Have I mentioned recently the utter destruction that some cute little nibbling bunnies wrought onto my gorgeous Romaine lettuce???? Off with their heads!
Actually the bunnies aren't the problem anywhere except the garden. It's the groundhogs. My dad was cussing at them again last night. Actually so was I. There we were, on the front porch drinking white wine before dinner, watching the little fuckers waddle across the yard, and I was yelling, "Yeah, that's right, you better run! Yeah, you! Don't look at me with those beady little eyes, I'm married to a man with a wall full of shotguns, and he looooves to eat groundhog! He'd be more than happy to come down here and blast your head off with his .22, you furry varmint!"
Which I know I've mentioned to my dad before in just such reference, but last night he looked at me quizzically (or maybe it was drunkenly) and said, "He is? I mean, he does?"
My educated response came via Bill Murray in Caddyshack: I cocked my finger at the groundhog in question and fired. "Au revoir, gophere."
My dad again: "I don't think we should. I mean, those people," he pointed vaguely with his wineglass in the direction of the horse farm across the street, who also now own the two other houses on this side of the road that share our circular driveway, "are like, animal activists and stuff. You know, they buy lots of horses and put them in little cages all day. Plus they have little yappy dogs." (are you kidding? this is even more of a reason.)
Now my dad knows I'm an animal activist too. "I like little furry creatures," I reminded him. "But I'm also a realist. And when something is eating the goddamned foundation of your outbuildings and tunneling under your front porch, you are entitled to blow its furry little head off. It's the way of country life. When ranchers start losing sheep, they're allowed to shoot wolves, which are a protected species. We're talking about groundhogs. Large furry rodents in paper bags, with bad teeth. Trust me. No one will miss them." As a matter of fact, the very reason we have so many groundhogs this year is that our next-door neighbour finally died at the ripe old age of 94, and isn't around anymore to drive around on her tractor and shoot them with her .22. Or, for that matter, poise outside our front porch tunnel with her shovel and a Hav-a-Hart trap and bonk them over the head when they come outside to investigate the shiny new toy.
Seriously. She did this. We called her "Killer Miller." Granny Get Your Gun.
My dad by this point had stopped drinking and was staring at me in rapt attention. I don't know, maybe it was horror that his granola-crunching hippie daughter was advocating the cruel ending of a life at the same time she was cutting full-page Amnesty International ads out of the NY Times. Or maybe it was pride that I'd finally gotten some sense in my head. (Blame it on marrying into a family of hunters, where "vegetarian" is a euphemism for "bad aim.")
"So, does your husband really have a .22?" He finally asked.
"Of course he does. Don't be silly. And that's probably the best choice for this task. But I really think he'd rather use the 30-30 with the night scope. Or maybe the 1917 Mauser his grandfather brought back from World War II," I mused.
As I got up to email him about this, my dad called after me, "Tell him to bring his biggest stock-pot, too." Then he laughed, the kid from Brooklyn making a hunting joke. He didn't notice the expression on my face, because I was already inside.
Because, you see, in my husband's family, they actually do eat groundhog.
21 June 2006
10 March 2006
Indian Style
One of the things I dread most about moving is the vocabulary. I've just recently come to terms with Mahopac and Oscawana and am even trying to make my peace with Shawangunk--and now I'm faced with Tulpehocken and Manatawny, not to mention remembering that Schnecksville is different from Schwenksville. Lord help me.
24 February 2006
It Must Be So Tiring to Be Holier Than Thou.
I found this on abctales.com a while ago, and was incensed enough, I'm pretty sure, to write the author, rip her a new asshole, and direct her to the Stolen Childhoods website in hopes that she would get a clue. Sadly, I doubt it worked, but she is at least no longer active on the board.
Of Stolen Childhoods, and Unfair TV Programmes
By ritawrites
from the ABC set GURUWRITES
I am convinced it is a Judeo/Christian thing. Come the year end, come the time for yuletide, when we will witness how the rich west shamelessly displays its throw-away wealth, you suddenly get flooded with media tearjerkers about the "those poor sods in those dark third-world holes". It almost seems to be a self-flagellation trip. Or maybe it's just a culture-thing that cannot feel happy about feeling happy - where happiness is measured by how much you can spend - without feeling guilty. Anyway, this year, it seems they have gone for the most tear-jerkers of all - those poor children, overworked in sweat shops, child labourers working in stone quarries, living in horrendous conditions - which according to one media sage, Aaron Brown of CNN/Newsnight, displays the shortcomings of a cultural indifference to such a sorry plight for their children. (I don't know how these obviously mediocre no-brainers like A. Brown make it to such positions as they end up holding, but I guess it's the very sliminess they display that puts them there), as if to say that the parents in Asia and Africa don't give a damn about their children and produce them only so that they can send them to work in stone quarries and horrible sweatshops.
Anyway, coming back to the point, this year it's these guys who've made a documentary called 'Stollenchildhoods' that everybody, beginning with dear bleedingheart Aaron Brown, seems to be getting all frothed up about. Oooh, look at those poor eight and nine year old boys in Philipines "tricked" into shrimp farming! Aaaah, look at those girl children carrying all those heavy loads in those stone quarries of India, "collaterals" in the unfeeling country of their birth. And so on and so forth. It's all heartrending stuff, there's no doubt about that. And it's important to highlight children's plight around the world. And watching the programme (Newsnight on CNN) I was waiting for the lugubrious crocodile tears to dry, and for them - experienced news guys - to get to the 'root cause' of the problem. Why such children exist in the world, in the first place. Which they finally did, in a round about way, after they had exhausted lachrymosing themselves hoarse about the "cultural" thing - poverty.
