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In the eye of the beholder

A few years ago, while walking through the Radcliffe Quad, Dr. D. and I saw several piles of what seemed to be building or gardening supplies—earth and various kinds, sizes, and colors of gravel. We assumed a modest project was about to begin. But then we noticed a sign with the title and creator of what, it turned out, was an art installation.
It became a joke. We started noticing “art installations” everywhere—a quarry, a nursery, a building site. Who knew there was so much public art to be seen?
But then the joke turned a little. Why not an art installation? With all the hurrying and busyness, the thousand daily annoyances, worries, to-do’s, and random distractions, why not pause and take a different look at things we usually don’t give a second glance? A pile of rocks, their shapes random as a John Cage composition. A heap of dirt or a stack of bricks on their way to becoming a garden or a walkway. On their way to being transformed by effort and imagination.
I’ve seen art installations in parks that seem to tell us something like this—a field of feathers, a tiny doorway at the base of a tree, a group of sculpted ants picnicking beside the Muddy River—pointing to a new, unexpected way to see what surrounds us. Prodding g us not to let our assumptions or our busyness dull us to the possibility that there could be wonders to see around us.
And this, too–isn’t this what we do with all our heaped-up moments—try to shape them into something worth noticing?
Thank you, Radcliffe Quad and that art installation.


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The Occasional Recipe: 4th of July Lemonade Syrup

 I’ve definitely given this recipe before, but it seems the right moment to do it again.
As they say, when life—or in this case the political process—gives you lemons, well, you know.
Here we are, celebrating a moment that we look back on with a certain amount of reverence along with a large dose of 2017 reality.  We see clearly the compromises the FFs made as they stated boldly that all men are created equal, though we know they didn’t really mean all men any more than they meant those who held up the other half of the sky. A decent respect to the opinions of the current population requires that we balance gratitude for the wisdom our founders had with understanding of their flaws and of the flawed compromises they made.
For several years I’ve had the pleasure of being in a class at Temple Israel where we look at our ancient texts and create new midrash, or stories behind the stories, stories that tell other ways it might have happened. Always our teacher, Rabbi Elaine Zecher, tells us to start with two things—context and world view. That’s what we need to do with our Declaration of Independence, too, if we are to try to realize its most idealistic objectives.
Right now I am finding idealism hard to come by. I am dismayed and disheartened by what this country, or at least its leadership, is at this exact moment. But I’m going to try to make lemonade, and I offer you this recipe.
Lemonade Syrup
Combine and boil for 5 minutes:
            2 c. sugar
            1 c. water
            the rind of two lemons
                        I’ve always cut the rind into thin strips which I leave in the syrup, but
                        I’m also thinking zesting the rind would work, too, so I’m going to try that
                        next time.
Cool and add the juice of 6 lemons. Strain (optional) and refrigerate.
This recipe makes a pint of syrup. When you’re ready for a glass of lemonade, just add 2 Tbsp. of syrup to a glass of water.
Happy 4th of July. Gulp.


