Autodidaxic

The New Math

2012-01-17T20:13:00.000-08:00

I knew that this day would come, all the literature talks about it. It is just part of the progression of the disease.

Part of the progression of the disease. It sounds so clear cut. So understandable. So orderly.
This happens, and then this happens and then this happens. Like a formula.

Except formula's lead to results, to answers. There are no calculations in the math I know how to do, where the expected answer is chaos, is forgetting, is not recognizing your son when he arrives unexpectedly.

No, she wasn't expecting me, and had been sleeping in a chair in the hallway, and had just been woken up to skoot down the hall for the daily round of "activities". I am glad that she is adapting to her new home, she's not happy there, but she's not unhappy either. She is looked after and cared for and watched and that is the best we can do for her.

But when she saw me, unexpectedly, amongst the hustling people that were getting her down the hall, she just stared at me, confused. Maybe she did know who I was, maybe she was just still half in a dream, maybe I am making too much of this.

Maybe I just don't understand this new math.

Packing the Elephants

2011-11-15T10:38:00.000-08:00

My Mom likes elephants. She always has, so, over the years, we kids have all given her elephants to add to her collection. Every Christmas, and each of her birthdays, one of us kids would manage to slip in an elephant of some kind. She displayed them all, the hand made elephant coffee mug, the row of tiny green ones trailing each other across a bookshelf, a big one carved from exotic wood on the floor, a three dimensional tin one hanging on the wall and a small ceramic one with a big smile who sat happily on a little swing just above the sink.

Now Mom, being the woman that she was, would never had let on that perhaps, her love of elephants didn’t necessarily mean that she wanted to be given an elephant at every gift giving opportunity, nor did that love of pachyderms mean that she wanted her house to be turned into a shrine for the things…no, Mom, being the woman she was, loved the gifts and proudly displayed them all, and we were never told whether, in fact, she really loved them THAT much.

It was more important to her to show off the gifts that her children were thoughtful (or unimaginative) enough to continually give her. That was Mom. She was always the one thinking about what would make all of us happy and feel special, even at her own expense.

It wasn’t just elephants though. She had inherited a commemorative spoon collection from her mother-in-law, and over the years each of us would dutifully buy a spoon wherever we travelled. My brother, while he was in the Navy, definitely won the prize for bring back spoons from the most exotic places, but my sister and I did our share to add to the collection. I even found one in Florida that had elephants on it…what a score! These too, my Mom carefully displayed in wall racks.

I found out though, that perhaps she didn’t quite have the love for spoons that she had for elephants when, after I returned from a trip to Chicago, with new spoon in hand my Mom said, gently, ‘Thank you, but I’m not sure that I have space for any more spoons.” I may be limited as far as my gift-giving prowess, but I can recognize a hint.

No more spoons.

That was also about the time that we all started noticing that Mom was no longer quite as interested in a lot of things that she used to love. It was subtle at first, little things like the types of books she was reading, shifting from dense English History tomes to lighter mysteries, albeit the Brother Cadfel mysteries were set in middle ages Britain…but the change was there.

Other things changed as well. She stopped doing needlepoint, and her quilting passion diminished from sewing beautiful, intricately patterned bed-sized quilts to sewing together the occasional small decorative wall hanging to display as part of her themed bathroom. She stopped watching movies or staying up late to watch Letterman. Crosssticks puzzles were left half finished…things were changing.

These changes continued until they demonstrated an undeniable pattern that lead to a series of difficult and sad transitions…and painful choices for my sister and I. Mom could no longer drive. Mom could no longer live alone. Mom needed care givers. Mom needed to move into assisted living.

The other weekend, we moved Mom to a more dedicated care facility and had to once more pack her things away as the new facility had far less space. There was precious little space for more than a bed, a side table and a TV cabinet that now was heavily laden with family photos in a vain hope that they would somehow seem ‘homey’ and familiar.

But no more room for elephants.

So, in the process of packing her remaining possessions, I filled a box with a collection of carefully wrapped elephants…including a set of tiny green ones trailing each other, a 3-D tin one that hung on the wall and a smiling one who happily sat on a swing. The box went into the garage and will eventually go into storage where someday, some future relative, possibly who will never have met my Mom, will open the box marked “Mom’s Elephants” and will unwrap each of the carefully wrapped elephants and wonder why such care was taken for a collection of such worthless little things.

What is love?

2011-07-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

Don’t worry, I don’t really have an answer to that.

I can’t tell anyone what love is, only that it is something that you know exists only when you have truly felt it for yourself. Love is many things of course. It is a fire that rages and burns you with fierce desire, but it is also the quiet of that gentle glance across a shadowed room. It is hands holding while tears stream and the ache that comes in the wee hours when a byzantine argument seems that it will have no end…and all you want is to fall into the person’s arms instead of screaming.

Love is fast moments of overwhelming passion and years of warm routine, it is sharing the world through each other’s eyes and being mystified by how someone cannot see what you see.

It is contradiction and consolation and condolence and a deep sharing of strength when it is most needed. It is being alone and forever together. It is respect and caring and anger and forgiveness. It is touching and kissing and longing for a touch that is withheld.

No, I can’t tell anyone what love is, only that I have found it myself and it still is amazing to me, and still so baffling. It is wanting to understand and being content with the journey of discovery…a journey that will last forever.

I can’t tell you what love is, because if you have found it yourself, then you already know.

One Dim Lamp

2011-06-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

Imagine that you are sitting in a room, alone. There is a chair, a table and a small lamp with a weak bulb. The room is small and the walls are made of frosted glass that lets in the light, but no clear images, save for a few clear panels spaced randomly. These clear windows are small and allow you to only see a tiny clear image of someone perhaps walking past outside…but quickly the image disappears before you have a chance to focus on it.

The room is not soundproof, but the walls are thick enough that they muffle the outside noise, so that unless someone stands close to the wall and shouts, you are not able to hear anything distinctly.

When you first enter the room, you can see well because there is a lot of light coming from the outside shining in. The light makes you feel less lonely, especially when you can see the outlines of people walking past outside, and you are able to recognize the faces that pass the clear windows.

But, as time goes on, the light from outside fades, and is replaced by the weak lamp in the room with you. Because of the light in the room, it becomes harder to see the shapes of people passing by outside, and the faces in the clear panes of glass become less noticeable, and pass by less and less frequently. Also, for some reason, fewer people speak loudly outside the walls, so that you hear less and less distinct sounds, just muffled echoes.

Soon, the light from outside fades almost completely and you are left sitting alone in a small pool of light, with only an occasional echo or shadow coming to you out of the growing darkness. Once in a great while, a face will hover at the window long enough for you to notice, but often the shadows make it hard to recognize who the face belongs to, and even if you call out, the face disappears before you can get an answer.

The darkness becomes deeper, until all that seems to remain is your chair, the table and the lamp sitting in a pool of weak light. You are scared, and lonely and uncertain, and distrusting of the darkness because you have forgotten that there were once walls that you could see out of.

Now, if sounds come to you, they are frightening because they have no meaning, no attachment to anything real. If a face suddenly swims in from the darkness it is startling and distorted by the odd shadows cast off by the dim lamplight, making the face seem only vaguely familiar…like a face from a dream that you once remember having.

This is how I imagine Alzheimer’s must feel.

That is not my Mother

2011-05-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

My mother laughs easily and doesn’t look out at the world through suspicious, haunted eyes. My mother tells stories about all the relatives that I will never know, but come alive in her words. My mother played games with me, and didn’t let me win just because I was too young to lose.

That is not my mother.

