Friday, January 29, 2010

Salinger and "Shining Your Shoes for the Fat Lady"

Katherine here.

Franny called me yesterday. I was having lunch with C.Fite between visits at Manual High School and Lincoln High School. Franny needed to let me know that Salinger had died and she didn't want me to learn from someone who didn't love me. I gulped and teared up and tried not to let it interfere with Cindy's tale of the new recliners she and Jerry are moving into their living room. I made it through lunch.

I got in my car and headed to Lincoln and managed to watch my teacher (an avid hockey player from Hawaii--go figure). He was trying to meet a literacy requirement and his lesson was just okay, but I paid attention and tried to see what was good. I got back in the car and my boss called with an update on some Metro issues and I told her I was struggling because Salinger died. She's a former Jeffco English teacher and I waited for her to gasp or something, but instead she asks me who this Salinger is. I tell her and she lets me know she never read Catcher in the Rye. I didn't know what to say and headed to Bruce Randolph School and started to cry.

I watched a Physics teacher (also working on literacy requirements) who told me she really doesn't understand what a prefix or suffix is in our follow-up conference. It was almost 3:00 and I returned to the car a disillusioned mess.

I turn on the radio and hit the NPR button and there is a voice reading the opening pages of Catcher. I would have read the words differently--I mean, I read them so many times. I started weeping and I realized I needed to pay attention to the traffic on I70. The ode to Salinger ended with the last page and Holden missing everyone you talk about. More weeping.

I got off the various highways it takes to get me home, pulled over and discovered Facebook messages on my Blackberry from folks I read those Catcher pages to and all I could do was miss them. So much.

Salinger is the glue to my life. I read Catcher in high school because it was banned. I was a "good" kid and couldn't understand the fuss over the book and wondered why Holden didn't just do his work. God, I was such an idiot.

Jim taught me to understand. When we were dating there was this bizarre moment when he arrived at my apartment on a Saturday morning. He had books, champagne, and record albums. He didn't want to come in, but handed me the items. He said that he was falling in love with me, but couldn't love a woman who had not read these books, drunk this wine (Mumm's--Hemingway's favorite), and didn't feel at home with the music (mostly The Band). He left.

After half of day just really being pissed (I wasn't in the mood for weekend assignments--I had plenty of papers to grade), I decided I'd try the wine. I'd never opened champagne. It was a challenge and I wasted some.

I picked up Franny and Zooey (I'd been told to read it first and if you're going to blindly obey a fellow you might as well go whole hog). I drank champagne and read all night. I read Nine Stories next and then the Seymore novellas. The Band and Life is a Carousel went round and round in the background. I fell in love. With Salinger, the wine, the music, with Jim.

I spent years at Green Mountain High School trying to teach kids what I learned that weekend. I've spent most of my life trying to live it with on-and-off success. It's not that big a lesson so it surprises me how hard it is to teach, to grasp, to live.

All I try to do every day is to "shine my shoes for the fat lady." I try to pay loving attention to the people around me. I try to see what is good and what is working in them. I try to accept them for what they are. I try to listen--that's all Holden, Franny, Zooey, and Buddy really had in Seymour--the world's best listener. I try to see trees instead of roads and realize that swimming suits are equally blue and yellow. I try to walk from one piece of hallowed ground to the next.

It's so hard and I don't do it very well. Rush Limbaugh saps me of the grace I have when he suggests we not contribute to Haiti and then my quirky grandson Zack tells me his favorite food in all the world is my roast turkey and I'm somehow a bit more balanced again. My problem is that Zack will grow up and I don't know if my kids are ready to produce a string of kids just to keep me on an even keel.

One last thought--Jim does the Facebook thing and I check in--I'm on the computer too much for Metro stuff as it is. I want to say how joyous it is to see faces I've loved and continue to love and to know how many truly wonderful things have grown from little things J. and I taught. Chris Hartman called last night too. I missed the call, but the voice and message were just right. Thank you all for sharing your lives with us way back when and now.

That's it for now. Love and kisses,
Mrs. S.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Correction

The chef/owner of Mizuna is Frank Bonanno, not Frank Bonnano. Sorry.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Mizuna: A restaurant

For us, walking into Mizuna at 7th and Grant (just down the street from that stalwart purveyor of tex-mex, Benny's) is like going to a family reunion, that is if the food is the best in all of Denver. Mizuna had only been open a month when we first had dinner there. We were on our way to see THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES with Franny, who was just entering her Marxist/Feminist period, and I had read about Frank Bonanno's new place in 5280.

