Bloggers are people

…who like to eat. Take tonight. The monthly blogger symposium (whereby A, B, C, & F get together over dinner and compare horror stories from a month’s worth of bloggerlife) took place at GT. ABC&F live in fear of calling ANYTHING by its real name (a blogger trait I’m told) and so when they schedule a dinner, they dare not say more than GT – leaving it to the ingenuity of the others to figure out exactly WHERE they will be eating, which perhaps explains why B was late – she may have been thinking the rest of the bloggers were at Ginza of Tokyo, whereas they were, in fact, at Griglia Tuscany.

Example of topics addressed: is there a “Wisconsin Idea” lurking in these blogs and should it be capitalized upon, publicized, ignored? [No answers were given to any of the posited questions; perhpas the bloggers were so tired of expositing that they liked positing but avoided giving answers to pretty much anything.] And, more importantly, can we improve on the integrity of Russ Feingold? If not, is he someone one would want to marry (F stayed out of this round of the discussion)? And, is Woody Allen an acceptable alternative?

Because the symposium reached a stalemate on these and other issues, another date will have to be set in order to really address the crucial blogger questions before us. In the meantime, I do want to reiterate that bloggers are people… who like to eat. One photo of just one blogger attacking dessert (after a sumptuous tortelloni dish preceded by a monstrous fried calamari plate) says it all (I’ll leave it to the reader to guess whether we are dealing with blogger A, B, C or F; first correct answer wins honorable mention on this post, identity concealed with an initial, of course):


a blogger contemplates another challenge: dessert 

What would I do without the holly and the email?

My friend, let's just call her Holly, is one of the best sources of forwarded off-beat stories around. Occasionally, I think that there is the desire on her part to educate as well. (Why else forward pieces about punishments that befell those who did not treat their animals in a manner befitting royalty?)

Today, in keeping with the educational motif, she sent me a piece that truly highlights the interesting and intricate ways you can say things in English. Language puns are fantastic for people whose first language is not English (i.e. me) because they make us roll with laughter about the often befuddling inconsistencies between the English written and spoken word. Here's her e-mail:

1. Two vultures board an airplane, each carrying two dead raccoons. The flight attendant looks at them and says,"I'm sorry, gentlemen, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

2. Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much - he became known as the lesser of two weevils.

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

4. A three-legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West. He slides
up to the bar and announces: "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw."

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?" they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan." Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds,"They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

8. The friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to "persuade" them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that ...(are you ready)......Hugh, and only Hugh, can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him .... a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

10. And finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

A light ‘n airy summer blog gets political.

I have been avoiding writing about politics for write a while now, but today I feel compelled to stand up to the accusations that are flying around the blogosphere (here), denegrading Chirac for stating that GWB’s comments on how EU should proceed with Turkey are inappropriate.

To repeat (from CNN and the well-intentioned but way-too-summarily-dismissive-of-Chirac blogger who cited it), Bush said this:

U.S. President George W. Bush has repeated a call for the European Union to admit Turkey, despite criticism by France's President Jacques Chirac that he was meddling in EU affairs.

...And Chirac responded thus:

Chirac took Bush to task Monday over his call for Turkey's admission to the European Union.
"If President Bush really said that in the way that I read, then not only did he go too far, but he went into territory that isn't his," Chirac said of a remark Bush made over the weekend.
"It is is not his purpose and his goal to give any advice to the EU, and in this area it was a bit as if I were to tell Americans how they should handle their relationship with Mexico."

Let me just note the following:

1. Bush has demonstrated repeatedly that he will pay attention to the EU only if it responds in the way that he would like it to with respect to American interests in Iraq and elsewhere. [Therefore, this newest statement may well be viewed as yet another American muscle flexing ploy. No one doubts that Bush is courting Turkey since the country is a crucial political link to his vision of foreign policy in the region. To the EU: start talkin’ Turkey, or else we will continue to treat you with the scorn that we’ve had toward you in recent years.]

2. Bush has also shown a singular lack of depth or breadth in his understanding of European history and, more importantly, of the current crisis facing the EU. This is disconcerting to say the least, because a stronger EU is not, as some say, a threat to the economic interests of the US. Quite the contrary (a point that has been argued elsewhere now for some time, one which is ignored by the current administration).

3. That lack of understanding has meant that the EU, in the midst of its current political crisis, has had little support from this side of the ocean. Indeed, many of the rifts between Great Britain and France and Germany – the three strongest member nations – may be directly attributable to our political machinations on the European continent. And, much has been written (in Europe) about the persistent cold American shoulder accorded to the EU even when the great leap toward the current 25 occurred on May 1st of this year. [Under these conditions, while GWB may have a RIGHT to expound on how the EU should now proceed, he certainly hasn’t earned the trust of the organization; greater diplomacy is definitely a prerequisite if he wishes to have his words count for more than just a suck-up lick toward the Turkish government.]

4. The problem of a Turkey membership is extraordinarily complicated, all the more so because the current group of economically-faltering, if not altogether weak, ten new member states has yet to be fully integrated into the EU. No one is blind to the fact that among the newest members, the unemployment rate stands at double digits and the countries are well on the way to being regarded as second class citizens within the EU – a fact that has lead to the current half-year impasse on the Constitution, with Poland leading the battle against French-German dominance in the Union. (A battle that is, perhaps ill-founded, given that Poland cannot afford to be viewed as the difficult one at a time when it needs the help and support of other member states.) Bush ought not be glib about pushing for yet another complicated accession – it only makes the US appear even more disengaged from the epicenter of the current EU crisis.

