bread

Some people feel impassioned about fly fishing. Others about their art. Or camping. I know at least one person who would love to camp every night of his life.

Me, I care deeply about bread.

An email comes just before class (Tuesday). A friend tells me a new bakery has just opened out on the west side of town. The name stops me short: La Baguette.

I have groaned about the state of bread in Madison. There are places that produce a decent loaf. I’ve written about them. But without exception, the crust just isn’t there. (Well, there is an exception, but the loaf is sourdough and good as it is, it’s still sourdough, which is great if you love sourdough.)

It seemed unlikely that suddenly someone would be able to roll out and bake the real thing and so I decided to put off a visit for a slow day sometime in the future.


Today was not a slow day. I had a seminar on the Square and afterwards, I took time to admire the fall colors at the Wednesday downtown market.



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And then I fell into the pre-departure chaos, where work issues are pounding at me from all sides, and Ed and I banter on the phone about what constitutes a decent meal on a hike and how many bottles of water each of us is able to carry.

But by early afternoon, an image of a perfect baguette wedges itself in my mind (that happens in times of chaos, except sometimes it is an image of a perfect pastry). I dial the number of La Baguette (608.827.6775) and wait.

Alo?

Oh, I haven’t heard that combination of French and English, all in one word, in a long time. It is Olivier Vigy, the owner of La Baguette and he tells me that if I wish, he’ll set aside a baguette for me. There aren’t many left.

I’m there in minutes. But where is “there?” A strip mall across the street from a big mall. On Mineral Point Road. A serious challenge for my red "velo." No rows of poplars here. No lovely cafés, no feeling of neighborhood. So how far along the asphalt speedways will I go to bring home a good baguette? It better be heaven.

I go inside.

Tables and chairs in a spacious, bright room. A glass counter with the classics: tarts, napoleons, flan. And leaning against the wall, the breads.




Something about my notebook and camera must have given a hint of my excessive curiosity. Olivier comes out from behind. We exchange greetings, then sit down at a table and exhale. I remember that the place has only been up and running for a week.






... I ask, bluntly: why here?


It turns out not to have been a straight shot. Olivier moved from a suburb of Paris to Minocqua (northern Wisconsin, pop. 4859).
Minocqua?
Dunque, yes! (Olivier’s sentences are exquisite composites of English with French accruements.)
We used to vacation up here (French people do that? cool!) and there came a time when I wanted something new in life and so we moved! (“We” means Olivier, his wife Carine, their three little kids and the grandparents. French people travle en famille.)

But, business in Minocqua slows during the off season. And so Olivier moved his family to Madison.

It’s sophisticated town. Multicultural. Too smart to fool with imitations.
Yes, but here?
It’s the perfect spot. On a busy road. Across from a shopping place. Close to home.

Close to home. Middleton home. I’m curious if he misses his Paris home.

I like how I am so close to nature. I love Chicago, but it’s too hard to find the countryside there.
I’m egging him on now. The food, surely you miss the food in Paris?
I did in Minocqua. Nothing there. Supper clubs. Here? We’ll see. We ate at l’Etoile. Nice. We liked the Chinese food in Middleton. And there are steak places. You know anything else around here?

Oh dear. While not Minocqua, the west side of Madison is (almost) a culinary wasteland. There’s Brasserie V – great moules frites (mussels with fries).
He laughs. You don’t need a restaurant for great moules! My mother… (and he goes off on a story about very very good mussels…)

So what about your baguette… (I ask this delicately, because, you know, I haven’t tasted it yet.) Why do you think it’s better than what we’ve seen around here?
Olivier doesn’t hesitate: the ovens. I spent a lot on them! They’re from France and they have the stone for baking bread. That’s what you need for the crust.

...and for the pastries...

I’m almost convinced that this place may be the real thing. But I keep going back to the idea of selling bread on Mineral Point Road.