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Remembering the Ladies

We were in a hotel room in Austin when James Comey was testifying before Congress. We sat, mesmerized, but then realized our time in Austin was short and there would be coverage of Comey that we could catch up with later. So we went to the LBJ Library to learn, to remember, and to mourn the America we thought we lived in.
Of course, Vietnam, a war without popular support and without apparent rationale at any level, throws its shadow over the Johnson presidency. But, even with that, what he accomplished! Civil rights, voting rights, Medicare, Medicaid, the Office of Economic Opportunity, creation of HUD, the NEA, PBS, and VISTA, automobile safety, vocational education, and on and on—it’s an impressive list centered around education, the arts, civil rights, and what we now talk about as economic inequality. Basically whatever’s getting dismantled now can probably be traced back to then.
But what particularly grabbed me was an exhibit of pictures of each of the  country’s First Ladies. These pictures—either painted or photographed—were at some level “official” portraits, hung in official places and at some level selected and sanctioned enough so we can assume this is how each woman chose, or was comfortable with, being portrayed. It’s a fascinating collection. Here are my snap-shot impressions of some of the often surprisingly revealing portraits:
Martha Washington—looks as if she, like George, was conscious that “history has its eyes on (them)”. She looks dignified and–despite clothes that look ornate to us–modest and unpretentious.
Dolley’s got some cleavage!
Early 19th century Elizabeth Monroe’s portrait looks slightly 17thcentury Dutch, but her burgher husband would have to have been prosperous: she’s wearing black and crimson with ermine-trimmed sleeves. Angelica Van Buren also looks fortunate as she stands beside a bust of her husband.
By contrast Anna Harrison looks awful (terrible hat–call Aretha stat!) but she had good cause: her husband died 31 days after his inauguration. It’s said he died of pneumonia after catching a cold while giving the country’s longest inaugural address on a frigid March day without a hat, gloves, or overcoat. Anna, by contrast, was ill at home in Ohio and didn’t plan on moving to Washington until spring. Hmm.
John Tyler, of whom I know little, looks slightly unkempt, but both of his wives (at separate times) look kind of triumphant to be having official portraits done.
Sarah Polk looks moody in her Italian-Renaissance-looking portrait, while both Margaret Taylor and husband Zachary look like they come from hardy stock.
Jane Pierce looks as unembellished as her name. But Harriet Lane, James Buchanan’s niece appears ready to make the most of her time in the limelight, with flowers trailing from her hair to her waist. Mary Lincoln is a visual spoiler alert, looking sad, distracted, and haunted.
Frances Cleveland looks elegant, light falling on her amply exposed skin. Helen Taft looks imperious. Grace Coolidge, who, it turns out, taught at a school for the deaf, is stunning, posed in a red dress beside a white dog, a long gauzy wrap floating from her arm past trees to a distant White House.
Mamie Eisenhower’s portrait shocked me with its little girl pinkness—pink dress, pink gloves, pink bag—and a vague smile beneath those tiny bangs.
Jackie, too, was a surprise. In her portrait painted nearly a decade after she left the White House this most fashion-savvy of first ladies is wearing a long high-necked thing that looks like maybe a dressing gown for Dame Edna.
Lady Bird is also a surprise, radiant and beautiful as she looks directly at the camera. Pat Nixon, as one might expect, looks pained, sitting in her blue lace dress her hair a little too blond. And Rosalynn Carter, whom I think of as capable and outspoken, looks as if she’s made herself smaller for the picture with arms at her sides, hands in her lap, and a slightly upward look.
Barbara Bush looks In. Control.—confidant and at home—while Laura looks as if she’ll be glad to get back to Texas.
Hillary, looking very young, is posed between a chair and a small round able that holds a few items that could be White House mementos, slight poised between two worlds.
And Michelle—thoroughly modern Michelle with her strong bare arms and her decidedly non-matronly double strand of pearls—looks like tomorrow even though she is, sadly, yesterday.
The current First Lady’s portrait has not yet been hung.
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Writing about other people?