5. There are other states that should, perhaps, receive consideration even before the question of Turkey is discussed. I have blogged before about the forgotten Bulgaria. GWB seems to have turned his back on the plight of other Eastern European nations YET AGAIN.

Oh, enough. I’m sorry, I’m with Chirac on this one. I doubt that GWB has even a fleeting interest in the future strength of Europe. His focus this week has been NATO's role in Iraq and on throwing out American lollipops to the Turkish government. In so doing, he has plodded into political territory with his hefty Texan boots where soft slippers may have been more appropriate.

In friendship

In the last 24 hours I have heard the following two sentiments, both expressed by women: “this guy is such a good friend” and “men are the pits when it comes to friendship.” Now, I am sure that there is a great deal of material out there on the topic of gender and friendship and I don’t have any nuggets of wisdom to offer here, but I do have one observation: in my experience, friendships between members of the opposite gender on this side of the ocean are rare*. Maybe we can blame the inevitable TV culprit** for infusing tension into these relationships (so that only Will and Grace can be buddies, because we, the public, KNOW that nothing can happen between the two of THEM). But from my perspective, it is a shame.

I do not stand in opposition to same-gender friendship circles. I belong to two book groups, both have only women and both work well that way. Though I dare say, a mixed-gender book group of carefully chosen friends would also be kinda fun.

In Poland, both in high school and especially at the university, most (not all, Agnieszka!, but certainly most – like the next five in line) of my closest friends were men. The long walks, the deep, talk-all-night conversations one tends to have at that age happened with these guys; we exchanged dozens of letters in the years after I left; and we still treat each other now, 30 years later, as the greatest of friends, even though all have married, some have divorced, and the spouses have variously now been included in at least some (but not all) of the exchanges.

Come to think of it, in my earlier time in Poland, in first grade, my best buddy was Janek, the boy I have alluded to in earlier posts.

So is it me, or is it that in post-war Poland, girls and boys and later men and women regarded each other with greater camaraderie than I have found to be the case here, in the States?

I know I have gone over the top in posting pictures from my girlhood, but I can’t resist this one***, taken in 1957 (I was just 4), with my then best buddy ‘Johnny’– the rubber doll that would remain my favorite for its lifetime, which was not too long because within a few years the rubber surface sort of crumbled with age and decay, so that Johnny suffered an untimely death and I was forced to transfer my affections to some poor substitute made of plastic.


a walk with a friend, back in 1957 

*I have heard men say that they remain close in friendship to women – at least until they themselves enter into monogamous relationships. So is it that women place barriers, reserving intimacy for exchanges with each other, feeling uneasy if men demonstrate that same capacity to feel close in friendship to others? (There certainly is a dearth of precedent here that would demonstrate how, indeed, such friendships can continue to thrive and not pose threats to existing relationships.) Or is it that men are satisfied with just one good friend (presumably their partner) and women are not?

**Of course I know very little about what goes on in the land of television since I have the inclination but not the time to watch it and in any event I only have basic cable, to improve reception, so I don’t even KNOW what’s out there, but still, if something must receive an undue share of the blame, let it be the old TV.

***No, I was not pigeon-toed. And yes, these were my favorite shoes. So “Poland in the 50s!”

Blog links

The pressure is on: everyone who is anyone has a blog link list. Moreover, some of my favorite bloggers have added Ocean to their lists – an honor that is humbly appreciated by me. [Readers will have noted that one of them, JeremyF, has, in my estimation, carried the banner of blogger stardom for some time, while still another, Dorotha – oh, I was bound to like her, given that she uses a name which, if you removed the h, would be identical to my Polish middle name – has a terrific blog as well, with posts that ALWAYS surprise.]

I know linking in this way spreads readership and allows others to taste a number of weblogs they would not otherwise be able to find. I know that revealing your blog reading material is a form of sharing, of participating in the Blog Community. I know all that.

However, ask me to announce publicly what my ten favorite movies are and I clam up. Similarly, ask me what my ten or even twenty favorite blogs are and I grow silent. I can talk about parents, work, neighbors, childhood fears and adolescent crushes, of bad days, good days, iffy days and in-between days. But a list of links? I wouldn’t know where or how to begin my public disclosure.

But, I move with the rapidly developing blog world out there and so who knows, perhaps one summer day I will sequester myself in my un-solarium and develop a list. One summer day. That means soon. Really.

Family business

UPDATE: I have done something I never do on the blog: I edited the post below. Let me explain. After writing and posting the first draft, I called my dad (whose birthday it is today) in Warsaw and had the following exchange:

him: Can you hang on, I want to get a pencil. Your nephew said the other day that you write things on the Net daily? What's that called? You know, where you comment on things?
me: (gulp)

him: So, hang on, I want to write down how to find it [my father isn't very computer literate].
me: Dad, let me send you instructions, or I'm sure my nephew [Chris, take your time, okay?] will pass them on. It's hard to dictate over the phone.

him: okay, I'll look forward to seeing this.
me: okay, well, you know, it's not much..

