Friday, December 13, 2013

It's The Holidays: Time To Talk About Food

I want to take a break from trying to write the next scene of my latest soon to be unpublished novel and I especially want to take a break from thinking about our dysfunctional political system.  Instead, I want to write about something I know we all care about.  Food.  

The Ten Best Things I've Ever Eaten


1 - On Sunday mornings in Freeport, Illinois my father would make fried egg and tomato sandwiches while the womenfolk were at church.  To this day, when I am alone in the morning and hungry, I will whip up a fried egg and tomato sandwich.  It is the only positive memory I have of my father.

2 - On chilly mornings when Annabel, who worked across the street from Estes Park Schools, gave me a ride to Miss Soth’s third grade class, we would stop first at Jerry’s Sandwich Shop where Annie would order me up a stack of pancakes.  She taught me how to pile the butter on between each cake and drizzle the whole thing with syrup.  I felt like a regular at the counter and after polishing off my pancakes, I’d walk across the street to school.

3 - The reuben sandwich at Hummel’s Deli in Cinderella City was to that moment in my life (I was 20) the single best thing I had ever tasted.  LIght rye bread studded with seeds, a creamy layer of sauerkraut that to this day has never been duplicated, thinly sliced pastrami (at that time in my life a completely exotic ingredient), great swiss cheese.  I worked at Craig Rehabilitation Hospital back then (fulfilling my Conscientious Objector obligation) and piled many a patient into an ambocab  for lunch at Hummels.  Those culinary forays remain among my favorite memories.

4 - The first time we went fishing with Felipe in Belize, I caught a (at least to my eyes) monstrous baracuda, among other things, and after the morning was done, Felipe landed us on a semi-secluded beach (within walking distance of a palapas bar just a dozen yards or so upshore).  While the four of us (Bud, Janet, Kathie, Me) had drinks, Felipe wrapped our catch along with some well chosen vegetables in foil, grilled them, and had them waiting, along with a stack of warm tortillas, for us when we returned.  It was the best fish I’d ever had, including my grandmother’s fresh caught trout in Estes Park.

5 - I spent the better part of an afternoon making the tamales in Rick Bayless’ MEXICO ONE DISH AT A TIME.  I rigged a makeshift steamer out of a broiler pan with the help of half a roll of tin foil and was skeptical about my chances for success.  An hour later, Kathie and I shared a steaming hot tamale.  OH MY GOD!  I’m not sure anything has ever tasted that good.

6 - We took a cheese making class at Luca d’Italia a few years ago with Frank Bonnano.  Among other things, we learned how to make mozarella, ricotta, and burrata.  The next week hadn’t reached the half-way point before we launched our first attempt at mozarella.  After two failed attempts, the third batch was perfect.  It ended up costing us four times what it would cost in the store, but we were proud.  The same thing with the ricotta.  We even used our first successful batch to make a ricotta based gnocchi that has become a staple around our house (although with store bought ricotta).  A burrata is a combination of ricotta and mozarella, with the fresh mozarella wrapped around the hot and creamy ricotta.  It is, to my mind, the quintessential cheese appetizer when accompanied by thin wedges of crispy and garlicky bread.  Our version was pretty good, but we learned a really important lesson as a result of our cheese making classes:  For God Sakes!  Go to a restaurant and order the burrata.  Don’t try this at home.  Taking that advice, the burrata at any Bonnano venue makes the entire meal worth the drive.  I mean it.  If you are a cheese lover, nothing beats the burrata at Osteria Marco, or Bonnano Brothers, or Luca d’Italia.

7 - Kathie, Franny, and I visited Annabel in the hill country of Texas one spring break.  We drove to a little town between Austen and San Antonio and had beef brisket on sheets of butcher paper with lots of Texas toast.  I’m not a barbecue lover, but if that joint was in driving distance of my house, I would live there.  As long as we’re talking brisket, the brisket sandwiches at Masterpiece Deli are even better than the Cubans at Masterpiece Deli.  I never thought I could say that about any sandwich.  I can’t believe there is a better sandwich in Denver.

8 - The Pescador Zarandeado at Tino’s in Puerto Vallarta is my favorite all time fish dish.  It is even better than Felipe’s barracuda in Belize.  First of all, Tino’s is the premier fish joint in PV and that’s saying a lot.  When you order the dish, they bring out the whole fish for your approval before they cook the thing.  The finished product arrives with crispy skin and white flaky flesh on a huge vegetable laden platter with a plate of warm tortillas nearby.  Wrap the fish and vegetables in a tortilla and realize that life, at least at that moment, is good.

9 - I’ve written about these before, but the steamed buns (pork belly) at Bones in Denver are simply the best apps in the city.  I refuse to believe there is anything anywhere that compare, and believe me I’ve been looking.  In fact, the only app in contention is the flash fried peppers at the same place.  


10 - There are so many other dishes, but I’m going to limit myself to ten.  The amuse bouche at The Restaurant at Meadowood the last time we were there took my breath away.  We had dinner four nights in a row at that restaurant (we decided to camp out at Meadowood the entire time -- a wise decision, I hasten to add) and the same dish dazzled me each time.  It was baby carrots, radishes, and other root vegetables from Meadowood’s amazing garden, dressed in a barely perceptible vinaigrette, resting on a bed of snow laced with olive oil.  OH MY GOD!

Happy Eating



Sunday, November 24, 2013

Scenes From A Grandparent

But then things happen.

I have no model for the doting grandparent archetype.  My grandmother didn't dote; she made me wash the dishes, dig up her garden, mow the yard, and row her around Lake Estes at six in the morning while she trolled for trout.  I never had the experience of piling into the car for a trip to grandmother's.  Gram was just another looming fact of life, always there, impossible to ignore.  There was never a time when we didn't have at least three generations living at home.  More often than not, we had four.  There were two times I can remember when five generations got together.  Both were documented by front page photos in the "Estes Park Trail."

All of that informs much of the attitude I bring to my own grandparenting.  I always thought there was something phony or over-the-top about grandparental fawning, the eagerness to hold the little one, the faces, the misty eyes, the offers to take care of the kid at the slightest provocation, the photos perpetually at the ready for flashing in the faces of unsuspecting friends and acquaintances.  My grandmother never did anything like that.  She just kept busy manning the kitchen, setting another place at the table, greasing the rails of her burgeoning clan.  But, no, she never would have volunteered to watch the kids and she certainly wouldn't have been happy about the opportunity.  Or sad either.  Watching kids was no privilege; it was her life.

Gram was always just Gram.  She was funny.  She would drop everything to play gin rummy.  She would take out her teeth and make weird faces for the kids in the neighborhood.  I cried for days when she died.  But I don't ever remember her making a big deal out of me or any of her other grandchildren.

I always thought I would be that kind of grandparent.  I've always been able to put on a good gruff act. I remember a great day where I got Sage to help me paint the benches and the picnic table and I have to admit that many of my instructions might have been a little peremptory.  But afterwards we sat on the font lawn and I taught him how to say "hubba, hubba" whenever a girl walked by.  In fact we had three generations in the  house for a time when Michelle and Sage lived with us while Chris was on tour.  I'm sure I was plenty gruff when trying to get Sage to eat something, anything!

I need to point out here that I don't much like children, especially babies.  I don't even think they're particularly cute.  So it is difficult from the get-go for me to warm up to the whole grandfatherly thing.  I know that sounds terrible, but my sisters had eleven children between them and I was the main baby sitter for all of them.  Sure, I got paid handsomely, but the whole scene got old after awhile.  And then, of course, I had my own kids and all that entails.  I still have my hands full worrying about them without getting all wrapped up in some neonate I don't even know.

But then things happen.

Like the look on Brooklyn and Sammi's faces after a dance recital one evening when all they wanted was to be loved and for everyone to be proud.  They were and we are.  Or the time at the kitchen table I told Brooklyn to stop acting like such a brat and she stood up in an outraged huff and stormed into the living room and sat down on the couch with arms crossed.  She lasted a few minutes before she came back.  She looked across the table at me and made a face;  I made one right back at her.  Her tears went away and her glorious face erupted in a smile.  I think I might have cried.

When kayaking with either Sammi or Brooklyn we sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."  Since their parents have done such a nice job grooming them to be pop divas, when we get to the last line, the girls belt out "gently down the STREEEAAAM" in a big finish that can be heard all the way to shore.

When Franny gave birth to Jaydee, our sixth grandchild, we went to her house to wait for Willa to wake up while Ken and Franny drove down to St. Joseph's.  Willa started stirring about an hour later and as we were going up to get her I was a little worried that seeing us instead of her parents first thing in the morning might throw her for a loop.  I was wrong and she stood up in her crib with the same huge smile that has become her default expression.  That moment was almost as wonderful as seeing Jaydee for the first time later that day.

We kept Willa overnight and the next day took her to lunch on the way to the hospital.  We were in a booth and Willa, whose remarkably stable life had just been turned upside down, was facing the corner of the booth, presumably wondering what her parents were up to, saying earnestly into the leather cushions, "I miss you.  I miss you."  It was a phrase she had recently started using, but it was a little heartbreaking nonetheless.

