Wednesday, September 29, 2010

STAR ISLAND - Carl Hiaasen

Hiaasen's newest novel is right up there with Skinny Dip and Sick Puppy, my favorites. It is the story of Cherry Pye, an amalgam of Lindsay Lohan, Brittney Spears, and Paris Hilton, and the attempts to hold her minimal talents together as she succombs to every drug induced temptation that gets in her path. Cherry is not the main character, however. That distinction goes to Annie DeLusia, an aspiring actress who earns a goodly income standing in for our pop diva whenever Cherry is too incapacitated to perform for the paparazzi. One Paparazzo, Bang Abbot, kidnaps Ann in hopes of holding her ransom for a swap with the real thing. He wants an exclusive photo shoot that he feels will make him rich and somehow enhance Cherry's tenuous hold on a career.

Like all Hiaasen novels, there is a steady stream of bizarre characters and an underlying environmentalist theme which result in all sorts of bizarre situations and sick, albeit hilarious, acts of retribution. We have an ex-governor hiding out for years in Florida's swamps, the botoxed public relations twins, the psycho body guard who, after losing his left hand to a baracuda, has replaced it with a weed whacker (People tend to take him and his lawn implement seriously), Cherry's enabling parents, and a succession of shady characters who prey on the rich and famous.

At the end everyone gets just what they deserve and the reader is left waiting for Hiaasen's next hilarious dissection of Florida politics,

Monday, September 27, 2010

REPLY TO OBAMA'S LATEST CALL FOR SCHOOL REFORM

I just finished a piece posted on THE DAILY BEAST talking about Obama's recent call for longer school days and the firing of all bad teachers, the implication being that this would go a long way toward making schools better.

It reminds me of the Woody Allen joke at the beginning of Annie Hall. Two ladies at a Catskill resort are talking.

"The food here is just awful," the first one says.

"Yes, and the portions are so small."


I guess that is the newest received wisdom to cure all that is ailing public education. The teachers are bad and need to be fired, so let us expose our children to them for even longer periods of time.

I've written about this before, but how many bad teachers are we talking about? 80%? 60%? Less than 50? One or two? How many "good" teachers taking the place of "bad" teachers will we need to compensate for rotten and disinterested parents, aging schools with antiquated connectedness, unfunded mandates, and tests that only serve to impede instruction in inner cities while doing nothing for affluent suburbs, who don't need the help anyway?

I suspect that the percentage of bad teachers, whatever that means, in education is about the same as the percentage of bad doctors, lawyers, parents, plumbers, gas station attendants, 7-11 clerks, businessmen, and POLITICIANS. I say fire them all and let illegal immigrants do the job. Their image couldn't be much worse.

I obviously think Obama is way off the mark on this one, but I'm still not ANGRY. I don't think he is a fascist, or a Colonialist from Kenya. If I had the money and the time I would still love to attend John Stewart's Reasonable Man March, or whatever it is called. I just wish that teachers would stop serving as the scapegoat for the failings of the other institutions of society, like the Family, to name just one.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

FREEDOM - Jonathan Franzen

These are tough days to be a liberal. We just take ourselves too seriously and so when the inevitable waves of criticism come we get confused, fight back for awhile, and then go off into a corner and pout. How can all those nasty republicans and nutwing tea partiers not understand what we all know to be true? Don't these people read papers? Don't they value logic and facts?

When we come into power, we lose our sense of humor. When John Stewart skewered George W. Bush back in the good old days of a republican administration, we got the joke and laughed uproariously. But when he skewers Obama, we feel angry and betrayed. When The New Yorker published its infamous cover before the last election of the Obamas dressed like Muslims fist bumping each other, we were outraged. We got the joke, sort of, but knew that all those stupid conservatives out there weren't smart enough to see satire when it hit them in the face. No wonder our detractors say we are elitist. They say it because we are.

The current political climate is a good one for reading Jonathan Franzen's new book. It focuses in on all those themes that are keystones for liberals and anathema for conservatives: Environmentalism, Corporate Greed, Conservative Insensitivity, and of course, Freedom versus Liberty. And just like in real life, none of those themes and conflicts get resolved. Every one ends up selling out.

