ME, INTERESTED IN NUMBERS??

Or: what I found this morning in a paper that I never otherwise read: numbers, numbers everywhere!

It's rare that I am sitting in a coffee shop early in the morning reading the Wisconsin State Journal, but today was just such a day. I was in my office early today. So early, as a matter of fact, that I witnessed this sunrise out my window (forgive the slant, I am, after all, on a hill):

It is imperative to fill yourself with something that'll really knock your eyes open on such mornings and so I headed to Starbucks for a strong shot of espresso (but greatly diluted by milk so who am I kidding). There I picked up a paper tossed aside by someone else. I am generally dismissive of this paper, taking a position of haughty superiority, perhaps, in flaunting my commitment to the NYT or WashPost or the IHT instead.

But today I actually learned something from our local rag. There were a number of articles that threw out numbers and they were not uninteresting numbers. I'll give you four examples (directly quoting from the paper)of stories that piqued my curiosity, in the order that they appeared in the paper:

1. Only 63% of 4 year college students earn a college degree within 6 years (this is in the entire US)... At UW Madison, the 6 year graduation rate for white students is 76.9%, compared to 52.1% for minorities... America is almost unique among industrialized countries in failing [in recent years] to improve its graduation rate. [Reasons for failure to complete college here: lack of academic preparedness, lack of personal attention given by colleges to the needs of students, and the need to quit and go home to get a job and care for families.]

2. Two-thirds of divorces after age 40 are initiated by wives. The survey found that women over age 40 seemed more aware of problems in their marriage while men were more likely to be caught off-guard by their divorces. 26% of men said they 'never saw it coming' compared with 14% of women.

3. Immigrants who come to the U.S. [that would be me!] live an average of 3 years longer than people born here [oh no, I don't want to usurp the bounty and use it to my own advantage!]. A growing body of evidence indicates the life span difference reflects both immigrants' innate vitality and their reluctance to embrace Americans' drive-through, drive-everywhere mentality (bold added).

4. This year's top 10 finalists (in the 16th annual National Geographic Bee) were all boys. Bo Sun of Ladysmith WI was among them. [N.b. I would say that the winning Q wasn't that hard compared to all Qs preceding it. The Q: Peshawar, in Pakistan, has had strategic importance for centuries because of its location near what historic pass? A: Khyber Pass. Comment: Forgive me for sounding provincial, but do we even know of any other Pass in that area?]

I would have missed all this had I only done a computer scan of my standard press. Of course, I am not going to mention the other stories, the ones that make me convinced that I can never really like the Journal. Let's just give it one moment of glory and not look critically beyond these few interesting pieces.

WHY SOME BLOG IN THE BATHROOM and other abstruse observations on a hobby

Rarely have I wanted to parrot a blogger's comments as much as I did Ann's today on the NYT article that gives extensive if rather narrow and banal comments on bloggers who like to blog. I wont say a word more. Read her analysis of the article and just assume it could easily have been mine as well.

Passion for anything -- including work, family, love, food, travel, literature, bird-watching -- anything at all, always irritates the passionless.

MORE IRRELEVANT NOTES FROM AN IRRLEVANT DAY

That row of breakfast rolls from today’s breakfast in the previous post? That may have been the highlight of the day. No, wait, I have to do better than that. Other highlights:

- Sitting in a coffee shop and grading exams, I looked up to notice that a colleague was sitting at the table next to mine doing exactly the same thing. It was a good reason to stop grading and start distracting each other. I think she was better at the grading while I was better at the distracting.

- I went to the bank to withdraw all the money and fly off to some distant destination. It just seemed the clever thing to do, an investment in a worry-free existence. Ah, to travel, to see the world and let the rest toil and fret about small things like bills and tuitions and other trivialities. But on the way, I got side-tracked by this sign (on the right here). I happen to know that this particular Fest makes one of my distant readers very happy and so I stood there and contemplated the unfairness of life. Here I am, happy not to be consuming anything from the Brat Fest, while there she is, far away, wanting so much to bite into that greasy little sausage from the Fest grill. By the time I finished with these profound reflections, the bank was closed and so I could not run anywhere at all.