We took Willa to the art museum a couple of days ago because Franny, busy figuring out how to take care of two kids in diapers, wanted Willa to go somewhere and do something more stimulating than television and watching Mommy nurse her little sister.  We didn't get past the Nick Cave interactive exhibit on the second floor.  Willa happily started placing felt shapes on the yellow walls and life-sized puppets and made sure to point out the video on the far wall to everyone who walked by.

I hope there were days when my grandmother felt as much joy.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Swim Suit Questing

This is Katherine today.  I'm pretty sure the content will make that evident soon, but in the handful of readers we have there might be somebody who might think Jim has been searching through the wilderness for swim suits.

We are headed to warm climates soon and my sit-by-the-pool-and-get-a-tan-while-sipping-on-margaritas wardrobe had died in Mexico in May of 2012.  The three identical suits suits died after four years of serious service in Mexico and Belize.

I have some really strong memories that have survived the trash bag burial of the suits.  I once spent a day alone at the Camelback Spa in Scottsdale and while I sat by the pool, a table of folks talked about how wonderful Starkey Productions had been for his business event.  Makes a mom proud.

I was hanging out at the infinity pool at Chaa Creek, my favorite resort in Belize, and I was having my very first caipirinha (a great drink) and reading a book about book restoration that took place in Florence, Italy.   We were there with Bud and Janet and between the four of us we can strike up a conversation with almost anyone.  We had a wonderful moment with the Chaa Creek owner and learned the history of the resort (it started with his wife selling homemade yogurt in the nearby village) and ended with him giving us a personal tour of his organic garden that fed the guests.  We missed the Belizian zoo to tour his garden.  It was a magnificent morning.  

I made friends with the pirate salesman who roamed around the resort pool in Puerto Vallarta.  He sold pirate bandanas that kept Jim from burning his scalp that trip (I think I bought four of them).  He wore me down and Janet and I finally agreed to go on the Pirate dinner cruise and show.  I still like the pirate bandanas.  The pirate cruise and show--not so good.

There are more memories, but that's not where this was supposed to go.

The three dead suits were originally very hard to find.  I've had a mastectomy and I lift weights.  I have a broad back on no front and I don't wear replacements (plastic surgery was not an option for me).  Swimsuits and sweaters are tough.

After a month or so of serious swim suit shopping, I found a hot pink Juicy Brand strapless one piece that looked liked a long top over a bikini bottom.  It covered my scars.  It was hot pink--that awful Juicy pink and I'm too old for that and for whatever reason I'm not wild about pink since my cancer experiences.  I don't want to define myself by cancer.

The clerk at Nordstrom told me the suit originally came in grey and turquoise (excellent choices), but they were long gone across the country.  She was right.  I tried every store the internet had as well.  That's when I learned about eBay.  It took several months, but I ended up with three of the suits in the right colors and for much better prices than the pink one I began to feel badly about leaving behind.

Since the death of the Juicy suits, I haven't needed one (NYC in April and Wyoming were not pool/ocean destinations).  NYC focused me though.  I was walking through Bloomingdale's while we were looking for a winter hat for Jim because it was pretty darn chilly and I wandered--Bloomingdales and its black and white tiles and its rich stuff all over the place is just too tempting.  I saw swimsuits and was struck with the knowledge that I was going to need one in about eight months and it was time to start looking.

I found two suits that I fell in love with instantly.  They were one piece suits with original paintings printed into the fabric.  They were high under the arms to cover my scars and the back was bare and low and my back is the best of what I've got these days.

One had a cowgirl wearing a great hat on the front in peaches and blues.  The other had a herd of horses spilling across a mesa-type setting.  They were $350 per suit.  I looked at the designer name and wandered back to knit hats and Jim.  Heavy sigh.

At the end of the summer, I began the new swimsuit quest in earnest.  I figured there would be sales too.  I looked everywhere.  There was nothing I liked that worked with my body and anything that did work made me look like the Granny I am.  Phooey on that.

I decided I'd try my eBay thing again.  The suit designer turned out to be from Australia (We Are Handsome) and I checked out what was available.  No more cowgirls, but a nice selection of scenery and critters.  Not as pricey there, but still beyond what I would pay.

After three months and regularly checking in, I found and purchased three suits.  No cowgirls.  No herds of horses running on mesas.  I did, however, find a roaring lion, a stallion, and a ferris wheel in my size.  I found them all in the space of a week and bought them all.

They arrived and my flat chest made the straps way too long.  I hadn't thought of that.  Next quest--swimsuit alterations.  Fortunately C. Fite sent me to a lady whose living room was punctuated by a beautiful priest's Christmas cassock that she was designing and sewing.  Anybody who can make cassocks could fix my three swim suits I figured.  Maybe God was on her side.

I picked the suits up yesterday.  They fit perfectly and I am set to go to warm and sunny places for several years.  It was a happy quest.  Happy trails to me.




Sunday, November 10, 2013

What's Good For The 1% Is Good For The Gander

Slow On The Uptake 

While hanging out in bed this morning somewhere between sleep and wakefulness,  I started thinking about payroll taxes of all things.  Do you remember that as part of the stimulus to get the economy rolling again, payroll taxes were lowered by a full two percentage points and totally forgiven for people, like my sister and brother-in-law, who were bringing in a certain amount of income or less.  Conservatives didn't like the plan.  It coddled people and made them dependent on an ever-expanding government.  At their first chance, Congress reinstated the earlier tax rate in the name of, I guess, fairness.

So I started thinking about that attitude, the attitude that says forgiving my barely-making-ends-meet brother-in-law the pittance of payroll taxes (6.5% of his meagre income) he pays would somehow hurt him and the country.  Back in the 80's Reagan and Tip O'Neal (sp?) agreed to raise the rate of the payroll tax to the current 6.5% in an effort to restore long-term solvency to Social Security.  The rate went up and, if Reagan and Alan Greenspan had in fact put that extra money into the SS Trust Fund instead of using it to defray the unsustainable cost of Reagan's popular (to the wealthy) tax cuts, Social Security would be on pretty firm footing even as we speak.  But they didn't do that.  Not only didn't they do that, but the 6.5% payroll tax only applied to an individual's first $110,000 of earnings (payroll taxes going to Medicare were set at something like 1.4% and applied to all income).

If that's the case (and it is), I couldn't help but think about the hypocrisy of all those folks (read:Mitt Romney and the rest of the 1%) who were screaming doom and gloom over letting people like my brother-in-law off the payroll tax hook.  Romney famously talked about creators and takers.  The takers were all those people who were living off the largesse of the federal government without paying their fair share in taxes.  These takers were being turned into dependent free-loaders by profligate Democrats.  Insert as many GASPS here as you would like.

But what about people like Romney and Ryan and Coburn and Boehner and Limbaugh and Hannity, etc.?  I suspect Romney's income is above $110,000.  Let's be conservative and say he pulls down $500,000 in salary from Bain, or whoever.  That means he earns $400,00 free of payroll tax.  Doesn't that governmental break turn him into a dependent taker just like the break for my brother-in-law made him a taker.  And what if Romney invests a couple of million in a mutual fund like Berkshire Hathaway and gains 10% in value over a year?  Does he have to pay any payroll taxes on that?  The answer is no.

I know I am a wild-eyed liberal, but there seems to be a fundamental unfairness here.  It seems like we believe (rather our Congress comprised of wealthy white guys believes) that eliminating the taxes of the poor makes them dependent takers and hurts our country; on the other hand, eliminating the taxes of the wealthy creates jobs and makes our country great.  After all what's good for the 1% is good for the country.  I would have to take exception here.  The truth is that what is good for the 1% is good for the 1%, country be damned.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

SUNDAY ON THE COUCH WITH KATHERINE



Good Morning.  This is Katherine.  If I do not identify myself, it's Jim.  I know this is hard for everybody, but we taught forever together and raised kids together and slept together and have done everything together and we seem to blog and FaceBook together and it gets really confusing for some folks.   Today it's Katherine though.

"Good Morning" is my current favorite greeting, but I always hear it in my friend David's voice.  He is a native of Birmingham, Alabama.  He has a wonderful voice and accent.  It's delicious when he calls and out pops his version of "Good Morning." I wish you could hear him when I type this.

I just watched SUNDAY MORNING.  It is my favorite television show.  I learn so much.  Kevin Kline married Phoebe Cates (the swimming pool girl in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH).  Is that cool or what?

The show always makes me think like an artist.  It's the suns.  Between each segment there is a different artistic rendition of the sun.  They are beautiful.  I love looking at the suns.

We have a large artistic sun hanging above (maybe over) our shower in our bedroom bath.  It was the final touch on my bathroom vision several years ago.

Jim was instrumental in making my artistic vision of the bathroom happen.  Jim retiled the shower in deep royal blue rectangular tiles with very white grout.  He tiled the floor with small white tiles, again with white grout.  Jim's handyman guru, Bud Simmons, advised against the white grout.  I ignored him--I was painting the bathroom.

The tile is wonderful.  Thank you sweetie.  I still like my white grout.  I especially like the part where you clean it.

I had Jim paint the walls gray.  I ordered super gigantic beach towels from Sundance (on sale for an amazing $18 per towel--an Olympic shopping coup for my side).  Two wildly striped towels hang from a very cool and heavy-duty towel rack that stores the extras above.   I put up a painting of a scientist holding a test tube by former student Shawnty Whitam who seems to be swimming in an ocean on the only wall with enough size for it.