My mother knows what day of the week it is and remembers the last time I came to see her. My mother remembers the stories of all the stupid art projects that my brother and sister and I brought home from school through the years. My mother saved 3^rd grade report cards and handmade mother’s day presents slopped together by 5 year-olds-pudgy fingers. My mother never forgets birthdays.

That is not my mother.

My mother read books, so many books. She could tell you every one of the Plantagenets and then explain how they interwove themselves through English History. My mother could explain the relationship between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth and all the intrigue that surrounded them. My mother could have written books.

That is not my mother.

My mother loved musicals because in college she loved working behind the scenes. My mother would iron and do housecleaning with the stereo blasting Camelot, The Music Man, South Pacific and My Fair Lady. “Each evening from December to December…” my mother knew all the words.

That is not my mother.

But, it is the woman she has become. She fades away a little more each day, my mother that I knew is disappearing. I love that woman with all my soul, but…

That is not my mother.

Strawberry Fields

2011-04-03T09:30:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's not forever but it does feel sort of eternal somehow. The memorial to John Lennon in Central Park is simple, elegant and understated, perhaps like John Lennon himself, though I don't really know that for sure, the Beatles were sort of out of my sphere of focus musically. I, of course, know a majority of their major songs by heart, as I know iconic nursery rhymes by heart...Beatles songs having woven themselves into the fabric of our existence.

But as for John himself, I know of him, his aesthetic appearance, Yoko and the supposed reason that he left the Beatles to watch the shadows on the wall. And I know about Mark David Chapman and the day that he shot John in the back outside of The Dakota apartments in New York.

As for Strawberry Fields, Yoko endowed New York with over a million dollars to create the small triangular section of Central Park as a memorial for John, named of course for the song John wrote as a tribute to the Strawberry Field Children's home that the Salvation Army ran in Liverpool near where John grew up. It was there, in the fields behind the home that John would listen to the Salvation Army band and become inspired to become a musician.

the center piece of the memorial is the mosaic circle with the word "Imagin" in the center. It is simple and moving in it's own way. I spent awhile just sitting in one of the benches surrounding the mosaic and watching how people interacted with it. Most avoided walking on the mosaic at all, unless it was to kneel on it to pose for a picture.

Occasionally someone would just walk directly across the mosaic, seemingly oblivious to any significance that it might have. This struck me as being somehow disrespectful and part of me wanted to get up and tell these people to walk around the circle, to pay attention to where they stepped, which got me to thinking about respect in general and why and how it is given.

After all this mosaic was really just a collection of nicely shaped stones, arranged in a discernible pattern on the ground. Were the spot not marked as a special location, would any of us even know that some sort of deference should be given to this spot above any other spot? It is not as though John Lennon is actually buried there, he wasn't even shot and killed there, nor was he born there. Essentially he lived across the street...so why does it matter where we step?

It seems to come down to the fact that I knew that the spot had significance, and that I was aware of what that significance was and because of that awareness, I chose to offer that spot some respect. I have no control over whether others choose to embrue that spot with significance or whether they choose to pay the spot respect or not, which, in a way, is exactly what Lennon was probably trying to say when he wrote "Imagin" in the first place.

"Imagin there no heaven...above us only sky. "

I don't think John would care if someone walked on his memorial, but he would like that we were all there enjoying the spot together, in whatever way we chose.

Starting My New York Minute

2011-04-02T16:54:00.000-07:00

It really doesn't matter what time you arrive, New York is always alive and happening. Our plane didn't land at JFK until nearly 11, so, after fetching bags and lining up a town car who then flew us along the Van Wyke through Queens until we approached the Queensborogh Bridge where we started getting our first views of the city...and I started getting that lump in my throat...that New York lump.

Ok, I admit it, I am a rube when it comes to New York. This is only my second visit (the first being two years ago for the marathon) and it was in that first visit that I became intoxicated by the place, and intoxication that has carried me over to today. This is THE place.

This is THE CITY. This is New York.

Right now K is pulling up various NY songs, especially Alicia Keyes brilliant and haunting Empire State of Mind and I am getting chills.

Defending Bill O'Reilly

2011-02-12T10:24:00.000-08:00

Already the title of this blog has me cringing, but in this instance, I feel that Mr. O'Reilly, the Fox News scion of conservative bombast needs someone to agree with him that is not in his camp.

Recently Mr. O'Reilly posted a video commentary positing that the motion of the tides was proof of God's existance. Apparently some people took issue with this statement and called him on it, to which Mr. O'Reilly posted this response:

Bill O'Reilly on the Tides

Essentially, Mr. O'Reilly states that while we know that the moon causes the tides, we don't know where the moon came from, or where the solar system came from or anything.

Well, scientists were quick to jump all over these statements and label them as typical ignorant conservative creationist-theory rhetoric, thus perpetuating the kind of polarizing debate that Fox News and Mr. O'Reilly thrive upon.

But what is missed in this type of black and white, either/or debate is the subtlety that I think Mr. O'Reilly actually was pointing out, which is that while science can indeed explain how the tides are affected by the moon, and provide theories as to how the moon came to exist as a satellite around the earth, the thing that science has yet to explain if the overriding question of "why the universe (and everything within it) exists in the first place."

The universe is a incredibly complex and wondrous place, filled with intricate systems and processes that scientists have been exploring for centuries, and will continue to explore. As humans, we have been endowed with minds that are curious and driven to continually ask "Why?" and "How come?". As we learn more, we also discover that there is ever more to learn. In addition to our curiosity, humans have also been endowed with a remarkable capacity for faith, in essence faith is the ability to believe in things that cannot be scientifically proven, things like a greater intelligence or supreme being that is the ultimate creator of all things. This idea of a creator of the universe crosses almost all religions and cultures.

So why is it so hard to reconcile these two human capacities? Scientific exploration and faith in a supreme creator? The two are by no means mutually exclusive as some would argue, rather if we look at our scientific curiosity as a way to continually discover the incredibly sublime mechanisms and complexity of a universe that was created by an intelligence far far superior to our own, then these two human capacities of curiosity and faith can be reconciled.

I'll take the analogy down a few levels to where it is more clear for me to understand, maybe it will help. Say I have a natural aptitude for mechanics and come across a vehicle that I have never seen before. Being curious I start to examine the vehicle, even start to disassemble and reassemble it. Along the way I discover that it runs on a certain type of fuel, that it has a navigation mechanism, that it has safety features and other systems that regulate and optimize its operation. In short, I find out all sorts of things about this vehicle except for who made it.

Obviously it was made. Obviously the vehicle exists for me to examine, disassemble and reassemble, and obviously it was manufactured somehow,,,therefore implying a manufacturer. So, even though we are unable to identify the creator of the vehicle through examining its parts, we can imply that the creator exists.

The disconnect seems to come when that same analogy is applied to natural systems and objects. A tree, for instance, has many component parts, utilizes intricate systems that facilitates its growth and development, and the tree interacts with the environment around it, which in turn presents even more intricate systems and interactions. Scientists are still exploring these inter-dependencies and systems...but none of their discoveries identifies who the creator of those systems and inter-dependencies is.

Why then, is it so unacceptable to imply that there is indeed a creator, and then continue our explorations. Nothing is lost by accepting this idea, except that in accepting the idea that there is a supreme intelligence that ultimately created everything, we become humbled and awestruck by the possibility.

This is where the real divergence takes place. Some who are awestruck by this supreme intelligence, then decide that there is no reason or merit in further exploration, and thus shut down the curious part of their minds to just accept that all things were created by God. While others, who see this kind of behavior are appalled that someone would willingly close such a valuable human capacity without question...and thus, in a kind of retaliation, shut down the idea that such a creator can exist at all.

But the divergence does not have to take place. As humans, we are capable of reconciling these two capacities, faith and curiosity, and use both to fuel and drive the other. The more we discover about the workings of the universe, the more in awe we can feel of the omnipotent power of a supreme maker.

