Geezer Wisdom

Episode 84: On Getting On

2010-12-10T14:29:00.000-08:00

* At the farmers' market last summer, people were snapping photos of my T-shirt. Written on it were the words, "Half the men my age are dead." People of my generation found it funny. My daughter didn't like it at all. I am 75. That's the average life expectancy of the American male.

There's this, though: If you manage to reach 75, your life expectancy jumps to 86.3. That's good.

I guess.

* A current Humana TV commercial pushes its Medicare supplement plan. It was written by someone who thinks people over 60 suffer universal physical and intellectual enfeeblement. It is delivered by an announcer speaks VERY CLEARLY and A LITTLE TOO LOUDLY. He underlines one word for emphasis on a whiteboard that has only ten in total. The word is "and". He then makes a joke so lame it wouldn't cause a titter from a toddler. And he makes a very, very big deal out of the fact that the sales brochure he wants you to call for is FREE! Madison Avenue really should seek out copywriters who have had their last growth spurts and whose complexions have cleared up.

* So far, I haven't felt the old-guy compulsion to find myself those armpit trousers with two-foot zippers. But retirement has propelled me toward the comforts of track suits, in my case a blue velour number that is bliss during the morning hours I devote to the newspapers. It makes me look like an over-the-hill Atlantic City lounge singer, so I promise not to wear it outside the house. On the other hand, the sweatshirt and pants I wear to the health club are rapidly becoming supermarket and rest-of-the-day wear.

* In the last decade I had a quintuple bypass and left carotid throat surgery. I've had a dental implant and gout (twice). My left knee and right hip periodically threaten to quit on me. I have arthritis everywhere but my hair, and my blood sugar skitters along the edge of diabetes. Like most people other than hedge fund managers I lost a ton of money in the recent economic unpleasantness.

So why am I so happy nearly all the time, often even downright giddy? Why do I all but skip to the mailbox to retrieve all those Christmas catalogs?

As a freelance writer working at home with a wife who commuted to the city five days a week, it took a year or so after she retired to get used to her being around all the time. After necessary adjustments, including addressing changed expectations and new divisions of labor, we settled into this warm bath that is retirement.

We sleep until we wake up. We read the papers until we are finished. We nap when we feel like it. We get discounts at museums and movies and hotels. No homework. No bosses. No brain-dead editors. No spiteful colleagues. Our friends are mostly younger than we, because I'm no more enthusiastic about cranky old people than I am about other people's messy progeny (our grandchildren are, of course, golden exceptions.) At lunch, we discuss dinner. We plan our next trip to to Venice. To Paris.

What's not to like?

A happy new year for you, too.

Episode 83: What Women Want?

2010-10-31T15:03:00.000-07:00

"Given the opportunity, women will behave as badly as men."

So I declared - or, rather, whispered - back when the Second Feminist Wave was at full boil. You didn't make female friends uttering such heresy. It was unassailable movement cant that women would bring their nurturing, gentle ways to positions of power if men would just get out of the way.

I demurred, pointing out that Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, and Gold Meir all took their nations into war.

Evidence of the truth of my conviction mounts. Look to Washington: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas has long been in tune and in lockstep with ideological hard cases like Trent Lott and Mitch O'Connell. Holding up the farthest lip of the loony Washington right is Representative Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, who imputes traitorous allegiances to anyone with whom she disagrees, presumably including most of her colleagues. Michelle has pledged to form a Tea Party caucus in the House after the election.

Need I even mention Backwoods Barbie of Alaska, she of the pretty face and empty head, who can't name a newspaper, who thinks Africa is a country, and who never left North America and didn't bother to get a passport until two years ago. Whenever she cites "common sense" as one of her virtues and those of her benighted followers, check your wallet and make skid marks in the opposite direction. Judging from e-mails I get from conservative male friends and neighbors, the main thing for which they favor Sarah is they'd all like to boff her, presumably joining her in shrieking "Lamestream media!" at the climactic moment.

Let's not linger on Catherine O'Donnell, the Senatorial candidate from Delaware, who thinks masturbation is adultery, took 19 years to get a bachelor's degree, and opened her first commercial with the claim that she isn't a witch. She has defaulted on at least one mortgage and owes thousands in back taxes. She has no visible employment except as a professional candidate. In a recent debate, she couldn't name one Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed. Pretty fades. Dumb is eternal.

Carly Fiorina, Tea Party candidate for Senator from California, isn't dumb. She was CEO of HP. Of course, the company stock plunged during her term and she laid off 30,000 workers while shipping jobs overseas. She was eventually fired by her board of directors but walked away with a multi-million-dollar golden parachute. Not dumb, but certainly inept, she thinks failure is a great credential for fixing her state's problems. She's said to have a ferocious temper, a requirement in a movement that thrives on inchoate rage. And, she's anti-abortion and against gay marriage.

Across the border in Nevada, voters are unhappy that their decisions to live in a state whose economy is based upon gambling aren't working out. About half of them think that Sharron Angle is the answer to their problems. Sharron runs a TV ad that juxtaposes photos of dark-skinned people climbing over a fence with shots of white school children. She has claimed that Dearborn, Michigan and a non-existent town in Texas are ruled by Sharia law. She told Harry Reid in a debate confrontation to "Man up!", an idiotic catch phrase that explicitly questions a man's virility. Imagine if Reid had rejoined with the equally denigrating "Don't be a pussy, Sharron."

Early in her campaign to fill the Senatorial slot from Connecticut, Linda McMahon said she had a plan - a secret one - to bring jobs back to her state. Presumably, she imagined that she would arrive in D.C. and lay out said plan before four-term Republican satraps who would immediately bow before the wisdom of a freshman who had yet to find the bathroom. Linda's credentials for fixing Washington are contained solely in her management of World Wrestling Entertainment, a sleazy operation throwing steroid abusers and their slutty helpmates together in scripted conflict for the edification and amusement of pizza-faced adolescents and their dimwitted older brothers. She has spent over $45 million of her own money on the campaign, which seems to have annoyed voters who wonder what good might have been done in more worthy causes. Should Linda lose, at least she can kick her husband in the crotch. She's done that to Vince before, on camera.

And can we forget Governor Jan Brewer's famous brainlock during a debate when she could do nothing but giggle for agonizingly long seconds? This was around the time that she revealed that headless corpses were strewn about the Arizona desert.

The message? When you vote Tuesday - you are voting, aren't you? - don't fill in the ovals just because the candidates are female or Polish or conservative or Green or gay or Democrats or Latino or Tea Party or Socialist or Italian or black or Catholic or Jewish or small business owners. Vote for the good of all of us, not the worst.

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For those who inquired - and thank you - the absence of posts on this blog and my website, http://www.akeyinthedoor.com/ , was due to a monumental crash of my computer. It wiped out both my basic operating system and my external backup hard drive and has required a lot of work getting it all back.

Episode 82: What They've Been Saying

2010-08-19T14:40:00.000-07:00

For the George W. Bush commemorative articulation award

"I simply misremembered it wrong."

- Mark Kirk, Republican Senatorial candidate from Illinois, after untrue statements about his service in Iraq and Kosovo.

Runner-up: Richard Blumenthal, Democrat from Connecticut, who misremembered the truth about his non-service in Vietnam.

The eternal quest for compassion and understanding

"We need to wipe them out!"

- Rush Limbaugh, referring to Democrats on his radio show of March 22nd.

"Spay and neuter liberals."

- Sign seen at a summer Tea Party rally.

Academic clarity of thought

"International recognition endows African state actors with a domestic power of command."

-Pierre Englebert, Professor, Pomona College, on strongman African leaders

"It's just inexorable, this authenticity in the visual language of sameness."

-Sharon Zukin, Professor, Brooklyn College, speaking about gentrification

Military Justice

"You go into Afganistan, you got guys who slap around women for five years because they don't wear a veil. You know guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway, so it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.

- James N. Mattis, Marine General, appointed commander of American forces across the Middle East. No word on when the General last fired a weapon in anger.

Tolerance

"Doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland?"

- wordsmith Sarah Palin, weighing in on the proposed Islamic cultural center in New York

Ordinarily, we can fairly assume that Backwoods Barbie would prefer see the island of Manhattan and its payload of liberal elites cut loose from its mainland moorings and shoved out into the Atlantic to play with the icebergs. Yet here, with the wisdom bestowed by her 3,000-mile geographical (not to say geopolitical) remove from the site in question, she feels qualified to voice the concerns of all of middle

America.

She is not alone, of course. Every Republican, Reagan Democrat, social conservative, Christian religionist, documented Tea Party yahoo, and right-wing loon has hitched up to the Islamophobic wagon train. Al Queda has to be delighted. This is their best recruitment tool since Shock and Awe.

Don't get me wrong. When I am appointed Supreme Leader of All the Peoples of the Universe, the practice of religion of any sort in any degree where and whatsoever will be banned, and all physical manifestations of any faith of any kind - churches, synagogues, mosques, temples - will be razed to the ground, plowed under thrice over, and spread with salt. Half the world's violence and social problems will thus be eliminated. Until humans came up with new reasons to kill other humans.

Since that post isn't open just yet, here's my backup position: Do all of you support our founding document (by which I mean, Sarah, the Constitution you profess to love)? Do you truly support the freedom of any resident of the United States to believe any damn-fool accumulation of fables, folk tales, legends, and resulting idiot dogma they wish? If so, mind your own business.

Or, must everyone filter their convictions through a screening process enforced by self-appointed guardians? Freedom for religion for everyone? Except for Muslims, and maybe Mormons? And Jews? Seventh-Day Adventists? Or possibly Jehovah's Witnesses? (God - your God - knows it's annoying to have to deal with those people on the front porch.) How about Congregationalists? After all, they're for abortion and same-sex marriage and Darwin.

So do ya, Sarah? Like the Constitution, I mean. Or do ya think it needs a little tweaking?

Episode 81: Lies, Damned Lies and Capital One

2010-06-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

For frequent travelers who regularly journey overseas, the credit card company with the dopey barbarian TV commercials has a seductive offer. Repeated unquestioningly by many reputable publications, including The New York Times and Consumer Reports, is this claim, appearing in the FAQ section of the Capital One website:

"Capital One does not charge a fee for using your credit card for foreign currency transactions. Foreign purchases will be converted at the foreign exchange rate in effect at the time of posting the charge."

What a deal! Other banks and credit card companies charge anywhere from $1.50 to $10 or more every time you withdraw money from a foreign A.T.M., the justification being that (1) you aren't using a branch of your home bank, and (2) the home bank or credit card company has to convert dollars to euros (or whatever).

But Capital One says it doesn't do that, at great expense to its profit line.

The truth? In anticipation of a three-week trip to Paris, I applied for and received a Capital One credit card. It was my intent to use it only out of the country, in this case from April 24th to May 16th. Normally, I prefer my debit card on trips abroad, not wanting to run up debt. But the Cap One card would save me hefty fees, especially if I paid off balances electronically with a few days of using it. You follow my logic, I hope.

This I did, incurring charges only from May 3rd to May 17th and paying them off in full well before the end of that month. Then came an "Accounts Summary". It showed four cash withdrawals and my four electronic payments, the last one on May 15th.

But here's the thing: The summary also listed four "Cash Front End Fees" totaling $41.63, directly preceding the cash withdrawals. A rose is a rose is a rose. That is to say, they have created another term for what they actually mean - "Foreign Currency Transaction Fees". The final indignity was a $5.86 interest charge, despite the fact that the balance had been fully paid in less than three weeks from first use.

There was no satisfaction to be drawn from the Capital One call center, of course. The woman at the other end seemed to have Tagalog as her native tongue.

A double pox on Capital One.

Episode 80: Snip. Snip.

2010-03-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

The eagles have flown back to Canada.

But the temp just passed 70 degrees. Wrens and robins are building nests. Crocuses have popped and there are multiple green shoots in the garden and the economy. It is the time of year when men's thoughts naturally turn to the office basketball brackets.

Geezer couldn't care less whether Wofford or Gonzaga make it to the Sweet Sixteen and hopes the Final Four will come and go as quickly as possible. But there is a little-remarked phenomenon that also takes place every year during March Madness:

Men choose this time to undergo vasectomies, causing a major annual spike in that elective procedure. This makes a certain peculiar sense. The surgery hurts for a day or two afterwards. Rest is mandated, with frequent applications of ice to the immediate area of the operation. Since they'll be sitting in front of the tube more or less continuously for a couple of weeks, these men think, why not do their wives a favor while they root for Vandy or the Running Devils. For a cherry on top, their better halves are known to be grateful for the sacrifice, which can bring later benefits.

That reminds me of a story:

I had a vasectomy back in 1972, when it was less common. My doctor was perfect: George Clooney-ish, tanned, with crinkly eyes, touch of grey at the temples, cleft chin. He assured me that the procedure was brief, involving two small incisions to either side of the scrotum and the snipping and cauterizing of two vessels called the vas deferens.

It could be done in his office, with local anesthetic, or in the hospital. I took the coward's option, not wishing to be awake if the nurse happened to goose the doctor at a critical moment. Then, given that this would involve people messing with three of my favorite possessions, I asked if it would hurt.

"Like a knee in the groin", he tanly reassured me.

It did. Ice was applied to the region for the next two days. After two weeks, the doctor told me to take a sample. Imagine that - medical authorization to spank the monkey. Crinkle.

Vasectomies were unusual enough that I wrote up the experience and sold it to Penthouse Magazine for their first American edition. A movie called Love Story had hit it big a year or so earlier. Its advertising tagline was the nonsensical but memorable, "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

I titled my article "Vasectomy Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry". It was reviewed favorably in the Saturday Review of Literature, quoted in several other magazines, and reprinted and distributed by the tens of thousands by Planned Parenthood. I lived to hear my title used as a punchline in a Catskills comic's standup routine and as a gag in a TV movie starring Lee Majors.

Bob Guccione, the editor and publisher of Penthouse, was delighted with the attention. He invited me to dinner in his private dining room in his first Penthouse Club in Mayfair, the tony London district. In attendance were Guccione, his main squeeze, me, and the recently anointed Penthouse Pet of the Year. We were served by dishy young women in French maid costumes. Miss Pet kept fumbling distractedly with the buttons on her blouse.

But that's another story.

Episode 79: The State of the Geezer

2010-02-23T16:12:00.001-08:00

Gazing far too long into the middle distance is a common symptom of passage through one of those big "0" or "5" birthdays, an occasion to reflect on what has been and what might come. When it's the arrival of the 75th anniversary of your birth month, the contemplation of clouds and trees and hills and water can last hours, days. More.
It is, after all, the bleak transition from what gerontologists classify as "young old" to plain "old", with a decade to go before "old old." Further inducing reverie is the fact that 75 years is the average life span of the American male.

Brooding about receding gums, rectal probes, unexpected bodily discharges, and every new ache or twinge - is the downward path to ruinous despair. Instead, I try to look to the light, as, for example, back when I qualified for Social Security and found that I wasn't required by law to replace all my jeans with those suspendered trousers with the two-foot zippers that every old coot I'd ever known seemed to favor.

Remember, Boomers, you're not all that old if (a) no one has offered you a seat on the subway yet, (b) you've only had one colonoscopy so far, (c) you can remember which of your cars you drove to the supermarket, and (d) you can identify two or more of the following celebrities:
Peter Gabriel. David Naughton. Kelly Hu. Mena Suvari. William Katt. LeVar Burton. Lisa Loring. Tea Leoni. Carrot Top. Sean Astin. Anson Mount.

We turned our reading chairs around to face the window. It looks through the treetops over our valley and out to the confluence of the Croton and the Hudson. The eagles are still doing wheelies over the water this late in winter, yet I spotted our first robin yesterday in the big black walnut out back. Deer are gamboling down on the river flat. Blizzards of white trumpeter swans lift off in great flocks to traverse the valley, north, then south, then back again.

We're off to Paris for a month in Spring, so we've been getting our innards and outer layers checked. Over the last three months, my dentist, internist, urologist, cardiologist, optometrist, dermatologist, and gastroenterologist all cleared me, with a caveat or two. They confirmed, in order, that I had no cavities or need for extractions, my blood sugar is within bounds, my prostate is still supple, my cholesterol readings were the best in ten years, my vision prescription remains the same, I haven't developed any melanomas, and there was only one benign polyp in my colon. And, nine years after my quintuple bypass, my blood pressure was 120 over 70.

We're going to Paris, did I mention?

Episode 78: On Bigots and the Godly....but I repeat myself

2010-01-29T18:24:00.000-08:00

Only Jon Stewart seemed to notice the recent recorded comments of the current Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina. Andre Bauer is seeking to succeed his superior, the Governor who transformed the meaning of "Hiking on the Appalachian Trail" into a euphemism for shagging his Argentine tootsie.

On the campaign trail, Bauer chose to divest himself of his grandmother's advice about not feeding strays: "You know why?" he proclaimed. "Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I'll show you the worst test scores, folks."

Denying poor children food will, following Bauer logic, help solve the problem of rampant poverty in his benighted state and, presumably, the other 49.

They'll just die. And stop being a bother.

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At Play in the Mind of John Boehner

The immaculately groomed and deeply tanned House Minority Leader from sunny Ohio insists he can, too, come up with ideas with more than two letters (That would be "NO!") He is hurt that the Democratic majority has not given more consideration to what he thinks is a viable alternative health care plan. He all but stamps his feet in ongoing snits over the way his grand plan is brushed aside.

That plan? According to the Congressional Budget Office, his proposal would extend coverage to another three million Americans by 2019. That would leave only 52 million citizens uninsured.

Compassion, Republican style.

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Separated At Birth?

On the left, George Clooney. On the right, center, a Shinwari tribal leader in Afghanistan as photographed by Adam Ferguson for the New York Times.

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Give It Up For The Lord

Focus on the Family, the profoundly anti-abortion Christian advocacy group, is sponsoring a commercial during the Super Bowl. It will star Tim Tebow, a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback from the University of Florida. Focus on the Family is opposed to abortion under all circumstances, even rape or incest.

Tim, the widely-heralded jock, is the son of Bob Tebow, head of a self-named evangelical association in Jacksonville, Florida. Click on its website to read its mission statement, "What We Believe". For pure, mind-boggling bafflegab, it's hard to surpass. Choice excerpts include:

"The words (verbal) of Scripture recorded in the autographa are inspired, not just concepts."

"By inspired, we mean that we believe the Scriptures have been 'breathed out' by God Himself."

"The written Word of God is totally without error of any kind."

"There is one God and there are three distinct Persons of the Godhead that are co-eternal, co-equal, and co-existent."

"For the rapture...the dead in Christ shall arise and be caught up together with those who are alive in Christ shall arise and be caught up together with those who are alive in Christ to meet Him in the air."

And so on and so on. And on, throughout a three-page evisceration of logic and the language. Every word of the Bible (as interpreted by Mr. Tebow and his fellows) is the literal truth, the exact word of the Almighty. Never mind that the book is a collection of folk tales and myths written centuries after the events it purports to describe.

CBS had no trouble accepting this ad despite its long-asserted policy of rejecting advocacy messages. It had already turned away a commercial for a gay dating service, as it did applications from MoveOn.org and PETA in the past.

So now will the network accept an issue ad from Planned Parenthood?

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Updates

In the last episode, Geezer suggested a few exceptionally annoying words and phrases past due for disposal. Chris and Fig offered these candidates:

*"Sounds like a plan."

*"Bring it!"

*"Let's do this!"

To which I would add this singularly unimaginative utterance from a banker at the Davos confab (surely this has passed its expiration date):

"Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

Geezer also shared a few bizarre communications to his website http://www.akeyinthedoor.com/. Add this one to the collection (verbatim):

"Hello everyone! I would like to burn a theme at this forum. There is such a nicey, called HYIP, or High Yield Investment Program. It reminds of financial piramyde, but in rare cases one may happen to meet a company that really pays up to 2% daily not on invested money, but from real profits.

"For quite a long time, I earn money with the help of these programs. I'm with no money problems now, but there are heights that must be conquered. I get now up to 2G a day, and I started with 500 funny bucks."

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Episode 77: Listings

2010-01-22T16:19:00.000-08:00

The Supremes have just handed down the judgement that coroprations and lobbyists cannot be restrained in their spending in political campaigns. Your opinions? Your needs? Forget them. They will be buried under avalanches of money. Five nasty old men have disenfranchised you. Thank Dubya for yet another triumph of the Dark Side. He appointed the last two right-wing justices, sustaining the Court's concrete conservative tilt.

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If you weren't paying attention, the Democrats' painfully fragile 60-40 supermajority swirled around the bowl Tuesday with the election of the slightly weird Republican Scott Brown (he repeatedly announced that his two daughters were "available" - for what?) to Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat. The ramifications are predictable. There was, however, one bright spot in the deepening gloom. Democrats don't have to suck up to Joe Lieberman anymore. No longer crucial to them, he's been demoted to irrelevant Number 59.

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Definitions

Tinsel: Worm mirrors.

Construction crew: Four guys watching a fifth guy work.

A person without convictions: Political Independent.

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Like, Whatever

A recent Marist College poll assembled the phrases found most annoying to Americans. "Whatever" topped the list, followed by "anyway", "it is what it is", and "at the end of the day." Allow me to volunteer additions:

"Y'know what I'm sayin'?"

"Not so much."

"Think outside the box."

"Going forward."

"I could care less."

"Across The Pond."

"What I'm talkin' about."

"My bad."

"Back in the day."

Feel free to offer, like, other candidates. They will be mentioned in an upcoming episode.

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Yoga Makes You Stupid

Billed as the "Christmas Gift of the Year!", the latest Swedish fad was a nail bed. Yes, a variation of the device employed by Hindu fakirs. This version involved a foam rubber pad covered with hard plastic disks and at least 4,000 sharp spikes, according to The New York Times.

One yoga instructor allowed that it was "quite painful initially", but that after the adrenaline rush, "you relax and feel nice again." As when you stop running head first into brick walls.

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Money and Power Make You Stupid

After losing one of his many court cases, Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy and the country's wealthiest man declared:

"I am the best prime minister ever," yet "I am absolutely the politician most persecuted by prosecutors in the entire history of the world throughout the ages." And this, after spending "two hundred million euros on judges."

His aides said he misspoke, about the judges, at least.

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What Happens When We Let Sarah Palin Teach English As A Second Language

Geezer's other website, http://www.akeyinthedoor.com/ is devoted to food and travel. It has an international audience. Lately, his comment box is filling up with messages from Russian viewers. A few are pushing porn, but most seem to be bloggers who just want to link up. Or to swap secret coded directives. Samples, absolutely verbatim:

"It is a class it is described, we shall try."

"Thank you for article, much interesting."

"But why you so certain that it exactly so?"

"Agree with You, but possible in detail?"

"Very cognitive, thank you for spent by you time."

"Hello, I want to congratulate your site with 2010. I am sure that, in this new year, your article will please his readers."

And my favorite:

"In other instances, soon after which the gardener, we will suppose that it is attempted to be the pleasantest thongs i ever treated any boy, and sti out there."

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Episode 76: Season's Bleatings

2009-12-11T13:58:00.000-08:00

Our Lord Joe Almighty Has Spoken
Senator Joseph Lieberman has announced that while he's willing to allow debate on health care he can't "in good conscience" allow any bill to pass into law if it contains a public option.
He won't allow it. Never mind the wishes of his Connecticut constituents, whom most polls show want the public option. Joe the Sanctimonious knows what's best for us. (We can assume he won't be giving up his free Congressional health care plan.)

This is the Lieberman, who, as a moralistic senator in the Clinton administration, threw his good great friend Bill in front of the train over a blow job.
This is the Lieberman who, as a wobbly Democrat, ran for Veep under Al Gore. In his one debate with Dick Cheney, he let Darth lie for the hour and never challenged him.
This is the Lieberman who, as the whiny loser in his state's Democratic primary, stated that for the good of the country, he couldn't allow those results to stand.
This is the treacherous Lieberman, who, as an Independent, was at Republican John McCain's elbow throughout his presidential campaign.
This is the Lieberman who should do the honest thing and reveal that he's been a right-wing mole all along.

************************************************************************************* How Did This Happen? A Literate Sportswriter
Take a look at the analyses of The New York Times pro football expert, Mike Tanier. They appear on the days of every NFL game. Examples:

"Jay Cutler's passes sail high over all our heads, like weather balloons, differential calculus, or Remembrance of Things Past. It takes amazing arm strength and a shocking lack of impulse control to overthrow Devin Hester, but Cutler finds a way."

"Michael Vick's consigliere, the irreproachable busybody Tony Dungy, suggested that his protégé would be a great fit for the Bills. Dungy also said that Missouri would be a better state if it were farther west, and the New Madrid fault rumbled obediently at his commands."

"Diatoms form the base of the oceanic food chain. They are microscopic creatures that produce food from sunlight and exist to be eaten, the undersea equivalents of the Lions, the Rams, the Browns, and the Raiders."

"Defending Miami is like trying to punish someone who likes confined spaces and gruel."

"Stripped of his play-calling duties, Jim Zorn is now like Puyl in The Last Emperor. He can order around the eunuchs and canoodle with Ar Mo, but he has little decision-making power."

"Cribb's salary is roughly an eighth of what Brady Quinn makes to stand on the sideline looking like the singer for a My Chemical Romance cover band."

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Crook of the Month

A man walked into a Taco Bell in suburban Rockland County, New York. It was the middle of the afternoon. He brandished a gun. Told the cashier to get on the floor. Then he walked into the manager's office and asked for a job application. Another employee took that opportunity to escape to a nearby Wendy's to call the police. The manager told the holdup man to leave. He did, with neither cash nor employment.

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Crooks of the Year

A gang in the Peruvian jungle has been killing people...for their fat. They are said to drain fat from their victims' bodies to sell for use in cosmetics. When arrested, two members of the gang were carrying bottles of liquid fat. They told the cops that the fat was worth $60,000 a gallon on the European black market.

Medical experts are skeptical that a real demand exists, but conceded that human fat might help to keep skin supple.

************************************************************************************* You Just Can't Trust Those Passive-Aggressive Canadians

The United Nations recently criticized Iran for numerous human rights abuses in the protests over the fraudulent June elections. The resolution enumerated death and injuries of protesters, intimidation and violence by government militia members, and abuse of prisoners including rape and torture.

The Iranian ambassador to the U.N. was outraged. He thundered that the resolution was politically motivated and lashed out at its main sponsor as a violator of human rights. That sponsor?

Canada.

Yes, Canada. Quite possibly the most humane, tolerant nation on the face of the earth.

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Episode 75: Not Your Friends

2009-10-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

These people don't care what you think. About anything.