And so the magic eraser is up and running. One thing that is absolutely necessary to maintain in familial relations in the "Old Country" is a great deal of respect for one's elders. Words of respect, absent by unintentional omission, not by design, will now magically appear in the post below.

Today is my father’s birthday. Having neglected to send him a card, I can only retreat to the procrastinator's friend: the telephone.

Our phone conversations are a poor substitute for face-to-face encounters. For any number of reasons, I say so little about what my days here are all about. Occasionally, I have been known to tell either one of my parents something provocative, like “did you know that I represent parents who allegedly abuse and neglect their children?” or “in my spare time I work the ovens in a restaurant.” Shock value, that’s all.

Am I one of those adult children that has still to reconcile herself to her parents' multifarious eccentricities? I don't think so. I am more amused than troubled by them. I love them both, in the way that you love family members even though they so freely parade all their weirdnesses in front of you. And I don’t much mind switching the focus to them in our dealings with each other. Both my parents have led very interesting lives and both enjoy an audience. All you have to do is say “huh” every few minutes and you can fill an hour without any problem. Though they basically never visit, I do like visiting Warsaw (dad-land) and Berkeley (mom-land) has great potential as well for future years.

Would it be devilish on my part to post, on my dad’s birthday, a photo from the last time that my parents were together (taken on a visit to New York, 25 years ago)? He he!


mom and dad, January 1979 

Now that’s Italian!

Alright, so I am going to bake tonight. Though I must admit, I do not like to search out recipes that are geared toward the healthy eater. Baking something that is labeled as low-fat low-carb high-fiber low-sodium wheat-free etc etc sounds like a trip to the pharmacy, not the baker’s kitchen.

But there are recipes out there that beguile in their authenticity, originality and flavor and that are also, upon careful inspection, pretty healthy, or at least balanced.

One such beauty is the Ligurian Cake (from Desserts by Pierre Hermé). The very name! It’s from Liguria, a province of Italy that speaks of villages perched on cliffs and distant hills with olive groves, a place where the anti-carb mania must be regarded as some kind of a statement against humanity (they do love their pasta there) and yet, if you look at what it is that they do eat on a daily basis – well, we should all be so healthy.

The Ligurian cake is called that because in its original version, it is made with Ligurian olive oil. But any extra-virgin olive will do (the 365 Whole Foods basic olive oil is fantastic for this). And let me remind you, we are two weeks away from the beginning of the raspberry season, so this is the moment for this simple little gem.

Personally, I like it with my morning coffee. But you can whip up some sugared egg whites (beat into a stiff meringue), spread them on top, bake for five more minutes (to brown the meringue) and you’ll have yourself a splendid dessert. Tell your guests that there’s almost a cup of olive oil in it and watch their mouths drop.

I don’t post recipes here. Ever. But, with every rule there’s an exception and this cake calls for it. First, the photo that shows how totally fun it is to bake it:


batter and berries 

…and the finished product. It looks ordinary. It’s not.


fresh, honest, very Italian 

Finally, the recipe:

1 3/4 flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 c sugar
zest of 1 - 2 lemons
4 eggs, room temp (do a quick warm up in hot water if you forgot)
3 TBSP whole milk (it's only 3 TBSP, relax about the WHOLE milk)
1 TBSP lemon juice
7 TBSP butter (remember: in baking, stick with unsalted), melted but still warm
2/3 c extra-virgin olive oil (use the tame kind)
1 pint (or so) of raspberries

Preheat oven to 350. Butter and dust with flour 10 inch pan (I use springform).
Sift flour and baking powder together, reserve.
Place sugar and lemon zest in mixing bowl, rub together well with fingers, add eggs, beat unitl pale and thick (3 min.).
At low speed beat in milk, then sifted dry ingredients, then lemon juice, then butter, then olive oil, beating each only until blended.
Pour one third batter into pan, top with barries, pour the rest.
Bake 30 - 40 minutes.

You need to check for doneness with the toothpick -- err on the side of longer rather than shorter if you like a drier cake. But don't fret, the cake is often eaten moist, so if you are partial to it that way, know that you're just like the rest of Ligurians. Or, pop your piece in the oven for another 5 minutes to firm it up. In baking, very few things aren't salvagable.

P.S. Something with a name that is as poetic as the Ligurian cake should have a rose carelessly tossed at the side. This flower (from my yard) would work well next to the dessert. In any case, if you're not into baking, perhaps a photo of this very splendid rose will mollify you.


in the garden, a rose bush blossoms 

Curiosity

I am at home, working at a desk that faces the front street. A young couple drives up in a sporty red car with an Illinois license plate. They get out, with a basic-looking camera in hand. They start taking photos – focusing especially on the house across the street (it’s not for sale, it’s rather standard suburban-looking, and they take several pictures of its ugliest feature: the huge, white garage door), of themselves, standing by it, of the lamppost just at the side.

I use this opportunity to go outside and pick up the mail. Surely they will engage me in conversation or at least explain their actions. Lots of smiles, no explanation given. I haven’t the courage to ask “what ARE you doing?”