- Because I was being so good about grading, I rewarded myself with not only the delicious junk breakfast but also a delicious junk dinner: MANY handfuls of nuts, a bowl of soup (that part was healthy) and a huge piece of cinnamon something or other. I am also thinking that a further desert is in order. After all, coffee shops have limited menu offerings. If there are only desserts here, what can I do, right?

- A friend sent e-photos of a baby just born to one of my former students. The baby looked like -- a real newborn. There is something predictably newborn-like about freshly born babies. There's little else you can add to that description, unless they also have a huge mass of hair or an usual feature or an odd number of toes.

- I do believe the rest of America is currently watching American Idol. The build up has been tremendous. I know some of the people who voted. To them, I say this: I hope that if you can only have the results fall your way in one election in the next six months that it wont be the elections leading to the selection of the American Idol.

A PUZZLER AND A TEMPTATION

An early office visit revealed this outside (my window is large and beautiful and looks out on Bascom Mall):

What the heck? Cows on campus? An athletic event? What?





A breakfast break from grading put me in sight of these sweet little things.
<--

The up-side: it reminds me of wonderful vacation breakfasts. I mean, it’s not the type of stuff one has on a daily basis. Still, a reward for grading is in order, right?

The down-side: this is no way to start a ‘healthy eating’ day! After a breakfast of this sort, what does one do, go to Noodles for lunch, like this blogger?

EMAIL CAN BE A GOOD THING!

Something I learned today: The blogging lawyer from St. Croix, V.I. wrote the following in an email that responded to an earlier post of mine:

We don't wear tropical shirts or sandals to court, but we DO wear them to the office (I have, in fact, worn sandy flip-flops to work). Most attorneys I know have one suit jacket that they keep in their office for court appearances and that's the extent of their formal, "lawyer" wardrobe.

Comment: I would enjoy wearing sandy flip-flops to work.

Another thing that I learned today: Nuts do not a dinner make.

Comment: if you forget to eat dinner by 9, you should not think that nuts will be a good alternative. You should make or get dinner after you remember.

Yet another thing I learned today: Even when you think your sister is not reading your blog, she may be reading your blog. One of the nice emails I got today came from her and in it she wrote:
“Your travel descriptions were great. You should be doing this for a living -- get paid to travel and write about it.” I include this quote not for any other reason but because I think it was a genuinely sweet thing for her to say and because it can serve as a lesson (see comment).

Comment: I should learn not to make assumptions, jump to conclusions and do all those other awful things one does in the absence of information. I should learn this and I WILL learn this. I PROMISE!!

And one more thing that I learned today: Online translations are amusing in their worthlessness. My new friend in Japan, Masahiko, who speaks almost no English, periodically writes in Japanese and then submits his note to an ‘automatic Net translator.’ Here are portions of his email from today:

Nina looks forward to meeting it by mail from now though it is lonely
because it came back to America.

Do your best, and come to Japan again in the next year though Nina is
thought work to become hard after the return, too.

Be relieved because both Kazumi and I are cheering it up.

Well, it mails it again.

I can only guess what my reply translated to in Japanese.

QUIZ: GIVERNY, OR NINA'S GARDEN YESTERDAY?

Too easy? I know, I know, it's not the one flower, it's the entirety that counts. Still, this is one heck of a pretty little columbine.

SECRETIVE

You’re darn right, Tonya, I cling to my private thoughts with true survivor-of-political-dictatorship (that it was communist is irrelevant) paranoia and out of a desperate need for guarded secrecy to ensure self-preservation (see Tonya’s blog here)! Of course I do! You never know, YOU NEVER KNOW who will stab your back today let alone tomorrow. I say ‘favorite this’ or ‘boo-hiss on that’ and it’ll make its way to the slimy hands of some holed-in bureaucrat who is then going to make sure that every employer, politician, and neighbor is aware of my proclivities and inclinations.

