The Never Ending Story...

'I'm working on a biography of St. Paul for Lent', I told Ben a week and a half ago.  "Ha!", he said, "You'd better hurry!"

Sure enough, it is Maundy Thursday and I'm not even to the Road to Damascus....which I'm gonna assume is in Rabbi Paul, even though I have not skipped ahead.  That's a bad habit I used to have when reading a particularly engrossing tale; did any of the characters I cared for die in the book?  Was there a happy ending?  Was there a sequel?  Sometimes I just couldn't bear the suspense spun by the author.....a peril foregone if one is reading a biography.  Rabbi Paul will still be on my reading list after Easter, and, probably Pentecost as well.

I'm not always so slow.  There's non fiction speed...a contemplative few pages before bed...several chapters of concentration on a plane. There's fiction speed:fully engrossed half hour at lunch, stealing a few pages during coffee after breakfast, and the anticipation of an evening after work.  And, finally, there's Daniel Silva speed: download to Kindle and neglect the rest of life until Gabriel Allon has squashed the latest threat and one has to wait until July for the next installment.

I have been haunted by books; The Lord of the Rings possessed me for months after I finished it the first time.  I was compelled to pick it up and reread the most heroic sections again and again.  I haven't read the entire trilogy for decades, so I don't know if I would find the same power in the story, but I suspect that I would.

The A.B. Guthrie books, The Big Sky  and The Way West  that my mom gave me also cast a spell, one that rears it's head every time we drive West.  These two novels are unvarnished tales of the frontier of wilderness,  mountain men, Indians and fur trade, and then the westward expansion of the pioneers along the Oregon Trail.  Reading A.B. Guthrie launched me on a Western binge of David Lavender, Bernard DeVoto and Mari Sandoz  as well as Stephen Ambrose's  Undaunted Courage.  There are at least two big books about the railroads waiting for my attention upstairs in the library....

I fell in love with Jonathan Raban's memoir of eastern Montana settlers Bad Land and read almost everything Ivan Doig wrote, though I think his later novels were more labored and constructed than his earliest ones.  I really enjoyed Wallace Stegner's novel about growing up in Saskatchewan, Wolf Willow.  I have a weakness for prairies...

My mom started me on British mysteries; they were a favorite of hers and she gave or lent me recent reprints or compilations of all Dorothy Sayers' Peter Wimsey books.  After Lord Peter, P.D.James' Adam Dalgliesh was dark and Martha Grimes' Richard Jury and Melrose Plant were fluff...but all in good fun.  I spent many happy hours reading the latest in these series...at least until Ms. Grimes freaked out about pigs.....

In the paperback book department, Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael books introduced the interesting historical background of a medieval abbey and the turmoil of 12th century....with the bonus of a television series on PBS starring Derek Jacobi, as good a monkish sleuth as I could imagine.

 If our books were organized, we'd have a whole rainbow of sleeves sporting the stylized horse design that used to scream across the book store, 'Here's a new Dick Francis!" 

Though we knew nothing of British horse racing...or anything else having to do with horses, each novel kept us turning pages as we waited to discover 1) What esoteric or convoluted way the hero would be entangled in the horse racing and/or breeding world whatever his career path, and 2) how long it would take him to get beat up?   Yes, Dick Francis, not one to trifle with success, had a certain structure to his books and having his heroes get beat up a couple of times was part of that formula...Despite the general attractiveness of the protagonists, I never worried about skipping to the end; the Dick Francis blueprint assured me the bad guy would be caught and things would turn out OK.

I wish I remembered how I came to read Dorothy Dunnett's historical series about the Scottish nobleman Francis Crawford of Lymond.  I know Blake and I were still searching out the final volumes after we were married, even though Wikipedia tells us Checkmate, the finale, was published in 1975.  Perhaps the volumes weren't published in the U.S. until later? These tremendously complex historical novels, full of exotic locales, phrases in French, classical literary allusions and all kinds of real and imagined characters with a bewildering duplicity of names, take the hero (or is he?) all over the world.  His friends and enemies sometimes love and sometimes loathe him; they don't always trust him, even as they follow him across a world of peril and politics for gold and country...but mostly gold.  Betrayal, treason, heroics, religion, family, psychics, prophets, curses, orphans, bastards, and lost loves: these books are high class soap opera built on a foundation of fact.  I am sure I would enjoy them even more upon rereading, but, alas! So many other pages await...