Briefly, it is the rambling story of Patty and Walter Berglund, their life long rock and roller college chum and iconoclast, Richard Katz, and their son Joey. There are other characters, much too numerous to mention here, who have the same significance as single episode crew members on the USS Enterprise. They help move the plot and give the main characters someone to play against, but that is all.

Patty is the main character here, mostly because her therapeutic autobiography supplies the reader with all the essential history to understand the tensions that energize the plot. A misunderstood daughter of liberal wealth. A teenaged rape victim. A basketball star at the U. of Minnesota. A desperate housewife and all that implies. And a cloying mother of a rebellious son. Patty is all those things.

Walter is the hero. A passionate environmentalist. A sell out to the 3M corporation. A disillusioned father. A betrayed husband. A monumental rationalizer. A victim of circumstances he helps create. That is Walter.

Richard is the brooding third side of this improbable love triangle. A talented guitarist. A slave to his selfishness. A person with impulse control issues. A collosal womanizer. An object of love for both Walter and Patty. Richard is the soul of this novel.

The intricacy of the plot is worthy of Joyce Carol Oates. It meanders from the suburbs of the twin cities, back to college days and before, to Washington D.C., to the mountain destroying coal mines of West Virginia, to the gulf war, to South America, and back to Minnesota. The characters fall in and out of LIKE with one another and at the end everything, except the state of the country and the world, seems to be working out.

It is a very topical novel. Most of the action takes place during Bush II and eventually ends up with the Obama administration. Bush II doesn't come off very well; the jury in the book, as well as in real life, is still out on Obama.

My reaction to the whole thing has been keeping me up nights ever since I finished it about a week ago. It was impossible to put down and I finished the 562 pages in two glorious days. It was also the first book I've read since Underworld that I felt compelled to underline.

The main reason the book has been keeping me up nights is because I feel a little guilty about liking it so much. It really isn't a work of art in the sense that DeLillo's tour de force is. It is more like journalism and I always feel like I've cheated myself somehow when I read something that isn't ART. I loved Stieg Larson's trilogy, but I'm a little ashamed to let people see me reading it. I also love John Irving and Pat Conroy, but after reading something by those guys I feel the same sheepishness I feel after eating a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

Then I get angry at my reaction and the similarly snobbish reactions of elitist reviewers for The Atlantic or The New Yorker. I mean what exactly is wrong with a compelling story? Why does a book have to be hard to read in order to be great? Why is journalism (my snobbish put down word for non-art) any less worthy than art?

I think I have an answer, at least for me. I saw Frida the other night, a wonderful movie about the love of Diego Rivera and Frida with Trotsky thrown in for good measure. I thought it was obvious (not to mention one of the points of the movie) that Frida's tortured canvases were art, while Rivera's magnificent murals were merely journalism. Hamlet said one should hold a mirror up to nature, but an artist, I think, does more than that. Frida took reality and deconstructed it, threw it up in the metaphorical air, rearranged it, and made us look at it in completely new ways.

Underworld is a greater artistic achievement than Freedom because it does the same thing. It reinvents the way stories are told by playing with chronology, point-of-view, and even questioning reality itself. Freedom never approaches that and therefore only reaffirms what we already know to be true. There are no new insights. But the reaffirmations are wonderful and I loved every one of them.

I have two paintings (posters actually) by Ray Knaub hanging in my home. One is a commision he did for the Georgetown railroad showing the train going over a bridge suspended over a gorge. It is a wonderful piece constructed on an epic scale. The other is a still life of three pots, the background all awash in shades of amber. It plays with realism a little and ends up being a painting not about three pots, but about all pots and all southwestern art. I love it.

I'll stop rambling now. Freedom is a wonderful book. The three main characters are unforgettable. The insights about conservatism, capitalism, liberalism, and the nature of the artist are compelling and true. Read this wonderful book.

Let me end with the essential conundrum of the novel:

What was over was over. His delight in the world had died, and there was no point in anything. To communicate with his wife, as Jessica was urging, would have meant letting go of his last moments with Lalitha, and he had a right not to do this. He had a right, in such an unjust universe, to be unfair to his wife, and he had a right to let the little Hoffbauers call in vain for their Bobby, because there was no point in anything.