Wow, I thought, now I will get to hear what solutions they have to get rid of this terrible blight in our world - stolen childhoods - as in what the causes of world poverty are, and how the world can deal with eradicating it, so I sat up straight and strained my ears - and I heard NOTHING. Except the age-old thing - aid. As if the UNICEFs of the world are going to eradicate poverty in the world, so that every child is assured that its childhood is not stolen - HAHAHA! And then Aaron Brown and co talked about the need for education. Every child ought to be educated, they said loftily, while wiping each other's tears. And who is going to pay for that, pray? It turns out that it will take 8 billion a year to educate all the deprived children of the world. Where is that money going to come from? Silence! All I got to hear was that the onus was solely on the shoulders of the third world countries themselves. Doesn't the rich first world have a duty towards the rest of the world, which presumably it belongs to? The question didn't even come up!
And what about the real reason of the inequality that exists in the world - the skewed trade and tariff systems that creates more wealth for the wealthy countries and puts poor countries at a disadvantage? Which only ends up in perpetuating the endemic poverty that exists there. Not a word about that.
And then I really sit up straight and look between the tear-jerker images being put out. Who financed these guys, the makers of 'stolenchildhoods' I wonder. Could it be some first world
companies/businesses, or their agencies, who are afraid of the rapid economic growth of countries like India, and are afraid of the real competition that is looming, and want to put a spanner in the works, I wonder. The fact remains, while indeed it is a shame that children are robbed of their childhoods, merely shedding tears over it is not going to solve the problem. Let's talk about the real issues. Let's talk about the fact that if these children are suddenly sacked - which is the real purpose of all this hullabaloo, so that third world firms/companies/businesses don't have the competitive advantage by the lower wages they pay to children - who at least are able to eat, they would just be put out on the streets, into prostitution, crime, drug pushing, starvation. That before pushing for "eradication of child labour", let's talk about setting up the infrastructure so that they get their rightful childhoods - a good education, and the simple pleasures of play and carefree gadding about. In order to be able to achieve that, the rich countries have to shoulder much of the burden - create the schools, help in creating the employment that parents need in order for them to have the luxury of sending their children to school, and to be carefree. Which entails fairer world trade and tariff practices. Unfair world trade practices, e.g. subsidizing first world farmers, forcing third world countries to open their markets to cheaper first world goods, which wipes out indigenous businesses which cannot compete, and perpetuating the first world/ third world divide are the real causes of most of why childhoods are really stolen. Will the makers of "stolenchildhoods" and Aaron Brown and co. make a documentary/TV programme about that? I bet not.
First, let me address this diatribe overall by wondering here in ether-space if "rita" (the vegan/vegetarian/yoga-touting/guru-worshipping airheaded saint) in fact viewed the same CNN NewsNight with Aaron Brown segment for which I was present at airing in December of 2004 (in fact, he's wearing my husband's tie). Because all that she swears is not addressed by my "tear-jerking," "corporate financed" and "lugubrious bleedingheart" friends.....in fact is addressed in the film and was addressed in the segment--or as much as can be addressed in a ten-minute segment.
Now. Let me address point by point.
1. Robin doesn't give a shit about Yuletide and whether or not he needs to grub to fill a void created by his consumerism. Firstly, he's not very consumerist, being one of the least materialistic people I know. Secondly, he's Jewish. Actually, to get technical, he's agnostic, convinced by his pessimism that the God he reaches for in his work doesn't exist.
2. He and Len worked on the film for seven years. To hell with this being the topic du jour. [ed. note: though the film is complete, as of 3/07, he is still working on the problem. What are you doing?]
3. The cultural indifference is not that these children's parents don't care that this is happening to them, it's that we don't care that it's happening to them.
4. Aid and education. Have you done the research? Education is the solution to this. It's been proven. When education rates rise, this sort of thing decreases. Especially in girls and women.
4a. Aid, because it's not the third world countries' fault that they're in this predicament. It's the World Bank, the IMF, globalization. This was also addressed. You obviously weren't listening, instead being too busy tap-tapping away your little pranic musings. These countries got screwed, my dear. By us. So it damn well is our job to make reparations. And this was mentioned.
4b. Not a word about skewed trade? Excuse you?
5. Who financed Robin and Len? Robin and Len. Robin spent his entire life savings and Len mortgaged his fucking office, you twat. So don't go making assumptions. I've seen the paperwork. As a matter of fact, I'm in charge of the paperwork. You have no idea how much this cost them. Personally. Furthermore, it damn near cost each of them their lives several times over. Robin especially, more than you will ever know. How dare you, you ignorant idolater.
6. It's not about causing the child-labour countries to lose their competitive edge. It's about.....get this.....the children themselves. Maybe you confused deva with diva.
6a. The consequences of those children getting "sacked" as you put it? Weren't you listening? Crime, prostitution, drug-pushing, starvation? Those things already exist, because of the child labour problem. Setting up an infrastructure is what the legislation is for. Jesus. Or maybe you missed that part too. Do the words "Global Marshall Plan" ring a bell? Not even a little finger cymbal? No?
