Episode 32: Apocalypse Soon

Cassandra had nothing on Geezer. He's been warning for years (see Episode 15) that the animals know something. Creatures great and small are known to anticipate the onrush of typhoons and earthquakes hours before the humans among them. It's happening here.
They're coming back.
Geezer lives 40 minutes by train north of Manhattan. Herds of deer have been noshing their way through our suburban gardens for years and Canada geese long since stopped schlepping all the way back to Ontario.
But in recent years, bears, coyotes, and bobcats and even a moose or two have been wandering through our back yards. A few months ago, a manatee made his (or her) way up the Hudson to the mouth of our very own little river.
Last week, an alligator was spotted sunning himself beside a pond less than half a mile away from our front door.
He knows, too.
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"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base."
-Dave Barry
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Irony Is Not In Their Vocabulary
Senate Democrats demanded the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Attorney General Gonzales committed perjury in testimony before them. They also issued a subpoena to Karl Rove to testify about the dismissal of federal prosecutors for alleged political reasons. In response, Scott M. Stanzel, a White House spokesman said:

"What we are witnessing is an out-of-control Congress which spends time calling for special prosecutors, starting investigations, issuing subpoenas, and generally just trying to settle scores."

Presumably, Mr. Stanzel awoke from an eight-year coma in January 2001.

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On The Pot-Holed Trail

*Thrice-married adulterer Rudy Giuliani has been putting out a line with a hook that chunks of the electorate have been swallowing whole: Because he was in town when two planes crashed into the twin towers, he is best qualified to lead the fight against terrorism.
Let's see, now. If Geezer gets himself mugged by being on a street corner at a bad time, he is then qualified to be Police Commissioner, right?

*Four-square, rock-ribbed, true conservative Fred Thompson continues his coy flirtation with those who wish he'd stop toying with their affections. Inevitably, those who wish he'd go away are gleeful to learn that Ol' Fred once represented the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association as both a lawyer and lobbyist. That is decidedly not an anti-abortion group. Note, too, that in 1994 he said, "I do not believe that abortion should be criminalized."

*Seeking to diffuse an issue before he announces his own formal candidacy, chubby family-values guy Newt Gingrich admitted to an extramarital affair at the same time he was vigorously pushing the impeachment of equally horny Bill Clinton over the Monica mess. No word if this was during his first or second marriage, which presumably involved a little additional fooling around.

* Have you seen Obama Girl? Check it out on YouTube.com.

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Onward!
The months of May, June, and July constituted the deadliest quarter for U.S. troops since the March 2003 invasion. Just think what it might have been without The Surge which happened to coincide with the same period.
The Iraqi soccer team won the Asia Bowl last week. The people were so happy they poured into the streets, Sunni and Shite alike, firing their guns in the air in celebration. Four people were killed and scores were wounded by falling bullets. How can you not want to fight on for folks like that?
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From The New York Times:
"A Missouri doctor who had supervised more than 50 executions by lethal injection testified last year that he sometimes gave condemned inmates smaller doses of a sedative than the state's protocol called for, explaining that he is dyslexic. 'So it's not unusual for me to make mistakes,' said the doctor."
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Yet Another Cry For Compassion
Hamas TV has a children's show called Tomorrow's Pioneers. It used to feature a character of the Mickey Mouse genre who spewed anti-Semitic and anti-Israel insults to its young viewers. He was called Farfur and he was beaten to death by a pretend Israeli who wanted his land.

Farfur has been replaced, in an abuse of logic, by Nahoul, a bee who claims to be Farfur's cousin.
Among the bee's pronouncements: "We shall continue on the path of 'Islam is the solution'. The path of heroism, the path of martyrdom, the path of jihad warriors. We shall take revenge on the enemies of Allah, the murderers of the prophets, until (we are) liberated from their filth."
And continue to pray for world peace.
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And Another
There was no more stirring moment in my youth than in Casablanca, when Paul Heinreid led the patrons of Rick's Cafe in La Marseillaise. The song was first written in 1792 as the Marching Song of the Rhine Army and contains such pleas for sacrifice and understanding as

Arise, children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us, the tyranny's
Bloody banner is raised.
Do you hear in the fields
The howling of these savage soldiers?
They're coming into your midst
To cut the throats of of your sons, your wives!
To arms, citizens!
May tainted blood
Water our fields!