That first dinner there was a transforming experience and every dinner since (we average about one a month) has lived up to that first evening.

Last Saturday celebrating our 33rd anniversary was a case in point. The car valets gave us their usual wave to let us know that we didn't need to leave our name. I'm sure they would recognize our Subaru Forester, the one with 110,000 miles, anywhere. Steve greeted us at the door and ushered us to our table along the bank of tables by the window and just under the spectacular painting of Frank and Alex Seidel (now the owner/chef at Fruition) slaving away in the kitchen. Steve brought Kathie her usual screwdriver (The instant we walk into the place, someone starts squeezing oranges. That's the kind of place it is.) and brought me a bottle of Pelegrino with a twist. We sat enjoying our drinks and looking over the constantly changing menu as a parade of every waiter, busboy, owner, chef, and sommelier in the place stopped by to welcome us back.

We love to sit at tables in various corners and look out at the scene. Mizuna is always packed and always abuzz with the conviviality of pleased diners. If you want to know what happy people look like, have dinner at Mizuna.

I love it when a waiter delivers a dish to a lucky patron. Have you seen JULIE AND JULIA when Julia Child has her first bite of Sole Meunier at the beginning and she looks up at the heavens as if to say "Thank you God. I didn't know food could taste like this." That is precisely the look that goes around the room at Mizuna like a never ending wave at a football game. And the waiters always look back over their shoulders because they are incredibly proud of what they are serving and like to see that look over and over again on the faces of their customers.

I had a new fois gras preparation with a alarmingly large lobe of the buttery stuff accompanied by a sweet chestnut stuffing and roasted butternut squash in a perfectly symmetrical and amazingly tiny dice. Kathie started with the lobster mac and cheese, the only thing on the menu that has never left, and for good reason. The lobster mac and cheese is also the dish that earned Frank Bonanno a victory in the food network's mac and cheese battle.

Next we shared a Frisee salad with figs and duck cracklings. I normally don't like frisee because the texture is kind of rough and irritating, but this was different. When Steve asked how we were enjoying the salad, I jokingly made the comment that some poor slob in the kitchen must have gone through each leaf of frisee to take off any unnecessarily rough edges. Without batting an eye, Steve said that's exactly what happens. Again, that's the kind of place this is. When someone orders a dish with mashed potatoes, a typical restaurant like 240 Union, for example, gets the mashed potatoes out of the freezer. At Mizuna, some guy in the back starts peeling spuds.

Katherine had the veal and the amazing little veal sausages for her main course. I had the ostrich, rare and wild tasting atop a bed of brussel sprout leaves with a chestnut bread pudding on the side. Beautiful. Perfect. All of this was matched to a Chateauneuf du Pape that Ryan chose for us. That's another thing I love about the place. They have a great wine list, but it is much more fun to simply tell Ryan our menu and let him choose the right wine. He always comes through.

We ended the meal with a shared plate of beignets and strong, black coffee.

There are a number of things that Katherine and I do well. She knits, pays the bills, decides where we will travel next, and mentors new teachers all over the city. I take out the garbage. But the thing we do best is eat and allow people at fine dining establishments to cater to our every need. We have eaten at Mario Batali's place (Babbo) in New York. We had a great dinner at The French Laundry in Napa. We have eaten at Jose Andreas' place in D.C. All great restaurants, but none any better than Mizuna in Denver, Colorado.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Health Care freshmen

Back when I taught Freshmen toward the end of my career, I used to give them a little blackboard (the use of that word alone tells you how antiquated I am) quiz at the beginning of the term. I would write ten words on the board - simple words like "Denver," "Politics," "Friendship," etc. My students simply had to copy the ten words correctly with no mistakes to earn an A. In my final two years of teaching Freshman, I never had a student earn an A on that quiz! I am not exaggerating. After seeing the results of my little test, I adjusted my lesson plans and goals accordingly and pushed on.


I share this anecdote because I fear that our entire country is being taken over by my ninth graders. No one listens. No one reads. No one can concentrate on any one thing for longer than an eye blink.


How else do you explain the growing anger over health care and bank bailouts and Obama's citizenship and his alleged affilliation with communism, socialism and fascism all at the same time. (News flash: those three terms are mutually exclusive. Didn't anyone pay attention during social studies classes?) I was reading a piece in Sunday's New York Times about populist rage in New Hampshire. They obviously hadn't heard or read a word that was uttered by the administration about the reforms. They were still worried about Death Panels. They still wanted government to keep its hands off Medicare!!!!! They wanted to be able to keep the insurance they already had. They were furious that their taxes would go up by as much as 75%.