7. Fair trade? The awful effects of globalization wiping out indigenous businesses? Why yes, yes they are making a movie about that. Or should I say, another movie. The first one was called "Globalization and Human Rights." Maybe you missed it. You don't strike me as the type to watch much educational television. So I'm pretty sure you'd owe me on that bet.
And now, since you seem to have missed the actual point, let's go to the videotape. Aaron?
Of Stolen Childhoods, and Unfair TV Programmes
By ritawrites
from the ABC set GURUWRITES
I am convinced it is a Judeo/Christian thing. Come the year end, come the time for yuletide, when we will witness how the rich west shamelessly displays its throw-away wealth, you suddenly get flooded with media tearjerkers about the "those poor sods in those dark third-world holes". It almost seems to be a self-flagellation trip. Or maybe it's just a culture-thing that cannot feel happy about feeling happy - where happiness is measured by how much you can spend - without feeling guilty. Anyway, this year, it seems they have gone for the most tear-jerkers of all - those poor children, overworked in sweat shops, child labourers working in stone quarries, living in horrendous conditions - which according to one media sage, Aaron Brown of CNN/Newsnight, displays the shortcomings of a cultural indifference to such a sorry plight for their children. (I don't know how these obviously mediocre no-brainers like A. Brown make it to such positions as they end up holding, but I guess it's the very sliminess they display that puts them there), as if to say that the parents in Asia and Africa don't give a damn about their children and produce them only so that they can send them to work in stone quarries and horrible sweatshops.
Anyway, coming back to the point, this year it's these guys who've made a documentary called 'Stollenchildhoods' that everybody, beginning with dear bleedingheart Aaron Brown, seems to be getting all frothed up about. Oooh, look at those poor eight and nine year old boys in Philipines "tricked" into shrimp farming! Aaaah, look at those girl children carrying all those heavy loads in those stone quarries of India, "collaterals" in the unfeeling country of their birth. And so on and so forth. It's all heartrending stuff, there's no doubt about that. And it's important to highlight children's plight around the world. And watching the programme (Newsnight on CNN) I was waiting for the lugubrious crocodile tears to dry, and for them - experienced news guys - to get to the 'root cause' of the problem. Why such children exist in the world, in the first place. Which they finally did, in a round about way, after they had exhausted lachrymosing themselves hoarse about the "cultural" thing - poverty.
Wow, I thought, now I will get to hear what solutions they have to get rid of this terrible blight in our world - stolen childhoods - as in what the causes of world poverty are, and how the world can deal with eradicating it, so I sat up straight and strained my ears - and I heard NOTHING. Except the age-old thing - aid. As if the UNICEFs of the world are going to eradicate poverty in the world, so that every child is assured that its childhood is not stolen - HAHAHA! And then Aaron Brown and co talked about the need for education. Every child ought to be educated, they said loftily, while wiping each other's tears. And who is going to pay for that, pray? It turns out that it will take 8 billion a year to educate all the deprived children of the world. Where is that money going to come from? Silence! All I got to hear was that the onus was solely on the shoulders of the third world countries themselves. Doesn't the rich first world have a duty towards the rest of the world, which presumably it belongs to? The question didn't even come up!
And what about the real reason of the inequality that exists in the world - the skewed trade and tariff systems that creates more wealth for the wealthy countries and puts poor countries at a disadvantage? Which only ends up in perpetuating the endemic poverty that exists there. Not a word about that.
And then I really sit up straight and look between the tear-jerker images being put out. Who financed these guys, the makers of 'stolenchildhoods' I wonder. Could it be some first world
companies/businesses, or their agencies, who are afraid of the rapid economic growth of countries like India, and are afraid of the real competition that is looming, and want to put a spanner in the works, I wonder. The fact remains, while indeed it is a shame that children are robbed of their childhoods, merely shedding tears over it is not going to solve the problem. Let's talk about the real issues. Let's talk about the fact that if these children are suddenly sacked - which is the real purpose of all this hullabaloo, so that third world firms/companies/businesses don't have the competitive advantage by the lower wages they pay to children - who at least are able to eat, they would just be put out on the streets, into prostitution, crime, drug pushing, starvation. That before pushing for "eradication of child labour", let's talk about setting up the infrastructure so that they get their rightful childhoods - a good education, and the simple pleasures of play and carefree gadding about. In order to be able to achieve that, the rich countries have to shoulder much of the burden - create the schools, help in creating the employment that parents need in order for them to have the luxury of sending their children to school, and to be carefree. Which entails fairer world trade and tariff practices. Unfair world trade practices, e.g. subsidizing first world farmers, forcing third world countries to open their markets to cheaper first world goods, which wipes out indigenous businesses which cannot compete, and perpetuating the first world/ third world divide are the real causes of most of why childhoods are really stolen. Will the makers of "stolenchildhoods" and Aaron Brown and co. make a documentary/TV programme about that? I bet not.
First, let me address this diatribe overall by wondering here in ether-space if "rita" (the vegan/vegetarian/yoga-touting/guru-worshipping airheaded saint) in fact viewed the same CNN NewsNight with Aaron Brown segment for which I was present at airing in December of 2004 (in fact, he's wearing my husband's tie). Because all that she swears is not addressed by my "tear-jerking," "corporate financed" and "lugubrious bleedingheart" friends.....in fact is addressed in the film and was addressed in the segment--or as much as can be addressed in a ten-minute segment.
Now. Let me address point by point.