And perhaps one of the greatest realities of this reconciliation is that the discovery process is infinite.

So Bill O'Reilly is right, we don't know...but that doesn't mean that we won't keep trying to find out more.

My Cynicism

2011-01-06T11:48:00.000-08:00

I have become quite cynical and I really don’t like it. It is easy to be cynical these days because everywhere I look, I see evidence to support my cynicism. The most recent examples were the revelations that only 10% of the money donated to the American Cancer Society actually gets used to support cancer research, the other 90% is used to support and perpetuate the ACS itself (including providing the CEO with a $1.7 MILLION dollar a year salary…or the Susan B. Komen foundation using 20% of its income to sue other charities who use the words “for the cure” in their title.

These are just a couple of the most recent examples that have come to light. Look anywhere, politics, education, business, the media itself and you’ll find ample evidence of humans subverting ideals with base objectives and self-serving intent.

So why not be cynical? Cynicism is a defense against the absurdity and blatant hypocrisy that seems to infect any endeavor that includes more than a handful of people.

So is the common element people?

Of course, humans are flawed beings that while capable of nobility, heroism and altruism, are also subject to the baser qualities of greed, covetousness, fear and ego. In our evolution and progression through the ages we have developed so many advances, many positive and beneficial, yet we still can’t seem to get beyond our lusts of power, and acquisition, or our need to piously tell others how they should live their lives while at the same time righteously opposing any of those others who dare to tell us how we should live our lives.

My religious friends would recommend that I find God and give my heart to Jesus, but to do so would seem to require that I also allow myself to believe in the organized churches that promote these beliefs…and time and again the hypocrisy of organized churches just further fuels my disappointment and anger. How can organizations that have as one of its foundational tenets: “Love Thy Neighbor”, also advocate the alienation or outright destruction of another faith whose believers interpret the supreme being differently?

The problem is that cynicism erodes the spirit and ultimately destroys the soul. It makes believing in anything feel like a childishly foolish pursuit that denies the intellect and subsumes common sense.

And yet, we humans have been endowed with the incredible capacities for faith and caring and trust. We have the ability to feel empathy and compassion for others, to feel love and the joy of altruism…all capacities that are also subsumed and eroded by the repeated onslaught of the evidence of human greed, avarice and evil.

So how do we balance our better capacities against our baser elements, and still maintain some kind of sanity?

The only answer that seems to offer some hope is on a purely personal level. I can control myself and how I treat others. I have a mind that allows me to make my own decisions, and a soul that guides my actions using a moral compass of my own creation. I cannot make anyone else act in any way, nor do I feel that I have the right to judge someone else, even though I may feel those judgments are justified according to my own moral beliefs.

Conversely, I can’t stop others from having their own judgments about me, though I don’t believe that they have any right to impose those same judgments on me. But if they try to impose those judgments, then I reserve the right to accept or deny them as I feel is right.

Is this enough? Does it free me from the weight of my cynicism?

Yeah right.

Smumb...Smug+Dumb

2010-12-04T17:23:00.000-08:00

So I was shopping today, and as I walked through the busy Marin parking lot, I happened to look over and see a bumper sticker that caught my eye. It read:

"Spill Baby Spill! How's that whole offshore drilling thing working out for ya?"

Now, I have never been a fan of Sarah Palin's whole Tea Party cadre of angry conservatives, and this bumper sticker is obviously a direct jab at her "Drill Baby Drill" catch phrase refracted through the lens of the tragedy of the Gulf oil spill disaster...but there is one other salient fact about this bumper sticker that has driven me from the grumbling depths to tap words to blog...that being that this particular bumper sticker was slapped on the rear of one of the many SUVs crowding the busy Marin parking lot that I was carrying my groceries through.

Marin County, along with being one of the wealthiest counties in the country, is also a heavily liberal place. Election results regularly run 60-80% Democrat, with the Progressive arm of the party being strongly represented.

So it is not surprising that a Marinite would feel compelled to take a bumperstickered shot at Sarah Palin. The problem is that this self-same Marinite seems to be oblivious to the irony of placing that bumperskicker on the back of a vehicle that desperately relies upon the whole "Drill Baby Drill" ethos, regardless of how many carbon offsets the owner may smugly wave about in their own defense.

The fact is that we: me, you, the smug Marinite in the stickered SUV, and the wingnuts from the Westboro Baptist Church, all share an addiction to refined crude that is only increasing. Sure, that shiney new Lexus Hybrid SUV sucks less of the stuff...but it still sucks...and sucks and sucks and lord knows you need the thing to run Aiden to his soccer practice after your Yoga class and before you pick up little Courtney from her jr. Pilates program.

So I say to you Mr or Mrs Smugginess, learn the meaning of "irony" and recognize that leveraging a horrific ecological disaster to make a weak political point (to an audience that mostly gets it already) is not clever or enlightened or any of the other qualities that I am sure that you embrace over tapas and Merlot with your friends.

Be smarter than that and realize that complex problems, especially those that you are contributing to, require far more thought that a snappy bumper sticker.

Heart Attack Grill

2010-11-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

So, if you haven't heard of this place, it is real. Click here for one of it's ads:
Heart Attack Grill

Now, the fact that some entrepreneur has turned the current obesity epidemic in the US into a clever marketing campaign for a restaurant is not what I am writing about. I mean, people want to eat crap until their arteries explode in a gummy-bloody mess, that's fine with me...and if some guy is smart enough to give these same people exactly what they want, along with soft-core porn nurse-waitresses...well that's just fine with me also (though I can almost guarantee that the waitresses are forbidden to date any of the customers, as much as I am certain that they would like to).

No, what is causing me to write today is that when I first came across an article on this place, I happened to drift down and read through some of the comments that were attached to the article. In case you have never done this kind of exercise, you really should. It is an enlightening view into the current state of online discourse and intellectual acumen that burbles under the surface of our great nation...much like the enlightening world of slugs and pillbugs that is exposed when you turn over a rock in the garden.

The argument that was fomenting back and forth was between a commenter who opined that it was disgusting that the restaurant would hire a person who was grossly obese (6'8" and 600lbs to be exact) to be the pitchman for the place; and another, more sensitive individual who accused the first commenter of a range of prejudices including "body-image issues" and "buying into the mainstream fantasy of the anorexic super-model mentality".

It was a spirited debate that involved references to the supposed unattractiveness of commenter one's sleeping partner along with casting doubt upon commenter one's references to various medical facts regarding obesity, type II diabetes and the cost of treating those afflicted with the disease; these arguments were countered with equally sanguine arguments about the fact that someone so obese would actually cost less (in terms of medical care) because they are more likely to die sooner.

Now, I am a firm believer in one's right to choose the way that one wishes to live one's life. So, if one chooses to eat healthy, exercise regularly and adhere to the majority of medical literature regarding how to live a "healthy" lifestyle, then I fully support that choice...as do I support the choice of someone who chooses to eat buckets of lard-infused beef and potato products while sitting immobile for 23 hours a day watching "Jersey Shore" and secretly pining for Snooki.

I just hope that Snooki understands that should she happen to actually fall for the devil-may-eat-what-he-damn-well-pleases swain, her love will likely include the following:
Maneuvering her beloved onto his personal scooter so that he can accompany her to their weekly night out at the Heart Attack Grill, and then later, utilizing their personal lifting device to return that same beloved to his bed where he can lay in comfort and reduce the pain on his knees and back.