They then walk around a bit, moving stealthily between houses, clearly aiming for back yards, camera still aimed to take shots. They disappear for a few minutes, reappear, walk up a few paces, back again. Finally, she takes out her cell phone, makes a call, can’t get a connection, he tries his, talks, they get back into the car.

In groping for his cell phone, he inadvertently places the camera on top of the car. Dilemma: do I wait until they pull away, repossess the camera and take a look at what the focus of the picture-taking was? (I can tell it’s a digital camera.) In the alternative, do I make a fool of myself by running out screaming and banging at their car trunk as they start to pull away, to warn that they are about to lose their camera, admitting, therefore, that I am sitting here like the prying person that I am, staring at their every move?

I choose the latter. As I shout, wave my arms, get them to take note, they stop the car, thank me, take the camera and drive off. No explanation is given, even though surely my antics should have bought me a slice of the truth. Damn these closemouthed types!

Guilt

I should have baked today. I could have baked today. I virtually promised that I would bake today. Yet I did not. Normally, it is deeply satisfying to bake on a Sunday. It’s as if you are storing up for the week: here’s the bread (more likely cake) that’ll see us through in the tough days ahead. And by Sunday night all the reject croissants that I haul in from L’Etoile are pretty much gone. There is a breadbox in the kitchen, but it stands empty.

Perhaps this low/no carb era that we are living through is at the bottom of the baking inertia that has overcome me. I know and understand that the act of baking is sinfully bad and I am only providing unnecessary carbs for those who would rather see themselves with a steak and an egg than with a piece of raspberry tart with a dark chocolate crème patisserie or a flourless chocolate cassis cake (that has one third of a cup of the dark currant liqueur and half a pound of bittersweet Ghirardelli). So I buy the fresh currants for decoration, but I neglected to bake the cake.

I remind myself that the low carb craze isn’t new. Back in the 60s, during my first brush with ‘dieting,’ I picked up this booklet (for a mere $.35):


reading material from 1965 

On the first page I read:


the motivating introduction 

Did people really once diet on sauerkraut juice? The fashion surrounding food consumption is truly remarkable. At least I know all this will pass. And in the meantime, I am definitely going to bake. Tomorrow.

Sunday reading and zesty grinning

Ann, my blogging compatriot, says (here), in between chews on yummy Espresso Royale caramels (I love those!), that she hasn’t missed a day in posting on her blog. I’m right there, too, but it hasn’t been without challenge. When I started this blog on January 2nd, I thought that the hardest thing would be to feel motivated to write on a regular basis (at least twice a day). In fact, finding motivation has been the easiest. But finding a hospitable environment for blogging has been at times trying -- there are so many pressures in each day to do everything but blog!

And so it is always inspiring to read a few good words on this Great Blogging Project in the blog of another (see post here). Truly, to know that something you wrote would give someone even the faintest of smiles is completely gratifying. (I read your terrific blog regularly too!)

This blogger uses the words “a good enjoyer” to describe a person who takes pleasure in things. It’s true, I’ve been accused for a long time of having a wildly happy approach to each day. When I was a kid, my parents gave me the mawkishly old-fashioned label of “ray of sunshine” (we were in the 1950s, the world was less jaded, it sounded even charming then). Throughout my younger years I felt like I should act in ways to give substance to the label. Too much pressure? Not at all! I liked the role, played it effortlessly and with a great deal of zest.

But I was a misfit in my own family. My mother was moody, my father was on his own cloud and my sister was a more brooding child (she was molding her own more artistic temperament to a family structure that would not accommodate it). So there I was, all grins and happy plans, without the enthusiasm of others to match my own.

Eventually I learned to temper it somewhat. But even the greatest feeling of frustration remains always just a passing phase for me. I’ll wake up and suddenly the list of possibilities is before me. The cloud passes. I’m the kid with the zesty grin all over again.

Here’s a photo from 1958 (I’m not quite 5 years old): I am in a dining room, in the Polish mountain town of Zakopane, feeling…happy.


just another day 

Only in Madison can you get something this good…

Everyone should rush next week to the Capri stand at the Farmers' Market (it's at the south central end) and coax Felix into selling his private cache of espresso goat milk ice cream. Throw a couple of Harmony Valley strawberries into the dish and you ‘ll get this fantastic dessert for dinner:


Goat milk espresso ice cream with strawberries 

Market colors

Of course, Saturday means L'Etoile market buying for me. Not much text today and just a small handful of photos. Why? No, not lethargy, my arms and fingers are still sore from my rooftop tree chopping of yesterday. The spoils of my labors:


so many branches 

I did take photos of the early morning sunshine hitting buckets of fresh flowers. I have always liked it when sellers put great masses of flowers in buckets -- it's the way I remember flowers being sold in the Old Country (I like the associations I have with the term the 'Old Country'). And the delicate early sun makes the pastels even more appealing.


in the early morning 

There is such wonderful variety in color at the moment. Even within the blue range, you can pick shades that are exactly perfect.


marching blues 

And the pairings -- how terrific to see irises against the puffy purple balls.


puffy next to slender 

Colors are fantastically coordinated, even in the food groups. During my first run I picked up the goldenrod tomatoes, red currants, yellow gooseberries, and yellow and orange carrots.


yellow orange red 

The day at the Market always ends for me with a bouquet for the kitchen table. This one will see me through the week.


a bunch for home 

Do I have enough strength to pick up chopsticks?

