When I was growing up, in Ardmore, Oklahoma, I felt rather alone in the world, as I'm sure many, perhaps most, children do. I attended a kindergarten in the home of a young Englishwoman who had come to the U.S. as a refugee from WWII, perhaps because she had married a Yank. I'm not sure. When I turned five, she told my parents that I should be in school, but at five, one could not attend public school in Oklahoma, as was probably the case in the 1950s most everywhere in the U.S.
In Ardmore, OK, however, there was a little old lady named Mrs. Stanley. Mrs. Stanley had an established first grade that a friend of my mother's, Carol Saylor, knew of and encouraged my parents to send me to along with her daughter, Sally.
Mrs. Stanley's school was in her bungalow house, classic Arts and Crafts (an architectural designation I would not know until almost twenty years later), the front living room of which had been transformed into a classroom. Mrs. Stanley sat in a rocking chair on raised wooden planks resembling a dais, with a large blackboard above her. She had a long wooden pointer that she used to address the blackboard, and we sat at wooden desks that lifted up for book and paper storage and retained their inkwells from an earlier era.
If one of the children brought Mrs. Stanley an apple, something that little kids still did in the 1950s, she would cut the apple into thin slices for the class to share. To this day, I don't like biting into an apple. I like the apple cut into thin slices.
We children were instructed in spelling bees, standing in line, calling out our answers thus:
ELEPHANT
E
E-L
E-L-E
E-L-E-P-H-A-N-T
ELEPHANT
We also learned to do addition and subtraction.
Most significant to me was the only book that our parents were required to purchase for us. It was a tiny little volume, yet one that transformed my life forever.
The book is a primer -- what a wonderfully old-fashioned word -- of Longfellow's extended poem The Song of Hiawatha.
The book is one of many developed by the educator and early feminist Florence Holbrook.
In Mrs. Stanley's bungalow I memorized:
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the Big-Sea-Water.
The illustration that accompanies these lines and the illustrations that grace the rest of the poem are exquisite. They are full-color plates and, like Longfellow's poem, romantic in their conception, realized just as Edward S. Curtis was exhibiting the first images of his prodigious photographic project. How could Longfellow's rhythmic, idealized fiction not capture the imagination of a five-year-old.
Florence Holbrook, educator and feminist, was also a peace activist. A member of the Chicago Political Equality League and the Chicago Peace Society, she attended The Hague Peace Conference in July 1915 as a delegate to the Women's Congress for Peace and Freedom. She is pictured here, #10. The earliest reference I have found for the peace initiative is to the publication The Advocate for Peace in 1913.
After the tutelage of the seminal figures of Mrs. Stanley and Florence Holbrook combined, I went to public school for second grade -- and shut down. There I was supposed to read "Run, Tip, run." (My Dick and Jane had Tip, not Spot.) The quick fix of the day was the deadening film strip. (Do readers of a certain age remember these?) How could this compete with the exoticism of Hiawatha? My second grade report cards descended to D's.
My parents always insisted that having sent me to Mrs. Stanley's was the greatest mistake they ever made. I have always contended that it was the most blessed turn of events that could ever have befallen me.
Other books created by Florence Holbrook:
The Book of Nature Myths
Cave, Mound and Lake Dwellers (and Other Primitive People)
Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades
Elementary Geography
Every-Day Speller
From Many Lands: A Third Reader
Northland Heroes
Poetry for Schools
'Round the Year in Myth and Song
Why the Crocodile Has a Wide Mouth and Other Nature Myths
November 28, 2009
November 25, 2009
The Tyranny of Turkey
I have eaten the most wonderful wild turkey, but most of my Thanksgivings have been meals of generic, grocery store birds. I just do not like it. It's somewhat okay for leftovers but even then it's rather bland.
I have known people who have turned Thanksgiving on its ear. A friend in graduate school traditionally did corned beef and cabbage; my ex-mother-in-law always did a rare leg of lamb; I am partial to an alternative fowl -- Cornish game hens stuffed with onions, garlic, celery and whatever else. What's the fixation on turkey?
I have, however, established one incontrovertible tradition: cranberry sauce. I grew up with the jellied stuff in the can, which when expelled from its can by opening both ends with a can opener, retains the indentations of said can. As an adult I discovered fresh cranberries and have been in love with them, riffing on the theme ever since.
This year's cranberry sauce is more or less:
Ginger Cranberry Sauce
One bag of fresh cranberries, rinsed.
Boil the cranberries at medium heat in about a cup of unsweetened cranberry juice until they start to pop. (Water will do, but the cranberry juice is a concept I just discovered this year perusing recipes. This deserves a Duh!!)
While the cranberries are still warm add in the zest and the juice of one naval orange, a small handful of dried cranberries so that they will plump, a good tablespoon or more of fresh, coarsely chopped ginger, about a third cup of honey, and a grating of fresh nutmeg. (I wonder if rosemary might be a wonderful addition, too? Just thought of that.)
You still need a little more sweetness to balance off the tart. I like to use an orange marmalade, about a third of a 10 ounce jar. This year I found the French St. Daflour ginger and orange marmalade, the least expensive marmalade in the exclusive grocery.
Once the mixture has cooled, add a douse of Cointreau, an orange liqueur, and some crushed walnuts for texture.
The flavor notes:
Voila!!
I have known people who have turned Thanksgiving on its ear. A friend in graduate school traditionally did corned beef and cabbage; my ex-mother-in-law always did a rare leg of lamb; I am partial to an alternative fowl -- Cornish game hens stuffed with onions, garlic, celery and whatever else. What's the fixation on turkey?
I have, however, established one incontrovertible tradition: cranberry sauce. I grew up with the jellied stuff in the can, which when expelled from its can by opening both ends with a can opener, retains the indentations of said can. As an adult I discovered fresh cranberries and have been in love with them, riffing on the theme ever since.
This year's cranberry sauce is more or less:
Ginger Cranberry Sauce
One bag of fresh cranberries, rinsed.
Boil the cranberries at medium heat in about a cup of unsweetened cranberry juice until they start to pop. (Water will do, but the cranberry juice is a concept I just discovered this year perusing recipes. This deserves a Duh!!)
While the cranberries are still warm add in the zest and the juice of one naval orange, a small handful of dried cranberries so that they will plump, a good tablespoon or more of fresh, coarsely chopped ginger, about a third cup of honey, and a grating of fresh nutmeg. (I wonder if rosemary might be a wonderful addition, too? Just thought of that.)
You still need a little more sweetness to balance off the tart. I like to use an orange marmalade, about a third of a 10 ounce jar. This year I found the French St. Daflour ginger and orange marmalade, the least expensive marmalade in the exclusive grocery.
Once the mixture has cooled, add a douse of Cointreau, an orange liqueur, and some crushed walnuts for texture.
The flavor notes:
- cranberry
- orange
- ginger
- with a hint of nutmeg and the crunch of walnuts
Voila!!