In The Magus, Conchis tries to explain to Nicholas that Freedom was the RIGHT to do all and the prohibition not to do all. Freedom examines the same paradox.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Life in the Maintenance Lane

Katherine here today.

I learned a long time ago that life is basically maintenance. I tried to teach Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance a number of times and it certainly taught me to maintain the bits and pieces of my life in any number of ways. I'm not sure what my students got out of it, but it always helped me.

I get up and I just start maintaining things in between what I do to earn a living. I maintain teeth, skin, hair, my weight, my fitness, my brain (I hope), my clothing, my relationships with friends and family, my nails, my emails, my car, my garden, my yard, and our finances. I maintain the lists I make of the stuff I have to maintain. If I had a motorcycle, I'd maintain it too just like Pirsig's book suggests.

Normally this maintenance business doesn't bother me too much. I just get up and start doing what needs to be done. I've even done pretty well when the maintenance demands have escalated. Stuff like cancer got in my way and increased my daily protocols, but I managed to keep plugging away like a good little soldier.

Last week I collapsed though. Two new sets of protocols entered the picture and the result was two days where I lived on the verge of tears when I wasn't actually crying. I wasn't sure I could take any more maintenance chores than I was already doing and I simply crashed and burned. I'm doing better now though thanks to Jim and C. Fite and Christine (my beautiful daughter-in-law) who somehow said and did the right things at the right time. No one else really knew I was in trouble at the time.

I have "frozen shoulder." Mastectomy patients like me and band leaders get it. Last spring my shoulder seized and I couldn't raise my left arm straight up and I couldn't put my left arm behind my back. I could hike and kayak though, so I decided to take weeks off from knitting and anything else that required my shoulder to go up or my arm to go behind my back. I was pretty sure rest would fix the shoulder.

Resting did not work. Now I see a physical therapist regularly and do all sorts of new maintenance work. She warned me it could take up to 18 months for my shoulder to return to normalcy, if it ever did. She taught me my stretches and exercises and 40 new minutes of protocols were added to my daily duties.

Three days later I stabbed a thorn under my right thumbnail while putting on my gardening gloves. I thought I removed the thorn. Two days later my thumb was a mess and I had a substitute doctor (mine is out of town) removed more of the thorn. Another two days passed and things were worse and I went in for a LONG procedure or a SHORT surgery where another substitute doctor lifted my thumbnail and dug around for remaining thorn fragments. This hurt a lot. This also added three 15 minute thumb soakings and four rounds with a heat pad to my daily protocols. This was when the good little soldier just died inside me.

My thumb procedure was last Monday and it's Friday now. Jim has hovered and brought me my favorite ice cream (Salted Butterscotch by Sweet Action Ice Cream Co.) and loved me in so many ways through my grumpy two weeks. He's even worried that I can't knit for now. How this logical fellow can love me like a pure romantic I'll never know, but I'm so glad he can. We are a perfect odd couple somehow.

C. Fite actually stopped by the house with flowers and a perfect card. The only card I've ever saved. Christine listened to me when I hurt and called me with good news about herself like she was truly my daughter. My heart soared. The world started getting better again and my little soldier self began to return.

Even though my heart hurt and I felt like I would never get back to having a normal shoulder and thumb, I never skipped a single protocol along the way--I just started resenting all the maintenance. Jim and C. and Christine made me remember that I should never resent the stuff keeping me here to love and be loved.

The seeds that Jim and C. and Christine planted all last week bloomed into a lot of hope this morning. Their love combined with finishing a wonderful book while sitting in my knitting den seemed to put me all back together. My little soldier inside is feeling pretty darn perky right now.

I promise to write about the book when my thumb is up to more typing. It is The Swan Thieves by Susan Kostova. I plowed through all 661 pages this week and it ended perfectly for me. I'm such a romantic idealist and it's rare for an ending to heal my heart in the way this book did. That's a lot.

I'm not sure what my point is today. If you're reading this, I hope you'll keep maintaining your motorcycle or the little soldier inside yourself even when you're feeling sad. You discover people love you and it's only your perception that is screwed up. I learned that long ago from Sissy Hankshaw and her huge thumbs in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Tom Robbins). I just forgot to follow every lesson I ever taught.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Twitterpated

I was being interviewed on SKYPE the other day for some kind of generational reality road trip show with Nate when the interviewer asked me what I thought of Facebook and Twitter and the like, hoping to get some kind of old codger reaction to all this new-fangled technology that is ruining the world. She wasn't disappointed.