Still, Olivier may know how to succeed in America better than I do. Here, you move by cars, he reminds me. Back in France, it’s all there: three bakeries, the butcher, the grocer, the market, the café bar. You walk from one to the other. You stop, visit with neighbors. It’s different here.
What about selling at the farmers market?
We did that up north. In Madison, they tell me the downtown market has a long wait!
There are other markets! I say this and then I think – oops, the other markets, including my beloved Westside Community Market, have bakers with sourdough loaves and breads with cheese inside. Is there room for a French baguette? Even if it’s the real thing?

As if on cue, Olivier says – I sell a different product. We are not in competition, we respect everyone!

I get up to leave. I pick a few pastries and an epi baguette (one of those where you can break off chunks). The bread feels great: the crust is firm, the texture looks right.

Olivier reminds me to come back for a real chat, over espresso. For sure! A bientot!

I can’t wait any longer. I break off a piece just outside and munch. Terrific crust. Nice. Chewy on the inside. I rush home, tear it into chunks, put a slice of cheese on top and a ripped up tomato from my patio. I take a big bite.

Heaven.

tough week ahead for Ocean

So beautiful outside! So beautiful! The air vibrates with summer warmth. Even though it is no longer summer. Technically.

If you look close, of course, you can tell. It’s sort of yellow out there.





I noticed, too, when I biked home after my late class, that there wasn't a sun on the horizon. All gone. Just the pink remains.






Sad, really.

But let me change topics. Here’s the scoop: I am speeding to get stuff done so that Friday morning I can take off for California.

Huh? California?

Well, my mom’s there and though she swears that visits aren’t needed, I think that on that point she may be wrong.

And I have this deal going with Ed: we will go together to California for the week-end if I agree to camp the three nights we are there (the fourth night is on a red-eye special, so basically we’re talking about four nights of inadequate sleeping arrangements). I don’t really remember why I once thought this was a good deal.

So on Friday morning, we’re heading west. And then, for two or three days, Ocean will have to stay suspended as I…camp.

There are positives:

We are not going to Big Sur (as originally planned) to camp among the fire damaged tree stumps. Nor Yosemite (as I proposed) to camp among the bears that eat ANYTHING you carry in. Because time is short, we're opting for Big Basin State Park.

There are also the negatives:

It appears that you have to lug water, as the streams at the campsites are nonexistent. So the washing, to say nothing of drinking possibilities are even more remote than during the typical camping experience.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I am at the moment but a stone’s throw from a glorious shower. I have good food in the fridge and a rosé wine chilling for the evening. Why worry about the week-end ahead?

Three nights out in the wild... Whoa! I amaze myself.

politics, not as usual

I read last night that Michelle Obama would be visiting Madison. Curious, I clicked on the official website. Indeed. Monday morning at Camp Randall Park. Not too far. Oh, there’ll be a press box. Bloggers aren’t press, are they? Are they? I fill out an application, listing my most unpolitical blog and wait for a response. (The campaign responds only if it doesn’t accept your application.) None came.


Still, on this foggy Monday morning, I forget all about Michelle. I’m settling in to do some work and then it came back – Obama’s wife should be coming through.

But why go? I admit that I support Obama. Not because of any speech that anyone made anytime in the last two years, but because his platform most closely corresponds to what I think is good for the majority of Americans. I used to like to listen to discussions and read blogs on both sides of the spectrum, just because a healthy debate is always stimulating, but since the level of speeches and correspondent blog discussion has degenerated into something verging on bizarre, I’ve cut back. I certainly wont change my mind and I don’t intend to use Ocean to blast away about anything except that we should all have a good day while the weather lasts.

So why go?

Two reasons: I actually really like Michelle and I enjoy hearing her talk in support of her husband. Her face is supremely expressive and the whole performance is really rather cool. So there’s the fun factor. And also – it’s an event. Insofar as I photograph people and events around where I live, what could be more appropriate for Ocean than an outdoor rally? Of a very Madison sort?

Minutes later, I park my bike and head for the press entrance. Sure enough, I’m listed: Nina Camic, blog.