Just above the toilet paper, there is a poster former student Lisa Woltkamp Kish gave us.  It's a collection of haikus that appeared on marquis's in NYC one year.  Jim asks me sometimes which is the best or my favorite.  I refuse to respond.  Each trip to the bathroom is a new experience and I see one in a whole new way.  What can I say?

Toilet paper is stored in a blue and white Chinese vase thing my mom gave me.  Works.  There is a giant stainless steel jack (you know--like the game of jacks) in the corner on the floor.  My AP students gave it to me the day I returned to class from cancer treatments.  I played jacks with students for years.  I love it.  It's heavy and lovely and full of wonder for me.

With all this, the bathroom was an unfinished painting.  Bud and Janet Simmons provided the solution when they invited us to spend time with them in Puerto Vallarta.  After a tour through the market by the river cut, I knew I needed a sun for my bathroom painting.

We looked at various places and returned to markets and I finally fell in love with our sun.  It is "Hedwig."  It is both male and female and I always connect it with the time Jim and I went to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch and were the only straight folks in the audience and at dinner afterwards a former student spotted us and walked up and said hello and announced he'd come out  before we could say howdy.  A memorable date.  Mostly--I loved Hedwig, the movie--very mythic about the sexes.  It is still something I love to watch.

Anyway, I fell for the lone bi-sexual sun we saw in a market stall and I didn't bargain enough to please Bud.  I didn't bargain at all.  I loved the sun.  The family running the stall where I bought my sun went to great lengths to tape it up in cardboard slabs so I could get it home. The sun is big.  It's pretty heavy.  It's gorgeous.  It's hard to explain how hard they worked so I could get my sun home.

Time passed and we headed home with my sun in hand.  This was our first trip to Mexico and we were leaving before Bud and Janet and we were on our own with minimal cash at that point.

I can't remember how many get-into-a-plane-and-back-home steps we had taken when we were required to go pay some folks to re-package our sun.  For reasons that were unclear, we needed to redo the amazing box structure the stall family had built around my sun.  We watched as airport officials carefully cut away the box on our sun and rewrapped it with cardboard from the same pile.  They must have known how much cash we had left--it took it all to pay them for their efforts.

Hedwig, my sun, once it made it back to Colorado, was the end of my bathroom painting.  I love my bathroom.

It was the suns on Sunday Morning that got me started.  I'm pretty frustrated that I have an artist's eye without the obsession needed to do some things I'd like.  Jim has written two books and I've seen obsession.  It's annoying, but it's impressive as hell.

I know I see many things through the eyes of George Seurat as Stephen Sondheim saw him in Sunday the Park with George.  It's one of the works of art that changed how I saw the world.  That's a lot for a musical comedy.

In the musical, George lists the words he thinks make art.  I used to know them by heart and now I know I'm missing several.

Here are George's words the ones I remember, and how I see them in my wee artistic world:

ORDER:  This is structure and pattern.  It is a simple as chronological order or as complicated as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  Some structure must illuminate parameters and then it is the artist's job to break those parameters.  There is an intentional ocean/water thing going on in my bathroom and my haiku poster and my jack sculpture break the rules.  Master the structure and then break it where it shows.  Knit a lace shawl, but it do it with a yarn no one else will.   That's what I'm playing with now. Knitting outside the lines.

LIGHT:  This is point of view.  I taught our kids to look at paintings by teaching them to look for where the light was coming from and that way they could think about point of view.  It was sheer intuition.  It works though.  I also want to take the word literally.  Art is light--like art is not heavy.  Ponderous things are sermons, not art.  My bathroom, my knitting--I hope I'm seeing things like a painter (sigh because I do not paint with any grace at all) and I hope there is a sense of humor in there somewhere.

COMPOSITION:  What is the object composed of? Color? Notes? Words? Yarn? Wood? What are the limits and possibilities?  I am collecting Mexican tiles for another bathroom.  I am beginning a composition.  In writing I think of this in terms of ideas and details and vocabulary and grammar and all those kinds of things.  I have always had a really hard time explaining this because it seems so obvious.  It's more than the medium--that's all the more I want to say about this.

DESIGN:  This is the purpose.  Why did the artist do this?  I wanted to enjoy hanging out in my bathroom and frankly there isn't a spot anywhere in the house that isn't covered in art and the bathroom was the only room left at that point.  Now I want to paint with yarn and I want to stretch boundaries with textures and colors.  My biggest frustration there is that my knitting skills have not yet caught up with what I can see in my head.  I never even got close in any other medium.

TENSION:  This is juxtaposition.  Two things stand next to each other that don't belong and it arrests the viewer and with luck the viewer emotes or thinks or reacts in some way the object has provoked.  Though ludicrous examples, I'm happy with how my bathroom and knitting hold up here.

HARMONY:  This is George's last word.  All of the elements must come together into something that is comfortable even if the composition or the subject or  the content of the art is not comfortable.  I need to really like entering my bathroom or wearing my knitted creation.  I need to feel more complete after reading the book or seeing the movie.

I'm done.  I'm tired.  We're headed to the art museum to see the Paris exhibit and a late lunch afterwards.  It seems fitting.

Friday, October 4, 2013

I WISH LUNCH COULD LAST FOREVER

Cholon Modern Asian Bistro vis a vis Bones

We met Franny and Willa for lunch yesterday at Cholon Modern Asian Bistro.  It sits on the corner of 16th Street and Blake with big windows lining both facades.  Kathie and I got there a little early and were having a drink when we saw Franny walking by with Willa quick striding beside her.  One of my greatest joys in life lately is the reaction on Willa's face whenever she sees us and yesterday was no disappointment.  Kathie tapped on the glass and when Willa saw us through the window, her eyes got wider--I call them Willa-wide.  Her pacifier almost dropped out of her smiling mouth and she came over to give the window a return tap.  After a start like that, how could lunch be anything but wonderful.

Lunch is my favorite meal out.  I love sitting at a table, especially if it is a beautiful day and the table is outside or at least by a window, watching people walk by, drinking a crisp wine or a beer sweaty with the cold, and going through a succession of creative small plates.  Bones is probably my favorite place for lunch, even though the ambience is hardly that of a French sidewalk cafe.  I mean the crowd ambling past to get a beef combination at Benny's is fairly pedestrian (excuse the completely unintentional pun).  But the food--if there are enough of us, we like to go through all the appetizers--is sensational, from the Shishito peppers (my favorite appetizer of all time) to the steamed buns to the escargot pot stickers.

I wanted to go to Cholon because 5280 had rated it the second best restaurant, behind Frasca, in the area, and in particular raved about the steamed buns.  Well, my loyalty to the Bonnano brand was sufficient to compel me to go out and make the inevitable comparison.

Let's start with the obvious.  It is ridiculous to compare the two.  Cholon is sleek and gleaming with roomy tables sitting on classy carpets and a long, beautifully appointed bar to greet you at the door.  If you've ever been to a restaurant by Morimoto, Cholon is in that mold, although not nearly so amazingly stark and opulent at the same time.  Bones, on the other hand, is a corner noodle bar loaded to the rafters with people sucking up noodle bowls and other people standing by the door waiting to get their chance.  It's noisy.  I'm deaf to begin with, so talking is not something I plan on whenever I go there.  I'm too busy eating.  Cholon is a beautiful room with quiet, efficient, perfect service.  Bones is a tight little joint with waiters and waitresses brushing by tables on their way up the rickety stairs to get drink orders.

But when it comes to food, the comparison becomes more interesting.  Just like at Bones, we ordered all the appetizers.  First came two orders of soup dumplings, the other reason I wanted to try the place out.  Last time we were in New York visiting Nate and Ashley we had soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai and they were a revelation, unlike anything I had ever had.  The dumplings (4 per order) at Cholon would also have been a revelation had I never been to New York; instead, they were different--filled with onion soup rather than the chickeney asian broth at Joe's.  Forget that.  I'm being a New York snob.  Those are the most irritating kind.  You know, the ones who, whenever they eat ANYTHING, will say, "this is quite good, but you can get much better ones at this little shop in the East Village."  In fact, the dumplings were to die for and I'll be sure to come back for more in the future.

Next came what I had been waiting for, the steamed buns.  They were beautifully presented.  Everything was beautifully presented.  In fact, I would have to say it was the most impressive plating I had seen in Denver.  And the flavor and texture and all of that was terrific, but the steamed buns at Bones are better.  Not prettier.  At first glance, not nearly as impressive.  But they simply taste better and the texture, the mouth feel, of the actual buns was better.  They're more addictive.  If I were only after the buns, no contest, I'm going to go to Bones.

But then the rest of the apps came out one at a time and they were down to the last detail at least as good as the rest of the fare at Bones.  There was a peppery toast thing with a cocoanut dipping sauce that we all thought Willa would love.  Alas, she is getting picky in her eating as she gets older and she turned up her nose at it.  That was okay with me as I popped the last piece of toast into my mouth.  A pretty traditional plate of delicious pot stickers showed up next.  The last app I tried was the beef skewers.  Sometimes at restaurants--it happens at Mizuna regularly--I'll take the first taste of a new dish and it will be so overwhelmingly perfect that I have to sit up, put my fork down, and fend off tears of wonderment.  Such was my reaction to the beef skewers.