I told her I thought Twitter was basically a work of the devil and then said a bunch of random things because I was flustered by the crappy sound on SKYPE and the -at least- thirty second lag between my statements and her reception of them. It is hard to be articulate in that situation, at least it is for a technologically challenged person like myself.

As a result, I spent a sleepless night trying to come up with a better response, and I came up with the real reason I hate Twitter in particular and most electronic communication in general. It looks ugly! I hate the abbreviations and the typographical short hand that all proficient Twitterers use.

LOL
:)
:(
R U OK?
L8 for appt
Gr8 to hear from U

Yuck. That was not an abbreviation, just my reaction to the whole thing.

I know I am an old English teacher and therefore the worst kind of cultural dinosaur, but I just love the way a page looks when it is filled with blocks of beautiful print. I like the way Starkeyland looks, even though I know I could make it look much more modern by having sidebars and scrolls and links all over the place and adding all sorts of nifty colors, but I hate that.

Even though I hate the content of The Wall Street Journal, I love the way it looks. Watching Fox News always makes me nauseous and not just because of its content. I much prefer watching talking heads on PBS. Back in the good old days I was proud of the way The Ram Page looked compared to all of the other glitzed up high school publications that other journalism programs produced. True, we didn't clean up with awards at Colorado Press Day, but I always just attributed that to the rotten taste and values of the judges.

I appreciate the Tod Helton/Dexter Fowler Rockies commercial where they are sitting in the lockerroom and Tod asks Dexter "What's a Tweet?" Fowler explains and Helton's reaction is the same as mine. "You mean you tell people your daily schedule?! Who cares what you are doing? You're basically still a rookie."

8am rewriting Gr8 Gatsby

10am running marathon LOL

11am lunch w/K

etc. etc. etc.

YUCK

Monday, September 13, 2010

Open - Andre Agassi

Andre Agassi's autobiography was completely mindless. It was wonderful to read.

It has spent some time as #1 on the best seller list and it has lots of hype. Time said : "One of the best sports autobiographies os all time . . . One of the better memoirs out there, period."

"Not your typical jock-autobio fare. This literate and absorbing book is, as the title baldly states, Agassi's confessional, a wrenching chronicle of his lifelong search for identity and serenity, on and off the court." -Los Angeles Times

"The most revealing, literate, and toes-stompingly honest sports autobiobraphies in history." -Rick Reilly.

I would have to agree, but keep in mind that we are talking about sports autobiographies here. Sure, compared to Wilt this is heady stuff. Of course Wilt Chamberlain went into much more detail when listing his sexual conquests. By Wilt's account he would have had to bedded three or four women a day starting at age eight to amass the numbers he gives himself credit for.

It is also better than Tom Jackson's autobiography in conjunction with Woody Paige, although one of the hypes on Jackson's back cover came from my mother-in-law. "With the exception of my husband, Charlie, Tom Jackson has given me more pleasure than any other man," she cleverly asserted. I think that was the best line coming from that book.

I don't think it is as good as Mad Ducks and Bears (Alex Karras), but that was more an expose of football life than an autobiography. And, of course, it can't compete with my childhood favorite, The Knute Rockne Story. My junior high devotion to Knute Rockne and Notre Dame makes Rudy whathisname look like a slacker. But I digress.

I had just finished reading Brooklyn and went to the Tattered Cover to buy Freedom, but as is usually the case when I walk into a bookstore, came home with a handful of other titles. I spent the rest of the day determined to start reading Jonathan Franzen's novel, but some force kept pulling me toward the Agassi. I gave in and, just like many of the reviewers said, I couldn't put it down. I finished it by the next morning by reading it in between serves at the U.S. Open. Even though I am a rotten tennis player, I love the game; if you love the game, you love Agassi.