I’m early. Naturally. I assume you’re supposed to come early if you’re press. I sit down and look around.





Hmmm, it would be good to take notes. What kind of press person am I? I forgot to take writing materials. I “borrow” a Bic from the Obama campaign. No one at the press table has paper. I leave and buy a notebook at Union South.

For a person who likes to take photos of people, a rally is a photographic fairy tale. Everyone expects to be photographed and most everyone wishes to be in rather than out of camera (and mike) range.










And so the people came. Not a huge crowd – just under 2000 – but a nice one, full of enthusiasm and good cheer.





OVERHEARD:

(from Obama volunteer): That baby just told me he loved Barack Obama!

(from someone in the crowd, just below me): hey, nice Doug Moe article in the paper on you! (my face turns Polish beet red)

(from random person interviewed for channel 3 news): I decided to come because this hasn’t happened since Kennedy… (I did not hear what the “this” was, but I assume it was something good)

(from me, directed to the cameraman next to me): Is the guy next to me from CNN? Doubt it. How can you tell? You can always tell by the cameras whether they’re big time press. This guy’s camera is bad. What’s a good press camera? 99% will be Cannons, a few Nikons, all with good reach. (I look at a Nikon dude, then, down at my Sony and give it a sympathetic pat so that its feelings wont be hurt.)





The WKOW TV guy takes out his pad and writes: “it is a partisan crowd.” To give him credit, some of my notes are even less interesting.


And now the speeches begin: the provost, the mayor, the county executive, our congresswoman, a student. The press corps is actually behind a chunk of the crowd, but we have platforms from which to take photos. And so I dutifully take photos of all the above. But as the rally is not about them, I’ll spare you the Daves, the Tammys, the Kathleens. Even though I especially like the one I took where our county executive looks like a spy, dark glasses and all. Another time.

Do press people applaud? Only one on our podium does. She looks to be a fake anyway. Sort of like me, except way too enthusiastic to even pretend at journalism.

And finally, out comes Michelle.





And as if to carry the theme of dawn, awakening, parting of clouds, change, the skies force the foggy clouds to recede and wisps of sunlight fill the stage.






Michelle’s voice starts low, quiet even. And then she says “Barack gets it!” and you can tell she speaks from her gut. “Barack gets it!”





“There’s only one candidate…” – her voice builds now, her passion is rising…





And because this rally is to kick off Women in Action Week in Wisconsin and there are many women in the audience, she tells them – “men help, but women get it done… this race can be decided on our shoulders!” and the crowd roars.






As it settles, a voice shouts from the audience – “how do we bridge the racial divide??” Michelle looks up, finds the face in the crowd and tells her with a smile: “ we are bridging it every day!” – and the crowd responds again.





As the crowd settles, a little guy, this one, in the front row…





…shouts out “no!” A parental figure is attempting to control him and he's feeling assertive. Michelle looks at him and grins: “you, too, can bridge the divide, Mr. three year old! Talk to your grandparents!” Everyone laughs.


The speech isn’t too long and it includes references to policy positions that women care about: equal pay, reproductive rights, sick leave, affordable health care, college tuition breaks for those who engage in service. (“Barack and I just recently paid off the last of our educational loans!”)

The crowd is enthusiastic and as she leaves...



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...they linger to shake her hand.



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Many are reaching out for a hug. A number engage her in stories and the secret service dudes nudge her to move on.



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At one point, someone reaches their baby over to her. Michelle stretches and you can tell that she is tempted to take the baby, hold it…



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…I can only imagine what her body guards and campaign people are saying to her. Her hands linger, then retreat.

And I retreat as well. I run into friends and colleagues…





…and I chat to the security guard who is busy clearing gates and such. My buddies are on lunch break at the bar across the street and I’m left cleaning up, he says. They’re laughing at me.

By now, it looks like just another Monday at noon. Except it feels a lot warmer. The sun is out and, well, there’s this warm fuzzy glow that comes from attending a positive rally. I find myself smiling. Humming almost. No slander, no put down, just a vision, Michelle Obama’s, representing Barack Obama’s, of where we should be heading.