1. Robin doesn't give a shit about Yuletide and whether or not he needs to grub to fill a void created by his consumerism. Firstly, he's not very consumerist, being one of the least materialistic people I know. Secondly, he's Jewish. Actually, to get technical, he's agnostic, convinced by his pessimism that the God he reaches for in his work doesn't exist.
2. He and Len worked on the film for seven years. To hell with this being the topic du jour. [ed. note: though the film is complete, as of 3/07, he is still working on the problem. What are you doing?]
3. The cultural indifference is not that these children's parents don't care that this is happening to them, it's that we don't care that it's happening to them.
4. Aid and education. Have you done the research? Education is the solution to this. It's been proven. When education rates rise, this sort of thing decreases. Especially in girls and women.
4a. Aid, because it's not the third world countries' fault that they're in this predicament. It's the World Bank, the IMF, globalization. This was also addressed. You obviously weren't listening, instead being too busy tap-tapping away your little pranic musings. These countries got screwed, my dear. By us. So it damn well is our job to make reparations. And this was mentioned.
4b. Not a word about skewed trade? Excuse you?
5. Who financed Robin and Len? Robin and Len. Robin spent his entire life savings and Len mortgaged his fucking office, you twat. So don't go making assumptions. I've seen the paperwork. As a matter of fact, I'm in charge of the paperwork. You have no idea how much this cost them. Personally. Furthermore, it damn near cost each of them their lives several times over. Robin especially, more than you will ever know. How dare you, you ignorant idolater.
6. It's not about causing the child-labour countries to lose their competitive edge. It's about.....get this.....the children themselves. Maybe you confused deva with diva.
6a. The consequences of those children getting "sacked" as you put it? Weren't you listening? Crime, prostitution, drug-pushing, starvation? Those things already exist, because of the child labour problem. Setting up an infrastructure is what the legislation is for. Jesus. Or maybe you missed that part too. Do the words "Global Marshall Plan" ring a bell? Not even a little finger cymbal? No?
7. Fair trade? The awful effects of globalization wiping out indigenous businesses? Why yes, yes they are making a movie about that. Or should I say, another movie. The first one was called "Globalization and Human Rights." Maybe you missed it. You don't strike me as the type to watch much educational television. So I'm pretty sure you'd owe me on that bet.
And now, since you seem to have missed the actual point, let's go to the videotape. Aaron?
09 January 2006
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
Recently Jenny sent me an editorial from the New York Times about reflection. The author seemed to think that end-of-year pondering was less than helpful. Apparently studies have shown that people who thought incessantly about their depression or analysed the relationships they were in were either no more likely to fix things, or in fact less so. However, one thing I noticed was that it never mentioned whether any action was taken towards improvement, or whether they were simply.....wallowing. I'd have to read the article again to confirm my train of thought, as its been several days since reading, and I got distracted in the midst of my own original response, but I wondered. Because there is a time when self-reflection is necessary, not for one's survival, but in order to thrive--not to act upon, not to judge, simply to acknowledge. To see things for the way they are. Whoever said the unexamined life is not worth living was on to something. Not only is it not worth living, it may in fact be unlivable. A spiritual inventory is one of the most important processes we have, a sacred ritual that empowers us and grounds us.
For me, the end of December is such a time. While for some the cycle of newness begins in the fall, when the harvest is at its peak, the traditional end of the year, when everything seems frozen and here in the north often actually is, gives me the necessary pause for reflection. Or, more aptly, for scrying on this thing that is my life. The lake in my front yard is frozen nearly solid, with only a narrow black channel of warmer current. But from our cove to nearly halfway across to Canopus Hill , the ice is a product of slow freezing: of daily fluctuations, thawing and re-freezing, that white ice crazed with crystals yet entirely motionless. As I wrote this by hand in my journal, it was also covered with a morning's fine dusting of snow. Instead of being simultaneously a reflection of the sky and a glimpse of the abundant, though wet, life beneath, the lake was blank: a perfect white sheet of paper: a movie screen.
(It was then that Robin came in from out of the snow of his short walk, and I drove him to the station in Garrison, that perfect little town carved into the cliff bank of the Hudson River, stopping at the general store for coffee and doughnuts, looking out over the falling snow above the river, the birds darting among the red thorns, talking about the normal life, the simple life, before I put him on the train with a quick kiss on the cheek and drove back over the mountain in the blinding wet snow and the magical snowy New Year's Eve twilight was gone)
This kind of reflection is more than self-analysis, while also being less than it--or perhaps by being less than it. There is second-guessing one's action, and there is meditation upon one's soul. One's actions, in a sense, are finite. One's soul is not. It is true, in both physics and human relationships, that to an extent a single action is infinite, in the sense that it reverberates and affects each thing in turn, causing re-action and new action. Soul manages to escape that, encompasses the whole at the outset, outside of time. There comes a point, one hopes, where one stops observing what one has done and begins to observe, quite simply, who one is. It's a subtle shift, one that often takes years or even a lifetime, but one that must be made to go beyond mere omphaloskeptic self-absorption into something spiritual. I hate to use the word "useful" because reflection is not a tool, which seems to be the general opinion. It is not a machine into which you put two quarters to come out with a hypothesis that can then be applied to the situation at hand. Meditation is not a transaction. In our consumer society, we often fail utterly to understand that. It's not something of which we can ask, "What's in it for me?" without being disappointed. The answer is too enigmatic to satisfy our craving for solid proof. We want results. And the answer, of course, is simply to be in it, ourselves, both feet planted firmly in this impossible existence where we set the ones we love free downriver on the current, where the road home is slippery and often treacherous, where the silent solitary beauty of snow falling on the evergreens undoes us even as we search for the meaning of small towns nestled in valleys.