Same goes for friends, colleagues, students, loved ones. You tell them what you like or don’t like and you are liable to be smeared, ridiculed, maligned, taken apart limb by limb and given over to the dogs the next day. (I checked the closet and underneath the bed before I wrote that. YOU NEVER KNOW. That I am under the grip of acute paranoia can be evidenced by the fact that I have not moved more than two feet from my spot of 8 hours ago. I just don’t trust the next room, the corridor, they seem full of mechanical contraptions and eerie ghost like-shadows, waiting to NAB me.)

Saying the wrong thing is the biggest fear of anyone raised in troubled times, political and personal, and I belong to that group, yes I do and so no one, NO ONE will ever know what my favorite movie** is. Ever.*

*I was emboldened to mention movies that ruled my life at age 15, 16 and 18 (see Sunday post). That was risky enough. The fallout is just beginning to be felt.
**I also do agree that Blogger is but another marketer of Friendster-like connections. (btw, who are the Olson twins?)

WAKE UP, BEAR, IT’S CHRISTMAS!

So went the children’s story (I’m talking about VERY SMALL children) about a bear, who, because of hibernation, almost slept through the holiday. It is an irrelevant little book, with not much of a story line and, as I recall, rather straightforward illustrations.

But the title, for some reason, has stayed with me over the years. It pops up in my mind when I am walking through a day in a stupor brought on by little sleep and who knows what else and I think I need a jolt. Coffee is the substance of first choice, but to get to coffee, one must first arise and move toward a coffee container. And so there must be some motivation.

The book title, bizarrely enough, flashes in my head and there I have it! That jolt, that needed reminder that there is a day through which one must move in some state of alertness. Christmas or not, there is a day out there.

It’s strange what drivel and nonsense come back to either haunt us or help us in moments when the day seems too confusing and never-ending.

HAS THIS BLOG BECOME A RUNNING COMMENTARY ON CROISSANTS, CREEKS AND CULVERTS?

A friend and fellow blogger asked today why I had not posted a single word about my legal work in Japan. This is not the first time I got asked this question. It’s as if the ‘law’ has completely exited from this blog so that it can no longer even hold the title of ‘blawg.’ It cannot be called a bpoliticlog either. What happened?? Has the unbearable lightness of being me pulverized all ideas of any substance? Or at least pushed them aside into a complete state of dormancy? Have I entered into some kind of partnership with mr. Irrelevance and ms. Trivia?

As I said earlier, I am rethinking what this blog should be about. In Japan I was spending quite a lot of time on the non-work postings and it was impossible to imagine that anyone would want to read even more text than I had already included.

But that was then. Perhaps this week-end I’ll take a stab at creating some blogorder and in so doing I’ll allow space for the blawg that is within me. Perhaps I can then revisit this other side of my travels to Japan. Perhaps. Patience, patience, we have many a calm day before us.

WINE SNOBS AND DINNER PRICES

A blogger (here) mentioned an extreme episode of wine snobbery that she experienced while eating at L’Etoile.

It breaks my heart when that happens! (Not literally, but you get the point – I so dislike wine snobbery.) It is no secret to those who know me that I do like wine. I especially like it when it is made by a small family-run operation, from grapes grown on small strips of land. Why? Because while others are imagining pears, lemons, minerals, woodsiness, etc on the palate while sipping wine, I am imagining the hard work, the care, the love that went into the making of it. You cannot be a small producer and not love your work because it is so very tough and extremely unpredictable in its result. One grower told me that he was happy that he had little kids, otherwise for sure he would have committed suicide in years when everything in wine-making failed him.

Wines should never break anyone’s budget. There are so many good inexpensive wines out there! Less than $10 per bottle, yes, of course – so many interesting, enjoyable bottles that complement meals and can be had for small prices. The ones that top $30 per bottle are already over the top – to be enjoyed by those who truly do not know where to lay down their cash. I always think that we in this country are such impatient fools, spending huge sums on wines that have been aged because we are used to instant gratification. Elsewhere, if people truly love the complexity of older, more expensive wines, they buy them young (and cheap) and put them away for a requisite number of years, to be enjoyed later.