In other words, they were reacting to the proposed reforms the same way my freshmen used to react to any new explanation. They simply ignored it and continued to believe whatever they wanted to believe, or to believe whatever the most popular person in class (read: Sarah Palin) told them to believe. I got the impression that I could take any of these New Hamshirites by the collar, force them to listen to me read the FACTS about reform, make them repeat the reforms I just read, give them a test about the reforms, and the next day all would be forgotten and they would back on the streets yelling about Death Panels.


I guess that is why I kind of envy right-wing conservatives. They get to believe anything they want.


I have to admit that I'm getting a little worried about myself. At the height of the presidential campaign I started hating all of those people who were believing the claptrap generated by Fox News and talk radio ranters. I was so relieved when Obama won because I thought I could go back to normal and stop hating right-wingers and other stupid people. But no! The talk has become even more poisonous and delusional and I find myself hating people again and saying things that are mean spirited.


For example, I was sitting in the hot tub at the Y with a bunch of naked republicans after the Massachusetts debacle. They were giving me a hard time about what they considered the certain death of the democratic party. Normally, I would just laugh it off and join in the repartee. Instead I made the following comment: "I've decided to start thinking like a conservative. You know, I've got great health insurance, a steady income, and if the defeat of Obama's health reform means that some poor slobs get coverage denied, or that 40 million individuals are without health care, well fuck'em. I mean that's how you guys think isn't it?"


The group's reaction to my liberal outburst was a collective gasp, partly because I spoke the truth and partly because people aren't supposed to say words like fuck in the YMCA (Remember our motto at the Y: Clean mind, clean body. Take your pick.)


I'm going to try a prolonged fast from the news. I figure it is the only way I can be nice to folks again.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Telling Good Luck from Bad

My reactions to the predictable Massachusetts senate loss and the possible demise of yet another health care reform have been all over the place. Last night, sure of the Democrats' loss but eternally hopeful anyway, I pointedly refused to watch any news related show and instead stuck to movies - Inherit the Wind followed by Best of Show. This morning I woke up and learned the inevitable when I got the Post out of the driveway.

"There goes health care," was my first reaction. That moment of despair metastisized to a certainty that when the Republicans surely win back the Senate in the midterms our country will be at a standstill. I mean when Justice Stevens resigns, Obama could nominate Oliver Wendel Holmes and not a single Republican would vote for confirmation. So we might have to kiss "cap and trade" good bye and any attempt to finally regulate a banking/financial sector that is bringing our country to the brink of ruin.

From there I began thinking of my recent reading of Andrew Jakson's biography, coupled with last year's So Damn Much Money, and came to the inescapable conclusion that the banks and insurance lobbies really do run the country and there is nothing to be done.

But then I started to act my age and things got better. I have always maintained that the main difference between a Democrat and a Republican is that a Democrat is more likely to have faith in government, while a Republican's goal is to limit government to garbage collection and defense. For a minute there I was beginning to betray that fundamental belief. And so I began to reconsider my despair.

From this new perspective, the loss in Massachusetts is just one more example of government at work. The people, at least the ones who chose to vote in Massachusetts, obviously don't like big government programs. They ironically do want health care reform, but they don't want government involved in it. I don't know how that is possible, but it won't do much good to ignore the message being sent.

Maybe this means that the folks in Washington have to scrap what they have done and start over. And I'm not sure that would be all bad. I have read everything I can get my hands on about the health care debate, and the bill(s) as it currently exists is a confusing maze of stop gap measures and shameless kiss-ups to every special interest out there. Yes, I know it is a start and that perfection probably isn't possible, but this seems to miss the mark by an unsustainable margin. And yes, I know that bargaining with the Republicans in Congress who only have one tool - tax cuts - in their tool box seems to be pointless at best, but as Andrew Sullivan said in a recent piece, maybe it is time to call the Republican bluff.

Obama's performance in light of the supposed "super majority" in the Senate has been disappointing. Since the majority is basically a fiction and is instead comprised of all manner of political stances, Obama and the Democratic leadership haven't been able to "get tough" like so many left wingers want. There was never a realistic hope of getting this hodge podge to agree on anything. Whereas getting all 40 (now 41) Republicans to vote the party line is easy because in fact they have only one party line - all problems can be solved by cutting taxes and if that means that some people will lose, well "fuck'em."