*Repeated polls affirm that Americans want stricter gun control. Our representatives do everything they can to allow guns in schools, bars, churches, and public meetings.

* Multiple polls affirm that a majority of Americans support abortion rights. Our representatives want to deny those rights not only to Americans but to any country in the world that seeks our aid. Orrin Hatch (right) tried pack a prohibition into the already ragged health care propopsal.

* And every recent poll confirms that Americans want a government-run alternative to private insurance plans. Yet members of the NO Party and DINO (Democrats In Name Only) are showing their colors every hour of the numbingly strung-out health care debate. Only a halfwit and/or a politician in thrall to the insurance industry can allow him- or herself to believe that an effective health care system can be created without a public option.

Max Baucus (top, left), Chairman of the Finance Committee and Senator from Nebraska (pop. 1.7 million) is so fixated on getting at least one Republican to vote for his health plan he voted against two public option proposals because he was afraid the NO Party wouldn't approve of them. Senator, they aren't going to vote for any plan. How can that not be clear to you?

Olympia Snow, Senator from Maine (pop. 1.2 million), is Baucus's lone, fragile, wobbly hope for a "yes" vote. She might, maybe, possibly play along, but she wants more time. "Why is there such a rush?" she has said. Senator, health coverage for all Americans has been debated since Truman proposed it...then Johnson...then Clinton...How much time do you need?

Charles Grassley (top, right), ranking committee Republican and Senator from Kentucky (pop. 4 million) says the public option is a "predator" and fears that it would drive private insurers out of business. Senator, exactly how would you otherwise guarantee that insurance companies would do everything in their power to cut administrative expenses, excessive profits, and lavish executive compensation and perks?

John Ensign, ethics-light adulterer and Senator from Nevada (pop. 2 million) says he is fearful that a public option would prove so popular it could never be removed. Senator, in what way would that be a bad thing?

And all of you and your like-minded colleagues: How is it that four senators representing fewer than nine million Americans out of a total population of over 300 million feel entitled to deny the clearly expressed wishes of countrypeople beyond your state borders?
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Youtube Alert
The best health care? Take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVgOl3cETb4.

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A restaurant full of vegan cellphone addicts isn't as annoying as most of the letters to our local newspaper. These days, many of them have been echoing the declarations of politicians from Bob Dole to Peter King that the U.S. has "the best medical care in the world."
The truth is, of course, we don't.

It seems worthwhile to recall the stats about this claim that Geezer posted in early August:

* The U.S. ranks 17th out of the 24 industrialized nations in life expectancy.
* The U.S. has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world.
* The U.S. is fifth highest in rates of death per 100,00 people.
* The U.S. ranks 13th in deaths due to heart disease, first being the lowest.
* The U.S. is third among nations with the highest rates of diabetes. Ahead of it are India and China.
* The U.S. health care system ranks 37th among 190 nations studied by the World Health Organization. In first place is France.

Deal with it, patriots.
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Faith On Parade
Members of Italy's parliament are about to vote on a bill to legalize living wills. Many of them are nervous about this because - wait for it - the Catholic Church opposes living wills. Welcome to the 11th Century.
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Did You Notice?
A new bank calling itself Ally has been spending big on TV and print advertising. These are the ones that have an adult treating children badly, the point being that mean old-line banks don't reveal the small print in their loan agreements. "At Ally Bank," reads one ad, "we don't bait and switch with teaser rates." Ally is "Straightforward. As opposed to backwards and crooked." Everything is upfront, nothing concealed. That's the message.

Ally Bank is the new name of the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, the loan underwriter for GM products.
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Episode 74: Guns 'N' Poses

2009-08-09T16:08:00.000-07:00

The Fun Gun Bunch
To the left are images described as "motivational posters", circulated among right-wing, survivalist, outlaw militia, and assorted gun-nut web sites. (The captions read, from the top, "FORTY FIVE: Because they don't make a forty six. " "M2: Making red jelly out of the enemy since your grandpappy was in diapers." "DIVERSITY: Let's celebrate it.")

Geezer invites you to keep these in mind when considering the recent bill in Congress seeking to make it legal for a gun owner with a carry permit in one state - say, Wyoming or North Dakota - to take it on his or her first visit (by plane, most likely) to New York. Think about what might be a sufficiently provocative word or action to draw that weapon from its holster: Jostled in the subway? A surly response to a request for directions? A threatening gesture from a panhandler? A culturally confusing encounter with a person of race or origin rarely encountered in the Rocky Mountain West?

This Geezer is not a wimpy standard-issue liberal who quails at the very sight thought of guns. On the contrary, as most men, I am fascinated by displays of weaponry. My father was a staunch NRA member who at one time possessed over 300 pistols and rifles. I was awarded a sharpshooter badge in the infantry and have enjoyed skeet shooting. I have had occasion to load, fire, take apart, and reassemble both of the top two weapons pictured here. I bear no ethical or moral reservations about hunting and I'm delighted with gifts of fresh-killed venison.

But sport shooting and hunting don't include human beings as potential targets. That there is no other reason for the existence of automatic weapons than killing people is hardly a new observation. But admit it, gunlovers, they aren't used to dispatch deer or elk or squirrels. Nevertheless, they can be purchased at gun shows throughout the country, and laws about background checks are routinely ignored. Their buyers are too often deranged, homicidal, or simply dimwitted. Skim through any daily newspaper to know the results.

Come on, guys. You really don't need an assault weapon to symbolically extend your favorite body part. Give adulthood a shot.
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Bumper Stickers Recently Observed
"God doesn't believe in atheists."
"If going to church makes you a Christian, does going to a garage make you a car?"
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Town Brawl Meetings
The senators and congresspeople conducting those screechfests known as "town hall meetings" might wish their August vacations were over. Amid all the jeering and yelling, a fair example of their level of discourse - and dumbfounding ignorance - might be contained in the demand of one possibly addled old goat, who shouted "keep your government hands off my Medicare!"

Among the numerous oft-stated convictions about health care is the one about the United States having the "best medical care in the world." Bob Dole declared just that for years. Representative Peter King, Republican of Long Island, repeated the claim a couple of days ago, and he's far from the only one to divest himself of that opinion.

But Peter, we plain don't. Maybe you meant the most expensive health care system in the world, because that's true. Otherwise, the United States is well off the mark on virtually every other count:

* The U.S. ranks third among nations with the highest rates of diabetes. Ahead of it are India and China.
* The U.S. has fewer hospital beds and doctors per person than Italy, France, Austria, and Australia.
* The U.S. ranks 17th out of the 24 industrialized nations in life expectancy.
* The U.S. ranks fifth in rate of deaths per 100,000 due to circulatory disease.
* The U.S. ranks thirteenth in deaths due to heart disease among major industrialized nations.
* The U.S. health system ranks 37th among 190 nations studied by the World Health Organization, just ahead of Slovenia, and following, among others, Dominica, Morocco, Chile, Colombia, and Malta. In first place was France.
* The U.S. has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world.

So what we have is the best system the most money can buy.

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Faith On The March

This month in Godliness:
* An 11-year-old girl died when her faith-healing parents refused to take her to the hospital even though she couldn't walk, talk, eat, or speak. Instead, mom, dad, and a few of their friends surrounded the girl and prayed while she lay dying on their living room floor.

* In Tel Aviv, a masked man opened fire at a gay community center, killing three and wounding ten others. Officials speculated that the motive was homophobia, the murders possibly by a member of one of Israel's Ultra Orthodox sects.

* Days of rioting by Pakistani Muslims resulted in the deaths of six Christians, including four women and a child. More than 100 Christian houses were looted and burned. There was a rumor that a few pages of a Koran had been defiled.

* In Sudan, police fired tear gas and beat women protesters outside a courtroom where a female journalist was being tried for wearing trousers in public, deemed "indecent dressing" by the local interpretation of the Islamic code. If convicted, the defendant faces forty lashes.

* While we're in Islamic Africa, note that an extremist insurgent group called Shabab is forcibly removing silver and gold teeth from residents in southern Somalia. Anyone found with such un-Islamic decorative dentures is taken to a masked man who removes the offending teeth with pincers or by hand. No anesthetics are mentioned.

* An "apostolic visitation" of five Roman Catholic bishops has been assigned to investigate the worldwide operations of the once-powerful, secretive religious order known as the Legionaries of Christ. Revelations first made public in 1997 alleged that seminarians were sexually molested by the founder of the order, Reverend Marcial Maciel. Nothing came of this until it was discovered this year that Maciel had fathered a child as part of a double life.

* Elsewhere on the Christian hypocrisy front, news reports (and Gary Trudeau) have unearthed the existence of a D.C. rowhouse nicknamed The Prayer House. Conservative Protestant members of Congress go there to dine and participate in religious study groups. Senator John Ensign lived there, the better to carry on his subsequently revealed affair. Governor Mark Stanford received counseling there during his affair with his Argentinian soulmate. Former Mississippi congressman Chip Pickering lived there during his affair with Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd. (He retired from Congress to become a lobbyist for the cellphone company owned by his mistress.) All three participants have insisted on their devotion to family; at least one demanded that Bill Clinton resign in the wake of his interlude with Monica.

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"Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe-spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life."
-Anonymous
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Episode 73: Bombs and Bombast

2009-07-12T14:09:00.000-07:00

Conservatives hold Nancy Pelosi in the same regard as Geezer does Darth Cheney and Lizard Gingrich, so it was no surprise when they covered her in projectile sleaze when she declared that the C.I.A. lied to Congress about the use of torture, specifically that she was not told about waterboarding in a September 2002 briefing by agency officials.

Leon Panetta, a former Clinton supporter and fresh new appointee to run the Agency, immediately denied that the C.I.A. ever withheld information from Congress. This, despite the fact that he wasn't anywhere near the Agency seven years ago.

Republicans jumped on Panetta's denial like maggots on rotting meat, declaring Pelosi all but traitorous for even hinting that such a thing could ever happen. House Minority Leader John "Boner" Boehner, who hasn't had a kind word for anything or anyone since November, actually brought himself to utter the remark that it was "hard to imagine that anyone in our intelligence area would ever mislead a member of Congress." It is not recorded whether he kept a straight face while divesting himself of that opinion.

A month later, Panetta admitted that his agency had, in fact, failed for eight years to inform the Intelligence Committees of at least one covert assassination program. Turns out Cheney ordered them not to.

The larger point, though, is that the C.I.A. is in the lying business. Has been since it evolved from the wartime O.S.S. and jumped into the Cold War. Disinformation, distortion, misdirection, and lies of both omission and commission, all under ever-deeper layers of secrecy, comprise the most basic skill set of its officers and operatives, just the thing for those members of Skull & Bones who formed much of the early cadre.

Since its inception, its members have been divided between those who believed their responsibility was gathering intelligence and the cowboys and adrenaline junkies who craved the excitement of black ops. Mostly, the cowboys won. They raised secret armies in countries around the world, dropped operatives and weapons into places deemed hostile to the U.S., assassinated politicians and diplomats, and engineered coups - all at the cost of untold hundreds of millions of tax dollars over the sixty years of its existence.

All of that might be at least marginally acceptable, morality aside, if the Company's record of successes reached even 50% of its operations. Instead, positive results of any real importance can be counted on the fingers of one hand with the thumb and forefinger left over to make an "O". Let's go to the tape:

* On September 20, 1948, the C.I.A. told President Truman that the Soviet Union wouldn't have an atomic bomb for at least four more years. Three days later, Truman announced that Stalin had his bomb.

* Throughout the 1950s, the C.I.A. sent hundreds of foreign agents to their capture, torture, and death in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc nations.

* On October 28, 1950, the Agency advised Truman that the Chinese would not enter the war in Korea in significant numbers. Two days later, 300,00 Chinese soldiers crossed the Yalu River and nearly pushed MacArthur's army off the peninsula.

* The British were detested in Iran for an abundance of good historical reasons. When the leftist nationalist Mohammed Mossadeq became Iran's prime minister in 1951, the official policy of the U.S. supported him. Nevertheless, the C.I.A. conspired with British intelligence to depose him. With a campaign of bribes, propoganda, and hired thugs, Mossadeq was captured and thrown in jail. The equally hated Shah, himself destined to be overthrown in 1979, was installed. The Iranians haven't forgotten.

* At the same time, the Agency was plotting a coup against Jacobo Árbenz, the leftist president of Guatemala. In the minds of its leaders in the era of McCarthy, "leftist" eqalled "commie". Using the same techniques as in Iran, plus a few judicious bombing runs on an army base, Arbenz was ousted and forty years of juntas, death squads, and repression commenced. In that small country, over 200,000 civilians were put to death.

* In 1960, the Agency informed Eisenhower that the Soviet Union had five hundred nuclear missles aimed at the U.S. As was later revealed, it had four (4).

* Long before the recent imposition of the Patriot Act, the C.I.A. had been opening mail entering or leaving the U.S. since 1952, in strict violation of its charter.

* The new president Jack Kennedy was assured by the C.I.A. that the planned invasion of Cuba by a brigade of paid Cuban exiles would result in the overthrow of Castro. This assurance was based in part upon a map of the Bay of Pigs drawn in 1859. Disaster ensued. We needn't dwell on the agency's subsequent efforts to kill Castro with poison and exploding cigars administered by Mafia gangsters.

* Frank Wisner was one of the founders of the C.I.A. He was mad, frequently delusional, hearing voices, and in and out of sanitariums for fifteen years. Yet his influence in the Company did not end until he blew his head off in 1965.

* The Agency created an international police academy in Panama and trained over 770,000 officers from twentyfive nations in Southeast Asia and Latin America. Among its grads were subsequent honchos of Central American death squads.

* In 1970, Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile, a democracy since 1932. He was a leftist, possibly even a Marxist. The C.I.A. couldn't have that. It spent $10 million and the next three years plotting his overthrow. Recognizing that he was about to be captured by the gunmen of a military junta, Allende shot himself to death. General Pinochet took over, murdering 3,200 people and jailing and torturing tens of thousands more in his brutal reign.

* Director Richard Helms denied that the C.I.A. aided the coup in Chile. That was proven false, and he was convicted of lying to Congress in 1977. Before that career-ender, he ordered the destruction of records of C.I.A.-funded research exploring the possibilities of mind control.

* And who among us can forget that the then-director George Tenet assured Baby Bush in December 2002 that the information that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk."

* Throughout its history, the C.I.A. has pursued a right-wing agenda, regardless of which party dominated Congress or the White House. Hardly new phenomena, the war-against-terrorism techniques of rendition and torture were long preceded by the Agency's secret interrogation centers in the 1950s in Germany, Japan, and Panama and in the 1960s in Vietnam. Who knows how many still exist at this very moment. Given the history of the Company, it is a virtual certainty that men and women are being imprisoned and tortured by its agents even as I write these words.

No doubt there are decent people in the C.I.A., those who serve in good faith and struggle to preserve their honor and that of the United States. That doesn't matter. They feed a malignancy that festers in the darkest depths of pure evil. It is past time to raze the institution, plow it under, and pour salt on the farrows.

For a comprehensive, highly readable history of the C.I.A., check out Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner, the source of much of the above material.

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Speaking of cruel and inhumane, I am listening as I write to the statements of the nineteen members of the Senate Judiciary Committee considering the nomination of Judge Sottomayor to the Supreme Court. To be required to maintain an expression of calm attention to these droning, repetitious, bloviating gasbags is surely a trial beyond justification.

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Episode 72: Mid-Life Diversions

2009-06-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

No No No.
Republicans Keep Getting It Wrong
Democrats have sex scandals. Republicans do bad for money and power. Pols V. Pundits
He is an aged, tusk-less bull elephant, bellowing in the wilderness. No longer the leader of his herd, John McCain reacts in the negative to every last proposal and initiative of the thoughtful younger man who defeated him. The man who thought his campaign ditty of "Bomb Bomb Iran" was a laugh riot thinks Obama should be making fist-shaking statements in support of the dissenters in the streets of Tehran. Never mind that such expressions of profound disapproval from the West are notoriously ineffective - see Tiananmen Square in 1989 - or that supporting them with actual action can easily lead to war or that blatant bellicosity simply gives the target regime a handy enemy upon whom to deflect blame. (The ayatollahs haven't needed encouragement in that regard.)

Every time McCain opens his mouth he gives us reason to rejoice in the results of the November election.Naturally, he has people who share his increasingly irrational diatribes - Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham, for two. Surprisingly, though, a number of commentators on the right feel that Obama's measured approach is exactly right. Among them are George Will, Peggy Noonan, Henry Kissinger, and Pat Buchanan (!), conservatives all.

The man called lizard continues his sharp-elbowed (and doomed) push to be anointed the next leader of the Garrulous Old Poops. Last week Newt Gingrich criticized Obama's Cairo speech, in part because Barack declared himself a "citizen of the world". In remarks before a conservative audience (after figuratively wrestling the podium away from Sarah Palin), Newt sternly announced that he weren't no dang citizen of the world. The former House Speaker, a forgetful sort, failed to recall that his hero, the sainted Ronald Reagan, once announced - before the United Nations Assembly, no less - that he was a citizen of the world, too. Time for a catch-up review by the former history professor from that third-rate college where he once pontificated.

Newt isn't the only member of his tribe tripping over his own feet. Congressional smucks lept to condemn Obama when he was maneuvered into a handshake with Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chavez at that Latin American meeting a few weeks ago. Something about giving credibility to unsavory people. Diplomatic niceties are lost on this crowd, but not on their beloved Ronnie. There he is, grinning lovably and stretching over the table to shake mitts with the potentate of the Evil Empire, Mikhail Gorbachev.

You Fascistic Socialist, You
Conservatives have so overused the "Liberal! Liberal! Liberal!" attack against opposition candidates, the label has lost its oomph. Since "Communist!", as applied to Obama, would be patently absurd, given his often centrist words and actions, the scary insult of choice seems to be "Socialist!" (Since Aristotelian logic isn't a prime analytical tool of conservatives, "Fascist!" has been employed by some of the same hysterics, but that boat seems not to have floated.)

Back on April 25th, conservatives hosted "Tea Parties" in cities around the country. They were meant to promote "Tax Cuts Now!!!". (Wingnuts left and right have never found single exclamation points adequate to emphasize their outrage.) The demonstrators ignored the administration's promise that taxes would be increased only on those households making $250,000 or more a year. Participants also failed to consider that the leaders of several of the most publicized events were Fox News anchors, in all likelihood the only protesters on scene who would actually be affected by that move.

Their tedious, predictable complaints spurn the reality of government programs that protect and serve tens of millions of Americans. Would these yahoos give up Social Security for the elderly and disabled? Medicare for their parents and grandparents? Workmen's Compensation when they are injured in the workplace? Unemployment Compensation when they lose their jobs? Medicaid and housing allowances for poor people? Free school lunches for disadvantaged children? Do they really want to protect insurance companies and greedy plutocrats who make and keep more money than they'll ever need?

Geezer doesn't like poetry, with the possible exception of Dylan Thomas recited by Richard Burton.
There.
That was almost harder to admit to than his lifelong atheism. Because everybody likes poetry, or at least claims to. The mystery is why? Writing is meant to communicate ideas, feelings, fresh concepts, interpretations of history. Exactly how does writing dreamily abstract prose, then breaking it up into faux poetic format accomplish that? (Shame on Ezra Pound for kicking that trend into gear.)
There was a bit of a fuss over the recent elevation of a woman, Carol Ann Duffy, to the post of Britain's Poet Laureate. After 341 years! trumpeted the press. Here, then, a sample of the deathless words that brought her this honor:

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Whatever her compensation, it's too much.

Gleanings From Readings
"He was plenty old enough, if he thought about it, to be her father, but in the society of the tour bus - a kind of school bus, with the discipline problems in the back and the brown-nosers up front next to the lecturers - they were all in the same grade."
- John Updike, My Father's Tears and Other Stories

"As if charging $15 to check a bag weren't enough, two airlines (United and US Airways) are asking for $5 more beginning this summer if you pay at the check-in counter - a fee on top of a fee."
- Associated Press

"What struck me was that virtually every story about Ensign's fall from grace included a reference to his having been considered a possible contender for his party's presidential nomination in 2012. Who knew?"
- Gail Collins, NY Times, regarding the Senator's confession of an adulterous affair

"A graduate student at Cornell University got a computer-generated paper accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The paper, entitled Deconstructing Access Points, made no sense whatsoever, as this sample reveals: 'In this section, we discuss existing research into red-black trees, vacuum tubes and courseware [10]. Recent work by Takahashi suggests a methodology for providing robust modalities, but doesn't offer an implementation [9].'"
- The Globe & Mail (Canada)

"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."
- L. Ron Hubbard, science fiction writer and founder of Scientology

"Tallulah Bankhead was supposed to pick up a ringing phone onstage in the 1962 show 'Here Today' and set the action in motion with her conversation. She forgot her lines (so) she handed the phone to a surprised co-star, saying, 'It's for you.' "
- Reminiscences of retired press agents, reported in the NY Times

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Episode 71: Thinking For Oneself

2009-05-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

Apart from the aches, pains, disabilities, obvious drawbacks and the unknown but certain finale, Geezer is a happy man.

I know that's counterintuitive, given the state of the banks, the car companies, foreclosures, the wars, terrorists, immigration, and all that. But with an adequate retirement fund showing signs of recovery, no deadlines, no editors, no bosses, and no stress, as well as recent multiple getaways to Manhattan and the Berkshires and upcoming trips to Montréal, Barcelona, Paris, and Amsterdam, this one old guy is all aglow. Life is good, pretty much.

Should I require a shot of adrenaline-fueled indignation, though, all I require is attendance to the ravings of the world's assorted religionists to achieve a state of highest dudgeon. Consider these few examples among many such events and pronouncements of recent weeks:

* Two Taliban thugs in Pakistan held a teenage girl down on a street in Sawat while a third flogged her mercilessly despite her pitieous cries to stop. Her crime? According to the source, either leaving the house without a male relative's permission or for refusing to marry the man wielding the belt.

Shariah Law: Your certainty in a confusing, undisciplined world.

* About 300 Afghan women marched in Kabul to protest a new law that restored Taliban-inspired restrictions on women that include requirements that they must receive permission to go to school or work outside the home and must use makeup and dress themselves up if their husbands so demand (presumably only in the bedroom). Worse, the law made it illegal for women to refuse their husbands' sexual advances. That is, marital rape is OK. A thousand male counter-demonstrators surrounded the women, courageously spitting, throwing stones, and shouting, "Get out of here, you whores!" and "Death to the enemies of Islam!" and "We want Islamic law!"

* Isn't there something more productive to do with the days and years available to them? Orthodox Jews spend a lot of time in observance of Talmud-dictated events. As if there weren't a sufficiency on the calendar already, they recently made note of Birkat Hachamah, a holiday celebrated every 28 years when the sun returns to the position it held at the time of its creation. This required the Observant to remove all chametz (unleavened bread) from their homes and cars and persons before Passover. Then they had to burn some of it and throw out the rest. A prayer was recited that has the magical power to release them from ownership of any crumbs still not dispatched. Reassuring. What bread has to do with the sun's movements is unclear, but at least it only happens two or three times in the average lifetime.

* Creationism isn't superstitious nonsense. At least, that is the conclusion to be drawn from a recent judicial decision in California. A history teacher impolitically uttered the reverse apostasy in his classroom, and a student sued. The judge agreed that it was a statement disparaging to Christians and their beliefs, and that government employees aren't permitted to display religious hostility.

The First Amendment, in his view, protects people convinced of nonsense but not their educated instructors who hold alternative views.

For daily descents into mindless dogma, it's hard bottom out lower than the Catholic church:

*On a visit to an Africa beset by H.I.V./AIDS, Il Papa Benedict, extending his reputation for cultural cluelessness, pronounced his church at the forefront of the battle against the disease. "You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem." The best weapon? Abstinence, natch.

*Having already welcomed a Holocaust-denying priest back into the fold, Benedict appointed Rev. Gerhard Maria Wagner the auxiliary bishop of Linz, Austria. That totem of enlightenment previously declared that (1) homosexuality was curable, and (2) the sins of New Orleanians brought on Hurricane Katrina.

*The Papal personage recently felt the need to acknowledge the role of his church in "forcing 150,000 Native Canadians into residential schools where many were sexually and physically abused." The Canadian government and three Protestant denominations had previously offered compensation and apologies, leaving the Roman Catholic Church, which ran most of the schools, the only responsible institution to be left unheard.

* You've heard about the Fort Wayne bishop who announced he would boycott the Notre Dame commencement speech of President Barack Obama. Way to continue a dialog, father. But did you

catch the letter sent by Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix to Notre Dame president John Jenkins? He said the invitation to Obama was "a public act of disobediance" to U.S. bishops. Disobediance? Does Fathead Olmsted grasp the concepts laid out in the First Amendment? No doubt against his wishes, the United States of America is not a theocracy. Americans, even Roman Catholic Americans, are not obliged to "obey" the commands of allegedly celibate old men in funny hats.

* No doubt Olmsted concurs with the archbishop of São Paulo, Brazil, who said recently "The law of God is above any human law," that law to be interpreted and disseminated by him and his fellows, of course. At the time, he was arguing that rape was bad but abortion was worse. The specific case he addressed was a girl who aborted twins last month after

her stepfather raped her. The thoroughly detestable archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho excommunicated the two doctors who performed the operation, but not the stepfather who abused the girl and her older sister.

The raped girl was barely four feet tall. She weighed 79 pounds. She was nine years old.

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Episode 70: Down By The River

2009-04-17T12:20:00.001-07:00

Jane Jacobs Be Damned

Urban planning can work, contrary to Jacobs' screeds, and Battery Park City, on the far south Hudson River edge of lowest Manhattan, is a heartening example. Since the heart of the development is just four lanes across West Street from Ground Zero, it would surely enrage bin Laden to know that the 14,000-plus residents continue to expand in both number and satisfaction. Unlike the controversial "urban renewal" projects of the Fifties and Sixties, Battery Park City didn't require the razing of established (if depressed) neighborhoods to build complexes of apartment blocks that often resembled the Stalinist bleakness of East Berlin and the former Iron Curtain satellite nations. Instead, B.P.C. was built upon new land - the rocks and dirt provided by the excavation for the World Trade Center and from dredgings from New York harbor.

To provide what amounts to a community gathering place, the handsome World Financial Center was erected across the street from the Twin Towers and filled not only with companies engaged in financial dealings, including American Express and Dow Jones, but with shops, restaurants, a ferry terminal, and a marina for private yachts known as North Cove. In the soaring atrium known as the Winter Garden are live palm trees.

