally pick up a pen or pencil. 

You can read more about the specific effects that handwriting has on the brain in this article: What's Lost as Handwriting Fades?

Lit Review: Etymology of the Phrase "Writing Process"

Lit Review: Tracing the Etymology of the Phrase “Writing Process” in Composition

Ori Fienberg

With one month left in the quarter, advisors and instructors in the College of Professional Studies at Northeastern University are making a final effort to encourage students to take advantage of writing tutoring.  For the students we frame this as help polishing their final papers, but the hope is that they will find the support so helpful, that they’ll schedule regular appointments throughout the next term so that they can work on the “writing process”, a term used casually be instructors, tutors, and administrators.  Everyone has a general sense of what this means, usually having to do with the completion and review of drafts earlier than the day before an assignment is due, but the notion is largely one we use idiomatically, without much awareness of its origins. 

 To begin the search for the first use of “writing process” as its most commonly used today, I turned to the Writing Programs Administrator’s Listserve (WPA-L), and discovered others have wondered about it as well. On July 9^th, 2013, Emily Issacs posed a question to the collective wisdom of the WPA-L with the subject “Writing is A Process.”  The body put the question “Who said it first?”.  Many people wrote back to suggest that it was Donald Murray, with several referencing his seminal 1972 article, containing the dictum in the title, “Teach Writing as a Process, Not a Product.”

Later in the day, John Wicker, a professor at Ohio State, provided several key citations focusing on the individual elements of Donald Murray’s dictum “process” and “product,” which are an indicator that while, tragically, many composition instructors and graders of writing still are very product-centric, emphasis on the importance of process dates back at least to the 1910s.  He notes an article by H.W. Davis in 1930 as having one of the earliest references to “writing process” as a distinct concept. In some respects searching for the earliest references to this phrase is a purely historical scavenger hunt, but by exploring the post-industrial texts that grapple with the same concepts and terms we discuss today, we can begin to plot the progress of composition as a discipline and reaffirm the importance of these concepts in the teaching of composition today.

While it may have been popularized in our current discourse by Donald Murray, article in 1972, “Teach Writing as a Process, Not a Product,” the term itself is at least as old as the field of composition.  Of course the origin of the field of composition is debatable, but rather than grasp at the straws of an exact date, it’s probably better to accept that most educational theory, pedagogical research, and anything to do with thinking or the mind has its roots in the birth of psychology. 

Early psychology was most concerned with physiological response than with the mind, so it’s little surprise that the first references to the “writing process,” in published research, apply to the motor skills necessary to physically hold and demonstrate writing with a pen/pencil.  Indeed reference to the “writing process” in motor terms dominates the discussion from about 1890 to 1910.  HH Bawden, in his Review of Ueber die Eigenschaften der Schrift bei Gesunden, identifies some key factors including “extent of stroke, rate, pressure, time occupied in the actual inscription, time consumed by pauses. . .” and these elements are thoroughly discussed in dozens of pamphlets, articles, and books concerned with teaching penmanship to school students (Bawden 420).  Curiously, after the turn of the century, another sedimentary layer of research concerning the writing process ties it to psychography, also known as automatic writing, which was treated as a topic for psychological study as late as 1915, when researchers sought to isolate and document the circumstances under which “mediums” were able to produce this effect (Downey and Anderson).

A shift in the literature on composition, both away from physical skill, and away from the occult happens roughly around the time John Dewey was working on, and then published, one of his best well known works “How We Think,” in 1910.  For instance, Edmund Burke Huey describes the writing process not only as physical, but as mental in his 1908 work “The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, with a Review of the History of Reading and Writing and of Methods, Texts, and Hygiene in Reading.” He traces the notion back to an in-between point on the continuum of writing and reading process, after mere consciousness, and as the “analytical process” begins (Huey 128). 