Tonight I went back to our pan-Asian restaurant of the moment, Firefly. First I had a ‘working’ meeting there in the lounge (how the momentum can change from day to day! Big projects? Yes! Bring them on! I am ready!), then I stayed for dinner. I have to say that it is a place that you love, or you don’t, depending on what you order. The tofu mushroom spring rolls? Yum! The kung pao seafood? Wonderful! Let’s leave it at that.

My table had the bottle of Firefly white Chardonnay along with the meal. Now that is unique! How many Madison restaurants are there with their own private wine label? (answer: none.) It turns out that these guys have independently found an Australian producer with the same name, willing, obviously, to sell at rock bottom prices. How clever, I thought. And then my cynical side kicked in: what if the restaurant proprietors (an enterprising lot as we know) first found the wine and then named the eatery? What a scheming bunch!

But, I am not cynical. I am reveling in the fact that you can have tasty fresh Asian food in Madison and wine to go with it and not walk away feeling that either 1. the chef desperately needs to sign up for one of those evening cooking classes around town, or 2. the kitchen has a pipeline to the MSG depositories of the world, or 3. the diner needs a secret investment to pay for the inflated tab that hits the table at the end of a lousy meal. [Big Bowl is in this same league of fresh and honest eateries and I do not mean to exclude it from my nod toward good Asian fare. But you have to arm-twist people of the Isthmus to go to a place such as Big Bowl because it is on the Far West side of town, whereas Firefly is homegrown and within spittin' distance of the Capitol and thus one of the emergent local heroes.]

Enough on food. The evening is getting on, I have to get up early for Market, and I haven’t yet begun my daily ritual of checking in on the various blog posts of the day. Instead, I am sitting here staring at my arm muscles, wondering why they buckled under the heave-ho of the saw this afternoon (see post below). Why am I so sore??

Tuscan rooftops

Peasant stock! That’s what I say when something needs to be done that requires more than a modicum of exertion. And so today I shouted it out to the world as I borrowed my neighbor's high ladder and climbed to the top of the roof to survey the overgrown trees that were precariously suspending their loaded branches over the house. The branches had to be trimmed. Hearty peasant stock!

Five hours later I am dead. The peasant in me must have trickled out over the years.

Oh, but the view from the top of the house! Almost like Tuscan rooftops, no?

Color

If you were to count the number of cloudy days we’ve had these past months, you’d have to believe that an evil spell has been cast over Madison. I walk out of my office tonight and I see the usual dark clouds and I feel the dampness of the day, the chill in the air and I think -- what kind of a summer is this anyway?? And then I pass the bike rack and I relax. For, wouldn’t it be lovely to coast on the bike, the first one in the rack --devilishly red, in-your-face bold... Fantastic! I’ll even settle for the blue bike in back with the purple basket. But spinning down Old Sauk Hill on the red one – wow! The world would be mine again.


the power of red 

Thank you!

It’s time to be grateful. And I am, I AM!

Thanks to Ann (here) who is supremely generous in her blog links. You write something even halfway relevant to the world out there – she’ll give you credit for it.

Thanks to MY STUDENTS for the moment of spring fever that lead them to write the lovely, lovely comments (I picked up my course evals today). YOU ARE ALL JUST TERRIFIC! I wish I had given out all 89s like I wanted, they MADE me revise and resubmit with a more normal distribution (no, it’s not true, I take full responsibility, go ahead and hate me for it). And I totally forgive the ones who said I move too fast through the material (do I?), don’t linger long enough after class (I’m shy) and don’t use the Socratic method in the way Socrates intended (help me here: what IS it that Socrates intended?).

Thanks to my blogger pal down south (Mother in Law, here) for one of the all-time nicest comments I am ever likely to get (EVER) on a blog. The feelings expressed therein are entirely mutual.

Thanks to chef Odessa at L’Etoile for calling me tonight and telling me I was a good forager in spite of my sometimes quirky input into the life and culture of the restaurant world (including my off-the-wall comments and suggestions, indicating how little I know and how quick I am to sound off anyway).

Thanks to all my pals who have been such great friends in recent months (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!).

Café etiquette

Should I tell the couple that is hogging TWO tables at the Café that this is not right? That they are disturbing my sense of fair play? That others, discouraged at the sight of a crowded Café are leaving while they are luxuriating in their kingdom of books and magazines (they need two tables to hold their stacks of reading material)? Grrr…

Sometimes one of them walks away (to get more books and magazines) and so then there is only one person at two tables. A customer comes up and starts to ease into the chair and it becomes like a scene from Candid Camera. “You can’t take that place, someone is sitting there” says the table hog. The customer stares at the empty place and the piles of books, puzzling over this and walks away. Eventually, hog number two returns with more magazines (bending back the bindings, making them look UNFRESH!)

I will not rant, I will not rant, I am NOT a ranter. I wish them no ill will. Just a few small inconveniences maybe. Ah, may his black nail polish chip before the day is over and may her computer crash in the middle of a long email. Too mean? If you spent the afternoon watching their greed dominate an entire area of the Café, you’d come up with some juicy zingers as well.