The first neighborhood encountered at the north end of the development contains a new building for the elite public Stuyvesant high school, a hotel, theater, and shopping mall to serve the residents of the sever

al mid- to high-rise apartment buildings. South of the Financial Center are the primary residential districts, deploying low- to high-rise structures that are both remarkably harmonious in appearance and yet varying substantially in design.

Separating the subdivisions are east-west pocket parks permitting quiet activities beneath flowering trees. At their waterside ends are symbolic gateways of discretely different design, lending each district a touch of individuality. Dog runs, community gardens, and tennis and basketball courts are spotted along the West Street edge.

On the ground floors facing inland are installed delis, drycleaners, compact supermarkets, pizza parlors, bank branches, daycare centers - most of the services required by the young families that increasingly make B.P.C. their home.

An esplanade runs along the Hudson from the top end of the development well over two miles to where it merges into the park for which it is named. They are lined with bushes, flower beds, and groves of trees, and provide unobstructed vistas of the surprisingly attractive Jersey skyline and down to the south, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. At the southern end, the gardens widen and the paths intentionally begin to meander. Cyclists, runners, skateboarders, and pedestrians take full advantage; amorous couples occupy benches, devotees work through their yoga routines.

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"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. "

- Groucho Marx, as recalled by William Safire.

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Video Alerts

You might well think that there is no connection between Julie Andrews and a Belgian train station, but then you probably haven't seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkBepgH00GM

The now-famous "Gathering Storm" anti-gay marriage commercial is almost its own parody. See both it and Stephen Colbert's take at http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/224789/april-16-2009/the-colbert-coalition-s-anti-gay-marriage-ad

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We Hold These Truths

Apart from those who hang crucifixes over their beds and walk the streets with Lugers shoved in their pants, it grows ever more difficult to find thinking Americans who disagree with these conclusions:

* George W. Bush is a pinhead.

* Dick Cheney is evil incarnate.

* Donald Rumsfeld was wrong. About everything.
* Republicans have a death wish.

* Torture is morally wrong and counterproductive.

* "Just following orders" stopped being a good excuse sixty years ago.

* Every soldier, marine, F.B.I. agent, C.I.A. operative, physician, private contractor, psychiatrist, general officer, and lawyer who conducted, approved, justified, or ordered that "harsh interrogation techniques" be employed against suspected terrorists should be indicted and tried.

But not now.

Raging lions of the Left - this means you, Keith Olbermann and Nicholas Kristof - are demanding that the tumbrels and the guillotine be wheeled out to punish the malfactors this minute!

Forget the collapsed economy, millions of people thrown out of their homes, unemployment at rates not seen in forty years, a health care system in collapse, our nation in disgrace. My fellows on the Left want to deal with the past, not the future. They are the first to condemn capital punishment as revenge, not justice, but what they want here is swift, bloody, vengeance!

They want to fix the blame, not the problem.

Our new president has ordered Guantanamo closed within a year. He has declared an end to torture. He wants to restore habeas corpus to the accused. Don't bog him down. Let him move on.

There's time to deal with the officially sanctioned atrocities of the past administration. Diane Feinstein is chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She says it can conduct a thorough investigation and produce a report in eight or nine months. Let her. Let the outrage cool so the committee can proceed in calm deliberation in concert with the Justice Department. Resist the temptation to form Truth Squads, independent commissions, and multiple Congressional inquiries. Make every effort to tamp down the inflammatory partisan rancor which is sure to roil the country and halt progress on every initiative meant to get Americans back to work, into shelter, and secure in their health care.

There's time. Unclench your fists.

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Episode 69: On The Way

2009-03-15T15:28:00.001-07:00

Coming Up

Pale green shoots of iris, crocus, and daffodil suddenly stabbed through the garden mulch. The small azalea next to the porch is already budding. In a just a few weeks, the maples and oaks and ironwood will leaf out, blocking our view of the Croton and the Hudson and the bay where Henry Hudson dropped anchor in 1609. We'll lose sight of the 18th Century tavern on the north bank that was a stop on the Albany Post Road even before the Revolution.
We know the season is turning because a pair of pileated woodpeckers showed up in the backyard, whacking at decaying branches, even before the robins. They usually don't appear until May. Harbingers of a hot summer, perhaps?

The Dow went up 9% last week. Good news or just a bump?

A Tiny Little Triumph For Reason
Georgia passed a law last year that allows people with permits to carry their guns into restaurants, state parks, and on buses. That wasn't enough for the state's gun nuts. They filed a lawsuit to allow weapons in the Atlanta airport. Really! A federal appeals court denied the request.

And On Your Left, Ladies and Gentlemen...

...the exterior of a public toilet in Europe. And on your right, the interior of the same toilet.

You Don't Want To Go There: Update
Adding to Geezer's warnings last time out about vacationing in Mexico, especially for college-age Spring breakers, consider this buried aside from the Times: "Because so many security-conscious students are hiring private drivers to shuttle them around in vans, taxi drivers have begun blocking the roads, and in some cases forcibly removing passengers from the vans and ordering them into taxis."

Tack Yemen to the No-Go list: A suicide bomber killed four South Korean tourists near the fortress city of Shibam, a UNESCO World Heritage site. A year earlier, terrorists mowed down tourists in Hadhramaut, murdering two Belgian tourists and their driver. And a few months before that, a suicide bomber killed eight Spaniards and two Yemenis.

While I'm at it, you might want to skip any resort island or town popular with British tourists.

Booze-fueled Brits have long been notorious in beach areas of Spain, picking fights, brawling, carousing, vomiting and urinating on cobblestone streets. It got so bad a few years ago King Juan Carlos publicly protested that such behavior was unacceptable and that the British government was obligated to do something about their carousing post-adolescent nationals.

The list of their favored destinations grows, from Ibiza to Cyprus to Kos to Zakinthos, among many waterside venues. They are enabled by cheap air-hotel packages offered by tour agencies and by bars that encourage binge drinking. A typical happy hour incentive was the one pouring four drinks and two shots for the equivalent of $8.

More "You Might Be a Redneck If..."

*You've been married three times and still have the same in-laws.
*You have to go outside to get a beer from the fridge.
*Your junior prom had day care.

*You wonder how service stations keep their restrooms so clean.
*You think the last words of the Star-Spangled Banner are "Gentlemen, start your engines."

*You let your 14-year-old daughter smoke at the dinner table in front of her kids.

While we're on the subject, you surely know that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston are Splitsville. Whoever could have foreseen that? Perhaps Momma Sarah, who was preggers before she married the First Dude. Redneck family values.

Rush "Fats" Limbaugh, the other de facto leader of the Garrulous Old Poops sure knows how to rally the troglodytes. In his call for Gotterdamerung, he expressed the wish that Obama fail, never mind how that could mean the end for all of us. Fats talks about morality a lot. He also is a drug addict and so far totals three marriages and three divorces. His intellectual underpinnings are comprised of two semesters and a summer session at prestigious Southeast Missouri State University. His mother said he flunked everything.
Add Louisiana Gov Jindall, who has demonstrated a Sunday School teacher's wit and charisma; Mitch O'Connell, the dough-faced Senate Majority Leader who struggled to win re-election in one of the safest Republican districts in the South; Michael Steele, bumbling party chairman; and the resurgent, albeit deluded Newt, and the Republicans show every sign of a galloping mutual death wish.

Room Service

Good news for those who can still afford to stay at certain InterContinental, Hard Rock, Nikki Beach, and W hotels! In the words of a press release from an outfit called Booty Parlor: "Premier hotels are now offering their guests a little something extra in the mini-bar. Currently available among the drinks and snacks is Booty Parlor's Hotel Collection. "Designed for instant seduction, this collection satisfies even the hungriest appetite." Several variously designated "Intimacy Kits" include such essential items as the "one-time-use" Vibrating Couple's Ring, tubes of Don't Stop Massage Oil, and a Marabou Feather Luxe Body Duster - "the best way to get hot and steamy wherever you are."
No word about costs, to your wallet or your dignity.

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Episode 68: You Don't Want To Go There

2009-03-04T14:19:00.000-08:00

Mexico has provided many memorable travel moments for us. It enjoys the richest, deepest culture in the Western Hemisphere, witnessed at such diverse archaeological sites as Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Cobá, Monte Albán, and Palenque. We scrambled in wonder over the monumental ruins of the Maya, Oltecs, and Aztecs and lowered ourselves into the massive sinkholes called cenotes and into caves sheltering vessels and artifacts of clearly ancient origin. We lingered at cafés bordering the zócalos of the provincial capitals of Oaxaca and Merida, watching vendors in native dress selling serapes and balloons while sipping tequila shots chased by tumblers of sangrita. In Mexico City's Zona Rosa, we poked our heads into boutiques and galleries and crafts and antiques shops, and in Plaza Garibaldi hired a couple of the dozen or so mariachi bands waiting there to sing for us. The museums were fascinating, the beaches near-perfection, the prices low.

I wouldn't go back now unless someone was willing to pay me large sums to review five-star hotels and fine restaurants with private supplies of certified pure water. For, in case you've been inattentive or away on a tramp steamer, Mexico is fast becoming a nation of outlaws. There are, to start, the millions of Mexicans without documents who swarm our border, with the active encouragement of their government and the assistance of brutal smugglers called coyotes. However essentially innocent of evil untent they might be, they violate our laws by their presence and strain our consciences about how to deal with them. But put aside that knotty issue for the moment.

More important, especially if your kids are thinking about taking Spring Break south of the Rio Grande, is the lawlessness that pervades Mexican society. Start with the everlasting tradition of the mordida - the "bite". Regular visitors know to be prepared for what is, in fact, a bribe. It is encountered everywhere, when the offering of a fistful of pesos may end unreasonable delays at the border or persuade the traffic cop to return the papers he demanded for no apparent reason. Offers to watch your car are attended by the vague hint that without payment it might not be intact when you return. As in any country with high unemployment and a despairing populace, pickpocketing, purse- snatching, street cons, random thievery, and aggressive begging are to be expected and tolerated as a cost of travel.

But in the last few years, escalating levels of violence have pushed Mexico to the precipice of what geopoliticians call "failed states." Combat between vicious, heavily armed drug gangs and between the gangs and police have resulted in over 6,200 homicides in the last year, a number on track to be exceeded in 2009. This statistic doesn't include the more than 400 women tortured, raped, mutilated, and murdered in recent years in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua, nor the additional 1,000 who have been "disappeared."

The chief of police of Juárez was told by drug traffickers that if he didn't resign, they would kill a police officer every two days. And so they did. Corruption is pervasive. An earlier Juárez police chef pleaded guilty to smuggling a ton of marijuana into El Paso. Hundreds of abductions and kidnappings, typically resulting in torture, rape, and/or death, occur every year, often undertaken by police officers, frequently in league with hired chauffeurs and taxi drivers.

Much of this occurs in the north, in border towns, and in Mexico City, usually against Mexican nationals, but visitors shouldn't consider themselves immune. Indeed, they are often preferred targets of organized and freelance criminals. Armed robberies of entire busloads of tourists continue. State Department travel advisories note that rape, ATM assaults, and taxi robberies are on the rise in such major resorts as Alcapulco and Cancun. Drive from the beach into the country and road blocks and traffic stops by uniformed men who may or may not be police are a dire threat. The Cancun police chief is now in custody on suspicion that he colludes with drug gangs and took part in the torture and killing of a retired army general who had been hired to reorganize the police force.

This anything-goes atmosphere recently dragged competing drug thugs from Guatemala and Mexico into a running gun battle over the results of a horse race - a horse race! - in which 17 people died.

Visit Canada. Please.

Great Writing. Not.
The winning submission to the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, awarded to the person who crafts the most egregious opening sentence to an imaginary novel, read:

"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

'Roid Rage
An actor who portrayed a drug dealer in the acclaimed film, The Wrestler, created a slam-bang drama of his very own in our county last month. Scott Siegal , 34, exited his car in front of his parents' house, aware that he was being watched by nearby DEA agents. He was carrying a brown box when he approached the agents' vehicle, looked inside and said, "Nice (bleeping) vehicle." Shortly after, when the agents pulled up behind Siegal's Cadillac Escalade and were joined by several police cruisers, he floored the accelerator and roared off. He crashed through a fence to get out of the gated community. Trapped in a parking lot, he rammed the DEA car to get out. Cornered again, he blasted through several police cars to escape. Dove straight at an officer, apparently intending to run him down. Rammed a total of five official vehicles. Abandoning his Escalade, he finally lost a footrace. The agents later retrieved $150,000 and 1,500 bottles of steroids from the perp's parents' home.

Said his lawyer after arraignment, "It was a temporary lapse of judgement."

Slumdogs
Fans of the over-praised Oscar-winning film know that India isn't the greatest place to grow up. It isn't a barrel of laughs for women, either. American researchers have estimated that there were 163,000 fire-related deaths of young women in 2001 alone. Many of those deaths were due to domestic abuse, often over disputes about dowries or because the women were unhappy about arranged marriages. A common method of solving such matters is to douse the women and set them afire. The deaths are then reported as kitchen accidents.

A woman's perilous place in Indian society is too often determined by the medieval moral standards of rabid fundamentalists, both Hindu and Muslim. In a January 2009 incident, a mob drawing its inspiration from a Hindu organization called the Army of God attacked young women in a bar in the college town of Mangalore. The women's sins, it was said, were drinking, dancing with men, and being generally un-Indian. Sri Ram Sena, as the group is called in Hindi, also condemns Valentine's Day as a foreign conspiracy to dilute Indian culture. In the controversy stoked by the incident, one intellectually incompetent politician denounced shopping malls as places where hand-holding was rampant! Can burkas and home confinement be far behind?

Chile Cashews
Spring is on the way. Time to remove the covers from the deck furniture and ask a few friends over. Here's and idea for an easy cocktail party snack to soak up the alcohol (or make them drink more.) It's adapted from a recipe from the Sazón Cooking School in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (that place you don't want to visit). It takes minutes to put together followed by 30 minutes in the oven.

3 tablespoons lime juice, freshly squeezed or bottled
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon sweet smoked paprika
2 teaspoons sea salt
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 pound unsalted dry-roasted cashews

Pre-heat oven at 250° with rack in middle. Whisk together the juice, olive oil, paprika, salt, and cayenne. Stir in cashews and stir to coat thoroughly. Spread the cashews in a large shallow baking pan and bake until coating is dry and fragrant, about 30 minutes. Cool completely before serving.
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Episode 67: Stimuli

2009-02-16T15:11:00.000-08:00

They're Back
For five years now, a local educational nature reserve and conservation center has sponsored the "Hudson River Eaglefest" in February to celebrate the return of the bald eagle to the Lower Valley. They set up warming tents with hot chocolate, conduct raptor clinics with live birds, and set up high-powered spotter scopes and cameras with telephoto lens around the bay where the Croton River meets the Hudson.

The event marks the success of a recovery program begun in 1976. It was barely in the nick of time. By then, environmental degradation blamed on pesticides had reduced the eagle population of the entire state of New York to a single nesting pair. Now an estimated 500 eagles spend the winter here. They move south as lakes and rivers freeze over, denying them access to the fish that constitute much of their diet. Here, they are within sight of the spires of Manhattan.

Within the first two hours, dozens of eagles had been spotted by the crowds of serious birders and delighted first-timers who had never seen an eagle in the wild. By the end of the day, over 4,000 people passed through the several gathering sites. Only mature eagles sport the distinctive white heads and tails. The "bald" description isn't a misnomer - it derives from an Old English word meaning "white-headed". They are a thrilling sight on the fly, with wing spans of up to eight feet. Oddly, young, immature eagles up to three or four years old are larger than adults, due to longer feathers. Eagles mate for life, and build nests of sticks that over time can increase in weight up to a ton.

The day before the Eagle Fest, we spotted four eagles from our kitchen window.

News From The Rabid Right

Republicans have decided on their basic ongoing strategy for their coming years in the wilderness: Just say no. And no again. And again. Joe Scarborough, formerly a congressional spearcarrier in the Gingrich Revolution and now a token conservative on MSNBC, referred to the stimulus bill as "A steaming pile of garbage," cleaning up the image for TV. On the Senate floor, Lindsey Graham, groping for keen analysis and an erudite metaphor, said "This bill stinks." The new G.O.P. chairman, Michael Steele, declared that "in the history of mankind", no "federal, state, or local" government has ever "created one job." Steele is not a man to be troubled by the fact that tens of millions of jobs have been created by the government since the establishment of the republic. Ignoring reality is a bedrock component of the conservative mindset.

Somehow Geezer lands on the mailing lists not only of regional and national Republican and conservative interest groups, but of utter loons. One of the last is the Minuteman PAC, which addresses its recipients as "Fellow Patriots". A recent rant came under the subject line "The worst two weeks in our history." That is, the two weeks since Obama was inaugurated. "I'm steaming mad!" rages the no-doubt self-appointed Executive Director, Brett Farley. Words from his lips: "The socialist gravy gtrain is in full steam." "The vast majority of tax rebates are going to folks who don't pay taxes. " And my personal favorite, "SCHIP is the despicable legislation that will force the states to offer free health care to ALL children in the United States."

Promoting Stimulus
On a trip to Florida to drum up support for his $780 billion stimulus bill, Obama was filmed approaching a woman who was pleading for his help. To her right was a blonde white woman of middle years, presumably a Southerner, who could be seen clearly mouthing the words, "I love you, Barack!"
Next thing you know, they'll be throwing their room keys and underwear at him.

The President With A Heart

We remember "Tear down this wall!" and "The shining city on the hill," but Ronald Reagan also dropped such pearls as his claim that unemployment benefits were merely "a prepaid vacation for freeloaders."

No doubt the jobless Reagan Democrats of today have repressed memory of that bit of compassionate conservatism while sitting at their kitchen tables deciding which bills not to pay.

Two Women At Lunch
First woman: "So who are you going with?"
Second woman: "Never end a sentence with a preposition."
First woman: "So who are you going with, bitch?"

No Comment

Muzzamil and Aasiya Hassan migrated to the U.S. from Pakistan.

In 2004, they opened the Bridges TV cable station in Orchard Park, in upstate New York.

The stated mission of the station was to counter Muslim stereotypes in the wake of 9/11.

On February 6th, Aasiya filed for divorce.

A few days later, Muzzamil went to the police station and admitted he had beheaded Aasiya.

TiVo Alert

It isn't too late to set your DVR to catch Spain...On The Road Again. This is irresistible for those of those who think food is reason número uno for travel, with sightseeing and beachgoing mainly what you do to fill the hours between meals. The travelers are superchef Mario Batali,
Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow, food writer Mark Bittman, and gorgeous Spanish actress Claudia Bassols.
They shift combinations in each episode, engaging in unhurried conversations, taking in the sights, and most of all, checking out chefs both traditional and contemporary, cooking for themselves, and eating just about everything that comes within reach. They amuse and entertain both themselves and us, especially those viewers with a particular fondness for Spain. The series is shown, sporadically, on PBS stations at various hours.

YouTube Alert
Be prepared to go "awwww!" when you click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfmypfR9yjI. Let's say it's about two different species getting together.

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

Episode 66: Hope & The Hooverites

2009-01-26T15:37:00.000-08:00

And on your left, ladies and gentlemen, another aspect of the Miracle on the Hudson, just in case you thought we had achieved a classless society.

Do the dwindling number of conservative Republicans in Congress really, truly, believe the convictions they trumpet without end or variation? We are in this heart-wrenching mess due exclusively to the failed policies and actions/inactions of the administration in power over the last eight years. Yet these yahoos still insist that lower taxes for the rich and the initiation of preemptive endless war worked, not to mention that the exploding national debt and out-of -whack budgets are okay (except when they occur under Democrats).

They ignore the fact that this current disaster was visited upon us by them and instead nitpick our new president's stimulus plan. They brush aside the reality that the last time the unemployment figures were this bad was in 1992, during the failed administration of the first Bush. They wave away the truth that the last time our economy was in worse shape than today was in 1974, during the Nixon-Ford years in office.

They demean the efforts of Jimmy Carter, the most genuinely humanitarian of any president in memory, to overcome the miserable conditions left to him by his Republican predecessors. They venerate the simpleton Reagan, whose three-note policies of lower taxes, less government, and opposition to the "evil empire" only succeeded in making his friends richer. (Contrary to what his acolytes routinely declare, government expanded under the actor-prez and the Soviet Union died of its own dead weight, as it would have done even if this here Geezer had been in charge.)

Did I mention who was at the helm during the onset of the Great Depression? For those of you who weren't around before the moon landing, it was Herbert Hoover. Republican.

Fair & Balanced
Fox News assembled the following panel of right-thinkers to analyze the Inauguration: Steve Forbes, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Reagan economic advisor Art Laffler, and Ron Paul. In that crowd, Paul must have been the token Liberal.

Geezer hasn't hidden the fact of his devout atheism.
It was gratifying, then, to hear the newly-minted President add "nonbelievers" to his roster of patriotic Americans in the obligatory incantations of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim citizens. We people of no religious faith comprise an estimated 16% of the U.S. population.
Why then can we not be accorded the same political and societal deference of gays (2.9%), African-Americans (12.3%), Hispanics 12.5%, Jews (2.2%), and Asians (3.6%)?

Why do ELEVEN states forbid, directly or by clear implication, nonbelievers to hold political office?

No Comment
* The critical ingredients for most antibiotics are now made almost exclusively in China and India, according to the New York Times. Further, of 1,154 pharmaceutical plants in generic drug applications to the F.D.A. in 2007, only 13% were in the U.S. The rest were in China or India.
* A study by Brookhaven National Laboratory found that women were less able to suppress their hunger when faced with their favorite foods, suggesting a reason for the higher obesity rate among females.
* The Czech government had to apologize for commissioning an art installation that depicted Bulgaria as a series of hole-in-the-floor toilets, Romania as a Dracula-themed amusement park, Sweden as a giant Ikea box, and Germany as a maze of highways that resemble a swastika.

Geezer Reflects
There was a time when an "afternoon delight" meant something other than a really good nap.

Things Aren't Bad Enough?
Gary sends along news from the Great White North that help is on the way from someone "Dedicated to building America's future, supporting fresh ideas and candidates who share our vision for reform and innovation...to confront the challenges of the 21st Century with integrity, innovation, and determination."

Who might this shining knight be? Why, yes! It's the Guv Lady and her new SarahPAC! We're saved!

Annoyance In A Minor Key
There are people who are merit attention for their cataclysmic ineptitude or overweening arrogance or unwarranted self-regard. Dubya, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, John Boehner, Darth Cheney, Sean Hannity, and vast numbers of CEOs come immediately to mind.

Then there are those whose actions and attitudes simply send prickles of irritation through those more thoughtful people with whom they come in contact: Drivers who thumb their directional signals only after they begin turning. Moviegoers who behave as if sitting on their couches at home. Cellphone users who punch the walkie-talkie buttons on their devices so we not only hear their high-volume prattle but the responses from the callees.

Add your own. I will. For one, there is the guy who makes a fetish of announcing that he doesn't own a TV. Too busy curled in front of the fire with his golden retriever and the two Arthurs, Rimbaud and Schopenhauer. Or his variant, the man who only has a TV - the little black-and-white one in the kitchen - to watch PBS documentaries and the occasional curling tournament.

Then there is the woman who enrolls herself in an expensive gastronomical tour and announces - with frequently expressed regret for the circumstances of sentient beings - that she is a vegan. This requires her hosts, chefs, and fellow travelers to frantically seek substitutes for the foie gras and lamb shanks that were intended on the daily menus, all while she crinkles up her face at the very thought of hamburgers.

An Announcement
Readers may have noticed with pedagogical horror that Geezer split an infinitive in the above paragraph. Be aware that the chairman of the usage panel of The American Heritage Dictionary has recently freed us from the split-verb myth. We can now aspire to boldly go to far galaxies.

Budget Tip: At a restaurant on a recent trip into the city, I happened to mention it was my birthday. The waitress congratulated me and removed the price of my martini from the bill ($12). That was good, so I mentioned the birthday when we signed up for a tour of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. They waved the admission fee ($13). Afterwards, the bartender at Little Giant bistro down the street, advised of my deeper move into my eighth decade, poured me a free wine refill ($11). Total saving: $36 (not counting the larger tips I felt compelled to leave).

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Episode 65: At Last

2009-01-21T15:16:00.001-08:00

He's there, working, doing what he said he'd do: Closing Gitmo. Banning torture. Moving to end a war. Reversing Bush policies on abortion, energy, conservation, and the environment.

Before getting too far along, though, could we please get behind Senator Bill Nelson, who has once again called for a constitutional amendment eliminating the Electoral College and allowing for the election of the president by popular vote alone?

When the Constitution was approved after the Revolutionary War, the great majority of American voters were illiterate. It was felt, not without cause for the time, that a panel of educated, informed citizens should be installed (Article II, Section 1) as a buffer between the Executive Branch and the electorate. That was the reason for the creation of Electoral College. In addition, Senators were elected not by direct vote, but by their respective state legislatures. It wasn't until 1913 and the 17th Amendment that the direct vote for the Senate was approved.

That was almost a century ago. It doesn't happen often, but the Electoral College has overruled the popular vote on occasion. Just consider what might have happened in 2000 if the direct vote had prevailed. Gore. Instead of Bush.

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Darth II?

Now that Dick Cheney is finally dispatched to whatever Hell he so richly deserves for his reign of terror, what fresh reactionary thug is going to step up? I nominate House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner. He's been nasty and vindictive and mean-spirited every since his first election from Ohio, but with Dick and George and Karl clogging the media for eight years, he's been flying under the radar.

Now he's loose, and Obama's proposed $800 billion stimulus bill is only one of his targets. The plan is intended to repair infrastructure, create jobs, stimulate energy innovation, and enhance existing essential services. Where did Representative Bonehead decide to train his laser-like focus? On a minor component intended to expand the availability of family-planning services to Medicaid recipients. Boner called the proposal simply a way to "spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives."

Distortion of the intentions of others is an abiding conservative technique, ignoring reality. In this case, Boner has derided the President's desire to help poor people avoid unwanted pregnancies, HIV/Aids, and STDs. His alternative suggestion? Lower taxes - once again - on rich people.

On an earlier occasion, just a day after the inauguration, Boner said of Obama, "At some point he's going to have to tell people what he's for, and then we'll see whether he really wants to govern from the middle or cave in to the liberals in his party." Not for Bonehead the reflection that he didn't mind one bit when Dubya caved to the far right in his party for eight full years.

Evil gnome Rove is still around, of course, stirring newts and spiders in his pot of bubbling bile. In the Wall Street Journal, he wrote that after Bush departed for Texas, "in a last angry frenzy, his critics again distorted his record, maligned his character, and repeated untruths about his years in the Oval Office." His leader, Rove continued, cut taxes (for rich people), expanded Medicare (to benefit insurance companies), liberated (pre-emptively attacked) Iraq, and protected the country (except for that one time of which he had prior knowledge).