Even while we search, the answer is inside us, and if we do not stop to ask for it, we will pass it unnoticed, thinking it merely another snowfield rather than the silent wonder it is.
For me, the end of December is such a time. While for some the cycle of newness begins in the fall, when the harvest is at its peak, the traditional end of the year, when everything seems frozen and here in the north often actually is, gives me the necessary pause for reflection. Or, more aptly, for scrying on this thing that is my life. The lake in my front yard is frozen nearly solid, with only a narrow black channel of warmer current. But from our cove to nearly halfway across to Canopus Hill , the ice is a product of slow freezing: of daily fluctuations, thawing and re-freezing, that white ice crazed with crystals yet entirely motionless. As I wrote this by hand in my journal, it was also covered with a morning's fine dusting of snow. Instead of being simultaneously a reflection of the sky and a glimpse of the abundant, though wet, life beneath, the lake was blank: a perfect white sheet of paper: a movie screen.
(It was then that Robin came in from out of the snow of his short walk, and I drove him to the station in Garrison, that perfect little town carved into the cliff bank of the Hudson River, stopping at the general store for coffee and doughnuts, looking out over the falling snow above the river, the birds darting among the red thorns, talking about the normal life, the simple life, before I put him on the train with a quick kiss on the cheek and drove back over the mountain in the blinding wet snow and the magical snowy New Year's Eve twilight was gone)
This kind of reflection is more than self-analysis, while also being less than it--or perhaps by being less than it. There is second-guessing one's action, and there is meditation upon one's soul. One's actions, in a sense, are finite. One's soul is not. It is true, in both physics and human relationships, that to an extent a single action is infinite, in the sense that it reverberates and affects each thing in turn, causing re-action and new action. Soul manages to escape that, encompasses the whole at the outset, outside of time. There comes a point, one hopes, where one stops observing what one has done and begins to observe, quite simply, who one is. It's a subtle shift, one that often takes years or even a lifetime, but one that must be made to go beyond mere omphaloskeptic self-absorption into something spiritual. I hate to use the word "useful" because reflection is not a tool, which seems to be the general opinion. It is not a machine into which you put two quarters to come out with a hypothesis that can then be applied to the situation at hand. Meditation is not a transaction. In our consumer society, we often fail utterly to understand that. It's not something of which we can ask, "What's in it for me?" without being disappointed. The answer is too enigmatic to satisfy our craving for solid proof. We want results. And the answer, of course, is simply to be in it, ourselves, both feet planted firmly in this impossible existence where we set the ones we love free downriver on the current, where the road home is slippery and often treacherous, where the silent solitary beauty of snow falling on the evergreens undoes us even as we search for the meaning of small towns nestled in valleys.
Even while we search, the answer is inside us, and if we do not stop to ask for it, we will pass it unnoticed, thinking it merely another snowfield rather than the silent wonder it is.
14 December 2005
Africa Journal
about keeping a journal... I keep cameras... but here goes...
the air here is thick with the red dust that makes up most of the roads and smells of dried wood fires, diesel and brick. the sun sets early, not because it has crossed the horizon but because the atmosphere is so thick with exhaust and dirt that it creates a higher softer horizon.... burnishing everything the light falls on an hour before the real sun sets below the real horizon .... the markets teem at this hour... small wooden shacks with corrugated tin roofs... goods dangling like so many unfulfilled wishes... one sign in particular caught my eye 'librarie du savoir' ... it was closed ... and in so many ways so is Mali... there is no god here or devil... just little gods and little devils ... who like the shops open and close themselves to us at whim... I walked the 4 miles to the 'guare' (the bus stop where most of the trafficking takes place) ... the same walk the kids take... I was looking for the 'locateurs' (trafficking agents) ... who kidnap these kids... in the middle of this squalor of limping buses and touts and mud and piss and tilted everythings I finally saw one and he saw me... and it was like we knew each other... and the knowledge that those who prey upon others may one day be preyed upon...
That is part of today... save this for me... as I normally don't write that much... and share it and my love with [your husband]
RR
25 November 2005
Pie Dreaming: A Deconstruction of My Coming of Age as My Father's Oldest Son
Apple, pumpkin, blueberry, and--in a minute or two--coconut custard. For most people, Thanksgiving is about turkey and stuffing, though some people refer to it mysteriously as "dressing" as if it went on the outside of the bird, cranberry sauce, football, and of course mashed potatoes and gravy.
For my family, it's all about the pie.
When we were little, my dad discovered that he didn't like most coconut custard pies. The ones from the bakery, in addition to having crusts that weighed about as much as the Hindenburg, had the wrong texture. They weren't....well, custardy. In order for a coconut custard pie to meet my father's strict epicurean standard, it needed to have a distinctly custard-like texture, smoother than pudding, almost as creamy as the filling in a Boston cream doughnut (and those were another story). Which meant two things. The first one was the obvious detail of cooking it in a water bath, which most large-scale bakeries no longer bothered to do. But the second is where my father's quirkiness started to show through. You see, my father liked his coconut custard pie with the coconut floating on the top. This meant that the baker had to pay close attention during baking, regardless of the fact that he or she might be slicing apples or rolling out another pie crust or even mashing potatoes while the custard simmered away in its water bath. Halfway through the baking time, the oven opened, out came the pie, and on went the coconut, thus giving the custard time to set, enough to hold the weight of the flakes of coconut.