Actually, Agassi merely dictated the book ( I suspected as much from the start) and a typist put it on paper and/or hard drive. Then J. R. Moehringer (The Tender Bar) gave it some structure. It is a successful collaboration. The book presents a straightforward account of Agassi's career in chronological order. It paints a pretty horrible picture of his driven father (Agassi was forced, never cajoled, into hitting 2,500 hundred balls a day!) and Nick Bollettieri's horrific tennis boot camp in Florida. It details his rivalry with Pete Sampras and his hatred (mutual) of Boris Becker. It takes us through a number of his more important matches, everyone of which I remember watching with rabid attention. And, of course, it talks about his awkward relationship with Brooke Shields and his eventual true love, Steffie Graf. It also talks about his heavy experimentation with Crack/Meth during his low years and his humiliating rehab with the help of Brad Gilbert and a whole entourage of trainers, pseudo shrinks, family, and friends. At the end he spends a lot of time talking about his charities, notably the school he funds and runs in Vegas. The whole ordeal ends on a triumphal note, and even though Agassi is basically a whiny jerk through most of his life, we end up happy for his apparently happy and successful future.

My main reaction to the whole thing is a certain bemusement at the error of magnitude that has characterized his life. The obstacles he had to overcome seem so insignificant, so trivial, compared to the obstacles that most of us face every day. Okay, okay, he had a bullying father who pushed him to be a tennis star and make millions and millions of dollars. The women in his life didn't understand him. He was tempted by drugs. Sometimes he lost important matches. Once, he was forced to watch The Joy Luck Club with Barbra Streisand and a collection of hollywood stars. He was on the set of Friends when Brooke Shields, in a cameo, licked the hand of one of the guys (Agassi stormed out.). His back hurt a lot when he got out of bed. But, praise the lord, he overcame all of that to start a school and live with Steffi Graf and his kids in Vegas. Interesting, but not the stuff of tragedy. I mean we could all tell him stories that would break his heart.

That's the thing with sports nuts. Listen to them argue on some sports talk show and you would think that the trading of Brandon Marshall was the end of the world as we know it. Kyle Orton only threw ONE TOUCHDOWN against the Jags and sports columnists like Woody Paige and Mark Kizla manage to opine for 700 words each as if that actually mattered. Of course, I was, and continue to be, devastated that Federer lost in the semis, but that is another story.

In biographies of people of significance like John Adams or Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln, the obstacles they encounter are out of my experience. They are huge stumbling blocks requiring huge deeds by huge men or women. By contrast, it is fun to read about Andre's puny travails but he needs to take himself a little less seriously. Of course, if he did that he never would have dictated his book and then where would we be.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The Renaissance Bellhop and The Road to Oxiana

Katherine today.

One of the wonderful things about nice hotels is that there are people hired to lug your stuff around and bring you things simply because you want them. They are called "bellhops," but it's a silly out-dated name. I've discovered that some of my favorite people are or were bellhops and there's some sort of natural art to getting to know your bellhop. I call it curiosity. If you start asking questions about your location, restaurants in the vicinity, or about the hotel itself--well, you discover a lot about your bellhop and sometimes you learn a lot about where you are.

Some bellhops, sadly, are dolts. They have no thoughts about their surroundings and often feel you're wasting their valuable time answering questions that you should have researched online for heaven's sake.

One of my favorite bellhops was Jeremy up at Jenny Lake Lodge. He felt the bellhop/cocktail waiter/fire-starter role was probably among the noblest on the planet. He turned his delivery bicycle into the "bellmobile" and had a handyman's belt with a plunger proudly hanging from some appropriate slot that was the "bell-belt." He rang the bell on his "bellmobile" to announce his arrival and the folks in the Columbine cabin heard him often--plumbing problems there. My favorite memory was when we first did the 21 mile jaunt over Paintbrush Divide and came home so blistered and tired we knew we couldn't trudge over to the lodge to get much needed cokes. Jeremy (alias "The Bell Man") somehow knew our needs and arrived with a pitcher of Coke before we could even call and request it. Jeremy loved his job and was born to serve. He manages a big hotel in the Caribbean now. That always makes me happy.

Sometimes bellhops are bellhops because they love the surroundings and will do anything to be near them. The Lodge at Vail is peopled with snowbums trying to eke out livings between days on the mountains skiing or boarding. Jenny always employs a conglomeration of fishermen, hikers, paddlers, and mountain climbers and between the wait staff and the bellhops you could learn about anything in Grand National Teton Park--Yellowstone too.