Such is life in the Republican parallel universe. And thus do the Republicans continue their evolution into an ever-shrinking regional party doomed to start feeding on itself.

We Won. Deal With It.

Our next-door neighbor, a staunch Republican, sent me a story. It alleges that a seven-year-old boy in Syracuse, NY challenged a court ruling over his custody. Since he had a history of being beaten by his parents, the judge awarded him to his aunt. The boy said she beat him worse than his parents. When the judge suggested that he live with his grandparents, he cried and said they also beat him.

Since domestic violence seemed to be a family pattern, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him. The boy had a ready idea, and after consultation with legal and welfare authorities, the judge granted temporary custody to the Republican Party, whom the boy firmly believed is not capable of beating anyone.

One of our favorite correspondents, Kelly K., worked at every opportunity in Obama's campaign. She couldn't miss the inauguration, which she attended with her honey, a soldier who returned from Iraq only a few months ago. She took pictures:

Faith On Parade

Every day, in every way, we earn of still more ways religionists poison our interactions with the other people with whom we share the planet. Observe:

* Pope Benedict XVI has lifted the excommunications of four ultra-traditional bishops who formed the breakaway Lefebvre's Society of St. Pius X twenty years ago. This was a few days after one of the bishops said on Swedish television that the historical evidence "is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed." This is the same ecclesiastical pinhead who has publicly stated his conviction that the U.S. staged the attacks of 9/11 as a pretext to invade Afganistan. Welcome back into the fold, Bishop Williamson. You'll have company.

* The Taliban has assumed virtually complete control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, and the government appears unable to counter it. Taliban leaders issue their pronouncements every night by radio, explaining what constitutes un-Islamic behavior. Among the strictures, ever-changing and multiplying, are watching television. Selling DVDs. Singing. Dancing. Shaving beards. Allowing girls to attend school. They enforce these dictates with public floggings, beheadings, murders of dozens of police and local officeholders, and relentless persecution of women - this in what used to be moderately secular region of Islamic Pakistan.

A Justification For Chocolate

"Stressed" spelled backwards is "Desserts". Break out the Godiva and molten cakes.

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Episode 64: Delusions R Us

2009-01-08T16:18:00.002-08:00

Monument to a Super-Duper Ego
Roland Burris, the likely senatorial designate from Illinois, is a pip. He built this mausoleum to himself and had carved upon it the words "Trail Blazer," followed by a chiseled resume of his achievements and additional space below to enter any future feats. Among the personal milestones therein enumerated are the facts that he was the first African-American in Illinois to become the state Attorney General and the first black Southern Illinois University exchange student to the University of Hamburg. There is an adjoining stone structure intended for "Other Major Accomplishments". Burris (71) is said to frequently refer to himself in the third person. His children are named Ronald and Ronalda.

But as we know, a towering ego is hardly an obstacle along a political career path.
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Independent of What, Exactly
In politics, smugness isn't confined to Senators or Congresspeople running for election in safe districts (A liberal Democratic candidate in Mississippi? Snicker). Far greater in number are those citizens who identify themselves as "Independents". They puff that they "reject partisanship" and "make their choices outside ideology," ignoring the fact that politics is by definition partisan and ideological.

Worst of all is the knee-jerk assertion of declared Independents that they "vote for the person, not the party." This is a assertion that denies reason. If you vote for a conservative Republican, you must accept that he or she almost certainly stands with anti-abortionists and gun fanatics, against single-user medical care for all citizens, and supports notions of limited government, a strong military, strict immigration control, and lower taxes for businesses and the wealthy. Vote for a liberal Democrat, and he or she will surely be aligned with pro-choice and gun-control activists, and those who believe that government spending can solve social and economic problems, including healthcare for all and programs intended to relieve poverty.

Of course, few politicians adhere exclusively to positions held by the right or left, but an independent who votes for a George Bush or a Bill Clinton must know what kinds of people either candidate is likely to appoint to key positions. Vote for a man or woman because he or she speaks well or looks good or likes dogs or would be "fun to have a beer with" and you can easily be in for four or eight years of initiatives and steamrolling policies you despise.

There is nothing noble or virtuous about being a non-aligned voter. Parties and their platforms matter. Convictions are important.
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Video Alert
Apparently this link didn't work in an earlier blog. It's worth another try - it's Robin Williams, after all. (About ten minutes long.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puMz1Q3E000
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Military Efficiency
The Army admitted this week that it had mistakenly sent "Dear John Doe" letters to family members who have died in Iraq and Afganistan.
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And You Were Thinking What, Mr. Jarrar?
In August 2006, Raed Jarrar, an Iraqui-born legal resident of the United States, had a ticket on JetBlue flight from JFK Airport. He was stopped at a checkpoint because a legend on his T-shirt, in both Arabic and English, read "We will not be silent."
He was given another T-shirt to cover the first one, which the security officer thought was inflammatory. Jarrar was incensed. He sued. Got a $240,00 settlement. OK, the security officer may have overreacted, and there is that First Amendment thing.

But in such times as these, how on earth did Jarrar imagine his declaration might be received?
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Oh, For a Memory Like That
Governor David Paterson gave his first State of the State address this week. It was over an hour long and included family names and ages of children he cited as exemplars of the spirit of New Yorkers. Paterson is legally blind and cannot read Braille.
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P.S. Your Cat Is Dead
George and Laura had a black American shorthair cat called India. It expired last week. So it goes as life and time dribble away.
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A Product Whose Time Hasn't Come (At Least Not For the Target Group):
Cialis for daily use.
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It Isn't Easy Being a Democratically Elected Dictator
* With a cholera epidemic, total economic collapse, rampant hunger among the citizenry, and the utter breakdown of every imaginable public service, President Robert Mugable of Zimbabwe is just plain exhausted. Really. So he has left his country for a month-long vacation.

* Venezuela's oil weapon has lost its punch, with a two-thirds dump in price-per-barrel since last July. This takes all the fun out of poking the gringos with a stick, one of President Hugo Chavez's favorite pastimes. He's had to suspend the much-publicized program providing discounted heating oil to about 200,000 households in poor communities in 23 states. Under Chavez, oil has accounted for 93 percent of the country's export revenue, up from 69 percent when he was elected president a decade ago. He is delaying devaluation of the national currency until after a referendum soon to be held that would allow him to seek re-election forever.

*Vladimir Putin is in a similar twist. With oil revenues way down and his great popularity at home starting to slip, the surly little ex-KGB agent picks fights with the West to distract Russians from the slumping economy. This week, it was Ukraine and, by extension, much of Europe, when he shut the tap of natural gas sent through the former Soviet republic to France, Germany, Italy, and several other countries.
************************************************************************************* 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.

Episode 63: Blessings Be Upon You

2008-12-29T14:37:00.000-08:00

Why Is This Man Smiling?
When a Jew goes before God, the Talmud says that the first question he is asked is "Were you honest in your business dealings?" What will be the reply of Bernard L. Madoff? Where will he then be directed to spend eternity? Assuming he believes in such things, how does he sleep at night, let alone smile during the day? Who populates his dreams? Does he give a thought to the thousands, perhaps millions, of people whose lives he has destroyed? How does he square what he has done with his purported religious convictions?

Catching On, Very Slowly

Maybe the turning point was when the clueless heads of the Big Three each took their private jets to D.C. to beg bailouts. Turned away, they came back by car.

Some of the nation's CEOs took the hint. Citibank's top execs, for example, turned down their scheduled bonuses, as well they might. No doubt they took note of the reaction to the actions of the boys at AIG, who held a retreat at a luxury resort less than a week after the insurance group dragooned an $85 billion bailout loan from you and me and our children and grandchildren.

And, there was John Thain. He replaced the former head of Merrill Lynch last year after a multi-billion-dollar loss. He got a $15 million signing bonus. A few months later, he arranged a merger with the Bank of America. A few weeks after that, Merrill received $10 billion from the Feds and the Bank of America wangled $15 billion. THEN, Thain asked for a $10 million bonus from his board.

What can he have been thinking? Andrew Cuomo stabbed a shard of reality into Thain's life. The bonus was unacceptable, Andy intoned, with dark implications of what might happen if the CEO didn't retreat. Thain allowed that the Attorney General might have something there. He withdrew his request and slunk back to his 15-bedroom house in Connecticut.

Now the capper: Peter Krause, a senior executive at Merrill Lynch for only three months before the Bank of America buyout, received a golden parachute of $25 million. He used part of that as a down payment for a pied-a-terre on Park Avenue. It comes with five bedrooms, three maids' rooms, a library, and a gym.

Praise the Lord we live in a country and culture fashioned by our Judeo-Christian value system. Otherwise, who knows what moral and criminal depredations might have been visited upon us.

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Video Alerts

Line up to take a last shot at Dubya before he slinks away. Charles brought http://www.sockandawe.com/ to Geezer's attention.

Then set aside ten minutes to see and hear Robin Williams' priceless take on the election at http://politicalirony.com/2008/11/30/robin-williams-on-obamas-election/ (Thanks, Bob.)

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Speaking of Capitalist Scum

Alleged "conceptual artist" Damien Hirst is a charlatan of such epic proportions as to render Andy Warhol, the previous champ, no more a flim-flam specialist than Grandma Moses. If you have been fortunate enough to slide past the hype of his work and personna, be it known that Hirst has re-cast galleries, museums, and corporate suites all over Europe and America as surreal necropoli.

Hirst is famous for enbalming animal carcasses in tanks of formaldahyde, you see. A sheep in the Crucifixion position is one, a half of an entire steer sliced down the middle from snout to tail, another. Hirst's best-known "work" is a dead shark, similarly entombed, with the supremely pretentious title "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living".

It's hardly news that artists have long tried to gain attention and commissions by outraging public sensibilities, especially in the 2oth Century. What is baffling is the credulity displayed by hyper-rich patrons (that's Bill Gates up there) and panting museum administrators, presumably otherwise intelligent, well-educated folk who eagerly stuff wads of money into Hirst's pockets.

In September 2008, an auction of his obscenities brought in $125 million. That famous rotting shark was purchased by a hedge-fund billionaire. There was speculation that he would install his prize in his Stamford, CT office - how apt for a gaggle of traders who can't stop moving or they'll die. Instead, it can now be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art - your $20 admission fees at work.

This isn't just cranky Geezer's take on this outrage. Said equally cranky critic Robert Hughes: "If there is anything special about this event, it lies in the extreme disproportion between Hirst's prices and his actual talent. Hirst is a pirate."

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To Our Middle-Aged Children

Do you have a will yet? A living will? A health care proxy? Long-term health care insurance?

Why the hell not?

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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.

Episode 62: 'Tis The Season

2008-12-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

...To Tally What The Righteous Have Done For Us Lately
We've been distracted, what with wars, a year-long campaign, economic turbulence, and big-haired governors from Alaska and Illinois. Here's how true believers have been otherwise engaged.
*In a region of Somalia controlled by the radical Islamist group Shabab, a young woman was

buried up to her neck and stoned to death for alleged adultery. Human rights activists declared that, on the contrary, she had been raped.

*The Archbishop of Canterbury apparently hadn't heard about that manifestation of Islamic law. He come up with a really bad idea - calling for Great Britain to adopt aspects of Shariah law to operate alongside the existing legal system.

*In April, and again in November, Greek Orthodox and Armenian monks came to blows in the mutually revered Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, believed by both to be the site of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Police were called to quell the violence. Six Christian sects share control of the church.
They can't agree on much of anything.

*Nigeria is not only the source of the most transparent e-mail fraud schemes in cyberspace. A few weeks ago, Christian and Muslim mobs, protesting local election results, killed over 400 people thought to be of one or the other faith. At least 7,000 others were made homeless as houses, churches, and mosques were burned to the ground.

*Kosher ethics took a beating at that meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, where the supervising rabbis were accused of employing under-age illegal immigrants and driving them through twelve-hour shifts without overtime pay and sometimes reneging on compensation promised. These men of G-D screamed constantly at the workers, demanding that they work ever faster. Safety measures, as with shields for cutting blades, were often ignored.

*Back in the Promised Land, right-wing Jewish occupants of an illegal West Bank settlement had to be dragged away by soldiers. They maintain their right to be there based on scripture stipulating that Judea and Sumeria were bequeathed to them by God in perpetuity. Never mind that their continued presence in the occupied territory ensures that there will never be peace between Israel and her neighbors.

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"Morality is doing what is right no matter what you're told. Religion is doing what you are told no matter what is right."

- Unknown

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*God WILL be with you in the foxhole and the gun turret, if the commanders and faculties of our three service academies have any say about it. Proponents of Evangelical Christianity deliver prayers daily at the compulsory lunches at the Naval Academy. Nine midshipmen had the courage to protest. Fugedabowdit. An Academy spokesman replied that it does "not intend to change its practice of offering midshipmen an opportunity for prayer" at meals. Similar complaints have been made about the Military and Air Force Academies leadership. In his farewell speech to the Corps of Cadets at West Point, General Robert Caslen intoned, "Draw your strength in the days ahead from your faith in God. Let it be the moral compass that guides you." Atheists, agnostics, and the merely uncommitted clearly fall short of sturdy officer material.
*Evangelical Protestants never fail to condemn those who don't hew to their own convictions. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family has accused Barack Obama of having "a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution" - meaning not Dobson's. "I think," he continued, proving he doesn't, "he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology." Meaning not Dobson's.

*After Proposition 8 passed in California, specifying that marriage is exclusively between a man and woman, Mormons were hurt and dismayed that gay activists were unhappy that the Church of Latterday Saints was a constituency in vigorous support of the proposition. In line with the views of most religionists, C.L.S. members believe they have the absolute right to impose their ecclesiastical views on society. They aren't so vocal about all their goofy convictions, such as their belief that Jesus will return to earth and build a new Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri.

*We can always count on the minions of the Vatican to exercise their gift for clueless hypocrisy. Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, who has managed to stand even farther to the right than his immediate predecessor, assailed the administration of Jesuit-run Fordham University for awarding Justice Stephen G. Breyer an ethics prize. This expressed indignation was solely for Breyer's majority opinion striking down Nebraska's ban on late-term abortion, ignoring the breath and depth of the justice's career dealing with many profound issues. That The One True Church continues to present itself as a font of impeccable morality in the face of the hundreds of pedophile priests who have ruined the lives of untold thousands of trusting parishioners in countries throughout the Catholic world is beyond rationalization. It must rankle Egan and his brothers of the cloth that a majority of Catholics voted for Obama and increasingly support a woman's right to choose what is done to her body.

Goodwill to all who persist in believing - despite resounding evidence to the contrary - that religion is a force for peace and love in the world, not one of repression, intolerance, violence, and hatred.

Happy holidays.

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"Barack thinks with his mind open. Larry thinks with his mouth open."
-Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree, commenting on the appointment by President-elect Obama of Lawrence H. Summers as his top economic advisor

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For foodies like us, coming to grips with current economic travails tends to focus on eating and drinking. Our early efforts include resolving to eschew $300 restaurant meals and developing a taste for boxed wines.

Our dining-out strategies include (1) drinking our customary cocktails at home, (2) avoiding multi-course fixed price meals, (3) confining ourselves to a sharing an appetizer, ordering two entrees and skipping dessert.

We put these strategies to use when we again borrowed the Manhattan apartment of our son the computer genius. An advantage of seeking out less expensive restaurants is that the quest takes you down streets into neighborhoods that you may have avoided in the past, especially when they project a youthful or scary or merely beaten vibe. That way are new discoveries made.

One was Hummus Place, 109 St. Mark's Place (bet. Ave. A & 1st Ave.) 212-529-9198. Back when Geezer worked in Greenwich Village, decades ago, this street led into darkest East Village, a street of pimps, addicts, hustlers, and motorcycle gangs. Now, it is a bohemian cacophony of bright lights and nonthreatening exotica and two-legged fauna. We found the narrow storefront eatery easily (north side of the street). First, take the name seriously. Hummus is what they serve. No fish, no pasta, no meat. What you get is a flat soup bowl ringed with a fat ribbon of the signature substance, surrounding a heap of vegetables - chickpeas, mushrooms, fava beans, and not much else. Falafel is the most popular appetizer, abetted by stuffed grape leaves and quinoa salad. All are served with hot, fresh, pillow-y pitas. While the very limited decor suggests Moroccan origins, the staff and ownership are Israeli. Wine and beer are served. The lunch special goes for $7.50. Our dinner tab came to $45, all included. Open daily for lunch and dinner.

We've tended to stay away from the Meatpacking District - way too trendy. On a cold wet Sunday night after Thanksgiving, though, it figured to be less trammeled. Our choice was Fatty Crab, 643 Hudson St. (bet. Gansevoort & Horatio Sts.), 212-352-3590. Another storefront location, tables are compacted into the narrow space, with one wall of exposed brick. On this occasion, three vases of amarilis blossoms provided color in the candlelit gloom. The food is labeled Malaysian, an elastic category given that the menu includes a brace of juicy pork sliders.

There is a decidedly Asian slant, though, including a green mango salad, Chinese broccoli with salted fish, shrimp and pork wontons with fried noodles, and coconut poached bass. The short "Snacks" list substitutes for appetizers, where only one item - pork ribs - costs more than $9. Mains were all under $20, except for "Short Rib Rendang", at $25. Service is "family style", meaning it comes to the table as soon as the kitchen sets it out. The result is a great deal of sharing. Everything is so tantalizing, so piquant in flavor and texture, the temptation is to order far more than necessary to fill up. The adjacent table of four ordered at least twelve separate dishes and were working on their third bottle of wine. We understood, but pretty much stuck to our resolves. Our bill came to $83.55, all in. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Full bar service. No reservations.

Korean food is yet another of those Asian cuisines of which I am fond and intrigued but don't know well. That being the case, I can't respond authoritatively to those blog and Zagat reviewers who are unkind about Dok Suni's, 119 First Ave. (bet. St-Mark's Place & 7th St.), 212-477-9506, so I'll settle for telling them they're full of it. You don't get to critique this edgy East Village place on level ground with the likes of pricey Korean fusion giant Momofuku Saam Bar, not when a filling, satisfying meal can be had here for well under $100 for four! I know enough to understand that authenticity is not the kitchen's primary concern, there being decidedly Western touches here and there. Strict observance of traditional preparations has never been high among my considerations. So are the juicy, crisp vegetables piled atop mounds of rice in the dish called bibimbap the same to be found in downtown Seoul? I don't care. It was most satisfying. There are no in-table grills here, as in other Korean places, but I didn't miss them, as I'm not all that anxious to cook my own food when I eat out. The marinated, boneless, aromatic, grilled beef dish called bulgoli stilled the protein cravings just fine. Back home across the Pacific, kimchi is cabbage in vinegar stuffed in a pot and buried in the backyard for a few months. Here, I don't know the procedure, but their version is a treat for fans of pickled veggies. Do try the scallion pancakes (pajun) and the thin-skinned dumplings. The music is loud, the decor limited, service the luck of the draw. No reservations, cash only.

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Italian Sausage with White Beans and Tomatoes

This takes about an hour in the oven but requires very little prep. It's also relatively low-cal, at under 500 calories per serving.
Serves 3-4

One pound sweet Italian turkey sausage cut into two-inch pieces

One pint cherry tomatoes.
One medium onion, sliced in half-moons
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1-2 extra-virgin olive oil
One tablespoon balsamic vinegar
One teaspoon dried thyme leaves, crumbled
One bay leaf
Salt & pepper to taste
One 16-ounce can of white beans, drained and rinsed

Pre-heat the oven at 425 degrees. Toss all ingredients except the beans together in a roasting pan or casserole. Place in the oven at the lowest rack. Roast until sausages brown, about 30-40 minutes. The tomatoes and onions should have become a thick sauce. Stir in the beans and, if needed, up to a quarter-cup of chicken broth or water. Return to oven and cook until beans are heated through, about 10 minutes.
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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 http://www.TUCKg3@optonline.net/.

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Episode 61: They Know Something

2008-11-21T15:03:00.000-08:00

The Wild, Wild East
Our scant hillside acre here in the Valley has been home over the years to chipmunks, skunks, raccoons, woodchucks, copperheads, rabbits, possums, and squirrels. Last winter, a fox took up residence in a brush pile down our hill, and a platoon of flying squirrels moved into our attic, proving reluctant to leave. Every May, a snapping turtle drags herself 100 yards up the hill to deposit her eggs in our lawn. We spot blue herons, egrets, and trumpeter and mute swans at the edge of our river, and eagles and osprey flap past our rear windows. A red-tailed hawk has taken to perching on the railing of our deck. Deer, needless to say, treat our flower beds as salad bars, and Eastern coyotes have made meals of them in turn.
That's nothing.
Three moose have wandered through the northern part of our county in recent years, black bears and wildcats have been photographed, and now, a mountain lion has reportedly extended his range to within a few miles of our front porch.

We live only 45 minutes from Times Square.

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The Governor Speaks

* "Until I'm president, it's going to be hard for me to verify that I'll think I'll be more effective."

* "I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically delineate based upon whatever."

* "People shouldn't read into venue locations someone's heart."

* "There's not enough people in the system to take advantage of people like me."

* "If you're asking me as the president, would I understand reality, I do."

* "I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating."

No, the above quotes weren't from the governor with the designer wardrobe. These were utterances of George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign.
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Have you noticed the proliferation of financial analysts and pundits on cable and broadcast TV who have chosen to shave themselves bald? No doubt they believe this makes them look manly, or at least cool. It works for Michael Jordan, after all. But the fact is, white guys can't pull off that look.

They look like thumbs.

************************************************************************************* Berkshires Remix "Leaf peeping" is a phrase that makes me gag - repeatedly, given that it is much beloved by the multitude of local New England tourism authorities and I've been writing about the region for twenty years. Those same flacks would have outlanders believe that the annual changing of the foliage lasts a couple of months or so. In fact, it is a band of green to crimson to rust that rolls down from Canada over a few weeks, lingering only a few days in each locality. Native connoisseurs nitpick that today was nice, "but you should have been here yesterday at 2:30."
In the Berkshires, that colorful arrival and departure peaks for three or four days either side of Columbus Day, October 11th. We rented an apartment in Great Barrington for a week starting Sunday, the 12th. The timing was perfect, for this, one of the best foliage seasons in years. From top (the Vermont border) to bottom (Connecticut), the colors were magnificent.

We took full advantage, driving a little over an hour north to North Adams and MassMOCA (1040 Mass MOCA Way, 413-662-2111), an adventurous contemporary art museum specializing in massive installations that can't be contained in most venues. The current special exhibition has an ecological theme, part of which invites visitors to insert their heads into hanging terrariums. Ballet, film, and various live performances fill out the schedule. After lunch, we stopped off at the Clark Art Institute (225 South St., 413-458-2303), a museum and research center in Williamstown. A more conventional repository characterized by impeccably mounted permanent and temporary exhibits of works from the Renaissance to the late 20th Century, it has recently added the Stone Hill Center, which has a couple of galleries for temporary exhibits.
In Stockbridge, the Norman Rockwell Museum has expanded physically and embraces an ever-wider vision of the sorts of art that can be associated with its main man. Featured on our visit were a special exhibition of a political satirist, Rockwell's original cottage studio recently moved here, and an invitational show of free-standing outdoor sculptures on the theme of "Gates".

The packed summer calendar of classical music, jazz, art shows, and theater thins out after Labor Day, but art venues and live performance centers continue to mount events through the cold months, slowing to a near halt only from January to March.

Eating Out Great Barrington is the shopping and dining center of the southern Berkshires, with boosters claiming over fifty eating places - perhaps so, if they're counting every pizza joint and Chinese takeout. Certainly there are enough worthy restaurants to eat out with satisfaction three times a day for a week. "Funky" was a word invented for the Helsinki Cafe (284 Main St., 413-528-3394). The two-room interior evokes a Rumanian (ok, Finnish) gypsy tea parlor and the menu incorporates an unpredictable jumble of dishes ranging over quesadillas, stir fries, borscht, falafel, and latkes. Despite those leaps in fancy, most of what comes out of the kitchen is at the very least acceptable and often quite good. Service is amiable, if scattered. Figure about $50 for two. There's a music club next door under the same management.
A lowish Zagat rating to the contrary, we quite liked Aegean Breeze (327 Stockbridge Rd., 413-528-4001). Its Greek card sticks to such traditional dishes as plaki (sea bass baked in a clay pot), spanakopitta (phyllo stuffed with spinach and feta), kebobs, keftedes (meatballs), and grilled octopus. For lunch, the large appetizer serving of assorted mezedes - several tangy spreads served with warm pita - obviates the need for an entree. Figure about $70 for dinner for two, but with these big portions you might not need more than one course.
Pearl's (47 Railroad St., 413-528-7767) aspires to a Manhattan steakhouse vibe, but with elbow room and servers who don't snarl. Leave the nastiness to foodie websites replete with amateur reviewers who seem to have taken a dislike to the entire experience. If they were expecting Sparks steakhouse, they have a point - experienced, hyper-professional chefs and waiters aren't thick on the ground in The Berkshires - but cracks like "incompetent", "duck like leather", and "very poor" are intolerant and unjustified. Bugger them. If you want a chunk of decently cooked beef or fish with appropriate sides, you can do a lot worse and not a whole lot better in these parts. You might want to settle for a sandwich in the comfortable bar. Otherwise, dinner for two is about $70.
Nearby Allium (42 Railroad St., 413-528-2118) has two rooms, with formal dining on the left and what amounts to a small plates wine bar on the right. We opted for the latter, where we chose cod fritters drizzled with red pepper aioli and the field salad with Basque garroxta cheese and serrano ham. Figure about $75 for a full dinner for two, about $35 for an appetizer meal with wine.
At the south edge of Great Barrington, a south Asian couple has taken over a former pizza parlor, which they half-renamed Aroma Bar & Grill (485 Main St., 413-528-3116). It took them a while to replace the photos of Tuscany on the walls, and the replacement decorations haven't much enhanced the gloomy ambiance. Persevere, for the food that issues from the kitchen is fresh, aromatic, and tasty. Samosas, marinated fish and chicken tikkas, and sixteen breads baked on the premises are among the best choices from a long, long menu.