November 24, 2009
Table Manners
It gives me some satisfaction that I am not alone in my inability to ignore (certainly not avoid) the incivility of the public world, yet I am saddened by its ubiquity.
Stanley Fish asked readers to add to his list of irritating utterances, some of which he rightly calls "programmatic lying," in his November 16 NYT Opinionator online commentary "Can I Put You on Hold?" The column elicited an outpouring of responses, one subset of which were complaints about the chummy wait staff who have been instructed to introduce themselves at the beginning and intrude throughout the meal.
I was struck, however, that these were among the few posts that received criticism instead of commiseration. Those who were put off by "Hi, my name is Chuck; I'll be your waiter" and "Is everything all right?" were admonished for being overly sensitive at best and downright misanthropic at worst. In defense of the malcontents I would add another question I find annoying. I have an empty glass; the waiter stands over me with a pitcher and asks, "Would you like more water?"
There is often more to the problem than mere chattiness. The questions are (it seems inevitably) asked just as I've put a forkful of food into my mouth. Glasses are set down anywhere on the table instead of to the upper right of the place setting and are set with the hand directed downward, fingers grasping the rim. There's the even more intrusive behaviour of squatting to be at armpit level with the table to jot down the order. On more than one occasion I've had someone come along with a broom and dustpan to sweep the floor under the table where I am dining. At the end of the experience, I'm asked: "How was everything?"
I have learned to dare not respond to this question. In point of fact I am not being asked to respond unless it is in the affirmative, making the query redundant in the first place. Should I mention a single problem with food or service I am met with excuses, justifications, rationalizations that exonerate the restaurant and everyone associated with it while making me the offending presence.
People used to employ non-verbal cues to communicate with wait staff -- and the wait staff used to be trained to read those cues so as to avoid asking unnecessary questions. As long as I am perusing the menu, I am not ready to order. Once I have closed the menu and laid it on the table, I am ready; there is no need to ask, "Do you need more time to look at the menu?" or "Are you ready to order?"
I am finished eating when my knife and fork are inverted side by side on my plate (not while the food-filled fork is traveling to my mouth -- even if it is my last bite), though I would feel more comfortable if my plate were not removed before my companion also finishes eating.
OK, so I'm a snob, but attention to these little actions used to be called "simple good manners." There are some rather obscure rules of etiquette that we need not cling to, and some downright silly ones: Who came up with the idea that one must leave some food on one's plate? But that does not negate the adage: Etiquette tells one which fork to use. Manners tell one what to do when one's neighbor doesn't.
People behave as if manners are a burdensome elitist relic, as if by discarding them we have liberated ourselves. Manners have evolved because they make life easier. Life is hard enough as it is. Why not alleviate some wee bit of the awkwardness of social interaction through the simple thoughtfulness of manners?
PS A lovely little movie was released earlier this year called The Invention of Lying, co-written by Ricky Gervais, who also stars. (Gervais conceived the premise for The Office and its offshoots.) The film could as easily been called The Invention of Manners, for both manners and white lies are vehicles of kindness with which we treat others.
Peter Ustinov once wrote, “Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.”
Stanley Fish asked readers to add to his list of irritating utterances, some of which he rightly calls "programmatic lying," in his November 16 NYT Opinionator online commentary "Can I Put You on Hold?" The column elicited an outpouring of responses, one subset of which were complaints about the chummy wait staff who have been instructed to introduce themselves at the beginning and intrude throughout the meal.
I was struck, however, that these were among the few posts that received criticism instead of commiseration. Those who were put off by "Hi, my name is Chuck; I'll be your waiter" and "Is everything all right?" were admonished for being overly sensitive at best and downright misanthropic at worst. In defense of the malcontents I would add another question I find annoying. I have an empty glass; the waiter stands over me with a pitcher and asks, "Would you like more water?"
There is often more to the problem than mere chattiness. The questions are (it seems inevitably) asked just as I've put a forkful of food into my mouth. Glasses are set down anywhere on the table instead of to the upper right of the place setting and are set with the hand directed downward, fingers grasping the rim. There's the even more intrusive behaviour of squatting to be at armpit level with the table to jot down the order. On more than one occasion I've had someone come along with a broom and dustpan to sweep the floor under the table where I am dining. At the end of the experience, I'm asked: "How was everything?"
I have learned to dare not respond to this question. In point of fact I am not being asked to respond unless it is in the affirmative, making the query redundant in the first place. Should I mention a single problem with food or service I am met with excuses, justifications, rationalizations that exonerate the restaurant and everyone associated with it while making me the offending presence.
People used to employ non-verbal cues to communicate with wait staff -- and the wait staff used to be trained to read those cues so as to avoid asking unnecessary questions. As long as I am perusing the menu, I am not ready to order. Once I have closed the menu and laid it on the table, I am ready; there is no need to ask, "Do you need more time to look at the menu?" or "Are you ready to order?"
I am finished eating when my knife and fork are inverted side by side on my plate (not while the food-filled fork is traveling to my mouth -- even if it is my last bite), though I would feel more comfortable if my plate were not removed before my companion also finishes eating.
OK, so I'm a snob, but attention to these little actions used to be called "simple good manners." There are some rather obscure rules of etiquette that we need not cling to, and some downright silly ones: Who came up with the idea that one must leave some food on one's plate? But that does not negate the adage: Etiquette tells one which fork to use. Manners tell one what to do when one's neighbor doesn't.
People behave as if manners are a burdensome elitist relic, as if by discarding them we have liberated ourselves. Manners have evolved because they make life easier. Life is hard enough as it is. Why not alleviate some wee bit of the awkwardness of social interaction through the simple thoughtfulness of manners?
PS A lovely little movie was released earlier this year called The Invention of Lying, co-written by Ricky Gervais, who also stars. (Gervais conceived the premise for The Office and its offshoots.) The film could as easily been called The Invention of Manners, for both manners and white lies are vehicles of kindness with which we treat others.
Peter Ustinov once wrote, “Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.”
November 19, 2009
A Blog By Any Other Name
I have never been able to keep a successful journal. I've tried, but I'm just no good at it. I make notes but I wouldn't call that a journal.
A journal is something like pseudo praying. I came to that realization one night when I was about 11 or 12, trying to engage in something I would have called prayer at the time. I suddenly understood that I was simply talking to myself. I wasn't doing what I think would be theologically understood as prayer. It wasn't meditative in a religious way; it was just me talking to myself. That's what a journal is. Talking to oneself.
My medium of communication used to be letter writing, until the advent of email. When email first emerged I would write emails in the same way I would write letters.
An email is supposed to be succinct, not the equivalent of my four page, longhand letters. People would tell me that I shouldn't write long emails. So I continued to write letters that I sent through the mail until typing on a keyboard supplanted my ability to script. Now, I am ashamed to say, unless it is a letter of condolence or a birthday card to a dear friend, I rarely write in longhand. I email.
The blog medium trumps the journal in that it is, in its cyberspace way, personal -- should one wish it to be -- or public -- should one make that choice instead. Or more correctly, not either/or but a combination of the two.