Snooki will also enjoy the nightly heaving and shoving of mountainous thighs required to attend to her beloved's personal evacuation needs (as self-same beloved will likely be unable to lift himself sufficiently off of the bed pan) and of course there is the attendant cleaning up afterward. Of course, this nightly ritual may be exacerbated by her beloved's paralysis, caused by his massive stroke (unfortunately, the heart attack comes later), and there is the joy that his family will experience getting to watch their father deteriorate into a huge, immobile mass that can neither communicate nor tend to his own basic functions.

I am sure that the family will continue to fully support his exercise of personal freedom to eat whatever and whenever he wanted to, because he was an American, and no one tells an American what they can and cannot do...certainly not some namby pamby doctor with obvious body-image issues.

So by all means, dig in and support the Heart Attack Grill and it's brilliant nod to total gastronomic abandon. After all, its your life...just remember that when your life ends up depending on someone else to support it, well, its that person's right to choose to do what they want as well.

My Revelation

2010-08-13T12:36:00.000-07:00

I think that I understand why some people turn to faith in God and Jesus with such complete, and blind conviction, its because God is intangible and , being omnipotent, never has to be accountable for the anything that God does.

Basically, if your house burns down during the tornado that came right after the locust plague, while you are welcome (and probably right) to blame it all on God, God has the out of being all-knowing, so that you also have to admit that "God works in mysterious ways and never does anything without a reason."

Living, corporeal people can't get away with that sort of blanket excuse.

If I walked up and burned down your house, and told you that it was "my will" and that "I have a reason for what I do, that you just can't understand because you cannot comprehend my mind" you would
A: Kick the hell out of me and
B: Have me locked up as a derange loony.

But for some reason, some people are capable of leaping beyond these basic perceptive realities and allow God to get away with (literally) murder with no accountability or even an explanation.

OK, why am I talking about this? Well, probably because the whole repeal of Prop 8 and all the arguments surrounding it is so prominent in the news right now. The Anti Prop 8 arguments (that won the reversal) are all fact-based, rational and grounded in sound legal precedent and documentation, while the Anti Prop 8 arguments seem to consist of purely irrational (from a legal standpoint) faith-based (or at least a slim interpretation of faith) screeds consisting of phrases like "It's evil" or "Its against God" or the wonderfully vague "Its destroying the institution of marriage"

...um How?

The Pro-Prop 8ers never seem to be able to answer that part of the question. If two men or two women marry each other, how does that physically, rationally and fundamentally threaten the institution of marriage, or your marriage for that matter? When the argument devolves to a purely faith-based, moral objection then the argument ceases to be an argument, and just becomes a yelling-match soundbite on the evening news.

The problem though, is that this just further reveals the underlying (and growing) neo-conservative/religious right sentiment among a lot of Americans. The tea-baggers and fundamental Christians that we on the coasts mock and laugh at, are gaining strength and power, and we smug coasters may wake up one day (maybe in 2012 after the next election), and discover that we have suddenly become a reviled minority.

I know, I never seem to be happy unless I am forecasting doom, and now that the Gulf oil leak has been plugged and all my dire predictions have come to naught (for the time-being), I need to find a new target for my pessimism, but this neo-conservative-religion based movement has been steadily growing and fomenting for quite a while, and seems to be gaining momentum as more people struggle to survive in the tanking economy.

I am haunted by this nightmarish vision of President Sarah Palin pointing her finger at me and saying "You're going to prison for un-American thoughts...you betcha!" and then some clean-cut young storm-troopers will come and haul me off to a gulag in Idaho where I will be brainwashed by relentless hours of watching Fox news and the 700 Club.

But, if that's God's will, he must have a reason...right?

What To Do With the Opo

2010-07-26T20:12:00.000-07:00

This is an opo

So, as a challenge, I bought an opo at the farmer's market on Sunday. I also got a lot of other neat veggie-goodies, but the opo was definitely the most unusual. The busy Asian man behind the counter was little help when I asked him "How do you cook this?" and he just said "Its like zucchini."

Right, well it was a start. So I did the modern thing and posted a message on Facebook with a picture of the thing and a question..."Anyone know what to do with an opo?"

Well, I have a wide variety of interesting and multicultural Facebook friends and sure enough, two came through for me. Thanks to Tricia and Marvin for directing me to their Philippine roots and getting me started on some basic opo recipes.

If you know me at all, then you know that a recipe is just a nice reference point for me to jump off of. But I didn't stray that far. So here's the recipe that I built off of their great suggestions:

3/4 opo, cubed
1 medium tomato diced
1/2 onion diced (I used a sweet Maui onion...yumm!)
3 cloves of garlic chopped
1/4 cup diced pepper (I used a 'chocolate' pepper, but a bell pepper would be fine, or spice it up with an Anaheim or hotter variety)
1 cup chicken broth
1 chicken breast (boneless-skinless) cubed
2 tbls lite oil (I use a canola-olive blend by Smart Balance)
Salt
Chipotle pepper (or regular ground black pepper)

Step one:
Saute onions and 1/2 peppers in oil until onions turn brown at edges

Step two:
Add tomatoes, rest of pepper, garlic and opo along with 1/4 cup of broth
stir and blend all components

Step three:
Add chicken and rest of broth, salt and chipotle to taste
Bring to boil

Step four:
Reduce heat to high simmer, cover
Cook for 10-15 minutes until liquid is reduced by 1/3

The opo is mild tasting and picks up the flavors surrounding it well, while imparting a light vegetable/grassy scent that is not unpleasant. The opo has dense white flesh that turns soft and translucent when cooked like this.

Overall, I'd give this recipe about a 6. It was hearty and filling, and the flavor had a definite 'homey' appeal, comforting and non-threatening, especially when paired with brown rice.

I could see making more of a light-quick stew like meal as well, or even a hearty soup from this recipe.

So, that's my opo story and I'm sticking to it!

Billie Joe McAllister

2010-05-27T22:06:00.000-07:00

Bonnie Hayes plays “Ode to Billie Joe” for me on her jazz nights at Cucina. I appreciate it, and I have always dug the song, but she doesn’t know why it means so much to me. I didn’t really get the connection myself until tonight …when it hit me in that full moon, wine haze of realizations.

You see, , if you’ll recall, “Ode to Billie Joe” is an enigmatic song about why “Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie bridge”…now there’s a back story in the song about the preacher seeing Billie Joe and the young girl in the song “throwing something off the Tallahatchie Bridge” up on Choctaw Ridge. Nobody knows what it was that they were throwing off the bridge, but later in the song, the girl confesses that she spends a lot of time “throwing flowers in the muddy waters off the Tallahatchie Bridge”.

Well, is she throwing those flowers in memory of Billie Joe, or is she throwing them in memory for the other thing that they both threw off the bridge before Billie Joe threw himself off the bridge?

It’s the mystery of the song that appeals to me, because it leaves open the question as to why someone would take their life in that way, or any way. Suicide should be a personal and mysterious thing, though too often it isn’t. Too often, the people who die make sure that those left behind know exactly why they jumped off their own particular Tallahatchie Bridge.

I wish that I didn’t know the reason that my own personal “Billie Joe” jumped off his bridge, but I do. And I understand his reasons, though I wish I didn’t have to. Sure, the mystery could haunt someone for a long time, maybe forever and that would be another kind of hell, but knowing doesn’t make it any easier.

So, thank you Bonnie for playing the song for me. I do appreciate it, even if, while digging the groove, I am crying a little inside.

Bonnie Hayes and The Right Hand Of God

2010-05-23T00:21:00.000-07:00

We went to another Bonnie Hayes gig tonight, and as usual, we danced our asses right off. Bonnie Hayes has been playing great danceable music for a long time, but she has the heart and fiery soul of a rocker who knows how to paint a phrase so that it sticks in your brain like sweet candy lingers on the back of your tongue.