I just finished reading a book about Nora Ephron. It was by “her best friend” and it made me grateful that most of  my closest friends are not writers.
Nora Ephron was, to me, one of those women like Wendy Wasserstein, whom we don’t know personally and yet feel we know. We feel they know us, too, and we are certain we and they would be meeting regularly for lunch or trading recipes or book recommendations or names of hairdressers…if only we had ever met.
Or maybe not. The Nora in this book isn’t really the girlfriend with the crepey neck or the not-so-much bosom buddy. She isn’t the relatably imperfect Meg Ryan characters in the movies that touched us—she was, instead, the frighteningly accomplished director creating the films anddon’tyouforgetit. She was the uber-connected person who always knew how to do or where to buy everything, cook like a four-star chef, and charm everyone in sight. She was also apparently overbearing,  intimidating, and not inclined to let kindness get in the way of making a witty or brutally honest comment. I felt relieved to have never had her personally in my life. Just reading about her left me in despair at the puniness of my life and in need of major validation. She would not have been my girlfriend: she would not have noticed my existence.
And no reason she would have. And no reason to admire her enormous and pleasure-giving achievements any less.
But all these more human qualities laid out in print by the “best friend” gave me pause. The book did not really offer a glimpse into the friendship. I had no insight into the comfort they may have offered each other in the wake of dissolved marriages or advice they may have shared on nurturing children or careers. The whole fact of the friendship was, as they say in writing workshops, told not shown. But shown, though I am guessing unconsciously, was the writer’s small nastiness and glee at exposing Nora’s flaws.
And while I was reading this, I also happened to read a magazine essay so shocking in its ugliness that it was, like an unfolding accident, impossible to tear my eyes from. The author was “celebrating” her mother’s 75th birthday by presenting her with the harsh evidence of a traumatic family event both had stayed silent about for decades. In the course of the essay, small ungenerous details, clearly added in hostility, made the reader feel sympathy for the mother instead of for the author, as was very obviously intended.
We writers are always writing about other people for a variety of reasons. They are our own reasons and it might be useful for us to remember that what the reader takes in often says a bit about us, too.


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Barricades and snapshots

 Two days apart I walked past two lengths of police barricades and took two very different photographs.
On Saturday in New York, in a taxi going west on 44th Street, I passed blocks of barricades and a large law enforcement presence on 6th Avenue.  Is it a holiday? What’s today’s date? There must be a parade.  Later, walking along 6th, I saw the barricades being stacked and loaded onto trucks.
“What was the parade?” I asked a police officer.
“No parade. Protest,” he answered, telling me that this block, just a few away from Trump Tower, was the scene of protests every week now, though that day’s—coming as it did on April 15—was bigger than usual and was specifically directed at the President’s refusal to release his tax returns.
Back in Boston, in my neighborhood two blocks from the finish line of today’s Boston Marathon, there were barricades, too.  A little while ago, I went to watch. The elite runners had crossed the finish line, the late stragglers were still to come. The runners I saw—or almost saw as I stood on tiptoe and peered over the crowds—were running strong and in solid numbers. The announcer called out their names and home towns as they came in and we all were applauding. All of us spectators had passed through security lines and there could have been no one standing there unaware that this was exactly where the second bomb had gone off four years ago. There was a City of Boston sand truck across the intersection of Exeter and Newbury, blocking vehicle access to the race and the grand stands. There were police everywhere, and, of course, barricades.
The barricades will, if history prevails, be neatly stacked by evening and carted away tomorrow, to wait until they are needed for the next public gathering. The next public celebration, show of strength, show of determination, show of courage. The next show of public engagement. Yes, they are “crowd control”; yes, they “hold back” the crowd. And yet, the barricades in a way enable us to form ourselves into a group to send a message outward.  On Saturday in New York and other cities it was a message of defiance and determination. Today in Boston it was a message that honored human accomplishment and courage. Barricades, but not obstructions. Not barriers to a mass message sent.
Today I also took photos. I recently became the one of the last people in the world to buy an iPhone, and I took videos (!) of the cheering crowd and, holding the phone high, the heads of the runners. I captured the sounds of the cheers and of the announcer.
On Saturday, heading to the suburbs after my day in the city, I took a picture, too, not as celebratory. It was on the train, the back of the set in front of me: a graffiti swastika. The conductor, like the policeman on 6th Avenue, said this, too, has become a common occurrence recently.
“I think I know who’s responsible for this,” he said. “There was a blond fellow, strange hair style, lots of money in his pockets. I heard he got a new job in Washington.”
Back to the barricades.