The public aspect of the web log means that, if one has any sense at all, content is consciously censored for the public view, unlike a tell-all private journal. I find that to be a wonderful challenge, for even if no one ever reads a blog, it must be, from my point of view, edited, censored, thoughtfully conceived.
I have used "one" throughout here as a first person singular as opposed to the more commonly used "you." I don't like "you" in English because "you" makes no differentiation between"you" singular and "you" plural. English speakers, depending on their geographic dialect, try to correct for this. In the south, people say "you all" or the elided "y'all." In southwestern Pennsylvania the solution has become "younns" [spoken -- no idea how it should be spelled out].
A journal is something like pseudo praying. I came to that realization one night when I was about 11 or 12, trying to engage in something I would have called prayer at the time. I suddenly understood that I was simply talking to myself. I wasn't doing what I think would be theologically understood as prayer. It wasn't meditative in a religious way; it was just me talking to myself. That's what a journal is. Talking to oneself.
My medium of communication used to be letter writing, until the advent of email. When email first emerged I would write emails in the same way I would write letters.
An email is supposed to be succinct, not the equivalent of my four page, longhand letters. People would tell me that I shouldn't write long emails. So I continued to write letters that I sent through the mail until typing on a keyboard supplanted my ability to script. Now, I am ashamed to say, unless it is a letter of condolence or a birthday card to a dear friend, I rarely write in longhand. I email.
The blog medium trumps the journal in that it is, in its cyberspace way, personal -- should one wish it to be -- or public -- should one make that choice instead. Or more correctly, not either/or but a combination of the two.
The public aspect of the web log means that, if one has any sense at all, content is consciously censored for the public view, unlike a tell-all private journal. I find that to be a wonderful challenge, for even if no one ever reads a blog, it must be, from my point of view, edited, censored, thoughtfully conceived.
I have used "one" throughout here as a first person singular as opposed to the more commonly used "you." I don't like "you" in English because "you" makes no differentiation between"you" singular and "you" plural. English speakers, depending on their geographic dialect, try to correct for this. In the south, people say "you all" or the elided "y'all." In southwestern Pennsylvania the solution has become "younns" [spoken -- no idea how it should be spelled out].
November 13, 2009
Autumn Leaves and the Four Seasons
San Antonio, Texas, has no autumn leaves. There is a city park called Lost Maples some miles out, where people have told me I can crunch through fallen leaves, but one has to drive miles out to do it. My idea of the experience of autumn is that it is simply there as a process of nature, not something I have to drive to witness like a Christmas lights extravaganza.
There is a wonderful song from the 1940s, The Autumn Leaves, originally French. Who knew...
The autumn leaves
Drift by my window
The autumn leaves
Of red and gold.
I see your lips
The summer kisses
The sunburnt hands
I used to hold.
But since I went away
The days grow long
And soon I'll hear
Old winter's song.
But I miss you most of all,
My darling,
When autumn leaves begin to fall.
It is a haunting melody, and even as a child, when I heard it I imagined myself in a New York City apartment with Frank Lloyd Wright-esque corner windows, watching the changing foliage viewed across Central Park.
Raking leaves is a wonderfully exhilarating activity, part of the process of preparing for winter. The part of the cycle that is winter has its place, too. The cold, the snow -- it gives another dimension to the passing of the years.
None of that happens here, making this time of the year, for me at least, entirely bizarre. No transitions. How does one prepare for Thanksgiving with no autumn leaves? How anticipate the Christmas season without a hint of cold or snow?
Until I lived here I had no idea the degree to which my memory is integrally tied into the changing of the seasons. Something magical happened when there were autumn leaves, or when snow was on the ground, or when the snowdrops pushed their blossoms up from under that white blanket, or when the lilacs bloomed or peonies were overrun with ants that would be the catalyst for their flowering.
When did this or that happen in the monotony of this climate. I have no frame of reference. I long for the seasons -- all four of them.
There is a wonderful song from the 1940s, The Autumn Leaves, originally French. Who knew...
The autumn leaves
Drift by my window
The autumn leaves
Of red and gold.
I see your lips
The summer kisses
The sunburnt hands
I used to hold.
But since I went away
The days grow long
And soon I'll hear
Old winter's song.
But I miss you most of all,
My darling,
When autumn leaves begin to fall.
It is a haunting melody, and even as a child, when I heard it I imagined myself in a New York City apartment with Frank Lloyd Wright-esque corner windows, watching the changing foliage viewed across Central Park.
Raking leaves is a wonderfully exhilarating activity, part of the process of preparing for winter. The part of the cycle that is winter has its place, too. The cold, the snow -- it gives another dimension to the passing of the years.
None of that happens here, making this time of the year, for me at least, entirely bizarre. No transitions. How does one prepare for Thanksgiving with no autumn leaves? How anticipate the Christmas season without a hint of cold or snow?
Until I lived here I had no idea the degree to which my memory is integrally tied into the changing of the seasons. Something magical happened when there were autumn leaves, or when snow was on the ground, or when the snowdrops pushed their blossoms up from under that white blanket, or when the lilacs bloomed or peonies were overrun with ants that would be the catalyst for their flowering.
When did this or that happen in the monotony of this climate. I have no frame of reference. I long for the seasons -- all four of them.
November 11, 2009
Hands
When asked what physical attribute I like most about myself, I inevitably reply that I admire my hands.
At this age my hands are somewhat arthritic and not as expressive as they used to be. Yet I still find pleasure in them. I speak as much with my hands as I do with words and always have. And I always watch the hands of others -- especially of artists.
In the mid-seventies I took a photograph of my friend Terry Salzmann's hands hammering to create one of her folded copper bowls. The photograph was the graphic for her MFA graduate exhibition announcement and a print hangs on my wall today. In that photograph is the bowl she made that she gave to me more than a decade later. I love it because it is hers, but also because it is a work of art -- not a bowl one could ever use for anything, but a purely gratuitous expression of the creative imagination.
One of my favorite novels is Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. I have taught it many times, I am so in love with it.
The first chapter of the 1947 novel, following the introduction "Book of the Grotesques" [for we are all grotesques], is about Wing Biddlebaum. Wing has settled in Winesburg in an attempt to escape the fact that he has been found out, not so much as gay but as "one of those men in whom the force that creates life is diffused, not centralised." A boy has gone "forth to tell his dreams as facts." And that is the undoing of Adolph Myers who becomes known as Wing Biddlebaum in his exile. With little said, Anderson communicates the anxieties of Wing's nervous hands, hands that led to the false accusations that have made him seek asylum and anonymity in Winesburg.
All of the residents of Winesburg have secrets, betrayals and griefs; yet all are saved by the grace of their humanity.
I consider the central chapter of the novel to be "Tandy." It is more about the mysterious stranger who arrives in Winesburg, and stays at Tom Hard's hotel, than it is about Hard's daughter, Tandy.