While these are early texts, it’s important not to discount them as out of date.  Huey’s research was cutting edge, and some of his studies of the physiology of the eye, using an eye-tracking technology he developed, and findings, such as that the eye pauses and stutters over letters and phonemes, rather than moving smoothly from right to left, have been confirmed through modern video recordings and computer analysis (Paulson and Goodman). Another example, which more closely ties to writing process, can be found in 1914, when Frank Nugent Freeman, an educational psychologist at the University of Chicago published “Experimental Analysis of the Writing Movement.”  His research could be read as a potential indicator of a psychomotor basis for linguistics, as he found that the learned movements of the fingers, hand, and arm, while tied to individual elements such as the writing of letters and the grouping of words are in fact “stages in the process of the organized whole” (Nugent 1).

The idea of the writing process, can be seen in an identical form, in HW Davis’ “Mastering Principles of Composition,” published in 1930.  The mere fact that there are principles to master suggests that many of the ideas in his article, possibly including the idea of writing process, which Davis uses very casually, are much older than this article.  Davis states that he “dimly recalls” learning the basics of English composition at university, and that they were likely based on early textbooks on rhetoric, published “sixty or seventy-five years ago” and relying heavily on Aristotle (Davis 796). Davis’ article is filled with humor and is eerie in the number of principles he subscribes to that still have major relevance in today’s field, holding forth on issues such as the importance of writing instructors also acting as practitioners, that errors are easier to grade than effectiveness, the value of doing your assignment before giving it to students, and even the role of will and desire in student success. 

Davis’ reference to writing process is presented less as a principle that composition instructors need learn or consider, but as a matter of fact, as he writes that teacher-assisted self-correction, “teaches the writers to observe and to know their own tendencies toward error, [and] it calls attention to the writing process rather than the finished product…”  There, imbedded at the end of the sentence, we can see writing process discussed in the exact same manner that Donald Murray presents it in 1972.  Given the casual nature of its use, it’s clear that we need to go back even earlier to determine who coined the phrase.

More than ten years earlier, Edward William Dolch Jr refers to the “writing process” in his 1918 Thesis Manuscript for the University of Wisconsin, “Some Objective Methods of Measuring Excellence in English Composition”.  Some of his objective methods involve the evaluation of excellence by calculating “Change in Probable Errors” and the measurement of “Median sentence length,” and so perhaps there’s a good reason why EW Dolch’s work in Composition has not persisted; however, this provides another example of a casual use of the “writing process,” again suggesting an even earlier origin (Dolch 26).

Roughly another ten years earlier a reference can be found in HE Conrad’s Mechanization of the Writing Process in Ohio Educational Monthly, Volume 56, 1907.  While the title may lead the reader to suspect that this is another dreary work on how to properly hold that singular technological achievement, the pencil, Conrad in fact mentions the writing process several times in nearly ecstatic tones.  He first notes that even, and maybe especially for the youngest students “… freedom of speech must be given, the floodgates of thought must be lifted and a desire for both oral and written expression must cause a spontaneous flow of language before the first steps of the writing process are taken” (Conrad 372).  Unfortunately, though this reference feels like the first step toward a new conception of the term, soon after Conrad has taken us back to the title, professing that “the copying of correct script and print models in both prose and verse is of great value in the early days and months of learning the writing process” (Conrad 374).  

Even so, it still seems that Conrad is on the brink of a new understanding of the phrase, as he rails against “busy work” and copying texts that bore students.  In his conclusion he declares that in order to effectively teach the writing process, “Thought is stimulated, and desire for expression is created by use of the child’s personal interests, observations and experiences before writing is attempted,” and later writes that “the pupil [should be] led to become his own critic as soon as possible and as far as possible… to arouse that self-activity so essential to the learning process,” (Conrad 376).  By alluding to both inspiration to write and proofreading of writing, Conrad neatly identifies two core steps that are a part of Donald Murray’s aforementioned essay in 1972.

After Conrad’s reference, the trail goes cold for a time on that specific phrase, though it’s clear that even if it wasn’t being discussed in exactly those terms, the idea of process in composition, aside from the small hand movements necessary to produce it, was still prevalent. 