If a romantic liaison or commemoration is in your immediate future, you can do much worse than a short drive to the quiet hamlet of New Marlborough and the Old Inn on the Green (New Marlborough Rd./Rte 57, 413-229-7924). "Old", it is, parts of the building dating from 1760. At dinner, the only illumination is from fireplaces and candles on the table and in sconces. Owned by an accomplished chef and his female partner, the menu is sophisticated without verging on weird, and if you're so inclined, the seven-course tasting menu is memorable. Service is equal to the challenge. We're talking about your basic $180 dinner for two. Save a few dollars with the midweek prix fixe menu, but that might be when the big honcho takes a night or two off.

Occupying a corner space near the entrance to Mass MOCA in North Adams, the casual Cafe Latino (1111 Mass MOCA Way, 413-662-2004) is spare in decor and fixtures but venturesome on the table. While the menu is labeled "Nuevo Latino", the kitchen staff doesn't don a culinary straitjacket each morning. They have been known to offer Japanese-Peruvian meals, for example, and other cross-cultural touches regularly appear, as with the latitapas, which join Spanish piquillos with black-bean hummus and chorizo. Still, among the most popular dishes are quesadillas and fish tacos. Fridays and Saturdays, they bring in jazz combos.

Save at least one meal for Bistro Zinc (56 Church St., 413-637-2745) in Lenox, my favorite of all the Berkshire possibilities. For one thing, in a region where restaurateurs are routinely closed at lunchtime or in winter, or two or three days a week, or whenever the owners feel like it, Zinc is open all year, every day, from 11:30AM to 10PM. Stop in for a drink and a snack in the barroom (which is as large as the main dining room), for the prix fixe ($13-$16) lunch, or for a full-out dinner of updated Gallic standards. That includes steak frites, foie gras, coq au vin, tuna tartare, and diver scallops, all prepared with care (cranky Zagat reviews notwithstanding). Service admittedly isn't a high point, the luck of the draw ranging from friendly and efficient to distant and touchy.

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

Episode 60: Gassy

2008-11-12T13:24:00.000-08:00

Geezer To The Rescue

Let me help. We can dilute so many problems with just one simple piece of legislation:

Mandate that gasoline prices will not be permitted to drop below $4.00 for the next four years, filling in the gap between actual pump prices and that fixed price level with a sliding tax scale.

This will (1) ensure that Americans will continue to curtail consumption, (2) discourage the purchase of gas guzzlers, (3) motivate Detroit to innovate in designing energy-efficient vehicles, (4) continue to reduce the price of home heating oil, (5) start paying back the $700 billion bailout with the resulting enhanced revenues, and (6) give fits to the leaders of countries that don't wish us well - Russia, Iran,Venezuela - while they try to figure out how to stabilize the plunging economies they pumped up when the price of a barrel of oil was over $145 (which, as of today, has dropped to $58).

And yes, Geezer knows this proposal hasn't a prayer.

*****************************************************************************

The Governor Makes Herself Perfectly Clear

Freed from the restrictions imposed upon her by McCain's handlers, Sarah Palin is stocking up on interviews by the dreaded Mainstream Press. She was in her kitchen whipping up snacks for the First Dude and the gang when she dropped these quotes on interviewers.

*About why she wanted to make a concession speech Election Night despite the convention that only the head of the ticket speaks on that occasion:

"But, you know, I thought, even if it was unprecedented, so what, y' know? Geez, let's do something a little bit out of the box there."

* About her frenzied reception at campaign rallies:

"But not me personally were those for," said Sarah Syntax," but it was just for the representation of a woman on the ticket, a mom, somebody who loves this country so much, somebody very, very committed to policies that I will believe will progress this country in the right direction."

* About her future:

"I'm like, 'Okay, God, if there's an open door for me somewhere -this is what I always pray - I'm like, don't let me miss the open door'. Show me where the open door is, even if it's cracked open a little bit, maybe I'll plow right on through that and maybe prematurely plow through it."

* About Africa:

"My concern has been the atrocities there and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent. Never, ever, did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don't know about this issue."

Late-night comedians have to be delighted that they'll still have Sorority Sarah to kick around.

***********************************************************************************

Breaking News:

A pediatricians' group warns that young children shouldn't have contact with hedgehogs.

***********************************************************************************

On Getting A Life

The letters-to-the-editor page of our local newspaper is the frequent repository of the ravings of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who figure things started to go wrong with the Emancipation Proclamation.

At the other end of the intellectual continuum are letters to such journals as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and, in the case quoted below, The New York Times Book Review, in which an over educated twit strives to give elitism a bad name:

"Had Pirsig never read any phenomenology or personalism, any Heidegger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Luigi Giussani, Alasdair MacIntyre or Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), just to name a very few off the top of my head? For academic departments breaking through these dichotomies, he might look at the JohnPaul II Institutes in Washington and Melbourne, or the Center of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. Or just subscribe to the journal Communio!"

Just so.

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Episode 59: Yes! We Did!

2008-11-06T14:27:00.000-08:00

It worked.

The rallies. The speeches. The pledges. The phone banks. The emails. The texting. The lawn signs. The doorknocking.

Now it's our turn.

*****************************
Signs and bumper stickers seen or reported along the campaign trail:

"Annoy a Republican. Think for yourself."

"Try being informed instead of just opinionated."

"Oh, look, honey - Another Pro-Lifer for War."

"The Republicans spent your Social Security on their wars."

And my personal favorite, on a sign with a Confederate flag:

"Rednecks for Obama. Even we've had enough."

************************************************************************************

"When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

-Sinclair Lewis

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Video Watch

You must see this! Hilarious! I don't promise it will be the last reference here to clueless Caribou Barbie:

http://www.youtube.com/v/5nYoahyaPuA&hl=en&fs=1
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Other Good Things That Happened

* With a new Senate majority of 56 and maybe another two or three yet to be determined,

Democrats no longer have to suck up to Joe Lieberman, the so-called Independent Democrat who's been providing the critical sole majority vote to the Democratic caucus for two years. Avidly pro-Israel, a strong supporter of the Iraq war who has pushed the idea of violent action against Iran, the whiny, sanctimonious Lieberman will probably lose his committee chairmanships and may even be drummed out of the party. The Republicans want him. Good riddance.

* Elizabeth Dole. spouse of Bob, tried to tar her church lady Democratic opponent as hanging out with (gasp!) atheists. Liddy (she hates that nickname) ran a desperate last-week commercial that tied Hansen to a group called "Godless Americans" because she attended a dinner sponsored in part by the founder of that organization. Voters in North Carolina, a robustly religious state, rejected the distortion, turning out Liddy after only one term.

* Randy Kuhl, the congressman from upstate New York who declared that the Democrats wanted Americans "to suffer and hurt" for political gain...lost.

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Episode 58: The Days Dwindle Down

2008-10-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

We understand.

When speaking at Robert Morris University in western Pennsylvania a few days ago, John McCain made reference to an impolitic comment by Congressman John Murtha.
"I think you may have noticed, " he said, "that Senator Obama's supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about western Pennsylvania lately."
The crowd booed.
"And you know," he continued, "I couldn't agree more."
The crowd fell silent.
It took him several halting rhetorical movements before he stumbled back on himself with a lame recovery,
"I could not disagree with those critics more."

We understand. Old people get confused. We lose our trains of thought, forget what we were saying, stumble over words. We shouldn't be President, either.

*************************************************
The Kinder, Gentler Sex
Geezer has long believed that, given the opportunity, women in positions of power will behave just as badly as men. Challenged on that view, he cites Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, and Golda Mier, all of whom launched wars in their terms as heads of state.
What might we expect should some of our current politicians of the female persuasion reach the Oval Office?

The expensively outfitted Republican V.P. candidate has been giving hints about where she would lead us. She divested herself of these thoughts in North Carolina: "We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."
Um, Sarah? Over 80% of the American people live in cities or their shadows, not small towns. Un-real Americans? All of them?

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota upped the McCarthyite ante. (Geezer suspects that neither of them know much about Tailgunner Joe, but they channel him.) Said she, last week: "I'm very concerned that he (Obama) may have anti-American views." Digging her political grave ever deeper, she went on: "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?"
Michele holds a once-safe Republican seat. Her opponent in this election gathered up a million dollars in new contributions over the weekend.

************************************************************************************* The Meaner, Nastier Sex
In the meantime, we can always count on bearers of the Y chromosome to pick up the battle flag and charge anew toward the enemy trenches.

* Joe McCain, brother of John, called northern Virginia "Communist country", neglecting to recall that bro and Cindy live up there, not far from John's national headquarters and the Pentagon.

* Randy Kuhl, congressman from upstate New York, slammed the desk on live TV while he trumpeted, "I firmly believe the Democratic majority wants the American public to suffer and hurt so that they can make some political gains at election time, and I think that's wrong."

***********************************************************************************
Video Watch
*The McCain campaign may have thought that nominating Palin would get them the Hillary vote. Probably not. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh9BmNuqeiQ
*Singing is an Irish enthusiasm, especially when fueled by the stout they inexplicably find tasty.
See one currently relevant result, courtesy of our friend Charlie, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EADUQWKoVek

***********************************************************************************
On The Trail

Kellie K. sends lots of pix from Pennsylvania, where she's been working for Obama. One got my avid attention: Our daughter Sam says here's a poll she trusts:

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Urgent Virus Alert!

This seems to be the real thing, a truly nasty virus that burns the entire "C" drive of your computer. Apparently, the key words to look for are "Postcard" and "Greeting". For further information, go to http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/postcard.asp
*********************************************************************************** For Frugal Martini Lovers
These are harsh times, so here's a money-saving tip courtesy of Cook's Illustrated. The key to a clean, crisp vodka is filtration. Super-premium brands like Ketel One and Grey Goose are distilled several times, budget labels aren't. So, dump the water from your Brita water pitcher, pour in the cheapest house brand from the corner store. After it passes through, empty into another pitcher, then re-pour into the Brita. Repeat at least four more times.
A 1.75 liter bottle of my local no-name vodka costs $12. A single liter of Grey Goose costs between $45 and $55, so a little pouring back and forth saves me about $80. Spin that out over a year.
***********************************************************************************

Ditherers
Can there be any person more annoying than an American citizen who continues to declare, after a two-year presidential campaign, that he or she remains undecided? David Sedaris has some thoughts about these strange beings in the recent New Yorker:

"I look at these people and can't quite believe they exist. To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat.
'Can I interest you in the chicken?' she asks. 'Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?'

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."

********************************************************************************* Step Slowly Away From The TV
And the papers, the newsweeklies, the polls, the computer. Every possible issue, every dubious relationship, every accusation, every lie has been spun, dissected, diced, restated, diverted, and twisted.

We've sent more money to Obama than to any other candidate in our lives. Jo has been calling seniors for him. Our Obama lawn sign is in place, right where our conservative next-door neighbor can't help but see it every day.

Barring a Rovian October Surprise, it's all over but the voting.

So now, fight the news addiction. Paint a bedroom. Clean and lubricate the mower. Bring in the deck furniture. Rent the "Mad Men" DVD.
Better still, go outside. Talk a long walk. Delight in the colors of autumn. We have.

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Episode 57: That One

2008-10-09T15:36:00.000-07:00

Calm.

I will remain calm.
I will not compulsively check the Dow.
I will put out of my mind that bagger job at the ShopRite. I will not let my thoughts stray to the arrogant, hopelessly incompetent yahoo who brought us to this terrifying nadir in American history. I will divert my attention from the relentlessly vicious lies and distortions of the nasty little old man who will say anything to promote his candidacy.

I will not allow my blood pressure to rise just because an empty-headed twit who exceeded her capabilities even before she became mayor of a frontier village of 5,000 souls insists that she's prepared to step into the Oval Office tomorrow. Did you hear her say a couple of days ago that "Obama has run the dirtiest campaign in American history"? Is it truly possible she believes that? Can the racist scum who shout "kill him" at her rallies find Iraq on a map? Can she?

But no. I will settle back. Rub the knots out of my neck. Watch the late afternoon sun strike sparks off our river and light up the gold and scarlet leaves of early fall. Feel the zephyrs of Indian summer on my skin. Drift on moonbeams, walk in meadows among blossoms and butterflies.

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"When in charge, ponder; when in trouble, delegate; when in doubt, mumble."
- James Boren 1992

"Life is too short to stuff a mushroom."

- Shirley Conran 1975

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We celebrated Jo's birthday with a weekend in Manhattan at the apartment lent to us by our son Alex, the computer genius. Dinner was at Tabla (11 Madison Avenue, 212-889-0667), opposite Madison Square Park at 25th Street. It's back-to-back with Eleven Madison Park (at 25th St, 212-889-0906), which is easily among New York's very best dining places. Both are owned by Danny Meyer, consensus local choice for Supreme Restaurant Deity, who started with Union Square Cafe over two decades ago. Hallmarks of his several emporia are ever-gracious welcomes, efficient and knowledgeable service, and imaginatively conceived food that delights the eye and taste buds without lapsing into weirdness. At Tabla, the base concept is New American dishes brightened with arresting combinations of spices, most of them imported from the Indian subcontinent. Results are memorable. Dinner for two is about $325, all included.
The next day, we walked across from the edge of the Hudson to the South Street Seaport, on the East River. For those unfamiliar with the Seaport, it is a popular reclamation project with preserved early 19th Century waterfront buildings as well as reconditioned historic ships surviving from the last years of mercantile sailing ships.
The area is touristy, true, especially since the authentically raucous Fulton Fish Market was forced out. But the Seaport provides shopping, exhibitions, and dining opportunities from relatively inexpensive to moderately accomplished. Our goal was to view the latest ambitious public art project to enliven the city, the "Waterfalls". These were four towering artificial water features in which water was sucked up hundreds of feet from the East River and releasing it in perpetual simulated Niagras.
We viewed the displays from a restaurant on the second floor of Pier 17, which occupies the north side of the Seaport and provides a wide vista of the river. We had lunch at Sequoia (212-32-9090), two beers and two tasty fish tacos for $53, including tax and tip. The Waterfalls? Interesting, but well short of the impact of Christo's "Gates" in Central Park in 2004.
************************************************************************************
Video Alert:
How about a laugh or two? Our good friend Sue pointed us to this witty, if disjointed, ditty about Those Ones. Both earthy and genteel, she warns that there are vulgarisms involved. Go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DIc8jdra0o

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Why Women Must Vote
Barely ninety years ago, American women were not allowed to vote. When some among them decided to picket the Wilson White House, they were arrested. It was the night of November 15, 1917, the longest night of their lives, and only the first of many.
There were 33 of them. The warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach the suffragists a lesson. One of the women, Dora Lewis, was flung into a cell and knocked out cold. Another, Lucy Burns, had her hands chained to the cell bars above her head and was left hanging, bleeding. Forty guards took turns beating the women with clubs, choking them, kicking them.
In the weeks - weeks! - that followed, the only water the women received came from an open pail and their food was alive with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, went on a hunger strike, she was tied to a chair, a tube forced down her throat, and liquid poured into her until she vomited. This treatment was continued over and over again. Woodrow Wilson tried to have her declared insane.

All the women wanted was the right to vote.

In the face of this sacrifice, are there any truly compelling reasons why the daughters of these courageous women - and their men - cannot take a few moments to get to their polling places on November 4th?

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Geezer Predicts:

A week before Election Day, national polls will show Obama leading McCain by as many as 15 percentage points. By November 3rd, the gap will have shrunk to less than four points, well within the margin of error. It will be a nail-biter, but by early Wednesday morning, the winner will be:

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Episode 56: Madness!

2008-09-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

Quote of the Week

"I'm not holding my breath, but I would like to see the self-proclaimed conservative, small government, anti-regulation, free-market zealots step up and take responsibility for wrecking the American economy and bringing about the worst financial crisis since the Depression."

- Bob Herbert, New York Times, 9/30/08
***********************************************************************************

Can't We All Just Get Along?

"Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process."

(Beat)

"Now is not the time to fix blame. It's time to fix the problem."

- John McCain, 9/29/08

***********************************************************************************

Quote of the Week (2)

"These were the reckless clowns who led us into the foolish multi-trillion-dollar debacle in Iraq and crafted tax policies that enormously benefited millionaires and billionaires while at the same time ran up staggering amounts of government debt."

- Bob Herbert, New York Times, 9/30/08

*******************************************
"So's your old man."
-G.O.P.

*******************************************

Temper Tantrums. Check out tales of the angry little old candidate's rages when he doesn't get his way at http://eyesonobama.com/blogcontent/id_20167/title_McCains-History-of-Blow-ups-The-Top-Ten

Something Hopeful? Play this music video set in Obama headquarters - http://youtube.com/watch?v=W3ijYVyhnn0

Or inspirational? Here's the star-studded Yes We Can video - http://youtube.com/watch?v=ibhwXYRBCLM

***********************************************************************************

Time For a Break From All This Agita.
Go to Your Happy Place.

One of mine is Venice. Geezer envies friends Dan and Barbara who are about to splash down in La Serenissima in a couple of weeks. Dan speaks about 87 languages and has visited at least 150 countries, so he doesn't really need my advice about travel. But he politely asked for my restaurant suggestions, so I could hardly demur:

* Ancora (San Polo 120, tel. 041-520-7066) is, as far as we can tell, the only restaurant directly on the Grand Canal, with no intervening structures to block the views of the busy traffic of gondolas, vaporettos, delivery barges, and racing police and fire launches. The interior is a piano bar, but the broad terrace holds many tables for snacks, meals, coffee, and/or drinks. Our last time there we shared two large crostini, followed by a bowl of pasta e fagioli for me and, for Jo, a filet of branzino accompanied by white beans, a few scattered black olives, and tomato chunks in oil with fresh basil leaves. It was all light, fresh, and simple, and at 53 euros for everything, inexpensive by Venetian standards. Find it near the Rialto Market.

Osteria Ai 4 Feri (Dorsoduro 2754/A, tel. 041-520-6978) is a tiny, highly popular spot at the corner of Campo San Barnaba. Get there early (around 12 or 7) or make a reservation or expect a wait. We shared a primo piatto (first course) of roasted vegetables - eggplant, mushrooms, bell peppers, onions, fennel, spinach, potatoes, and beets - very filling. We followed with spaghetti vongole, pinkie-sized clams tossed in a garlic and oil sauce. Tab was only 39 euros, with two glasses of wine.

Trattoria alla Palazzina (Cannaregio 1509, tel. o41-71) is in the sestiere (quarter) that contains the ancient Jewish "ghetto" of the city. The name itself was born here. This restaurant is next to the east end of the Ponte Guglie, with an ancient dining room in front and a long trellised garden terrace in back. We've been there before, and it wasn't any cheaper the last time, so look for the page in the long menu titled "Traditional Dishes", at lower, if not cheap, tariffs than the more contemporary items. We both had plates of light-as-air gnocchi in tomato sauce and shared a secondi platter of grilled lamb and sausage. With wine,, water, coffee, and limoncello, the tab came to 92 euros. The traffic on the adjoining canal is diverting.

Osteria-Enoteca Ai Artisi (Fondamenta della Toletta, tel. 041-523-8944) used to be a simple ombra e cichetti bar (tumblers of wine with tapas-like snacks). Now we found it had become a little more serious, with an explanded menu and many more wines by the glass. We ordered a seafood antipasti platter, a pasta ragout, and a pasta with anchovies, a Venetian speciality. All good, along with three big glasses of Multipuciano and Brunello, two liqueurs, and two expressos, and not unusually expensive at 70 euros.

Ristorante San Trovaso (Dorso Duro 967, tel. 041-523-0835) is down a quiet lane about a block-and-a-half from its better-known sibling, Taverna San Trovaso. We've eaten in both, but find the kitchen as capable and the staff less cranky here. When weather permits, the garden is the venue of choice, but there is a large dining room. Jo had melon with prosciutto, a serving about twice as large as it might be in the States. I had penne in a zesty sauce of olives, tomato, and a sprinkling of hot pepper flakes. Each would constitute a full meal at home, but it was our last day, so we ordered up secondis of fritta mista, grilled branzino, and a plate of four vegetables. After, Jo got the scroppino she's craved, a liquid dessert of lemon gelato and vodka. I had
a glass of vin santo, a digestif not widely available in the U.S. The bill is 89 euros.

Cantinone Gia Schiavi (Fondamenta Maravegie 992) is a wine shop with a bar serving crostini - slices of bread topped with bits of cheese, fish, sauteed leeks, olive paste, and whatever inspires the owners that day. Much of it is forked straight from can to bread, meaning that the two- or three-bite tidbits can't really compare to a good Spanish tapas parlor. But with a spritzy glass of wine from the Veneto and a amiable crowd that drifts out to the sidewalk despite the sign imploring them not to, it makes an atmospheric stop on your way to lunch or dinner. The walls are lined with bottles of wine, some at unusually reasonable prices.
************************************************************************************
Kayaking Down the Canal Grande
It sounds entirely logical: Venice is a city on water, with beguilingly romantic mansions and palaces rising from the edges of every canal. What better way to see it all than from a kayak?
One little thing: Although the city authorities endeavor to remove the more obvious detritus floating by - watermelon rinds, orange peels, items of clothing - they have yet to deal with less visible pollutants. That water teems with contaminants causing bacterial infections that keep the emergency room busy with unwary boating enthusiasts. After Katherine Hepburn fell into the San Barnaba canal for her role in Summertime back in the 1950s, she developed an ear infection that stayed with her the rest of her life.
************************************************************************************
Bonehead Remark of the Week (Anti-American Division)
The permanent secretary of the award jury selecting the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature next week has divested himself of the opinion that the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe in great writing. "You can't get away from the fact that Europe is still the center of the literary world, not the United States." Apart from ignoring the awards of that very honor to Faulkner and Hemingway, Horace Engdahl obviously dismisses the work of approximately 250,000 published writers in a country of thirty million. Perhaps he hasn't come across Roth, Updike, and DeLillo, among many prospects. And he might ask himself why the Academy never got around to anointing Nabakov, Joyce, and Proust, Europeans all.
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Episode 55: Truth and Consequences

2008-09-24T15:46:00.000-07:00

Mom Always Liked you Best.
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"I would make a proposition to my Republican friends. If they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."

- Adlai Stevenson

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Lies, Damned Lies, and John McCain

It's difficult to keep up. The Republican candidate's stormtroopers, the thuggish Steve Schmidt and practicing lobbyist Rick Davis, never allow the simple truth to sully their outrageous daily assaults on Barak Obama and reality. Still, here are recent examples of the unceasing mendacity of the unholy trio.

Lie: Obama passed legislation to teach comprehensive sex education to kindergarteners.

Truth: The Illinois bill would have allowed only "age appropriate" material, it didn't pass, and Obama wasn't even a co-sponsor.

Lie: Alaska supplies 20 percent of U.S. energy.

Truth: Alaska produces 3.5 percent of our domestic energy production.

Lie: McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, has had no involvement the company he co-founded and owned for several years.

Truth: Davis received a monthly stipend of $15,000 from his firm's client, Freddie Mac, right up until August, when the government took it over.

Lie: Obama will raise taxes on income, electricity, home heating oil, and life savings.

Truth: Obama repeatedly states he will raise taxes on income and capital gains only for couples making more than $250,000. He has voiced no plans to raise taxes on electricity and has proposed energy rebates of up to $1,000 for the purchase of home heating oil.

Lie: Obama's advisors are saying that the financial crisis will benefit him politically.

Truth: McCain's campaign cannot cite a single example of such a claim.

*****************************************************************************

News Item:

A moose estimated to weigh 1,000 pounds was killed when she crossed Intersate 684 in northern Westchester County, less than 40 miles from Times Square. Eight cars were damaged in the resulting pile-up.

Why did the moose cross the road?

She spotted Sarah Palin in the woods.

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If Palin Was a Contestant on Jeopardy!

Katie Couric's interview of Sarah Palin was lluminating, in its way.

Sarah's answer: "We have trade missions back and forth. We - we do - it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin raises his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border."

Katie's Question: "Have you ever been involved in negotiations with your Russian neighbors?"

*****************************************************************************

"We need more than a brave soldier. We need a wise leader."

- Joe Biden

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A doctor was treating an elderly Texas rancher whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle. Their conversation got around to the election and Sarah Palin.

The old rancher said, "Well, y'know, Palin is a post turtle."

The doctor asked him what a post turtle was.

The rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

The doctor was puzzled.

The rancher continued, "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she's up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with."

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The first debate is over. The next one is supposed to return to the subject of the economy. When you watch it, consider:

During the last Democratic administration, the federal budget was balanced and the federal deficit was erased.

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Episode 54: Fascist In Stilettos

2008-09-18T14:47:00.001-07:00

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."

- attributed to Sinclair Lewis (1935)

**************************************************

What We Know (So Far) About Her
Understanding that what was new and startling this morning is old hat by tonight, consider the following as a reminder of the convictions (many) and accomplishments (few) of Sara Palin.

* She likes to kill large animals for fun. In 2007, under the guise of predator control, she put a bounty on wild wolves - $150 each upon presentation of the left foreleg of each kill. The shootings were approved if made from low-flying planes. Even avid hunters reject this technique as unfair. See what this is all about at http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1287024576/bctid1290867853

* She obtained her first passport in 2007. It was used to take her to Kuwait to visit Alaskan reservists and wounded soldiers in Germany. Her campaign said she stopped in Iraq, but she didn't. They said she set down in Ireland, but it was only to re-fuel, and she never got out of the airport. Her other foreign travel was to Canada to boost a proposed pipeline. It's claimed that she went to Mexico, but when and why are questions her campaign mysteriously refuses to answer.

* As for meaningful experiences abroad, she has said she didn't think previous vice presidents had met any foreign leaders, either. In fact, every Veep in the last sixty years (except Spiro Agnew) had met with foreign leaders before taking office.

* No snobby elitist higher education for Sarah. She attended five academic backwaters in six years: University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hawaii Pacific University, North Idaho College, and Matanuska-Susitna College, graduating at length from the University of Idaho. None of them imposed entrance requirements. She graduated with no honors, no achievements. Oddly, considering how isolated she has been from the press, her major was journalism. Husband "First Dude" Todd graduated from high school.

* Palin is touted as a tax cutter, but Alaska has neither a state income tax nor a state sales tax. Local property and sales taxes pay the bills, along with considerable lavings of federal largesse. In her six years as mayor of Wasilla, she increased government expenditures by over a third. While she reduced property taxes, she increased the local sales tax. Wasilla had no debt at all when she took office, but was $22 million in the hole when she left.

*During Palin's mayoral terms, she signed off on budget cuts of funds that paid for medical exams for victims of crime. From that point on, rape victims or their insurers had to pay for their rape kits. The tab: $500 to $1200.

* In a town without a sewer system, she borrowed money to build a $15 million sports arena. Years later, it still operates in the red.

* She talks about her executive experience in Wasilla, but she hired an administrator to do most of the work shortly after becoming mayor.