Sticking to the sidelines

1. I had a long, leisurely meeting yesterday with a colleague who has been at the Law School for quite a while. His experiences are such that he can remember fondly times when colleagues were more likely to have these long meetings, over a beer maybe, scheming, forming coalitions, building empires. We talked wistfully of a project that could have been implemented, but which is being dropped for want of a sufficient number of empire builders these days.

2. This afternoon I met over a quick Borders’ coffee with a ‘constituent,’ a woman who also wants to plan, propose changes, restructure the 'system,' though her focus is on family law and especially an area of it that recently has fallen victim to too much political tinkering. She is a grassroots-type person. She facilitates meetings and plans agendas. From my tired and jaded perspective, I see her chances of success as very small indeed. I tell her of what she is up against, but she is undeterred. I tell her others have tried (and failed at) what she is doing and she responds “so what.”

3. This evening I have yet another meeting, over a glass of wine, with yet another reformer, a colleague who is rebuilding a program at the Law School, introducing some much needed changes in a specific area of the curriculum. She is a friend to all, beloved by those at the top and those at the bottom. She works this to her advantage and she has everyone convinced that by tomorrow, nay by yesterday, we will have a better world.

So, here I am, having within 24 hours talks with three leaders, listening to three agendas, with three different approaches. And where am I in all this? A tired beer-coffee-wine drinking listener? The one who smiles patiently, benevolently and then says “it can’t be done?” Maybe I just need a long vacation – like about a year’s worth of days to recharge my enthusiasm for grand-scale projects. Because right now, all I can do is look at my to-do list and be happy if I cross off five items from each day’s allotment.

Two bits from a busy afternoon

invitations

I’ve written here upon occasion about my Polish high school crush of all crushes, the one that lasted years and years, where the person garnering my greatest affection became a chanter (of PRE-Gregorian music I believe) in later years. Today I got an email from him inviting me to “drop in” on a music festival that he is organizing in a godforsaken town in southeastern Poland next month. And you know, that is just like him to beckon in this way to his own performance. I feel honored, but I think I’ll pass. [The last email I got from him before this was also an invitation: to his son’s wedding. I did not fly down to Poland for that either.]

smells

I asked for my usual latte at the Borders café. The person behind the counter brewed the espresso, frothed the milk and put the two together, fanning the air under her nostrils rapidly and wincing in disgust as she handed me the cup. Naturally, I had to ask: am I ordering something particularly repugnant? Oh no, she tells me. She just hates, positively hates the smell of milk. [They must have forgotten to ask her this during the interview.]

Slapped down on the East Coast

When I first moved to the Midwest people would tell me that they didn’t much care for the singular snootiness of East Coast types who never looked to the Midwest for anything distinctive or worth stopping for. I balked at that. I’d not heard anything slanderous said about Indiana or Wisconsin during years spent living in New York. Paranoid bunch, I thought.

Over the years I revised my perspective. Having lived in Wisconsin since 1979, I am now certain that to those in the East, the Midwest is like a blimp, a hurdle one has to jump over on the way from New York to California.

Of course, one can quibble about whether indeed, apart from Chicago, there is a city that even comes close to some of the coastal greats in terms of cultural and demographic diversity. Fine, I’m not going to enter that discussion. I like New York and San Francisco and I understand their defenders.

But to have Wisconsin slapped down on the subject of CHEESE? In this day and age? Yet sure enough, today in the NYTimes (here) I read about the remarkable artisanal producers of cheese in New England (and they are remarkable, I have sampled their cheeses; even L’Etoile and Harvest occasionally feature a Vermont or Maine cheesemaker). And I read these two charming statements:

New England has become the most important center of American cheese craft east of California. While California has more sunshine, New England has better grass.

Are we forgetting a stretch of pasture land in between California and New England? And:

"The reason there are so many supermemorable cheeses from New England," Mr. Jenkins said, "is these cheese makers, more than those that come from any other state, including Wisconsin and California, are more Europe-oriented. Their cheeses have their roots in a 4,000-year-old tradition. They did their homework and understand the realm of cheese, the alchemy and science of cheese making."

Now that is just so insulting that one really wants to take Mr. Jenkins (who is in charge of cheese buying at Fairway Markets in NYC) and push his face into a goat manure pile. For, if you look at Wisconsin’s Fantome goat milk cheese (Ann, the cheesemaker, travels to France periodically to study the production of chevre at small farms there), or Felix’s sheep’s milk feta (Felix is European born), or Butler’s creamy sheep camembert, or Pleasant Ridge Reserve (which is patterned after the Alpine cheeses of Farnce’s southeastern regions) you would see that the traditions of old world cheese making are very much in places in Wisconsin and have been thus for many years now.

You want to hold our mass produced bricks of tasteless cheese against us? Look at your own processed Vermont cheddar. They’re in the same league.

Darn those East Coast snots.

'My Life' in Madison

Who would spend an entire afternoon at Borders on such a beautiful day? Me. I have a lot of work to catch up with and oftentimes bringing stacks of papers to Borders forces me to actually move through them. It worked for me today.

Of course, I was keeping an eye on the activity up front surrounding the first day of sales of the Clinton book. My desire to present accurate information here led me to inquire at the counter about the strength of customer interest. Naturally, they lied and said that the book was doing very well indeed. Have you ever heard a business admit to lagging or mediocre sales? No, of course not.