The problem is that Obama's approach to health care attempted to appease all of these various Democrats in order to defeat the possibility of a filibuster. What we have now is a bill vilified by both ends of the political spectrum. Only those people, like Paul Krugman, who know something about history and political reality can find anything to like in the bill.

But now with the illusion of a filibuster proof majority gone, maybe Obama can go back to his roots, as it were. Maybe he can introduce legislation that lives up to his promises instead of sinking to the lowest common denominator and in so doing can start defining the debate again instead of leaving that to his critics at Fox News and talk radio. I think if he does that, he will win back his base of young voters with whims of iron.

But I take umbrage in the certainty that Obama's presidency - anyone's presidency - never has enough clout to remake the country to the extent that voters would like to believe it can. That is also why I take comfort in the knowledge that even something as seemingly calamitous as a Sarah Palin presidency in 2012 will not effect my life very much. There is one thing I know for sure about change: Tomorrow will be a lot like today.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

K. Starkey's List #3: A P-M-I for Ten Days in Mexico

Katherine here after ten days in Mexico. I thought I'd do a standard Plus, Minus, and Interesting list as a treasure of our time there. Here goes:

The Plus Side of PV:
1. The Extreme Outdoor Adventure. We began by taking a Zodiac powerboat across the bay and then hopped into an army-style transport truck that took us up through a canyon and part way up a mountain. A mule trip up the next part of the mountain was followed by a finishing hike to the top. With zip-gear on and appropriate training (a five minute lecture with weird cheers about how much fun we would have), we then started zipping down the mountain. I have height issues, but I've done this before and did nicely enjoying the view and looking cool for the photographer haunting us throughout the process. About midway we needed to repel down a waterfall. Now my fear of heights raised its ugly head and I quivered clearly as the guide told me to just sit down over the open air behind me. Somehow I did it and the other two repelling stints. It was great. Even the zip down into the water pool wasn't as horrible as I imagined, but I didn't get scraped up and lose my shoe like Jim did. We were clearly the oldest people on the tour and there was some weird pride in being able to do what the youngsters along with us were accomplishing. It you go to PV, do this.

2. Reading by the pool. Not much sun, but warmth and a chance to polish off four books. I re-read Inez of My Soul by Allende (see List #1). I read The Lacuna by Kingsolver (see Jim's last blog). I read Year of Wonders by Brooks about an English town in the 1500's that chose to endure the plague and not leave because that would infect the entire country. It's based on a real story. A great book. I read After You're Gone by Jeffrey Lent. A man loses his beloved wife and finally meets a new love who also lost her great love through his deceptions. They both finally gulp and try to love again when disaster hits one of them and the survivor must repeat the process. I'm haunted by this one and keep worrying about what will happen to me if I lose Jim. I've re-written the ending in my head endless times to no avail. Finally I started The Girl Who Played with Fire (sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo) by Larrsen (see list #1 and Jim's last blog), but I'm so worried about the characters I'm struggling to continue and am working on a mountain climbing book instead.

3. Eating. There's a great shrimp place in Ixtapa after a culturally rich bus trip inland. For $9.00 you get mounds of shrimp (garlic, diablo, and fried) and side dishes. You also get a bottle of tequila and shot glasses and can drink as much as you want or can as part of the price. I can never remember the name of the place. Las Carmelitas is above the town--the taxi takes $180 pesos, but is well worth the view and food. Ahhh. Tino's for fish is incredible. We went to the lagoon location on the way to Nuevo Puerta. Daiquiri Dick's--stupid name, but great food.

4. The sculptures on the Malycon. I love Sergio Bustamante and the one he has with surreal folks climbing a ladder. I love his studio shops as well.

The Minus Side of PV:
1. The "horrible, horrible, oh most horrible" time share experience. Bud and Janet wanted us to go to get discounts for tours and stuff. At one point a man told me I could not cross the room to tell Janet we were leaving and would meet them downstairs. Did I say this was horrible?

2. The pirate ship dinner/show thing. Bud and Janet have been down there 15 times and hadn't done it and we were game. The ship looks cool gliding through the bay. Don't do this. Ever. Even though lots of folks recommended it, the food is disgusting and the shows pathetic. I used to like the word "ARGH," but this has ruined it for me.

The Interesting Side of PV:
1. Cassandra Shaw's jewelry shop. We took an interesting walk around Old Towne to find the shop because Franny had liked it when she was down there with Ken. Cassandra is an ex-patriot from Canada and her shop is so cluttered it's hard to see anything. I managed to find earrings for myself and F. though.