* She has issues with police chiefs. She fired the one in Wasilla because he "intimidated" her, then tossed the state's public safety commissioner because he wouldn't fire her ex-brother-in-law.

* When the Wasilla librarian refused to remove books that Palin found offensive, the Mayor tried to fire her. The titles in question reportedly were those on the hit lists of fundamentalist religionists across the country, such dangerous works as Lord of the Flies, Lysistrata, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Twelfth Night, Catch-22, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, and Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.

* Palin advocates abstinence-only sex education, with no mention of birth control, never mind that she was pregnant when she eloped with the First Dude or that her daughter was knocked up by a home-schooled, self-described "redneck" who declared on MySpace that he didn't want kids. Las Vegas is probably giving odds on how long that shotgun marriage will last.

* Palin got around to applying for her first passport last year. This was so she could visit Alaska reservists in Kuwait and Germany. Her campaign had to back off claims that she also went to Iraq and Ireland - turns out she took a peek at a border crossing and landed at Shannon Airport long enough to re-fuel.

* She crossed into Canada once, to pitch a pipeline. And it has been revealed that she visited Mexico once, although her staff has mysteriously walled off questions about why and when she went. The balance of her experience with foreigners involves those famous views of Siberia across the Bering Sea. Clearly, she's ready to deal with Putin.

* Palin says she sold the state plane on Ebay at a profit. She did list it on that site, but no one bit. The plane was eventually sold to a private buyer...at a loss.

* She was for the Bridge to Nowhere until she wasn't. As vice-presidential nominee, she claims to be against earmarks. As governor, she hired a Washington lobbyist to advocate for earmarks.

* As governor, Palin charged the state $17,00 in travel per diems for 312 nights she spent at her home in Wasilla during her first 550 days in office. (Possibly she was unaware that per diems are intended to compensate for time spent away from home.)

*In April, she told a church congregation that the war in Iraq was "A task that is from God." In a ceremony in September that sent her son and his comrades off to that misbegotten conflict, she said they were going there to destroy the people responsible for 9/11. Don't confuse her with the facts.

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On The Trail

* On a press trip some years ago, one of the other participants, pretending to be a travel journalist, leaned over to me seeking information. We were in a 747 midway across the Atlantic, on our way to Madrid. She asked, in words I won't forget, "So, Spain. That's sort of next to Mexico, right?"

One of our presidential aspirants has a similar form of geographical dyslexia. Understanding that we old folks are prone to confusion and forgetfulness, shouldn't a candidate for our highest office at least know which hemisphere is home to one of our most important allies? Check out http://salon.com/ent/video_dog/comedy/2008/09/20/bateman_mccainspain/index.html

* You'll remember that former cheerleader/current heiress Cindy McCain introduced her husband at the Republican convention. Did you know, as reported by Vanity Fair, that the outfit she chose to wear for the occasion cost $300,000? Palin was a piker - the Valentino jacket the hockey mom bought for her acceptance speech set her back only $2,500.

* Here's an idea purloined from the 'Net: Send a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name. They will then send her a thank-you card. Everyone should do this.

* Nineteen American cities have larger populations than the entire state of Alaska. A total of 47 states, including both Dakotas and Rhode island have larger populations than Palin's frontier territory.

*Favorite Obama quote so far: "The Old Boys Network. In the McCain campaign, that's known as a staff meeting."

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If you came across this blog while surfing and would like to receive advance notice of future postings, please send your e-mail address to TUCKg3@optonline.net. The information will not be shared.

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Episode 53: Them

2008-09-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

"I know how to win wars
-John McCain, July 15, 2008

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The Odd(est) Couple

There they were, on a stage in Pennsylvania after their convention, looking like a really bad date the day after the computers crashed at eHarmony.com.

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YouTube Alert

Some measure of hypocrisy creeps into the words and actions of nearly all politicians, but Republicans have made it an art form. Check out www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086, sent along by friend Kellie as evidence of conservative versions of truth-telling.

Hookers & Blow: When asked to tone down their celebrations in light of the hurricanes approaching the Gulf Coast, the compassionate conservatives at their convention certainly tried. Not.

Check out www.youtube.com/watchv=nWerT-e08I&feature=related.

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What We Know About Him

(Note: Unlike the vicious daily rondelay of lies and distortions emanating from the McCain camp, the statements of fact recounted below have been triple-checked for accuracy and context.)

* He's rich. But not due to his own entrepreneurship or business acumen. He married an heiress.

* He's had cancer four times and he's old. He could drop dead giving his inaugural address, making reality of a nightmare, given his V.P. choice.

* He graduated fifth from the bottom of his class of 899 cadets at the Naval Academy. He got in because he was a legacy, the son and grandson of two admirals. He has no advanced degrees.

* Before he ever got to Southeast Asia, he crashed three planes - at Pensacola, on duty over Spain, and near Philadelphia while flying to an Army-Navy game. His shipboard nickname of "Ace" was not a compliment.

* He intends to appoint Supreme Court Justices in the mold of Scalia, Alioto, and Thomas.

* Although avowedly opposed to torture, he voted against a bill to ban waterboarding.

* Has supported the war of choice in Iraq from the beginning.

* Doesn't know the difference between Shites and Sunnis.

* Favors making permanent the Bush tax cuts, which overwhelmingly profit the rich. Lies that Obama proposals would tax middle-income families.

* Voted against the children's healthcare bill.

* Admits he doesn't know much about economics at a time when the economy is the leading issue of concern to voters.

*Was one of the Keating Five. Received $112,000 in political contributions from Charles Keating, later a convicted felon, in addition to accepting three free stays at the crook's Bahamas spa and nine free flights on Keating's private jet. Censured by the Senate.

* Puts himself forward as the man to lead the nation on into the 21st Century but doesn't know how to get on the Internet or send an e-mail.

* With somewhere between four to eleven houses, he has suggested that people facing foreclosure get second jobs and skip their vacations.

* After his return from Vietnam in 1973, he embarked on a series of affairs that lasted until he met Cindy Hensley, a former cheerleader 17 years his junior. Given his brutal treatment at the hands of the Vietnamese, his desire to make up for lost time is understandable, at least for most honest men. But the rest of us aren't running for president from the family values party.

* After Obama criticized McCain for not supporting a bill to increase college tuition benefits for veterans, McCain angrily countered, "I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lecture on my regard for those who did." An obvious response is that most people would prefer to pursue other options in life, including those named Bush, Cheney, Rove, and, come to think of it, his gun-toting running mate.

*Given his family history, McCain was all but pre-destined for a naval career. But there is nothing inherently noble about military service. It has been fairly said that there are four major reasons to enlist: Because it's the family trade. Out of deeply felt patriotism. Simply needing a job. And, for the opportunity to kill people.

* McCain was a bomber pilot. He voluntarily entered an arm of the service that carries with it the moral burden of knowing that one's actions will result almost certainly in the deaths of innocents.

* War hero? Americans of all ideological persuasions have accepted that claim as if it had been injected into a vein, and few dare challenge it. McCain was shot down, possibly in part due to his own incompetence as a pilot. He was taken prisoner and subjected to mistreatment that was all but intolerable, by his own accounts and those of others. He admits he sought relief and medical care by offering to provide the military information his captors sought. Whom among us would not, nor contemplate suicide, as he did.

Heroism is a choice - the soldier covering a grenade with his body to spare his friends, a firefighter entering a burning building when everyone else is fleeing.

McCain was a prisoner. He lived. There was no choice. There was only hope. McCain was a survivor. Heroism had nothing to do with it.

* Suffering is not a qualification for the highest office in the country. For McCain to demand compensation for his, as he implicitly did in his near-lachrymose recounting of his P.O.W. years in his nomination acceptance speech, is reprehensible. He has been hardly reluctant to play the poor-me card throughout his campaign:

*In response to criticisms about the McCains' seven houses, his spokesperson angrily replied: "This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years - in prison." Asked about high milk prices: "This is a guy who didn't have the luxury of milk for five and a half years." Queried about the need for alternative energy sources: "This is a guy who lived in the dark for five and a half years - in prison, with no light bulbs."

* His prison experience ended 35 years ago, but McCain continues to live in the past. When old soldiers and older politicians start talking about "honor", the rational response is to check your wallet and your kids and slowly back away. McCain bellows about "victory with honor" in Iraq. He fails to define what exactly he means by "victory", but can we escape the feeling that he envisions a full-dress ceremony on a battleship in the Persian Gulf with Osama bin Laden handing over his grenade launcher and signing twelve copies of an unconditional surrender?

He wants to re-do Vietnam. It's too late.

McCain is so far over the hill he can't see tomorrow.

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Next Up: What We Know (So Far) About Her

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Episode 52: Summer in the Valley

2008-08-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

We do our big-deal travel in edge seasons, taking to the road just before or after the high months of the destinations we covet, when prices are lower and crowds are thinner.

That means early December in Florida, when the weather is as good but room rates are as much as 40% lower than after the 15th. For the same reasons, we think April, May or September for central Europe or Canada, and October or April for southern Europe.

Because we can, we stick close to home from June to September and January to March, feeling a little sorry and a whole lot smug because we don't have to adhere the standard wage-slave-two- weeks-in-July-scramble.

Daytrips and an occasional overnight are our tickets during those months, preferably during the week, when inn prices are lower, visitors fewer, and restaurants are happy for our business.

Apart from the obvious ultimate drawback, there is much to be said for retirement.

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Food is typically a key component of our excursions distant and near (please don't call them "staycations"), but not always . Teatown Lake Reservation is a 834-acre nature preserve with a robust environmental mission in northern Westchester County. It shelters injured raptors, sponsors walking tours, conducts eagle-sighting days, harvests sap for maple syrup in late winter, and promotes ecological awareness. In the lake that is at the heart of the property is the two-acre Wildflower Island, protected from deer and approached only via footbridge in conducted tours. The point is to protect flowers and vegetation from non-native invaders. We've been meaning to take the tour for years and finally got around to it in June, probably the best month to visit. We'll do it again. The grandkids like the animals in the main building and in the separate sheds out on the grounds where the hawks, rabbits, and turkey vultures are housed. Tours are $6. 1600 Spring Valley Road, Ossining, NY 10562; 914-762-2912; http://www.teatown.org/.

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From the profoundly pastoral to the devoutly urban we went. Friends from France (we met on Easter Island a couple of years ago) alighted in the city for a few days, and a sturdy dose of Manhattan cosmopolitanism seemed in order. Bob and Leah live in a gorgeous corner of Provence, where they've just opened a gite, essentially a Gallic version of a bed-and-breakfast. (E-mail me at TUCKg3@optonline.net if you'd like to get in touch with them about renting.) We met in the lobby of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where a massive exhibit of Turners were on view, over 150 pieces by the British genius who anticipated French Impressionism by about three decades.
Afterward, we walked down to the Carlyle, at 76th and Madison, to check out Bemelman's Bar. The famously whimsical wall murals are original, painted there in the 1950s by illustrator and children's book author, Ludwig Bemelmans. It's a Manhattan landmark, but it's also as dark as inside a closet and a piano player bangs out Cole Porter at disco levels. We drank up, paid ($75.59 for four drinks!), and quickly left.

Next stop was the equally celebrated and higher-toned King Cole Bar in the St. Regis at 55th and 5th. This was better. How many bars have their own maitre 'd? As soon as we walked into a room where every stool and chair was occupied, he set about shifting people and squeezing out enough space for us to sit. The decorative highlight is the 25-foot backbar mural by Maxfield Parish, a 1906 Art Nouveau masterpiece depicting the King Cole tale, recently restored at a cost of $100,000. The music was low, the conversation a happy but restrained buzz, the drinks as perfect as cocktails they should be, at about $20 each.

Dinner was at Metrazur, Charlie Palmer's restaurant at Grand Central Terminal. It's on the east balcony, where the big Kodak photos used to be, under the vaulted main ceiling that depict the heavens. It is one of the grandest interor public spaces in North America, the floor below teeming with commuters and tourists eighteen hours a day. We were met there by Bob and Leah's daughter, Kellie, their very attractive and delightfully self-assured daughter. She lives in the city. The menu can be described as "Creative American Bistro", a sprightly roster of not-excessively-imaginative dishes of largely Franco-Italian inspiration. My main course was a duck confit risotto with white truffle and cannellini brodo, escarole, fennel jam, and charred tomato nage. Only a couple of dinner entrees exceed $29, not to be expected at most New York eateries run by celebrity chefs. Better still, Kellie picked up the tab.

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To See Ourselves As Others Do

A 21-year-old man in Rockland County called the police and falsely reported a robbery. He provided the 911 operator with this description of the supposed suspect: "He's got gray and black hair, kind of a big nose, a gray and black mustache and dark eyebrows, and he's like very old and wrinkly."

When asked, he volunteered that the suspect was about 40 or 45 years-old.

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There are about 80,000 Ecuadoreans in our county, and most of them seemed to gather on a Sunday in August in a park beside the river. There were souvenir and crafts stands, a covered stage for musicians and other performers from back home, and, of course, food stalls. The vendors all served essentially the same things. Aluminum foil bowls were filled with rice and potatoes (Ecuadoreans like two starches on each plate); a strange sort of corn with huge, bulbous kernels (we asked what it was called and they said "corn"); heaps of shredded pork (moist and flavorful). And cuy. Ecuadoreans love cuy. Back home, they make little houses in their kitchen for the cuy to live in until they're selected for Sunday dinner. Cuy are guinea pigs, roasted on spits over hot coals (photo at upper right, kept small for the squeamish).

There were perhaps four other Anglos among the thousands of attendees. As if we didn't stick out enough, we were both pale and tall, at least by comparison. We looked like storks among flocks of penguins. But apart from a few curious glances, there was no obvious hostility to our presence, and they accepted it as entirely

natural that I sounded as if I spoke Spanish.

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Dutchess County has held a farm fair for over 160 years. It is a winning old-timey combination of blue-ribbon farm animals, cooking and gardening competitions, wildlife and conservation displays, carnival rides and games, camel rides and hog races, and booth after booth of every kind of evil fast food you shouldn't ever eat and absolutely lust after. It is quintessenial G-rated Americana, just the thing for a late summer outing with grandchildren, especially if yours are as adorable as ours.

We reserved a room at the Delamater annex of the Beekman Arms Inn in Rhinebeck (on the left), which claims to be the oldest inn in continuous operation in the United States. (There are competing claims.) Avoid Friday and Saturday nights, and you can get a spacious room with king-sized bed, gas-fed fireplace, and unstocked fridge for $175, continental breakfast included.
Contact them at http://www.beekmandelamaterinn.com/.

Then, there were picnics beside the Hudson, an all-you-can-eat clambake at Crabtree's Kittle House in Chappaqua, visits to the Sunday farmers' market at Muscoot Farm........

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Swedish Cucumber Salad

Serves 6-8

Our neighbors Joe and Florence are prodigious gardeners, and at this bountiful time of year we can expect to receive frequent bags of monster eggplants, tomatoes, zucchini, and cucumbers. Here's a Craig Clairborne recipe that does excellent work with the cukes.

4 large cucumbers

6 tablespoons white vinegar

6 tablespoons sugar

Three-quarter cup of cold water

Salt and freshly ground white pepper to taste

One quarter cup minced parsley

1 tablespoon chopped dill

Peel the cukes and cut them in half lengthwise. Scrape out the seeds with a spoon. Cut the halves crosswise into thin slices. There should be about 5 cups.

Blend the vinegar, sugar, water, salt and pepper into a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Pour the liquid over the cukes. Let stand until cool. Refrigerate.

Sprinkle with parsley and dill and toss to blend.

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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. The information will not be shared.

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Episode 51: Last Time In Venice

2008-07-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

Even if you've never been there, you surely know the Piazza San Marco (left), with its signature basilica and campanile. They're as familiar as the Eiffel Tower and London's Tower Bridge, and the city they symbolize has drawn visitors for centuries.
Geezer first stepped onto a vaporetto, the water bus that chugs along the Grand Canal, in 1956. A few months before, I had seen the movie, Summertime, starring Katherine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi, and was thrilled to be in such a magical place, this city with streets of water lined by palaces centuries old, faced with Venetian Gothic furbelows and golden ceramic murals glinting in the sun.

Those fifty years ago, Venice was assaulted by thundering tourist hordes from March to November, thinning only before chill blasts off the Adriatic and frequent appearances of acqua alta, the "high water" floods that routinely submerge plazas and ground floors of buildings throughout the city.
Today, the crowds are far, far worse, millions of visitors all but overwhelming the ever-dwindling local population of less than 65,000. Most of them are daytrippers or overnighters, in town merely to check off the highlights - San Marco, the Rialto Bridge, a couple of churches, a museum or two. They are too often pushy, rude, loud, and ignorant, grumbling when their ways are impeded by mind-bogglingly tacky souvenir stands and Senegalese peddlers of counterfeit Gucci bags. While the worst of them are by no means only Americans, we overhear our countrypeople making such remarks as "They have something just like this in Vegas!"
Fortunately, the most popular attractions are largely confined to the district of San Marco, one of the six sestieri into which the city is divided. Find accommodations in one of the others and the multinational deluge dwindles to tolerability.
We prefer Dorsoduro, on the south side of the Grand Canal. Venetians live there, pursuing what serve as normal lives in a place where everything has to be delivered and distributed by barge and handtruck. There are supermarkets and hardware stores and pharmacies there, hidden within buildings that were old when Casanova was seducing nuns.
We rented a little house down an alley off the corner of Campo San Barnaba (left), quiet but convenient. The campo (plaza) has a church used as an exhibition space, shops, a bakery, a design gallery, tabacconist, three cafes with more tables outside than in, and a newstand whose owner hides the International Herald Tribune below his window. Every morning we picked up a paper (you have to ask), selected a table under an umbrella, ordered two cappuchinos and two brioche, which is, essentially, Italian for croissant. Schoolchildren, merchants, and office workers hustled past, headed down the street to the vaporetto stop or to the Accademia bridge that crosses over to San Marco. This all made us very happy. Every morning.

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"Of all the dreamy delights, that of floating in a gondola among the canals and out of the Lagoon is surely the greatest. We were out one night when the sun was setting, and the wide waters were flushed with the reddened light. I should have liked it to last for hours.'
- George Eliot (1885)
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Eliot traveled when the British pound was the mightiest of the world's currencies. Now, her nighttime glide down the canal and out into the Lagoon and back would set her back the equivalent of $145, as long as the trip didn't take longer than 45 minutes. There is a brief, cut-rate alternative, of a sort. Traghettos (right) are gondolas that connect sides of the Grand Canal along stretches that aren't served by bridges. They carry up to eight passengers, most of whom stand, if they are Venetian. I usually choose to sit, against the real possibility of getting pitched into the water. The ride is short, but it costs only $.78.

Only two workshops are left in the city specializing in the construction and repair of gondolas, one of which is the vaguely Tudor anomaly below. A gondola fact: The starboard side of the boat is several feet longer than the other. This makes the gondola bear constantly to the left, a motion countered by the gondolier with his long oar on the lee side. That's why he never has to switch sides with his oar, which will be understood by anyone who has ever steered a canoe.

Venice doesn't bristle with bargains

even in the best of times. When we were there, a euro cost $1.55. That's in contrast to 2001, when a certain incompetant pinhead walked into the Oval Office and set about wrecking the American economy. When George II took over, a euro cost only $.86.
There are a few scattered ways to trim costs, though not by much. Psychological: Think of the euro as on par with the dollar. That won't do it for you? Then rent a room or apartment instead of staying in a hotel. With a little care and research, you can save 20% to 40% in total lodging costs for stays of three days or more. (More about this in the next episode of Geezer Wisdom.) After that, sustenance is the focus for cost-cutting. Start by resolving to have your big meal at midday, when prices are typically 20% less, and to order no more than two courses. The standard Italian meal is (1) antipasti, (2) primi (soup and such), (3) secondi (pasta or risotto), (4) main course, and (5) dessert, but no one really needs that much food, and you won't be pushed to order more.
Take at least one meal a day in a cafe or bar, where sandwiches and snacks are always available. Types of bar food associated specifically with Venice are cichetti, two- or three-bite munchies routinely compared to Spanish tapas. In truth, they fall short in taste and complexity from the great Spanish invention, but three or four of them can easily constitute a meal and, with jiggers of wine called ombras, can cost less than $15 per person, if the more expensive seafood morsels are avoided. Examples are chunks of marinated octopus, cubes of mortadella or salami, cheese, meatballs, grilled mushrooms, and calamari. (Avoid the snowy-white strips that look like noodles - they are pure lard, the kind of food you have to grow up eating to like.)
Look for cichetti ("chi-KET-tee") down narrow lanes and side canals off main squares and intersections in wine bars called bacari. A very popular bacaro (wine bar) is Cantione Gia Schiavi, a storefront whose walls are lined with thousands of bottles of wine and spirits. Cod puree spread on bread was a good choice, as was the rolled anchovy toothpicked to a pickled cipollino onion.There's a bar, but no seats, so patrons tend to drift outside with their glasses and plates despite signs imploring them not to. It's at a bridge across a narrow canal near the Accademia Bridge, at Fondamenta Maravegie 992, but as for all Venetian addresses, have clear directions or a detailed map.
Not far away, a short block off Campo San Barnaba, is the Osteria-Enoteca Ai Artistic. It's fairly new, with a stand-up bar and outdoor tables bordering the canal. The cherry peppers stuffed with anchovy paste were a hit, as were the leaves of boiled and air-dried ham topping slices of bread and garnished with chopped olives or artichokes. It's on the Fondamenta della Toletta, lined with businesses that included a mask shop, a gelateria, deli, cafes, jewelry stores and three bookstores.
In the San Polo sestiere is the Cantina do Mori, said to date from 1462. It looks like it, with the dark, worn, woody aspect that is catnip for seekers-after-atmosphere. Dozens of copper pots hang from the ceiling. Various wines are drawn from the row of big casks behind the bar. The place fills with vendors after the nearby Rialto Market closes at 1pm. They go for spicy meatballs, tuna on bread, fried vegetable croquettes - good, if unremarkable. But eight of them and two ombras of vino bianco went for only 14 euros.

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"The gondolier's cry, half warning, half salute, was answered from far within the silence of the labyrinth. They passed little gardens, high up the crumbling wall, hung with clustering white and purple flowers that sent down the odor of almonds. Moorish lattices showed shadowy in the gloom."
- Thomas Mann

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YouTube Alert
Capoeira is an athletic blend of dance, games, and martial arts from the Bahia region of Brazil. Here's a compelling example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2VwnBU1-iU.
It's good to have friends, but when they weigh 400 pounds?
Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr1pWzoLvT8 (If this link doesn't work, go to YouTube.com and search for "Christian the Lion - Reunion!").

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From Gary:

McCain can't remember how many houses he has. He had the number written down, but he left it in his other plane.

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Behind the News
Did you catch this? It wouldn't be surprising if you didn't, given the Olympics, Russia's invasion of Georgia, and John Edwards' confirmation of the truth that men are dogs.

A woman by the name of Bemann McKinney paid South Korean scientists $53,000 to clone her departed pet canine, presumably in the belief that what the world needs now is five more pit bulls.
In publicizing her successful effort to replicate her beloved "Booger", McKinney, who lives in Utah, attracted unexpected attention from British tabloids. Turns out that 31 years ago she was a minor beauty queen who had won the title of Miss Wyoming USA. When enrolled at Brigham Young University she became romantically obsessed with a fellow Mormon student. She followed him on his obligatory proselytizing mission to England. With a male accomplice, she abducted the young man and spirited him away to a Devonshire cottage, where she chained him to a bed with fur-lined foot- and handcuffs. Sex ensued, repeatedly, until he was able to escape.

After her arrest, she jumped bail and got back to Utah, where she picked up the trail of the object of her rabid desire. About to stand trial for stalking, she disappeared again. When she reappeared with the artificial progeny of old Booger, she responded to the revelation of her amorous history with:
"It's taken years of therapy to get past this. We go to church and serve the Lord and try to lead good lives and do good things."

************************************************************************************* Get Lost
Don't fight it. You will get turned around in Venice. Led astray. Perplexed. Street numbers are infrequent and rarely appear where expected. Most maps are incomplete, fuzzy, or too small-scale to include every alley. Spoken and written directions often start with "find so-and-so bridge or campo, cross over the canal toward the church of whatsis, turn right at the fountain, then ask someone where to go from there."
No matter. As long as your legs and wind hold out, many of your most memorable discoveries result from unintended detours and wrong turns. Shops both beguiling and chic show up at every turn (yes, those are snakeskin shoes down there), and always edgy Italian design takes over small show windows punched into 500-year-old walls.
Go before it's gone.

Episode 50: Leggo The Baton

2008-07-20T15:27:00.000-07:00

"Aspirational Time Horizon"
So Dubya, and you, John, does that mean, y'know - um - sorta like a TIMETABLE?

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"The older I grow the more I distrust the doctrine that age brings wisdom."
- H.L. Menken

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Irrelevant Old Poops
It isn't easy to know when to ease off, back away, and leave the stage to the next generation, especially if one has lived a life of accomplishment and is possessed of an ego the size of Rhode Island. But when it's time, it's time, and here are six old crocks who need to grasp that reality.

Ralph Nader is our generation's Harold Stassen, an earlier clueless egotist who made a spectacle of himself time after time after time. This is Ralph's fifth run for the Presidency. He maintains that he is obligated to do so because there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties, ignoring the realities of the last three presidential elections. Nader did an important service for consumers forty years ago. You're 74, Ralph. Go tinker with a Corvair.

Phil Gramm has resigned as economics advisor to McCain. Yet another Texas argument for mandatory retirement, Gramm progressed from a career as a college professor and investor in porn films to a Senate seat and a failed Presidential campaign. A few months ago, he said he was a lock for Secretary of the Treasury in a McCain administration. Then he poo-pooed concerns over current economic difficulties with such statements as, "You've heard of mental depression. This is a mental recession" and "We have become a nation of whiners." His compassion for people who don't happen to be multi-millionaires was manifest in his remark some years ago, "Most people don't have the luxury of living to be 80 years old, so it's hard for me to feel sorry for them." Presumably, he'd prefer that old people find themselves an ice floe and push out to sea. These days, he persists as Vice-Chairman of UBS Investment Bank, which has recently agreed to stop concealing the accounts of rich Americans trying to hiding their money. He's 66. Time to go, Phil. Don't scrape your knuckles on the rug on the way out.