But that wasn't the half of it. My father also knew the deep truth about pie-making: there is nothing more criminal than a soggy crust. Lusciously soaked in apple and cinnamon and nutmeg, yes. Soggy from drowning under three cups of egg and milk and sugar, not so much. No, my father insisted on baking the pie shell for his beloved coconut custard separately. Surely he's not the only cook in the world to do this, because there exist such exotic things as clay-moulded pie weights (though why anyone would need anything other than a one-pound bag of pinto beans and a length of aluminum foil is beyond me to this day. They're just as reusable, too; my father has had the same bag of "pie beans" for more than thirty years.) This isn't the weirdness. The weirdness is what comes next.
One would think that an empty pie shell and a fully-cooked coconut custard filling would not be too hard to merge. One would be, in this case, gravely mistaken. The obvious problem is the aesthetic one: an upside down custard is a vulnerable thing at best. At its worst it's pockmarked, pale, watery, and prone to weeping. Failing that, it also doesn't fit snugly into its crust, like a child's fist does into a mitten. Even if it did, the coconut would all be on the bottom, which defeats the obsessive-compulsive routine of pulling the pie out half-baked to add the eponymous ingredient. No, this does not do at all. In order for a coconut custard pie to be a proper coconut custard pie, at least if you were born a Monahan, the pie must undergo a transformation that defies all logic (and occasionally gravity.) The pie must be slud.
That was not a typo. Perhaps it was my father's own coming of age in the fifties, in Brooklyn. Or maybe it was the fact that my mother's a die-hard Mets fan. Her theory is that it comes from "they woulda had him at second, but he slud." Regardless of the etymology, it is the only word that adequately describes the precariousness and absurdity of the entire pie undertaking. The baked custard must be slud, with a flourish, like an omelette from a pan, but it must be slud not onto a plate, but into a waiting pie crust. Furthermore, this bit of acrobatics must be performed at the holiday table during coffee, in front of the entire family, including friends, orphaned neighbours going through divorces, and inevitably a priest or two. This heightens the drama, raising the stakes from simple culinary manouevre to a sort of dessert as theatre.
It takes equal parts caution and frivolity, care and sang-froid, control and a damn the torpedoes kind of attitude. What's the worst that can happen? The entire custard could land in Aunt Doris's lap? Not likely, unless the tablecloth is greased. No, the realistic worst-case scenario is ugly enough, and it's happened more than once. I'm not describing a dessert that looks more like a quiche, or even scrambled eggs. What I'm talking about here is swearing in front of your mother.
Pie-sludding was always my father's honour. It was always the high point of Thanksgiving dinner, even more exciting for us girls than getting to finally listen to Christmas carols on the drive home. It was sometimes the only time the whole extended clan was actually around the table together, instead of snoozing or watching the game or off in Patrick's room playing whatever video game was cool that year. Just when we were getting bored, someone would call down the hallway that Jackie was getting ready to do the pie. And off we would go, joystick dangling and the enemy shooting at us undefended, obliterating us in a fireball of epic proportion.
Then one year it happened. No, not a custard-wearing catastrophe. Grad school. More specifically, grad school in Spokane, three thousand miles away from the family table in Staten Island. One night in May, shortly before I packed up my Volvo wagon and drove across I-90, I came downstairs to find my father in the kitchen, stirring something and peering intently into the double-boiler. I sniffed. This could mean only one thing. Coconut custard pie--but completely out of season. It was the one thing he gave me when I left for Washington, except for his father's Estwing hammer that was older than I was. When I went away to NYU at 18, it was advice about drugs and birth control and not getting mugged. When I left for Spokane, he didn't say a word. He just taught me how to slud the pie.
Ever since then, the pie has been my duty and my honour to bring to the family table. We don't go to Staten Island anymore; only two of us live there. The cousins have all married or gone off to reform school (or both), divorce has taken some people to Florida or Easton, and our grandparents are long dead. For a long time I continued the pie ritual at my own parents' house, in the enormous plaid kitchen where my mother spends two-thirds of her day, not because of the stove but because of the massive oak table where she reads or does her crossword in the southern exposure. I got married nine weeks ago to a chef, a beloved, funny man with long blond hair and a goatee who loves to sing Doors songs while he shuffles back and forth from oven to counter to sink, lining his favourite knives up like toy soldiers next to the cutting board. We didn't have Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving; apparently that's something I'm going to have to get used to. On a holiday that's traditionally all about food, if you're a chef, you're at work. If you're a chef's wife, you're curled at home under an afghan, reading a novel and trying not to think about what you're missing while every family around you in this nation is sitting down to their tables and feasting. You're waiting, for the restaurant to close, for the truck to pull into the driveway, for your husband to slump in through the kitchen door, his whites rumpled and mottled with stains from the night's specials.
Tomorrow our family is coming up. The whole family. Mine, and his. Because my husband is who he is, there will be turkey, a ham, stuffing with and without mushrooms, sweet and mashed potatoes, two kinds of corn, string beans, cranberry relish, cream of carrot soup, homemade rolls, and whatever else he thinks up between now and then.
But dessert is my department.
For my family, it's all about the pie.