This year at Jenny we got to know Ross. I'm not sure Ross was enthralled with his job title, but he was a great bellhop nonetheless. He delivered ice with elan and if we were on the porch when he came by we talked books mostly. He created a cocktail just for me--vodka with huckleberry lemonade. Ross spent last winter in Beaver Creek and was summering in the Tetons. He raced down mountains all winter and came to Wyoming to climb them all summer. There was a certain symmetry in his down and up lifestyle that pleased me.

Ross graduated from GW in DC (I think I've got that right--it's been over a month and my memory isn't what it used to be). His degree was impressive and I think environmental, but I'm really guessing there. Anyway, he became my model for the Renaissance "bellhop." Between his bellhop shift and his cocktail shift he'd either read a book or climb a mountain. Wonderful balance.

One day we went to Jackson to find him a climbing book--we thought he could attack both his loves simultaneously that way. We wanted The Wall by Jeffrey Long (cool book about climbing El Capitan with quite an ending), but couldn't find it and settled on a light book about climbing the fourteeners in Colorado called Halfway to Heaven. It's just fun. Nothing heavy there at all as I recall.

Ross was equally inspired and he brought us The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron. He indicated it would be the book he wanted with him if he were stranded on a desert island. This book is not a book just for fun and I felt a bit embarrassed at having picked such a light book for him when Jim and I are usually pretty good about matching books and readers.

Anyway, I've just finished The Road to Oxiana and it is not the book I would want with me on a desert island and I keep wondering why it is Ross's choice. I need to email him about that.

It's an interesting book even though I had to slug my way through the first half. It's a travel book detailing the writer's trip through Persia and Afghanistan in the 1930's. Robert, our traveler, is almost creating the genre most recently used in Eat, Pray, Love (I didn't like that one, but I'll spare you my Eat, Pray, Love rant). The first half seemed like constant descriptions of minarets, mosques, and mausoleums. Having never really seen any of that geography other than watching it get blown up during modern press coverage of wars in the area, the architecture and landscape described was hard for me to connect to--all the fault of my lack of Mideastern experience. I finally did better when I stopped trying to read it straight through and began to read Robert's daily entries one at a time. It took me over a month with this approach, but I appreciated the book much more that way.

I really liked the second half. I began to understand Robert's tone of voice--probably because he talked more about people and the frustrations of his journey. Robert was wonderfully sarcastic and he and his fellow drop-out from Oxford, Christopher, began to suggest that the Eat, Pray, Love formula for self-awareness through travel might sometimes be selfless rather than selfish.
At the end of the book, Robert credits his mother for teaching him to see the world the way he did. I loved that.

I think Robert and Christopher logged about 850 miles in ten months and never did reach their precise goal. Terrible roads, cars and lorries in sorry shape, bizarre political decisions, and the whims of local potentates detained them regularly. They were often ill. Christopher was arrested for unexplained reasons. The accommodations were rustic and the local folks often chased them away from the architecture they wished to study. They loved it all and were sad when it ended. Robert's perception of reality as almost always breath-taking and his ability to see the kindnesses of others and realize his own indiscretions were beautiful.

If I'd read the book in 1937 when it was first published, it never would have crossed my mind to wonder if Robert and Christopher were gay. I wondered though. They liked dressing up. Robert packed for them "Martha-like." Robert missed Christopher when he was in jail. Even though I know I need to put things into the context of the times, this exchange made me wonder too:

"Seeing Christopher slopping about the deck in a pair of shorts and that red blouse he bought at Abbasabad, Miss Willis asked: 'Are you an explorer?'
'No,' answered Christopher, 'but I've been in Afghanistan.'"

The book certainly shows how not much has changed culturally in the area as well. The Russians are in and out and skirmishing with the Afghans. Doctors are forbidden to treat women. The various religious sects in both Persia and Afghanistan fuss over everything--down to what is permissible for Robert and Christopher to visit, draw or photograph. The book didn't inspire much hope for peace in the Middle East.