Dan Rather had his feelings hurt when CBS eased him out as anchor of the evening newscast in 2005. His employers' reasons had to do with Dan leaping to some unsubstantiated conclusions about Dubya's military service, although the fact that he hadn't been able to drag his program out of last place in over twenty years no doubt had something to do with it. (Who can forget "Gunga Dan"?) Now Rather is suing CBS for $70 million in damages to his reputation. He's 77.
Old people tend to trip over their own tongues. A few days ago, Dan was a guest on an MSNBC morning program, discussing the gaffe by Jesse Jackson (see below) concerning Barack Obama. "I have a great respect for Jesse Jackson," Rather said, "that he was an important figure in paving the way for an Osama bin Laden to appear." Nobody on the show corrected him. Exit gracefully, Dan.

Jesse Jackson is proud of his leadership in three decades of the civil rights movement. He ran for president twice, throwing a scare into fellow Democrats during his strong race in 1988. But Jesse had more than a few pre-YouTube episodes before his latest senior moment. There was his crack during that presidential primary run about going to "Hymietown" - i.e. New York - and his comment that he was "Sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust." A married minister, his shaky grasp of personal morality was illustrated when he fathered a daughter out of wedlock.
On at least a couple of recent occasions, Barack Obama declared that black men had to meet their responsibilities as fathers. It's hard to argue against that statement, given the fact that over 60% of black children grow up with single parents. Jesse plowed ahead anyway. Fox News caught him whispering on a commercial break: "See, Barack's been talking down to black people on this faith-based (stuff). I want to cut his nuts off. Barack, he's talking down to black people."
Obama has stated often that he stands on the shoulders of those who preceded him. It is reasonable to assume that Jesse's grumping is simple jealousy. He's 67. The limelight is moving away, Jesse. Deal with it.

Robert Novak has been a journalist, of sorts, for over 45 years. One of his less luminous moments was when he outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent in 2003. He was illegally leaked that information by Scooter Libby, an assistant to Dick Cheney. Scooter's in jail. Bob didn't even pay a fine.
Add to his right-wing rants the information that Bob is a big fan of dog- and cockfighting, which he will travel to Mexico and the Caribbean to see. He deplores U.S. laws against those activities.
In addition to his syndicated newspaper column, Novak is a professional pundit. He was all over CNN until he had a snit on a talk show, uttered a nasty word, and stalked off. Not long after, he became, predictably, a regular on Fox News.
Around Washington, D.C. he is known as an aggressive driver with a hot temper. On July 23rd, he was tooling along K Street in his black Corvette when he hit a pedestrian. He didn't stop.
A nearby bicyclist saw the accident, raced after the Corvette, and made Novak halt while he called police. The cyclist, a lawyer, reported that the pedestrian, an 86-year-old homeless man (not 66, as initially reported), flew up over the hood and splayed across the windshield before rolling off.
Novak claimed he didn't know a six-foot-tall man landed on his windshield. The judge believed him and levied a $50 fine. He should have taken away his license. Novak is 77. Take the exit ramp, Bob, and you might want to lose about sixty ugly pounds while you're at it.

And then there's McCain. Where to begin? I'll have much, much more to say about ol' John in future episodes (else I'd have to hand in my lefty blogger credentials), but here are a few antipasti to chew on:

*Last year, after a trip to Germany, McCain referred to "President Putin of Germany."

*He said in Spring that troops in Iraq were "down to pre-Surge levels" when there were, in fact, more than 20,000 more troops than when the Surge began.

*In the last month, he has referred to a country that hasn't existed since 1993 -
Czechoslovakia. Look up Czech Republic and Slovakia, John.

*Last week, McCain, the alleged foreign policy expert, confused Somalia and Sudan.

*On a morning television show a few days ago, he talked about problems along the "Iraq-Pakistan" border. (For the geographically-impaired, those countries are 750 miles apart.)

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"There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog, and ready money."
- Benjamin Franklin

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YouTube Alerts

*If you're old enough to remember Woodstock and Joe Cocker's performance there - or if you've just heard your parents talk about it - go to http://youtube.com/watch?v=T4_MsrsKzMM. Hilarious.

*Many Christians will be deeply offended by this video - http://youtube.com/watch?v=on LbeuEqNIE - but most of us secular humanists find it both startling and hysterical.

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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 TUCKg3@optonline.net. Your information will not be shared.

Episode 49: Europe These Days

2008-07-14T14:04:00.001-07:00

Sliver
Every city has a "narrowest house", structures usually squeezed into alleys between normal buildings. The one on the left, the slender red band with windows, holds the title for Valencia.
That city was also the assignment for Cindy Loose, a reporter for The Washington Post. She produced a syndicated article that is a casebook demonstration of travel writing in the hands of someone singularly ill-equipped for the task. It began:

"As much as anything, seafood paella enticed me to Valencia. That and the fact that it's an ancient city on the Mediterranean coast, and its very name evokes images of sun-ripened oranges.

"As it turned out, I saw only one orange tree in the Spanish city of Valencia, and it was a rather straggly example of the species. The seafood paella - and I had sample tastes at four restaurants - was so overwhelmingly fishy that I opted for other choices. Twice I picked chicken paella, demonstrating my preference by pointing at the sample dishes in the windows.

"That was great, except both times I had it, I kept wondering why Spanish chickens would all have such oddly misshappen legs. Then it came to me: The 'chicken' legs came off of rabbits."

Ms. Loose was apparently shocked - shocked! - to discover Spaniards, among hundreds of millions of other people, actually eat bunny rabbits! Thumper! That seafood tastes like fish! And she never figured out that Valenciano farmers grow their famous oranges not downtown but in vast orchards outside the city! I have even more bad news for her. Spaniards eat lamb and goat and goose barnacles, too. Deal with it.

Professional travel writers, Ms. Loose, research their destinations before they go. They arrive with some basic understanding of what to expect, from current political issues to the state of the local economy. They are prepared to experience new sights, different tastes, unusual customs, and distinctive notions about how to live their lives. They even try to pick up a few words of the language. You might try those.

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Flying
Most frequent travelers in Europe have heard and probably booked flights on one of the low-cost airlines that have recently clogged airport departure gates. Ryanair and easyJet have high profiles, but they have over one hundred competitors, among them such upstarts as Air Berlin, Estonian Air, Alpi Eagles, and Fly Baboo. Most of them give new meaning to the designation "cattle cars". They land and depart from obscure airports distant from their target cities, slash any services that might be remotely regarded as frills, and often make intermediate stops even during relatively short routes.

There's a new sheriff in town. Vueling Airlines is based in Barcelona, with a network that serves several major cities in Spain, plus four in Italy, two in France, and one each in Malta, Greece, and Portugal. The planes are new, prices are among the lowest available, and, best of all, all flights are non-stop and fly only in and out of the main airports of each city. When you make your arrangements on the Internet - www.vueling.com - the site will also offer to make reservations at discounted rates in your destination cities.

All that's to the good for travelers trying to squeeze as much value as possible from the ravaged dollar, but it's entertaining to consider how Vueling assembles its fares. A recent flight from Paris to Barcelona cost 1.40 euros. No, that's not a misprint. At current exchange rates that fare converts to $2.21.

But I'll bet that you'd like to take some clothes and other necessities with you. That'll be an extra 9 euros ($14.22) per suitcase. Use your credit card to pay? That's another 6.50 euros ($10.27).
Want to sit in the front bulkhead row for a couple more inches legroom? 12 euros ($18.96). Then there's something (unexplained) called a spoilage fee - 22.48 euros ($35.52). Add taxes - 39.30 euros ($62.10) - and the total, one way, for one passenger, comes to $143.28. Still a good deal, given the parlous state of the dollar.

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Laundry
Need incentive for escaping your hotel with your dirty clothes and finding a neighborhood laundromat or dry cleaner? After a couple of days at a Barcelona hotel, we sent three shirts and one pair of khaki trousers to the housekeeper. The charge, twenty-four hours later, was 34 euros ($53 at the time).
At least wash out smaller items like underwear, socks, lingerie, and stockings in your bathroom sink. A squirt of the shampoo usually provided works fine. Leave the clothes to soak in the sink for a couple of hours. Wring them out as vigorously as the fabric will allow, then roll them into a towel, squeeze out more moisture, and hang the items on shower curtain rods or any other projection that will allow air to circulate. They should be dry in the morning.

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Puffing
Not so long ago, Europeans visiting those parts of the U.S. with anti-smoking regulations mocked American prudery. Now, smoking has been banned in restaurants and workplaces in Ireland, Spain, France, and Italy, all nicotine-afflicted countries where smokers always felt free to light up wherever they happened to be.
Results of the no-smoking legislation are surprisingly positive, with some unexpected side issues. Italians, known for making a sport of evading laws and ordinances, humbly (and uncharacteristically) accepted the restrictions, to the point where even smokers sitting in outdoor cafes make a point of holding their cigarettes away from others and exhaling into neutral air. Spaniards have grudgingly accepted the strictures but with a lot of grousing and an inclination to violate the borders and intents of the new rules. Never mind that an estimated 700 of their countrypeople die from second-hand smoke every year.

The French have fallen in line, but with an unfortunate result: Smoking is banned inside cafes, so all the addicts have moved to the outdoor tables, spewing clouds of poisonous exhalations over non-smokers who would also like to enjoy the fresh air and people-watching. And in England, home to the quart-of-beer lunch, pub owners are trotting out the tired argument that no-smoking legislation will hurt business, glossing over the threat to the health of the 70% of their patrons who don't smoke.

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Phone Home
Most cellphones sold in the United States don't work overseas. Here's a big, fat, four-star recommendation: The Mobal World Phone. It's a universal cellphone that works in 150 countries. The cheapest model is only $49 (with tax and shipping $63.35). There are no minimum fees, service charges, or usage requirements, even if you use it just one time a year. You pay only for calls made and for voicemail (if you activate that feature). You are assigned a lifetime phone number and the phone comes with an included SIM card. No more pre-paid calling cards, no searching for ever-scarcer pay phones, no stratospheric hotel long-distance rates.

Catches? Not really. The only way you can get nailed is if you talk too long and too often. The phone can't be used within North America, but you can call the U.S. and your friends and family can call you. Setup is tricky for the severely technologically-impaired, but you can always ask your twelve-year-old to do it. For more information, go to www.mobal.com.

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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.

Episode 48: My Kind of Town

2008-06-29T15:13:00.000-07:00

Whether you prefer New York to Los Angeles or Paris to London or, to the point here, Barcelona to Madrid, may well depend upon which city you experienced first. Geezer first saw Barcelona in 1955 as a green-as-grass G.I. with high-water pants and a whitewall haircut. He didn't get around to Madrid until six years later. Fiercely exotic Barcelona had him wide-eyed and wowed, after which Madrid could stimulate little more than regard. Those early impressions have balanced out a little more evenly since, but given an either-or choice I'd opt for Barcelona every time.

Back in the Fifties, after two decades under the iron fist of of the dictator Franco, Spain more closely resembled an underdeveloped country of the southern hemisphere than of Europe. There were mule-hauled carts in downtown Barcelona and much street lighting was provided by gas. Young couples were expected to be accompanied by chaperones and they could be arrested for daring to kiss in public.

By the early Seventies, largely due to a concern for sustaining Spain's high levels of tourism, the authoritarian Francoist shroud was being lifted slightly to allow in a few freshets of contemporary thought. Almost unimaginably, demonstrations and protests were permitted to proceed, albeit under tight control.

One afternoon, I was sitting at a window table at a restaurant on the second floor of a building overlooking the top of La Rambla and the broad Placa de Catalunya. The former is a wide, tree-lined pedestrian concourse with a constant 24-hour flow of tourists, sailors on shore leave, three-generation families, street performers, pickpockets, caricature artists, and those who seek profit from the others. The plaza has spillover from La Rambla as well as thousands of pigeons drawn by visitors who actually think it is a good idea to feed the rats with wings.

As I was working my way through lunch, I heard a welling rumble of shouting people approaching the plaza from the Paseo de Gracia. The sound became thunderous and angry as a parade of demonstrators burst into view. They carried banners and waved forbidden Catalan flags and some rocked cars in their path as if to overturn them while others set fires in waste baskets and threw rocks at streetlights. They swept across the plaza and down La Rambla beneath me.
I don't remember why I returned to the same table in the same restaurant that same night. But there I was at 9:30. A sound of people marching and bellowing slogans came up across the plaza. Banners were waved. Marchers broke into a run across the plaza. Some of them set small fires, a few rocked cars in their path. They swept down La Rambla.

I asked the waiter what was going on.

"This afternoon, politics," he said with a sigh and a Mediterranean shrug. "Tonight, football."

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To Market
As soon as possible after I arrive in Barcelona I get down La Rambla to the Mercat de Sant Josep, a.k.a. La Boqueria. Housed under a soaring neo-Gothic metal and glass roof dating from the 1870s, the sprawling market features stall after stall of artfully displayed produce, meats, cheese, and seafood. Demanding home cooks and professional chefs roam the aisles, picking through pyramids of shiny melons and glowing peaches and bundles of albino asparagus and French beans, poking at glistening heaps of scallops and slab-sided skate and plump sea bass, squeezing loops of butifarra sausages and garlands of garlic. Crabs and large clawed shrimp are so fresh they still creep across their beds of cracked ice. Tucked into it all are a dozen bars and cafes. It is both a joyous tumult and a photogenic education in the Spanish culinary repertoire.

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This Time
We had breakfast each morning at Cafe Zurich, a once-legendary spot across from the top of La Rambla. The original had been torn down years ago for a new office building, and then re-constructed at the same location after major protests. The newstand at the corner had both the International Herald Tribune and USA Today, so with cafe con leche, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and toast, we were set for long intervals of people-watching and conversation about the day's news.

On this visit, my particular interest was seeing how the rehabilitation of once-ragged neighborhoods was proceeding. The most recent area to receive attention was Raval, the part of the old town west of La Rambla. It was long an intimidating place to travel on foot, especially at night, afflicted with drug dealers, pimps, and other street criminals. Urban renewal has involved considerable demolition and new construction, to the dismay of some. But a former hospital dating from the 11th Century was converted to a library and art school, a 19th Century monastery became an ambitious cultural center and the brand-new Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (left) worked the mysterious magic that art museums do - witness the Guggenheim in Bilbao - motivating entrepreneurs to gather 'round with galleries, shops, cafes, and clubs. Add thousands of young people attending new university centers and an influx of North African immigrants and Raval is well on the way to full renewal. Now there is buzz about yet another shabby district showing signs of life - Poble Sec, west of Raval.

It worked in La Ribera. That was another medieval quarter, one that became the home of the city's thriving textile industry in the 19th Century. Its narrow streets were lined with small factories, workshops, markets, blacksmiths, tanneries, and, somewhat surprisingly, the courtyard mansions of many of Barcelona's privileged families. One of these became the Museu Picasso (below left) in the Sixties, and slowly annexed adjacent mini-palaces as the collections grew.

The now-predictable transformation of Carrer Montcada and nearby streets and plazas has made La Ribera and adjacent El Born a vital stop for both tourists and Barceloneans.

We've seen the Picasso. So we had continued down Montcada. With all its galleries, boutiques, bars, the textile museum, and the Barbier-Mueller collection of Pre-Colombian art, you could easily spend a full day along just this one block.

We crossed the Passeig del Born, down another alley, and into the compact Placa Olles, there to join the queue outside Cal Pep. Not long ago, the restaurant was largely unknown to the traveling public, but is now exalted in every guidebook and foodie website. It opens at 1:15 Monday through Friday - 8:00 in the evening - and the line starts forming well before those times. Be among the first 14 and you'll likely be seated. Otherwise, expect to wait at least an hour.

The reasons for this enthusiasm aren't for Cal Pap's high style or trendiness. The food is very traditional Spanish/Catalan in concept, but prepared to near-perfection with the freshest ingredients, cooked to order either at the grill behind the counter or delivered from the kitchen. The preferred seating is at the counter in the front room. It has just 14 stools, best for viewing the activities of servers and cooks. Patrons who don't speak Spanish or don't know what to order usually accept the counterman's rote suggestion of a "sampler".

Agree to that and thereafter proceeds a parade of plates. Our lunch that day included: a heap of lightly breaded and delicately fried shrimp and squid parts, tiny clams in garlicky oil, chickpeas with baby squid no bigger than a thumbnail, pimientos de Padron (jalapeno-sized peppers grilled in salt), and roasted merluza (a fierce-looking fish with sole-like flesh). It was too much, and very good, but it's hard to resist the crema catalana, a sweet custard with a caramelized crust.

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They're Alive!
Maybe the phenomenon originated elsewhere, but I first encountered living statues in Barcelona. At first, street performers simply painted themselves silver or white, stood on podiums, struck poses, and pretended to be the Tin Man, Frosty the Snowman, or whoever, and tried not to move for as long as possible. Once the living statues discovered that this was relatively easy money, evolution took over. Not only are there imitators from Key West to San Francisco to Paris, the costumes and props have grown ever more elaborate.
Have you checked out the several green manifestations of Lady Liberty at the ferry dock in lower Manhattan?

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Hidden City
Barcelona's Barri Gotic - Gothic Quarter - had an earlier life as a Roman settlement, established
two centuries before Christ. There are still remnants of that period, most of them hidden. Start with the Museu d'Historia de la Ciutat. It is a Gothic mansion of the 15th Century. It was moved here to get out of the way of road construction in the 1930s, but when they were digging a new foundation, they discovered the remains of the ancient Roman town, Barcino. It sprawls under the museum and beneath the adjacent plaza.
After that, stroll over to the back of the Cathedral and seek out the shadowy lane called Carrer Paradis. At number 10, on the left, enter the usually open portal and walk a few yards inside. On the right, completely enclosed by another Gothic building, are the bases of four Roman columns, thought to be part of a temple to Augustus. They are a ghostly presence.
Rounding the back of the Cathedral, enter the cloister, with palm trees, flowers, and a flock of resident geese. The birds are meant to symbolize the city's Roman era, presumably after Christianity was adopted.
Exiting through the side door and walking toward the front of the Cathedral, note the small alley on the left. It's another gloomy byway, opening into the modest enclosed Placa de Sant Felip Neri, with plane trees and a sexagonal fountain. There's no particular Roman connection here, but evidence of a more recent tragedy. Note the many pockmarks in the wall of the plaza (right). The door to the right was, and is, the entrance to an elementary school. During bombardment of the city in the 1936-1939 Civil War, a shell fell in the square. The school was in recess. Twenty children were killed.

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Eating, Sleeping, Seeing
Cal Pep (described above) is at 8 Placa de loes Olles, between the Picasso Museum and the waterfront. Most dishes are between 4 and 13 euros.

One of my favorite tapas bars is Irati, 17 Career Cardenal Casanyes, between La Rambla and the Placa del Pi. It specializes in the Basque version of the famous bar snack, called pintxos - meaning a wide variety of tidbits heaped atop pieces of bread and pinned in place by toothpicks. Platters of fresh pintxos are brought out at regular intervals, and the countermen pour glasses of sidra - sparkling cider - from ladles held high above their heads into glasses clutched below their waists.When you are finished, they count up the toothpicks (no fair throwing them away - this is the honor system). Around 20 euros cover enough food and cider for two, a serious bargain for pricey Barcelona.

A more conventional full-service restaurant is Senyor Parellada, in El Born at 37 Career Argenteria. On the ground floor of a hotel, it is contained in two large rooms with tall framed mirrors and many tables. At lunch, it attracts businesspeople and lunching ladies, with a younger crowd filling it up after 9pm. We started with potato and leek soup and ziti with spinach and a cream sauce, followed with a long-braised veal shoulder and duck confit with figs. All was quite satisfying and only 61 euros with espresso, bottled water, tax, service, and a full bottle of wine from Penedes.

Finding decent hotels for under 150 euros a night for two isn't as difficult as it used to be. We had a thoroughly acceptable room for only 109 euros a night at Duques de Bergara, 11 Career Bergara, T: 93-301-5151, www.hoteles-catalonia.es. It has a few English-language channels on the TV, a dining room, lounge, and a swimming pool in the terrace in back. The front desk staff is multi-lingual and usually helpful, but I'd eat and drink elsewhere. The top of La Rambla is less than two blocks away. We paid 109 euros per night for a double. Our last night in Barcelona we switched to the Alexandra, 11 Career Mallorca, T: 93-467-7166, www.hotel-alexandra.com.
Thoroughly contemporary in style, it is located in the tony Eixample district, north of the Placa de Catalunya. Wi-Fi is free, the bartender shakes a perfect martini, and the expansive breakfast buffet is free if you book via the website, a substantial saving. We paid 110 euros for a double.

The Museu d'Historia de la Ciutat (described above) is in the Gothic Quarter, on the Placa del Rei. The grand corner staircase on that impressive square is said to be where Queen Isabel greeted Columbus after his return from his second voyage to the New World.
Churches are often venues for music recitals. We saw a classical guitar duo perform the Carmen Suite by Bizet and the Suite Espanola by Albeniz in the Basilica Santa Maria del Pi. The church is a fine example of Catalan Gothic, completed in 1453. It enhances the lively and atmospheric Placa del Pi.
There's a new wrinkle in self-guided Barcelona sightseeing, the GoCar. The vehicle in question
is an open-top little bug with a roll bar guided by GPS. Several different routes are offered. I haven't tried it, but no doubt more adventuresome people will. Given the alarming Barcelona traffic, I'd rather have root canal.

Notes: At the time of visit, one euro cost $1.55. My apologies to Catalan and Spanish speakers - I haven't figured out how to insert the proper punctuation marks with this software.

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Clams Lola
Serves 4
The Catalan kitchen employs many ingredients and techniques distinct from other regional Spanish cuisines - meat or fish combined with fruit, regular use of piquant spices, sauces utilizing nuts. There's a hilltop village in Catalunya called Horta de Sant Joan, a place so small and remote it doesn't appear on most maps. This recipe was given to me by Lola, the wife of the owner of the Bar Manolo in Horta. I passed it on to Penelope Casas, who included it in her book, Delicioso!

3 thick slices of bread from a narrow French or Italian loaf
20 blanched almonds
8 garlic cloves, peeled
4 tablespoons parsley, minced
Salt
2 tablespoons plus one-half teaspoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, lightly smashed and peeled
1 cup homemade fish broth or bottled clam juice
Fresh ground pepper
One-half teaspoon sweet or smoked Spanish paprika
3 dozen cockles or two dozen littlenecks (the smaller the better), scrubbed and washed

Place the bread and almonds on a cookie sheet in a 350-degree oven. Toast the almonds until golden, about five minutes, and remove to cool. Leave the bread in the oven until golden, about another five minutes. Remove to cool.

In a mortar or small processor, mash the eight cloves of peeled garlic together with the parsley, almonds, bread, pinch of salt, and the one-half teaspoon oil. Set aside.

In a large skillet, heat the remaining two tablespoons of oil with the two smashed garlic cloves, pressing the garlic with a spoon to squeeze out the flavor. When the garlic has browned, discard it. Add to the skillet the fish broth (or clam juice), ground pepper, and paprika. Stir in the mortar (or processor) mixture, add the clams, and bring to a boil.

Cover and simmer until the clams start to open. Remove them to a bowl as they open. When all have opened, return them to the skillet, turn off the heat, cover, and let sit for five minutes before serving.

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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 TUCKg3@optonline.net. The information will not be shared.

Episode 47: Stepping Up

2008-06-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

Valencia wants more than just a place in the Spanish sun. The ancient provincial capital is shouldering its way into the front row, right up there with Madrid, Sevilla, and Barcelona.

At least it's trying, very hard, starting with its futuristic Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences). At the left is L'Hemisferic, one of five structures standing in a row along the dry river bed that winds through the heart of the city. Designed by native son and acclaimed international architect, Santiago Calatrava, included are a planetarium, science museum, arts center (below at left), botanical garden, and aquarium.
For the moment, the architecture is of greater interest than the collections and exhibits inside, which are still being gathered and organized. An exception is the aquarium, dubbed
L' Oceanografic. (If the spelling of these names seems odd, that's because the Valencia region has a dialect related to catala, the language of northeastern Catalonia, which in turn was influenced by its proximity to France.) When we were there in May, the crowds were manageable but the sticker shock was substantial. The price of admission was over $60 for the two of us, so much we forgot to ask for the senior discount.

We grumbled over the expense, but it is a carefully thought-out complex, divided into several structures explicating Mediterranean sea-life, wetlands flora and fauna, an aviary, a penguin enclosure, a beluga and dolphin arena. Worth all that money? Not quite. But on reflection, not entirely outrageous, either.

One of the highlights of Valencia's Ciudad Vieja - Old Town - is a visit to the Mercado Central - the main food market. I found it intriguing that the soaring steel and glass building (at left), completed in 1928, bears a striking resemblance to many of Calatrava's designs here in Spain and around the world.

A tour through the market might be illuminating for those enthusiastic American locavores who yearn for a closer connection to the creatures who provide them nourishment. Spaniards are less squeamish about the sources comprising their food, confirmed after witnessing a butcher whacking a boar's head with a cleaver and lifting out the requested amount of brains. Funny thing - pig's brains taste exactly as you thought they might. Whether that's a good thing is another issue.

At the heart of Old Town is the Catedral. An Arab mosque once stood on the site, leveled by Spanish Christians as they slowly re-conquered their country from the Moors. Built primarily in the 14th and 15th Centuries, the cathedral was extended and embellished over several more, so it constitutes something of a rolling lesson in sequential architectural styles, with elements of the Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, and neo-Classical modes all in evidence. It contains the alleged remains of the Holy Grail, the chalice from which Christ drank at the Last Supper, if you are of a mind to believe the claim.

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When we were in the process of checking-in at our hotel, the Ad Hoc Monumental, we witnessed a little drama. A young couple, guests, were clearly in distress. They had lost a credit card the night before, apparently the only one they carried. But after a while the desk manager took a phone call and informed them that the card was found at the restaurant where they dined - and the owner was bringing it to them. He arrived shortly, to their relief and gratitude. We wanted to eat at a place like that, and made a reservation on the spot.

We were early, so we ducked into the Cafe de las Horas, near the Plaza de la Virgen. Dark, it is, and funkily operatic, with chandeliers, candlesticks, a huge bowl of fake flowers, and a sturdy gay vibe. (Spain now recognizes same-sex marriage, so there's no need for gays to be furtive.) It was a good place to try the popular local drink Agua de Valencia, a punch of orange juice and cava (a Spanish sparkling wine) served in a pitcher, like sangria.

At 9pm, we walked across the street and were greeted at the door of Seu-Xerea by the owner, Stephen Anderson, a British expat of Burmese origin. The rooms weren't anything like what we expected - antiques and traditional decor with upscale touches, perhaps. Instead, the rooms are clean, crisp, minimalist. The food, it quickly became clear, was modern and multi-national, with reference to both Mediterranean and Asian influences, but with nothing carved in stone. It comes in attractive, not precious, presentations, and in quantities sufficient to assuage hunger, not simply titillate.