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The Occasional (Repeated) Recipe: Panzanella

I think the time is right to re-run a past blog post in which I gave a recipe for the Italian bread-and-tomato salad panzanella. After all, it’s the end of August. Farm markets are still open and vegetable gardens are filled with seasonal bounty: there are tomatoes out there, folks.  Made it last night but instead of French bread, I used white bread I had baked.
In case you’re impressed, you should know that the bread recipe I use is as easy as all my other recipes. Takes no longer to mix together than it takes to describe. It’s my dumbed down version of this.  Mix together in a bowl:
            1 ½ c. warm water—pretty warm but not hot
            ½ Tbsp. kosher salt
            ½ Tbsp. yeast
            3 cups flour
Cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise 2-5 hours. Put it in a greased loaf pan and let it rise again, about 20 minutes or so, then bake 30 minutes in 450 degree oven. You can also after the first rising, refrigerate it a few days, then bring it to room temperature, let it rise in loaf pan, and bake. I also make this with half or a third whole wheat and often with the addition of toasted walnuts and sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds. Or other goodies.
And here’s the panzanella recipe I originally posted:
In mid-summer it’s hard to avoid coming home from the farm markets without too much of something that looked delicious. My downfall is tomatoes. Off-season I don’t buy fresh tomatoes: the world is too filled with heartbreak as it is. So during the summer I tend to go a little overboard. Ok, a lot overboard.
On this particular day I had beautiful ripe tomatoes and was thinking of panzanella, that summery Italian bread salad. It seemed easy enough…some tomatoes…some bread…olive oil…..let’s see.  I looked through my three shelves of cookbooks: nothing. (Really, “Nigellissima”?? Really, “VB6”??) I looked online: too much. Too many ingredients, serving too many people. Maybe in the summer you’re always suppose to be cooking for a crowd. Tonight I’m cooking for two. So, as often happens–admittedly, not always with marvelous results–I made up a recipe. And I’m sharing it with you as I made it. No specific amounts, no specific proportions–you’re in charge. I’m just telling you there are ripe tomatoes out there–go make panzanella.
What you need:
tomatoes
red onion
basil
cucumbers
dried cubes of French bread
olive oil
salt/pepper
I cut the tomatoes, bread, and cucumber in nice-size chunks; you can do the same depending on your idea of nice size. I cut some red onion in smaller pieces, because that’s what I prefer. I added a little olive oil and salt and pepper. I tore a bunch of basil leaves. Not “a bunch” as in what Whole Foods puts in a rubber band, but a “bunch” as in what my plants were offering and what I thought looked like a good amount.  I tossed it all and took a moment to enjoy how it reminded me of the Italian flag. And then I set it aside in a (non-metallic) bowl for a few hours. Do not refrigerate it. Refrigeration does terrible things to tomatoes.
At this very moment it is still in progress, the tomatoes’ juices and the olive oil doing their magic on the bread cubes. I plan to taste a little throughout the afternoon because the one amount I was unsure of was the olive oil. But I’m thinking this is going to be very good. And I’m hoping that if you find something that could make it better, you’ll let me know.

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Summer Reading

Was it only a week ago that the two weeks of conventions ended? Needing a little non-substantive refreshment, I went to the gloriously renovated Boston Public Library for a little frothy palate-cleanser before getting back to the weightier books on my list.  I grabbed “The Summer Before theWar,” by Helen Simonson.  I was hoping for light reading, a confection. Funny how that worked out.
1914 England and the sun is shining down on those it always shines on, English upper-class fortunates. A thinly-disguised Henry James even makes an appearance. These fortunates are in Rye, walking in their gardens and trying to ignore the slow-motion slide into The War, the one before numbering was shown to be necessary. It was a moment when a woman of privilege could speak of never riding on public railway cars but, instead, having a private car which was cleaned by two of her maids before she got it. (A private railway car? Just for her use? Did the train wait at the station while the maids cleaned it? I am still wondering.)
I had echoes in my head of Hillary’s acceptance speech as I read how the (unmarried, of course) heroine was forced to account for every penny she spent from her own inheritance and how she had to fight for a job she was more than qualified for. And, beyond that, the casual cruelties of 98 years ago:  a gay man threatened with being outed—a way too modern term for what discovery would have meant, a lesbian couple living in shadowy ambiguity, a pregnant rape survivor shunned by “polite society.” Human rights…..women’s rights….The pieces of the plot, totally right for the time, felt shocking in the context of what I had been watching for the past days.
And underneath it all, the war. Waving banners, patriotic parades, young women handing out white feathers to brand unenlisted men as cowards, and only the most astute observers understanding that this was not likely to be an exciting and brief adventure. Especially for the poor recruits on the front lines. Especially given the class distinctions which persisted through who got on the ambulances, who was treated in which hospitals.
Echoes.

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Mourning in America

This morning I am, like so many others,  heartbroken. For the lives lost. For the families whose empty places will never be filled. Mostly, though, I am heartbroken for America.
America, which can only be “great” if its promise as the land of opportunity is there for all its people.
Years ago I had the honor of working with the late Jonathan Mann on a project to encourage college students to become human rights advocates. His message was that, though there are many important actions to be taken, what underlies them all, what makes you an advocate for human rights is acknowledging every human being’s right to respect and dignity. 
I’ve been thinking about that message lately, and especially this morning, just days past the celebration of our country’s beginnings, when we’re focused, through the political campaign, on emphasizing differences, seeing people as “Other” instead of seeing commonality, beginning with respect for the dignity of each person..

In his brilliant musical, Lin-Manuel Miranda has the dying Hamilton sing, “America, you great unfinished symphony.” The next movement will depend on how we see each other.
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Withdrawing from the Race

We’re months away from the election and already I can’t take it any more. I can feel my level of anger rising with every ratcheting up of the coarse discourse.  I am drawing a personal line.
I’m going on a campaign news blackout. What will I miss?  If past experience is any indicator, I won’t miss much.  I’ve got my candidate and if she isn’t on the ballot in November, I’ll vote for the person who comes closest to representing the things I believe in. I won’t need to listen in until then.

It’s not going to be easy, but I am taking a personal vow to distance myself from the ranting polluting our environment. I will no longer allow it to pollute my personal environment.  If you hear of anything really substantive or important, let me know. But I’m guessing that won’t happen. Meanwhile, I am going to concentrate on other things.
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The Occasional Recipe: Carrot Soup

It’s still soup weather. Actually, I think any weather is soup weather, but it’s still a little cold, so others might agree with me. This is a recipe I made up. I heard someone mention carrot soup and that sounded inviting. But when I looked through all my cookbooks and a few pages of online possibilities what I found was not exactly what I wanted. I wanted carrots. A carroty taste. Not ginger or cardamom or dill, not that there’s anything wrong with those. I just wanted carrot.  So this is what I did and, like many of my recipes, it’s so stupidly easy that it’s embarrassing to call it a recipe. However…
I chopped an onion and stirred it over low heat with a little vegetable oil until it was translucent. I didn’t let it brown at all. That browned onion taste is delish, but that’s not what I wanted. The quest was carrot.
Then I cut up some carrots and threw them and some bouillon and water in the pot with the onion. I used chicken bouillon though I could have used vegetable. I use something called Better Than  Bouillon that comes in a little jar and IS better than any prepared bouillon I’ve tasted. You use a teaspoon to a cup of water. I used roughly 2 carrots per cup of liquid, though I think I may have added more liquid and thrown off that formula. But it worked anyway. I figured the bouillon had enough salt and pepper so I didn’t add anything else.
When the carrots were cooked through I pureed everything with a stick blender.  Done and yum.
I was serving it to company, so I plopped a dab of crème fraiche on top to make it look a little special. Everyone liked it.
Enjoy!