We had a great afternoon.  The lunch lasted about two hours.  The perfect amount of time.  Cholon is definitely, as the saying goes, a destination restaurant, but when it comes to taste, inventiveness, and vibe, Bones remains my gold standard.  It's also A LOT cheaper.



THE MOST INSIDIOUS TECH INNOVATION IN THE HISTORY OF MAN

A Parable

I went on line the minute the new iPhone 5s were available.  At first, the site took forever to load and then I kept getting error messages.  When I finally got through and jumped through all the hoops, they told me I would get my new phone in two months.

Two months!

There were only two ways to look at this.  If the incredibly high volume glitching up the site was any indication, then it must be a great device well worth waiting for.  On the other hand, the glitches and two month wait are proof that Apple is incompetent and arrogantly overreaching.  I came to the only conclusion I could and realized that the iPhone 5 as presented by the Apple Corporation is the most insidious technological innovation in the history of man and trashed my forms and went back to my dial phone.  Ma Bell never made me wait!

But even though I was frustrated, I was kind of happy.  The whole experience confirmed my certainty that everything and everyone in the world other than me and the people I hang out with are slowly chipping away at my freedom.  By going back to my dial phone I struck a blow for the kind of liberty our founding fathers were talking about when they couldn't get enough bars to call out of Philadelphia.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

A Mind Run Amok

Memory Touring

At the end of My Dinner With Andre Wally takes a cab back to his cold apartment and as he looks through the window at the storefronts passing by, he remembers certain moments in his life.  There he is getting an ice cream cone with friends at a drug store, there he is meeting his father outside a restaurant, there he is with his mother buying a suit, etc.  It remains one of my favorite movie moments.

But lately I've been having the same experience and I'm not sure what I think about it.  In the film, Wally's memory tour perfectly illustrates how our ephemeral lives progress from one patch of holy ground to the next.  However, my actual memory tour keeps sending mixed messages, all of them troubling.  Have I moved into my personal home stretch, as it were, and I'm trying to make some sort of final accounting?  Has my mind just totally run amok, grasping at random memories like so many straws?  And most disturbing, what am I to think when I can remember losing a hubcap twenty-five years ago at the intersection of Hampden and Wadsworth, but I can't remember the errand that has placed me at said intersection in the first place?

Franny, Ken, Willa, and Cheese moved some time ago from their old place close to Sloan's Lake to a nifty little Victorian in the general area of 38th and Lowell.  That is what started this whole thing.  In order to get there, I have to drive by a lot of old stomping grounds, all holding old memories, both good and bad.

There I am being an ass to some hapless clerk at a 7-11 on the way to a soccer game.  I don't even remember the cause.

There is Franny in her stroller on the sidelines of the boys' soccer games wearing her blue bonnet, Chris and Nate running by in their green Wheat Ridge recreational soccer uniforms.

There I am driving to Vinnola's on a Friday night getting all the fixings for pizza to take back to our house at 3510 Teller.

There I am in Dr. Arendt's first office on Wadsworth getting gassed before a filling.

There I am at what used to be Mon Petit, a pretty good french restaurant, turning red with embarrassment when Kathie's mom literally yells "STOP!" as the waiter tries to pour the sauce over her chateaubriand.

I'm at Elitches--old Elitches--with Virgil and Jeri on Hewlit-Packard day at the park.  Virgil made sure to get there early enough to score one of picnic tables looking over the walk into the park from Tennyson.

I'm at Elitches years later standing outside the playhouse and Chris makes fun of me for wearing a white leisure suit.  What am I thinking?  Hey!  It's the eighties.

There I am at Regis.  It's 1966 and we have to run all the way up Lowell to Loretto Heights as part of freshmen orientation.

And there I am again just a few blocks up 50th at The Blue Guitar, one of those college neighborhood folk music places.  I'm five feet from Rene Heredia and I hear live flamenco guitar for the first time.  If you know flamenco, you are envious right now.

I'm at Marycrest High School in 1971.  It's my first teaching gig.  There are girls in plaid skirts sitting under shady trees discussing Animal Farm.

It isn't just places that set me off.  It's my family.  Whenever Brooklyn directs Sammy in a little playlet--like her cruise director bit yesterday--I see Chris and Nate as little boys, two actors in search of an audience.

When I see Willa already creating little playworlds to inhabit, I see little Franny in her blue bride dress already choreographing events in the back yard.

I'm about to drive over to Franny's for lunch.  I think I'll take a detour down 32nd and then over to 35th at Pierce.  Just down the street is Paramount Park where the boys and I used to go to practice soccer.  Franny had a softball game there once a long time ago.








A Journey to the Jammie Drawer



Don't be confused.  Today it's Katherine and not Jim.  The content of this will make that important.

I just went up to the bedroom and took off my once favorite pair of leggings and put them in my jammie drawer.  It was a big moment.  Going through my jammie drawer reminds me of an old Sophomore Language Arts assignment where kids worked on introductions and somehow led the reader to masterful lists of the flotsam and jetsam that occupied their various junk drawers.  Exceptions could be made if you had a great medicine cabinet, or tool box, jewelry box, or even a jammie drawer.

My jammie drawer has a two purchased pair of flannels for the winter, a pair of long sweats, and a pair of short sweats.  All essential comfy wear for around the house.  It's the other stuff I want to talk about though.

There are three Howard Dean T-shirts.  I love Howard Dean.  He started his political career trying to get bike paths in Vermont because it was a healthy thing to do.  He ended up learning how to use the internet in politics and teaching the Democratic party to fight for the whole country and not just the blue states.  Franny worked for him and I scored three oversized shirts.  The best thing Howard Dean ever did was order the perfect T-shirt for bedtime.  No other politician has met his T-shirt standard since.  My three T's are not long for this world.  I try not to wear them because of this.

There is one T-shirt from Belize.  Jim hadn't packed enough.  I must say he's always a light packer, but he always misses on one item.  He forgot underwear when we went to Aspen once.  Try to buy basic men's underwear in Aspen.  Every store suggested we drive to Glenwood where underwear could be purchased.  Anyway, we went to Belize and he didn't bring enough T-shirts (go figure) and he bought this one and then he didn't like it.  I do.  It's in trouble too.

There is a pair of Walt DisneyWorld plaid boxers with Mickey waving (tiredly, I admit) at the rim of my left leg.  These were originally a strange gift to Franny from Chris when she was at Dunstan and disdaining Disney.  She never wore them.  I found them a while back (I was still teaching) and was so excited to have comfy boxers for my jammie drawer.  Another favorite item destined soon to go away.

There is a Snooze baseball shirt--the kind like a T-shirt with 3/4 length sleeves.  Mine is grey with green sleeves.  I bought it to wear because it would look cool and I don't mind advertising Snooze.  It just didn't fit.  My girl body and the boy shirt just didn't work in terms of public consumption.  It's fine in the den though.

There are two Patagonia hiking tops that fit before the mastectomy and don't fit now.  The gaps under the arms are too icky and I have nasty scars.  Again, on a really hot night I'm fine in the den.

I just put in the most expensive thing ever in my jammie drawer.  Several years ago (I think four--I just don't know), we went to California.  First we met Franny's in-laws in Santa Rosa, then we went to Justin Garland's beautiful wedding in Berkeley, and finally we headed up to the Napa valley.  I had a clothes disaster at the wedding.  The dress I brought had broken and I hadn't noticed somehow.  I lost the pair of shoes I had planned to wear.  I wore a cowgirl shirt and shoes that killed me at a setting that needed lovely-butt-sensible shoes (the ones that have never appeared again).  I was sad.

When we got to Napa we got there too early to check in and we went shopping and I bought a pair of leggings and tunics.  They were the first garments since the mastectomy that I felt good in.  We spent too much money, but I felt good every time I put the leggings or any of the tunics on.

The leggings are done.  Girls will understand this.  I can't throw them out.  They are a part of how I look in the mirror and do my own little version of Funny Girl's, "Well, hello gorgeous."

I put on newer leggings.  Basically the same as the Napa ones, just no story.  I put the first ones, the Napa leggings, in the jammie drawer.  They will feel really good when the weather gets chillier.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

River Rock Necklaces and Other Weird Stuff I Think About


Katherine here.

I drive a lot.  It balances out the 35 years where I hardly drove at all.

Most of my married life we had only one car and Jim drove it.  He often wonders why I'm such a backseat driver.  35 years of riding can do it.

These days I drive from school to school and observe second year teachers working to help kids and earn licenses.  I drive from school to school.  I know this city.   I'm not sure Jim likes this about me, but I know the best route to almost anyplace around Denver, Aurora, Littleton, and most of Douglas County.  I'm worthless up north.  I'm okay with that.

I need to occupy myself while I drive from school to school to school to school.  Sometimes I listen to music.  I have a billion stations on the Sirius thing.  After a while, they all play the same songs over and over.  Sometimes I listen to 104.3 The Fan.  I'm loyal.  Chris advertises there.  Sports radio is okay if the radio people aren't intent on whipping us up into irrational hatred.  The Joe Flacco banner on the stadium was a real boon to them, but I couldn't take it.  I couldn't listen all last week because of this.