My favorite moment in the whole book is when Robert talks about an earlier traveler in the area--someone named Moorcraft who died in 1825 at Andkhoi. Yet another traveler, Sir Thomas Holdich in The Gates of India, thought Moorcraft an idiot for carting 30 books with him on his journey because sojourners should only take along "light and handy equipment."
Robert's response to all this made my heart sing:

"A light and handy equipment! One knows these modern travelers, these over-grown prefects and pseudo-scientific bores dispatched by congregations of extinguished officials to see if sand-dunes sing and snow is cold. Unlimited money, every kind of official influence support them; they penetrate the furthest recesses of the globe; and beyond ascertaining that sand-dunes do sing and snow is cold, what do they observe to enlarge the human mind?
Nothing...
No one thinks of (the traveler's) mental health, and of its possible importance to a journey of supposed observation. Their light and handy equipment contains food for a skyscraper, instruments for a battleship, and weapons for an army. But it mustn't contain a book. I wish I were rich enough to endow a prize for the sensible traveller: 10,000 pounds for the first man to cover Marco Polo's outward route reading three fresh books a week, and another 10,000 pounds if he drinks a bottle of wine a day as well."

I liked that.

I'm glad I read the book. It's not what I would take to a desert island and again I wonder why it is Ross's choice. Mostly I've begun to think about trying to travel with a keener eye and trying to decide what book I'd like with me on a desert island. I'll let you know.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Zen and the Art of Sausage Making

Katherine today-just so you know.

Yesterday we spent the whole afternoon making various types of sausage. We got into sausage making last Christmas because each year we treat ourselves to some new cooking technique. We learn something and it fills the time between familial extravaganzas and keeps me from having less-than-merciful thoughts about the dark Republicans who litter my family tree. We've taken up pasta-making, tamale-making, cheese-making--lots of stuff like that. Last year it was sausage-making.

This was our fourth foray into sausage making, filling our freezer so we can have an array of choices whenever we want. Last winter whenever the weather people indicated we'd be snowed in, we'd rush out to Tony's and get the meats and sausage casings and spend the wintery day this way.

We started with one little Mario Batali recipe and just made Italian sausage. By the third outing, we'd figured out what we needed to do and we started improvising. Those improvised sausages were so good that we began playing around with all sorts of possibilities and yesterday we cranked out three miraculous batches.

Since I am a sweetheart (well, most of the time), I decided to share the process for any adventurous cooks who might be reading out there.

Equipment:

You need a meat grinder and a sausage stuffer. If you have a Kitchen Aid mixer you're halfway there because they have the right attachments available. We bought them for ourselves for Christmas last year--not real pricey either.

Ingredients:

You need meat, fat, filler (breadcrumbs, potatoes, etc.), liquid (wine, brandy, stock, etc.), and seasonings. The trick is learning to trust your instincts and be playful. You also need sausage casings which you can get at gourmet food shops that make their own sausage (we get ours at Tony's).

Basic Procedure:

You need to get the meat and fat really cold, but not frozen because it will grind up better. We usually just put it in the freezer as we start setting up. Cut the meat and fat into one inch cubes so it can make it through the grinder. Then you grind up the meat and fat. You need about one fourth of the quantity to be good fat (pancetta, pork belly, bacon). Add filler and appropriate seasonings. Add the liquid last until you get a texture that is tighter than meatloaf, but not too tight (that took some time to figure out). Then you need to try the sausage before you stuff the casings. Just fry up a small portion and give it a whirl. It's a nice break in the process too, especially if the sausage is yummy.

The next part is a bit yucky, but you get over it quickly. You need to clean the casings. Put a length in a bowl of water and then get it out and trap it between your fingers and pull it through to get rid of excess water. It's slimy--what would you expect for pig intestines? Attach the casings to the sausage stuffer, run the sausage mix through the machine until it appears at the end of the tube, tie a knot in the casing, and then start pushing the meat filling through the attachment (follow the Kitchen Aid directions). Make one long sausage and when it's done, pinch it and twist it into the serving sizes you want. Put the little beauties in the freezer and then they're ready when you want them.

Yesterday's Recipes:

Duck Sausage (makes 12 smallish sausages). This one is costly and you only share it when you know someone understands how special it is.