(As an aside, we both liked Dorothy Dunnett's odd first person mysteries about the painter Johnson Johnson...haven't seen them in bookstores for years, but with the wonders of Amazon, they still seem to be in circulation under different titles.)

I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to Neal Stephenson's series of three massive tomes, The Baroque Cycle.  I originally bought the hardback version of the first book, Quicksilver, thinking it might be something Blake would enjoy...Several years later, I pulled it off our bookshelf, read the blurb again, read the first chapter set in colonial New England...and I was hooked.  Mr. Stephenson walks the line between history and fantasy and spins rollicking good yarns about the trio of characters he introduces in volume 1... makes them come alive in all their foibles and failures in volume 2...finally tying up the loose strings with heroism and hocus pocus as love triumphs after all in volume 3.  Isaac Newton,  Leibniz, kings, Puritans, pirates, scientists and alchemists.  After reading the books, I just read a bunch of reviews...clearly, this is a trilogy that evokes strong feelings!  If, like me, folks had read the entire 2500 on Kindle, they would not have been grumpy.  It's an adventure tale, a witty one, and I'm afraid I pulled the book equivalent of binge-watching by going full steam ahead, damn the torpedoes between volumes.

But, let us end this never ending story with the novel I usually single out when asked for the best novel I've ever read: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara.  I think I bought this book after reading a review lauding its praises; while not in any sense an expert on the Civil War, I was raised in a home with Bruce Catton on the book shelves among other volumes.  My father discussed battle and battlegrounds, generals and politicians both North and South with a familiarity born of deep reading.  

The Killer Angels is epic, building the drama of Gettysburg through the inner dialogue of figures we know only as names.  Once again, we saw the movie and were mesmerized by the final battle scenes...but no more so than by the superb narrative provided by the book itself.  This is a war book, and not for children.  But no other book I've read on the Civil War evokes the combined violence, glory, and tragedy of that great battleground.

P.S......

Kitchen Klatter and Raw Meat

 

No, that is not a can of cat food artfully presented with a hint of lemon.  It is, rather, in the words of Wikipedia: 

Steak tartare is a meat dish made from raw groundmeat (beef or horsemeat). It is usually served with onions, capers, pepper and Worcestershire sauce, and other seasonings, often presented to the diner separately, to be added to taste. It is often served with a raw egg yolk, and often on rye bread.

Clearly, this dish is not in the mainline for meat eaters, those of us who choose between a burger and a filet depending upon the dollar signs on the menu.  But other foodies extol the virtues of this purest of purists' meat choices.

You're Wrong About Steak Tartare

Why do I even risk ruining someone's supper or, worse yet, turning them against beef altogether as a barbaric choice made by folks with ultra long incisors?  

Because once upon a time, on a whim and a dare,  I ordered steak tartare...at a German restaurant in Washington, D.C.  Even given fair warning, the appearance of the dish, bringing to mind nothing so much as a uncooked cube steak, was enough to give me pause.  The articles tell us that raw meat is supremely tasty...and I'll admit that a fine rare or medium rare steak certainly has more flavor than the sliced beef 'n gravy on the average buffet.  But even decades later...for that's how long it has been...the overwhelming 'remembrance of things past' is not the beef, but the capers, onions, and other strong herbs I suspect were used to cover up the taste of the meat in times past....not enhance it.

Because it was lunch, and out of pride and bravado, I did eat some of my steak tartare.  The German beer was much more palatable....

Since then, we've enjoyed other adventurous food outings: main dishes with the eyes intact...and other artistic but unarguably raw concoctions.  Blake has always loved oysters and for many years, I eschewed the slippery gray things.  But I do love the places where oysters are on the menu: the East Coast, West Coast, Gulf Coast, and over time, I've weakened and now eat my share, dabbing horseradish and dipping malt vinegar to....what?....accentuate?....eliminate?....the underlying mossy essence of the shellfish. 

Gabe....

not a big fan of oysters....

Thinking about these 'delicacies' gives me pause as I contemplate some of my culinary accomplishments when we were first married.  Clearly the guy that has survived oysters for more than forty years earned that cast iron digestive tract.