I do want the Broncos to win tomorrow night when the season opens.   I can't imagine what 104.3 The Fan will be like if we lose.  These are angry people and they want listeners to be angry.

Mostly I drive in silence and I think.  Even though the world is falling apart, I think about stupid stuff.  It keeps me occupied.

For instance, I've noticed that going north is significantly faster than going south.  I make the lights.  The traffic moves.  My life is Federal, Sheridan, Wadsworth, Kipling--I go north and south often.  Going north is always pleasant and going south makes me feel like a spawning salmon.  I've never noticed this when going east and west where I have even fewer rivers to navigate.  I notice these things.

A recent odd meditation has been about what I have dubbed "river rock" necklaces.  For reasons I haven't yet puzzled out, a morning weather person must be an attractive female who makes guys at gyms take notice.  They must have big boobs accentuated by tight clothing (usually bright) and an open neckline accented by a "river rock" necklace.  We see Lauren Whitney on the CBS station more often than not and she's the Platonic ideal of weather ladies.  She has a virtual plethora of "river rock" necklaces.  The whole, now very young, female crew has a variety of "river rock" necklaces.  It's a movement that's been building for several years.

These necklaces are large.  Numbers of large, really large, stones are strung together on large chains.  The stones and chains are large.  Given the size of the boobs, I just don't know how they hold everything up.

My friend David, a significant jeweler in Alabama, calls these necklaces "Pebbles and Bam Bam" necklaces.  I like this too.

I'm just not wild about them.  They scream artificial unless somebody with some real live money is wearing them.  I'm okay with "river rock" necklaces if the green stones are really emeralds.  Maybe.

You can tell I've spent some time on the "river rock" necklace thing.

Yesterday I spent emotional energy feeling badly because Roger Federer lost in the US Open.  I suspect his life in Dubai or Monoco or wherever is just peachy keen.  He hasn't worried much about me.  Why do I do this?  Why do I spend even an instant wondering what stupid things Von Miller has done.  I do though.

We watched the new version of The Great Gatsby this past weekend and I thought about it between downtown schools.  It wasn't really worth a long drive.  My advice--never watch movie versions of your meaning-of-life books.  It looks like it was done on Instagram.  The worst thing is that the movie is pretty good until Gatsby shows up.  That's a problem for me.

I have also been thinking about where I could have meals on the road on the way to Scottsdale next March.  It's never too early to think about road trip meals.  I love driving to the Tetons because of the destination, but I also really like the drive and I love our little food stops along the way.  We stop and have breakfast at Johnson's Corner (the truck stop a bit south of the Loveland exit) and it serves the most amazing German sausage.  Really.  Lander and Dubois have great little places to eat.  It's a joy.  It's only 10 months before we go again.

Driving towards Santa Fe or Arizona is the opposite.  We try to avoid the chain places.  We have tried for years without success.  There are a billion places to eat in Santa Fe.  It's the in-between places that are hard.  The McDonalds in Trinidad left the list (we had been desperate) when a man came in packing a huge pistol and looking like he wanted to shoot something.  It was the most un-nerving meal I've ever had.  We don't stop in Trinidad anymore.  We both got food poisoning at a Mom and Pop place a local recommended in Raton.  We aren't stopping there again.  It's hard to find a spot and I think about this a lot.

It's odd, but the best meal we've had headed south was in Gallup, New Mexico a couple of years ago when we were returning from what I thought would be my last trip to Arizona.  We saw The Grand Canyon and several spring training games for the Rockies during that trip.  The weather was not great for our 10th visit to Arizona.  I was done.  It always snows in March when we visit.  Arizona is out to get me.

We are going back though and we will watch baseball and find a spa or something this time.  March again.  We can't help it.  That's when spring break is.

It's just the eating on the way down there I think about while driving around and I'm stuck with the thought that the motel/restaurant where John Wayne stayed while filming with John Ford in Gallup is our best bet.  The John Wayne burger and the crusty delivery was better than Trinidad.  We didn't get sick either.

I also have been worrying about the snake in the garden.  I have never seen it, but the burrowed holes that move from place to place indicate its presence.  The bunny population has been reduced as well.  I'm sure bunnies don't hibernate and there just aren't as many as there were earlier this summer.  My harebells aren't all bent over because the bunnies have been hiding in them.  For the longest time, there was a fox who kept the bunny population down.  The fox is gone though.  I don't know what happened there, but I worry about it.  It was a beautiful fox.

I have a snake.  It's been on the move.  I am afraid I will see it.  The bunnies aren't eating my veggies this year.  The squirrels are.  Do snakes eat squirrels?  Mother Nature forces a girl to think.  And to keep an eye out for snakes.

The world has always begun anew in the fall and I think fall things while I drive.  School stuff still, but it is also the time of the REI Labor Day sale.  It's important.  I spent a goodly amount of time thinking about what I should target for our yearly winter upgrades (boots last year).  Coats are ordered this year and I sometimes hum the "Wells Fargo Wagon" song from The Music Man at times like this.  I like this kind of thinking.   Jim will like his new coat even though he didn't "need" one.  He hasn't needed anything since we got married.

That's it.  I know the world is falling apart.  I don't think about it much.  It's a very confusing world.

I look at my mom.  She's lovely and 86 and has retreated into the Rockies, the Broncos, and Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy movies.  I think about how to convince her that her twenty year old Afro American housekeeper would never, ever, in a million, billion years want to steal one of her Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy movies.  I know.  I am a good daughter and I have watched one all the way through and part of another.  No one would ever steal one of these movies.  Her retreat is part of what makes her paranoid though.

I only bring Mom up because I don't know how long it takes to move from thinking about where to have lunch on the way to Scottsdale to being like my mom and living in a world where you suspect people of taking your Nelson Eddy movies.  I could be thinking about Syria instead.

On another note--It's important to note that I've thought through the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman.  I'm good with it.




Friday, August 30, 2013

Gated Communities, Charter Schools, and GROSS POINTE BLANK

Do you remember the scene in GROSS POINTE BLANK where John Cusack rides along with his one time high school buddy to a home in a gated community his buddy is trying to sell?  Half way through the sale another old high schooler drives up in his community patrol car, pistol strapped to his hip, lookin' for somebody to bust.  The rent-a-cop explains to Cusack how he took a two day course on law enforcement or something and then was sent out into the neighborhood to keep intruders away.

Gated communities!  I hate them; however, if I lived in one I'm sure I could find a nifty rationalization to explain my situation.  There are lots of great people who live in gated communities.  I would go so far as to say that the majority of the people in gated communities are well-intentioned and just want what is best for their families.

But that doesn't lessen the damage gated communities do.  Trayvon Martin would still be alive today if it weren't for gated communities, whether actual or metaphorical.  The creation of such communities is just another step in the stripping away of The Commons, the heart of what made our democracy work.  If you no longer share a Commons (again, actual or metaphorical, doesn't make much difference) you no longer have a community.  Instead, you have a bunch of different enclaves, all with different vested interests, all inherently distrusting of the enclave across the holler, the people who butter their bread on the wrong side, or who were insensitive enough to be born black.

I hate charter schools for the same reason.  They are nothing more than educational gated communities, all making love to whichever community interest will get them the most money, the most enrollment.  And just like gated communities, the folks who put their kids in charter schools are well-intentioned.  They want what's best for their kids.  No one has told them (or they don't want to admit) that what is good for their kids is not necessarily good for other kids.  Putting a kid in a school focusing on science or the arts or languages or whatever kills two birds with one stone.  It helps the kid get higher test scores and thus will help him get that acceptance to Harvard where he can launch his path to the Supreme Court, but studies show that while ability/interest grouping helps kids who are already motivated (actually, whose parents are already motivated) to succeed, achievement suffers for those kids who are stuck in the public schools who are getting less money as the charters take away some of their funding.  Their motivation suffers because all of the kids who were truly motivated are sitting in charter schools.  Their IQ scores actually go down.

But fuck 'em.  If they don't have what it takes to get into the charter, if their parents are too busy working four jobs to make a commitment to the school, if they don't have the transportation, well whose fault is that?  Meanwhile all those little parent driven over-achievers in charter schools continue to plow through curricula, continue to focus on the next test looming on the horizon.  They will grow up and become Ted Cruz, brilliant yes, but totally oblivious to the needs of anyone who isn't him.

There.  I just had to get that off my chest.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Dougco Ramble

I have been thinking about the recent uproar at the Douglas County School Board meeting a week ago. The only thing I know about Dougco going in is what I hear from Katherine.  I try to avoid reading too much about the state of the profession.

As I understand it the Dougco board is all about school reform on steroids.  They don't just have charter schools; they have CHARTER SCHOOLS.  They don't have merit pay; they have MERIT PAY.  They are all about applying market principles (make that MARKET PRINCIPLES) on an institution that by definition is anathema to market principles.  They want to let 15% of the teaching force get weeded out of the pool by quantifying that which cannot be quantified.  To be fair--since Merit Pay is based on test scores--shouldn't they let teachers select and cull  their own classes by using the same market principles?  Somehow, I don't think that would fly.