When we were little, my dad discovered that he didn't like most coconut custard pies. The ones from the bakery, in addition to having crusts that weighed about as much as the Hindenburg, had the wrong texture. They weren't....well, custardy. In order for a coconut custard pie to meet my father's strict epicurean standard, it needed to have a distinctly custard-like texture, smoother than pudding, almost as creamy as the filling in a Boston cream doughnut (and those were another story). Which meant two things. The first one was the obvious detail of cooking it in a water bath, which most large-scale bakeries no longer bothered to do. But the second is where my father's quirkiness started to show through. You see, my father liked his coconut custard pie with the coconut floating on the top. This meant that the baker had to pay close attention during baking, regardless of the fact that he or she might be slicing apples or rolling out another pie crust or even mashing potatoes while the custard simmered away in its water bath. Halfway through the baking time, the oven opened, out came the pie, and on went the coconut, thus giving the custard time to set, enough to hold the weight of the flakes of coconut.
But that wasn't the half of it. My father also knew the deep truth about pie-making: there is nothing more criminal than a soggy crust. Lusciously soaked in apple and cinnamon and nutmeg, yes. Soggy from drowning under three cups of egg and milk and sugar, not so much. No, my father insisted on baking the pie shell for his beloved coconut custard separately. Surely he's not the only cook in the world to do this, because there exist such exotic things as clay-moulded pie weights (though why anyone would need anything other than a one-pound bag of pinto beans and a length of aluminum foil is beyond me to this day. They're just as reusable, too; my father has had the same bag of "pie beans" for more than thirty years.) This isn't the weirdness. The weirdness is what comes next.
One would think that an empty pie shell and a fully-cooked coconut custard filling would not be too hard to merge. One would be, in this case, gravely mistaken. The obvious problem is the aesthetic one: an upside down custard is a vulnerable thing at best. At its worst it's pockmarked, pale, watery, and prone to weeping. Failing that, it also doesn't fit snugly into its crust, like a child's fist does into a mitten. Even if it did, the coconut would all be on the bottom, which defeats the obsessive-compulsive routine of pulling the pie out half-baked to add the eponymous ingredient. No, this does not do at all. In order for a coconut custard pie to be a proper coconut custard pie, at least if you were born a Monahan, the pie must undergo a transformation that defies all logic (and occasionally gravity.) The pie must be slud.
That was not a typo. Perhaps it was my father's own coming of age in the fifties, in Brooklyn. Or maybe it was the fact that my mother's a die-hard Mets fan. Her theory is that it comes from "they woulda had him at second, but he slud." Regardless of the etymology, it is the only word that adequately describes the precariousness and absurdity of the entire pie undertaking. The baked custard must be slud, with a flourish, like an omelette from a pan, but it must be slud not onto a plate, but into a waiting pie crust. Furthermore, this bit of acrobatics must be performed at the holiday table during coffee, in front of the entire family, including friends, orphaned neighbours going through divorces, and inevitably a priest or two. This heightens the drama, raising the stakes from simple culinary manouevre to a sort of dessert as theatre.
It takes equal parts caution and frivolity, care and sang-froid, control and a damn the torpedoes kind of attitude. What's the worst that can happen? The entire custard could land in Aunt Doris's lap? Not likely, unless the tablecloth is greased. No, the realistic worst-case scenario is ugly enough, and it's happened more than once. I'm not describing a dessert that looks more like a quiche, or even scrambled eggs. What I'm talking about here is swearing in front of your mother.
Pie-sludding was always my father's honour. It was always the high point of Thanksgiving dinner, even more exciting for us girls than getting to finally listen to Christmas carols on the drive home. It was sometimes the only time the whole extended clan was actually around the table together, instead of snoozing or watching the game or off in Patrick's room playing whatever video game was cool that year. Just when we were getting bored, someone would call down the hallway that Jackie was getting ready to do the pie. And off we would go, joystick dangling and the enemy shooting at us undefended, obliterating us in a fireball of epic proportion.
Then one year it happened. No, not a custard-wearing catastrophe. Grad school. More specifically, grad school in Spokane, three thousand miles away from the family table in Staten Island. One night in May, shortly before I packed up my Volvo wagon and drove across I-90, I came downstairs to find my father in the kitchen, stirring something and peering intently into the double-boiler. I sniffed. This could mean only one thing. Coconut custard pie--but completely out of season. It was the one thing he gave me when I left for Washington, except for his father's Estwing hammer that was older than I was. When I went away to NYU at 18, it was advice about drugs and birth control and not getting mugged. When I left for Spokane, he didn't say a word. He just taught me how to slud the pie.
Ever since then, the pie has been my duty and my honour to bring to the family table. We don't go to Staten Island anymore; only two of us live there. The cousins have all married or gone off to reform school (or both), divorce has taken some people to Florida or Easton, and our grandparents are long dead. For a long time I continued the pie ritual at my own parents' house, in the enormous plaid kitchen where my mother spends two-thirds of her day, not because of the stove but because of the massive oak table where she reads or does her crossword in the southern exposure. I got married nine weeks ago to a chef, a beloved, funny man with long blond hair and a goatee who loves to sing Doors songs while he shuffles back and forth from oven to counter to sink, lining his favourite knives up like toy soldiers next to the cutting board. We didn't have Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving; apparently that's something I'm going to have to get used to. On a holiday that's traditionally all about food, if you're a chef, you're at work. If you're a chef's wife, you're curled at home under an afghan, reading a novel and trying not to think about what you're missing while every family around you in this nation is sitting down to their tables and feasting. You're waiting, for the restaurant to close, for the truck to pull into the driveway, for your husband to slump in through the kitchen door, his whites rumpled and mottled with stains from the night's specials.