I noted that one colleague was hovering near the Clinton books for a long time, much as if he wanted to buy the volume but couldn’t get himself to lay down the cash for it. I also saw a TV camera recording the non-action (there were no people buying nor even looking at the book at that moment). And I saw a blissfully empty café. No readers and few shoppers here today. All this reinforced the belief that in Madison, the rush to purchase “My Life” is NOT on.

In any case, this is the kind of town where people wait for paperback editions to come out. Or at least for the week-end Borders sale for state employees (that would be 75% of Madisonians... okay, a slight exaggeration) to kick in. Second-run movie-houses (at $2 per viewing) are also popular. And the used books store, ‘the Frugal Muse,’ is a hot place to run into People You Know. One could say we are a frugal sort.

A photo of the Clinton display at peak evening rush hour:


buy me, buy me! 

It is in my blood…

It is barely 7 in the morning. The phone is ringing. Not to worry, I know who it is – it’s my walking buddy catching me again for an early morning hike. We go through spurts, she and I, walking sometimes daily for weeks on end and then retiring into our own worlds for weeks, months even, exhausted perhaps by our own feverish intensity.

Oftentimes there is A Topic that gets dissected and thrashed around and today we started in on being cold. Or not. She says this about herself: “I come from Siberian great grandparents on the one side, and hardy German stock on the other. I can’t help it that Hitler forced my grandfather to leave Europe and settle in a land that places high value on the thermostat. I need my gusty Siberian winds and breezes! I need to breathe deeply each night! My blood churns with the tundra.”

Okay. I am empathetic. I, too, like open windows at night and I have a great disdain for air-conditioning unless the temps climb well into the nineties and beyond. But her significant other, the guy who shares her space, what of him? “He was born with cold fingers and toes. There’s a condition that keeps him from ever being warm enough. So I tell him, on your side of the room, keep the windows closed. On my side, they stay open.”

I ask if her breeze migrates to his side of the room. “Sure,” she says. “That’s why in the summer he wears flannel pajamas. And a night cap. It’s very cute, he pulls it down low, and he huddles under a warm blanket. What can I do? I tell everyone they’ll have to drill holes in my coffin otherwise I wont be able to breathe! I need the cool air. It is in my blood.”

I envy her. She is a woman that is not afraid to state her needs. And her partner in life? “Oh, you mean the guy who felt compelled to set up a digital camera studio in our older daughter’s bedroom, forcing her to sleep downstairs in the basement when she visits? He does fine.”

The longest day of the year

Every year I conclude that this day is under-appreciated. In terms of celebratory oomph, it definitely trumps New Year’s. There, we’re talking about paying attention to calendars artificially constructed around fictional time periods. But summer solstice is for real: it’s all about the sun’s position and minutes first being added to the day, then being taken away. For a person like me who loves long hours of daylight, summer solstice should be heralded in ways that make all other celebrations look feeble.

I seem to remember something from my youth about setting wreaths, with candles in the middle, to sail on rivers, as the night finally closed in on daylight. Or is that in my imagination? How do you place candles in a wreath’s center? Isn’t that where the hole is?

Google-to-the-rescue revealed so many sites on summer solstice – it would take the rest of my longest-day-of-the-year to go through them. But the very first one that had celebratory notes attached to it (from a website here for “pagans and those practicing nature spirituality” ) did offer some promising ideas for today. I read the following:

Celebrate Solstice time with other Pagans -- take part in the Pagan Spirit Gathering or some other Pagan festival happening during June. Keep a Sacred Fire burning throughout the gathering. Stay up all night on Solstice Eve and welcome the rising Sun at dawn. Make a pledge to Mother Earth of something that you will do to improve the environment and then begin carrying it out. Have a magical gift exchange with friends. Burn your Yule wreath in a Summer Solstice bonfire. Exchange songs, chants, and stories with others in person or through the mail. Do ecstatic dancing to drums around a blazing bonfire.

I’m not sure that writing a blog post on solstice with a vague recollection of possibly imagined floating wreaths qualifies as “exchanging stories with other persons through the mail,” so I should consider some of the other options. Welcoming the rising sun is out the door – too late, of course. True, I could well imagine myself doing a crazed dance around a bonfire, given the right amount of spirit (of the digestible kind). Absent that, I’ll just make a pledge to continue my support of the earth by writing periodic checks to Green Earth, my organic lawn care service. Such an act seems to me to be a bit anticlimactic, perhaps not what I would count as sufficiently thrilling, but if that’s what the Pagan worshipers out there want me to do, so be it.

This morning, I read the following...

I’m a sucker for blog posts that are poignant, troubled, heartfelt, sincere. Unfortunately, there aren’t many who attempt to do this and even fewer who pull it off well. However, this morning I read one that was so profoundly touching that it literally forced me to swallow twice. I’d tell the blogger directly, but she lists no email address and so I’ll substitute the message with a link here (even though I rarely link to other blogs for numerous reasons, all too irrelevant to mention – clearly I do not play the blogger game according to the Rules Out There).