Part of the sheer joy of hearing Bonnie Hayes in concert is the that she pulls together a monster band that you almost don't notice, because they are that freaking good. Bonnie comes from a gifted musical family, she has brothers who play or have played for some of the top acts in rock and blues, and tonight, we were treated to hearing her brother, Kevin, playing on drums.

Kevin Hayes regularly plays with Robert Cray, but when he is home, he sits in with Bonnie's Super Bon Bons, and let me tell you, his right hand is blessed by God.

I have been a good enough musician to recognize two things: One, I am competent on a couple instruments, but never had the touch that true musician's have, and two: I am good enough to recognize when I hear a truly great player. I was also fortunate to have a good friend who happens to be a brilliant drummer. As the drums were never one of my instruments, I learned from my friend to really listen to what differentiates a great drummer from a good one.

And tonight, I heard the solid, unwavering right hand of God banging out every back beat and kick in exactly the right place and time. He never missed and his right hand drove the band and every dancer's feet across that hall tonight without most of the dancers knowing what it was that kicked their feet and tossed their souls. His right hand popped through Bonnie's lyrics, Eric Schram's hot guitar licks and Vicki Randall's sweet vocals and sharp percussion, and maybe most important, Kevin's drums complimented and built a steel foundation for the sheer badass brilliance of Daryle Anders' bass.

So while Bonnie lit the room with her exuberance and sublimely infectious songs, it was the men and women that she gathered around her that set the room ablaze, with the heart of the inferno blasting out of the D'Amico furnace that were Kevin Hayes's drum kit and that brilliant, blessed right hand.

Land of Hypochondria...a Follow-up

2010-05-10T21:40:00.000-07:00

OK...so that lump in my back? Yeah well I can tell you what it wasn't:

It wasn't the head of some ghost Indian sent back to wreck havoc on humanity as was suggested by a friend of mine who watches far too many horror movies.

Nor is it the demented head of a deranged advertising executive...um also compliments of the same friend who sited an obscur English musical called "Getting Ahead in Business".

Its not an alien life form, some obscur cancer, or something even House couldn't figure out...nope, its just a plain old boring Lipoma...a fatty benign tumory kind of thing (I didn't actually see it)

Anyway, I am fine now, and have a cool new scar on my back (to match the several on my front side) and no real horrendous story to tell...this time.

In The Land of Hypochondria

2010-03-24T21:45:00.000-07:00

I have a lump on my back. Its not a big lump, somewhere between a quarter and a half-dollar in size. Its under the skin and doesn't really hurt, or itch...or really do much of anything besides be...there.

Of course, I am convinced that this lump is just the very tip of the proverbial iceberg of all manner of horrible and incurable maladies.

Why?

Because that's just how my brain works about these things, especially when I am pushed to acknowledge that they exist. You see, I have someone who cares about me and noticed this lump in the first place as I am neither inclined to, nor flexible enough, to regularly examine the terrain of my own back. So, this person who cares about me also recommended that I see a doctor about my mystery lump...which I have agreed to do.

And that is all that it takes to ignite the fuse of my rampant hypochondria. Somehow, there is something wired into the male brain that allows us to actively deny physical ailment so long as that ailment does not interfere with our far more important pursuits of say...watching a rerun of our favorite show or passionately discussing the latest technological gadget that we covet. But, once that ailment pierces our shield of inconsequence then the ailment becomes all consuming.

Its presence gnaws at our psyche like a bulimic termite in a woodpile. And, in some sort of x-chromosome-fueled calculus, the more insubstantial the ailment, the greater the degree of imagined peril the ailment possesses.

And, I am helpless to stop this calculus until I am assured by a doctor that the lump is just a lump and I am still in astoundingly good health.

Sigh...until then, please bear with me...for I fear the candle is growing dim...cough cough...save yourself....

Making TBTAM's Butternut Squash Soup

2009-11-14T16:49:00.000-08:00

So, there is is this neat blog called "The Blog That Ate Manhattan" http://theblogthatatemanhattan.blogspot.com/ that is written by a doctor in, of all places, Manhattan. Along with lots of good medical advice and articles, the author, Margaret Polaneczky,MD (aka TBTAM), also writes about a wide range of other topics including cooking and food.

Recently, I came into possession of TBTAM's infamous Butternut Squash Soup recipe, so tonight I am making the stuff. I have never personally dealt with a Butternut Squash, I have had pleasurable dealings with pumpkins, which are a cousin of the Butternut Squash who just happen to have had a much better publicists when the English tradition of carving turnips for Halloween made its way across the pond to America, where we, jumbo sizers that we are, decided that a turnip was just too puny for our needs and transferred the tradition to the more suitable pumpkin.

And, of course, none of that has anything to do with making butternut squash soup, other than that pumpkins smell and taste similar to butternut squashes, and also do quite well as soup.

I am excited about this recipe as it pushes me out of my comfy cooking comfort zone, not only by making me work with an unfamiliar squash, but also by forcing me to use 5-spice and Ginger, two spice choices I don't normally utilize.

So, here's the basics.
Get a butternut squash (you'll find them lurking in the shadowy back corners of the produce section, loitering near the potatoes and yams)

Peel the squash and then slice it in two, which will reveal a neat little cavity filled with much the same schmutz that you find inside of a pumpkin...scoop that stuff out so that all the seeds and stringy bits are gone.

Then, slice the squash into neat 2-inch chunks and place them in a bowl where you then toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper. (My apologies to TBTAM, but I replaced the pepper with Chipotle for a somewhat zestier twist).

Next place the oiled up chunks of squash onto a baking pan and shove them into a pre-heated to 350 degree oven. Leave them there for 30 minutes or so (turning occasionally) until they are nicely browned all the way around.

While the squash is cooking, mince two tablespoons of ginger and mix it with 1/2 teaspoon of 5-spice.

When the squash is baked properly, place the chunks into a food processor along with the ginger-5 spice blend and processorize it. Add a cup of vegetable broth and continue to processorize until it is smooth.

Pour the smooth squash into a medium sized stock pot and mix in one to two more cups of vegetable broth along with one cup of white wine (yeah!). And...simmer.

Before serving, mix one cup of creme fresh (I used fat-free half and half) and a tablespoon of orange juice and before serving, swizzle this mixture on top of the soup.

That's it. A great soup for a chilly winter's night.

Moving Too Fast

2009-11-13T12:13:00.000-08:00

I gave up caffeine awhile back, which is kind of a big deal for me as I was drinking a lot of coffee each morning. The headaches I would get from either drinking too much coffee or not drinking enough were really getting tiresome, so I weaned myself onto decaf, which is all that I drink now.

I get fewer headaches, which is nice, and aside from a few mornings where the old starter just won't turn over, I have not been missing the early morning buzz. I still enjoy the warm cuppa every morning, its just a warm cuppa unleaded.

Anyway, I figured that once I got off the java-juice, I would become more relaxed and thus, more tolerant of the slower pace that the world surrounding me seems to have adopted of late.

No such luck. You see, I have the fortunate/unfortunate circumstance of living in the lovely county just north of the Golden Gate Bridge...once the center of the new age movement and 70's haven for all things spiritually and cosmic.

Its also freaking expensive to live here as well. Lovely climate, proximity to San Francisco, beautiful landscape...it all adds up to the ideal place to come and enjoy the fruits of a successful life. Except, it seems that all the people who moved here in the 70s and 80s to gobble up those fruits have stayed on here, and now the median age of the residents of this lovely little county is approaching triple digits...AND THESE PEOPLE MOVE WAY TOO FREAKING SLOW!!!!!