Restaurant wines drive me insane: the mark up is two to three times the cost of the wine. Again, this is so unique to our way of dining. Elsewhere, the basic table wine is often the price of bottled water. And no waiter should ever, EVER even bat an eye if you ask for an inexpensive ‘house wine.’ Of course, this category of wine does not exist at l’Etoile… Sigh… L’Etoile’s prices all around are steep. If it’s any consolation, the restaurant doesn’t get fat on its dinner service. The cost of ingredients and the labor-intensive work makes each dish prohibitively pricey to prepare. L’Etoile makes up deficits incurred during slow days by selling croissants at the Market Café!

ISLAND PEOPLE

In one day I had two encounters with island law types. I received an email from the author of this blog, based in St. Croix of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and I had lunch with a friend who spent a year with her husband studying and practicing law in Palau. I’m told that in Palau, there is indeed a law of the indigenous people, supplemented by random suggestive rather than binding case and statutory law from the States. I would assume that in the Virgin Islands the primary law IS the U.S. law.

But what’s it like to be an attorney on the islands? Do people walk to court with sand in their sandals? Do they wear breezy, patterned shirts with palm trees on them? Am I creating images that not only stereotype, but also demonstrate my complete ignorance about island life?

More importantly, how did these law people find such interesting places to apply to for jobs, while my biggest venture into the world Out There after law school was to send inquiry letters to Milwaukee firms? I think I missed the boat on that one. Literally.

WHERE TO EAT IN MADISON?

A friend and fellow blogger succumbed to the “favorites” list mania (posting on the topic here, responding to a call for favorites here). In spite of my dire warnings about favoring this or that (see post below), he rolled forth with a listing of top three restaurants (in three separate categories), overall bottom five as well, and explanations justifying placement. Now, as a self-proclaimed foodie, I am going to say that his lists are not bad. Perhaps his rant against Mickey’s is a little odd given his favoring of Hubbard’s, but still, one can forgive – it is a trivial error.

But let’s go back to the top of the top. Where in that little pile is Harvest? I mean, granted, who am I to squabble about the virtues of the place where I choose to lay down my wimpy talents, but still, assuming l’Etoile rules, where, after that, is Harvest?

As for chains, please scratch Macaroni Grill and replace it with Big Bowl. For sure!

Finally, my own personal announcement of the bravery award: that my pal should think he can continue to live, work, and eat and not bear the wrath of not listing Chautara attests to his strong moral fiber and unwillingness to succumb to the PC trend of including it on all lists favoring anything at all in Madison, including ‘favorite place to encounter other favorite place aficionados.’ For this alone, one should trust his listings and give him the reigns to freely expound on the subject of food henceforth. [Though, in all fairness, anyone writing on the topic should right away explain what they do and do not eat. I happen to know that this particular blogger is a semi-vegetarian. Irrelevant? Not really: I may not myself put Smoky’s on a top anything list, but it certainly explains why this blogger blows Smoky’s off without so much as a wink. I have yet to meet anyone who would rank Smoky’s as a superior eating place based on its caraway-laden cottage cheese side-dish, or its iceberg lettuce salad alone, but those who eat beef do swear by the place.]

LEARNED HAND AND GUIDO CALABRESI’S WIFE ARE NOTED AT YALE GRADUATION WHILE THE BUSH FAMILY LAYS LOW

Today marks the first day of the graduation ceremonies on the Yale campus. I understand that every effort was made to keep politics away from the podium. President Bush, though in New Haven, is not going to make an appearance at any of the ceremonial events. His graduating daughter, too, skipped the speeches today.

…And so she failed to hear filmmaker Ken Burns say the following (this from the AP):

Without mentioning Bush by name, Burns drew parallels between today's political leaders and the Iraq war, versus Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, which he chronicled in an award-winning film series.

Both wars threatened to tear the country apart, Burns said.

"Steel yourselves. Your generation must repair this damage, and it will not be easy," Burns told the seniors.