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Eating and Viewing
This summer's "Restaurant Week" offered three-course lunches for $24.07 and dinners at $35 at over 200 New York City eateries. The roster included many topflight places where entrees alone frequently exceed $45. That seemed too good to pass up, especially since we'd been wanting to see the Louise Nevelson retrospective at The Jewish Museum (92nd Street at 5th Avenue; 212-423-3200; galleries closed Fridays).
A potential problem with these periodic promotional events is that restaurant personnel can be a little sullen when confronted with the likelihood of lower levels of accumulated gratuities. We'd heard this wasn't the case at San Domenico (240 CPW bet 7th Ave. & Broadway; 212-265-5959; jacket required), and it wasn't. This is an old-line, rather formal restaurant, with a full-service, four-tiered staff that might be expected to be stuffy, but our treatment was gracious and attentive. Kudos to the management for including their signature dish on the special prix fixe card - a soft-cooked egg with a single large ravioli dressed with truffle oil. Everything that emerged from the kitchen was admirably understated, more often prepared with light broths than with fats and oils.

Here's an agreeable discovery: OpenTable.com is a very helpful online service that permits users to make reservations at restaurants in several cities without having to deal with haughty clerks who can barely bring themselves to deal with people with unrecognizable names. It not only confirms time and number of diners, but affords the opportunity to print out proof of the arrangement.
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Episode 31: My Pijamas

This Was Then
Most of what I know about food I learned in Spain. After all, Spaniards eat just about anything that trots, swims, sprouts, crawls, flies, or germinates. (Nearly anything, at least. They aren't fond of corn or hot peppers.) That isn't a revelation. Most of the world's great cuisines began as peasant food, and poor people have to make the most of the ingredients available to them.
When I first arrived there in 1955, a temporary refugee from a cocksure and sanitized America, Spain was of the Third World, not a Europe on the mend from total war. I was soon to learn how elastic the definition of "edible" could be.
A newly minted Private First Class, I wandered slack-jawed through Barcelona's ancient barrios. Foreign visitors were still rare in the midst of that long winter of Francoism, so this Yankee soldier in high-water chinos and whitewall haircut provoked constant stares and some tentative approaches. One of these was a stooped old man in a beret who came close as I puzzled over a street map. He offered to help, gazing up at this towering young norteamericano (back then, 74 inches were sufficient to tower.) I made the universal hand gesture for eating. With a gap-toothed smile, he led me off with a lurching gait into the bowels of the medieval Gothic Quarter, chattering incomprehensibly all the way.
He deposited me with a flourish in front of an unpromising bar-restaurant with fly-specked windows and displays of octupi as big as melons. I thanked him and entered, warily. Heads swiveled in the shadowy high-raftered room with a drifting blue haze of pungent odors. All the patrons were men, for only men went into bars then. After a communal up-and-down examination of the interloper, they went back to drinking red wine from squat tumblers and shouting orders and opinions at each other.
A waiter in a frayed white jacket scurried up to me. He guided me through the crowd to the staircase in back. The floor was covered with shrimp skins and mussel shells casually tossed aside as their contents were consumed. They crunched and clattered beneath my feet.
The dining room upstairs was far quieter and tidier, for I was the only patron. It was barely noon. I was on G.I. eating time, but no Spaniard even thought about lunch before two PM. The room was not decorated so much as it was layered - with shellacked bullfight posters, photos of the owner with customers, yellowed press clippings, garlands of garlic and dried peppers, and mounted bulls' horns. Hanging overhead was a bloated brown wineskin that used to be a pig - it employed every part of the animal but its head and hooves. It looked like a Thanksgiving Day parade balloon that was a cruel joke on Disney.

The handwritten menu made no sense, but I stabbed at gazpacho, sangria, and paella. Oh, sure, chuckle now at such lack of sophistication, ye who nightly graze on the likes of blue corn tortillas and oysters in jalapeno pesto. But this was then, and those three Spanish gifts to the world were decades away from becoming culinary cliches. This was a time in America when tomato soup was served hot and it was Campbell's. Rice was for pudding and wine was for sissies.
Gazpacho wasn't bad, though, if odd, and the sangria suited the taste buds of one weaned on Pepsi-Cola. Until that day, however, and to the despair of my Nova Scotia-born mother, no fish but that interred in seven-ounce cans had passed my lips. It was my untested conviction that organ meats and squiggly things tasted exactly as they looked.