I mean seriously, it is incredibly annoying to me to be stuck behind someone driving a Jaguar who can't manage to push the peddle down far enough to overcome basic inertia. Fine, you made it, and you can buy that snazzy, expensive sports car...now drive the thing like it is supposed to be driven. Or, when you manage to claw your way out of it, pay attention to your physical presence in the world so that you don't meander up and down store aisles, essentially impeding any type of normal progress as you scour the shelves for just the right brand of Metamucil.

I know, I know, there but for the grace of God, and all that. Sure, I'll be old one day (sooner than I'd care to admit), and I too will be getting in the way of some irritable younger jerk who is just moving too darned fast...but I'm not there yet and I think that I need to face up to the fact that the pretty county that I grew up in has morphed into a big ex-hippie Sun City.

Sigh...hurry up with that double decaf! I got places to go!

I'm Missing New York...Time To Cook!

2009-11-09T20:40:00.000-08:00

So I've been in a lousy mood today, everything is moving too slow, everything is too boring and dull and well...I just don't feel plugged in like I did in New York, so, if you know me at all you know that when I am feeling lousy I create complicated recipes to cook up for dinner. The more lousy I feel, the more complicated a recipe I think up.

Now combine this propensity with the fact that its once more pomegranate season and that's all she wrote...(BTW, who is she and what has she actually written anyway?)

So, here's what I made tonight. You decide how lousy I felt.

Main course, a spinach, caper and blue cheese stuffed chicken breast that is coated in a wash of pomegranate infused fat free sour cream covered by panko and baked at 350 for about 30 minutes until it is so tender that Elvis would cry when he slipped a fork through it. This is all covered by my patented pomegranate reduction sauce that, quite frankly, has been known to send Catholic School girls into dramatic fits of peremptory confessions of lust for the chef.

Side dishes, my ever famous spinach-mushroom-green-olive-Parmesan bake with panko flavored by salt-free chicken bouillon and , of course, just a touch of chipoltle to keep everyone honest.

Complimenting the spinach bake is a nice little salad of sliced Washington Pears with a pomegranate-sour-cream drizzle whose tang balances the pear's sweetness just right.

This whole meal took about an hour and a half to prepare with many complicated steps involving just about every available dish and cooking device in the house.

Do I feel better? Well the Barefoot Chardonnay www.barefootwine.com that accompanied the meal didn't hurt, and everything actually turned out quite tasty, so I still miss New York, but at least I feel well fed and a little buzzed so the longing is now more of a soft moan of the soul rather than the wrenching ache of longing that had defined most of my day.

Its a start...

The City That Never Sleeps?

2009-11-09T10:49:00.000-08:00

10AM, Borders on Columbus Circle.
Don't worry, he's not dead...just very relaxed.

Infected By New York

2009-11-07T13:28:00.000-08:00

It’s happened, I’ve been totally infected by New York. I am not complaining. I have been reawakened by the mainline jolt of electricity that is now buzzing along my veins. Up until now, I thought that San Francisco was about the biggest city that I could handle, being the shy little Marin country boy that I thought myself to be.
But that boy is gone now, seared away by the epic truth that I have now walked the streets of a real city. I have walked the streets of Paris, and she is beautiful and large as well, but I am far too American in my soul to ever feel at home there. And though San Francisco is where I have always called home, I wonder now if I have just accepted San Francisco because of proximity and because of growing up in a place that everyone tells me is so beautiful and desirable. Yes, this is my home, my roots and family are here, but aside from those strong ties, I have never felt the instant affinity for a place like I felt on the streets of Manhattan.

San Francisco has many charms and does look lovely as it sits like a princess on an azure silk pillow…but once you get closer you find the people cold and unfriendly, rushing about furiously trying to justify the expense of sharing the azure pillow with the princess.

I wonder if the coldness that pervades most of the people you pass on the streets of San Francisco comes from a deep-seated discontent. So many people come here to California, and San Francisco thinking that this place is the answer to the restlessness in their soul, but then they discover that San Francisco is just another place and the answer that they seek is really supposed to come from inside of them…and it just isn’t there, the answer continued to look even further on.

Maybe I am just smitten with New York, like the vivid thrill inspired by a new lover, but something feels so right and connected within me now that I have walked those streets.

Does this herald a new beginning? I rebirth? Not sure, but I think that I need to explore this new lover some more to find out.

Halloween in Penn Station

2009-11-03T04:11:00.000-08:00

After the American Cancer Society pasta dinner on Saturday night, we were planning on just heading back to the hotel and having an early night so as to rest up for the race on Sunday. As we were leaving though, Sarah Colloum, the project manager for the ACS Team pointed out that we were very near to Penn Station and that we might want to check it out, being that it was Halloween and all.

So we walked the block to Penn Station and ducked in to get out of the rain.
So there we are, in a walkway leading up to 6th Ave, watching thousands of people coming off the trains dressed up for Halloween…WHAT A TREAT!!!

Many of the girl’s costumes seemed to have a common theme:

Sexy cop with badge and hot pants

Sexy nurse with a cap and very short skirt

Sexy zombie with bloody mouth and very short skirt

Sexy ganster girl, with fedora and very short skirt

Sexy…well you get the picture

Now, I wasn’t complaining, but I was more interested in the wild and unusual costumes that passed by, the ones NOT purchased at SexyCostumes.com.

And there were plenty to choose from, several pig outfits with the word Flu written on them, many centurions and gangsters and pirates and zombies and an extremely buff guy dressed as Snow White(boy wouldn’t the 7 Dwarfs been surprised!)
Then there were the just plain out there costumes that defied description, my favorite being a man (I assume) dressed head to toe in a bright green body stocking that covered his face and body completely…or the guy who was a walking Facebook Page with a cutout for his face where the profile page would be.
I was used to the parade and variety at the Castro in San Francisco, but this was truly a special moment for us and we just stood and gawked (and took pictures to be posted later).

Funny, I don’t mind being such an obvious bumpkin here. Besides, Halloween is made for watching and staring right?

Cosmic Tease

2009-11-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

Even before we landed at JFK, there seemed to be some kind of cosmic conspiracy to keep us from getting to New York quickly. I know, the cosmos was just trying to build our anticipation, but enough already. Virgin America has wonderful in flight entertainment option s including a way that you can track your actual flight, so that was what I was doing as we approached New York. I popped up the nice Google map and saw our plane pointing East, taking dead aim at New York, but then a funny thing happened, the plan started pointing up (North) and then to the left, (Back West!) Along with the map, the display pops up altitude, airspeed and outside temperature (in case you were wanting to take a stroll on the wing at 30,000 feet, bring a coat…its a nippy 48 below zero and at 500 miles an hour the windchill might be severe).
For the next several minutes, the plane maneuvered through a series of complicated loops and turns that, according to the map, took us over much of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and quite possibly half the Eastern Seaboard. Finally the altitude started to reduce (the outside temperature started to creep up toward zero) and we seemed to get closer to something New Yorkish.

So, down through the clouds and onto solid ground again. We’re getting excited now and it helps that we are in row 5, so we figure that we’ll be some of the first ones off the plane (crafty thinking huh?), except that they don’t open the doors, and we wait, all of us on the plane flooded into the aisles or hunched over by the windows, waiting. Eventually the pilot came on and told us that one of our engines wouldn’t shut off so they couldn’t bring the jet way out to us. I could hear the engine whining in the background and had visions of some crazy cartoon jet spinning around on the tarmac with one engine blasting away…that didn’t happen by the way, we just sat there…waiting.

After about 20 minutes of this, the pilot came on and told us that they had managed to find the off switch and the door opened. We were released, New York here we come!

Not so fast dere bud!

New York wasn’t finished teasing us. We made it down to the baggage claim, only to be held outside the carousels by security guards who said that they were checking out a suspicious bag.