For instance, Percival Chubb writes in his 1902 work, The Teaching of English, In the Elementary and the Secondary School, that “If the medium is words, oral or written, the child is engaged in the process of literary composition [emphasis added]” (Chubb 173).  He emphasizes his point by adding, “The task of the teacher is to help the child refine this natural process, and to raise speaking and writing to the dignity of an art. . .” (ibid).  Chubb alludes to the motor process of writing, but as separate from higher order mental activity (Chubb 73).  He is much more focused on processes as mental steps, and separating drill exercises and intuitive writing from the task of leading children to “ the conscious, ingenious mastery of the most elaborate and difficulty forms,” such as presumably the structuring of a classical argument or an analytical review (Chubb 195). 

While the trail runs cold before the turn of the century (without digitization, it’s hard to find the textbooks from the 1860s and 1870s that may have informed HW Davis’ use of the term), in many respects this is a semantic exploration rather than pedagogical: no matter the exact form of the term, it’s clear that “process” or “development” has been important part of the discussion on writing pedagogy going back specifically to the turn of the century, more generally Aristotle’s discourses on rhetoric, and possibly even further.  Despite the depth of agreement among professionals, students still fail to understand writing as a process rather than a product.  Possibly this is because without context, students don’t hear the wisdom of multiple generations of teaching scholarship, but instead just another overused educational term.   

With more context and explanation, rather than repetition of terms, students may begin getting the support they need to develop and clarify their written arguments and research, not just in the last weeks, but from the beginning of each term, and the moment they begin the physical aspects of the writing process, by putting pen to paper or fingers to keys.  As H. Heath Bawden said, “it is a beginning in the right direction and promises much” (Bawden 422).

Work Cited

Bawden, H. Heath. “Review of Ueber die Eigenschaften der Schrift bei Gesunden.” Psychological      Review. Vol 7(4), Jul 1900, 420-422.      

Chubb, Percival.  The Teaching of English in the Elementary and the Secondary School. New York:          The Macmillan Company, 1902.

Conrad, HE.  “The Mechanization of the Writing Process.” Ohio Educational Monthly. Volume 56.    Pp. 372-377.

Davis, H.W. “Mastering Principles of Composition.” The English Journal , Vol. 19, No. 10. December          1930. Pp. 795-803.

Dolch Jr, Edward William. University of Wisconsin: “Some Objective Methods of Measuring          Excellence in English Composition.” 1918.

Downey, June E. and John E. Anderson.  “Automatic Writing.” The American Journal of Psychology.     Vol. 26, No. 2. April 1915.

Freeman, Frank N.  “Experimental Analysis of the Writing Movement.”  Yale Psychological Studies, II    (New Series), Psychological Monographs no.75.  1914.

Huey, Edmond Burke. The psychology and pedagogy of reading: With a review of the history of     reading and writing and of methods, text, and hygiene of reading. New York, NY: The    Macmillan Company. 1908.

Isaacs, Emily and John Wicker, et al.  Writing is A Process: Who said it first? Writing Program        Administrators Listserve (WPA-L). Digest: July 9^th 2013.

Murray, Donald. “Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product.”  The Leaflet. November 1972.

Paulson, Eric J. and Kenneth S. Goodman.  “Influential Studies in Eye-Movement Research.”        International Reading Association. Posted January 1999.  Accessed March 18^th, 2014.

Skyrim Autobiography of Ori: Level 55 Wander, Adventurer, Dragonborn

Guards envy me and my adventuring ways, but still suspect me (with reasonable justification) stealing all that's not bolted down.  Ladies love me and give me better prices, jarls want to be me.  Shopkeepers count me among their dear friends.  I have spoken with gods, and killed demons. 

The Forsaken quiver in their furry boots when I visit their nasty plateaus.  After I've killed them, I strip their bodies, but leave the weakly enchanted weapons they gave their lives to protect.  I use the hearts of their shaman in potions that I will never use. 

I have one house, in the first city that made me a thane, with a housecarl, who I've never touched, though she clearly wants to jump my bones, which I have collected from dragons, so many that I have lost track of where I stashed them.  