Burns quoted famed jurist Learned Hand as saying, "Liberty is never being too sure you're right."

"Somehow recently, though, we have replaced our usual and healthy doubt with an arrogance and belligerence that resembles more the ancient and now fallen empires of our history books than a modern compassionate democracy," Burns said, to applause from the 1,300 graduates and their families and friends.

…But I wonder if she noted the protesters outside the home of the University president (where the Bushes were staying for a while this week-end)? And who exactly was protesting? From the AP release:

The crowd was a mix of students and older Yale graduates.

Anne Tyler Calabresi, 69, of Woodbridge, said she was protesting on behalf of herself and her husband, Federal Appeals Judge Guido Calabresi, a Yale graduate and former dean of the Yale School of Law.

"I'm profoundly worried about the way this country is going," she said. "And I'm furious about the lies George Bush has told to us again and again. He has led us into a war that is destroying our reputation around the world and creating implacable enemies around the world that we didn't have one year ago."

TORNADO WARNING AND OTHER WEATHER-RELATED DIRECTIVES

A message from the local weather radio station (currently appearing on my computer):

While driving tonight... do not enter flooded roads... underpasses and intersections. Stay away from flooded rivers... creeks and culverts. Remember... turn around... don’t drown.

I appreciate the good intention behind this advice. Moreover, I should not be the one to comment, since I am sitting safely home rather than being on a road where creeks and culverts are flooding. Here, the only danger of flooding is in the solarium… Of course, I am at the moment in the solarium… Does the warning thus apply to me as well? Should I turn around and type backwards, with an eye toward avoiding a rush of water from underneath? If they're telling me not to drown, I most certainly want to be a good citizen and do my part to keep my head above any rushing waters.

HOW CAN SO MANY PEOPLE CONFIDENTLY MAKE UP LISTS?

Everyone does lists: favorite books, movies, names, favorite everything! Even the new blogger format asks this of you: name this, describe yourself thus. To me, this is an impossibility. My favorites, my personals, they’re always in a state of flux.

Take movies: when I was 15, I saw Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet 45 times (I counted), paying each time the requisite Polish zloty (I lived in Warsaw then) over and over to sit through it. The colors, that youthful, zesty Juliet, Mercutio’s stunning movements, I could not get enough of it all. [Oh! I see that John McEnery, who played Mercutio, is currently appearing in a very minor role in “Girl with a Pear Earring!” I should see if he still evokes the same rapture, in his, ahem, slightly older countenance.]

But not for long. “R&J” got dumped once I discovered Lelouche’s ‘A Man and a Woman.’ [God, remember when he sings in the background ‘A l’ombre de nous’ – in the shadow of us; or when they come together but neither is ready, each lost in the death of their former love; oh, such a film! It was, btw, the Grand Prize winner at Cannes, in the 1960s… I can see it now, the cinematography is so slow, their love develops through the minutia of small, improvised gestures, glances; nuanced, gentle, hesitant, with exceptional acting; such a brilliantly artful film.]

That lasted until I went through my movies-in-the-shadow-of-WW II phase – especially ‘The Garden of Finzi-Continis,’ a 1971 film that blew me away. I dream about scenes from that movie still. [It was the winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Even Pauline Kael liked it! Again, a contemplative, initially subtle movie, that takes you through the lush Italian gardens slowly, and then plunges you into the horror of Fascist persecution of Italian Jews.]

And so on. A favorite? No favorite. It doesn’t work that way. A favorite may be defined by the context, or by the state of readiness to be mesmerized, to fall in love, to be driven insane. Often it has more to do with me, than with the movie itself.

I KNOW THAT SOME OF MY GOOD FRIENDS AND CLOSE FAMILY MEMBERS ARE VEGETARIAN BUT…

This guy is dinner!-->

The brazenness, the audacity, I mean, come on! That patch of ground is decimated as a result of his shenanigans.






<--I found this rabbit dish on the Net: "Brochettes de lapin au fenouil et aux herbes de Provence." A few cubes of red pepper, cucumber, a dash of olive oil and we're set.