But here! My very first paella was aswarm with tentacles! Claws! Liver chunks! Tripe! Parts of undisguised marine creatures! And right in the middle, staring balefully at me, was an eyeball...of what origin I had no idea.
I took seriously the role of unofficial ambassador my Army superiors impressed upon me, and the waiter hovered to observe my reaction to his national dish. I smiled a sickly grin, ungritted my teeth, and moved in on the pizza-sized pan. Somehow, I ate it all.
All except the centerpiece, which rolled around the rim when the waiter picked it up. He expressed approval of my appetite.

That called for dessert. The menu listed a dozen possibilities, but only one item looked familiar: Pijamas. I groped for my pocket dictionary. The one-word definition read...pyjamas. So, one more adventure. I pointed at that. It arrived soon after, a huge, multicolored, many-textured heap of whipped cream, sorbets, tarts, cakes, custards, and fruits. Pyjamas, it turned out, meant a portion of every dessert in the kitchen, all piled in one bowl.

Paella was strange, but good, I eventually decided. Curiosity begat passion - for baby eels, kidneys in red wine, squid in its ink, mussels, crayfish, prawns, sea bass baked in salt, roast kid, rabbit, wild boar. I even screwed up the courage to try percebes - goose barnacles that look like the miniaturized feet of Godzilla.

Spaniards eat to get ready to dine. Food and wine are almost hourly lubricants for social, commercial, and familial intercourse. An abundance of each is essential to the honor of the hosts, and edibles and drinks must be hearty and lusty and straightforward in both flavor and portion.

This Is Now
So what happened? Spanish chefs got serious. They were tired of slighting comparisons of their native cuisine to those of Italy and France. They aspired, they got competitive, they got cred. Now chefs from around the world make pilgrimages to the kitchens of Catalonia and the Basque Country to genuflect at the altars of a cuisine so new it doesn't have a name. Kitchens are closer to labs than places to cook, with beakers and test tubes replacing skillets and pots. Listen to this blather out of the mouth of Andoni Luis Aduriz, an avatar of this movement:

"Mine is a 'tepid' cuisine, a cuisine of whispers, a cuisine where I seek insipidity in every sense. Diners at Magaritz (his Basque region restaurant) have to tune themselves in, to make more of an effort to understand than has been asked of them up until that moment. It's a new tone, as if the melancholy of the products was emerging."

Goodbye, it appears, to food as pleasure or nourishment, let alone to romance or fun or gratification of the several senses. Now we are directed to attempt to divine the gustatorial meaning being communicated by the chef while paying dearly for the privilege.

I'll take paella and pyjamas.

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Vegetable Paella
Serves 4 to 6

Paella isn't a single dish. There are scores of variations in the overarching category of arroces (rices), including some that don't even involve rice, widely thought to be a basic, unalterable component. Here's a version that makes fine use of the fresh vegetables of late summer. Serve by itself or as an accompaniment to grilled chicken or fish.

4 tablespoons olive oil
1 small jalapeno, seeded and minced
1 large Spanish onion, peeled and thinly sliced
1 large red sweet pepper, cored, seeded, and sliced
1 large green sweet pepper, cored, seeded, and sliced
3 large cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2 teaspoons smoked paprika, preferably Spanish
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
1 medium zucchini, scrubbed, trimmed, and cubed
4 large ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1-and-a-quarter cups arborio rice
2 cups chicken broth
One-half cup frozen peas, defrosted quickly under warm water
Flat-leafed parsley, minced, for garnish

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large (preferably iron) skillet with a lid. Add the jalapeno, onion, and red and green peppers. Lower heat and cook uncovered until onions start to turn golden.
Add the garlic, paprika, thyme, zucchini, and tomatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Adjust heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for 15 minutes.
Stir in the rice and chicken broth and bring to a boil. Simmer for another 20-25 minutes until rice is tender. Taste and adjust seasonings. Garnish with the peas and parsley. Serve.