I remember cooking pork blade steaks several times a week while we lived in Columbia: they retailed for $1.29 a pound, never mind that a person burned more calories than he consumed trying to separate the meat from the bone.  Another favorite dish involved cooking hamburger, then mixing in a can of tomato soup and a can of cream of mushroom soup, and pouring the whole mess over spaghetti.  I am sure I can blame that one on Campbell's soup, but, it was mighty cheap and fed us several times.  I used my harvest gold electric skillet a lot!....

It's so convenient anymore to look up a recipe using whatever combination of ingredients you desire.  For lunch today, I had bought some asparagus, having a vague notion that I'd seen an interesting pasta recipe using both shrimp and asparagus.  Very springy, right?  All you need to have on hand.... besides the shrimp and asparagus and pasta........ are such staples as mushrooms, fresh oregano, fresh parsley, and fresh thyme!  Pardon me if all my spices come in those convenient little round orange containers that say "Tones"....

The cookbooks in my pantry reflect the way people used to cook at home...and the kinds of meals kids ate in the school cafeteria.  One of my most careworn cookbooks is one I received as a wedding shower gift.  Even though the blue cover is long gone, I know Grandma Hurst's friend, Mabel Pursell, gave me the big thick Kitchen Klatter cookbook.  I still use it: particularly for frostings and muffins.  A windshield survey of the contents is sufficient to recognize how much times have changed in the kitchen: 

Exhibit A:   Mustard Ring (Extra special!) 

Ingredients: eggs, sugar, unflavored gelatin, dry mustard, turmeric, salt, water, cider vinegar and whipping cream.  Follow the instructions and turn into a quart and a half ring mold. When firm, turn onto salad greens.

When was the last time you saw a mustard ring?  

Exhibit B: Just-Before-Payday Casserole

Ingredients: margarine, flour, pepper, onion, milk, potatoes, can luncheon meat, grated cheese. Make a white sauce, add potatoes, and bake with lunch meat.  Top with a little cheese.

Or...

Exhibit C: Wiener Dinner

Ingredients: Minute Rice, frozen green beans, 10 hot dogs, margarine, onion, mushroom pieces, pepper, flour, chicken broth.  

Cook rice and beans according to packages.  Cut hot dogs into chunks and saute in margarine.  Saute mushrooms, onion, and pepper.  Stir in chicken broth and flour.  In a large bowl, put the rice on one side, the beans on the other, and pour the wiener mixture over all.

Hmm.. Makes me want to pack a lunch....but all the ingredients are in your pantry!

Don't misunderstand: I mean no disrespect. The women of Kitchen Klatter  were women like my grandmother, the cooks who sent in both family favorites and aspirational recipes like Mary Beth's Quiche Lorraine  (Pronounced Keesh Lorraine) and President Eisenhower's Old-Fashioned Beef Stew.  They were Presbyterian women with honorifics: Mrs.Wm. R. Tweedie or Mrs. C.A.Bottermuller and they were careful to thank the Presbyterian business and professional men who sponsored the cookbook. 

Food fetishes come and food fads go.  What would our fore-mothers make of the current popularity of sushi, sashimi, ceviche...

or for that matter, steak tartare??

Even Bad Teams Need Fans

It’s 1970 maybe? And the Chicago White Sox, at a nadir in their history, honor straight A students with free tickets. I’ve donned my blue Sox cap.... I own the baseball cards and a weakness for the undermost of underdogs. I have brought my ball glove, even though we are seated way out there in the upper deck right field line..there's no one within 50 seats of us.
Ugly old echoing Comiskey with its weather beaten wooden seats, dropped in the middle of nowhere.

If you can see past my knee socks, check out those hand decorated tennis shoes.

Once, a friend and I spent hours painting a banner for Luis Aparecio Day for the opportunity to walk on the field between games at a double header and, maybe, win some tickets.

The second game was rained out.

Another time, our family car overheated in weekend traffic trying to get to an afternoon game; my father in a fury of impatience pulled out, made a U turn, and we went straight home in dead silence.

I was a loyal fan those two years, but a philosophical one..I knew the Sox were abysmal and hopeless, but even bad teams need fans....

To all the fans of lost causes,

Happy Baseball Eve....

Return to Sender

'Tis March...when the sand hill cranes flock in the Platte Valley, the geese vee south along the Missouri, baseballs return to southern diamonds, and Farm Bureau members from across the nation gather in our nation's capital.