2. Watching the Broncos lose at El Torrito's sports bar. Lots of Dallas fans work in the bar and there were a ton of Denver folks who had found it for the game. Everyone except us ordered ribs which seem to be a specialty. We found out too late. We also saw a lot of the GB/Arizona game with very sad BG fans all around. At least there was no talk of Bret Favre.

3. The old people around the pool. One said he was Brittney Spears' agent and was looking for a spot in PV that held 60,000 for a performance for her. No one like that would stay at a place like we were staying. Old bull-shitters are even more pathetic than young ones and I've known a lifetime of young ones. These old farts love bashing Obama and talking time shares made me roll my eyes like when I taught sophs--cute, but come on now.

4. The PV airport. It's not bad at all. It used to be a nightmare. Our first time down there I bought a decorative sun that was carefully wrapped in cardboard. The airport wouldn't let it on the plane and charged us six bucks to re-pack it in different cardboard. The lady after me had her decorative moon re-packed in my old cardboard. I liked the new airport much better.

That's it for today.

Vacation Reading

We just returned from ten days in Puerto Vallarta filled with warm temperatures, not enough sun, a few terrific restaurants, and four books under my belt.

I started the trip with Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked. Finished half of it on the plane and the rest around the pool. The book revolves around a fanatic blogger who fancies himself an expert on an old washed up rock "star" who managed to produce one album of note and then disappeared. This is exactly the kind of stuff that fuels blogging whirlwinds and creates the kind of experts that make me cringe.

You know the type. I recently did a handy man job for a lady who will remain nameless. When I ventured into her basement I noticed the most alarmingly complete collection of Grateful Dead concert tapes now extant and I could imagine what a conversation with the Deadhead in question would be like. He would undoubtedly consider himself an expert on the subject, the uncontestable bearer of meaning on the life and times of Jerry Garcia and he would consider his expertise to be on a par with say a Ph.D. in literature specializing in the Jacobean Period. He would equate his (some would say) wasted hours following the Dead around with the Ph.D.'s research and years of study culminating in a thesis and a teaching position at the local university. And to make matters worse, our Dead expert would invariably start a blog which would attract other pathetic losers and those losers would generate bogus ideas and strange conspiracy theories until a cottage industry was formed.

Juliet, Naked made me happy because it debunks all of that without being mean spirited. As it turns out, the blog devoted to the vanished rock star is just a massive collection of bullshit and the rockstar shows up to inadvertantly give the blogger his comeuppance. But in the process the book explores the nature of art and fame and love until by the end I didn't hate the blogger at all. The only thing I felt was an urgent need to go out and buy another book by Nick Hornby.

After I dispatched Hornby's book, I moved to Halfway to Heaven by Mark Obmascik. Obmascik is a Denver freelance writer who used to work for the Post and who has published one of my other favorite books, The Big Year, a fascinating and hilarious examination of fanatic bird watchers. His newest book is a chronicle of his attempt to scale all 54 fourteeners in Colorado in one year. I don't think it is as entertaining as the bird book, but it is still a compelling read. There are all sorts of crazy climbing types, a lot of obscure and not so obscure retellings of Colorado history, and an exploration into testing one's limits (and one's family's limits). One thing for sure, at least for someone as afraid of clingling to rock faces at 14,000 feet as I, if you ever entertained the idea of climbing all the fourteeners, this book will make you reconsider.

Next up, The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson. I read this book in one day by the pool because it was not possible to put it down. This isn't great literature. It isn't even a great mystery in the sense of Richard Price (Clockers, Freedomland, Samaritan, Lush Life), but the characters are still rummaging around my head and causing me so much worry, that I am more than a little hesitant to pick up the next in the series.

I will end this little essay with the best and most disturbing book. I am not a huge Barbara Kingsolver fan, although I think The Bean Trees should be required reading for sophomores in high school (right up there with Catcher). I never appreciated Animal Dreams with the same devotion that my wife and her students did and while I like the didacticism of her first novel, I find that some of her later works, at least the ones that I've looked at, are too didactic. Her latest novel, The Lacuna, is a revelation. It focuses on a young mixed race man from Mexico who ends up working for Diego Rivera, Frida, and Lev Trotsky as a cook (all of Kingsolver's novels end up making my mouth water) and secretary. The young man ends up being a wildly successful author in the USA until the McCarthy era catches up to him. It is an exploration of the nature of the artist set in a world overrun with the irrational fears of a people on the verge of the cold war. The evil wrought by the conservative powers that be and the mindless paranoia about communism fueled by greedy capitalists sounds a lot like our current situation. The book and our times scare the hell out of me.