So, another 20 minute wait until they let us in, the suspicious bag having been checked out and whisked off to suspicious bag purgatory. But we were on our way…right?
Nope. The carousel spit out a couple of bags right away, and then…stopped. We all figured that between the delay before we were let of f the plane and then the delay getting into the carousel that there would have been plenty of time to get the bags out of the plane and into our hands.

We figured wrong, so another twenty minute wait…are we ever going to get to New York?
The bags came eventually, K’s alarm clock was going off inside of her bag so I was fairly certain that we were going to be descended upon by all manner of security forces…but they let that slip.

We had planned on taking the New York Airport Service bus to Manhattan. I had called a few days earlier to see if they would take us to the hotel and was assured that “Yeah, we can take you dere.” Funny though, when I spoke to one of the NYAS representatives at the airport itself, he looked at me with a grin and shook his head ‘no’.
He did give us a tip to go to the travelers aid who could arrange a shuttle for us. So we trooped on over to the traveler’s aid and a wonderful lady from Queen’s, Janey, got us set up with a shuttle.

Janey was pure Queens joy, with long blond to grey hair and friendly pretty face that complimented her open-direct demeanor. She was excited to find out that we were running the marathon and when we told her that there was a way to track our progress online, she asked for our numbers and then told us that she’d be at the 56th street bridge in Queens and that she would be rooting for us.
“You don’t gotta worry”, she told us, “Now you got family here in New York!”
Our shuttle driver arrived and we followed him out to the van where another couple climbed in with us.

Great we are on our way, New York here we come!!!!

“Heh, heh, heh. Man, you outta towners are the best y’know?”

The shuttle driver was really quite good, in fact he provided us with an extended tour of every possible turn and terminal available at JFK while he wound his way around looking for more passengers. I had no idea that one airport could be so convoluted and massive.

After a several stops we had filled the van with people and made it to the airport exit.

Woo hoo! Now we’re on our way! Just a quick ride down the Van Wick Expressway and we were there.
That’s when I remembered the Seinfeld episode where George was trying to get to JFK in record time except that, “I’ve never beaten the Van Wick”.

We didn’t either.

2 hours after landing we emerged from the tunnel into Manhattan and now it didn’t matter to us how long it took because we fell into instant tourist-yokel mode. Gawking out the window and being glad that somebody else was driving, especially when it became evident that New York celebrates the last Friday of the month like they do in San Francisco, with the streets being flooded with bikers participating in Critical Mass, although I have to say that New York Critical Massers have a far greater amount of courage than their sometimes noisy SF counterparts. These people were truly insane to try weaving in and out of New York traffic.

I have to say also, that while intense and crazy, I like New York drivers and pedestrians because both have an innate understanding of the physics and motion dynamics. None of this “how-dare-you-think-of-touching-me” pedestrian attitude that seems to pervade West Coast streets. No, here, people on the street understand that a speeding cab will run you down because they are faster and a whole lot heavier that you, so people on the streets pay attention and walk when there are no cars coming, not stepping blithely into the street as if they were impervious to physical laws and damage.

But, we’re here now, and we are ready! And already got family here!

In Flight

2009-11-02T09:06:00.000-08:00

So, we’re in flight, somewhere over …umm, someplace snowy with turbulence. I have been bouncing off the walls for the last several days, the excitement about the marathon and getting to New York. K- has been doing a lot of research, which is good because my concentration is shot. I keep running through logistics: how will we get to the ferry? How will we get to the expo? How will we get from the end of the race to the first hotel to pick up our bags and get to the second hotel without collapsing?

But it will all work itself out I am sure.

And then there is New York. A lot of people find it hard to believe that I have lived this many years without ever setting foot there. I have seen it from the Jersey shore, and it is beautiful and thrilling and terrifying and mysterious…and I suspect, intoxicating. Though I wonder if I am still able to be addicted to such things.

We shall see in just a few hours.

Nothing at Face Value?

2009-10-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, I participated in a focus group that looked at various marketing campaigns for Internet Security Software. The other group members were all pretty computer savvy, and all of us had been burned in some way by a computer virus, or security breach of some kind.

The interviewer gave us four paragraphs that basically presented a marketing pitch for each of the systems, after reading them we were to talk about what we liked and what we disliked and then say how much we would pay for it.

Immediately, it became clear that none of us were buying any of the marketing spin that we saw on the paper. We were more experienced than that, and at one point, the interviewer had to tell us..."Just assume that it is true, then how would you feel about it?"

But that's the problem, not a one of us was stupid enough to just "assume it was true." As much as marketers and their compadres would love it if we were that stupid, there are very few people who have grown up in our age of media bombardment that will willingly accept any claim made on an ad at face value. Its absurd to rely on any evaluation of an ad given that caveat.

Add to this absurd assumption that the product, internet security systems, have repeatedly shown to fail at some time or another, either via coordinated system hacks, or through simple human error or avarice and the level of requested assumption drops to less than zero.

Fine, so the focus group premise was a joke...this is not the point that I learned last Thursday. No, what I learned is that my own cynicism and mistrust runs extremely deep within me, as it may within many people. I have been repeatedly disillusioned, deceived and otherwise disappointed by advertising, corporations, politicians and humans in general, and these things have changed me.

I am not a paranoid who believes that the world is out to get me, rather I believe that I am a rational, reasonably intelligent person who has simply lived his life in this modern world and paid enough attention to recognize that there is a pattern of promises not meeting reality that runs throughout the types of interactions that I sited above.

So what do I do with this deep cynicism, because I also have come to recognize that this cynicism rests at the core of so much of my personality. My humor tends toward the witty observation of inequity, or world-weary reality check. Sure, it makes people laugh, but what's the underlying cost of just accepting a world that continuously fails to meet its own stated promises?

Right now, I feel as though I am on the cusp of a change. A decision about how I want to live my life...how I want to be. This decision carries a lot of weight as the choice means that I may have to abandon this core foundation of cynicism, and with it so much of who I seem to have become.

Perspective: 30 Years in a Heartbeat

2009-09-20T17:06:00.000-07:00

Interesting contrast.

A lazy afternoon recovering from my 30 year high school reunion and I ran over to the store to pick some things up for dinner. Outside the store was a crowd of high school kids hanging out.

And of course, that got me to wondering.

All the clichés are true of course. Time flies by in the blink of an eye. I knew that the kids hanging outside the store had no clue that in 30 years time they would be walking into a room filled with almost-50-year old adults, all of who bear ghosts of the faces that you once knew so well; ghosts now buried under 30 years of experience. And certainly, the almost-50-year-olds have only the vaguest memories of what is was like to hang out on a warm Sunday afternoon with our minds uncluttered by kids, and mortgages and college tuition and all the other mundane and “grown-up” realities that have filled our once-uncluttered minds.

It is the natural progression of things that we all get older. There is nothing profound in stating this obvious reality. But still, I think that in each of my classmates was a little cringe of just how vivid that reality was. It is one thing to watch our mirror gradually reflect back the receding hairline and growing paunch over incremental time. This slow progress allows us to develop our self-denials that time has much of an effect upon us.

It is when the mirror is stripped away and we suddenly find ourselves surrounded by all of these grown-ups that look like our parents looked, when they should actually look young and eager and goofy and all the things that we remembered them to be, and we wonder, can this really be true? Are these all the same kids? How did they grow so old when I haven’t changed a bit.

Ah sweet denial. I wonder how many of us were eager to go home and confront the mirror after such a night?

Still, seeing the faces of my once young contemporaries, I was encouraged that we all had arrived through our 30 years journey stronger and wiser and, in a deeper way, far more beautiful than the clichéd beauty of coveted youth. The experience etched around our eyes and drawn across our flesh is a coin of real value, for it is purchased in exchange of innocence and naive hope.