The stranger says, "I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean." The child Tandy is, for him, "the quality of being strong to be loved." He goes on, "Be brave enough to dare to be loved. Be something more than man or woman. Be Tandy." And then he disappears as the mysterious stranger typically does.
For me, Tandy is not the girl per se. Rather she is a concept of self realization. Not in the sense of egoism or narcissism but of the self reliance that comes with a belief in one's self and what that holds for future potential. And that is what the rest of the novel is about, hope for youth to transform the future.
It has always been one of my favorite novels within the canon of American literature -- a novel about the self-made possibilities of the central character Tom Willard who has been nurtured amongst the community of his small town upbringing. They are human in their grotesqueries -- and loving and well-wishing in spite of their human frailties. He wishes to break away into the broader sensibility of an urban adulthood, and in the closing scene of the novel the entire cast of Winesburg sees him off.
Tom is the diametric opposite of Gatsby, who has manufacured his self-image in the quest for his fantasy of Daisy. Greil Marcus has called these grotesques, which he finds personified in American folkloric story and song, the characters of "the old, weird America."
I can only hope that in some backwater, someone like me is still making Winesburg, Ohio required reading in an obscure American literature class.
At this age my hands are somewhat arthritic and not as expressive as they used to be. Yet I still find pleasure in them. I speak as much with my hands as I do with words and always have. And I always watch the hands of others -- especially of artists.
In the mid-seventies I took a photograph of my friend Terry Salzmann's hands hammering to create one of her folded copper bowls. The photograph was the graphic for her MFA graduate exhibition announcement and a print hangs on my wall today. In that photograph is the bowl she made that she gave to me more than a decade later. I love it because it is hers, but also because it is a work of art -- not a bowl one could ever use for anything, but a purely gratuitous expression of the creative imagination.
One of my favorite novels is Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. I have taught it many times, I am so in love with it.
The first chapter of the 1947 novel, following the introduction "Book of the Grotesques" [for we are all grotesques], is about Wing Biddlebaum. Wing has settled in Winesburg in an attempt to escape the fact that he has been found out, not so much as gay but as "one of those men in whom the force that creates life is diffused, not centralised." A boy has gone "forth to tell his dreams as facts." And that is the undoing of Adolph Myers who becomes known as Wing Biddlebaum in his exile. With little said, Anderson communicates the anxieties of Wing's nervous hands, hands that led to the false accusations that have made him seek asylum and anonymity in Winesburg.
All of the residents of Winesburg have secrets, betrayals and griefs; yet all are saved by the grace of their humanity.
I consider the central chapter of the novel to be "Tandy." It is more about the mysterious stranger who arrives in Winesburg, and stays at Tom Hard's hotel, than it is about Hard's daughter, Tandy.
The stranger says, "I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean." The child Tandy is, for him, "the quality of being strong to be loved." He goes on, "Be brave enough to dare to be loved. Be something more than man or woman. Be Tandy." And then he disappears as the mysterious stranger typically does.
For me, Tandy is not the girl per se. Rather she is a concept of self realization. Not in the sense of egoism or narcissism but of the self reliance that comes with a belief in one's self and what that holds for future potential. And that is what the rest of the novel is about, hope for youth to transform the future.
It has always been one of my favorite novels within the canon of American literature -- a novel about the self-made possibilities of the central character Tom Willard who has been nurtured amongst the community of his small town upbringing. They are human in their grotesqueries -- and loving and well-wishing in spite of their human frailties. He wishes to break away into the broader sensibility of an urban adulthood, and in the closing scene of the novel the entire cast of Winesburg sees him off.
Tom is the diametric opposite of Gatsby, who has manufacured his self-image in the quest for his fantasy of Daisy. Greil Marcus has called these grotesques, which he finds personified in American folkloric story and song, the characters of "the old, weird America."
I can only hope that in some backwater, someone like me is still making Winesburg, Ohio required reading in an obscure American literature class.
Two Birds, One Stone
"Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests'." ~~ Notebooks, 1937
"There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive." ~~ Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, 1960
Neither of Albert Camus's observations is new to you, I'm sure. One would think that with the regularity with which they are quoted they might actually have had some impact on democratic political discourse. Sadly, that has not been the case.
The national debate over health care has turned into, what? I was about to use the rather stale word "circus" but that would be too kind. I had some naive fantasy that the election of Barak Obama would result in a more measured discussion. Certainly the Obama administration is better than the Bush mafia, but the right-wing loonies are drowning out even the slimmest chances of meaningful health care (or any other kind of) reform.
In all fairness, this is in part due to perverted remnants of our Puritan founding. As the persecuted religious followers became the agents of their own communities, they self righteously demanded conformity. That trait we have come to call the Puritan work ethic had its good side and its bad. As immigrants to a new continent it provided an entrepreneurial drive in the face of daunting odds, but it also justified a disdain for the poor whose need could be dismissively attributed to an outward manifestation of their presumed sloth.
The Puritan's evangelical offspring have bred down the years, spawning the ludicrous "theologies" of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority; Pat Robertson's Law of Reciprocity, amplified in the ministry of Kenneth Hagin and the self-help empire of Joel Osteen; and James Bakker's Prosperity Theology. These are effectively augmented by the ear-splitting rantings of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, et al.
There is plenty of incivility in other places on the globe. The UK goes apoplectic over soccer. The only people more intoxicated with the zombie state of mind induced by electronic devices than Americans are probably the Japanese. But are they screaming at each other over their airwaves? (Maybe the Brits are, but I'd venture a guess that the Japanese are not.)
If we do get health care "reform" I fear it will require those ironic quotation marks. Health care subsidies so we can buy private insurance ourselves? An insurance exchange? No single payer option? And why should it be an option? Why not just single payer? The solution is going to be just as zany as the problem.
It may be a moot point since it looks as if the last trick out of the Republican's hat, the Stupak Amendment (that will disallow the expenditure of a dime on abortion health care and will disallow a woman from purchasing insurance from a private insurer that provides abortion coverage), threatens not only to sabotage the victory of Roe vs. Wade, but will kill even a remote possibility of passing health care reform legislation altogether.
Those are two really big birds to fell with that one Stupak stone.
See Jane Smiley's 09/17/2009 HuffPost Book Review on Republican Gomorrah, which I read two days after writing this.
"There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive." ~~ Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, 1960
Neither of Albert Camus's observations is new to you, I'm sure. One would think that with the regularity with which they are quoted they might actually have had some impact on democratic political discourse. Sadly, that has not been the case.
The national debate over health care has turned into, what? I was about to use the rather stale word "circus" but that would be too kind. I had some naive fantasy that the election of Barak Obama would result in a more measured discussion. Certainly the Obama administration is better than the Bush mafia, but the right-wing loonies are drowning out even the slimmest chances of meaningful health care (or any other kind of) reform.