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I bike back to my work. I take off my jacket and begin to undo the press badge and then I let it go. Just for a few more minutes.

when times are tough, there’s always chocolate

And then there is the chocolate that’s good for the best of times. That’s my preference. You get to a point where you want chocolate as a reward, not a painkiller. Job well done. Life is good. Luck is holding out. Sit back, close your eyes and concentrate on the piece of creamy bliss.




Josie’s Terra Source chocolates may be good for those who just want to stuff it in until it hurts, but they are best, I think, for people who want to think and dream, and revel in what they are eating. In other words, don’t open a box when you’re about to pay your bills online. Open a box when you’re through with the awful and are ready to move on to the sublime.


I met Josie at the Westside Community Farmers Market a week back. Her stand was simple: a plate of chocolate bits and a container of individually packaged chocolates. It’s hard make a visual splash with chocolates when you have brassy autumnal veggies on stands all around you.

After chatting for a minute, I took the plunge and asked if I could see the art in progress. There was no hesitation in her response. Yes. I was really impressed. Josie is fairly new on the Madison chocolate scene and she has some established competition. Some (not all, but some) of that competition has expressly told me to keep my camera lens focused elsewhere.

Josie is different. She acknowledges the help she received from Madison’s great – David Bacco – and she wants to give back to others who show an interest.

Okay, so this Sunday afternoon I went to watch. The molding, the filling with ganache, the quick refrigeration, the popping out. All by hand. With flavorings from locally sourced fruits and organic teas and spices. Golden raspberry. Tart rhubarb. Scarlet tea. Brandied pear. Bliss.



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It seems such a lonely process. The chocolates are made in a commercial kitchen that is usually devoted to cake baking. So I saw a lot of these lying around:





The radio pipes in classical music. Josie fills, smoothes, covers and pops.



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After, there’s much to clean and scrub.

Have you thought about selling in a shop? – I ask.
No, that’s not where my talents are.
How do you like to sell?
Honestly, I would like meeting up with the buyers and handing them their chocolates.

Oh the many benefits of a Farmers Market! Let me be honest: foodwise, in Wisconsin, winter sucks.

questions of the day

As every Saturday, Ed and I head out to the Westside Community Farmers Market. (In case you were wondering, the ripped shorts were deemed good enough for another go around. And so I walked two steps ahead.)



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We were ten minutes too late to get eggs. But, there was plenty to bring home. One purchase caused Ed to ask – what’s that?



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I think the stem is a dead giveaway, no?


After the market, I reluctantly take one of my framed photos to the Overture Center for the Arts (they will be displaying one piece from each artist during the run of the Madison Open Art Studios event). Why reluctantly? Because what little patience I had for promoting things that I do on or off the blog is gone. How do you maintain humility as you hang your stuff up at Overture? I can just see Ed rolling his eyes: humility does not pay the bills.

As I registered my presence and my photo at the downtown Art Center…





Ed asks: why is yours the absolute smallest piece in the entire room? Good question. “I’m cheap,” “I’m modest,” “I wish I were elsewhere,” are possible responses. The same ones that I would give to anyone who would ask me why I never mailed the sixty invitations to the show that I was supposed to mail. That was my pledge. I failed.





And now it is late afternoon. We are at Ed’s place, surveying the progress on the Writer’s Shed.

Where do you want your shower? Ed asks.

Who says men can’t change?
(A special thanks to all who took on the hefty task of explaining to Ed that many women, nay most women, perhaps most men and women like easy access to a water source.)

The sun is now starting to recede. I always am drawn to this honey-toned light, but I hate the loss of warmth. I watch the farmers return to the fields next door. They start with a bite of melon then get down to business.