2 whole duck breasts
1/4 pound pancetta
fresh homemade bread crumbs--maybe a cup
zest of two oranges
salt to taste
white pepper to taste
red pepper flakes to taste
sage to taste
French chervil to taste
1/4 cup Citronge liqueur
orange juice as needed to get the moisture level correct

Breakfast Sausage (makes 28-32 large sausages)

4 pounds pork butt/shoulder (same stuff, but stores call it by different names)
1 pound pork belly
fresh homemade bread crumbs--maybe two cups (sheer guess here because I just throw it in until it looks right)
salt to taste
white pepper to taste
lots of red pepper flakes (we like it spicy)
onion powder
sage to taste
French chervil to taste
beef stock as needed to get the correct moisture level

Italian Sausage (makes 28-32 large sausages)

4 pounds pork butt/shoulder
1 pound pork belly or pancetta depending on how rich you feel
fresh homemade bread crumbs--maybe two cups
salt and white pepper to taste
red pepper flakes to taste
lots of marjoram, basil, oregano, fennel seeds
white wine as needed to get the correct moisture level

You can do anything. Our last round included a veal sausage where we added cooked mushrooms with partially cooked and diced potatoes as the fillers--that was pretty darned expensive, but heavenly. Strangely, the finished sausages are somehow beautiful although that's hard to imagine before you actually go through the process.

It was a great day and our freezer is filled to the brim with wonderful sausage goodies. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving when I can start my stuffing by pulling out some of the breakfast sausage for my original recipe.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

BROOKLYN - Colm Toibin

Katherine and I have had this running argument for almost as long as we've known each other about gender bias in literature. Her point has always been that far too many of the novels we asked our students to read were written from a male point of view by mostly male artists. I always argued that gender was not an important factor in literature that was truly great. Sure, Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn are about boys, but that doesn't take away from the universality of those works. Holden's and Huck's realizations spring from situations associated with boys, but they are the same realizations that girls have and the same satisfaction can be had by reading about them, regardless of the sex of the reader. Madame Bovary, I suppose, is in my top five list of favorite novels precisely because Emma's story transcends gender even as it is based on it.

Don't get me wrong. I certainly agree that there are more books about male characters than female ones on required reading lists and I think educators should use a little affirmative action in order to offer students a better balance, but I don't think the current situation is some kind of male conspiracy. The Bean Trees is a great book, but I think teachers make an egregious error when they emphasize feminism in their approach to it. It isn't a feminist statement; it is an exploration of parental love, marital love, and the fight against injustice that love should always engender. Even a book like Catch-22 that on the surface seems to treat women like objects, ends up celebrating the refuge and love provided by those same women. It is a great novel and as a great novel transcends gender.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin is such a book and I strongly suggest that you postpone all further activities and rush out and read it. Just like Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man offers, to my way of thinking (understand that this is the Jesuitical training in me speaking), a pitch perfect description of young introspective males, so does Brooklyn offer such a portrait of a young woman in the person of Eilis Lacey, an Irish lass who makes the journey to Brooklyn.

Overshadowed by her sister, Eilis is destined to be nothing more than a wallflower who dabbles in bookkeeping until, at her sister's instigation, she escapes the social restraints of the home land for the scary freedom of the boroughs of New York City. Terribly homesick at first, she ends up standing up for herself, taking night school classes and falling in love with a life-loving Italian plumber, Tony.

I know, I know, this sounds like the makings of a Harlequin romance and maybe it is, but Toibin's exquisite exploration into the character of an ordinary human being placed in a new set of circumstances just overwhelms the reader with recognition. I was brimming over the entire time even when I reached the last twenty pages and had to force myself to keep going to the inevitable conclusion.

But the conclusion wasn't as inevitable as I thought. It was instead almost exactly what you would expect to happen, but in that expectation we see how ordinary people doing ordinary things can approach tragic heights.

I've always liked those novels that eschewed the grandiose for the commonplace. Most stories, after all, are not about great individuals clashing with great forces; instead, they are about people like me who sometimes find themselves in over their heads frequently due to their own stupid, human choices. Emma Bovary is like that. The sad little car salesman in Fargo is like that. Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale are certainly like that.

Brooklyn shows us that choices, even insignificant ones made by seemingly insignificant people, can be just as heroic, just as existential, as those made by anyone no matter how great or heroic they seem.

I am now going to go right out and buy Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. I've never read it, but I'm betting it will feel a lot like Toibin's wondrous achievement.