In all fairness, this is in part due to perverted remnants of our Puritan founding. As the persecuted religious followers became the agents of their own communities, they self righteously demanded conformity. That trait we have come to call the Puritan work ethic had its good side and its bad. As immigrants to a new continent it provided an entrepreneurial drive in the face of daunting odds, but it also justified a disdain for the poor whose need could be dismissively attributed to an outward manifestation of their presumed sloth.
The Puritan's evangelical offspring have bred down the years, spawning the ludicrous "theologies" of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority; Pat Robertson's Law of Reciprocity, amplified in the ministry of Kenneth Hagin and the self-help empire of Joel Osteen; and James Bakker's Prosperity Theology. These are effectively augmented by the ear-splitting rantings of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, et al.
There is plenty of incivility in other places on the globe. The UK goes apoplectic over soccer. The only people more intoxicated with the zombie state of mind induced by electronic devices than Americans are probably the Japanese. But are they screaming at each other over their airwaves? (Maybe the Brits are, but I'd venture a guess that the Japanese are not.)
If we do get health care "reform" I fear it will require those ironic quotation marks. Health care subsidies so we can buy private insurance ourselves? An insurance exchange? No single payer option? And why should it be an option? Why not just single payer? The solution is going to be just as zany as the problem.
It may be a moot point since it looks as if the last trick out of the Republican's hat, the Stupak Amendment (that will disallow the expenditure of a dime on abortion health care and will disallow a woman from purchasing insurance from a private insurer that provides abortion coverage), threatens not only to sabotage the victory of Roe vs. Wade, but will kill even a remote possibility of passing health care reform legislation altogether.
Those are two really big birds to fell with that one Stupak stone.
See Jane Smiley's 09/17/2009 HuffPost Book Review on Republican Gomorrah, which I read two days after writing this.
The Glorious Olive
This is an entry of a different ilk. In the year before I moved to San Antonio, and the first year I lived here, I had little money. One of the enterprises I undertook was writing a food column for a lifestyle magazine in Tampa, FL. At the time I was living without a kitchen. Some of the recipes were created from memory (like this one); others were created in my imagination, fingers hovering over a keyboard. (Was it duplicitous to have not kitchen-tested every recipe?)
A glorious tree flourishes in our Dorian land:
Our sweet, silvered wet nurse, the olive. Self born
and immortal, unafraid of foes, her ageless strength
defies knaves young and old, for Zeus and Athena guard
her with sleepless eyes.
– Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus
Olives boast an ancient history, and there are certainly few foods that are surrounded by such a multitude of lore, gastronomic or otherwise. From Virgil’s Aeneid to the Koran and the Bible to Cervantes to Shakespeare to Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, a belief in the redemptive qualities of the olive has endured across centuries and cultures. The olive branch is an age-old symbol of peace, and its curative properties have been extolled throughout time.
The presence of olive groves beside the vineyards of the Mediterranean has imparted a legacy to the cuisines of that part of the world, most notably in the richly abundant flavors of the oils used in the preparation of countless dishes from those lands. In North America we owe a special debt of gratitude to the Franciscan missionaries who planted the first olive tree around 1869 in what would become California, probably from Mexican seeds. Thomas Jefferson was so captivated with the olive that he once wrote, “The olive tree is surely the richest gift of Heaven.”
Olive trees are remarkable in themselves. They attain great age, growing gnarled and twisted to heights of 20-40 feet. Some in the eastern Mediterranean are thought to be over 2,000 years old. Yet it is said of the olive tree that it is a passionate tree, and must be loved if it is to bear the fruit for which it is so highly prized.
Olives vary in color depending on species and their degree of ripeness when harvested. A green olive is simply less ripe than a dark olive. All fresh olives are bitter and must be cured to become edible. After being sorted according to size and color, they are soaked in an alkaline solution (traditionally wood ash), then fermented in dry salt or wet salt (brine) to reduce bitterness and tenderize the flesh. Finally they are marinated in oil or vinegar, to which herbs, spices or other flavorings may be added.
Probably Americans are most familiar with the pimento-stuffed Spanish olives and the pitted ripe black olives that dually graced our Thanksgiving tables as we were growing up. These have been increasingly supplanted by a wide array of glistening, succulent orbs – Greek kalamatas, French nicoise, Spanish picuals and Italian frantoios and pintarolos.
Olives are fundamental to Mediterranean cuisine, and the rich mixture known as tapenade is a staple of Provencal fare. Made from a blend of olives, anchovies, and capers, tapenade is traditionally pounded with a pestle in a marble mortar and olive oil is added to form a creamy consistency. Even people who swear that they detest anchovies will fall passionately in love with this heady, delicious concoction. The essential triumvirate of ingredients can be augmented with garlic, herbs, even a little Cognac, but the foundation of the recipe remains the same.
Serve the tapenade on baguette slices as an hors d’oeuvre, or as a condiment for roasts, especially lamb.
Tapenade
In this recipe, garlic and thyme have been added to the traditional ingredients of olives, anchovies, and capers.
To pit olives, first consider throwing an old shirt over whatever you’re wearing. Place a handful of olives on a cutting board. Take the flat side of the blade of a chef’s knife and gently press on each olive. (They can squirt, hence the shirt.) This will break the skin, making it easy to slip the flesh off of the pit.
1 pound Greek-style olives, pitted
(traditionally black olives but experiment with less ripe ones, too)
4 anchovies fillets, drained
2-3 tablespoons capers, rinsed of salt or oil cured, drained
1 large clove garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
Pinch cayenne
1 teaspoon fresh thyme or ½ teaspoon dried, crushed
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (use a mild flavored variety)
Sea or koher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
With the flat side of a heavy knife lightly crush olives and discard pits. In a food processor, pulse olives, anchovies, capers, garlic, cayenne, and thyme to a coarse purée. Add olive oil and process just until emulsified, a couple of pulses. Season with salt and pepper, keeping in mind that all three primary ingredients are salty. Makes about one cup.
Tapenade Pizza
This is a fantastic use for leftover tapenade, but it is delicious enough to warrant the preparation of a batch specifically for the pizza.
1 round of prepared pizza dough
½ cup tapenade
½-¾ cup mozzarella cheese, grated
½ cup sliced scallion rounds, including light green parts
¾ cup sliced mushrooms, white or Portobello (optional)
Light grating of parmigiano reggiano cheese
Pre-heat oven to 450-500. Place prepared dough on a pizza pan (preferably perforated). Spread tapenade over surface of dough. Sprinkle with mozzarella, scallions, and mushrooms if using. Bake in the middle of the oven until bread is golden and surface is bubbly, about 15 minutes. (Keep an eye out.)
Wine suggestion:
Tapenade requires a full-bodied red to stand up to its flavor. Try a good Bordeaux or, for a special occasion, a Cahors. Certainly a Chianti rufino would stand in good stead.
A glorious tree flourishes in our Dorian land:
Our sweet, silvered wet nurse, the olive. Self born
and immortal, unafraid of foes, her ageless strength
defies knaves young and old, for Zeus and Athena guard
her with sleepless eyes.
– Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus
Olives boast an ancient history, and there are certainly few foods that are surrounded by such a multitude of lore, gastronomic or otherwise. From Virgil’s Aeneid to the Koran and the Bible to Cervantes to Shakespeare to Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, a belief in the redemptive qualities of the olive has endured across centuries and cultures. The olive branch is an age-old symbol of peace, and its curative properties have been extolled throughout time.
The presence of olive groves beside the vineyards of the Mediterranean has imparted a legacy to the cuisines of that part of the world, most notably in the richly abundant flavors of the oils used in the preparation of countless dishes from those lands. In North America we owe a special debt of gratitude to the Franciscan missionaries who planted the first olive tree around 1869 in what would become California, probably from Mexican seeds. Thomas Jefferson was so captivated with the olive that he once wrote, “The olive tree is surely the richest gift of Heaven.”
Olive trees are remarkable in themselves. They attain great age, growing gnarled and twisted to heights of 20-40 feet. Some in the eastern Mediterranean are thought to be over 2,000 years old. Yet it is said of the olive tree that it is a passionate tree, and must be loved if it is to bear the fruit for which it is so highly prized.
Olives vary in color depending on species and their degree of ripeness when harvested. A green olive is simply less ripe than a dark olive. All fresh olives are bitter and must be cured to become edible. After being sorted according to size and color, they are soaked in an alkaline solution (traditionally wood ash), then fermented in dry salt or wet salt (brine) to reduce bitterness and tenderize the flesh. Finally they are marinated in oil or vinegar, to which herbs, spices or other flavorings may be added.
Probably Americans are most familiar with the pimento-stuffed Spanish olives and the pitted ripe black olives that dually graced our Thanksgiving tables as we were growing up. These have been increasingly supplanted by a wide array of glistening, succulent orbs – Greek kalamatas, French nicoise, Spanish picuals and Italian frantoios and pintarolos.
Olives are fundamental to Mediterranean cuisine, and the rich mixture known as tapenade is a staple of Provencal fare. Made from a blend of olives, anchovies, and capers, tapenade is traditionally pounded with a pestle in a marble mortar and olive oil is added to form a creamy consistency. Even people who swear that they detest anchovies will fall passionately in love with this heady, delicious concoction. The essential triumvirate of ingredients can be augmented with garlic, herbs, even a little Cognac, but the foundation of the recipe remains the same.
Serve the tapenade on baguette slices as an hors d’oeuvre, or as a condiment for roasts, especially lamb.
Tapenade
In this recipe, garlic and thyme have been added to the traditional ingredients of olives, anchovies, and capers.
To pit olives, first consider throwing an old shirt over whatever you’re wearing. Place a handful of olives on a cutting board. Take the flat side of the blade of a chef’s knife and gently press on each olive. (They can squirt, hence the shirt.) This will break the skin, making it easy to slip the flesh off of the pit.
1 pound Greek-style olives, pitted
(traditionally black olives but experiment with less ripe ones, too)
4 anchovies fillets, drained
2-3 tablespoons capers, rinsed of salt or oil cured, drained
1 large clove garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
Pinch cayenne
1 teaspoon fresh thyme or ½ teaspoon dried, crushed
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (use a mild flavored variety)
Sea or koher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
With the flat side of a heavy knife lightly crush olives and discard pits. In a food processor, pulse olives, anchovies, capers, garlic, cayenne, and thyme to a coarse purée. Add olive oil and process just until emulsified, a couple of pulses. Season with salt and pepper, keeping in mind that all three primary ingredients are salty. Makes about one cup.
Tapenade Pizza
This is a fantastic use for leftover tapenade, but it is delicious enough to warrant the preparation of a batch specifically for the pizza.
1 round of prepared pizza dough
½ cup tapenade
½-¾ cup mozzarella cheese, grated
½ cup sliced scallion rounds, including light green parts
¾ cup sliced mushrooms, white or Portobello (optional)
Light grating of parmigiano reggiano cheese
Pre-heat oven to 450-500. Place prepared dough on a pizza pan (preferably perforated). Spread tapenade over surface of dough. Sprinkle with mozzarella, scallions, and mushrooms if using. Bake in the middle of the oven until bread is golden and surface is bubbly, about 15 minutes. (Keep an eye out.)
Wine suggestion:
Tapenade requires a full-bodied red to stand up to its flavor. Try a good Bordeaux or, for a special occasion, a Cahors. Certainly a Chianti rufino would stand in good stead.
November 8, 2009
Being and Responsibility
In one of her essays, a discussion of daytime talk shows, Barbara Ehrenreich points out that, though producers of the daytime genre intend it ultimately to be politically impotent and the issues under discussion marginalized, it is the only forum left in contemporary culture that confronts people with moral responsibility, with the shame and guilt of their actions.
One Sunday morning during a PBS fund-raising campaign I watched the self-help author Wayne Dyer's segment. The man is annoyingly self-aggrandizing but had a couple of interesting things to say. One of his contentions was that true nobility is not about being better than anyone else. It is about being better than one used to be. That evening on 60 Minutes, Elaine Stritch provided yet another insight when she asked Morley Safer if he had ever been fired. He laughed, No.
Oooooooh, she said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head with knowing wisdom of what he'd never had the experience to learn. Her response to the ax, she said, was not, "I'll show them." It was, "I'll show me."
Starting over with eyes wide open is hard work. Stanley Kubrick's much misunderstood film Eyes Wide Shut confronts the issue of seeing what we want to see rather than what is actually there.
I have argued that David Mamet's entire oeuvre could be said to center on the human capacity for limitless self-delusion, on our uncanny ability to believe what we want to believe while remaining blind to what is immediately before our eyes in order to preserve our psychic status quo.
Freud wrote that everyone is an artist because everyone dreams. The perverse side of that creative impulse might be our seemingly inexhaustible capacity for self-delusion.
To so great an extent are we motivated by fear - that pesky, ubiquitous fear of the unknown. It haunts us all. Even if it hurts us, we will persist in the behavior we know because ... well, it's what we know. Better the evil we know than the evil we don't. Or those twin phrases we hide behind: "It's just the way I am" and "I can't help the way I feel." Well, yes, Virginia, you can.
If one can come to terms with one's fears, whatever those fears may embody, then it should allow the means to come to terms with all of the other little deaths that the process of confronting the unknown inevitably requires. If we're going to die anyway, what should hold us back from the petit mals? Well, easier said than done for all of us.
See David Brooks's NY Times 11/09/2009 editorial "A Rush to Therapy," which I read the day after I wrote this.
PS An acquaintance from graduate school, Larry Baker, has recently published A Good Man, a re-imagining of Flannery O'Conner's character in the Bush years.
Years ago, while teaching Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, I came across a critical essay that argued that our attitudes toward moral responsibility have changed dramatically over time beginning with
- a Judeo-Christian belief in sin and atonement
- then shifting around the 19th century to seeing reprehensible actions in terms of crime and punishment
- and finally arriving with Freud and Modernism to condoning behavior in the paradigm of neurosis and therapy.