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I'll end this post with a question for all you cat people out there. Assume I am not one of you. I don’t hate cats, but I don’t seek them out either. If we are to share space, I like them to keep their claws nicely curled inside their paws. Ed, on the other hand, developed a latent affection for cats. He has two strays. The two strays hate each other. Most dogs, like most people, can be trained not to hate. Is this not possible with cats? My assumption is that Isis (the people friendly cat) gets jealous when Larry (the skittish cat) comes close to Isis’s sweetie (Ed). Is there a way to end this ongoing battle?

It's time to leave the cat battle ground and bike to get a cappuccino. Oh, but the corn fields look gorgeous at this time of the year!



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suspended

At so many levels, Donna’s comment to my last post made me laugh. Donna (whom I don’t know, btw) was so… beautifully precise in her depiction of a chance crossing of paths that I want to use this moment to say thank you. You know, of course, that next time you spot us, Ed will be just as disheveled as he was today. He wont hear it if you tell him that canary yellow will not hide old stains and that ripped shorts are… noticeable. And yet, it was a Friday afternoon and the sky was blue and the air was warm and so there you have it: the day was beautiful. Anyway, thank you, Donna, and all of you, for those sentences of good will and good humor that make their way to Ocean.

In other news: I spent a good many hours working, and thinking about stuff. In an unusual Ocean move, let me share some of this with you. I’ll start with this photo of a suspended windowwasher. Is there something singularly significant about it? Well, in my days, Poles often used allusions and allegories to help their story along. Let’s just say that the photo may be of help to the processing of the rest.





In my mind, Poland was always a country divided. There were the provinces and the cities. The urban and the rural. And the rural, in my days, inevitably meant the economically depressed (with a few exceptions in the southern highlands, where Chicago money – or something! -- seemed to have perked up standards a bit). The urban, of course, also had their share of poverty, but so often it was a kinder poverty. Maybe it was because people had running water and access to decent schools and health care. Maybe.

The village I lived in as a young child was at the edge of an especially depressed rural landscape (the northeast). The accomplished farmers used horses and old wagons for transport. Others moved on foot. No one had a car then. You never saw a tractor. The women shoveled coal and wood into stoves and boiled water in old tinny pots for the inevitable supper of potatoes and sour milk.

My grandparents were outsiders. They were rural folk once, but not from this region. And they had lived abroad. Always poor, they now were better off than nearly everyone in the village. My grandmother had worked as a cleaning woman in the States. Now, in Poland, she had $100 in social security per month. She would never have to worry about food again.

When I outgrew my clothes, my grandmother passed them on to village people. In the years we had American clothes, the village people would sell them at the town markets. Oftentimes, we would see our old clothes on kids in the village and we would cringe. Privilege can be embarrassing.

But even though my grandparents were outsiders and I was a double outsider (I stopped living there year round at the age of three), I never felt shunned. Poverty of a desperate kind doesn’t breed resentment. It only breeds desire to get out of it and do better by yourself and your family. During my return visits, I sat on wooden chairs in front of warm stoves and answered questions about life in America. I was offered tea with sugar and I never turned it down.

The fact is, so many Poles, even those from the most depressed regions of the northeast, those who could not possibly understand the rule of law or the role of democracy or the Supreme Court or the two houses of Congress, regard this place of great wealth and purple mountain majesty as beautiful. A place they would love to touch, if only through the worn sweaters that we handed down to them.

That’s one thing.

Here’s another:

I have to say that I was part of the elite in the Poland of the late sixties (by the time I was a teen). I was educated, well-traveled and I lived in central Warsaw (a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment that my parents could now afford). I showered daily (rare!), used deodorant (unheard of!) and I worried about zits on my face. America had left its mark.

Still, in high school, I loved most everyone in my class. My friends were communists (Dorota!), anti-communist (Marcin!), Catholic (so many!), Jewish (Malgosia!) atheist (there must have been some!). Some were very poor. They knew this about themselves, but we didn’t know. In the Poland of my youth, wealth was nonexistant and so poverty did not stand out.

Oh, the dichotomies! It should not have worked. At the level of government, it did not work. But for us kids, it did.