We are part of this annual migration, one as perennial as college students on spring break.  It's one last chance to meet face to face with the leaders in Washington that can affect our businesses as much as any drought, flood or plague before we dive deep into the ancient ritual of planting.

Washington, D.C. is a city we have visited in all seasons: when the National Christmas tree glows in the shadow of the Washington monument and when summer warmth lingers deep into October, but it is most memorable in spring when standing under a magnolia's translucent blossoms feels like being inside a seashell.

Or...when introducing your grandchildren to the grandeur and majesty of the monuments, architecture, and museums of their heritage, their history............

Aaron, March 2011, at the airport on his first big adventure without his mom and dad. He was seven with a window seat, a backpack and his mom's old digital camera.  The Air and Space Museum was our first stop and, being a grandkid, he and his grandpa spun and pitched and rolled in any number of simulators.  I took one of my favorite pictures ever of Aaron and Blake at the IMAX  sporting their
3-D glasses; Aaron is in the very first stages of ooooh......aaaaaah.

So many wonders! Like the meat extravaganza of a Fogo de Chao, the view from the top of the Washington monument, Mount Vernon, a New Zealand kiwi, a ride on the Metro, and even more aircraft with Ben and Kenzie... necessitating a three hour nap to recharge...  Aaron, who took so many pictures the first day of the trip that we had to clean off the camera on Blake's computer.  Every one of his aircraft pictures is still in our March 2011 web album, a record of his seven year old fascination with mechanical marvels.

Lizzie, Gabe, and Abbie, traveling together in their seventh year, each picked their number one sight to see:  moccasins at the Indian Museum for Lizzie, Air & Space for Gabe, and the Art Museum for Abbie. The three of them attacked the week with exuberance, imagination, and energy: bounding up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial only to stand reverently before the solemn phrases of Lincoln's great oratory, reading every word.

 Every museum piqued their interest... and led to a visit to the gift shop and smashed penny machine.  Every monument could be measured between finger and thumb, every water fowl needed to be named, every fountain needed to be splashed, and mirror glass demanded a selfie.

 All that action was exhausting, making Grandpa an unwelcome alarm clock in the morning...

and the Capitol Visitor Center the perfect place for a quick siesta while Marco Rubio was speaking.

Our nation's capital is always changing, under construction here or restoration there.  And seven year olds grow too; they learn history, grow long legs, and stand to read about museum exhibits rather than flitting from attraction to attraction like bees on flowers.  Still,  the photography gene is strong.... Gabe, Abbie, and Lizzie took 500 pictures between them last week on the cameras they received at Christmas....and the only reason Aaron didn't is because his mom's old cell phone took a tumble that shattered the screen in the dark at the Korean War Memorial.

Still, that didn't keep his adventurous and hungry spirit from downing a big plate of lobster with his grandpa, fuel for the miles of steps from Lafayette Park to Library of Congress, from Ford's Theater  to the Smithsonian Castle, from Gershwin's piano to Jefferson's books.

Moon Gates, meteorites, and magnolias....for Aaron at 7 or Aaron at 12, Washington, D.C. was a playground of curiosities.

I always return to the National Gallery of Art when we travel to D.C., but I thought Gabe, Abbie, and Lizzie might enjoy a different museum this time around so we made the hike up to the Portrait Gallery in the old Patent Building. After all, it does have the fascinating interior courtyard with its scrim of flowing water and 394 wavy glass panels overhead.  I thought we might take in a few Presidential portraits, but I was unprepared and completely blown away by the kids' knowledge, anecdotal or not, of the historical figures in the paintings and their curiosity and interest about the people they didn't recognize.  James J. Audubon's self portrait (Lizzie: how did he paint himself?) Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson, John Brown and U.S. Grant, Robert E. Lee or Thomas Edison...famous names and well known faces, for sure, but they also recorded Harriett Beecher Stowe, John Brown, the Preamble of the Constitution on license plates and, of course, Alexander Hamilton.....

I drive the same 10 miles of curvy prairie roads every morning and night, and I have to tell myself to look at the landscape, not take it for granted, to watch for the small stuff, the seasonal changes, like the pair of quail that ducked into the brush around the cemetery this evening on my way home.  For frequent travelers, I'm sure the familiar sights of Washington, D.C. can get routine at best, if not downright stale.  Take my word for it: no matter how many times you visit, this city of museums and history and politics will always be new....if you see it with kids!

Joshie?  Levi? Are you ready?