Tomorrow our family is coming up. The whole family. Mine, and his. Because my husband is who he is, there will be turkey, a ham, stuffing with and without mushrooms, sweet and mashed potatoes, two kinds of corn, string beans, cranberry relish, cream of carrot soup, homemade rolls, and whatever else he thinks up between now and then.
But dessert is my department.
14 October 2005
My Best Friend Just Hijacked My Blender
So, Robin was scheduled to come over for dinner last night, and because of all the skook he's been through recently (and also because we're dirt-poor and the herb garden is out of control) I decided to make him pasta-pesto. Which, being the brilliant friend that I am, I happen to know is his favourite meal.
Robin comes over just after 7, and beholds me in the kitchen with a vat of water on the boil, the blender out, and a huge-ass pile of basil on a dishtowel. A couple of humps of garlic, some parm, some walnuts. (neither of us likes pine nuts. Ptui!) Says to me, "So, what's for din-din?" Um, guess.
He opens the (first) bottle of white wine (Fat Bastard sauv blanc, pretty yummy) and pours us each a glass, so we can "Get obliviated." Sounds good so far. I'm picking bugs and stuff off the basil and hucking it into the blender. It's at this point that Robin, who has been telling me all about his breakup with Teri and how she thought he was a control freak, goes, "Honey......let me do that," and gets up off where he's been leaning on the kitchen table. It makes sense, right? The man's Italian. Native speaker, and all that. For chrissakes, the name on his passport is Umberto. Also, he's a complete boss in the kitchen, much like a certain husband I have. I'm used to this. I've been relegated to salad duty and baked treats for the remainder of my existence.
Anyway, after a couple of swigs of olive oil into the blender (I cannot believe we actually ran out of olive oil in my house. That's like running out of air.) and some of the garlic, he looks at me and goes, "You know you can't really make pesto in a blender. Where's your food processor?"
What, you mean the one my husband wouldn't let me get because it's just as quick for him to chop the veg himself? Yeah. That one. It's working a double in the kitchen tonight. Besides which, I've always made pesto in the blender. (possibly for just this reason, actually)
Robin, of course, has a food processor 100 yards away through the Noah's Ark style downpour. It's now 7:20, dark as a donkey's arse, and we're two thirds of the way through the Fat Bastard. So we put on our rain slickers, grab our wine glasses, cork the wine, wrap the basil up in its dishtowel, untwist the blender from its base, and pack the whole mess into a string bag. And tromp up the steps over the hill.
There we are, in one of those cataclysmically blinding downpours (sans lightning, which would have made it so....I don't know....Forrest Gump), hunkered over our wine glasses, in the dark, on these slippery slate steps over the hill, Robin's got my blender under his arm, and he stops dead in his tracks, looks at me from under the brim of his ancient Columbia danger-yellow parka hood, and goes, "Is Teri right? Am I too controlling?"
I'm very proud of myself for not actually laughing out loud.
Robin comes over just after 7, and beholds me in the kitchen with a vat of water on the boil, the blender out, and a huge-ass pile of basil on a dishtowel. A couple of humps of garlic, some parm, some walnuts. (neither of us likes pine nuts. Ptui!) Says to me, "So, what's for din-din?" Um, guess.
He opens the (first) bottle of white wine (Fat Bastard sauv blanc, pretty yummy) and pours us each a glass, so we can "Get obliviated." Sounds good so far. I'm picking bugs and stuff off the basil and hucking it into the blender. It's at this point that Robin, who has been telling me all about his breakup with Teri and how she thought he was a control freak, goes, "Honey......let me do that," and gets up off where he's been leaning on the kitchen table. It makes sense, right? The man's Italian. Native speaker, and all that. For chrissakes, the name on his passport is Umberto. Also, he's a complete boss in the kitchen, much like a certain husband I have. I'm used to this. I've been relegated to salad duty and baked treats for the remainder of my existence.
Anyway, after a couple of swigs of olive oil into the blender (I cannot believe we actually ran out of olive oil in my house. That's like running out of air.) and some of the garlic, he looks at me and goes, "You know you can't really make pesto in a blender. Where's your food processor?"
What, you mean the one my husband wouldn't let me get because it's just as quick for him to chop the veg himself? Yeah. That one. It's working a double in the kitchen tonight. Besides which, I've always made pesto in the blender. (possibly for just this reason, actually)
Robin, of course, has a food processor 100 yards away through the Noah's Ark style downpour. It's now 7:20, dark as a donkey's arse, and we're two thirds of the way through the Fat Bastard. So we put on our rain slickers, grab our wine glasses, cork the wine, wrap the basil up in its dishtowel, untwist the blender from its base, and pack the whole mess into a string bag. And tromp up the steps over the hill.
There we are, in one of those cataclysmically blinding downpours (sans lightning, which would have made it so....I don't know....Forrest Gump), hunkered over our wine glasses, in the dark, on these slippery slate steps over the hill, Robin's got my blender under his arm, and he stops dead in his tracks, looks at me from under the brim of his ancient Columbia danger-yellow parka hood, and goes, "Is Teri right? Am I too controlling?"
I'm very proud of myself for not actually laughing out loud.
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