Dougco actually pays certain grade level teachers more than others  because those grades (6th and 1st maybe) are more critical and thus more difficult to teach than others.  No teacher, no teacher who had actually spent time in a classroom, would suggest that there are different levels of difficulty to effective teaching.  It is damn difficult no matter who you're teaching or where you are.  In addition to all of this, Dougco teachers tell Katherine, they are not being valued.  They are not getting enough input on the decision making of the powers that be.  They are being denigrated in the press; blamed for whichever societal ill is in fashion; resented for their retirement plan that is, along with the horrible prospect that everyone might have health care, bankrupting the country.  And not only that, but according to Mike Rosen and others of that ilk, their job is easy.  Anyone could do it.

All of those complaints, of course, have been voiced by teachers since the days when kids did their ABC's on stone tablets.  That doesn't make them any less legitimate, only more frustrating.  But the school board sat back and listened to all this carping with incredulity.  Test scores were soaring, they claimed.  Fully 80% of teachers in a recent survey said they were happy with Dougco.  The percentage of teachers leaving the district wasn't higher than anywhere else.  So where's the beef?

If you've taught long enough in a big district those survey results in the face of all the public discontent make perfect sense.  The disconnect between what teachers as a group really think and feel and what they are willing to say to the "boss" was and obviously continues to be one of the most infuriating things about the profession.

The majority of teachers are like the majority of college educated people everywhere.  They're average. And just like everywhere, there are a bunch of remarkably talented folks in that group and there are a bunch of remarkably untalented folks and there are some who have no business on the streets let alone a classroom.  I can make the same statement about doctors, lawyers, engineers, POLITICIANS, etc.  But the thing that distinguishes teachers, I think, is that they themselves were teacher pleasers growing up.  They knew how to play the game.  They felt comfortable within the rules.  Most of all, they wanted people, particularly their teachers, to like them.  I know everyone wants to be liked, but being in schools and all the baggage that comes with it intensifies that need.

In other words, we teachers have a hard time with authority.  We don't like to be called into the principal's office.  And we learned early on that principals as a rule don't like to be contradicted.  When they ask you to say what you really think, you know what you really have to do is tell them what they want to hear.  Therefore, those same people who bitch and moan over a beer at FAC (as long as the bar is out of the community) about the rotten state of morale in Dougco or Jeffco or Anyotherco, will happily bubble in mostly positive marks on a survey that might make it to the desk of someone with power.

According to the survey (one of the county expectations, by the way, is an acquiescence to county goals and standards) everything is just peachy in Dougco.  According to the disgruntled Dougco teachers working out at the Y in the morning, the place sucks.  Go figure.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Ranting About Young Adult Lit and Allende's CITY OF THE BEASTS


This morning it's me, Katherine.

Before reading this, remember that I'm a girl who believes in heart and intuition and magic and soul and all those things.  I'm beginning to wonder, however, if all the wizards and vampires and zombies and beasts and the other-worlds inside books that sweep young adults off to these different worlds are a good idea.  I believe that heart and intuition and magic and soul bring light to reality.  I'm just not sure adolescent worlds that lose reality altogether are such a good idea when fantasy seems to be all that's offered.  Things just feel a tad out of balance.

I've been saving this rant up since I finished Isabel Allende's "young adult" novel while we were in the Tetons.  I bought CITY OF BEASTS because I wanted to compare what a published writer did with the genre next to the two books Jim has written.  I picked Allende because I love and respect her and because I wasn't going to deal with all the already existing noise that goes with Harry Potter or the vampire books.

I need to begin by saying my sense of adolescent novels is snobbish.  When I wanted to arm an adolescent to think and to read about the real world, I marched into class with CATCHER IN THE RYE.  When it was time to escape and play pretend, I taught the entire 1500 pages of THE LORD OF THE RINGS.  Both had merits, but I'd bet a lot I helped more kids understand the real world through the eyes of Salinger than I did through the eyes of Tolkien.

That's my problem with Allende's CITY OF THE BEASTS and what I know of the Potter and Twilight series.  These stories don't move kids to maturity, but make them yearn for worlds that do not exist and will never exist.  These stories suggest that somehow we all have special abilities or powers and that there are magical worlds to go to.  Tolkien's world was allegorical and the unity of the Fellowship made sense in post World-War II zeitgeist.  I just don't see any allegorical similarity between the fantasies that kids (and romantic adults) are zipping through these days.  Neither the sentences (especially my brief dive into the Twilight stuff) or the stories seem like the kind of stuff I can appreciate.

Here are my problems with current adolescent lit and they match how I felt about the sex-is-the-only-goal movies I saw everywhere when Chris and Nate hit middle school (PORKY'S, RISKY BUSINESS, THE SURE THING, etc.).   The sex movies and the escape lit aimed at adolescents don't say what is true about living in the real world.  I think adolescents need that.  The whole movement that suggests kids should pick their own books gets woven into this as well.  I knew a lot of adolescents in my 33 years in a classroom and most of those kids were good kids, but I wouldn't put a one in charge of curriculum.

CITY OF THE BEASTS began to tick me off when I realized the uber-uniqueness of the two adolescent protagonists of the book.  The book follows a 15 year old boy whose artist Mom is dying of cancer and so his grandmother (a writer for a fictionalized version of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC who loves living in jungles and drinking vodka and coffee) takes him off into Amazonian jungles to try to prove the existence of a warm weather Yeti-style beast.  Fortunately, Jaguar is the boy's vision name and I can't remember his given name and it's not worth looking up and for what it's worth, whether you love or hate him, nobody forgets Holden Caulfield's given name.  Jaguar has been trained by his amazing doctor father to be an expert climber and Jaguar conquered El Capitan in Yosemite when he was 13 or so.  The doctor also shot up each of his pimples with cortisone so he never faced the anguish of acne (an acknowledgement of acne seemed kind of real).  Jaguar also plays the flute at a level that seems to stop and soothe boatloads or forests full of people.  He plays with his famous, flautist grandfather's instrument which he keeps hooked to his belt for emergency chaotic situations that need soothing flute music to resolve the tenseness in the air.  There's a point where there's only so much tenseness in the air anybody can take, you know.

Jaguar meets the ethnic and exotic 12 year old Nadia (I remember her name!!!) in the Amazon where her father guides a group of awful stereotypical folks through the jungles to find the Beast.  Nadia speaks the many languages of the native peoples and animals.  She negotiates for the group a they meet tribal folks along the way and she summons the witch doctor who guides she and Jaguar, eventually, to the Invisible Tribe (you just have to focus really hard to become invisible) and the City of the Beasts.  She loves animals and talks to them, especially her monkey and I need to add that lassie was nothing next to this monkey.  There are two other books and it's pretty clear that these two kids will age and grow into a more-than-friends relationship.  Isn't that how these adolescent books work?

The characters are just too unreal for me.  I've known gifted young climbers and linguists and musicians and all sorts of gifted teenagers.  I haven't known many who had enough hours in their lives to become such masters in the multiple ways Jaguar and Nadia.  Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell)  says it takes about 10,000 hours to master anything--these kids are not wasting any time.

The whole world of the book is unreal.  Even by Amazonian standards.  The two kids find the real El Dorado and Jaguar finds the Fountain of Youth and brings home the healing water for his mother (we'll find out if it works in the next book perhaps) and brings home the three largest diamonds in the world which will be used to save the Invisible Tribe.  Beasts who live for centuries and talk very slowly do exist, but, of course, will be kept secret because they promise to stop killing people and they will stay hidden in their city.  The group of characters on the expedition come out of a Tarzan book.  The book takes place in 2001 and yet they snap photos and destroy film as though a digital world does not exist.  The leader wears a pith helmet and makes soldiers take photos of him with his boot planted on dead animals hunters killed.  There is also a kindly doctor and a greedy jerk wanting to kill native peoples to find the gems of El Dorado and there is the Tonto-ish guide and adult good guy who happens to be Nadia's father.

Kids seem just too smart to believe in this stuff.

The book has many messages.  I like the part that seems to say that practice pays off even though the book never discusses the practice.  All the climbing practice and the flute practice and the talking to animals and native peoples has paid off.  Without those skills, everybody is screwed.  This part isn't announced like some of the other messages.  Maybe that's why I like it better.  I still believe kids can read between the lines.

The other messages really don't apply.  One message is that we must always give before we take.  sounds good.  Sometimes you just have to give and give and give and nobody hears that you need help too--how many people can't hear Holden's hurt?  Give and take don't really balance out in life.  Ask anybody.

The book is all about shutting down your head and working from the heart alone.  Though I believe it is important to follow your heart and have done so as a wife and mother and teacher, I think this book offered magic and talismans and dreams rather than knowing that there is a reality that is often boring and repetitious.  The Myth of Sisyphus and his smiling reaction to punishment was my best advice to teens about this.  Kids needed to know that a lot of life wasn't peachy keen and a bummer to deal with and that you need to "keep passing the open windows" as John Irving would say (The Hotel New Hampshire).  I'm not sure such unreal worlds with unreal solutions help as much as watching Holden learn he has to go home and get some help.