When I've uncovered massive ruins, filled with enemies, I summon forth a Dremora Lord, and listen to my enemies pitiful screams as he cleaves through their feeble iron armor with one swing of his great sword and then cackles "There could be no other end!" 

In my early days of adventuring, I considered myself quite the chef, but now I sometimes go weeks without eating, my only sustenance life-sustaining potions, and spells that draw on my deep magical reservoirs.  My last true meal was raw horse meat, eaten after my mount was side-swiped by a bear.  I killed the bear and ate its claws, because I could.

I am the greatest smith in the land.  Give me two ingots of iron and I will give you legendary dagger that outshines your family heirlooms.  My daedric armor is the fortress I walk within.  Sometimes, during battle with lesser foes, including everyone, but the strongest of ancient and blood dragons, I lose the will to fight. In the old days, the Falmor pushed me to my limit.  Now I admire the strange beauty of their glowing underground lair as they hack ineffectually at my armor, till, sometimes after hours of exertion, they die as a result of many reflected blows.

My enchanted jewelry is even more powerful than it is beautiful.  I travel with a pocket full of diamond rings and necklaces.  They make me stronger, quieter, and healthier.  With the right accessories, I can unlock the most secure chests, or kill giants with one swing of my life-absorbing sword.  Even so, I yearn for more power.  The ability to put two enchantments on a single item alludes me.

My book collection rivals the library at the Mages College (where I am the arch mage).  I possess rare books, skill books, and books of spells I've already learned.  Some books tell stories of ancient weapons that I have found, improved upon, and sold for a pittance to innkeepers or the travelling khajit. 

I've discovered hundreds of ruins, forts, and homesteads.  I've completed dozens of quests, but still have so much to do.  Dragons plague the land, and Stormcloaks, Empire, and Thalmor troops all engage in petty diplomatic and war games that bore me to tears.  I could walk into the cities of their egotistical rulers and slaughter all who challenge me. 

Sometimes I've even tried, but while their guards fall before me, like the wheat I swipe from farmers' fields as they watch, their rulers cannot be killed, and merely groan, collapsed on the floor for several moments, before rising to continue their limp-wristed dagger stabs.  Sometimes in these fits of rage, I will eventually resign myself to their Sisyphean attacks: I am the stone, destined to always roll back to a time before, as even in death, I awaken on the threshold of my rage, with opportunity to begin again, the killed guards return as though I slaughtered them in a dream that I have just woken from.

Despite these moments of ennui, I still find much joy in the world.  There's so much to learn.  Even when I became a legendary alchemist, I still did not know the mysterious 3rd and 4th properties of many of my herbs and reagents.  Sometimes, I'll even come across an ingredient I've never encountered, like ground mammoth tusk, or wisp wrappings. Even so, a few months ago I made the choice to give up all I'd learned of Alchemy, and thus redirect some of my mental energy to other endeavors.

It was a necessary sacrifice, because I find that it's harder and harder for me to reach the epiphanic revelations that seemed to accompany every day of my early career.  I have become comfortable with my best skills, and now must become a master of all the disciplines I'd previous despised or ignored. 

My skin has grown soft beneath my heavy armor, and I feel naked and slick as a slaughterfish when I break out my light armor.  The great sword is slow and heavy, despite my strong hands.  Though I like to pilfer, rarely have I picked the pockets of the towns people.  What could they have to interest me?  Their amethyst wedding ring?  The key to their depressing hovel?  Despite this doubt, and a faint distaste at this sort of behavior, it is a skill I've ignored, and thus I have resolved to see if it could be of any future use.

Maybe this is a sign that the final chapter of my adventuring remains to be written.  Wearing my amulet of Mara, I've discovered women across the region, attractive, capable women, of a variety of races, are more than willing to become my wife and tend my home (when they're not collecting bear hides, or working their forge). 

Perhaps even, it is time to put a stop to these dragon attacks, and settle down in 1-9 cities with 1-9 wives.  At the same time, I've heard Ulfric and the jarls speak of the tradition of Kingsmoot, and I wonder, with all the dragon souls I've absorbed, am I not meant for some greater purpose?