(I'm leaving out pharmaceuticals, but that can wait for another discussion.)
This observation has always struck me, for it reveals a great deal. This is not to say that the identification of neuroses and its adjunct therapy is invalid. It is to say, however, that the culture may have gone rather overboard in tolerating unacceptable behaviors. I can scorn you if you smoke, but can say nothing if you're rude in the theater or if your children are kicking the back of my airline seat.One Sunday morning during a PBS fund-raising campaign I watched the self-help author Wayne Dyer's segment. The man is annoyingly self-aggrandizing but had a couple of interesting things to say. One of his contentions was that true nobility is not about being better than anyone else. It is about being better than one used to be. That evening on 60 Minutes, Elaine Stritch provided yet another insight when she asked Morley Safer if he had ever been fired. He laughed, No.
Oooooooh, she said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head with knowing wisdom of what he'd never had the experience to learn. Her response to the ax, she said, was not, "I'll show them." It was, "I'll show me."
Starting over with eyes wide open is hard work. Stanley Kubrick's much misunderstood film Eyes Wide Shut confronts the issue of seeing what we want to see rather than what is actually there.
I have argued that David Mamet's entire oeuvre could be said to center on the human capacity for limitless self-delusion, on our uncanny ability to believe what we want to believe while remaining blind to what is immediately before our eyes in order to preserve our psychic status quo.
Freud wrote that everyone is an artist because everyone dreams. The perverse side of that creative impulse might be our seemingly inexhaustible capacity for self-delusion.
To so great an extent are we motivated by fear - that pesky, ubiquitous fear of the unknown. It haunts us all. Even if it hurts us, we will persist in the behavior we know because ... well, it's what we know. Better the evil we know than the evil we don't. Or those twin phrases we hide behind: "It's just the way I am" and "I can't help the way I feel." Well, yes, Virginia, you can.
If one can come to terms with one's fears, whatever those fears may embody, then it should allow the means to come to terms with all of the other little deaths that the process of confronting the unknown inevitably requires. If we're going to die anyway, what should hold us back from the petit mals? Well, easier said than done for all of us.
See David Brooks's NY Times 11/09/2009 editorial "A Rush to Therapy," which I read the day after I wrote this.
PS An acquaintance from graduate school, Larry Baker, has recently published A Good Man, a re-imagining of Flannery O'Conner's character in the Bush years.
November 4, 2009
Lars von Trier's Antichrist to Open
Lars von Trier's Antichrist is arriving in theaters. For some reason I always look forward to a new Lars von Trier film. I shouldn't, but I always do. I must fall prey to some embarrassingly shallow fallacy that because he's a Dane, I'll get some deep Kierkegaardian existential insight.
I like the stylization and the sheer audacity of von Trier's films, and the themes upon which, on the surface, they seem to be premised, with the promise of revelations into deep Manichean dualities of the human soul. I like disturbing art that challenges us to explorations of evil, the tragic nature of human existence, the anguish of love and guilt and loss. I pass up on the DVD with the blurb, "It will touch your heart." No, I like depressing movies -- really depressing.
But von Trier is inevitably so over the top that he sacrifices dialectic for spectacle.
His Dogma 95 manifesto informs the hand-held camera (for almost three hours, no less) in Breaking the Waves. If that isn't enough to induce nausea, the ending, dripping with kitschy mysticism, will. Bjork's performance in the quite un-Dogma-esque Dancer in the Dark (though von Trier relies on that nauseating hand-held camera again) is a tour de force, but stopping the action to allow for musical numbers -- even if they are meant as episodes of respite from the tragic situation in which the protagonist is otherwise engulfed -- gives the film a jolting quality.
His USA: Land of Opportunities trilogy (Dogville, Manderlay, and the still-in-production Wasington) purports to be "a series of sermons on America's sins and hypocrisy." With diametrically opposed stylization -- bare sound stages where the sets are marked only by lines on the floor and a few stray props -- these films set out to explore questions of slavery, greed, and misogyny. But do they? After all, as many critics complained, von Trier has never himself visited the Western hemisphere.
As the historical fiction writer David Liss remarks in his blog (which got me started on the subject of von Trier in the first place), von Trier is "the kind of filmmaker who can only exist in Northern Europe – a product of long, unending winters and public funding for the arts. Though, to be honest, those are two things I kind of like."
A. O. Scott, writing in the NY Times observes that "The scandal of Antichrist is not that it is grisly or upsetting but that it is so ponderous, so conceptually thin and so dull." Scott goes on, von Trier "is...a bit of a snob, a filmmaker who undermines his pulpy instincts with high-flown, vaguely political ideas."
And that's just the problem. The ideas are not rigorously explored. They are not deserving of their high-flunged-ness. Even Kierkegaard, that author of such cheerful titles as The Concept of Anxiety, Sickness Unto Death, and Fear and Trembling, would spend years exploring Socrates in order to write The Concept of Irony, a work of which a contemporary reviewer remarked, "...not only treats of irony but is irony."
So I will faithfully escort myself to the theater to see (Scott says "endure") Antichrist, but if the critical response (even reader reviews where one usually finds some cultish devotion) are any indication, I am going to be disappointed. Yet again it sounds as though we are given an intellectually shallow premise slathered over with gratuitous gimmicks rather than a thoughtful examination of the human condition that might lead to a philosophy of insight.
Lars, don't take yourself so seriously; if Kierkegaard could find irony in the depths, maybe you can, too.
I like the stylization and the sheer audacity of von Trier's films, and the themes upon which, on the surface, they seem to be premised, with the promise of revelations into deep Manichean dualities of the human soul. I like disturbing art that challenges us to explorations of evil, the tragic nature of human existence, the anguish of love and guilt and loss. I pass up on the DVD with the blurb, "It will touch your heart." No, I like depressing movies -- really depressing.
But von Trier is inevitably so over the top that he sacrifices dialectic for spectacle.
His Dogma 95 manifesto informs the hand-held camera (for almost three hours, no less) in Breaking the Waves. If that isn't enough to induce nausea, the ending, dripping with kitschy mysticism, will. Bjork's performance in the quite un-Dogma-esque Dancer in the Dark (though von Trier relies on that nauseating hand-held camera again) is a tour de force, but stopping the action to allow for musical numbers -- even if they are meant as episodes of respite from the tragic situation in which the protagonist is otherwise engulfed -- gives the film a jolting quality.
His USA: Land of Opportunities trilogy (Dogville, Manderlay, and the still-in-production Wasington) purports to be "a series of sermons on America's sins and hypocrisy." With diametrically opposed stylization -- bare sound stages where the sets are marked only by lines on the floor and a few stray props -- these films set out to explore questions of slavery, greed, and misogyny. But do they? After all, as many critics complained, von Trier has never himself visited the Western hemisphere.