That's it.  Jim wrote two books where the girl is a gifted musician.  We've known girls like her.  The guy likes to cook and has cool parents.  Also possible.  The parents (except for their much cooler jobs) are a lot like us and I think we're real.  Well, kind of.  I just feel angry that Allende's decidedly average book (I couldn't find a sentence to underline anywhere) is published and Jim's is not.  I know I'm prejudiced.  I love the guy.









Friday, June 28, 2013

Of Hard Hats, Habitat for Humanity, and Border Patrol

One of the reasons I've stopped volunteering at Habitat for Humanity work sites, other than the fact I don't look good in a hard hat, is that in those times I did volunteer and show up at the site, there were so many other volunteers (more often than not youth groups) that I found myself looking around for things to do.  I hate standing around waiting for someone to make up something for me to do.  Now, if I volunteer at all, it is at one of the stores.  There is still almost nothing to do, but at least I don't have to wear a hard hat.

Which brings me to my current concern.  I'm thrilled about the immigration bill's success in the Senate, even though I can't see it ever getting through the House, but I wonder about the promised surge in border patrol.  20,000 more agents!  A longer fence!  How much will this cost?  I thought we were trying to be austere.  When we cut even more money from the federal budget, will these 20,000 additional agents get furloughed?  Imagine the mob scene frantically crossing the Rio Grande during federal furlough days.

I'm afraid, just like my experience at Habitat, all these extra agents will have nothing to do.  In this month's ATLANTIC you will find a nifty little chart entitled "America's Emigration Problem."  This chart goes on to explain that border crossings from Mexico, both legal and illegal, have fallen by 80% since 2000!  Why?  It sure as hell isn't because of increased vigilance.  Since the recession in 2008, Mexico's economy has grown at twice the rate as its neighbor to the north.  In fact, preliminary data show that there are more people moving south across the border than people moving north.

Those poor, bored agents.  While they're standing there shoulder to shoulder on the fenceless stretches of our unprotected border waiting to retire and start collecting PERA benefits, will southern governors come up with make work projects.  Maybe they could clean up some of the tumbleweeds collecting against the fence.  But if they do, I think we should make them wear hard hats.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Playing Jacks and Packing Light: The Odd Outlier Abilities I Have and Have not Got


Katherine today.

Several unrelated events met up recently to bring back the Malcolm Gladwell book about why folks succeed and where unique abilities originate.  Outliers makes me feel smart because it champions quantity as a vehicle to success.  10,000 repetitions of a skill creates extraordinary performance.  That means all those millions of Big Chief pages I made sophomores write were really valuable.  I believe strongly that schools suffer because drill work and repetition and quantity have been replaced with a bogus belief that poured-over long-time quality efforts lead to the same effect with less homework.  The effort to teach literacy without reading as homework is among the most baffling things I see in education.

I'm wandering though.  I was thinking about playing jacks and Jim's first comment to me this morning: "I'm going to take a record low number of things to Jenny Lake this time."  Good morning to you too sweetie.

I'll start with the packing.   Jim would never say anything like that in the morning if he hadn't been thinking about it and there is absolutely no sub-level manipulation or condemnation of my increasingly futile attempt to pack well.  I suck at packing.  I haven't even come close to 10,000 repetitions so my chances for improvement are limited and I just can't stomach the idea of practice packing.  Jim is a natural.  He hates clothes.

Jim has so many packing advantages.   His daywear consists of one outfit and he's just dealing with variations on a theme.  There are long shorts that go to the gym or go kayaking or go hiking or play tennis.  Most are black.  He couples these shorts with T-shirts--mostly grey.  Some have sleeves.  Some don't.  Sometimes he wears tennis shoes.  Sometimes he wears Keens or hiking shoes or flip flops.  He grabs a stack of black shorts and grey T-shirts and adds a lightweight jacket and he is done.  He brings some jeans and "good" T-shirts and a sport coat to cover nice nights out.  Maybe some dress loafers.  If he forgets anything, it's underwear.  This pretty much has him covered for two whole weeks.  If the weather is cold and wet, he's good.  If the weather is hot and icky, he's good.  He is the lowest maintenance fellow imaginable.  When he declared he was taking less than usual it occurred to me he might really mean it.  He is not a practiced packer honed by limitless travel opportunities--he just hates wearing clothes.  Two weeks is a long time to do with less than he normally brings in my mind.  I will try not to worry about this.

He also needs no potions or lotions.  He can use the shampoos and soaps at the hotel and his skin doesn't seem to wrinkle or look much different.  He doesn't have the nasty skin problems I deal with since the two cancer battles.  Recently,  I saw an age spot on his right arm and it took me aback.  I'd point it out to him, but he'd worry about it for several days.  I'm pretty sure I shouldn't mention it here either, but I can't edit my every thought.

On my side, there are all sorts of packing hurdles so I pack too much.  I need all sorts of potions for wrinkles and eczema (radiation treatments suck).  Eczema and fragrances are a really bad combo--no hotel products for me.  I really miss getting all excited when the hotel has really good shampoos and lotions and it feels like a treat.  There's something depressing about buying your skin creams at Walgreens instead of Nordstrom.

I also pack the wrong stuff.  I try to be prepared.  I make lists.  I look up weather reports.  The weather changes and my lists match some ideal for every situation that makes the usual and probable difficult to deal with when I arrive.  This is where Cosmic Banditos is the best book ever.  Almost every chapter ends with this phrase: "And then things didn't go according to plan."  These are words to live by.

I find myself with several problems.  I know lady light packers who mix and match and everything they bring along  (think Janet Simmons).  It's a lot like Jim's black/grey motif.  This is hard for me to do.  I'm a girl who doesn't really believe in matching so I can't pull out a stack of anything that would work that way.  You come stare at my closet and find a way to mix and match your way through that forest.

Shoes are a packing problem for me when I fly  If you don't believe in matching, you need to bring a lot of pairs of shoes to figure things out so you DON'T match.  Flying and multiple shoe options are out.  I use up any spare weight on a plane in my eczema stuff anyway.  My limited footgear is only one reason I'm not wild about flying.

When we are on the road, I bring the shoes I want.  I'm good enough to limit myself to one pair of cowboy boots, but that's about the only limit I acknowledge.  I bring multiple flip flops, some spiky heels, some tennis shoes, some water shoes, and one pair of yummy cowboy boots.  It's really hard to explain why this is necessary, but it is and I know this hampers the light packing ability.  I really like shoes.  Really.

The weather never works the way it's supposed to either.  I look it up online.  I plan accordingly.  Then I worry about what will happen if the weather is wrong and it always is.  I decide to pack for all kinds of weather to compensate.  I end up with a little bit of stuff for every possibility and it never works out.

At Jenny Lake the weather ranges are wide and I worry about weather stretches.  It's always chilly when we arrive, but that can last a day or a week.  It's always too hot when we leave and the deer flies are annoying, but you can never tell if that will be just hitting as we leave or whether the heat will have been there for over a week.  It's the time lengths that do me in and there's never been a clear cut pattern there and I'm a girl who likes patterns.  I wonder if we will be in the wind and rain a lot?  This year, I feel pretty good about the wind and rain part at least.  I used our yearly REI dividend to help pay for these cool light weight wind/rain jackets that take no space at all.  The North Face description indicated they were great for scaling peaks.  That's us.  Besides,  I'm hoping the teeny jacket lowers my packing mass considerably.

Enough of that.  If Outliers is correct, I need a lot more travel to improve.  Jacks, on the other hand, is something I am practiced at and I'm getting ready to get in playing shape.

There are few devotees of jacks left.  When I was a kid, we played for hours and hours and hours.  I bet I got 10,000 reps in third grade alone.  Later on I played jacks with students during informal lunches we had with kids in our adjoining classrooms.  I beat most of determined teenagers wanting to bring down their Honors English teacher.  I laid some in waste.  Two or three boys became so obsessed they beat me.  I have really good memories of playing jacks with so many kids.

Yesterday when we went to Chris's house for a Father's Day Brunch, I realized it was time to think about teaching Brooklyn and Sammi to play and love jacks.  There are challenges.  Sammi is partially paralyzed and modifications will be necessary if she wants to play.  I can do that.  Brooklyn, on the other hand, is reluctant to do anything that doesn't require princess attire.  Brooklyn's starts all conversations with me about potential outings by asking if walking will be involved.  Walking is on Brooklyn's no-fun list.  That limits almost every good time I can think of.  Jacks, however involves no walking.  I just need to find a pink outfit covered in princesses or find a movie where a princess plays jacks.  Normally I just get out my jacks and start to dazzle my audience.  Brooklyn doesn't dazzle easily.  I'm not worried though.  She's young and I've got time to strategize.

It seems so odd to me that I can't pack a suitcase with normal restraint, but I can still sit on the floor and play a nasty round of jacks.  Repetition is everything.  Schools should take note.  Kids will read better if they read until their eyes fall out.  Kids will write better if they write until their arms fall off.  Practice is everything.  Quantity is everything when you are a beginner.  Homework is good.  I feel sure of it.

That's enough for now though.  I am going to restrain myself at least here.  Besides, I want to practice some jacks.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Father' Day

I don't put much stock in special days like Father's Day, Mother's Day, most national holidays, and birthdays.  Christmas and Thanksgiving I can tolerate, but it is getting harder every year.  I just don't like the idea of sending cards, giving flowers, or candy, or presents in general on those days.  I know this sounds cheesy as hell, but I think that if someone is special, you shouldn't wait for a birthday to do something about it.