One more leap into the dianthus patch and I am sharpening the knives.

TO DUST

A week ago I was sitting at terminal 2E at the Paris airport thinking how nice it is that all Air France flights to and from the States arrive and depart from this brand new structure. (To and from Tokyo as well.) It is (was) amazing: all glass and air and space, curved into a hall that muffles sound and creates (created) a feeling of a contained universe: expansive, but not overwhelming.

I have another series of flights coming up this summer and I was looking forward to again being routed through there: 2E, the terminal of choice. But it is no more (see story here).

IT’S RAINING, SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

The tile floor of the un-solarium has suspiciously dark-looking grout. Normally it is not dark. It is dark on the rare, rare occasions when the ground underneath is so saturated that the water has nowhere to go but up, right through the cement, into the grout, eventually flooding the room. It has happened twice before in the 17 years I have lived here. I am near that stage again. Dark grout = wet grout. I WANT THE RAIN TO STOP! Enough already.

FAHRENHEIT 9/11: TOO HOT?

Alright, it is official: Michael Moore’s movie picks up the top prize at Cannes. Is it really because (as is suggested in the WashPost article here) no other movie stood out of the pack of contenders? Or because of the popularity of Moore’s political message in Cannes? Or is it the case that movies arousing controversy are almost always more likely to win at Cannes even as they have trouble being distributed in this country?

It took almost fifty years for a documentary to again walk away with a first place finish at the Cannes Festival (the last documentary to do so was, according to WashPost, Cousteau’s “The Silent World’). Are documentaries ever successful if their political message is disfavored?

I find it humorously ironic that insofar as release here will occur anytime soon, it is likely to be around the Fourth of July.

TO MARKET

Is it really possible for a thunderstorm to last for 12 hours? I am waiting for the water to come into the house. One more day of rain and my un-sunny solarium will be flooded for sure.

This is my first day back moonlighting at L’Etoile (see yesterday’s post) and I am sure to get there by 6:30 a.m. (is it still 'moonlighting' if it's such an early morning schedule?). If I am to be a market forager for the restaurant, I need to make a first round of the stalls at the very beginning, just to acquaint myself with all that’s available on this day.




Besides, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE BAKERS AT L’ETOILE’S MARKET CAFÉ ARE UP TO! Oh, but to breathe again that familiar wonderful smell of baking croissants and baguettes…










The summer staff for this season is efficient and together (this has not always been the case) and the bakers know what they’re doing. The croissants are even, the gougers are light, the eggs are there as well for those who like that market bun and egg combination.

It is always a balancing act on bad weather days: the L’Etoile Market Café relies on there being no over-production or under-production. The cost of organic ingredients is high and so a surplus is an automatic loss. On the other hand, it’s not good to run out of baked goods by 10 a.m. Today, when the weather changed three times in the course of the morning, the anxiety about getting it right was high.

But my job for today is really to be at the market (here’s the L’Etoile cart that makes the rounds with me-->). Odessa comes along if she’s in town (as in today), otherwise I am on my own. I carry a calculator, a clip board, a menu, and a pocket knife to test for firmness, as well as a sack of croissants to hand out as treats to farmers who have especially good offerings today.

What’s hot right now? Snap peas! Delicious! Asparagus, of course. I spotted the first baskets of strawberries at one stand (gone by 8 am, more to follow next week). Spinach, yes, it’s there, though the winter hoop farmer refuses to grow it anymore: a spinach purist will only eat the cold weather variety. Rhubarb. Oh, and I picked up a half dozen squash blossoms for my own use (sautee, stuff, whatever).



I have to say that I get a charge out of buying large quantities: a whole bucket of honey, a crate of Gourmet Farms cremini mushrooms, 12 bags of Harmony Valley spinach, on and on. The list is huge and each L’Etoile supplier has to be greeted, with a review of what’s there and equally important, what’s coming next week.

Okay, I mustn’t get carried away. I’ll end with the flower basket I get each year for my own back patio. The clay pots still need to be filled. Spring is such a good season!