There is a six-course tasting menu for 42 euros, but that was too much food for us. An amuse bouche of cauliflower froth arrived in a demi-tasse dusted with caviar and a swirl of pesto. We ordered zingy little spring rolls and vegetable sushi wrapped in lightly fried nori. Those were followed with mussels and bits of monkfish in green curry sauce for me and two fat chunks of suckling pig for Jo. This last made us despair of having pork this good ever again. Dessert was cardamon ice cream with a spoonful of honey jelly.

There may be other restaurants as good as Seu-Xerea-in Valencia, but I doubt there are any better, despite what Michelin seems to think.

However, it is practically illegal to visit Valencia, the rice bowl of Spain, without having paella, so the next day we sought out a place to satisfy that particular itch. Given that bargain prices were not among Seu-Xerea's virtues, that was a criterion now, and we got that at Cafe Plaza, a no-frills joint as anonymous as its name. Large portions were scooped out of the pan we chose - there are many versions of paella - and a pitcher of sangria was plunked down between us. There was a reason every table was occupied - the paella was satisfactory, if not memorable, and our check totaled slightly more than a single main dish at Seu-Xerea.

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Eating, Sleeping, Seeing
Seu-Xerea Restaurante, Conde de Almodovar 4, is described above. Figure about 120-150 euros for two, all inclusive. The six-course tasting menu is 42 euros per person, plus wine, taxes and tips. Cafe de las Horas, Conde de Almodovar 1, is described above. At Cafe Plaza, Almudin 12, paella and sangria for two was 28 euros, including tax.

Ad Hoc Monumental Hotel, Boix 4, T: 96-391-9140, www.adhochoteles.com, is a three-star facility, as determined by Spanish tourism authorities. Located in the old town near the Plaza de la Virgen, the cathedral, and my recommended restaurants, it is comfortable without being lavish. Its 28 rooms vary significantly in dimension and configuration, so you might want to check out the one assigned before signing in. Built in the late 19th Century, there are many exposed beams and antique decorative touches. The restaurant serves all meals. Doubles run from 130 to 200 euros, but vary substantially from season to season. By the way, the name is pronounced "Ahd-Oohk".

If you've never visited Valencia, Valencia Bus Turistic offers get-acquainted double-decker bus tours along a fixed route. There are five stops where riders can get off and re-board subsequent buses from 10:30am to 10:25pm. Narration is provided in five languages via audio devices with earphones.

We decided to take the train from Valencia to Barcelona. Flights take only about an hour, while the train trip is about three-and-a-half. But add in getting to the airport two hours in advance, squeezing through security, runway delays, and finding a taxi, it's a wash. Do get Preferente Class, which allows access to a special lounge and two and one seating on the train itself. Fares vary, depending upon departure time and number of stops, but each of our tickets cost 48.40 euros.

Note: At the time of our visit, $1.55 bought one euro. Also, I haven't figured out how to provide proper accents for Spanish words mentioned in this blog.

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Easy Paella
Serves 4-6
Traditionally, paella is prepared in an almost ceremonial manner, staged in hours over a charcoal brazier, then presented at table in the round, flat-bottomed pan in which it was cooked. Diners then spoon their food directly from the pan. Components are far from obligatory. While Americans tend to associate paella with seafood, the earliest versions were probably land-based, incorporating rabbit and game. There are at least fifty different versions, a few of them not even employing rice.

The following recipe, despite the slightly daunting list of ingredients, is relatively easy to put together and should take less than an hour-and-a-half from start to table. A bonus is its low calorie count.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup red bell pepper, diced
1 cup celery, chopped
5 garlic cloves, minced
One-half cup Spanish (not Mexican) chorizo sausage, outer casing removed, then diced
5 cups homemade fish broth or bottled clam juice
2 cups diced tomatoes
One-and-a-half cups Spanish bomba or Italian arborio rice (not Uncle Ben's)
1 cup lump crab meat, picked over for shell pieces
2 tablespoons Italian parsley, minced
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Pinch cayenne pepper
One-half pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
One dozen littleneck clams, the smaller the better, scrubbed

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
Warm the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic, and chorizo and fry, stirring, until onion is soft. Add fish broth or clam juice and tomatoes and bring to a boil. Stir in all the remaining ingredients, except the clams.
Cover and bake in the oven for 45 minutes. After 30 minutes, place the clams in a pot with a inch or two of water. Bring to a boil and cover. After five minutes, the clams should start to open. Remove them to a bowl as they do, so as not to overcook them
When the time is up for the paella, remove it from the oven. Add the clams. Fluff the rice. Serve.

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

Episode 46: Home Again

2008-06-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

We returned from Europe to find our valley in the early throes of a full-throated Spring. The Korean dogwood was surpassing its past displays. It used to flower this flamboyantly only every other year. Now it denies us nothing every single June.

Another regular visitor is the embodiment of its prehistoric ancestors. Only days after we moved into this house in 1986, she showed up in our driveway, an appearance brought to our attention by neighbor kids. A scary prospect in the water, given jaws purportedly capable of chomping off human toes, the Eastern snapping turtle is considerably less intimidating on land, given itsvery deliberate mobility.

In this case, she even provokes a measure of sympathy, despite her un-cuddlesome appearance. Consider that she leaves the river a hundred-and-fifty feet below us, crawls up a cliff-like hill that is often nearly perpendicular, over fallen trees and retaining walls, and into our yard for the sole purpose of laying eggs.

To improve her chances of producing progeny, she buries the eggs in several places. One year, she deposited them under the spot of lawn that was to be paved over the next day. Some landowners along her unvarying route take pity on her, carrying her out of danger across interceding roads. We expect to continue noting her annual passage; snapping turtles can live up to eighty years.

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"To forget pain is to be painless, to forget care is to be rid of it, to go abroad is to accomplish both."
- Mark Twain
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Mi Segunda Casa
When Geezer was very young and his world incorporated only his home in a New York suburb and the towns outside the Army camps where his officer father was in training for the war in Europe, he only slowly grew aware of the places beyond, across the water. I don't remember when I first heard the simple but evocative advertising slogan "Castles In Spain". In that time before five TV channels became five hundred, those three words summoned images of chest-thumping knights in armor, chest-heaving ladies-in-waiting, dramatic jousts with trumpets announcing deadly competitions, and massive assaults on the fortresses of evil princes.

When I finally arrived in Spain in 1955, courtesy of the U.S. Army, I wasn't disappointed. There were flamenco, bullfights, and attractive young women happy to spot the naive young American G.I. entering the nightclub. On a later visit, driving west of Madrid, I detoured off the main road when I spotted an apparently abandoned castle up on a hill. There was no gate, no attendant, and in my wanderings through its echoing chambers, I came across a room with a full suit of armor. It was tossed in a corner, an unwanted relic of a distant time, of no interest to villagers who were more concerned about the hardscrabble day-to-day circumstances to which the dictator Franco subjected them.

Forget all that. That Spain is barely recognizable now, thirty years after the most attenuated death of a national leader experienced in Western history. ("Franco is still dead," declared Chevy Chase long after the event.) Massive improvements have been made in infrastructure, with thousands of miles of new highways, ultra-fast trains stitching major cities together, expanded airports, rehabilitation of entire urban neighborhoods, and new museums and cultural centers designed by major architects.

Much of this very visible progress is due to Spain's admission to the European Union and its financial support, and one result is that it costs about as much to visit here as it does Paris or Rome (if not quite as breathtakingly expensive as London.) Bargain Spain is past and gone. That's one reason I hadn't returned for over three years.

For me, that's a long time. I first saw Spain in 1955, courtesy of the U.S. Army. Subsequent visits were scattered through the 1960s and 1970s. When I decided to quit the 9 to 5 life in 1976 to become a freelance writer, Spain soon became my prime personal and professional destination. Eventually, I authored four guidebooks, contributed to three others, and wrote over one hundred magazine and newspaper articles about what was, for all purposes, my second home. Spain constituted about one-half of what I referred to as my income, an amount the Pentagon thought of as five ballpeen hammers and a toilet.

When the opportunity to return was presented, I lept at the chance. Our first stop was Madrid, and it was May Day. That occasion assures an influx of outlanders and foreigners more than enough to replace all the Madrilenos leaving town for the long weekend. The annual celebration of unions and working people ushers in a month of parades, open-air concerts and films, bullfights, neighborhood fiestas, fireworks and whatever other events the powers can dream up.

Many of them take place or wind up in the Plaza Mayor. The enclosed square is bordered on all four sides by cafes, a sea of tables stretching out toward the equestrian statue of Felipe III. This day, there was something new, a concert by huge electrified assemblages of musical instruments on flatbed trailers hauled majestically around the plaza by tractors. There was barely room for them among the the throngs. Multiple speakers six feet tall slammed out heavy metal rock until I thought our ears might bleed.

It was the same at the Museo del Prado. Originally meant to be a science museum, its mission was altered to house what is easily one of the most important repositories of classical paintings in the world. After three decades of halting starts, slowdowns, revolving- door directors, political interference, and resurgent efforts aimed at upgrading its infrastructure and expanding its gallery space, it has finally emerged as the equal of any such facility in Europe.
At this moment, the curators had mounted a major exhibition of the works of Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes, focusing on his works before and through the period of Spain's War of Independence from Napoleon. The crowds were endless.

The Prado has several entrances - the main one in front, facing the boulevard, and one each at the north and south ends of the building. They are closed and opened as necessary for crowd control. All three had lines of visitors up to two hours away from getting inside. Much as I wanted to see the new galleries, no way I was going to shuffle forward a half-step at a time for that long, not to see a museum I've been through thirty or forty times.

Inspiration! We walked around the back and through the new entrance, unchallenged, no line, no wait. I can't guarantee that will work every time, but keep it in mind. The new wing, which contains a restaurant and several galleries, segues smoothly into the main building, providing easy access to the luminous canvases of Velazquez, El Greco, Murillo, and, of course, Goya. Look, too, for the nightmare imaginings of Hieronymus Bosch and the lush extravaganzas of Titian, Tintoretto, and Rubens.
Not all of Madrid's advances involve infusions of public money. No more than a decade ago, the barrio known as Chueca was a scary place. Its dark, dank streets and plazas were ruled by drug dealers and thugs, desperate addicts, prostitutes and pimps, and lowlifes of every sort. The Plaza del Rey (at left) was a no-man's land. No longer.

The transformation of Chueca is dazzling. At first, bold gay entrepreneurs started moving in, creating hip new shops, businesses, design centers, galleries, clubs, and eating places. Those same narrow streets now course with people, mostly young or youngish, multi-sexual, multi-cultural.

One of the men who first nibbled at the edges of Chueca was Diego. After a long career at the legendary cocktail bar Chicote, once the choice of Hemingway, Ava Gardner, Orson Wells, Gary Cooper, and Tyrone Power, Diego set off on his own.
With his two sons, he opened Del Diego, a sleeker version of his previous employer's digs.

A master mixologist, his every move behind the bar is smooth, precise, unhurried. His drinks menu lists Cosmopolitans, Sex on the Beach, Long Island Iced Tea, and a roster of martinis. What makes regulars out of drop-ins, though, is his knack for making every patron feel privileged. He recognized me as soon as I came in the door. This was remarkable, considering I hadn't been in there in four years. But back then, we had spoken at length, if my appalling Spanish and his lack of any English could be described as "conversation."

Don Diego makes every effort to be understood and tolerates with equanimity my verb-free massacre of his language. He remembered that my drink is a vodka martini, after whipping together a cosmo for Jo, and invited us back after dinner for complimentary digestifs. We departed after Diego kissed Jo's hand and warmly shook mine, grasping my elbow.

We wanted to try one of Chueca's tradition-defying new restaurants. Bazaar was our choice, on a street blooming with forward-edge eating places. In a culture where most residents don't even think about dinner before 10:30pm, we were advised to line up at the door by 8:20. Ten minutes later, everyone gathered there surged in, filling the rooms in an instant. Older Spaniards are reluctant to sample tastes from other lands, rejecting spicy foods and unfamiliar ingredients. But the kitchen at Bazaar draws inspiration from many cuisines, hopping around the globe to borrow ideas. The results, while hardly stunning, are quite satisfying, and given the current status of the dollar, a very good deal - most dishes are 6 to 9 euros. We started with a cold tomato bread soup and followed with curried chicken on rice noodles and entrecote with a cake of vegetables.

Our evening ended back at Del Diego. The brandies were excellent, the handshakes and hand-kissing even better. Madrid has never been more magnetic.

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Eating, Sleeping, Seeing
Americans have learned what tapas are - finally - the basis of what are now known as "small plates" in restaurants all over the United States. Madrid lays disputed claim to the invention of these gastronomic treats, and there's hardly a block that doesn't have a bar offering a counter crowded with platters of them.

At least a dozen cluster around the Plaza Santa Ana, a short walk from the Puerta del Sol. We stopped in at an old favorite, La Trucha ("The Trout") at Nunez de Arce 6, where everyone passing through the door gets an enthusiastic "Buenas Tardes!" from the barmen. We ordered their signature verbena de ahumados - a "festival" of smoked fish. While we waited for its assembly, we had pimientos de Padron - grilled jalapeno-sized but mild peppers - and marinated olives. With a couple of glasses of wine, figure about 25-35 euros.

In Chueca, Bocaito, Libertad 4-6, has survived the district's tempestuous history to remain what many knowledgeable Madrilenos consider the city's premier tapas emporium. It's colorful and atmospheric, but forget cheap. Four pinchos - skewered strips of grilled pork - a few anchovies, and three squat tumblers of wine cost 21 euros. But if you can splurge, consider the
fritura malaguena - lightly fried fish and shellfish in the style of Malaga. At last look, it cost over 30 euros for two.

Not far from Bocaito is Bazaar, Libertad 21, described above. Del Diego Cocktail Bar, Reina 12, is also described above.

Hotel Maria Elena Palace, Aduana 19; T: 913-604-930; www.mariaelenapalacehotel.com. is a sleek, fairly new 4-star hotel in the center of old Madrid, about halfway between Gran Via and Calle de Alcala. In walking distance of most of the city's major attractions, it's on a quiet side street in one of the busiest parts of the city (except when the club next door cranks up on the weekends). Rates for doubles are a reasonable 90-130 euros.

Museo del Prado, Paseo del Prado (no number); T: 902-107-077. Open Tuesday-Sunday 9am-8pm. Admission 6 euros; free for seniors (declare "mayores de edad" and be ready to show your driver's license or passport).

Real Jardin Botanico, Plaza de Murillo 2; T: 914-203-017. Open daily 10am - 6-8pm (depending on season). Admission 6 euros, free for seniors.

Note: At the time, one euro cost $1.55. Also, apologies to linguists - I haven't figured out how to add proper punctuations to this blog.

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Cocido Madrileno
Serves 6-8
This is a definitive recipe for the signature Castilian stew from Penelope Casas, the single most authoritative writer on Spanish cuisine, from her book, The Foods of Spain. Few cookbook authors produce recipes as uniformly reliable.
It is presented here in full, with only a very few minor modifications meant to shortcut a step or two. Yes, it takes time, but it is meant only for important family dinners. (Note how few herbs and spices are involved. Its flavors evolve from the long simmering together of its aromatic ingredients.) Important: Cooking begins the day before serving the meal. Read the recipe all the way through before starting.

To Begin:
2 chicken thighs
2 pounds beef chuck
One-quarter pound slab bacon, in one piece
Three-quarter pound chorizo (Spanish, not Mexican - they are different products)
One-quarter pound serrano or prosciutto ham, in one or two pieces
2 ham or beef bones
18 cups cold water
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 large onion, peeled and halved
1 leek or 2 large scallions, trimmed and cleaned carefully
2 garlic cloves, peeled
2 large carrots, trimmed and peeled
4 medium new potatoes, peeled
4 ounces short, very fine noodles

For the Meatballs:
1 cup shredded beef chuck (from the pot)
One-half cup chopped bacon (from the pot)
2 eggs
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon parsley, minced
2 tablespoons broth (from the pot)
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
Bread crumbs
1 tablespoon olive oil

For the Cabbage:
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
One-half head cabbage, chopped
Salt
Freshly ground pepper

The day before serving, place the chicken, beef, bacon, chorizo, ham, and the bones in a large soup pot with the 18 cups of water. Add salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Skim off any foam.
Lower heat and cook at a low simmer for one-and-a-half hours. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate. Remove the fat that solidifies on the top of the pot.

The next day, add the onion, leek, carrots, and potatoes to the pot with the meat. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

Make the meatballs: Remove the specified amount of beef and bacon from the pot and place them with the eggs in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until smooth. Transfer to a mixing bowl and add the garlic, parsley, broth, salt, pepper, and enough bread crumbs so that the mixture can be handled. Form into sausage shapes, about 2 inches long and i inch wide. Heat the oil in a skillet and fry the meatballs until firm and golden.
Add them to the soup pot and continue cooking the cocido, covered, about one hour more. Add the chickpeas to the pot, preferably enclosed in a cheesecloth bag for easy removal. Cook for another 30 minutes.

Make the cabbage: Heat the oil in a skillet. Saute the onion and garlic until the onion is wilted.
Add the cabbage, salt, and pepper and continue cooking over medium heat until the cabbage is tender.

Serve the cocido in three courses: Strain the broth, leaving some liquid to cover the meats. Add the fine noodles to the broth. Simmer briefly until noodles are limp. This is the soup, to be served first. Arrange the vegetables on a platter, and serve next. Finally, place the cabbage on a second platter. Cut the meats into serving portions, leaving the meatballs whole, and arrange them over the cabbage.

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If you came across this blog while surfing and would like to contact Geezer or be added to the list of contacts receiving advance notice of future episodes, please e-mail TUCKg3@optonline.net. The information will not be shared.

Episode 45: Goin' To The Chapel...

2008-04-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

...Gonna Get Married

Jo and I took our daughter Leslie with us to a remote Spanish village about fifteen years ago. Fearless as ever about plunging into any language in any country in which she finds herself, Jo introduced Leslie as "mi higo", not "mi hija".

Thus was Leslie bestowed with my nickname for her: Fig.

Now, for the first time, Fig is getting hitched. Her tootsie is Matt - bright, good-looking, gainfully employed, and a man who insists on doing the cooking.

He is also fifteen years younger than Fig. (I will pause here for female readers to exclaim, "Way to go! Atta girl!" and "Right on!") Matt designed the engagement ring (pictured) with stones he purchased in India. ("You go, girl")

Geezer has always admired versatility. Fig has been a writer and anchor for Public Radio stations in the Northeast, an editor/writer for INC. magazine, an instructor of graduate students at Emerson College in Boston, and a columnist on film for the Boston Globe, to mention a few highlights. She makes friends easily, in all of the countries to which she has traveled - the reason she finds the need to find hotel lodging a rare experience. Those she counts among her ever-widening circle can expect to receive from her photos, clippings, birthday cards, and notes about items of possible interest. She cultivates relationships as she would a garden.

Together, she and I have created a website for a hotel marketing firm and collaborated on three travel guidebooks. In that work, I have seen that Fig pushes back at current media expectations to just "get it done." She is more concerned with getting it right.

It's been a hoot watching Fig transform herself from diligent professional to girlie-diva-bride.

I couldn't be happier for her.

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That Was Then
In 1860, a rangy one-term congressman from Illinois who had opposed the Mexican-American War ran for president. In 2008, a tall, first-term senator from Illinois who opposed the Iraq War is following the same path.

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Let's Par-TAY!
There was a Halloween celebration at an office of the Department of Homeland Security last fall.
Costumes were encouraged. One intellectually-challenged white employee came dressed as a prisoner at a detention center, complete with a prison jumpsuit, a dreadlocks wig, and his face painted black.
He won a prize for "most original costume."
The judge was Julie Myers.
She presides over the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, which has 16,000 employees.
It took her two days to realize that "a few of the costumes were inappropriate."
We can all go to bed every night knowing that our government is eternally vigilant.
And sensitive.

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We Don't Need No Stinkin' Gun Control
Not with humanitarian hunters like these stalking the woods.

It reminds Geezer of some of Hillary's recent ploys to position herself as just another good ol' country gal. She waxed fondly about her daddy (or was it her uncle?) teaching her how to shoot when she was just a li'l tyke back when in Scranton. (Strange nobody mentioned her past record urging stricter gun control laws.)
Then she gathered up a camera crew and went to a tavern where she could be filmed knocking back a beer and a shot.

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YouTube Alert
You have to check out www.babiesforobama.com.
Lookit there! I finally figured out how to hypertext!

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Health Watch
*Twelve years ago, Sonny Graham received a heart transplant from Terry Cottle, who had shot himself. Sonny married Terry's widow. In time, Sonny Graham came to think that Terry had a good idea there. Last week, he, too, shot himself to death.

*The article was illustrated by a black-and-white photograph of a room that looked like a sub-basement of Torquemada's dungeon. It was deeply shadowed, paint scaling off the walls, and at the center was a Chinese woman working at a crude table. She had laid out pig intestines, cut them open lengthwise, and was scrapping out the mucus membrane.
The membrane is a key ingredient of the blood-thinning drug heparin. It was administered to me during an operation on my carotid artery last summer.
I didn't die, but over sixty other people have.

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Serves 2
This has been a staple in my recipe file for at least a decade. I think I clipped it from the Times and that it was created by Marion Burros. It's a tasty light meal, and only about 550 calories total.

4 ounces yellow onion, chopped
1 teaspoon olive oil
Three-quarters cup long-grain rice
One-and-half cup chicken stock
One-half teaspoon tumeric or, preferably, saffron
2 4-ounce tuna steaks
1 tablespoon lime juice
One-quarter cup dried cherries
2 scallions (green onions), trimmed and sliced
1 ripe banana, peeled and diced
Salt
Pinch of nutmeg

Preheat the broiler.
Heat the oil in a nonstick pan. Saute the onion until it starts to soften. Stir in the rice, stock, and tumeric or saffron. Bring to a boil, then lower to a bare simmer. Cover and cook until the liquid has been absorbed; about 17-20 minutes.
After the rice has cooked about five minutes, wash and dry the tuna steaks, place them on a double thickness of aluminum foil, and carefully put them under the broiler. Turn them over after 4 or 5 minutes and broil for 4 minutes more.
Pour the lime juice over the cherries and set aside.
When the rice is cooked, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cherries (with the lime juice), as well as the scallions, banana, salt to taste, and nutmeg. Serve with the tuna.

Episode 44: On The Trail

2008-04-02T07:55:00.001-07:00

Dear Congressperson:
Can you say (or even think), "Windfall Profits Tax"? Or can you possibly, maybe, conceivably, however improbably, decide that the Big Five didn't really need that $18 billion tax break to underwrite domestic oil exploration?

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Whatta Guy
Looking, as ever, like the guy in a 1930s Arrow Shirt ad, Mitt Romney has generously - and humbly - made himself available to be John McCain's running mate.

That would inevitably bring up the issue of Mitt's Mormon religion yet again. Assuming he isn't one of those religionists who cherry-picks the least inconvenient dicta of his faith to observe, here are some of the founding convictions of his church:

In 1827, Joseph Smith announced that he had been visited by an angel. This was in the vicinity of Elmira, in upstate New York. The heavenly visitor identified himself as Moroni and revealed to Smith the existence of gold plates upon which were written the tales of ancient prophets who left Jerusalem in 600 BC and migrated to America. Two magic stones were also to be discovered that would allow the discoverer to translate the symbols on the plates.

Smith said he found and dug up the plates and the stones out back of his farmhouse. That presented a problem: He couldn't show the plates to anyone because they would be struck dead, or so he said he was told. On the other hand, he couldn't write, so he needed to translate the plates to a scribe. The solution was to hang a blanket across a room, Smith dictating on one side, a literate neighbor on the other. Over many weeks, a detailed transcription was thus produced. Upon completion, the gold plates, unseen by anyone but Smith, returned to heaven.

I might mention here that Smith had been convicted of fraud less than two years before his self-investiture as a new prophet. But if you, like Mitt, swallow any of this, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a Book of Mormon for you.

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Jay Leno displayed a picture of McCain and Romney on the Tonight Show the other night and said, "Doesn't it look like the head of Leisure World explaining the benefits of assisted living to the newest resident?"

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That's not the only photo of McCain with a former opponent - see right.

These days, John is on what is being labeled his "biography tour", meant to "re-introduce" himself to the voters. One wonders whether he will remind the electorate that he graduated from the Naval Academy fifth from the bottom of his class.

Or whether he will repeat his admission that he doesn't know much about economics - that is, about the subject that is currently the number one issue of concern to Americans.

Or that "It's not social issues I care about". Or that he "would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected." Or that "The nice thing about Alzheimer's is you get to hide your own Easter eggs."

Or that he has made a habit of firing obscenities at Senate colleagues with whom he disagreed. Or that he once joked that the reason "Chelsea Clinton is so ugly" is "because Janet Reno is her father."

All of which leads to the inevitable conclusions that he is (1) not bright enough to be president, (2) ignorant of key issues, (3) hot-tempered, (4) mean-spirited, and, at 71, (5) far too old.

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I'll Get It!
In Hillary's "red phone" commercial we see parents looking in on their sleeping children late at night, the mood peaceful but ominous. Then the images fade from black and white to full color. An announcer intones "Who do you want answering the phone at the White House at 3am?" and we see Hill reading. In a pantsuit. With jewelry. In full makeup. At 3am.
The woman is a powerhouse.

(Asides: The footage of the sleeping children was originally shot for a railroad company advertisement and one of the children, now a young adult, has declared herself an Obama supporter.)

That's not all. Hillary is courageous under fire. According to her oft-repeated tale of derring-do, she landed at an airport in Bosnia with sniper fire all around. According to her story, delivered with the devil-way-care smile of a grizzled war correspondent, her party had to run bent over to a waiting vehicle, bullets whizzing overhead. Chelsea was with her. And Sinbad and Sheryl Crow.

We now know, of course, that this was a fable. She says she "misspoke". She was too kind in that characterization. What she did was lie! Made it up! The war was over! (She took her daughter with her into a war zone?) And she thought what Clintons and far too many other politicians think - that she wouldn't get caught.

Even if it had happened, being shot at in Bosnia doesn't buttress Clinton's claims of foreign policy expertise. It doesn't even give her street cred. People get fired upon in Tuzla, Beirut, and Detroit. It only makes them victims, not experts in diplomacy or warfare.

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If you came across this blog while surfing, and would like to receive notice of future episodes, please send your request to TUCKg3@optonline.net. The information will not be shared.