Father's Day is the worst.  It is nothing more than a marketing attempt to cash in on the previous marketing of Mother's Day.  Who is the biggest beneficiary of such days?  Hallmark Cards, of course.  Oops!  I just spoke disrespectfully about a business, a Job Creator.  I'm going to quick get off the keyboard and genuflect.  I'll be right back.

There, that's better.  I think Father's Day is my least favorite because it brings all my father issues to the surface.  Remember the great feeling you used to get--still get--when you give the perfect present to your mom or dad?  That perfect aspen leaf pin for mommy.  A paisley tie for dad.  You saved up, or borrowed the cash from your grandmother.  You made the purchase yourself.  Went home and gift wrapped it and spent the whole night in bed dreaming about how happy mom would be when she fastened that pin on her blouse.  I mean, how sharp does that look?

I'm not soliciting sympathy here, but I never had that experience with my father.  I made my mom cry over the perfect gift lots of time, but my father left long before I had a chance to give him something special.  If I had gotten him something, it probably would have been a roll of stamps so he could stop deducting the ten cent postage from the child support checks he sent my mother.  $24.90 every week like clockwork.  Oh well, at least he was punctual.  But enough of that.

The only real problem not having a father caused me was that I never developed an attraction for power tools.  I do go to Home Depot and Lowe's to get stuff for home projects, but you won't find me wandering through the power tool section sizing up the latest innovations in cordless drivers. (My favorite is the cordless screwdriver.  I remember my grandmother had one of those back in the fifties.)  I also never felt an urge to have a mancave where I could hang out with my buddies, drink beer, eat lots of nachos and guacamole and act like I care about who wins.  In short, Father's Day, like leaking sinks that refuse an easy fix and flapperballs that are less than reliable, makes me feel somehow inadequate.

I was looking through the Post yesterday and noticed on the feature pages a list of gift suggestions for Dad.  I knew the list would piss me off, but I read it anyway.  A Bosch articulated-arm miter saw was first on the list.  The article said it was perfect for a small workspace.  That would certainly apply to my, ahem, workspace.  If I had the slightest idea what an articulated-arm miter saw was I might want one.

Here is a better one:  the Rockler Insty-Drive, 18 Piece Self Centering & Countersink Set.  My mother always told me that I was too self-centered.  Maybe this piece of equipment would help.

The list left the power tool motif for a moment and suggested a JBL Charge Portable Wireless Bluetooth Speaker.  It will not only supply the driving bass line that any decent mancave requires, but it is sturdy enough and produces enough sound to go with Dad on his latest handy man project, like turning out table legs on his new lathe.

And the coup de grace, The Bottoms Up Home Unit Kit for dispensing draft beer in your mancave.  It fills the cup from the bottom up for a perfect glass of beer every time.  Finally, something practical.

There were other suggestions, but they pretty much followed the same theme:  Things To Insulate Dad From His Family On Weekends.  I just don't belong in the demographic that this list is speaking to.  I would mostly like Father's Day and all other such days to disappear, but since that isn't going to happen anytime soon (think what it would do to the economy), I do have one item I'd like.  I have a water color by my uncle (my mother's twin and my namesake) that I would like to put in an oversized mat and frame and hang on our big living room wall.  This is not the kind of gift you talk about with your buddies over a beer.  It would probably cost around $500.  I know, I know, I could probably pick up a perfectly good table saw for the same price, but it would look lousy in my living room.

Hey.  Happy Father's Day.  I hope everyone has a great day with their kids.  We're going to Chris' for brunch, but before I go I'm gonna get over to Lowe's and check out Black & Decker's Cordless Lithium-Ion Gyro Screwdriver.  My grandmother never had anything like that.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

I Love Jeans, Shorts, Spiky Heels and Flip Flops--So There!


Katherine today.

It's chilly and rainy and not even 60 degrees outside and it's almost noon.  It's summer though.  Today is the first day I can remember when my fate is my own.  When I woke up, I didn't begin with a mental catalogue of the things that had to get done.

On most days, the items on my list are usually good and make me happy.  Cooking, knitting class, seeing family, meeting friends, planting posies--I love all these things.  They have to get done though.   Today I woke up and the to-do things could be done tomorrow.  Life will go on if I don't change the sheets or clean our bathroom or fold the last load of laundry.  I could do those things, but I don't have to do them.  To quote Willa, "Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy."  It's a good mantra to cultivate.

So here I am with choice number three on today's list.  I've knitted two rows and one had beads and I'm new at beads so that was a goodly amount of time.  Two rows before 6:00 AM--Ahhh.  Then the gym.  And now--I'm writing away instead of thinking about chores.

I was running around the track at the gym (pleased as punch that I was running a bit better) and decided I wanted to write about a Sunday column in The Denver Post about social "rules" that needed enforcing.  I broke the only four I read.  All were about appropriate clothing.  I decided I would postpone all bathroom work and spout off on the fashion rules this social guru insisted I broke. I broke them all.  To quote Willa, "Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy."

The first rule was about jeans.  Jeans are bad.  No one should wear them.  If you are in the woods and under 40, maybe.  If you were foolish enough to spend more than $58 on them--well, I stopped reading at that point.

This is sacred territory for me.  Saying anything negative about jeans is like saying you don't like skin.  I think a huge problem with old people is that they don't wear jeans.  What's up with that?  Where is the magic line that says this is the moment you stop wearing jeans?  Good-bye True Religion and Hello Dockers.  No thank you.

Whoever wrote the column clearly didn't understand other things about jeans.  They work with cowboy boots.  That's important for a girl like me.  I have some impressive boots (the baby blue ostrich with lime green goatskin Luchese's top the list) and unless you're really and truly line-dancing, you don't wear boots without jeans unless they have spiky heels.

Jeans force you to think about your weight.  What can I say?  I have jeans for my various weights, but I'm not buying a bigger pair than anything I have now.  It's as good a weight loss system as any of the others I've tried.

Look around.  People wear jeans.  They will always wear jeans.  So silly.

The second rule was about shorts.  To be avoided at all costs.    Absolutely not after 40.  Again.   Excuse me.  This is also silly.  Who gets to decide this stuff?  I didn't even check the reasoning.  People love shorts or they don't.

My mother wore shorts with pantyhose underneath--"Horrible, horrible, oh most horrible."  It was the pantyhose that made her shorts approach awful.  I never understood it at all.  It was the wosrt when we traveled.  She played tennis and walked in Yosemite that way and she looked at the geysers in Yellowstone that way.  I think if you're going to wear shorts, you should just wear shorts.  If you must make a rule about wearing shorts, I think a no pantyhose rule would be okay with me.

My father never wore shorts at all.  I never ever saw my father's legs until he was dying.  He wore his suits to work and khakis on the weekend when he went fishing in the mountains.  I only saw his forearms when he retired and took up golf.  It was okay he hid them all those years, you know. It's kind of amazing I love shorts so much given my background.  Maybe I'm just being a passive aggressive kid.

Like I said, people like shorts or they don't.  I'm okay with anybody wearing them unless they wear pantyhose underneath--I just get a Barney Fife feeling all over when that happens.  For me, there are perfect shorts for almost any function.  I have shorts for running, hiking, kayaking, dining on a patio with pretty plants, hanging out, playing tennis, going to a cool early evening cocktail party (it could happen), watching grandkids, gardening,  and typing.  Doesn't everybody?  To quote Willa, "Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy."

I skimmed through footwear too.  I didn't read much because it was clear I was a scofflaw in the shoe department through and through.  Spiky heels followed the jeans and the shorts pattern for rules.  We should all avoid them, but if they must be worn, make sure only young folks don them.  I don't wear spiky heels often, but I have two amazing pair and I wear them to Mizuna or at Jenny Lake sometimes or if there's a fancy-dancy wedding.  When I pull them out and put them on, I remember I have really nice legs for an old lady.

The last fashion taboo was flip flops.  For anyone at anytime.  Talk about making a rule folks won't follow.  Try that in Kauai.

 A world without flip flops would be like a world without jeans.  Stupid.  People were meant to be barefoot.  I'm sure of it.  Flip flops are the closest thing to barefoot that will still get you into a fine restaurant.  Like shorts, there are flip flops for any occasion.

I love Chacos for daily life.  They are made in Colorado.  They are sturdy and last forever and cost a bundle for what is essentially a flip flop.  They feel right on my feet.  The arch is right.  The width of the straps is good.  I like my black ones best.  There's a part of life that is a quest for the perfect daily flip flop.  If you don't have a favorite flip flop, part of me thinks something is wrong with you.

I love Tori Burch flip flops for dress up.  All of mine came from the Nordstrom Rack last year.  I somehow discovered when the weekly shipment Tori Burch shoes would arrive and my work schedule met up with the flip flop delivery schedule.  I like these because the soles of the shoes are incredibly thin and the straps are thin and I feel barefoot in a downtown kind of way.  I wouldn't go for long walks in these, but I feel good going to Bones.

That's all I read.  It's hard to read something that attacks the very core of your being.  No jeans, no shorts, no spiky heels, no flip flops.  I'm not giving these up--not yet.  To quote Willa, "Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy."