What I Like

The tastes of home

2012-01-10T23:18:00.001-06:00

Commander's Palace

We were in New Orleans for Christmas. I was looking forward to sampling all the great restaurants there, including Brennan's, Commander's Palace, Emeril's, Antoine's and others. Ha! After Christmas brunch at Adelaide's (part of the Brennan's restaurant empire), that dream went "poof!" There was no way we were going to eat one rich meal after another for four consecutive nights.

Adelaide's is located in the Loews hotel. My wife and I shared a cab with her brother and his wife. It was coincidental that the four of us were in NOLA for Christmas. We booked the trips separately; only when my wife was talking with her brother did they discover we'd be together for Christmas after all.

A tall thin woman greeted us in the lobby, took our names, relayed them to the young men and women at the hostess stand, then disappeared. We thought perhaps she was not an employee after all, just a happy diner returning from the women's bathroom. Eventually we were seated. Later I looked around the room and saw that woman sitting at a big round table in the center of the dining room with about 8 guests. She acted like she owned the joint. We asked our waitress about the woman, who told us that indeed, that woman was a Brennan. She did own the joint!

I ordered a curried mussels appetizer, a grilled trout with crabmeat for the entree, and Pear and Apple Gallette for dessert. If the link still works (it did yesterday), you can see the entire Christmas menu offerings. That evening we did not have much of an appetite for dinner. We bought peanut butter crackers and Golden Flake dip style potato chips at the drugstore. That was our Christmas dinner. Golden Flake is a Southern brand (Alabama), and it immediately established itself as my preferred chip. Zapp's are made in Louisiana, but I liked GF better.

There is a beignet under all that powdered sugar.

We made the required pilgrimage to Cafe du Monde for beignets and coffee. As we waited for a table, we watched the wait staff load up their trays with orders. A cashier rang up the amounts.

I had to have oysters while I was in New Orleans. I ate them prepared four different ways: raw, roasted, fried (in a po' boy) and pureed in a soup. The roasted preparation was the best. I also tried the city's famous cocktail, the Sazerac. I preferred the original recipe, the one made with brandy rather than the newer, rye whiskey version. I was probably 10 years old when I first heard about the Sazerac on an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. Actress Joanna Moore was Andy's girlfriend. She ordered the cocktail; Andy had a beer.

I'll write more about our dining adventures here in a future post.

I also want to acknowledge other tastes of home. After our plane landed in Chicago, and before we picked up the dog at the kennel, we stopped at Booby's for a hot dog. I used to eat here regularly when I worked nearby, but that was 15 years ago. I was taking it on faith that the restaurant would still be there. It was. Hot peppers (or hot sport peppers) really make the dog a Chicago dog.

Finally, on the morning of New Year's Eve, we ate kringle from Racine, Wis. The Northwestern Wildcats were playing in a football bowl game that day. A pre-game serving of kringle is a tradition started by friends of ours when we tailgated in Champaign, Ill., before a Northwestern-University of Illinois game. That day the Wildcats won. On New Year's Eve, the boys lost. I know I've written about kringle before, so I won't belabor it. Suffice it to say that I am a foot solider in Kringle Nation. If you ever find yourself in Racine, head to O&H Danish Bakery. It's the best you can find.

Ding, dong. My life is calling

2012-01-03T20:31:00.002-06:00

Three recent current events--a boardroom shake up and two deaths--caused me to remember people I hadn't thought about in years.

Bonnie Prudden died on Dec. 11 at age 97. She was a fitness guru, long before Body by Jake, Richard Simmons, Jillian Michaels or Jane Fonda. One day in the early 1960s, Ms. Prudden was in Lancaster, Pa. She was participating in a physical fitness demonstration. Evidently, she was looking for youngsters to help her and somehow or another, my parents volunteered me.

I was no Jack LaLanne, mind you. Rather, when I went with my mom for clothing, we shopped the Husky sizes. That was actually the term used for boys of a certain girth. Husky. Clothing makers could have used Tubby, Chubby, Fatty or Porky. But that would have been cruel. Husky is a softer word; still, if you were Husky, you knew you weren't slim.

The President's Council on Physical Fitness was big in the early '60s. I wasn't reading Drew Pearson's Merry-go-round, and I wasn't into politics, but I knew that President Kennedy enjoyed a game or two of touch football. I was impressed that his family could field two teams of 22 (11 on offense and 11 on defense), without having to draft neighborhood children. My fitness level was anything but presidential. I could not climb a rope to the ceiling (yes, that was a requirement of gym class) until I was in high school, when I finally had the arm strength. (I was really, truly proud of myself that day.)

Back to Bonnie. I guess I was six or seven years old. The demonstration was in the junior high school gymnasium, not my familiar elementary school haunt. I was called to the floor with others my age and we must have done squats and push ups and deep knee bends. I wouldn't be surprised if we were accompanied by a rousing rendition of "Go You Chicken Fat, Go!" (sung here by Music Man Robert Preston). That was my date with Ms. Prudden.

Vaclav Havel, a former president of the Czech Republic, died at age 75 on Dec. 18. Did I meet him? No. But I saw him in the Prague symphony hall in 1990, a year after the Velvet Revolution, which freed the country and other Central and Eastern Europe nations from the Soviet Union's iron grip. The International Hotel Association was holding its annual congress in Prague, and at the time I was editing a hotel magazine. One of the social events was an orchestra concert. He was seated in a box and waved to us when he was introduced.

Shirley Temple Black was the U.S. ambassador to the country, and she appeared at a luncheon. A lot of the older European delegates were bemused to see her. During my stay in Prague, I spoke with a Czech woman who was a volunteer for the congress. She told me life was better since the revolution, but life was still difficult. Things did not change overnight, nor in a year, for that matter. I told her that the only Czech word I knew was houby (mushroom) because Berwyn, a western suburb of Chicago, stages an annual houby festival. The woman was amused.

Finally, I'll tell you about my high school date with a future beauty products chief executive of a Fortune 500 company. Andrea Jung was replaced as chief executive officer of Avon Products on Dec. 14 (she remains the chairman). She was a year behind me in high school. I took her roller skating once. The end. (I don't kiss and tell.)

You might find any of these stories, taken individually, to be plausible, even truthful. But for all three to have involved one person might have you crying, "These tales are fantastical."

But I assure you, gentle reader, that these are all true and they all did happen to me.

Taking the long way home

2011-11-07T06:00:00.003-06:00

In Marbella, the beautiful seaside resort

From Granada, I made my way south, to the coastal town of Marbella. And since I was so close, I decided to cross the Mediterranean to Morocco. By my calculations, I would be the first in my family to set foot on the continent of Africa. (A younger brother had already claimed South America; Asia, Australia and Antarctica were still up for grabs; since then only Antarctica remains available.)
I arrived in Algerciras in the evening and began to look for a room for the night. It was pouring and I was getting soaked. I wore a plastic bag on my head to protect myself from the rain. I looked ridiculous. All the hotels looked too expensive for my budget. I turned down street after street looking for suitable accommodations. At last I found one. The innkeeper walked me up three flights and opened the door to a tiny room. I had to crouch so as not to knock my head against the rafters. I was soaked and exhausted. I fell asleep to the sounds of whistling winds and rain lashing the windowpanes.
The next morning, the skies were clear and the winds were gone. I took the ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar and passed into Ceuta on 4 December. What I remember most from setting foot in Morocco was how the children accosted you. They begged in English. If you didn't reply, they begged in French. If that provoked no response, they tried German, Spanish, Italian or a Scandinavian language. They were like quarterbacks checking off their receivers. I stayed mum and fought my way through the crowd.
I don't know how I took up with this band of Moroccans, but I did. Mustafah was their leader; he had three or four guys with him, plus a Canadian guy and his girlfriend. Perhaps the Cdns struck up a conversation with me in a cafe. I'm not clear on that, but I felt safe with the Canadians. They invited me to tour the market with Mustafah as our guide, but first I had to exchange some checks at the American Express office. Mustafah led us through the maze of streets. I had read in the guide books that a guide was important because you could get lost in the medinah and never (well, hardly ever) find your way out. Everything was for sale in the market: freshly butchered meat (in a gutter, I saw a foot with a hoof attached), pots and pans, fruits and vegetables, spices and clothing. Mustafah and company helped me negotiate the purchase of a djellaba, a head-to-foot robe, also known as the Moroccan sleeping bag. I still have it; it hangs in the back of the hall closet. I haven't worn it since college, I'm sure.
After all of this, I found myself being invited by Mustafah to visit his home. Mustafah referred to me as "mon ami Jimmy." Much of our conversation had been in French. The Canadians said it would be a good time. They knew him and his family. So after a night in a hotel, all of us boarded a bus to visit M's mountain home. I felt like a latter-day Margaret Mead on my own anthropoligical visit.
We drove up into the Atlas Mountains. Whenever someone wanted the bus driver to stop, he clapped his hands. Our time came, and we disembarked. Then we walked to the Mustafah family homestead. We passed a VW bus, a gift, Mustafah told me, from his American friends. As I remember this, the Mustafah home was stone and covered in stucco. We sat on the floor. There was a fireplace but no windows. Young boys brought us dinner, which we ate with our hands. Except for the Canadian girlfriend, there were no women in our presence. We went to sleep, me in my new djelaba.
The next morning we ate. We moved to another room and then the Moroccans began their sales pitch. They were selling hashish, or in their language kief, keef or kef (take your pick). I wasn't buying. They had bags of it. I wanted none of it. In my mind, I was thinking about the movie Midnight Express, but I just Google'd it, and the move came out in 1978. Any how, I must have known the broad outline of the story from news reports of the time.
I was still operating under the assumption that my visit to their home was because they had a genuine interest in showing me the Moroccan way of life. It took me a while, but I figured out that my visit to their home was to exchange hashish for a pocketful of my recently cashed American Express checks. They ratcheted up the pressure. It began to feel like a fraternity rush, which I had successfully dodged back home. The negotiations continued, mostly in French. They threw insults about my masculinity. "A real man would buy it." So that was their game.
After multiple refusals, they suggested I empty my pockets. My bankroll had been drained over the last two months. I needed enough for a train ticket back to Luxembourg. I could not part with my cash. I played my last card. "If you are a man, you will believe me when I say I have no money in my pockets," or words to that effect. "Si vous etes homme, vous me croyez quand je dis il n'y a pas l'argent dans mes poche." That ended their demands. At that point, they asked me to hand over my boots, pea coat and watch. In return, they gave me some desert boots. They must be a Moroccan honor code that forbids house guests to go barefoot on their way out.They would put me on a bus back to the city tomorrow.
There was still an evening to get through. I could not wait to leave. We had dinner, I slept and the next morning the Cdn chick kissed me on the cheek. I felt that she was sheepish. Mustafah walked me to the road to wait for the bus. We passed the VW minibus and I realized the "gift" was most likely not given freely. Mustafah inquired about the value of the watch, and I inflated its worth, careful to point out the great amount of "real gold" surrounding the face of the Timex. I boarded the bus and it made its way down the mountainside. We stopped in a village square and passengers boarded holding chickens upside down by their feet. A Moroccan man sat next to be and tried to strike up a conversation. I was leery. A Mustafah plant, most likely. As quick as I was to get to Africa, I was equally eager to leave. I just had to be the first to set foot on a continent, didn't I?
I crossed the strait and found myself in Marbella again. It was late and I couldn't find a cheap hotel. I slept on the beach in my Moroccan sleeping bag. It was proving to be handy. The next day, I took a bus to the train station. An American girl sat next to me. Turned out she was from Providence, Rhode Island. I knew there was a drug kingpin there. I was leery of saying too much to her. This whole episode messed with my mind.
I reunited with my friend in Madrid. At last I was with a trusted friend. He suggested a few days in the Canary Islands before we both returned to the States. I had no money for that, but he had his father's American Express card. I could pay him back. That was the best deal I had been offered in days. We were off to Tenerife.

On the Canary Islands

The playa

The Canary Islands were windy and cold. We tried to sit on the beach, but we didn't sit out for long. My friend told me that beaches were arranged by nationality. The Scandinavians frequented one section, the Dutch another, the English another. The restaurants all seemed to be smorgasbord types. Cheap food and lots of it. About four months later, at the Tenerife airport, two 747 jets collided with each other, killing 583 people.
Back on the continent, I rode trains from Madrid to Luxembourg to pick up my Icelandic Air flight back to JFK. It was snowing hard and we were delayed. I remember sitting on the floor of the airport. I met a man who had been working in the diamond mines of South Africa. At last we were cleared to fly.
I arrived at JFK on Dec. 21. I set aside enough money for a bus ticket back to Boston. I asked the cab driver to take me as close to the bus terminal as I could get on my remaining money. I was wearing my djelaba and was jet lagged. He must have taken pity on me because he dropped me off in front of the depot. At the news stand, a tabloid headline screamed "Daley Dead" and sure enough, the mayor of Chicago had died that afternoon. When the line moved and it was my turn to buy my ticket, I was 50 cents short. A man behind me made up the difference. There were kind people in this world. I disembarked at a terminal outside of Boston. I considered walking home; it was maybe five miles. But I was beat. Drained. Tired. Exhausted. I called dad to come pick me up. I was home at last.

Welcome to the Hostal California

2011-10-31T20:22:00.000-05:00

I rode the train from Madrid to Granada and checked into the Hostal California (photo, left). It was Thanksgiving week, but for some reason, my friend stayed back in Madrid rather than come with me to see the Alhambra, the former palace of the Moorish ruler of Spain. So I was alone to explore the city.

This was a real treat and one of the most memorable experiences of my trip. I think it was because I had no prior experience with Spain or the Muslim world. The tiles, the arches, the gardens and the water features of the Alhambra added up to a sensory overload of sights and sounds. In 2010, I returned here on a business trip and I toured the grounds with a licensed guide. By this time, the Alhambra had been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and I could see why.

But in looking at my photos from1976 and those from 2010 (see my earlier posts, including "The Alhambra, Granada's Big Red One"), not much had changed. I enjoyed the second visit as much, and maybe more, because of the guide's insights and explanations of what I was seeing. But even to the unguided, the Alhambra delivers a powerful punch of Arabian architecture and exotica.

On my second trip, I learned of Washington Irving's love affair with Spain and his role in popularizing the Alhambra. His stories helped to save and preserve the property. From my hotel in Granada, it was a long walk up a steep hill to gain entrance to the property. It was November, but some bushes and flowers were still in bloom, and the fountains were splashing water. If you ever have a chance to see this place, go.

The original walls were colored red

I met a couple at the Hostal California, and we went up to the caves one evening for a gypsy show of flamenco dancing. Restaurants and apartments are actually carved into the hillside. That might have been our Thanksgiving day celebration.

At the Generalife, next to the Alhambra

The gardens are in the 20th century style of the French

Snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains

A hike up the hillside yielded this view

My Spanish steps

2011-10-28T06:00:00.001-05:00

Madrilenos

After a week in Berlin, I returned to Cologne for another week or so. Then I headed to Madrid, roughly 900 miles away. I passed through Paris, and since I had time before my train left, I went to the movies. I bought a ticket to Fantasia, thinking that there would be no dubbing or subtitles. Wrong! Mickey Mouse spoke French to Leopold Stokowski. The usher showed me to my seat. Later, I found out that tipping the usher is expected. I sat through the movie twice, catnapping.

Then I boarded the train to the Spanish frontier. I learned that word during my European sojourn. Borders are frontiers. Doctors Without Borders is the English translation of Medecins Sans Frontieres. At the border, we disembarked the French train and walked to the Spanish train. The reason for this, I was told, is that the rail gauge in Spain was made narrower (or larger) to prevent French trains from rolling into the country unimpeded.

Franco rally, Nov. 20

I was visiting a high school friend in Madrid who was taking his junior year abroad. He was living in a private apartment with a widow, and I stayed with them a few days. As it turned out, there was to be a rally in at the Plaza de Oriente in support of Franco, who had died one year earlier. He was still dead. Franco was the butt of a long-running joke on Saturday Night Live. (We didn't call it SNL at the time.) Franco had been ailing for quite a long time, and the news reports of the time always reported, "Franco is still clinging to life." That went on for a couple of weeks, I guess. So, when the generalissimo finally passed away, SNL's Weekend Update began with, "Franco is still dead."

My friend's classmates told me to stay away from the rally because of threats of violence that were rumored. Never known for my ability to make wise decisions, I went any and stood among the throng, carefully snapping pictures. I didn't understand a word that was orated, but when the outstretched stiff arm went up in the fascist or Nazi salute, I felt a chill.

Philip IV, Plaza de Oriente, Madrid

The fascist salute unnerved me.

Madrid

I was surprised to see palm trees in Madrid. It never occurred to me that Europe had palm trees, and at that latitude, which I roughly gauge as the same as Boston's. And seeing them downtown in the capital city of a major European city just threw me for a loop. I was nonplussed (to use a word correctly which I had missed used last month). Another thing that I didn't understand was the Plaza Bernardo O'Higgins. Why was an Irishman being honored here? At dinner with my friend's professor, I learned that O'Higgins was the leader of Chilean independence from Spain. This trip was proving to be educational every day.


Madrid

Cuckoo's Nest

I had seen "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" at home, so I looked for another movie and found "All The President's Men" (todos los hombres del presidente). I reasoned that the Spanish subtitles would not get in the way of my enjoyment. Wrong! The movie was dubbed in Spanish. Even though I knew the broad outline of the story, I could not follow many of the details.

After Madrid, I took the train to Granada, to see the world famous Alhambra. It was Thanksgiving.

Berlin: my tale of two cities

2011-10-27T06:00:00.003-05:00

Adelheid and Klausi

A friend of a friend in Cologne (Koeln) told me, "When you go to Berlin, you can stay with Klausi und Adelheid." Before entering West Berlin, soldiers searched the train cars, pushed mirrors underneath the cars and walked around with dogs, looking for defectors from the East to the West. The spy movies make this dramatic, but I found it unnerving. I have two DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or East German) stamps in my passport. One is smudged; the other is dated Nov. 8. I don't know if that is an entrance or exit stamp.
At the train station, I called Klausi and in my halting German, I introduced myself. Annette told me to call you (rufen Sie an). He sounded wary. I continued. She said I could stay with you for eine nacht. One night, he agreed, and then told me which bus to take. He and his girlfriend, Adhelheid, were graduate students.

They lived in the Kreuzberg neighborhood, a low-rent district full of donner-kabob stands and Turkish guest workers. K&A turned out to be very nice. They let me stay in their apartment for eine woche. I had dinner with their friends, some of whom were squatting in abandoned buildings. As a thank you present, before I returned to Cologne, I bought them a carton of HB cigarettes. We all smoked. What did I know about hostess/host gifts?

In the forests of West Berlin

One day we went to the forest. I had no idea that West Berlin was that large. I saw a sign warning of boar attacks. I had a beer with raspberry syrup, a Berlinerweiss. That was tasty.

I saw the Olympic Stadium from 1936, where Hitler mocked Jesse Owens, but Owens won all his races. I saw the Reichstag. I really enjoyed this week in Berlin. I know it sounds weird, but I was happy I could experience a divided city, one side free, the other captive. It was my first up-close experience with a totalitarian society (I later visited Cuba), and it sure didn't conjure up images of a worker's paradise.

Of course I had to see East Berlin. I paid my admission fee (hard currency D marks), passed through Check Point Charlie and walked around the eastern sector. I felt a little paranoid, like I was being watched. Maybe I wanted to feel that way. I ate lunch in a restaurant (wurst and a beer) and returned to the West in the evening. It was spooky. I don't remember taking these pictures of the wall, but they are pretty sobering when I look at them now.

Last month my wife and I watched a really good German-made movie called Das Tunnel (The Tunnel), about the efforts of those stuck in the East to escape to the West. It's really tense, and I recommend you find it on Netflix and watch it.

Check Point Charlie

I think this was the present-day view of Potsdamer Platz

Image living in a wall city, ringed by razor wire. Your movements are controlled and you don't know what your neighbors are saying about you, or to whom they are talking.

Brandenburg Gate

My Dutch treats

2011-10-25T06:00:00.003-05:00

I took the ferry from England to Hoek v. Holland, The Netherlands on 19 October. I was staying in Zaandam, north of Amsterdam with a former exchange student, Wilhelmina (Mien) and her husband.
I saw the usual sites of Amsterdam: the Anne Frank house, the Rijksmuseum and the Dutch Masters, the canals, the Red Light district, and perhaps the most inspiring building of all (to a 20 year old) : the Heinken brewery. I found out they give you a prize pack if you visit on your birthday. At least that was the story in 1976. I never had the chance to test it out.
One day we drove to Utrecht, where Mien grew up, to meet her mother, father and brother for dinner. I had met them all before when they visited America. We also went to the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, which has a large collection of outdoor sculptures.

Cafe Karpershoek

From my international collection of 'curb your dog' signs

A street organ

The man behind the organ

At the Kröller-Müller Museum

Visitors to the State of Illinois Building in Chicago are familiar with artist Jean DuBuffet. I saw his "garden of concrete" installation at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo.

After reading this post, my brother sent me this album cover.

From Holland it was on to Cologne, Germany, to meet Michael, another foreign exchange student our family hosted. During my weeks there, I shot black and white film; thus I don't have any scanned photos to share. I reloaded with slide film prior to taking the train to Berlin. And you'll read about that in a future post.

An American in London

2011-10-23T22:06:00.003-05:00

On Oct. 5, 1976, at the Immigration Center, Folkestone, England, I was "given leave to enter the United Kingdom for six months," according to the stamp in my passport. On Oct. 19, my passport shows I left the UK at Harwich. I spent two weeks in London, visiting museums, strolling through gardens and parks, attending the theater and looking at antiquities.
I had not planned to visit England during America's Bicentenniel Year, it just turned out that way.

Changing of the horse guards

One afternoon, I was watching the changing of the horse guards. This was a variation of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, but not as crowded. I fell into conversation with an elderly (I was not six months from being a teenager, so I don't know how "elderly" he really was) Englishman. After the guards finished changing, he asked me if he could give me a little tour of the sites. I was game. We set off on a walk and he pointed out where Churchill's wartime bunker was, and some other historical buildings that I have forgotten. The sun was going down, so he suggested a drink. I agreed and he steered us into a nearby pub. He regaled me with many stories, I'm sure now most were embellished and some were fabricated. I happily bought him another Guinness, which he told me were full of vitamins and pronouncing it the English way, where vit rhymes with bit (not with bite).
As we finished our drinks, he told me he was retired, on a budget, and that perhaps I'd like to compensate him for his time. I said I was a student on a budget, but that I could give him some coins. He said he was thinking more along the lines of "folding money." I said, sorry, and left him with some coins. He looked at the pittance in the palm of his hand, weighed them solemnly then slipped the coins into his pocket. I was disappointed, too, realizing that this kindly old man was not out to show his American cousin the best of London, but rather to hustle him.

Picadilly Circle and the Eros statue

An equestrian event in some London park; details long forgotten.


My London base camp (perhaps the Rees hotel)

I found this youth hostel, or budget hotel frequented by youth, thanks to my guide book. I slept in a dormitory style room, with two or three other guys. Women had their own room. There was one communal bathroom and a dining room on the ground floor. English breakfast was the order of the day: fried egg, bacon, baked beans and a tomato. I ate everything but the fried egg, having developed an aversion to the form when I was two or three years old. It continues to this day.
One thing I remember from my weeks here was a conversation one of my roommates had about the Amana Colonies in Iowa. First off, I had never heard of the Amana Colonies, and I was living in Illinois, not more than five hours east. It bothered me I had never heard about this, and I regarded this information a bit skeptically. The guy raved about the food and the quantity of the food served in the restaurants there. Isn't it interesting that a conversation about food impressed me as much as being in London? I forget now what the second thing was.

I walked around the city or took the Tube. I visited the British Museum, where I saw an arm (left or right, I forget now) retrieved from an Egyptian monument. In Paris, two weeks earlier, I had seen the other arm in the Louvre. I visited the houses of Parliament, and took a sheet of toilet paper from the men's room as a souvenir. I did a gravestone rubbing at Westminster Abbey. I rolled that up and carried it with me for two months. When I returned home, four days before Christmas, I didn't have time or money to shop for presents. I gave the by now crumpled and rumpled rubbing to my sister.

Victoria and Albert memorial (I think)

The Albert Hall

I saw four or five plays while in London. Tickets in the nosebleed seats were really inexpensive. I remember seeing Equus; which was a big deal then. I saw Mousetrap, the Agatha Christie play that had been running since before I was born.

Why are these people lined up in a straight line?

For the bus, of course.

The band, The Who, had put out an album with a poster inside of it. I think the album was Live at Leeds. The poster advertised a date The Who played in a club on Wardour Street. I went to that club. That night the band was The Fabulous Poodles. (I'm not making this up.)

Another day, I was walking by Portland Place (I'm pretty sure that's where it was), and learned that the BBC was taping a quiz show. So I joined the audience. As I recall, the radio show was called "Pardon My Slip." One team of panelists (well-known to the natives, no doubt) would read a story riddled with factual errors, and the other team would buzz in and correct them. I liked another show (which I think I listened to on the radio back home and did not witness being recorded), in which the panelist would invent a story to arrive at a bad pun. One I remember was a convoluted tale about porcelain figures that ended in "the best laid schemes of Meissen men . . .."

Elizabeth I

"It would be painful." How charmingly polite of them.

The view from atop St. Paul's Cathedral

I have been back to London once or twice since my first visit. To tell you the truth, I have never been charmed by that city. That's not to say I am not glad to have seen it. Back in 1976, I was having the time of my life. After a fortnight in Olde London Towne, it was time to head back to The Continent. Next stop: Amsterdam.
This blog was updated with additional information on Oct. 27, 2011.

Perfect Paris

2011-10-20T22:56:00.002-05:00

From Luxembourg City, I rode the train to Paris. I found it difficult to switch easily from speaking German to French. I knew what I wanted to say, but the words came out in German. Eventually, I settled in.
In two weeks, from my base camp on the Left Bank, I visited all the sites: Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre (pre-Pei), Arc de Triomphe, the Tuilieres, Place de la Concorde, Rodin museum, Sacre Coeur, Montmartre and even the sewers (based on Frommer's recommendation).
I walked or rode the Metro everywhere, too unsure if my French would allow me to navigate the bus system and understand the drivers. Silly boy. It would have.
For restaurants, I followed Frommer, by and large. I still remember the waitress who, while taking my order, squashed a cockroach crawling across my table. One dinnertime found me in Montmartre. I fell into conversation with some locals and we drank that evening. I enjoyed myself so much that I broke camp on the Left Bank and moved to the mount of the martyrs. I saw the same guy in the restaurant the next evening; he wasn't as friendly. Nevertheless, I now had a view of the Sacre Coeur basilica from my room in the Hotel du Cheval Blanc (photo below). One night as I walked in Les Pigalles, a woman stepped out of a darkened doorway, grabbed my crotch and asked, "L'amour ce soir?" I declined. I think she was a transvestite.
I wrote in my notebook almost every evening, I'm sure. It's in the house somewhere, I know it. One day I'll find it and annotate this report. These photos are from 1976. Since most of the pictures are of monuments, you might think I had been in Paris just last week. Notre Dame will be 850 years old next year. What difference does 35 years make? I made a video that includes many of these photos, and uploaded to this blog, a couple of posts ago. Check it out.

The Lux Life

2011-10-19T21:03:00.001-05:00

Portrait of the author

On 19 September 1976, I entered Luxembourg. I toured Western Europe for a little more than three months that year, re-entering the United States on 21 December. I worked for nine months to earn the money for this trip. I suspended my college education for a year.
In 1976, the least expensive way to fly to Europe was on Icelandic Airlines. The flight left JFK and touched down in Reykjavik, to re-fuel, I believe. That's the plane in the photo below. Then it was on to Luxembourg.

Icelandic Air, the only way to fly

"Europe on $25 a day" (or whatever the per diem) was my guide to lodgings and restaurants. I had torn out the relevant pages, rather than tote the entire tome.
My Boy Scout knapsack held the chapters on Paris, London, Amsterdam and Cologne. I made a side trip to the Berlins (West AND East; more about that in a future post) and to Spain (again, I'll write about that later). I had a "dressy" outfit (see photo in upper left) and jeans and a plaid shirt. I wore boots, and don't remember if I had a pair of sneakers or dress shoes. I think not. I also packed a sweater and underwear, and carried a sleeping bag. And that was the sum total of my worldly possessions for 90 days.
I had a pocket full of American Express travelers checks, maybe $400 altogether, though I think it was more like $300. I had neither cell phone nor ATM card, neither iPad nor iPod. Internet cafes were yet to be conceived. The plan was to drop in on former exchange students in Holland and Germany and to connect with a high school friend on his junior year abroad in Madrid. It sounded like a plan.

I can't say I remember a whole lot about Luxembourg. The capital city is also called Luxembourg. I was impressed that pedestrians stood at the curb waiting for the light to turn green, even though there was no oncoming automobile traffic. I felt conspicuous jaywalking. I stayed there maybe two nights to get my bearings. It was a German-speaking country, and I knew enough of the language to rent a room and order dinner. My hotel was home to the Pelican Bar. The guide book suggested a visit to the Ramparts, which are old fortifications. (I looked it up tonight and found out this area is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Later on my trip, I visited the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, another World Heritage site.) I know I kept a journal for the first weeks of my trip. It is in a box somewhere in the attic, I'm sure. I do have my passport, which provides a true record of my roamings. I know I took the train to Paris, but don't have a stamp in my passport. The next dated stamp is 5 October, when I entered England at Folkestone. So I surmise I was in Paris for about two weeks.

More about that later. I didn't make the Benelux triple play on this tour, though in 2007 I crossed the border from Netherlands into Belgium.

This summer I used a service to scan about 200 slides from my trip. I shot these pictures with dad's 35mm Kodak camera. Dad always used a hand-held light meter. I do not remember if I took that with me, or just used an average setting of 125th of a second and a F-stop of 16. I've enjoyed looking at these pictures again 35 years later. I was young, carefree and accountable to no one at the time.


Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

Mini-apple news, Minnesota

2011-10-02T21:35:00.001-05:00

Thanks to one of my faithful readers, specifically a brother-in-law who lives in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, I have more news about Minnesota apples. That SweeTango apple my wife and I bought in Lake City, Minn., (see earlier post) has limited distribution, meaning it is unlikely we would have found it in our home state. Here's a snippet and a link to a news article my b-i-l sent:
http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=939223

The SweeTango is an apple love child born of a years long breeding between papa Honeycrisp and mama Zestar. To prove how popular it is the folks at the Apple House say this weekend when they start selling baby SweeTango the people will come en masse. "It's just a whole new world with people and apples. They can smell them from Highway 5 and they will pull over and come in, it's crazy," Mirabelli said.

It also turns out that SweeTango is at the center of a lawsuit involving the University of Minnesota, which developed the fruit, apple-growing co-operatives and one specific orchard.

MINNEAPOLIS - A lawsuit challenging the University of Minnesota's exclusive licensing deal for its hot-selling SweeTango apple is ending with a victory for the school and the cooperative that markets the new variety nationwide, although more producers will be able to grow the fruit, representatives for both sides told The Associated Press on Monday.

Read more here: http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=939015

A favored activity of my father in the fall was to go for a drive in the country to get apples. As I think about it, I'm not sure if apple gathering was his prime motive. I can think of others, including: getting out of the house, driving his car, getting out of the city and enjoying the fall foliage. Apple buying might have been a bonus for him.

One of my brothers picked up the habit. He likes to "go for apples," as he says. And, I suppose, I have the apple-seeking gene, too. When my wife and I lived in the city, we'd head to the country and an orchard for a peck of pippins and a gallon of cider. Sadly, that orchard no longer exists; it was sold, subdivided and developed into houses.

Our local grocery store sells apple pies baked in a paper bag. That's the hook: a paper bag. The paper sticks to the thick sweet crust. It's a good pie.

My trip to Paris

2011-09-24T17:43:00.000-05:00

In 1976, I worked for nine months and saved my money for a three-month-long trip through Europe. I stayed in Paris for two weeks, shooting rolls of film with my father's 35mm Kodak camera. This summer, I had those slides scanned. I cropped and enhanced some of them to make this short film. Because most of these photos are of monuments, it is hard to see how Paris has changed. The pictures could have been taken yesterday. I hope you enjoy what you are about to see.

Things to eat

2011-09-13T22:58:00.002-05:00

Sweet Tang, Sweet Tango or SweeTango. They are all good.

On our drive home from The Cities, we stopped in Lake City to buy some apples from the Pepin Heights store. Or, as I like to say, we bought some pippins from Pepin. (I like to say it, but my wife told me, "25 times in a half an hour is too much.") Lake Pepin is what puts the lake in Lake City.
It was a "country" store, full of fresh apples, apple butter, apple cider, apple jelly, apple jam and apple pies. A woman was filling bags with various apples named Wellington, Ginger Gold, Wealthy and Sweet Tang*. I was looking for Honey Crisp, a variety we came across several years ago from a Michigan farmer selling at a market in the Chicago suburbs. Later, I learned that the University of Minnesota actually developed the Honey Crisp. I've been on the look out for it ever since.
A few days earlier, in the Horticulture building at the Minnesota State Fair, I inquired about the HC, only to find out I was too early. HCs are ready at the end of September.
Back to the store: Varieties of apples were priced from $1.29 to $2.29 a pound. We were about to buy the cheaper species (McIntosh, most likely) when we saw samples set out to taste. Like Goldilocks, we taste each. Sweet Tang, at the upper end of the price spectrum, was the clearcut winner. We bought about 5 pounds of the fruit. It has supplanted Honey Crisp as our sought-after apple.
Since it was lunchtime, we scouted for foods we could eat "en voiture," so to speak. From the refrigerated case, we selected wedges of aged Cheddar and Dutch gouda. We bought a bag of crackers, and (for home consumption) a jar of apple butter (which was made in Wisconsin, not Minnesota). On a cupboard marked "Amish Candy," I espied Bonomo Turkish taffy. This is a candy from my youth, though I do not associate it with the Amish. I bought a bar of the vanilla flavor and ate it at home.
At check out, the total of our purchases came to $90+. That seemed high, really high. Maybe we bought more apples than I realized. I looked at the tape and showed the cashier that she had rung up the Cheddar cheese at $50. The weight of the apples (5.23 pounds) was applied to the cheese, which was valued at about $10 a pound. It took a manager to undo the mess: ring up a credit, re-ring the cheese, sign the credit slip, sign the new charge slip, tear up the original slip. We got back on the road, exited at the first rest stop in Wisconsin at La Crosse, carved up the cheese, changed drivers and got back on the road.
*In doing research for this entry, I found out the apple is really called SweeTango. Perhaps it is my urban background, my penchant for pet names or the hip-hop culture that pervades modern-day America that I read the sign at "Sweet Tang." At any rate, I prefer my name to the actual one.

Last weekend, I returned home from my village's farmers' market with my The New Yorker canvas tote bag filled with a loaf of 9-grain bread (sliced), four tomatoes (Illinois grown), six ears of bi-color corn (again, from the Land of Lincoln), a pint of red raspberries and a half-dozen nectarines. The fruits were from Michigan. It was lunchtime, and I was eager to eat some of the bounty. I picked some basil leaves from the plant outside the kitchen and chopped them up to add to a half-stick of butter. I buttered the bread and layered it with sliced tomatoes. Then I remembered a brick of mozzarella in the fridge. I added a slice of that to my creation. Voila! The Caprese Sandwich.


Paula Deen

Last night I saw the remains of a loaf of bakery bread in the fridge. It was dried out to a fine fare-thee-well. "To the Internet," I cried, to find a recipe for bread pudding. There was Paula Deen's. It is called, without hesitation or documentation, "The Best Bread Pudding." But since my Google search of "bread pudding recipe" yielded 10,100,000 results (in 0.21 seconds), it will be awhile until I feel comfortable in concurring until my own personal test kitchen explorations are completed.
I followed most of Paula's instructions, except I didn't have enough bread. So I guess on the measurements, and used less milk and fewer eggs (three rather than five). Raisins were my own idea. I substituted walnuts for pecans. I didn't have brandy, so I skipped the sauce. All in all, my pudding turned out great. My wife agrees.
I ate some warm from the oven last night. I microwaved another serving tonight. I thought sliced bananas might taste good with it, but I forgot to add them.

It's been a good week for eating and cooking.

Reading list: The Corrections, Let The Great World Spin

2011-08-24T13:01:00.001-05:00

I'm back on my reading challenge to finish the fiction winners of the National Book Award. I finished two and loved them both; I started another and dropped it because I didn't like it.

Author Jonathan Franzen made a big stink about Oprah Winfrey's selection of his novel, "The Corrections," for her book club. I thought him a bit of a prig and a snob when he came down on her. But it did make me curious about his book. I loved it. It's an epic story of a husband suffering from Parkinson's, his long-suffering wife and their three children, now adults and living away from St. Jude's, the Midwestern city where they grew up.

Like a lot of modern fiction, this story moves back and forth. The story doesn't move in a linear, chronological fashion. Each character receives a chapter, or really a mini novel. I found it easy to identify with the aging and ailing parents and their foibles. None of the children are likable, but each is strongly drawn. Franzen has a detailed eye. His description of the minutia stored in the father's basement is hilarious and so true. Franzen won the 2001 National Book Award for fiction. I recommend this one.

"Let The Great World Spin" by Colum McCann is the 2009 recipient of the National Book Award. This is a series of short stories about individuals who are tangentially connected to each other on the day in 1974 that Philippe Petit walked on a rope between the towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. The novel is not about Petit, who is the subject of the movie, Man On Wire. The story begins with two brothers in Ireland, who follow each other to New York. The younger brother is a priest who's lost cause are the prostitutes in the city. McCann jumps from this story to other characters who had a relationship with the priest. We writes of the other brother, the daughter of a prostitute, hippies involved in a fatal traffic accident and a support group of mothers whose sons died in the Vietnam War (these stories were among the best). I'd recommend this book, too.

The book that I could put down was Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater, the 1995 recipient of the National Book Award. Mickey Sabbath is a philandering puppeteer who chronicles his sexual flings. It's a bawdy tale, but after 125 pages, I gave up. I had no interest in reading the remaining 300 or so pages. I liked Roth's award-winning "Goodbye, Columbus" and short stories, and his novel about Lindbergh. But I can no longer work on the Sabbath.

48 hours in Cleveland

2011-08-23T22:28:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I wrote about the dish exchange in Cleveland. My sister, who lives in Washington, had been holding mom's set in her basement for a number of years. About two years ago, we hatched a plan for transferring them to me. We decided to meet in Cleveland for a weekend, which is about a 5 1/2 hour drive for each of us. I live in Chicago. Nothing happened in 2009, nor in 2010. This summer, this month, we made it happen.

Fortunately for me, my office is closed on Fridays for the summer. After registering the dog at the kennel, my wife and I were on the road by 10 a.m. We rolled into Cleveland about 5:30. It was an easy trip along the Chicago Skyway, to the Indiana Turnpike, to the Ohio Turnpike and finally on the freeway into Cleveland. My sister and sister-in-law arrived about an hour later. We stayed at the Renaissance Hotel. That night, we walked to East Fourth Street, which is a block of about six restaurants. We ate at La Strada, a Mediterranean joint that was on the noisy side. A group that was in for a convention was at the bar, which was steps from our table. We enjoyed the food, but it was hard to carry on a conversation.

The next day, after breakfast in the hotel, we boarded the Goodtime III for a cruise down the Cuyahoga River and into Lake Erie. The ship wasn't three times as good as the original Goodtime (see this Cleveland Plain Dealer profile for the history); the Roman numeral just signifies its order in the business. My sister befriended the leader of a family reunion group that was celebrating on the ship. The ship sailed under many interesting bridges; some swing open, others rise and lower like an elevator car. We passed sand piles and docks. The tour gives you a real appreciation for the work that is conducted along rivers in this age of planes, trucks and trains. I have an affinity for Lake Erie because I live along another of the six Great Lakes, Michigan. Some of the locations along the river look as if they'd be perfect for a Batman movie set. Indeed, on the ride home, I read that the Avengers movie was going to be filmed there in the coming weeks. (I should be a location scout for Hollywood, I tell ya.)

After the water excursion, we walked to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum. If you want to sound like a local, then just call it the Rock Hall. That's also the web address: rockhall.com We ate a quick lunch there, then explored the museum. It is a remarkable building. Women Who Rock was the special exhibit that was on that month (until Feb. 26, 2012). There is a really good orientation movie, about 9 minutes long, with a locomotive being the recurring theme that pulls rock music from its roots to the present day. About two and a half hours later, we were finished and walked back to the hotel. My sister and sister in law continued for another hour. We saw this stamp on our way home.

That night we ate at the Blue Point Grille in the Warehouse district. We all ordered something different, and everything was well made, presented and tasty. I think Cleveland has a lot of good dining choices, especially the restaurant Melt Bar and Grilled, which I wrote about in "Close Encounters of the Hipster Kind." The next morning we ate breakfast nearby, exchanged the dishes, then went in search of Great Lakes Brewing Co. and the market district in Ohio City, just over the river. I'm a fan of GLBC's Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, which I can find in Chicago. I hope I'm not telling tales out of school, but my sister developed a fondness, nay, love bordering on obsession, for Eliot Ness Amber Lager. The brewery makes the Burning River Pale Ale, which is a not-so-veiled reference to the Cuyahoga River, which caught fire in the 1969. We found the brew pub but it was closed on Sunday, as well as the West Side Market.

Next on the agenda was the house from the movie A Christmas Story. With help from signage and my sister-in-law's smart phone GPS, we pulled into an ordinary looking and somewhat rundown residential neighborhood. We parked and I walked up to the house, where a line was forming for the tour. The house was not yet open. I was the only one in our party to be excited; my wife doesn't appreciate the movie and the other two women never heard of it. I bought a coffee mug and fridge magnet in the gift shop across the street. It also sells the full-size leg lamp, a desk-size leg lamp and a nightlight leg lamp. There is also a museum, but I passed on that, too. Just being on the front porch, looking through the window and seeing the kitchen in the back and a Christmas tree to the right was sufficient for me.

We returned to Cleveland and deposited the two woman at their car. My wife and I explored a little street fair that had set up in the warehouse district. We bought a sandwich, chips and a drink at a neighborhood deli, then got in our car for the ride home. There was a lot we didn't see in Cleveland, but then again, we had two nights and less than 48 hours. We had a good time.

What a dish

2011-08-22T21:12:00.002-05:00

On special occasions, when I was a boy, mom brought out the good china. Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving and company meant dinner on the Copeland Buttercup pattern dishes from Spode, England. Mom was still using the set when I, now an adult, would return home for the holidays. There was something comforting, and genteel, about eating a home-cooked meal on those plates and bowls.

Me, celebrating my 11th birthday with a Boston cream pie and those dishes.

Those dishes are now with my wife and me. Neither of my brothers wanted the set, nor did my sister. Earlier this month, my sister and I drove from our homes to Cleveland and we made the swap. Back at my house on Monday morning, I ate breakfast off the good china. It was like visiting my parents again and being a kid again, back in the house where I grew up, all rolled into one. The dishes have a strange power.

Easter, and a piece of cake in front of Aunt Lucille.

Close encounters of the hipster kind

2011-07-18T06:00:00.003-05:00


Melt's July sandwich special

On our road trip to Nashville last month (more about that to come in a later post, I promise), I dug into my bag labeled “Vacation Reading Material” and pulled out the June-slash-July Twenty-Eleven ReadyMade magazine. (To be absolutely clear: my wife was “behind the wheel,” that is to say, she was driving, at this point.)

ReadyMade is subtitled “Instructions for Everyday Life” which could also be used by several dozen other magazines I can think of, including Money, Consumer Reports, Playboy, GQ, Oprah and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Somewhere along the line, I acquired a subscription to this quirky little magazine; perhaps I “cashed in” some unused airline miles I earned on Continental or some other “off-brand” airline. All I know is that ReadyMade began appearing in my mail drop around the beginning of the year.

ReadyMade is published by Meredith Publishing, which also spits out the venerable Better Homes & Gardens (parodied on “The Simpsons” as Better Homes Than Yours). I had leafed through an earlier copy of RM. The content struck me as heavy on the how-to-make-hip-stuff-out-of-junk-normal people (that is, your parents)-would-otherwise-leave-out-on-the-curb variety. I remember one layout showing how to make a bookcase from discarded television cabinets.

The cover of the June/July issue promoted “How to Buy a House. Your Go-To Guide.” So I went to. Here were seven case histories of first-time buyers. The men tended towards premature hair loss; the women toward bad, choppy haircuts. Both favored tattoos and nerd glasses. Those with dogs favored literary names: one couple owned Bernard and George; another Aeneas. Based on the names alone, I was immediately prepared to dislike one set of homeowners named Bethany, Boonie and Strummer. I thought this was about a single (crazy) woman and her two cats. As is often the case with me, I prejudge on appearances or other superficialities. As it turns out, this article was about a woman, her husband (Boonie, a furniture designer) and Strummer, their son. (I’m still not digging that Strummer name, but I’ll put it aside.)

As it turns out, these 30-something inked-up, hipped up youngsters are ~~just like~~ ~~very similar to~~ along the lines of me, when I was 30-something. They just want to own a house, fix it up, make it their own, build some equity and stability, and live a life not dependent on a landlord raising the rent, selling the building, converting it to a condo or torching it for insurance money while everyone is away at work for the day. I looked past the tattoos, the porkpie hats, the too-cute names, the rescued-from-the-shelter pets and the trying-too-hard-to-stay cool decorative accessories (like the crosscut saw used as wall décor or the de rigeur antlers). I came to like the closing page called MacGyver in which readers are challenged to make something useful from something discarded. I liked the magazine so much that I kept it, knowing I wanted to blog about it.

When I returned home, a renewal notice was in my mail drop. I set it aside with the other bills. The next day, I read that Meredith was cancelling ReadyMade. As my new 30-something friends might say, “That was random.”

A waitress soon handed me a menu

Last week found me in Cleveland, reading the hotel room magazine for a clue about where to dine that evening. I wanted to avoid the House of Blues, other national chains and hotel restaurants. So when I read about Melt Bar and Grilled, a homegrown eatery with a second location, I set the GPS to Cleveland Heights. I was greeted by a young man who informed me that a table would require a 60-minute wait but I can sit immediately at the bar or along the wall behind the bar. I picked my way through the crowd and bellied up to the bar.

The waitress soon handed me a menu and a card with the monthly food and drink specials. I surveyed the room and saw that the patrons and staff were heavily skewed towards tattoos, piercings, shaved heads and Van Dykes. And those were just the women! Hi-ooooooooo!. Seriously, the women favored rainbow-hued streaks in their head hairs. But I’m not kidding about the tattoos and piercings. They are either a prerequisite for employment or an employee benefit. Or both. I knew this was a hipster hangout because Cartoon Network was playing on one of the flat screens over the bar. Cartoon Network in a bar? Really?

Snowmen, a little too cute for my taste, adorn Melt

Panels from pinball machines sit above coolers behind the bar.

The décor trended toward the ironic: colorful panels from pinball machines, outdoor Christmas ornaments, target-practice deer, vintage beer and soda signs. In other words, a hipster’s Cracker Barrel. I ordered the monthly special sandwich: a blackened chicken breast with pineapple, avocado and pepper jack cheese (see poster at the top of this blog) with fries and cole slaw. To drink I had the Hotel Phuket (gin, cucumber juice and lime). Quite refreshing.

As I ate, I looked around the room again. This time I saw families (some looking like they walk off the pages of ReadyMade), a pair of white-haired older women and a man and woman about my age. I really enjoyed this restaurant, and encourage you to seek out Melt Bar and Grilled. The original store is in Lakewood.

When I push my “comfort envelope” and enter a world not like my own suburban bubble, I find two things usually: people are people and I enjoy getting out of my rut.

Danza in the streets

2011-06-02T06:00:00.011-05:00

Bert Convy

To me, every generation has an actor who stays employed, even with no visible sign of talent. When I was in college in the 1970s, Bert Convy was that actor. He drove me nuts. He was all over television and I didn't know why.
I never saw the appeal of him, but there he was on The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Love American Style, the Match Game and Hollywood Squares. Why was he getting work? Who was hiring him? For what reason?
I looked up his bio on Wikipedia and, I have to admit, I am impressed by some of his work and by his awards. He was a minor league baseball player in the Philadelphia Phillies organization. Bert won an Emmy as Outstanding Game Show Host in 1977 for his work on Tattletales. He died at age 57 of a brain tumor. I feel a little bit badly now for having dissed him.

Tony Danza

Tony Danza is the Bert Convy of his generation. I never saw the appeal of Tony. Still don't. But he has been gainfully employed through the 1980s, '90s,' 00s and most recently in 2010 (The Fran Drescher Show). Like Bert, Tony did his time on The Love Boat. He was famous for Taxi, of course (as Tony Banta), and Who's The Boss (as Tony Micelli), Hudson Street (as Tony Canetti) and The Tony Danza Show (no, not as Tony Danza but as Tony DiMeo.) Do you think he flubs lines if he is not addressed, in character, as Tony?
Who's The Boss, like most of his shows, is pretty lightweight fluff. So I shouldn't expect great acting. Stlll I was put off by his performance. There was more mugging in any 30-minute episode than on a subway car after midnight in the toughest inner-city neighborhood.

Jeff Conaway as Kenickie

Tony has his appeal. He outshone Jeff Conaway, who played Bobby Wheeler on Taxi. Conaway had just come off of Grease, where he played the hood Kenickie. Conaway received fourth billing in that film, after John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John (Neutron-Bomb, as we wags called her in the '70s) and Stockard Channing. Conaway was married to ONJ's sister for a time. Was Conaway a better actor than Danza? Based on his work in Grease, I'd say yes, even though Kenicke wasn't that demanding of a role. Jeff Conaway also died young; he passed away last month at age 60.
Actors and their appeal can change overnight. I'm thinking of Alicia Silverstone, who was the It Girl of her generation. Briefly. She peaked with Clueless in 1995. Then Reese Witherspoon came along, making Pleasantville in 1998 followed by Election the next year. Legally Blonde in 2001 launched her into the stratosphere. I can't say Reese stole Alicia's career away from her, because I think Witherspoon is the better actor. But, as Sinatra sang, "You're riding high in April, Shot down in May." That's life.
Who's the Tony Danza of his/her generation? I don't know because I don't watch TV like I used to. But if you have any nominations, leave me a comment.

Boyhood hero

2011-06-01T13:37:00.001-05:00

I think it is a little silly when I see grown men at the White Sox park wearing jerseys with the name Konerko, Buehrle, Pierzinksi or Rios. I understand their support of their favorite player, but I think that show of loyalty is best left to impressionable children. Don't get me wrong, I have my favorite professional ball players and athletes in other sports. But I believe after age 18 (high school), fans should leave the jersey-wearing to the pre-teens and young teens.
On the other hand, on Monday I showed up on campus to welcome home the NCAA champion lacrosse team from Northwestern. I admit that it can seem weird for a 50+-year-old man to be cheering a team of 20-somethings. But I was there with my wife.
If I know little about a team or its players, I have a simple set of guidelines for whom to root for. In football, I root for any left-handed quarterback or left-footed kicker (punter or place). In baseball, I root for lefty batters and pitchers. Same in golf, though I only know of Phil Mickelson.
I liked Babe Ruth for that reason. Good old No. 3 led major league baseball in home runs, until Hank Aaron surpassed him. Even then, the Babe remained the Junior Circuit's No. 1 home run leader, with 714. (That is also the number on the Dragnet shield, for those of you keeping score at home.) I liked another American League No. 3 when I was a kid. That was Harmon Killebrew, first of the Washington Senators ("Washington. First in war, first in peace, last in the American League") and then of the Minnesota Twins. The Twins were the first team to be named for a state, not a city, in case you didn't know.
How did a Penna. Dutch boy hitch his star to a Midwestern ball player? Well, my older brother was a Phillies fan, and I could not root for the same team as he did. So, since I was born in Minnesota (lived there all of three months before moving back to the motherland), I decided I would root for the Twins. They were my team from about 1964 to 1974 or so, when I stopped following baseball closely. In 1965, the Twins went to the World Series (I believe Ring Lardner wrote about the "world serious"), and at age 9, that was big league news for me. Unfortunately, the Dodgers won in seven games.
All of this is a lead up to Harmon's death last month. I no longer memorize stats about any player, but I still remember that Harmon was born in Payette, Idaho, in 1936. He was 10 years younger than my dad. He never hit 50 homers in a season but he "went yard" 49 times twice. Until A-Rod passed him, Harmon was the American League's leading right-handed home run hitter. I don't remember if I ever saw him play, but I'm sure I must have. My family moved to the Boston area and I went to Red Sox games for six years. I have to assume I saw the Twins and Harmon once or twice at Fenway.
These days, I root for the White Sox. The Twins are a fierce enemy, and I cannot root for them. I do think of my youth, ages 8 to 14, as my golden age of baseball appreciation. Harmon pulled the plug on himself in a hospice. He was 74 years old. Eventually, our boyhood heroes die, but our memories of them continue throughout our lives.

King room, non-smoking

2011-05-21T15:57:00.000-05:00

I used to travel a lot for business; nowadays, not so much. I've been averaging a trip a month for the last six months or so. I got it in my head to document each hotel room. I missed a Ramada in Wisconsin and an extended-stay property near Miami. Here's a look at where I've stayed recently.

Salvatore's Grand, Buffalo, New York

I visited Salvatore's one evening in December. It was snowing lightly, so I decided to eat in the hotel restaurant rather than drive around and look for another spot. The dining room is rather over-the-top in decor; perhaps in a downtown setting it would seem more appropriate. In its shopping center location, the restaurant seems to be trying too hard. Nevertheless, the food was delicious; order the sausage bread appetizer if you ever eat here. The room was large and clean, and it has free wi-fi.

Somerset Inn, Troy, Mich.

Nothing wrong with the Somerset Inn in a suburb of Detroit.

La Quinta Inn, New Britain, Conn.

The locals pronounce their Ts as Ds. So I was staying in "New Briddin." Now that I think of it, however, they didn't say, "Welcome to the LaQuinda." Hmmm. The locals also warned me not to walk around downtown at night. I drove around and didn't see anything too seedy. My room was on the second floor at the end of a loooonnnng corridor. Did you ever see the movie "Inception"? Remember how Leo DiCaprio and the gang were trying to stay upright as the hallway rotated? The hallway reminded me of that. The hotel had free wi-fi, so I was able to get some work done that evening. I don't often travel with a laptop, but if I do, I like to be able to log on and get some work done (below).

La Quinta, desk

Comfort Inn, La Crosse, Wis.

I had trouble finding the Comfort Inn. It's located in a shopping center off the Interstate. I was looking for a huge sign, but there's only a mild-mannered one in front of the property. Next door were the burned-out ruins of a restaurant. The hotel has a free breakfast.

Holiday Inn Express, Cincinnati, Ohio

This Holiday Inn Express, just off the Interstate, was very pleasant. Free breakfast in the morning. The view from my window (below) wasn't much. Avoid room 216.

The view from the Holiday Inn, Room 216

The Premier Hotel Times Square, New York City

Now here is true luxury, Room 1620 in The Premier Hotel which is connected to the Millennium Hotel on 44th Street in Manhattan. It's been a long time since I stayed in a hotel this nice; Comfort Inns, Holiday Inn Expresses and La Quintas have been the rule. But this was a sponsored junket, so the cost wasn't coming out of my company's T&E. The room was large, with a sleeping area and sitting area. Outside of the closet is a little console with coffee maker and a selection of teas. The bathroom has a separate tub and shower. The hotel sets up an expansive buffet for breakfast on the mezzanine. In the evening (5 to 7 p.m.), it serves complementary wine, cheese, salami and pasta salads.

Premier Hotel, sitting area

My favorite joke related to hotels is this one I heard from Henny Youngman: "The towels were so thick and fluffy, I could barely get my suitcase closed."

A week in Spain

2011-05-16T21:33:00.000-05:00

Long-time readers will remember I was in Spain more than a year ago. Since I now have iMovie, I've been cranking out short films like never before. I put together this short, 3+-minute video of highlights from Granada and Valencia.

Read more about the trip by clicking on Spain in the "What I Write About" cloud, or on one of the titles below.

Watch Your Head

The Alhambra, Granada's big red one

Back in Granada

A Taste Of Spain

Ruven Afanador's "Mil Besos"

Souvenir from Spain

Musing on museums

A midwest ramble

2011-05-10T22:27:00.000-05:00

Business took me to La Crosse, Wis., last month. I drove.

The five hours in the car went quickly thanks to public radio and lunch at Culver’s (more about that later). Because of Wisconsin’s extensive university system, I was never out of range of a college radio station, which typically is affiliated with public radio. I picked up UW-Milwaukee closest to home. When that began to fade, I found UW-Madison. A University of Minnesota station carried me into La Crosse. For the return trip, the process was reversed. The intelligent chatter, for the most part, provided entertainment and education.

The Milwaukee station was interviewing the NPR ombudsman. I was looking forward to this segment, but sadly it was a squandered opportunity. The host was not a good interviewer. He was a fill-in, but he wasn’t inexperienced. The ombudsman, who is retiring (or has by now), touched on the Juan Williams firing and the fund-raising sting. But these were topics that could have been explored more deeply by an experienced hand.

I drove north from Illinois into Wisconsin. At Kenosha, I picked up Highway 50 and drove to US 12. That took me to Madison where I picked up Interstate 90. I-90 and I-94 merge for a bit, then split off. 94 continues north and then bends west to The Cities (an affectation I picked up from natives); 90 leads into La Crosse (and on to Rochester, my birth home. I don’t have the certificate with me, but if I ever run for president, I’ll dig it up.)

The drive from Kenosha to Madison takes you through rolling farmland that reminds me of my ancestral Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. You slow down through Fort Atkinson (“the Fort”), Cambridge and a few other, smaller towns, and then pick up speed (from 30 to 45 to 60 mph) when you return to the farmland. North of Madison are New Lisbon and Tomah. These names remind me of our honeymoon. We visited old Lisbon and Tomar, Portugal. (For years, I thought the city was Tomah, but I just Googled it and the Portuguese city is indeed Tomar. Maybe a displaced Bostonian named the Wisconsin city.)

At one point during the trip up to La Crosse, I tuned into a Minnesota Twins day game. I picked it up on an FM band, which I found odd, because I don’t believe I ever heard a game in frequency modulation mode. The sound was richer than that heard on a station in amplitude modulation mode. It was a little disconcerting, I must say. Baseball on AM is tradition. At least for me. It goes back to the 1960s when I would tune a little green Zenith Bakelite radio into a Phillies or Orioles game from my third-floor bedroom in Lancaster. If I didn’t like those options, I’d turn the dial and bring in the Pirates or, from Ohio, the Indians or Reds. New York was close enough so that didn’t seem exotic. I’m not sure if I heard games from Boston. I’m sure I must have pulled in the Cubs on WGN or the Cardinals on KMOX. Those were powerful stations that crossed the Appalachian Mountains. I’m not sure if the White Sox or Braves (then in Milwaukee) were on anything that strong.

Back to present-day Wisconsin. Culver’s is restaurant chain serving hamburgers and ice cream. More specifically, Butter Burgers and frozen custard. You order at the counter, the cashier gives you a number to put on your table and then you sit down. A friendly runner delivers the food to you on a tray. The employees are typically high school kids or their grandparents. There is no in-between. Since I stopped for lunch on a school day, the employees were at the older end of the spectrum. The hamburgers are hot and tasty. The bun is buttered, giving the sandwich its name. I ordered a vanilla shake. The frozen custard was so thick that I could not suck it up through the straw. I had to scoop it out. I took the rest of the drink to the car and drove 10 miles without drinking. I wanted the shake to melt a little. It did, and I slurped up a couple of tablespoons or so. I continued the 10-mile intervals for about 30 minutes. By then I could drink the entire shake through the straw.

I stopped to gas up. Rather than pay at the pump, I paid indoors on the chance that the candy counter would be stocked with Mallo Cups (search this blog for a prior essay on the merits of this treat). I was in luck. I bought 10 packages and ate one on the spot. Soon enough I was back in Illinois.

That was then, this is now

2011-05-03T12:37:00.000-05:00

I pulled out my papers from 9/11 and shot them with Monday's papers.

Remembering Dad

2011-05-02T06:00:00.002-05:00

Today was Dad's birthday. He hosted his children and their families on a Caribbean cruise in 2005. We had just toasted Dad for his generosity, and this was his reply.

The pike's peak

2011-04-28T21:50:00.001-05:00

Monday I had to be downtown for a conference, so I rode the train. On the return trip home, I thought about dinner. When I alit, I walked to the fancy-food grocer in town. I bought a wall-eye pike fillet, two crabcake sliders, a quarter-pound of mixed greens and a slice of chocolate cake (I presume these slices were of unsold Easter cakes from the day before.) I paid for the purchases and walked the seven blocks home. I was feeling very European--taking public transportation, buying dinner ingredients á la minute and walking home.
I sliced a whole onion thinly with the mandolin and sauteed the rings in olive oil. When they softened, I laid the pike on top of the bed of onions. I could see the flesh turn white as it cooked. I flipped it over to finish. I served the fish with a green salad and boiled and buttered fingerling potatoes. The fish picked up the flavors of the onions. I didn't follow a recipe. At some point, I must have been served fish prepared this way, or read an article about it. Regardless, this was a a perfect dinner.

There is nothing like a Daim

2011-04-21T13:11:00.003-05:00

We went to IKEA last night to look at furniture and walked away with $25 in food. We paid for it, I want you to know; it's not like we walked out of the store without paying.
I love this candy. It's the Swedish Heath bar. The Ikea website describes Daim as "crunchy almond brittle bites with a delicate milk chocolate coating." The retailer does not sell the candy on its website, so I was on the look out for it. (I need to write about my Mallo Cup hunt last week.)
In Googling Daim, I came across this Village Voice blog post from April 4 about the treat. Honest, I didn't steal the headline, but it is pretty obvious for anyone who's seen South Pacific.
Besides Daim, we bought a half-pound of whole-bean coffee, two flavors of Anna's Cookies, some Sylt ligonberry jam and a box of the Kakor Chokladflarn chocolate cookies.These come in a corrugated cardboard box with a plastic wrapper on top (neither the sexiest package out there, nor the safest, from a tampering point of view). Next time we go grocery shopping, maybe we'll end up with furniture.

Kakor Chokladflarn

Cheese bored? No way

2011-04-19T13:20:00.000-05:00

I attended a trade show last week. The evening concluded with a cheese buffet, the likes of which I have never seen. Since the show was in Wisconsin, there was the requisite carved-in-cheese tribute to the Super Bowl champions Green Bay Packers. The auction raised money for scholarships.

My salad day

2011-04-18T22:13:00.001-05:00

I was going to write about two memorable birthdays, then I looked backed at what I wrote and discovered I already had shared one memory, the story of my 18th birthday when I received the J. Geils Band Full House album and it was a warm spring day and we had a track meet and I was all jazzed up. I hate to be one of those blowhards who tell the same story over and over, without ever asking, "Did I ever tell you about the time . . .?"
So I'll tell you two other stories. On my 51st birthday, I was atop the Eiffel Tower with my wife, two of my brothers-in-law, and a couple of sisters-in-law. That afternoon we took the train to Netherlands, changing trains in Belgium. So I was in three countries that day.
Today, my co-workers and I drove to Superdawg for lunch. We visited the new-ish one in the suburbs; the original is in Chicago. Both are on Milwaukee Avenue, about 12 miles apart. On the way to Superdawg, we passed the shuttered Don Roth's restaurant. Don Roth had two restaurants in Chicago; one on Wabash Avenue and one in the shadow of the Water Tower off of Michigan Avenue. The Wabash location was known for its spinning salad bowl.
I was reminded of the evening my wife took me to dinner to the Water Tower location. We were dating then, and she treated me to dinner. Quite possibly I ordered the famous salad. When the waiter took away our dinner plates, he asked what I wanted for dessert. To my surprise (and my wife's), I said I didn't want anything. I rarely pass up the sweet course, but that night I did. The waiter pushed a little. "Some cake? Ice cream, perhaps?" No, I said. I held firm and he went away.
A few minutes passed and I saw out of the corner of my eye something sparkly. It was moving my way. The waiter placed in front of my a piece of cake with a sparkler in it. "You getting this whether you want it or not," he said. I looked at my wife, and she looked relieved. I had almost spoiled her surprise. These PDBs (public displays of birthdays) don't bother me; my wife hates them. She doesn't like to be the center of attention.
Tonight we ate at a favorite hamburger place, cashing in a two-for-one coupon I received by signing up for the restaurant's email list. My brothers and sister all called this weekend, as did my college roommate. It was a birthday to remember.

The birthday bunny hop

2011-04-17T12:31:00.000-05:00

The bunny cake was THE signature dessert for Easter and spring birthdays in my youth. The jelly bean mouth and eyes, and the licorice string whiskers (or were they pipe cleaners?) define the face. As I look at the cookbook cover and mom's version today, I see that mom freelanced the design. On mom's execution, the ears are angled differently and she left out the bow tie.
My first birthday was on Easter and so was my ninth. I haven't had an Easter birthday since. This year, Easter falls a day before my older brother's birthday. That's about as late as it can be. I don't think my brother has ever had an Easter birthday.
Mom was a pretty good baker; her cookies, pies and cakes were equally good. When I was older, I liked the store-bought birthday cakes from the Federal Bakery in Lancaster, but I think that's because of the toys they used for decorations. And because of the buttercream icing.
A clever cook can create more than bunny cakes. I found mom's "Cut-up Cakes" from Baker's Coconut in a long-forgotten desk drawer. It offers an idea for every month. The book assumes one knows how to make a sheet cake. It doesn't not include recipes or baking instructions. I don't remember ever eating a witch's cake or a Santa cake. But the instructions are here. See below. I celebrate a birthday tomorrow, but without a bunny cake.

My sister and I celebrate my first birthday at grandma and grandpa's house.

Mid-century Mom asks if I'm ready for another piece.

Seven or eight years later, my cousin eyes a bunny cake. This must have been an Easter celebration at our house.

The sporting life

2011-04-11T12:53:00.002-05:00

On Saturday, we bundled up and drove to the South Side where the White Sox were hosting the Tampa Bay Rays (nee Devil Rays). We had decent-enough seats in the lower level along the right field line, but they were in the shade and the temperature was barely 50. We sat there for an inning then decamped for the other side of the arena where we saw a wide swath of sunlight warming a wedge of seats in left field foul territory. On the way there, we stopped for a sugar-dusted funnel cake. The hot dough warmed our fingers. The Sox won.

Yesterday the weather broke. The temperature jumped 25 degrees, landing in the 80s. Anyone with a dog, convertible, bicycle, tennis racket or sneakers was out on Sunday. We headed to the lacrosse pitch at Northwestern. (Did you like how I slipped in the British word for "field"?) The No.2-ranked Wildcat women were playing the Quakers from the University of Pennsylvania. (I tried out several cheers, like "Beat the pacifists" and "Make war on the Quakers.") On Friday evening, the 'Cats dispatched the squad from the western side of the Commonwealth, the Nittany Lions of Penn State. Yesterday, the purple-and-white clad women took care of their foes from the eastern edge of Pennsylvania to remain undefeated. The lacrosse world anticipates a title-game rematch with No. 1 University of Maryland next month at the NCAA tournament.

Earlier this month I watched the pre-game hoopla surrounding the men's NCAA basketball semi-final games. Five overgrown men shoehorned themselves around a desk and spoke of "keys to the game" and "what to watch for" when this team had the ball. Five men for 10 starting players! One analyst for every two collegians. CBS was really doing its part to lower the unemployment rate, I guess The network scaled back once the game started. Then, only three men called the game. The other two, I presume, were back on the breadlines.

We returned home after lacrosse and I tuned into the Masters tournament (as much as one with cable needs to "tune" a television). I saw the South African player win the green jacket. I'm not a golf fan, but I like to watch (as Chauncy Gardner said in 1979). The course looked so green and the announcers were so soothing, especially compared to their college basketball brethren. Watching and listening to the Masters was like putting on a relaxation tape or video. It was very calming. I also watched because Dad was a golf fan and I knew that when I called him on Sundays, he'd be watching a tournament. Looking at golf on TV is a way I can still feel connected to the old man, who would have turned 85 in three weeks.

Inside the opera house

2011-04-07T13:08:00.001-05:00

As much as I like going to the opera, I love being in the opera building. The Civic Opera House in Chicago is on Wacker Drive. A covered colonnade extends almost the entire block, from Washington Street on the north to Madison Street on the south. When an opera calls for horses, you'll see a trailer parked near the Washington Street entrance. The back of the building faces the Chicago River.

Guests enter from Wacker, near Madison. Uniformed attendents on the sidewalk direct taxi cabs and help patrons out of the cars. They sound a two-minute warning as curtain time draws near. Often you'll see ticket holders on the sidewalk, silently holding out their ducats for resale. The same homeless man is outside every performance. He sells copies of the newspaper Streetwise. He shouts, "street-wise. Street-Why-eyes. Streetwise." We often see musicians entering through the doors closer to Washington. They sometimes arrive within 20 minutes of the performance; they bolt out as soon as the performance ends.

The Venturi effect creates windy conditions in the lobby. Wind is forced through the vestibule into the two-story-tall lobby. In the winter it is especially cold. Ticket takers wear capes. Nowadays, they scan the tickets; just a few years ago they were tearing them. The ticket takers are located straight ahead and to the right. Before you enter, you can buy a libretto. Not so long ago there was a tag team of libretto hawkers. "Buy a libretto," chanted one, as the other said, "Enjoy the opera with a libretto." Now there is a rather low-key woman who doesn't try as hard. I have bought a couple of libretti over time, but I didn't follow them during the performances. There is aslo a small counter where you can buy scarves, note cards and other gifts. But if your aim is to purchase a souvenir of your visit to the opera, you better buy before the performance. It's closed before intermission.

Latecomers sit in chairs in the lobby and watch the performance on closed-circuit television. There is no late seating, you see. Unlike the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which starts a good 10 minutes after the stated time, the Lyric Opera performances begin "on the dot."(There is no reason to put on the dot within quotation marks, but I think it injects a little humor.) Often, my wife and I will comment that some event or another is on "Symphony time" or "Opera time."

All manner of beverages are sold at intermission--hot, cold, caffeinated, alcoholic, non-alcoholic--an a limited assortment of snacks. I especially like the Manner wafers in chocolate and raspberry flavors.In my younger days I might have bought a glass of champagne, but nowadays I need no inducement to nap. As soon as the lights go down in the auditorium, my head begins to nod. Usually, though, after a refreshing first act snooze, I'm awake for the remainder of the performance.

I like the comedy/drama mask motifs that show up throughout the interior decorations. You can see an example in the chandelier at the top of the page. The lobby is decked out in gilt. The illuminated signs over the checkrooms and the directional signs (mezzaine, dress circle, etc.) are in gold.

After last month's performance of Carmen, I took some shots around the opera house. I hope you enjoy this tour.

Mural behind the refreshment bar in the basement.

From the lobby looking west, to the second floor.

Sconce

Carmen curtain call. Final performance of the 2010/2011 season.

Opera redux

2011-04-05T13:27:00.000-05:00

I remember a Mad Magazine cartoon (probably a "Lighter Side of . . ." by Dave Berg) from the 1960s. Children are listening to a young person's concert on the radio and the announcer mentions the William Tell Overture is coming up next. The announcer instructs the kids to try to listen and enjoy the music without thinking about it as the theme to the Lone Ranger. In the last panel, their dad enters the room, yelling "Hi-o, Silver, away."

In that vein, it is difficult for me to NOT think of Gilligan's Island when I listen to the opera Carmen. Long before I knew anything of Bizet or Shakespeare, I watched the cast-aways perform Hamlet, set to the music of Carmen. "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" is set to the Toreador song. "To be or not to be" is sung to the Habanera.

Last month, we attended the Lyric Opera's production of Carmen. We've seen this three or four times by now, and I've enjoyed it every time. Last year, we arrived in Paris the day after it was performed outdoors in the city. Had I known, we would have scheduled the trip accordingly. Carmen is a perfect "starter" opera for anyone who has not been to the opera. The music is familiar, and the story doesn't require you to suspend belief that events could actually unfold the way they do. It is on the long side (nearly four hours), but the two intermissions break things up.

I think this opera has the best first act of any I've seen. It's packed with familiar music (including the Habanera). I love the children's chorus and their playful impersonation of the soldiers. Every act starts with a beautiful overture. A lovely harp and flute duet begins the third act. In the fourth act, there's musical tension between the cheering in the arena and Don Jose's appearance. We saw the last performance of the opera and the last performance of the Lyric season. We left the opera house elated and eager for September for the new season begins.

Enjoy some podcasts about Carmen produced by the Lyric Opera.

See a YouTube clip of "Borrower/Lender" here.

Scallops

2011-04-01T13:00:00.000-05:00

Scallops for dinner. What a treat. I wasn't a fish eater when I was a child but I always loved scallops. I ordered them when we went to dinner at the Jersey shore (was it Chris's in Ocean City) and later in Boston (any where).
Last week I bought eight of the fat little disks at Whole Foods recently and fried the bivalves in a hot cast-iron pan coated in olive oil. The sweet hellfish didn't need anything more than that.
Scallops are associated with St. James. St. James The Greater wore a hat trimmed with scallop shells. He preached the Gospel in Spain and walked to Compostela. Since then, thousands of pilgrims also have walked to the town. When I studied art history in college I wrote a term paper about the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. That's when I made the connection between the French word , coquille St. Jacques, and why St. James wore scallop shells. My given name is James, and I'm no saint. But I do love the scallop.

Bill Kurtis Inc.

2011-03-27T11:24:00.006-05:00

Hello. I'm Bill Kurtis.

Do you have Bill Kurtis where you live? Or is he a local phenomenon? He is all over Chicago. Bill Kurtis, anchorman. Bill Kurtis, investigative reporter. Bill Kurtis, rancher. Bill Kurtis, AT&T pitchman. Bill Kurtis, movie actor.

Out for dinner Friday night at the Happ Inn, we saw Bill's name on the menu twice. First, there was the Bill Kurtis Tallgrass Burger made with grass-feed beef from Bill's Tallgrass Beef Co. There was also Bill Kurtis’ “cherry lime ricky” and a hard-boiled egg cocktail at $8 (Tanqueray 10, lime, rose lime, cherry juice, soda and cherry). The burger is good. We've eaten his Tallgrass beef at another local restaurant. I have yet to try the cherry lime ricky, mostly because of the egg. I guess I can ask for a no-egg cocktail. I have never deliberately eaten a hard-boiled egg. Sometimes they are slipped into Cobb or caesar salads and bits get hidden under lettuce leaves and I inadvertently take a forkful, resulting in a brief gag, then reaching for a crust of bread or a glass of water to eliminate the foul, sulphuric taste.

Bill Kurtis has been around Chicago since the 1970s when he first co-anchored the news for the CBS station. I had a journalism professor who could not stand him. He thought he was a little vacuous. Bill has never really bothered me.

I'm William Shatner.

I think as they have both aged, Bill and William Shatner are merging into one. William Shatner is Bill's beefier older brother. Both have profited by parodying their public images. William is known, of course, from the Star Trek television show and movies. Shatner is also a pitchman (Priceline) and he's involved with livestock (horses). There was a really good profile of Shatner in the New York Times Sunday magazine last September.

Regardless, I admire each for pursuing their private interests. It is easy to pigeon-hole someone as "actor," "rancher" or "journalist." These men are more than their public labels.

In which I write about a couple of old ladies

2011-03-21T13:31:00.002-05:00

It's been a week since we turned the clocks ahead one hour, and it's taken me a week to get back on schedule. I read somewhere that the rule of thumb for overcoming jet lag is one day per time zone. Well, that's not my thumb.
Anyhow, this morning I got out of bed at my usual hour, 6 a.m., and read the weekend's mail while waiting for "Father Knows Best" to come on at 6:30. Today, Jim Anderson had to take over Bud's paper route for the day in the 1955 episode "Father Delivers The Paper."

One of the customers is Cheerio Meredith playing the role of Old Woman. I didn't know her name until the credits came on, but I recognized her from The Andy Griffth Show (or TAGS, as it is known by "afficiandos"), where she played Emma Watson. In one TAGS episode, an escaped convict holds her hostage in her house. She cracks the door open when Andy and Barney come around to tell her to watch for an escapee. She's very expressive with her eyes, rolling them toward the unseen convict in her house.

She appeared on a lot of classic 1960s TV shows, including Dick Van Dyke Show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Donna Reed Show and McHale's Navy. In the 1944 film, "A Fig Leaf For Eve," Cheerio played Tillie, Old Drunk. I learned from Cheerio's Internet Movie Database profile that she died on Christmas Day, 1964 at the age of 74.

What do you think about dying on a holiday? Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died hours apart on the Fourth of July. That is kind of poetic, isn't it? Dying on your birthday is rather tidy, I think. You are an exact year when you go.

Long-time readers of this blog might remember that I've written about my 100-year-old neighbor, the oldest person I ever have known. Mrs. G was the first one to welcome us to the block when we moved into our house in 1992. Her birthday, Feb. 17, was the same as my mother's, and four other individuals I know. This year, Feb. 17, 2011, she died at the age of 101. A perfectly symmetrical circle of life. May she rest in peace. Below is her self-portrait.

St. Grandma's Day

2011-03-19T17:31:00.000-05:00

We never celebrated St. Patrick's Day as an Irish holiday when I was a kid. March 17th was my grandma's birthday (mom's mom) so we always had a party at our house for her. Grandma would have been 113 years old on Thursday. There is a picture of me on Facebook putting a birthday cake down in front of grandma. I can't retrieve it right now because of my self-imposed Lenten ban on using Facebook. So enjoy this picture of Jack Benny. Mom always reminded us that it was Jack Benny's birthday, too. We knew who he was, but only as a TV personality, not as a radio star. I never appreciated his joke about being 39 until I turned 40.
When we moved from Pennsylvania to the Boston area, mom started making corned beef, boiled cabbage and potato dinners on March 17. Perhaps a kindly New England neighbor taught her, or Mom decided on her own to "get with the program" and cook a little Irish (or Irish-American) to get in the spirit of the day.
I never went to a St. Pat's parade until I lived in Chicago. Our world was Penna. Dutch. I went to one or two parades when the city held them on State Street, but I found them to be too chaotic to travel to and be in. The El was crowded early in the morning with city and suburban kids cutting school for the day. The kids were already drunk before they arrived downtown and worse in the evening when they returned home. And the silly plastic green bowlers they wore were, well, silly. And cheap.
We had a potluck lunch at work on Thursday. We had merged two offices into one earlier this year, so the idea was to have a party and get to know one another. We were encouraged to bring a main dish, salads or desserts. Those who can't cook bring cutlery. I made a vegetable stew (vegetable korma) from Cooking Light magazine. It's Indian-inspired and not green in color at all. Rather, it's yellowish from the tumeric, so I guess I need a kindly Irish-American neighbor of my own to help me get with the program.

A chocolate souvenir from London

2011-03-16T12:58:00.001-05:00

Many years ago, maybe a dozen, I was in London in the spring. That's when I bought this hollow-chocolate bird, probably at Harrod's. I think this was treat was made not for Easter but for the Mothering Sunday holiday, which is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent.
It's unlikely that this candy made it's way back home with me. In all likelihood, I shot this photo (on film) while still in England. I like how I positioned the bird so the natural light hits it just so and that the depth of field blurs out the background.
I was in England to interview James Dyson, the innovative vacuum-cleaner designer, for a magazine article. The bagless, cyclonic cleaner was a real innovation, and it was just coming on to the market in the United States. I remember asking the president of Hoover if his company would make its own version. He pooh-poohed the idea, saying no housewife want to see a container full of dirt. Collecting the dirt in bags was preferable. A couple of years later, the company was selling a cyclonic machine of its own design. I could tell you other stories of CEOs who told me in absolute terms that they would not do something, only to do an about-face later. The English use the word Hoover as a verb ("to Hoover the floor") and as a generic descriptor for a vacuum cleaner.
From Waterloo station, I rode the train to the factory in Malmesbury and toured the facility, watching workers assemble the machines. Dyson was very generous with his time. We spoke in his office for about an hour, and he talked about how important it is that students be encouraged to invent, experiment and refine their ideas. It was a sort of stump speech for him. A more recent invention is his hand dryer for public restrooms called the Airblade. I would have advised him that no one wants to stick his or her hands into a blade.
You should check out the company's website, especially the Inside Dyson pages, and read his biography, the long road to selling the vacuum cleaner and his design heroes.

Unexpressed Facebook updates

2011-03-15T12:40:00.000-05:00

As stated earlier, I have given up Facebook for Lent. Here are some thoughts I might have posted on my page:

The college basketball tournament has gotten out of control. I read today that former college coach Bobby Knight proposes a 128-team field. Currenty, the NCAA tournament invites 68 teams.

palanquin

While looking for another word, I found the word palanquin. I think I'd like one. But I don't know enough people who would carry it.

"The King of Queens" has become the "MASH" of its generation. You can find re-runs on almost every cable channel at almost every time of day.

A day at the opera

2011-03-14T12:43:00.003-05:00

Niles Crane, the character from Frasier

I hate to rave about opera productions, lest I sound like fastidious Niles Crane or his brother Frasier from the television series. But we've seen two outstanding productions in the last three weeks at Chicago's Lyric Opera.

Yesterday was Hercules by Handel. The music, the voices and the staging were beautiful. David Daniels sings countertenor. His is an eeriely beautiful voice that sounds like a boy or a young woman. I viewed him through my binoculars to confirm that he is a grown man. His falsetto is so clear that it's hard to believe where the voice is coming from. Alice Coote, who plays Hercules' wife, and Lucy Crowe, who plays the prisoner of war, also shine. Early on, Crowe sings lying down on the floor with a hood over her head. Though the opera is Hercules, the title character has a small singing role.

Peter Sellars

Handel's music is soaring, though there are parts I don't care for. His style is to prolong syllables, so singers go up and down the scale and up again just on the word "love," for example. Or, phrases are repeated repeatedly. Still, that's a small quibble. The opera calls for a chorus, so, this being the Lyric, there are 45 to 50 voices. The company doesn't go half way.

We saw stage director Peter Sellars in the lobby during intermission. A couple in front of us stopped him and congratulated him. I wanted to see who they were praising. It was a man in colorful casual dress (obviously with an artistic flair) and a wild head of hair. I thought it might be Sellars; my wife confirmed it by looking in the program. I remember reading that Sellars, long ago, was considerd the "bad boy" of opera. The staging in the second act was brilliant. The sky turns a cranberry red during the death scene. At the end, the backdrop is plain, the stage is brightly lit, and the shadows of the chorus dance on the wall.

Lohengrin arrives on his swan boat

Prior to Hercules, we saw Lohengrin by Wagner (the video clips should still be up until the end of the season). We have seen and enjoyed other of Wagner's operas, but all I knew about this was the wedding march. There is a recognizable riff with French horns that I did not know was from this work. Lohengrin is a true spectacle: great voices, costumes, story, music. Johan Botha is Lohengrin. With his heft and long hair, he cuts the figure of a warrior. I can't say enough about this production. Its run has ended in Chicago. I'd see it again wherever it is staged.

We end the opera season this month with my favorite, Carmen.

A new start

2011-03-10T13:04:00.002-06:00

In each calendar year, there are several beginnings. The obvious one is Jan. 1. That's the start of the new year. There are others. Memorial Day marks the beginning of summer, when we vow to spend more time outside engaged in physical activities. Labor Day marks the beginning of the school year, when we buy new clothes and school supplies.
Then there is the Lenten season, which began yesterday. Many people vow to forgo certain treats until Easter. I gave up Facebook on March 9. I won't check on or update my personal Facebook page for the next 40 days. (I do have to maintain the office Facebook page at work.)
The time I was spending on Facebook was taking away from my time on this blog. I was updating my page, checking up on friends and playing Bejewled Blitz. That game really became a huge time suck. I was spending less time on this blog and less time reading books. (Previously, I was squandering my time playing Freecell or spider solitaire when we had the PC. Those games are not available on our Mac.) In years past, I gave up Freecell for Lent. This year it's BB.
I have also vowed this season to kick up my exercise. I started out OK in January. The health club has a 90 miles in 90 days challenge, which I've completed successfully many times. I started out great this year, but then I fell out of the habit of going to the club, getting on the treadmill and running 4 or 5 miles. When we had the snowstorms, I expended a lot of energy shoveling. Last week at the club, I added my mileage and saw I had accumulated 50 miles. To complete the challenge, I'm going to have to run 40 miles today. That's not going to happen.
Yesterday, I was shopping for new pants. I had a real "come to Jesus" moment in the dressing room at Macy's as I tried on new pants. They didn't fit. I stared at myself in that three-panel mirror and shook my head, and silently tsk-tsked myself. I had to go up a size, returning to my waist size from six years ago. I can still fit into the older, smaller-waisted trousers but they are snug, I must admit.
So, I have vowed to bump up my exercise. I'll walking on the days I don't run. I'll try to eat better, although I did allow myself a paczki on Fat Tuesday. Come Easter, I'll be slimmer. I'll have blogged more. I'll have read more books. It's a new start.

Sports night: Northwestern basketball

2011-03-06T20:26:00.000-06:00

It's hard to believe that the regular season has ended. Northwestern men's basketball started its season with an exhibition game on Nov. 4, 2011. The team played its last home game on March 2, 2011. Before the game, the university honored the senior class: Mike Capocci, Ivan Peljusic, Jeff Ryan and Michael "Juice" Thompson. We enjoyed these guys for four years. I made this brief tribute video.

Oscar weekend: The Cookies Are Alright

2011-02-25T23:14:00.000-06:00

Oscar weekend: (1)27 seconds

2011-02-25T21:03:00.002-06:00

I had my own desert adventure involving my arm and a rock.

Oscar weekend: Bang the Drum (Loudly)

2011-02-25T20:58:00.000-06:00

One day I realized I have a lot of video of drumming and drummers, so I compiled them into this short.

Oscar weekend: Closely Watched (Model) Trains

2011-02-25T20:50:00.000-06:00

I've been getting to know iMovie editing software. I discovered its built-in sound effects and some of its titles. This was shot at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Oscar weekend: 127 Hours (in Vermont)

2011-02-25T20:46:00.001-06:00

Here's a gem from 2005. Thanks to the Paul Butterfield Blues Band for the musical accompaniment.

Oscar weekend: Easter at the Chicago Botanic Garden

2011-02-25T20:34:00.001-06:00

It's Oscar weekend, so I thought I'd share some home movies that I made. Here's one I call Easter at the Gardens.

Dyspeptic Muffins. Wasn't that a band from the '60s?

2011-02-23T23:32:00.003-06:00

Along with the recipe book from the young adults class by my dad's church (see "Kelvinator Fruit Cake and other delights") I found the Inglenook Cook Book of 1,000 recipes (from #1 Beef Soup to #1000 Real Marshmallows) contributed by the sisters of the Church of the Brethren. The Brethren were also known as the Dunkers because of they way in which they baptized members. I never joined the church but my older brother did. I saw him in his gown enter the baptismal pool at our church and the minister dunked him three times.
The contents of the book I have were copyrighted 1901 by the Brethren Publishing House, Elgin, Ill., and the edition was printed in 1910. I find this book notable for many reasons. First, every recipe assumes the cook has some skill and knowledge in the kitchen. Cakes are baked not for any specified amount of time. They are just baked. Recipe authors do not use oven temperatures but rather instruct to bake in a "hot", a "moderate", a "slow" or a "quick" oven.
Second, unlike today's recipes, the measurements are imprecise. Cooks add lumps of butter "the size of a walnut" or "a small egg" or "a hen's egg." To make corn soup, one boils a soup bone and then saves "enough broth for the soup." For Irish Moss (#965), "Buy 10 cents worth of Irish sea moss in the drug store, then take a piece the size of a dollar and wash it in cold water."

Third, the instructions give insight into how the sisters lived their lives. For recipe #3, Sunday Soup, one soaks beans over night, then, "In the morning, when they have simmered half an hour or until breakfast, pour off the water through a colander." Apparently there is cooking to be done before breakfast. Later the beans are cooked again. "After church, visit or washing (according to the day) add to your beans a teacupful of sweet cream . . ." There is a day to go to church, a day to visit and a day to wash.
Consider the detail in recipe #8, Chicken with Noodles by Sister Lydia A. Barnhart of Ottawa, Kan. "Take a nice fat chicken, cut in pieces and cook until tender, with plenty of rich broth. About nine o'clock in the morning, make a dough with one pint of rich, sweet milk, 2 eggs, a little salt. Roll thin and let dry until dough becomes brittle. Cut up in fine strips and drop into the broth and boil only about 15 minutes." There are only two precise measurements--one pint and two eggs. I suppose you could count "about 15 minutes" as a third measurement. Sister Barnhart does not tell us the weight of the chicken, how long to cook it, how much flour to use for the dough and how fine the strips are to be cut. The book has six separate noodle recipes.

This is the edition I own.

Lard is the frying medium of choice. Fish balls: fry in hot lard. Fried rabbit: fry in a skillet with "plenty of sweet lard." Fried chicken: "Have the skillet on the fire with plenty of butter and lard (1/2 of each), having it smoking hot." Thank you Sister P.G. Peebler, Jennings, La. If fat is your game, you might also like any of the five recipes for Suet Pudding (#286 to #290).

I like reading the home towns of the sisters:

Elgin, Ill. (Maud O. Fahrney, #78 Frizzled Dried Beef)
North English, Iowa (Alice Barber, #82 Hash Balls)
Stuarts Draft, Va. (E.D. Kendig, #112 Fried Pork Steak)
Elklick, Pa. (Cora A. Keim, #584 Tomato Salad)
Lordsburg, Calif. (Evelyn T. Keiser, #199 Peach Fritters)
Tropico, Calif. (Lucy Magie, #268 La Fiesta Pudding)

I find the recipe names fanciful: A Good Dish for Supper (#81), Healthful Potpie (#157), Excellent Lemon Pudding (#265), Dyspeptic Muffins (#354), Transparent Pie (#662), Old Maid's Cake (#779) and Old-fashioned Corn Pone (#417). Remember, this book was published 100 years ago. What was the new-fashioned corn pone like in 1910?

There are foods I have no idea of, like the aforementioned Sea Moss. This book has three recipes for panada (#967, #968 and #969). It's bread softened with broth, water or cream, sometimes mashed with meat and served to the sick. Pawn Haas (#999) is scrapple (pork, beef, buckwheat flour and seasonings). I know of snitz. Those are dried apples. Knep is out of my ken. I make it out to be a dough or dumpling. The sisters contributed six recipes for Snitz and Knep (#166 to #171).

This charming little book offers advice on Preserving and Canning (#869 to #914). #869 is Twentieth Century Apple Butter by Sister N. J. Roop of Warrensburg, Mo. To make 10 gallons requires "20 gallons of cider, 20 pounds of sugar and a 3-hooped tub of quartered apples." Sister Roop explains, "This butter can be made between breakfast and supper, and no hurry or night work."

In recipes For The Sick (#948 to #977) we find the aforementioned Panada and Irish Moss along with Barley Water for Fever (#950), Broth (#952), Corn Meal Tea (#955) and Toast Water or Crust Coffee (#973). "Toast a slice of bread a nice brown, but be careful not to burn it. Put it into a bowl and pour over enough boiling water to cover it. Cover bowl and let stand; then add a piece of ice, and when cool give to the patient by teaspoonful." Sister Chas. Hawbaker, Franklin Grove, Ill.

I wonder if my health plan covers Crust Coffee?

Election Day in Chicago

2011-02-22T12:58:00.002-06:00

Chicagoans vote for a new mayor today. I live in the suburbs so I cannot vote (legally) in this election. But I used to live in the city and I always "exercised my civic duty." The first time I voted in a Chicago election was in 1979. I was a college student living with two friends on the third floor of a six-flat on Sheridan Road in Rogers Park. Challenger Jane Byrne beat Mayor Michael Bilandic in that primary election because of the mayor's mishandling of snow removal following the blizzards that winter.

One of my roommates and I drove through the New Year's Eve blizzard. We left his home in Philadelphia and drove across Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. We were driving west and the storm was moving east. That was not a good combination. We stopped for a bathroom break at a rest stop. We returned to the car to find that the locks had frozen. My roommate went back to the bathroom for a wad of paper towels. He told me to stay in the lobby while he went out to the car, rolled the towels to make a torch, lit the torch with a cigarette lighter and held it to the door. I watched for a bit then ran out to tell him he was working on the wrong car. Later, I had read that the way to do it is to heat the car key and insert it in the lock. I don't own a cigarette lighter. Instead, I carry a vial of lock de-icer in my winter coat. (I used to keep it in the car, then the logic of that decision sunk in.) I have to buy a new vial because it was confiscated at the courthouse when I reported for jury duty. (See earlier blog post.)

Back to the road trip. We arrived in Chicago on New Year's Day. The sky was blue and clear. But there were few parking spaces to be found on the street because it was early and no one had yet shoveled out their cars.

Jane Byrne was the "good government" candidate and I had to vote for her because, at the time, I was also for good government. My polling place was in a barbershop on Sheridan Road near my apartment. When I went to vote there were two guys sitting around. One was the barber, the other I took to be a committee man or precinct captain. Either way, he was part of the mayor's Machine. I was pretty sure he could tell that I, a punk college student, was going to vote against his man. The voting machine was the old style kind with levers, a curtain and a big handle you pulled to register your choices. It was probably loaded up with votes before it was delivered. The entire setting--barbershop, precinct captain and booth--made me feel like a real Chicagoan. Which I wasn't, and after 30+ years of living in and around the city, I'm still not.

These days I vote in a synagogue on an electronic machine. I still think that the machine is loaded up with votes for the wrong candidate before it's delivered. The poll watchers give me a sticker after I have voted and one restaurant in the area offers burger and beer specials to those showing the sticker.

We still have snow storms in Chicago, but not so bad that you want to throw the rascals out.

Kelvinator Fruit Cake and other delights

2011-02-21T14:20:00.008-06:00

Dad had shipped some furniture to us about eight years ago. I never examined the contents of the drawers until earlier this month.That's when I came across a recipe book produced by the "young adults class" of his church. Dad and Mom's names are listed, along with two of dad's sisters. My guess is that the book was published in the early 1950s, before he and mom joined their own church.

She's having way too much fun with that pastry bag.

The names of their classmates form a roll call of Pennsylvania Dutch society: Brubaker, Bucher, Detwelier, Gerber, Gibble, Gingrich, Gootshall, Groff, Heisey, Hess, Hinkle, Hostetter, Hummel, Kline, Risser, Shaver, Stauffer, Weaver, Wolf and Zuver. If I don't know the families personally, I've heard their names (some of them relatives) throughout my years in Lancaster County.

I am guessing that some private publisher sold these cook books to many clubs, churches and associations. The generic acknowledgment reads,

"We wish to acknowledge the fine spirit of co-operation by the organization members and the community at large including the merchants and business firms,without which this cook book could not have been possible.

To the women of the community who contributed their recipes we say many thanks.

The Organization"

Advertisers included a DeSoto and Plymouth garage, a Packard dealer, an electrical contractor, a bologna company, super markets, a lumber company, a clothier, a manufacturer of "high-grade paper boxes", an insurance agency, a tourist court ("a home away from home") and a "memorial works." Plenty of space-filling ads remind readers to "patronize your local merchant" and otherwise blank pages instruct the book owner to "write extra recipes here." The last pages are for "birthdays to remember" and for a Christmas card list.

If this woman stood up, she'd be about 8 feet tall.

Recipes are organized by:

Hors d'oeuvres, Pickles and Relishes
Soups, Salads 'n Vegetables
Meat, Fish 'n Poultry
Bread, rolls, 'n Cookies
Cake 'n Pastry
Desserts
Candy, Jelly 'n Preserves
Miscellaneous

A good copyeditor would have caught the use of "and" in the first series and changed it to 'n. I wonder if the 'n convention was influenced by the decade's emerging rock 'n roll genre.

I have to like an organization that considers cookies, cake and desserts distinct food groups.

Aside from the sweets, there isn't much in this book that I'd want to make (or eat). I'm sure I was served "Cranberry Salad" when I was a boy. It's Jell-O with a can of cranberry jelly, crushed pineapple and nuts. "Chill in individual molds. Serve on lettuce." Thank you Mrs. Detweiler.

With their Cheese Souffle recipes, Mrs. Detweiler and Mrs. Stauffer engage in a Bobby Flay-style "throw down." Mrs. Stauffer uses more milk and eggs. What's up with Ham Loaf? The young adults offer three recipes for this dish.

The church itself contributed a recipe for Communion Bread. My brothers, sister and I loved to eat this outside of the rite of communion (for which we'll surely go to hell). For me, at least, it was a tasty snack. Now I can make it myself. I just need 25 pounds of pastry flour, 6 pounds of butter, 12 tsp. salt, 2 1/2 quarts of milk, 2 1/2 quarts of cream. Makes 650 servings.

The spelling of "cocoanut" permeates the cookie section -- cocoanut cookies and orange-cocoanut cake. Mrs. Laudermilch divulged her recipe for "Kelvinator Fruit Cake" which requires a 12-hour standing time in where else but the Kelvinator. Mrs. Laudermilch suggests serving the cake with whipped cream, pudding sauce or hard sauce. Hard sauce, Mrs. Laudermilch? You realize this is a church cook book.

Who wants some "Glorified Rice"? It's rice, pineapple, marshmallows, nuts and powdered sugar. Mrs. Bashore says "this is a very delicious dessert to serve after a heavy meal or to serve for lunch with wafers and cocoa, if desired it can be served in sherbet glasses with a red cherry on top."

Fannie Allwein goes Continental with her "omelet sans sauci." You figure it out.

Hungry for Fudge, Chocolate College Fudge, Chocolate Fudge, Marshmallow Fudge or Peanut Butter Fudge? The young adults have the recipes.

Mrs. Ensminger contributes "Clever Judy Frosting" and Jean Meyer gives up "Lucian Eggs."

The book concludes with a variety of menus. A "quick meal from the freezer" includes this dinner: perch float, asparagus spears, frosty fruit cup, applesauce and mint sherbet. How about this lunch from the "sample reducing diet menu": banquet salad with mineral oil mayonnaise, cornmeal crisps-salad wafers, canned pears, skim milk or buttermilk, 1 glass. To gain weight there is this helpful dinner menu: apricot nectar, braised beef heart, green Lima beans, Kohlrabe, jellied tomato salad, whole-wheat or enriched bread and carrot custard pie.

Bon appetit!

Mid-century Mom

2011-02-17T17:41:00.000-06:00

Mom, as photographed by Dad, circa 1958

Mom with two bottles (both for my younger brother? or one for him, one for me?). Mom was born on this day in 1926.

Clean labels, clean plates

2011-02-15T22:49:00.000-06:00

In my day job, I edited an article recently about clean labels in processed foods. "Clean label" refers to an ingredient statement that is short and free of additives and artificial ingredients. Haagen-Dazs Five vanilla ice cream is often pointed to as an example. It is made with five ingredients: skim milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks and vanilla. The author wrote about other dairy products. Yogurt has three ingredients: milk and two live cultures. Butter has one (or two): cream (and salt). Milk has the ultimate clean label: milk.

The government's new Dietary Guidelines for Americans emphasize eating low-fat, low-sodium and high-fiber foods. One of the best ways to ensure healthy eating is to cook for yourself. I am a fan of Mark Bittman,who recently resigned his column in the New York Times called The Minimalist. He is a proponent of home cooking and eating well. He reminds me (and he himself referred to) Craig Claiborne, a former Timesman who wrote the cookbook, The 60-Minute Gourmet. I've served many of those dishes over the years. Sixty minutes to prepare a meal is a luxury nowadays; the magazines I read have recipes for 15-minute and 20-minute meals (which usually include the prep time and the cooking time).

When I had a couple of snow days this month, I started organizing the recipes I had clipped from newspapers and magazines and had printed from the Internet. I three-hole punched them and placed them in three-ring binders. I have one binder for mains and another salads and desserts. Many of the meals center around pasta and vegetables. There's a roasted broccoli and pasta dish; pasta and peas; pasta and pumpkin; pasta, white beans and escarole. The best thing about the recipes are the seasonings they call for. My food can be unimaginative and on the bland side. Ingredients like lemon or lime, cumin or sea salt, red pepper or fennel, make the food more interesting.

I have collected a lot of recipes involving shrimp. Frozen shrimp has become my friend. I buy the two-pound bags and take out what I need, according to the recipe. I used to buy a lot of chicken breasts or tenders. I have jilted the bird and taken up with the crustacean.

Greek beet salad with capers and feta cheese

Last week we bought beets for a salad recipe ("Roasted Beet Salad with Beet Greens and Feta") I found when I was cleaning up. It turns out this was from the March 1997 Bon Appetit. I don't recall having made this before.

The beet tops had wilted in the fridge. Every time I opened the refrigerator door, I saw these limp stems and leaves. I hate to waste food, and I was afraid I was going to have to throw them out if I didn't "get cracking." This morning I got out of bed at 6 and decided I was going to roast the beets before I left for work. I cut off the beet tops, put them in a bowl of water and returned them to the fridge to rehydrate. This evening I finished the salad (six ingredients, plus water). We ate it with veggie tacos (tofu, corn, spinach, spices). We cleaned our plates.

Snow stories

2011-02-07T21:49:00.001-06:00

It's snowing again tonight. It snowed this afternoon, topping up the snow that fell last week. Then it stopped. Now it's snowing again.
A week ago, the weather forecasters were predicting a blizzard. They had their maps and their computer models. With certainty, they told us the storm would begin in Chicago at 3 p.m. You know what? They were right. I saw a VP at work leave the office about 2:30. Around 3:15, a rep from HR told us we could go home.
The wind was howling last Tuesday night. We have new windows and they are weather-tight. They held out the wind. But we could hear it whistling. And a cable, hanging from the gutter to the driveway, was being whipped and banged against the side of our house. (I looked at it the next day, and couldn't determine what it is. It's not a telephone line or a TV cable.) An email from work said the office would be closed on Wednesday.
On Wednesday morning, the snow was still falling. A drift in front of the garage door was 4 feet tall. Another drift in the side yard prevented the dog from reaching one corner of her dog run. But along the north side of the house, I could see bare pavement on the driveway. I had bought scones the day before, in anticipation of the storm. I wanted to have a breakfast treat.

Later in the morning, I started shoveling. I worked in 30-minutes shifts. I cleared the front steps and a walkway to the sidewalk. There were 20 inches of snow, undrifted. I cleared the back steps and a path to the garage. I tackled the drift in front of the garage door. Then the driveway, which by now was buried in about 8 inches of snow. As I shoveled, I dug up twigs that had been blown down in the night. The branches were atop about 10 snow and buried by another 10 inches. It was like an archaeological dig. My wife joined me in the afternoon, and we finished off the driveway, enough that we could back out the car. Before I went to bed, I checked e-mail. There was a message from work. The office was closed for a second day. Hooray!
Back at work on Friday, I listened to my co-workers' storm stories. They weren't very interesting or unusual. We all suffered in the snow.
Tonight, the snow falls again. It muffles the sound of cars and trucks. The dog comes in from outside and her black fur is flecked with white. The new snow is pretty. But I've had enough of it for now.

Sunday in the Park With Jim

2011-01-31T07:34:00.001-06:00

The spring flower show is on at Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago. We visited there yesterday and I made this video with some photos I shot. The conservatory is our "go-to" spot in the winter when we need warmth and a shot of color.

Handmade foods: beef stew

2011-01-18T12:58:00.001-06:00

Beef stew is my go-to meal in the winter. Usually, I make it on a Sunday because I have the time to let it slow cook. My wife and I will get two dinners out of this, and maybe a lunch, too.

Last weekend I was organizing recipes that I had clipped from newspapers and magazines. I came across a recipe from Wine Spectator for daube, the classic beef stew. I ordered daube twice on our trip to France last year; once in Aix-en-Provence and once in Paris. This recipe has the beef marinating overnight in red wine. Usually, I add the wine while I'm cooking, to deglaze the pot. But I decided to try the marinated version.

When I woke up Monday morning, I started the coffee brewing, then launched into the beef stew project. I cooked the beef chunks in oil to remove some of the liquid. Then I removed the beef and added the juices to the marinade. I added the beef back to the pot to sear it, removed it again and again saved the juices. Then I sauteed onions. After that, I dusted them with flour, added the wine marinade, tossed in the beef, sliced carrots and cubed potatoes. The recipe calls for bay leaves, thyme and some other seasonings. I left out the thyme because I'm not a fan. I added a can of tomatoes, too. Also, the recipe didn't call for potatoes, but you got to have them, right?

The whole thing cooked for an hour or so. Then the Dutch oven went into the fridge and I went off to work. Not a bad morning, eh? The house smelled great and the evening's dinner was made.

Handmade foods: ice cream

2011-01-17T13:16:00.000-06:00

We received an ice cream maker for a wedding gift. That was more than 26 years ago. We used it regularly that first year. After that, it sat on the shelf alongside other food-making appliances we bought or were given to us over the years, including a bread-making machine and a deep fryer. I've restrained myself from buying other appliances, especially a rice maker and cappuccino machine. A heavy cast iron pot with lid makes beautiful rice and my stovetop Bialetti is quite reliable.

Last month, my job took me to a commercial ice-cream making plant, and that sparked a renewed interest in the wedding gift. I dusted off the Richmond Cedar Works machine and brought it upstairs from the basement. I found the instruction booklet (that in itself was remarkable), which contains recipes. We bought the ingredients and I set out to make a basic vanilla ice cream. I scalded two cups of milk then stirred in a cup of sugar. Then I poured in a quart of light cream and four tablespoons of vanilla. When this was cool, I poured the mixture into the stainless steel canister (called the freezer) of the ice cream maker, added the plastic paddle and affixed the lid.
Instead of buying chipped ice, I used snow, which we have an abundance of. I built a three-inch layer of snow, topped it with table salt, built another snow layer, followed by salt, then snow again. I plugged in the machine and it whirred away. About three years ago I bought a new plastic paddle because our dog chewed up the old one. It was in a kitchen cabinet drawer and the dog got into it. This was at a time in her life when she was chewing everything. I think I documented this in an earlier post. When we left Maggie alone in the kitchen, she pulled everything off the countertops (coffee maker, coffee bean grinder, can opener and toaster oven) and pulled out everything under the sink (cleaning supplies, brushes and rags).
I referred to the directions again after about ten minutes of whirring. This is a habit of mine. Read the directions. Follow the directions (but skip a step, usually critical). Then re-read the directions to make sure I read them correctly the first time. That's how I learned I should have added a cup of water between layering the snow and the salt.
The directions said to let the maker run for 20 to 30 minutes. I turned off the machine after half an hour to see my precious dessert. It was still liquid. Nothing had churned. So I re-assembled the lid to the freezer and started the motor back up. Then I added more salt. I remembered that my dad told me the brine mixture is what causes the freezing, not the ice alone. One summer, I made ice cream in our hand-cranked maker. I had used only ice with no salt. When he came home from work, he told me that salt is key. So I added more salt to the maker.
After another 30 minutes, I stopped the machine and looked into the freezer. The mixture was the consistency of mush, just like the instruction book said. Success! I divided the mix into three tupperware containers. Into one I added half-a-cup of espresso. Into another I added two jiggers of rum and some raisins. I left the third container as plain vanilla.
All three flavors taste great. I know what all the ingredients are, and can pronounce them all. I used no artificial colors or flavors. The mouthfeel isn't quite right, though. I think I will beat the mix longer next time (and make sure the brine is colder sooner). That should make the ice cream feel creamier.
I am already thinking about the next flavors to make. Peppermint, coconut and toffee are at the top of the list. I'll let you know.

Handmade foods: Croquettes

2011-01-16T20:20:00.003-06:00

Gather my wife, her three brothers and her sister, sit them around a table during the holidays, and sooner or later one of them will mention "mama's kroketjes." "Croquette-yas" is more or less the phonetic pronunciation of the Dutch, meaning "little croquettes." My mother-in-law served these fried meat logs at Christmastime. I ate them on several occasions and loved them, but my wife and inlaws LOVED them. So I had to try to replicate Willie's croquettes.

Two croquettes on a platter.

One brother-in-law makes them, but he says he can't get the seasoning right. My wife has never made them, but she knows what they should taste like. My sister-in-law made them with her mom, but her recipe was not an exact match. With a little Internet sleuthing, I came up with a recipe that was close, my wife said, but not like mama used to make.
You don't whip up a batch of croquettes on the spur of the moment. You can't come home from work, open the fridge door, fire up the stovetop and say, "Let's have croquettes for dinner."* No, this is a two-day project. First you slow-cook stew beef until it is tender. I browned about a pound of chuck in vegetable oil, then simmered it in canned beef broth. The second time I made it, I cooked it with finely chopped onions. (My wife didn't remember the onions, but her sister said they should be in there.) When the beef is cooked, chop it into little pieces.
Then you have to make a roux. The recipes I found said to use equal parts butter and flour. I used 4 tablespoons of each. Then stir in a cup of milk until it all thickens. The first time I made these, I seasoned with curry powder and paprika (because I thought every European-born cook uses paprika. Not my mother-in-law). The second time, using my sister-in-law's instructions, I used clove and curry. My wife said that is not right. The third time we'll use all-spice in addition to some curry. The curry flavor is a "for sure."
To the roux, add the meat. Then form the mixture into 3-inch-long logs. These should be firm but not hard. You don't want them loose at all. If they are too loose, they'll break apart in frying. The consistency of my first batch was perfect. The second batch was too loose. I made some into little balls for my own personal consumption. That shape doesn't fly with my wife. The form has to be like a log. Then you refrigerate overnight. A pound of meat yields eight logs.

These bad boys are ready for eating.

The next day, you can cook the croquettes. Dredge them in flour, dip in beaten egg, coat with bread crumbs and lower into hot oil. Deep-fry these for about seven minutes and serve with brown mustard. You will be happy.

Read this blog entry at Almost Bourdain about Dutch croquettes. I followed the recipe for the most part, omitting the spices and seasonings. The pictures are helpful.

*I froze half the mixture and thawed it one morning before I left for work. That evening I opened the fridge door, fired up the stovetop and said, "Let's have croquettes for dinner."

A happy new year

2011-01-11T21:11:00.000-06:00

Times Square

Pardon me. Here it is the 11th day of January and I have not yet wished my readers a happy new year. In my enthusiasm to review "Ship Fever," I neglected to fill you in on my holiday celebrations.

We celebrated New Year's Eve with another couple at a French restaurant on Chicago's north side. The place we had been haunting for the past three Eves, Cafe Matou, closed this summer. My wife and I arrived early and were seated at a delightful little table in the path of waiters and busboys scurrying in and out of the kitchen and where we could watch (and hear) the busboys toss clean silverware into the service drawers, making quite the racket. I requested a different table and we were re-seated in the main dining room just as our friends arrived.

The food was excellent; I ordered the special appetizer: seared bay scallops with caramelized endive (written carmelized on the menu) and trumpet royale mushrooms and the special entree dish: pan-roasted skatewing with braised fennel and sauce vert. Those scallops were out of this world, and the skatewing was equally delish. (Oh, now I'm sounding like Rachel Ray. Yum-O. I mean, Ick.) The first bite of the skatewing told me that the fish had not been de-boned. The waiter happened by at the same time I was removing bone from my lips. He showed me how to push the meat away from the cartilage. I don't remember the dessert, but I'm pretty sure it was really chocolaty and good.

Perry Mason and Della Street

We watched the ball drop in Times Square and stayed up until 11:30 (central time) so we could see who "dunnit" on Perry Mason, then spent the last 30 minutes of 2010 in the company of Morpheus.

On New Year's Day we continued the tradition (now in its third year) of joining my brother-in-law and his family at the Cafe Ba-ba-Reeba pajama brunch. The niece/nephew were there with their boyfriend/girlfriend. The cafe is a tapas restaurants, so there are always a lot of small plates being passed around. Happily, the grilled squid found no other takers but me. If you arrive at the restaurant in your pajamas, the server gives you gift cards equal to the amount of your check for use another day at the restaurant. This works out well.

Before brunch, we watched the TicketCity Bowl (Northwestern versus Texas Tech) at Buffalo Wild Wings, a sports bar chain. A former co-worker told me she had heard the chain referred to as B-W-3, but she did not know what the 3Ws were. Later, I read that the original name is Buffalo Wild Wings and Weck. Weck is a kind of bread, kummelweck. Regardless, we watched the dismal first half of the game and listened to the third quarter on the radio in the car en route to Cafe B-B-R-B. It appeared that my beloved Wildcats would lose again on New Year's Day. (On Jan. 1, 2010, the Cats went down in overtime to Auburn. That team won the national championship last night, again on a field goal.) But I digress. Back in the car after brunch, we learned that NU lost by just seven points.

Sean Penn, Timothy Hutton and a falcon

Later in the evening we made a pork-and-sauerkraut dinner, a New Year's Day tradition for the Pennsylvania Dutch. In all the years I ate that as a kid, I never put two and two together. It was only as an adult, when I had my own household, that mom asked if we made pork and sauerkraut. Then she told me it was a good luck tradition. On New Year's Day I did stay up past midnight. "The Falcon and the Snowman" was on TV. Timothy Hutton is really good in this and Sean Penn is excellent.

So that was how I spent NYE and NYD. It won't be too difficult to top those days in 2011 on the fun-and-excitement meter. All in all, though, I had a good time.

Reading list: Ship Fever And Other Stories

2011-01-07T21:56:00.002-06:00

Refugees are dying in over-crowded camp hospitals. It sounds like something in a war-torn African nation or post-earthquake Haiti. But it's not. It's the situation in 19th century Canada. Irish immigrants, fleeing the potato famine, are taken off the ships and quarantined on Grosse Isle in the St. Lawrence River. They suffer from typhus, or "ship fever," and many will die, as will the doctors and nuns who care for them.

"Ship Fever," a short story by Andrea Barrett, tells the story of Ireland's potato famine and its affect on the country's citizens in a way I've never read before. The starvation was brutal. Families scrounged the woods for weeds to eat. There was no government relief in the form of food or medicine. The "lucky" ones boarded ships to North America. If they surveyed the sea journey, they probably came down with typhus. If they surveyed the disease, they were sent on to Quebec or Montreal, with no social services to integrate them into the country. The anti-Irish sentiment in the United States kept out the Irish and the Canadians, including earlier Irish immigrants, were none too pleased to accept the new arrivals either.

"What's going on here [the deaths in the refugee camp] has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with politics," writes Dr. Lauchlin Grant in his diary. He's frustrated by the lack of aid from the government. Grant is the center of "Ship Fever." He's hopelessly in love with a childhood friend, now married to another man, a crusading journalist exposing England's neglect of the Irish. Grant saves the life of an illiterate Irish woman and they work together in the camp for a time. Barrett based her story on an eyewitness account written by a survivor of the passage from Ireland to Canada.

In the other short stories in this book, Barrett also weaves science and the history of science and medicine into her tales. Carl Linneaus, the man who developed the binomial taxonomy of plant life, figures in two of the stories. Barrett writes that Linneaus and other scientists of the time believed that starlings hibernated on the bottom of lakes in wintertime. It was inconceivable to them that birds would migrate. In one story, a woman sets out to prove this theory wrong. In another story, Barrett eventually explains the mystery of "Birds with No Feet," a tale of naturalists investigating the origins of the species. Gregor Mendel figures in "The Behavior of the Hawkweeds."

The other seven stories in this book are nowhere near as sad and horrifying as "Ship Fever." I would call them all melancholy, though. Some are set in modern times with husbands and wives facing difficult marriages or sisters dealing with their sick father.

"Ship Fever And Other Stories" received the 1996 National Book Award for fiction.

While looking for something else

2010-12-31T09:49:00.000-06:00

We played tourist in our own city this week. I had time off from work so we headed downtown to the Art Institute of Chicago. I wanted to see the Marc Chagall stained glass windows, which were re-installed this year upon the completion of the new modern wing. The museum removed the windows because of fears that the pounding, shaking and general disruptions from construction would damage the installation.

The museum has a marketing campaign now called "Home for the Holidays" that encourages visitors to see the windows, the Thorne miniature rooms and the armor. We saw all three, as a matter of fact.

While looking for the armor, we came across an installation titled Public Notice 3. On the risers of the grand staircase, in colorful LEDs, are the words from a speech about religious tolerance. This just blew us away. We had never seen anything like it. At first we thought perhaps these were random words set off in color. But as we looked, we saw that the words formed coherent sentences. We started reading from the bottom of the staircase and continued up to the landing. There, the stairs continued on the left and on the right. We read the entire speech, then read the placard which explained what we just saw.

As explained on the Art Institute's website, Jitish Kallat, "the contemporary Indian artist has designed a site-specific installation that connects two key historical moments—the First World Parliament of Religions held on September 11, 1893, and the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that very date, 108 years later." Check out the site for more about this piece.

Below (and above) are photos I shot of the stairway, and also pictures of the Thorne rooms (some of which were altered with appropriate for the period holiday decor) and the armor.

One of the Thorne miniature rooms

Decorated for the holidays

Pumpkin breath

2010-12-30T20:23:00.001-06:00

We had three whole pumpkins, plus a carved jack o'lantern, on our front steps for Halloween. Me being me, I keep things around for a long time. Though I had tossed the carved jack in November, I kept the other three orange orbs on the porch until the first snow fell. The pumpkins looked out of place with their caps of snow. I left them on the porch for another 10 days then tossed them on the compost heap behind the garage.
One afternoon I trudged through the snow to toss more vegetable waste on the pile. As I rounded the corner of the garage, I saw a squirrel scamper off the pile and climb a post of our cedar stockade fence. It's little jaws were working up and down like pistons, nibbling on something in its paws. I looked at the compost pile and saw that a hole had been eaten through the shell of the pumpkin. Inside, my gray fur-clad friend had discovered a trove of seeds. Clever little creature. (I took this photo days later after another snowstorm covered the pumpkin entirely. That's why you don't see squirrel tracks.)
Seeing this reminded me of two books I had read. I had just completed Cold Mountain and so I thought of Inman, who, on his odyssey back to his home, would scavenge food in the mountains. Ada buried cabbages in the earth so that she could retrieve them in the winter for something to eat. In The Road, father and son, on their journey to the water, stumbled upon caches of food and gorged themselves. They were living in a post-apocalyptic world where grocery stores no longer existed.
I am fortunate to have a fridge and pantry stocked with goodies, some readymade. I have the fixings to make meals and treats. I tossed the pumpkin on the pile only so that it would decompose, never thinking that it contained sustenance for a hungry squirrel.

Top moments of 2010

2010-12-27T21:47:00.002-06:00

This past year for me has been one of home and travel, theater and art, family and friends. Following, in no rank order, are my highlights of 2010.

Fixing up the house. It all started with a mudroom, then changed as we faced our needs and our wants. We wanted a covered back porch where we could clean the dog's paws and stamp the snow off our feet. The idea was to move the washer and dryer from the basement to this new porch. The remodelers wanted to build us a family room addition with a bedroom up top. Well, sure. But there was a matter of budget. We re-thought our plans.

We needed a new roof. It was long overdue in fact. When our contractor Ramiero and his brother tore off the old roofs, they found five layers. I think up to three layers is generally recognized as safe. After that, Rameiro removed the old aluminum siding (top photo) and replaced it with vinyl (bottom).

Then we designed a patio for the side yard and Bob the landscaper installed new sidewalks as well. He finished that project just before Thanksgiving. Next spring and summer we'll be able to enjoy it fully. The roof, siding, patio and walks look great, and we feel better about the house.

Traveling, at home and abroad. Business trips this year took me to Orlando, Las Vegas (twice, one week apart; never again), Miami, Wisconsin, Buffalo and Spain. Pleasure trips took us to Nashville and France.

Revisiting Granada, Spain, was memorable. I first saw the Alhambra in 1976, touring the old Moorish city on a student's budget. This time around the accommodations were better. Instead of traveling solo, I was in the company of witty architects, designers and journalists. I ate better and had a better appreciation for what I was eating. It was a magical tour.
In the spring, my wife and I drove to Nashville to see her brother and to tour the area. We listened to a concert of the Grand Ole Opry in Ryman Auditorium. We saw the Dale Chihuly exhibit in the city's botanic garden. We looked for the White Trash Diner, only to find it out of business.
In late summer, we flew to France. In Paris we visited Pere Lachaise cemetery, Musee d'Orsay and the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, then rode the fast train (TGV) to Aix-en-Provence and poked around there for several days, visiting the seaside resort of Cassis and the salt operations in the Camargue.

Somewhere in Provence

Rene Fleming, the great soprano, gave a two-hour, sold-out performance at the Civic Opera House in Chicago. She was very funny with her introductions to the arias. I think we gave her four or five standing ovations and she responded with a like amount of encores.

Good books. Through the recommendation of an architect I met on my Spanish rambles, I read two novels by Charles Portis, "The Dog of the South" and "True Grit." I also liked "Operation Mincemeat," the true story of a British intelligence operation to fool the Germans in World War II, "Cold Mountain," "Them" and "The Moviegoer."

A new job. In August I landed a full-time job as editor in chief of a trade magazine. I had been making a go of a freelance career that was gaining traction, but I know my temperament, and it is one that requires an office and co-workers.

Self-portrait of my neighbor

My neighbor turned 100. One hundred years old and still living in her own house. Mrs. G was the first to welcome us to the neighborhood 19 years ago. I asked our village government to draw up a proclamation, which they delivered to her home. Mrs. G's daughter and family threw her a party. Later in the year, a Lithuanian heritage museum in Chicago held an exhibition of my neighbor's art. (Her self portrait, left.)

The theater. Our little village is home to a professional theater company. It stages some plays in the library club building and others in the back room of a book store. We saw "A Streetcar Named Desire" in the library club, and you would swear you were sweltering in a shotgun house in New Orleans. Blanche unraveled in front of your eyes before a menacing Stanley. "Travels With My Aunt" was mounted in the bookstore. The imaginative staging had four actors voicing the banker and trading dialogue like they were jazz musicians. When we walk home from the performances, we imagine we're in Manhattan, walking up Broadway to our apartment.

The death of my aunt. My sister called her the matriarch, this oldest living relative on my father's side of the family. My aunt lived in the same central Pennsylvania town her entire life. Her friends sang her praises at a memorial service. I knew this woman as my aunt. I saw her through her friends eyes--a demanding choir director, an honest piano teacher, a fun-loving cousin, an inclusive woman, a true friend. I'm sad she is gone.

Reconnecting with old friends. My college roommate came to town, and some other friends threw a party in his honor. He is "the straw that stirs the drink" (to use a favorite phrase of mine). The old gang from the third floor of our dorm came together one evening in March. I had thrown out my back that morning and was in terrible pain, but the company and the memories provided a comforting balm. Later in the year I met former co-workers for lunch. Though I had not seen them for five months, it was as if I had never left. We picked up the conversation as if I had been gone just a week. Family and friends--that's what it's all about.

Read my highlights of 2009 and 2008 here.

To all my readers, I wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous new year, a year that is filled with love.

Too much TV

2010-12-23T22:42:00.001-06:00

You are a baby boomer who watched too much television as a child if:

You learned the legal concept of citizen's arrest from Barney and Gomer.

You hear the name Barney and think of a deputy sheriff and not a purple dinosaur (or Neil Patrick Harris's current role.)

You accept Allan Melvin as a con man on The Andy Griffith Show and as Rob Petrie's army buddy.

Illya Kuryakin

The three best-known Russians in the 1960s (to you) were Chekov, Illya Kuryakin and Natasha Fatale.

The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name Chekov is Star Trek, not the Russian playwright.

On the other hand, when you hear the name Henrik Ibsen, you think of Laugh In's Henry Gibson and can hear him say, "And I'm Henry Gibson."

When you know you are right about something, you say, "You bet your sweet bippy."

You're not sure you can identify Oliver Wendell Holmes, but you definitely know who Oliver Wendell Douglas is. And sometimes you wonder if Chip and Ernie Douglas are his nephews.

When you are introducing a group of friends, you mentally add "And Jerry Mathers, as the Beaver." Or, if Gilligan's Island was more your speed, you say to yourself "and the rest."

After you hear "swimming pools" you think "movie stars."

When you make a mistake, your first response is "Sorry about that chief."

Bill Daily (middle)

You think that Bill Daily was a better sidekick as Howard Borden than as Roger Healy.

Even at your tender age, you recognized I Dream of Jeannie as a rip off of Bewitched and The Munsters as poor man's Addams Family.

You honed your European accents by watching Hogan's Heroes.

Jesse White

Before you knew Jesse White as the trustworthy Maytag repairman, you remember him as a petty criminal on Perry Mason.

In the back of your mind, you thought that maybe a horse really could talk. But you immediately knew that My Mother The Car was stupid.

You wanted an identical cousin of your own.

You debated with your siblings which uncle you would want to adopt you should something happen to your parents. And would he have a butler?

Now it's your turn. Leave a comment.

Reading list: True Grit

2010-12-17T23:15:00.001-06:00

The movie is coming out this month, so I was in a race to read True Grit before the release of the remake. I finished the novel last night on a plane ride back from Buffalo. When the United flight landed, a gate was not ready. Traffic control sent us to the penalty box, where we waited for 15 minutes. That gave me enough time to read the end of the story, plus the afterword by Donna Tartt.

I have read one other novel by Charles Portis, that being The Dog of the South (see earlier post). I was ignorant of Portis until February of this year. I met an American architect from Texas on a business trip to Spain. He liked that I had read Walker Percy, so he recommended another Southern writer. On the bus from Granada to Seville, he gave me a piece of paper on which he had written Portis' name and the title of his four novels. I absolutely loved Dog (as the cognescenti write), or should I say TDOS (another affectation of smarty pants)? I was eager to try Grit, or should I say TG?

I have not seen the original movie. I was a teenager when it was released, and at the time wasn't any kind of fan of John Wayne. He was too "establishment" for a radical "know-it-all" like me. With the passage of time and the mellowing of my views, I an willing to give Wayne and the movie a chance. Neither Wayne nor Jeff Bridges, though, are close in age to how Portis describes Cogburn.

Mattie Ross is a 14 year old girl. Tom Chaney, a hired hand, killed her father in cold blood. She hires Rooster Cogburn, U.S. marshal, to bring Chaney to justice. Or kill him. She wasn't particular. LeBoeuf is a Texas Ranger who is also after Chaney for the murder of a Texas politician. The three of them then hunt down Chaney. The story is told in the first person by Ross, who is in her 40s, I guess.

What I liked about The Dog of the South were Ray Midge's (the narrator) off-beat opinions and observations. This book is full of them, too. Here are some favorites:

"I have known some horses and a good many more pigs who I believe harbored evil intent in their hearts. I will go further and say all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sly faces? Some preachers will say, well, that is superstitious 'claptrap.' My answer is this: Preacher, go to your Bible and read Luke 8:26-33."

"On his deathbed he asked for a priest and became a Catholic. That was his wife's religion. It was his own business and none of mine. If you had sentenced one hundred and sixty men to death and seen around eighty of them swing, then maybe at the last minute you would feel the need of some stronger medicine than the Methodists could make. It was something to think about."

[On seeing Cogburn, in the court house, for the first time.]"I was surprised when an old one-eyed jasper that was built along the lines of Grover Cleveland went up and was sworn. I say 'old.' He was about forty years of age.

"Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone."

[Cogburn spars with LeBouef, making fun of the Texas Rangers.] "Rooster said, 'How long have you boys been mounted on sheep down there?"

There are others, but I did not dog-ear the pages in the later stages of the novel. I like the names of the bandits, including the leader, Lucky Ned Pepper (who really is lucky) and one of his acolytes, The Original Greaser Bob.

This is a fast-moving adventure story, which you could finish in a day. It is, writes, Mattie, "my true account of how I avenged Frank Ross's blood over in the Choctaw Nation when snow was on the ground." And this is my true account of how I came to love Charles Portis, from Spain to Buffalo and home again as the winds swirled snow on the tarmac in Chicago.

A courthouse and a church home

2010-12-14T21:05:00.002-06:00

I was called to jury duty last week. It seems I am always being called to jury duty. Of the millions of registered voters in Cook County, why me? I've been ordered on nearly one dozen occassions to appear at courthouses in Des Plaines, Skokie, at the Daley Center in downtown Chicago and to the criminal court at 26th and California in Chicago. I have been summoned to the last four or five times during my tenancy in Cook County. I don't like it. It is the court furthest from my home. There is scant in the way of restaurants to patronize during the lunch recess. And it is just inconvenient for me to get to.
My plan last week was to drive through downtown to Roosevelt, head west to California, then south to the court house. Instead, I exited the highway at Fullerton and California because traffic was slowing. (I expected it to be even slower closer into downtown.) So I exited and proceeded south on California. Fullerton is approximately 24 blocks north of Madison (Chicago's N/S equator; State Street is the E/W meridian). I needed to get to 26th Street, 26 blocks south of Madison; in other words, I had 50 blocks ahead of me.
I like driving in Chicago. Even if I haven't been in a neighborhood before, I am familiar with most of the street names, so I never feel totally lost. I know where Kedzie is in relation to Ashland (west) and Pulaski in relation to Cicero (east). My dad liked driving around in country he vaguely knew. When he took back roads through Lancaster or Lebanon counties in Pennsylvania, he called it "spookin' around" which has to be a Pennsylvania Dutch idiom. I was moving great down California, admiring the apartment buildings and storefronts. Suddenly, at Grand Avenue, I was stopped. California does not continue across Grand because of a factory. So, I headed east to Western Avenue, drove south to Roosevelt, picked up California again, and cruised into the parking garage at the court house.
Something caught my eye on the way to the court, and that was the building here, the Douglas Park Church of the Brethren. I was, as the English say, "gobsmacked." The CoB is fairly well known in the eastern states. I haven't seen many in Chicago. This church, opposite Douglas Park, appears to be in an apartment building.
After my court duty ended (I was not called for a jury. I did collect the $17.20 jury duty pay, which my employer demanded I sign over. "It's in the employee manual," the paymaster reminded me.), I doubled back and took this picture through the car's moon roof with my cellphone camera. I grew up in the Brethren church; my paternal grandfather had his own church, and he was a fairly well known minister. All the printed material came from a church distribution point in Elgin, Ill. I would see it on the Sunday school lesson books and the hymnal, too.
Without this exposure to the church, I would probably spell brethren as bretheren. Many years later, I saw that office when I picked up an aunt in Elgin. It is near the on ramp of Interstate 90, heading east towards O'Hare airport. My aunt flew to Chicago twice a year to attend board meetings at the church office. Her board often lunched at the Milk Pail, a famous Elgin landmark, but I read once that it has since closed. After her meeting, my wife and I picked her up, we went to dinner and she spent the night with us before returning to Pennsylvania.
After college, when I had my own apartment, I attended a garage sale in Evanston. It was billed as "The World's Largest Garage Sale" because it was held in the public parking garage in the city's downtown. I saw a Church of the Brethren metal road sign and thought it would fit perfectly in my hand-me-down decor of flea market sofas and chairs, cast-off lamps and the one good family antique--a double bed (not a queen but a double) that my parents shipped to Chicago. My dad was born in this bed (he said conceived in it, too. TMI!) My older brother and my sister also slept in it; not at the same time, though. The bed is in our guestroom, but I no longer have that sign, and don't remember how I disposed of it.
When I'd visit my grandmother during breaks from college, she'd ask if I had found a "church home." (Grandma was married to the minister.) That phrase, "church home," always struck me as odd. I didn't have a tavern home, a work home, a barber home or an auto mechanic home. Still, I answered truthfully that I did not have a church home. I was not a churchgoer. (I like Ellen Degeneres' line about exercising religiously--"every Christmas and Easter," she says. That's about as often as I go to church, though as I get older, I might add "and for funerals, too."
I am not a churchgoer today. And I still don't have a church home. But the sight of a Church of the Brethren sign does incite good memories. And that's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Reading list: Cold Mountain

2010-12-13T23:03:00.001-06:00

Inman, recovering from battle wounds, walks away from the hospital to head for his home in Cold Mountain in western North Carolina. He has just deserted the Confederate Army. Inman intends to propose marriage to Ada.
Ada is all alone on the farm her father bought after they moved from Charleston, S.C. Her father died and the caretaker left for Texas. Ada can read Shakespeare, paint and play the piano. Running a farm is beyond her ken.

That's the bare story of "Cold Mountain," the National Book Award-winning first novel by Charles Frazier. The story is in the details. On his odyssey, Inman encounters an array of situations and people, including a preacher ready to throw his pregnant (and drugged) girlfriend off a cliff, a hearty farmer trying to pull a dead bull out of a stream, a woman who lives with goats in the mountain, a charging mama bear, and the Home Guard, a nasty gang that would just as soon kill the deserters as turn them back over to the army.

The chapters about Inman's journey reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." Both stories have the same bleekness and the same intensity to survive at any cost. As Frazier makes clear, nobody wins at war. Warfare in the mid-19th century was exceptionally brutal. The young men who enthusiastically signed up because it was a matter of honor, quickly found out otherwise. Life on a farm with only a horse as power and home-grown food the only source of sustenance was hard work, day in and day out.
Inman's story alternates with Ada's. Ruby, a wise young woman who pretty much reared herself in the woods, comes to teach Ada about farming. Ruby knows the names of all the trees, herbs, birds and animals. She knows what's to be done during which phase of the moon. Sowing seed at the wrong time or killing a hog when the moon is not in its proper phase can have serious repercussions.

Frazier creates densely layered scenes. A close encounter with a crane in a river was particularly memorable. I like his descriptions of people. Sometimes just a sentence conveys the idea, as in:
After a 24-year-old piano teacher put the moves on 15-year-old Ada, her father fired him and "immediately hired as music tutor an old spinster with clothes that smelled of naptha and underarms."

Other times he paints the scene with a handful of sentences, as in:
"Her eyes were the pale color of harebell blossoms. She went about with her head not combed. Her feet were bar and briar scratched, and there was something about her that spoke of oddity so much that Inman found himself clearing his mind by adding up muddy toes on one of her round feet to check if the mystic five would indeed by the sum."

Ruby is at home in the natural world. "When three crows harried a hawk across the sky, Ruby expressed her great respect for the normally reviled crow, finding much worthy of emulation in their outlook on life. She noted with disapproval that many a bird would die rather than eat any but food it relishes. Crows will relish what presents itself. She admired their keenness of wit, lack of pridefulness, love of practical jokles, slyness in a fight. All of these she saw as making up the genius of crow, which was kind of willed mastery over what she assumed was a natural inclination toward bile and melancholy, as evidenced by its drear plumage."

Frazier imparts country wisdom: "Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it's a common mistake nonetheless."

The vocabulary is very specific or archaic or arcane. Sometimes it seems to me that Frazier is making up words, as in: "Whatever a book said would lack something essential and be as useless by itself as the gudgeon to a door hinge with no pintle."

There is the colorful manner of speaking, as when Ada tells Ruby about wild turkeys. "I could do to grease my chin with a turkey leg, she said. That shotgun's charged, both barrels. Go kill us one."

Ultimately, Inman is reunited with Ada, but I was not satisfied by the conclusion. I won't give it away here, but if you saw the movie version, you know how the novel ends. I remember seeing the movie and that Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellwanger and Jude Law were in it. But the film made scant impression on me.

On the other hand, I'm still working over this book in my mind.

Multiculture, 1950s style

2010-12-09T16:29:00.004-06:00

My usual morning routine is to watch Father Knows Best while I start the coffee and the oatmeal. I use the 5-minute oats, ever since my dad made a fuss about them. Several years back, he came for a visit. We went grocery shopping, and he wanted oatmeal.
In the cereal aisle, I showed him packages of instant oatmeal. Those were no good, he said. Then I found a canister of rolled oats. Also no good. Those were "quick oats" that cooked in one minute. Dad was holding out for the 5-minute variety. We found those and he was satisfied. I've been a 5-minute man ever since. (The 5-minute oats are sold in the same size canister as the 1-minute oats, so you have to be careful.)
So back to Father Knows Best. The series ran from 1954 to 1960. I have yet to see a repeated episode. I love the stories and the family: James Anderson, his wife Margaret, daughters Betty (Princess) and Kathy (Kitten) and son James Jr. (Bud).
Yesterday, the Andersons welcomed an exchange student from India into their home. I haven't seen too many characters of color on this show. A Mexican gardener has shown up a couple of times. He was pretty exotic. (On Leave It To Beaver, Beaver had a Spanish-speaking friend named Chuey, from South America. Chuey spoke only Spanish, but Beaver understood him. I bet that was groundbreaking for the times.)
So back to FKB. The episode was titled "Fair Exchange and featured Rosita Dolores Alverio, playing Chanthini, the student from India. She dressed in a sari. You might know Rosita better by her professional name, Rita Moreno. It was odd seeing her cast as an Indian. But given the era, I guess that was the best Hollywood could do. Give it credit for advancing multiculturalism.

First snow of the season

2010-12-04T21:58:00.001-06:00

Whenever we have an overnight snowfall, I seem to wake earlier than usual. That's strange, because the snowcover muffles the traffic noise, which is light to begin with on our sparsely traveled street. Perhaps I heard snowplows snorting in the distance. Or perhaps, as my wife suggests, the white snow reflects the gathering light and I'm nudged awake by the brightness.
I was awake at six and out of bed by half past, and this on a Saturday morning. After breakfast, I threw on a coat, found the snow shovel in the back of the garage and cleaned the sidewalks. The snow-capped pumpkins on our porch tell me it truly is time now to change the seasonal outdoor decor.

The dog surveys her domain.

The Queen Bee

2010-11-26T10:49:00.001-06:00

Aunt Bee kept the household humming in Mayberry, N.C. She made sure Andy's uniform was cleaned and pressed. She made Opie breakfast every morning. Her homemade pickles were famous (famously bad). She worried about Barney and was wooed by bachelors serious and nefarious.
Bee Taylor is the winner of my "TV Housekeepers, Maids and Nannies" poll. She defeated Alice of "The Brady Bunch."

In that poll, I created two brackets and four divisions within each bracket. The break down was:
Bracket 1:

the ANNOYING DIVISION
the GIRLS AND BOYS DIVISION
the MOTHERLESS CHILDREN DIVISION (1)
the SUBURBAN DIVISION

Bracket 2:

the STUDS DIVISION
the MOTHERLESS CHILDREN DIVISION (2)
the FANTASY DIVISION
the URBAN DIVISION

I am not surprised by the outcome, mostly because I think the voters tended to be Baby Boomers who grew up with The Andy Griffith Show. Bee was a steady influence in the Taylor household. She'd get flustered, and sometimes accidentally drunk ("gassed," as Andy put it in one episode). I admired that big picnic basket of goodies she delivered to the courthouse for Andy and Barney.

Early on, Bee almost left. Opie couldn't accept her. Then one morning, as she was about to return to her home, Opie ran down the stairs and out into the yard, crying for her to stay. He explained to Pa that Aunt Bee couldn't fish or play catch or do a hundred other things that boys like, so she'd have to stay to learn.

Frances Bavier was a native New Yorker, according to her Internet Movie Database biography. She was born Dec. 14, 1902 and died Dec. 6, 1989. She made her Broadway debut at age 22 in the play "The Poor Nut." Later, she acted with Henry Fonda in "Point of No Return." It seems Frances was typecast as an aunt. She played Aunt Maggie in a Lone Ranger episode, an Aunt Marty and an Aunt Meg in the Loretta Young show and Aunt Alice in film "The Lady Says No." She was in an Alfred Hitchcock episode with Vera Miles. Some YouTuber spliced together scenes for this hilarious "Aunt B's Lesbian Trailer Park Days" clip.

Aunt Bee was one of a kind. Should someone make a movie of Aunt Bee, Tyne Daly would be perfect for the role.

Well, what do you know?

2010-11-16T21:56:00.003-06:00

In the September 13, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, there was a Talk of the Town piece titled "Say Cheese." It told the story of a 117-year-old (or, in NYer style, "a hundred-and-seventeen-year-old") piece of cheese. The 4-inch-long and 1-inch-tall morsel originated in Lithuania. The cheese owner's great-grandfather took the cheese to South Africa, then to England and then to the United States. The cheese was discovered in a trunk by the man's grand-daughter, who showed it to her own daughter. The owner gave the cheese to the Tenement Museum in Manhattan where it sits in a jar today.
That piece of cheese has a good 80 years on my unopened 10-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola. The soft drink is not nearly as well-traveled as the cheese. The Coke originated in Massachusetts and moved with me to Illinois. It has never left the country.
I'm dating this Coke to 1973 (but I could be off a year either way). In high school, I worked in the shipping department of the R.H. Stearns department store in Wellesley, Mass. I received shipments from other stores in Boston and the North and South Shores. I also performed janitorial and maintenance tasks. One chore I hated was changing light bulbs in the ceiling. Inside the back entrance, the ceiling was three stories above the floor. While I climbed the ladder, my supervisor Bill (who later was promoted to ladies' shoe salesman) held the ladder. Often he jiggled the ladder's rope so it brushed my trousers. I hated that. Bill was about 20 or 21. He should have known better than to horse around with a boy on a three-story-tall ladder.
Bill also liked to drink and he didn't like to drink alone. So, he'd take me to lunch at the Wellesley Inn where he would drink beer or cocktails. Once he ordered for me a cocktail called a Pink Squirrel. (It tasted about as good as it sounds.) That was the only time I had the drink. I was only 16 or 17 at the time, but back then the drinking age was 18 and I looked old enough. If we didn't go out to eat, we'd drink beer (Schiltz) at the store.

My summer was not all about discovering alcoholic beverages, mind you. I drank soft drinks, too, and bought them by the six-pack (or maybe eight-pack). This is one of those bottles. I suppose when I left my job and cleaned out my locker, I took this bottle with me. I kept it at home through the remainder of my high school days. It was there when I returned to college. Somehow, it made its way to Illinois, where I keep it in a filing cabinet. I have no intention of opening it.

The manager of the store was Barry S. It must be hard to be known by the initials BS. Anyway, every day, Mr. S asked me, "What do you know for sure?" I was 16 years old. I didn't know anything, and I certainly didn't know anything for sure. In the 30-some years since I waxed floors, changed light bulbs and shipped packages, I know this: What comes around, goes around. I am now asking my young co-workers: "What do you know for sure?"

Farewell to France

2010-11-03T21:06:00.004-05:00

Well, I've milked our trip to France for too long. It's time to wrap things up. I've stretched the account of our vacation way past the actual number of days we spent in l'Hexagon, as the French call their country.
A goal of the trip was to see new sites and neighborhoods in Paris and to explore Provence, which we had never visited. We succeeded. Here is a recap of what we liked.

In Paris:

Pere Lachasie cemetery (above, click for larger view)
Parc des Buttes-Chaumont
La Defense
Eiffel Tower
Musee d'Orsay
La Marais

In Provence:

Aix-en-Provence
Rousillon
The farmers markets

Cassis (above) and the calanques
The Bories
Restaurants

As soon as we returned we read about new exhibitions at the museums, new neighborhoods and new restaurants. Well, that is to be expected. Cities change. That's why there is always something to discover (or rediscover). No matter how hard you try to see all there is, you just can't. There is always more to see.

I like the Hotels Paris Rive Gauche blog to keep up with what's going on in Paris.
Afar magazine does a really good job of capturing the feeling of a place.
And the New York Times travel section often can point you in the right (but often expensive) direction.

And so, mes amis, this is the last post about our trip to Paris and Provence. Find previous posts by clicking on the word "france" in the index to the right. Click on "travel" to read about other places I like.

Scenes from around Provence

2010-10-31T06:00:00.000-05:00

Here is a collection of photos from Provence.

A chicken in a window.

Afternoon snack. What's more French than chocolate mousse with a pine sprig garnish?

Town hall.

Sculpture at Les Baux.

Church at Les Baux.

The streets of Les Baux are flanked by souvenir shops.

Pigeon defense.

In St. Remy.

Avenue de la Resistance, St. Remy.

Shutters of Provence.

More shutters.

Subway cars on a flatbed trailer.

Scenes from around Paris

2010-10-30T10:11:00.001-05:00

Here is a collection of photos from Paris.

Bicycle rental stations are all over town. Mayor Daley wanted to bring this idea to Chicago.

I've heard of the Blue Oyster Cult. Apparently there is a blue lobster cult, too.

You see these shellfish stations set up outside of restaurants all over town.

From the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. I had never been here before, and really enjoyed the park and the surrounding neighborhood. It's a hilly, green oasis in a big city.

This handsome creature was outside our hotel window.

A FedEx tricycle.

At Pere Lachaise cemetery, we saw this photo exhibit of cemeteries from around the world.

Jacques, on the rue Saint-Jacques.

In front of the Musee d'Orsay. There is a lot of motion and tension in this stallion.

Watch your fingers, mes amis. From the Paris Metro.

Killing time before dinner

2010-10-24T22:10:00.001-05:00

When we finished visiting La Defense, we had a decision to make. A couple, actually. Where were we going to eat, and what were we going to do in the hours before dinner? It was about 4:30, and we could not realistically sit down for dinner before 7:30. And even at that time we'd be among the only diners in the restaurant.

We rode the Metro to the Tuileries garden, then walked toward the Louvre. I've always loved this garden, which offers every Parisian stereotype in the book. The slatted park chairs? Yep. The entwined lovers engaged in public display of affection (the original PDA)? You betcha. The pond with the sailboats? It's here.

When we reached the Louvre, we sat and looked at our map. We did not want to go back to the hotel and rest for a bit because it was too far to walk to, we didn't want to ride the Metro again, and frankly the hotel was not all that nice. So we decided to walk up the Avenue de l'Opera toward the Opera. This proved to be a fruitful walk. We stopped in a wine shop because I was interested in some white wines we drank in Aix. I looked at a lot of bottles but could not find what I wanted. Then it occurred to me that if I bought a couple of bottles, I'd be carrying them with me for the rest of the evening and on the plane home in the morning. So I abandoned that idea. I liked the wine, but not enough to burden me for the next 24 hours.

As we walked up the avenue, we looked to our left, and noticed a few restaurants. We turned down the rue Gomboust and explored the area. We passed a half-dozen restaurants filled with workers having a drink after hours. We studied each menu and moved on to the next. We saw the "Hi Panda" store (above). I didn't know what it was, but liked the graphic. When I got home I looked it up (hellopanda.net) and found that it is a French clothing store featuring the panda motif from a Chinese-born designer. Right around the corner is a Marc Jacobs store.

We passed a couple of wine bars, including Le Rubis. Men in suits were next to guys in blue jeans. They were all drinking wine, some outdoors, where barrels served as tables, and others indoors. I found this review from BlackBook when I returned. After 45 minutes or so of touring, we settled on Rouge St. Honore on the Place du Marche Saint Honore. This is a circular street with restaurants on the north, east and south sides, and shops on the west. In the middle is a large building with an auto dealership on the ground floor and what I seem to remember as a police station on the upper floors.

We took a table on the sidewalk under a red awning. My wife ordered the penne pasta and a glass of Saumur, a red wine. I ordered the daube (beef stew), a dish I had in Provence (much better there than here), a cheese plate and a glass of Bordeaux. Looking at the receipt today, I see we wrapped up dinner at 9:05. That was early by Parisian standards. We continued our walk to the Opera (below), now bathed in light.

At boulevard Haussmann we turned east to walk back to our hotel. Haussmann changes its name to Blvd. Montmartre, then Poisonniere, Bonne-Nouvelle, St.-Denis and finally St.-Martin where it arrives at the Place de la Republique (photo, below). We found several thriving restaurants on Haussmann and Montmatre, overflowing with 20-somethings, Paris' up-and-comers. There are two huge arches on this walk, Porte St.-Denis and Porte St.-Martin. I had never seen them before. These were commissioned by Louis XIV. The boulevard around these arches is not too nice of a place to be walking after dark. We hurried.

We reached our hotel, a shabby little converted apartment building that was in the process of being upgraded (it still has a way to go). It uses Ving cards. Those are those hard plastic room keys with the key-punched holes, circa 1980s. They are are the forerunners to the credit-card-like swipe-able plastic keys. We picked the hotel partially for its proximity to a Metro stop and partially on price. We won't do that again. It would have been better to shell out $25 to $40 more for a better hotel. There is a time to be thrifty and a time to treat oneself. This was our vacation, after all. That's the time to treat yourself.

One more day in Paris

2010-10-23T18:46:00.001-05:00

The night before we left Aix-en-Provence to return to Paris, we heard rumors of a train strike from guests in our hotel. Unions were going to protest the proposed raising of the retirement age from 60 to 62. I asked the desk clerk about this and she said the best thing to do was check at the train station. That wasn't too helpful.
Nevertheless, we drove to the TGV station without a problem (although I had to circle a roundabout twice to find the right turn) and returned the rental car. I showed my ticket to the agent and she said our train wasn't affected by the strike. We had about an hour to kill so we ordered breakfast in the station; the usual--coffee and tartine. The train arrived on scheduled, we found our car and our seats. A man was sitting there. (On the train ride to Aix we found people in our seats.) The man said he was departing at Avignon. We found other seats. These were better because they faced forward.

Eventually, the ticket taker entered our car. I handed him our tickets, which I had bought online before we left the States. He looked at them and said, "These are for tomorrow." Really? How could that be? I booked them. When they arrived at our house, I checked them. I showed them to the station agent this morning. Well, he was right and I was wrong. If you've been reading about this trip from the beginning, you know I was plagued the entire vacation with wrong dates and wrong turns. I paid the supplement, a tax on my carelessness.

When we arrived in Paris, we dropped our bags at the hotel, (after I made a wrong turn out of the Metro station at Place de la Republique), had a bite to eat then took the Metro to La Defense, the little village of government buildings west of Paris. It was a neighborhood I had wanted to see on previous visits, but never had the opportunity. We had planned to see it on the beginning of this trip, but just ran out of time.

The Cube (above), also called La Grande Arche, is the centerpiece. It aligns with the Arc de Triomphe. You can stand on the steps of the Cube and look east and see the Arc in the distance, about three miles away. There is an observation deck atop the Cube (just as on the Arc) but it was closed the day we visited.

The only thing I knew about La Defense was the Cube. So I was bowled over by all the other exciting architecture here.

We watched awhile as men applied banners to make this image.

The X-bracing makes this an interesting building.

The front of this building is concave. An oversize disk provides a covered entrance.

This sculpture reminds me of the Calder sculpture at the Dirksen building in Chicago.

We saw this thumb from a distance.

The French love their carousels. This one is at La Defense. I know there is another at the Tuileries garden. And Aix had a merry-go-round on the Cours Mirabeau.

This is just a wild, colorful and playful sculpture.

Before we left La Defense, we stopped at a cafe for a beer and a wine. This pilsner, 1664, is the most popular brand. As were were sitting, music started and the fountains shot up (see video, below). What a delightful surprise. We enjoyed the show, then headed back to the heart of the city to find a restaurant for dinner.