We were a pack of teens who cared more about holding hands and kissing on park benches than hating each other for what we brought into the mix. If we spoke of hate, it was toward those who destroyed our country during World War II. Our parents drank tea to celebrate namedays (well, not mine, but they had issues that transcended politics). We, the young, the brave, went on hikes, pitched tents on river banks and farmers brought us cheese and milk for breakfast.

I have heard people say that in Poland people were civil to everyone because you never knew what the consequences would be, should you speak out against another person in the room. And so we developed a culture of respect. It may have been dishonest among our parents and elders, but for us, it was real.

I write all this because I live now in a place that is equally divided. Red, blue, north south, of color, white, Alaska and the east coast elite.

Back in Poland, I never heard any of it. The unlearned had respect for the learned, the rural wanted a home in the urban, the uneducated wanted schooling for their kid, the poor wanted a little of the wealth found abroad. The urban mass looked with lust toward the pastoral fields and the simple village life, the educated ate the same food in the same milk bar as the uneducated, the teens with access to things American shared with those who did not.

I kind of miss the time when I felt, at least in my own adolescent world, that we were all in this together, in pursuit of common goals for ourselves and our families. It was a good feeling. I wish our kids here were feeling it now.

September

Warm, but nippy if you go out at the edges of the day.

I biked to work at a leisurely pace (my first class is a late morning thing, my last class is an early evening one) and I looked yet again at September. You can see it – no other month looks like this:



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On the Hill, a student still wanted to call it summer. She looked at her cell messages, put the phone down, looked at her bright pink toenails, and then looked at nothing at all, not even the the Capitol at the other end of State Street.



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Students don’t believe in September. They seem to go from summer to late October. Everything in between is… still summer. Stretch out on the green, throw a Frisbee, take your laptop outside.

Transition months are more for people like me who need time to adjust, so it’s not shorts to snowshoes. Though maybe tomorrow I’ll try that stretch out on the grass thing. When no one's watching.

closure

Biking for pleasure, biking to get to work, biking to make a delivery. Biking up the steep Old Sauk hill, biking past my old home.

The hot sunny day is making me sweat. Crazy biking. Maybe I should have walked.

Maybe I should have walked. Maybe I should have skipped Estonia, skipped the art show, skipped rolling croissants, or cooking for twenty during presidential debates four years back. I made soup and needed twenty soup bowls. In those days, I didn't hesitate much.


The hill (Old Sauk hill) wasn’t really a challenge today. I had so much energy, so much brute force, killing force that it took no effort at all to climb it.

My old house in the old neighborhood had a new flower patch and while I marveled at its orderliness, I wondered what had become of the 10, 40, 140 perennials I had stuck in there over the years.

My friend and once neighbor talked of changes in her life and I compared them to changes in mine. I left thinking she was on a good track. And that’s not because she is heading with her husband to England next week. Maybe I could say that she is on a good track and therefore she is heading with her husband to England next week.

I visited with my doctor who had read the Doug Moe column and she commented that she always imagined that I had wanted to be a lawyer from the time of diapers. [Truth is, my grandmother boiled my diapers in pots of water on top of a coal stove, having neither electricity nor indoor plumbing to help her along.] I filed that into my storehouse of stories of what people found most surprising after reading the Doug Moe piece. One colleague mentioned that she wondered why I could not jump into journalism given my constant movement between Poland and the US. Another colleague said he never knew I was such an interesting person. Hmmm.

On the ride back from the far west side, I stopped at Owen Woods.


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Owen Woods – the place where I went to find something, back in the days when I lived so close to it. Something? What? Imagined balance. An echo of my own thoughts.

It was pretty today, after five, tea time five, just before the news five. I caught glimpses of the capitol – from the top of Old Sauk hill, from inside the Owen park itself.



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And I caught that afternoon-evening light that makes all lasting bits of summer colors seem faded and pale, in spite of the blue sky, the loud screech of the yellow bird, and the balls of rabbit fur, hiding behind golden stalks of prairie grasses.



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