As the historical fiction writer David Liss remarks in his blog (which got me started on the subject of von Trier in the first place), von Trier is "the kind of filmmaker who can only exist in Northern Europe – a product of long, unending winters and public funding for the arts. Though, to be honest, those are two things I kind of like."
A. O. Scott, writing in the NY Times observes that "The scandal of Antichrist is not that it is grisly or upsetting but that it is so ponderous, so conceptually thin and so dull." Scott goes on, von Trier "is...a bit of a snob, a filmmaker who undermines his pulpy instincts with high-flown, vaguely political ideas."
And that's just the problem. The ideas are not rigorously explored. They are not deserving of their high-flunged-ness. Even Kierkegaard, that author of such cheerful titles as The Concept of Anxiety, Sickness Unto Death, and Fear and Trembling, would spend years exploring Socrates in order to write The Concept of Irony, a work of which a contemporary reviewer remarked, "...not only treats of irony but is irony."
So I will faithfully escort myself to the theater to see (Scott says "endure") Antichrist, but if the critical response (even reader reviews where one usually finds some cultish devotion) are any indication, I am going to be disappointed. Yet again it sounds as though we are given an intellectually shallow premise slathered over with gratuitous gimmicks rather than a thoughtful examination of the human condition that might lead to a philosophy of insight.
Lars, don't take yourself so seriously; if Kierkegaard could find irony in the depths, maybe you can, too.
October 30, 2009
Riffing on a Letter from a Friend
In a lovely little Halloween card, a dear friend suggested I look up an author who now lives in San Antonio, David Liss. Highly regarded for his historical fiction, which despite my devotion to the NY Times Book Review, has somehow eluded me, he is also a champion of blogging, and among many other topics, often writes about film. I follow only one blog and have been tempted to try it, but for some reason his prompted me to start this one.
She also suggested I seek out the little coffee shop that Liss frequents here, and with a single google I identified it as the Olmos Perk. Yes, I do know it. The name's a play on its neighborhood, Olmos Park. It's next door to the nicest laundromat in town, and it is very inviting, with, in addition to the coffee and pastries, magazines lying about that you might actually want to peruse (as opposed to the standard doctor's office fare, e.g., Parenting Today [never been a parent], and the usual business office fare, e.g., Forbes [never had any money]). It could be argued that it's nice simply because of what it's not: it is not a Starbuck's.
Sidebar: I lived in Seattle in the '70s when Starbuck's was a single little shop in the bowels of the Pike Street Market. This before the prententions of grandes and ventis, before baristas handed over the joe, before it took the person in line in front of you 10 minutes to place an order:
"I'll have the...uh...let's see, uh...the, uh...the double chocolate chip frappaccino... with, uh, creme...no, uh...make that blended creme, with, uh...with whipped cream, uh, no...I mean... chocolate whipped cream. [Pause as barista begins to fill order.] Wait, I want the mint chocolate chip...unless, uuuuh...do you have the white chocolate? Yeah?...Well...make it the mint anyway...Oh, and...uh...could I get cocoa, and...uh...maybe some cinnamon? [Another pause.] Did you put vanilla in that? Because I wanted vanilla in that."
My friend ruefully noted that it's almost impossible to fathom that we are edging toward 2010. Yes, we're a decade into the 21st Century, and pretty much just as barbaric as ever. Remember when we were coming up on 2000, and the hysteria that ensued over Y2K? Even then I called it a hoax directed at the Chicken Little complex, but, hey, it worked. How much money do you think was wasted on that scam?
It's even more difficult to fathom that Rachel Carson published The Silent Spring almost 50 years ago, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb over 40 years ago, and Bill McKibben published The End of Nature over 20 years ago. Indeed, Carson's and McKibben's concerns have been abundantly borne out. Though Ehrlich's dire predictions of widespread famine in the 1970s and '80s proved unfounded and have been derided as Malthusian, certainly the strain an ever-growing population puts on the earth's resources -- widespead use of pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture and hormones and antibiotics flooding the bloodstreams of poultry and livestock, endangered species, global warming -- is real. As a colleague of mine once pointed out in my defense, Malthus might not have been right at the time, but....
My friend rejoiced at the fall leaves "varied and vibrant." Oh, I miss the autumn leaves!! They are my favorite colors and I know what she means about the way they shimmer in the sunlight and breeze. In San Antonio, alas, there is no such array in which to bask, and there will be no snow, and it will likely be hot before the cycle can produce a true flowering of spring.
She also suggested I seek out the little coffee shop that Liss frequents here, and with a single google I identified it as the Olmos Perk. Yes, I do know it. The name's a play on its neighborhood, Olmos Park. It's next door to the nicest laundromat in town, and it is very inviting, with, in addition to the coffee and pastries, magazines lying about that you might actually want to peruse (as opposed to the standard doctor's office fare, e.g., Parenting Today [never been a parent], and the usual business office fare, e.g., Forbes [never had any money]). It could be argued that it's nice simply because of what it's not: it is not a Starbuck's.
Sidebar: I lived in Seattle in the '70s when Starbuck's was a single little shop in the bowels of the Pike Street Market. This before the prententions of grandes and ventis, before baristas handed over the joe, before it took the person in line in front of you 10 minutes to place an order:
"I'll have the...uh...let's see, uh...the, uh...the double chocolate chip frappaccino... with, uh, creme...no, uh...make that blended creme, with, uh...with whipped cream, uh, no...I mean... chocolate whipped cream. [Pause as barista begins to fill order.] Wait, I want the mint chocolate chip...unless, uuuuh...do you have the white chocolate? Yeah?...Well...make it the mint anyway...Oh, and...uh...could I get cocoa, and...uh...maybe some cinnamon? [Another pause.] Did you put vanilla in that? Because I wanted vanilla in that."
My friend ruefully noted that it's almost impossible to fathom that we are edging toward 2010. Yes, we're a decade into the 21st Century, and pretty much just as barbaric as ever. Remember when we were coming up on 2000, and the hysteria that ensued over Y2K? Even then I called it a hoax directed at the Chicken Little complex, but, hey, it worked. How much money do you think was wasted on that scam?
It's even more difficult to fathom that Rachel Carson published The Silent Spring almost 50 years ago, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb over 40 years ago, and Bill McKibben published The End of Nature over 20 years ago. Indeed, Carson's and McKibben's concerns have been abundantly borne out. Though Ehrlich's dire predictions of widespread famine in the 1970s and '80s proved unfounded and have been derided as Malthusian, certainly the strain an ever-growing population puts on the earth's resources -- widespead use of pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture and hormones and antibiotics flooding the bloodstreams of poultry and livestock, endangered species, global warming -- is real. As a colleague of mine once pointed out in my defense, Malthus might not have been right at the time, but....
My friend rejoiced at the fall leaves "varied and vibrant." Oh, I miss the autumn leaves!! They are my favorite colors and I know what she means about the way they shimmer in the sunlight and breeze. In San Antonio, alas, there is no such array in which to bask, and there will be no snow, and it will likely be hot before the cycle can produce a true flowering of spring.
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