Generations of fathers

I don’t ever recall celebrating a Father’s Day in Poland, nor Men’s Day. Mother’s Day – most definitely and Women’s Day too. One could guess that the women’s holidays were guilt-driven. If you’re going to dump paid work, household chores and childrearing on the women, you may as well give them flowers twice a year to acknowledge their efforts (virtually all women I knew worked; the concept of ‘housewife’ did not exist in the Poland of my youth).

My father’s job in the foreign service meant that he traveled a lot. He was gone when I was born and I rarely saw him in my first years when I lived with my grandparents in a rather isolated village in northeastern Poland.

I knew several things about him as I went through my childhood years: that he lacked a formal education as a result of the war (he retained an unhealthy disrespect for academics forever after), but that he was damn smart and could knock down my little-girl existentialist fears in a minute.

He was also (and still is) an expert practitioner of the art of “out of sight, out of mind” (there’s a small soliloquy delivered in the movie “Cabaret” by Sally, at the point where she receives a telegram from her father – if you know the scene, I can tell you that those exact words could have been said by me).

The two men of my childhood, my dad and my grandfather (on my mom’s side) were both public servants of sorts, committed to socialist-communist ideals –in my grandfather’s case, until his death in the early 1970s. Privately, they were intractable. But there were ways to get at their sentimental side – through music, for instance. I went with my grandfather to see a movie about the Polish folk group (“Mazowsze”) and he sniffled and snorted throughout the whole sappy thing. My dad, too, could get worked up over music and things associated with it. In fact, just about the only time he ever shouted at me was when I, as a young girl, messed with his precious hi-fi. That was definitely his baby and I could not be trusted to come within ten feet of it.

Otherwise, I saw both of them as the calming forces at home. To me, they were the men of reason, the peacemakers. As a girl, I loved their calmness in my oftentimes chaotic family (much later, I was assured that my images of their even-temperedness are mine alone).

In reality, neither of them obsessed much about the family. They came and went according to their own schedules. My dad was (and is) a great talker but a terrible listener (dad, for twenty two years you have been misspelling your granddaughter’s name: I promise you, there is no “z” in it). My grandfather was the storyteller. But I heard far too little from either of them when I was growing up.

It is surprising that they are together in so much of this post since they didn’t especially like each other. My grandfather was a common man’s friend: he built houses for peasants in the Polish village and organized workers into political coalitions. My father was a quintessential diplomat (though they say he lost his diplomatic tone when he left his last post and retired). But both, in their own circles, loved to weigh in on topics of a political nature.

I see my father once a year when I travel to Poland. I see him get spiffed up each day, always dressing with care, often wearing one of his ancient ties, dousing himself with cologne in the way European men so often do. He lives in our old apartment and that, too, is faded, unpainted for years, drapes hanging as they were hung when we moved in many decades ago. He is always so excited to see me, pleased to have my ear again, happy to pour a cup of tea or a glass of wine with his shaking hand. Then I leave and more often than not, I do not hear from him again until my next trip.

My dad has a standard comment that he inserts, always with a grin, at the end of a story or an observation. He’ll say in his accented English: "life is curious… and it gets curiouser and curiouser every day."

A photo of my dad and me, taken during my first vacation away from Poland (in 1959, to Bulgaria):


Nina, 6; Bohdan, 33 

And here's one from the village where my grandfather was born. It is taken also around 1959. My sister and I are visiting old relatives. It is, I think, the only time I've seen my grandfather wear a tie. Maybe he borrowed it for the occasion.


Eliza (6), Wojciech (approx.70), Nina (5) 

Purple blooms, cows, & remembering Babcia

It took six hours to finish Market buying for L’Etoile today. Three comments on the foraging: too much, too long, too windy.

This is my one day to go nuts with color on the blog and today anyone could tell that purple colors dominated nearly every flower stand.


a bucket of purple 


purple in every bunch 


a rainbow -- with purple 


a great pairing 

What’s with the cow? It was THE Saturday to bring cows to the Square and so the moo motif was evident in many side stands set up to promote dairy products.


pinch the cow 

And the line, is it the beginnings of a queue for the Tuesday sale of Clinton’s memoirs? No, just the typical Saturday crowd waiting patiently for a L’Etoile croissant.


worth the wait? 

The season is shifting rapidly: this was the tail end of the asparagus; even the strawberries will start to taper off soon. But we have the cucumbers, summer squash and beans now making an appearance.


baby cukes 

Since the berries are so sweet this week, I bought several dozen pints for home use. There is always a part of me that wants to do the entire bit of wintering-over fruits purchased at the peak of the season. But I regret the impulse the minute I get home. Washing, trimming and storing all that I buy will take the better part of the evening.

My grandmother ("Babcia") would have filled shelves and shelves with her own fruit preserves and syrups. What a woman. I wouldn’t have the patience. She, on the other hand, always seemed comfortable working long hours in her very primitive country kitchen. Definitely your picture-book classic Eastern European grandmother. Because I moved away, I stopped eating her food – her blintzes, pierogi, poppy seed cake and strawberry compote – they’re all just a memory now.

Here’s a photo from my last visit (almost 30 years ago) in her Warsaw apartment (to which she moved when she could no longer look after her country house and garden). She deserves a separate post singing her virtues, though this buried little paragraph seems more fitting with her shyness and overwhelming modesty.


Babcia, 1976