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Episode 30: Fleet's In

Tall Ships Sail Into Newport
Few sights thrill me as much as watching a flotilla of frigates and barks and whalers tacking into a harbor under bellying canvas, or when moored at rest, sails furled, only the hawsers creaking as if eager to challenge the sea again. So on impulse, we drove to Rhode Island for the July visit of 22 tall ships from 11 countries, one as far away as India.
Bestowed the apt, if banal, moniker of "City By The Sea" by its early boosters, Newport offers much to reward a visit. For architecture buffs, it is a living library of styles from Colonial Saltboxes to Georgian/Federalist townhouses to Queen Anne Victorians to the unimaginably ornate summer palaces called "cottages" by the wealthy families of the post-Civil War Gilded Age.
Sybarites appreciate the ministrations of the staffs of an unprecedented collection of luxury boutique hotels and inns, many of them occupying lavishly appointed 19th and early 20th Century manor houses.
And the relentlessly active can exhaust themselves with sailing, swimming, tennis, windsurfing, flying kites by the shore, and hiking the 3.5 Cliff Walk that runs behind the Bellevue Avenue mansions.
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"We'll be a great country where the fabrics are made up of groups and loving centers."
- George W. Bush, Kalamazoo, March 27, 2001

*************************************************************************************A Neighbor Visits
Our house is on the side of a hill high above a river valley that lies within the Atlantic Flyway, the aerial freeway used by birds migrating twice a year between Canada and points south. We often look down upon falcons, ospreys, eagles, and hawks. One year-round resident is a red-tail, like the one here.
He's gotten used to us. Lately, we've noticed him perching on limbs of trees closer and closer to the house. He stays longer and longer, regarding us with the fierce contemplation that is the only expression available to raptors. After determining that we are probably too large to eat, and that there are no likely rodents in view, he flaps leisurely away.
Yesterday, though, Jo yelled for me to come quickly. I ran upstairs. There he was, on the railing of our deck, not ten feet from our French door, staring at us. Our presence didn't disturb him. Jo said she felt like she was being stalked.
We named him Skylar.
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BRING 'EM HOME
A reader of this blog has a boyfriend serving a second tour over there. She's come up with a highly creative way to influence our foot-dragging politicians. Geezer doesn't want to give her inspiration away, so please go to http://www.camocampaign.org and cheer her on. (Click VIEW PICS at the bottom of the her opening page.)

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So Were You Lying Then Or Are You Lying Now?
When he was running and serving as governor of liberal Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, said he supported a woman's right to choose and the principle of stem cell research and he went along with allowing gay marriage.
Now, running for president, he's executed a 180. Maybe even the Republican base views the transformation with skepticism. His fundraising has fallen off and he 's had to dump a few million of his own fortune into the kitty. Why?

"Because I have to, all right?" he snapped. "My message is important and critical to get out."

Which message is that, Mitt?
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Male v. Female

Husband: You talk twice as much as I do.
Wife: Because I have to repeat everything.
Husband: What?

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Family Schmalues
*You've heard about Republican Senator David Mitter of Louisiana, right? He planted himself on the moral high ground from the start of his political career, vigorously opposing abortion, same-sex marriage, and any effort to solve the immigration problem.Then it was revealed - and he admitted - that his telephone number was in the little black patron book kept by the madam of a D.C. escort/call girl service.
But did you hear that Mitter was also a regular at a pricey New Orleans brothel in the 1990s well before he went to Washington?
And, he is the Southern campaign chairman for Rudy Giuliani.

*On July 11th, Bob Allen, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, was arrested for allegedly soliciting oral sex from an undercover cop in Titusville. No big spender, Allen offered twenty bucks for the deed.
In March, he was appointed co-chairman of the Florida campaign of John McCain.
The Senator was already having a rough week. He acknowledged that his cash on hand had fallen below two million dollars, his two top aides quit/resigned, and dozens of other paid workers were canned.
McCain is toast. He just hasn't crumbled yet.

*Talk about grabbing the high ground: Pope Benedict XVI, in his ongoing campaign to piss off every other religious group in the world, has reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church while noting "defects" in other Christian faiths. In the same document, he declares that his Church alone is the mediator of all salvation.
That would be the very same Church whose Los Angles Archdiocese has just agreed to a $660 million settlement with 508 victims of sexual abuse (including forcible rape) by members of its priesthood.
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Geezer's Indispensable Pans & Paeans

*You absolutely must go see Michael Moore's Sicko. It is his most disciplined film to date, apart from a couple of errant detours. By turns witty, melancholy, sarcastic, and outraged, he lays down a highly lucid case for universal health care, comparing the U.S. system unfavorably with those of Canada, England, France (gasp!), and even Cuba. Yes, he skips lightly over the fact of the crushing taxes required for coverage in those countries, but isn't it time for hedge-funders and Internet billionaires to start ponying up?

*How bad could Evening be? It has three of the greatest actresses of our generation - Vanessa Redgrave, Glenn Close, and the glorious Meryl Streep. They even filmed it in one of Geezer's aforementioned favorite places, Newport. As it happens, it comes in just above unwatchable. The tragic figure moving much of the action is an annoying, self-pitying drunk. Redgrave plays a dying woman suffering dementia and Streep is only on screen about six minutes. Close, whose character is an upper-class WASP, is made to shriek and wail like an Iraqi mother who has lost three children to a car bomb, in as culture-deaf a scene as might be imagined. Worst of all is Claire Danes in the primary role, an actress who has received unaccountably good notices in previous appearances. In the end, Evening is little more than a glossy chick flick.

*Chances are you couldn't care less about Edith Piaf or even know who she was. That's okay, but don't let it keep you from La Vie En Rose. The singer is portrayed by Marion Cotillard in one of the most powerful performances you are likely to see this year. Yes, it's subtitled, and Piaf wasn't one of the world's most sympathetic creatures, but run to the nearest art house before it gets away.

*Knocked Up tells the story of a pudgy, shaggy, unshaven, socially inept slob who lucks out one night with a smart, leggy, gorgeous blonde. He is woefully ill-equipped for the ensuing adventure, seeing that he shares a house with three other guys whose joint ambition is constructing a website that gives the exact minute in a movie when the lead actress gets naked. Given the bottom-scraping level of all-too-believable post-adolescent vulgarity, those with tender sensibilities may think twice about attending. But this comes from the guy responsible for The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and it's hilarious in the same ways.

*It takes a while to get past the fact that the hero of Ratatouille is a rat. He's a classy critter, though, with a keen sense of smell, a culinary genius who uses a slump of a human to create fabulous meals for an evil food critic. The setting is Paris - a big plus! - and the restaurant kitchen that is center stage is remarkably authentic. Superchef Thomas Keller was recruited to demonstrate the fabrication of key dishes. Geezer hasn't seen a G-type film since he was 11, but this one is a winner.
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Today's Recipe
Rhode Island makes the most of one of its principal edible products, and it often goes its own way. Newport has three or four polished purveyors of high cuisine, a half-dozen pretenders and at least a score of mid-level, middlebrow eateries. But Geezer never misses a chance to eat at Flo's Clam Shack in Middletown, a few yards away from the Newport border (4 Wave Avenue, 401-847-8141). The handwritten menu is plump with tasty variations on the state's favorite bivalve.
There are clam rolls (go for the whole-bellied variety), deep-fried, nutty, crunchy outside. Classic "stuffies" are fat quahog clams chopped up with peppers and bread crumbs, the mixture packed into the two shells the clam came in and baked. And there are clam cakes, tasty fritters known best for their near- absence of clams.
But Little Rhody most clearly asserts its culinary individuality in its signature chowder (pronounced "chowda" in these parts). Where Manhattan clam chowder is tomato-based and the Boston version uses cream, Rhode Island chowder uses neither. No masking the briny central ingredient here. A simple version follows.

Rhode Island Clear Clam Chowder
Serves 4

24 Cherrystone clams
2 strips thick bacon, diced
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
2 medium potatoes, any type, peeled and diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
Salt & freshly ground pepper to taste
3 springs of fresh thyme, leaves removed and chopped (if large)
1 dried bay leaf
Pinch of crushed fennel seeds
1 tablespoon parsley, chopped

1. Scrub the clams under running cold water. Put them in a large saucepan with and pour in enough cold water to almost cover. (Bottled clam juice can be substituted for the water.) Bring to a gentle boil and cook until the clams start to open , about 8 minutes. Remove each clam as it opens and set aside in a bowl. Discard any clams that haven't opened after 12 minutes.
2. Strain the broth through cheesecloth or a fine mesh screen. Reserve.
3. Remove the clams from their shells, rinse, and chop. Set aside.
4. Fry the bacon in the same saucepan. Add the onion and cook until it is soft, not brown. Add the clams and the reserved broth.
5. Add the potatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Add the celery. Cook until the potatoes are tender, but not mushy.
5. Add the bay leaf, fennel seeds, and parsley. Serve.

Notes: For a little kick, stir in a quarter-teaspoon of hot pepper flakes at the end. The chowder is often served with a small pitcher of whole milk on the side, to be added to the bowl, if desired.

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If you came across this blog while surfing and would like to receive advance notice of future episodes, please send your e-mail address to www.TUCKg3@optonline.net.

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