Our youthful dreams were once fueled by the innate certainty of immortality, of boundless possibility and an unwavering belief that we could accomplish anything. We had all the answers and the blind self assurance of unyielding possibility.

Now, of course, we know better that life is a formidable opponent. We know that despite our belief to the contrary, our youthful dreams must yield and adapt to the currents of our actual lives. Our dreams have evolved and become stronger by it. We have learned that the cost of making dreams real is long and hard work, pain and often regret at what has to be left behind so that we can move forward.

But, like the ghost faces of the kids that we once were, we can still recognize the shadows of the dreams that we once produced. We know that between those unrealized dreams and the realized dreams of our lives in a wavering and circuitous path that connects them, the common thread being ourselves.

We were once beings of pure and youthful beauty who have grown into the expression of our own beautiful experience.

My New Cards

2009-06-17T18:43:00.001-07:00

So I finally broke down and got myself some new business cards. I have been contracting now for a couple years, and never got around to getting any cards made. So here it is.

I had them designed by my girlfriend's sister who is an excellent graphic designer. If you like them and are interested in having her do some work for you I'd be glad to hook you up.

In any case, I started out by just giving her some basic contact information along with what I did for a living. Then I also told her that I liked green, and that I wanted an oak tree on it. Yes, I have a thing for oak trees OK?

I also blanked the phone number, but if you want to give me a gig, let me know and I will give you the number.

My 15 Minutes of Fame

2009-04-19T07:45:00.000-07:00

Yep, this is me and they still seem to be playing this commercial, because people still keep telling me that they saw me on TV.

This was a strange little turn of events that lead to me appearing in this commercial for an anti-snoring device. We attended a focus group where they showed us the device and asked how much any of us would pay, or whether we would even buy something like it off of a TV ad. I said that it seemed like a good idea for a product, but that I had never bought anything off of the television and wasn't likely to. They paid all of us $60 bucks a piece and that was that...or so we thought.

About two weeks later, I got a call from the Puresleep folks asking if I would be interested in trying one of their devices. I said sure, why not? It was free and I figured that it might even help with my snoring, which had gotten rather epic.

I tried it and it worked, and I told them that. A little while later they asked if I wanted to be in their infomercial. I said yes, and this commercial is the result.

It has been an interesting experience because they seem to run this commercial all the time on certain cable stations. I have only seen it live a few times but I have bee approached by many co-workers at various different places who all say, "Are you on TV?"

Yep, but I haven't made a dime (nor will I) and so far, no Hollywood agents have come beating down my door with offers for the PureSleep movie.

The Joke That Really Isn't

2009-03-30T10:08:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a young man in college who was very excited. He had worked hard in high school and managed to gain entrance to a very prestigious college. He thought, now I am going to be somebody, and worked diligently to get the best grades that he could.

After some time he realized that there was something missing, after all, getting good grades was fine, but they only went so far and he believed that there was something more. That's when he met a lovely young woman with whom he fell in love.
"Now I know what was missing." So he married the lovely young woman as soon as he finished college.

But after college he realized that there was still something missing. His friends told him that he needed to have children soon, because children gave your life permanence and purpose. So he talked with his wife and they set about starting a family, and in a few short years they had two lovely, healthy children and he thought, "Now I know what I was missing."

Still, something felt incomplete. The man had worked in a few different jobs, but hadn't settled into a path that felt right. He spoke to many people including his father who advised him to do what he loved. The man loved to tell stories, so he found a job where he could tell stories and discovered that he felt happier. So, looking back he realized that his wife and children were not enough, and that now that he had a true vocation, he would be happy.

A few years went by, his children grew, he advanced in his career and became more successful. But still, he felt like there was something missing. He looked around and saw that his friends all had the same things as he did, a home, a family a career, and they appeared content so why didn't he?

He began to look for answers. First he started to read many books about the meaning of life. While he gained some insights, he still didn't feel that what he was reading provided him with the answers he was seeking. He started to become obsessed with finding the answers he needed.

His wife told him that he should be happy with what he had. His pastor told him to find peace in God, and his parents told him that they were proud of him and that he should be proud of himself.

But nothing that anyone said seemed to satisfy him. A friend told him that true wisdom lay in Eastern philosophy, and so the man began to read a great deal of Eastern Philosophy. The man began to become enlightened and expanded his view of the universe and his role within it.

But still, he felt that there was something missing. This feeling gnawed at him and he became even more obsessed. One day he came home and told his wife he could not stand it any longer.

Even though she pleaded with him, he quit his job and devoted all of his time to studying philosophy. His wife grew frustrated and desperate and finally left him. Though hurt, he felt that he could not give up his quest.

He used his remaining money to travel to China in search of someone there who could help him to find the answers he sought. Once there he found many teachers, but none that could give him the deeper answers he was looking for. That was when someone told him the wisest teachers were in Nepal. So he made the long journey to the Himalayas.

He found a monastery that allowed him to stay and learn in exchange for work. He worked hard at cleaning the monks robes and dishes, all the while he studied hard, looking deeper and deeper into his soul. While he felt that he was getting closer to the answers he wanted, something was still missing.

Seeing his frustration, the elder monk told him that he must seek out the wisest man of all time, the great Sri Unum. "Only the great Sri Unum has the wisdom to give you the answers that you seek."

The man was overjoyed but the monk warned him that the great Sri Unum lived on top of the most difficult and treacherous mountain in the Himalayas and that the journey to him would be hard and long and he could lose everything. The man didn't care.

"I have to know" he told the monk and he set out to find the great Sri Unum. He walked for weeks, over harsh terrain in terrible conditions. Along the way, he was robbed of his remaining money. He cloths became threadbare and torn, but still he persisted. When he saw the mountain that the great Sri Unum lived atop, he was disheartened for it was a truly intimidating mountain. But he was determined and so he walked on.

He climbed and climbed the rocky face of the mountain. His hands and feet became bloody and blistered. He was frost-bitten and starving, but still he climbed on until he reached the summit where he saw a small wooden shack sitting in a bare patch of ground at the very top of the world.

By this time the man was nearly broken. He could not walk but crawled his way to the door of the humble shack. When he opened the door, he saw a very old man sitting in lotus, smiling peacefully.

It took all the man's strength to ask, "Are you Sri Unum?"

"Yes, I am he." said the old man.

""Oh that is wonderful, I have come so far, given up everything to find the answer that I seek, can you help me?"

"Yes, of course. What is your question?"

"What is the meaning of life?" asked the man.

"Life..." began the great Sri Unum, "is like a fountain."

The man looked at the great Sri Unum, waiting...but there was nothing more.

"That's it?" asked the man, "I have come all this way, lost my wife and family, given up my home and all my possessions and you tell me that life is like a fountain?"

The great Sri Unum looked surprised, and then a little confused, "You mean, life is not like a fountain?"

Cynicism Vs. Compassion on the Internet

2009-03-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

Recently, an excellent health blog that I follow, www.Everythinghealth.com, posted an article asking for financial assistance for a 13-year old Armenian girl who requires a very serious operation to remove ovarian tumors. The blogger is a physician that I respect and have consistently found her blog to be an excellent source of credible medical information and advice, however, this recent article caused me some concern.

In general, I am always suspect of pleas for money that arrive over the internet. A few years back, I began to explore the many “Nigerian Scams” that I would receive via the various email accounts that I had. This exploration lead me to develop some vary simple research techniques that quickly identified whether a particular message was a scam. Unfortunately, these same techniques don’t seem to yield the same degree of certainty about whether the messages are not a scam.

And therein lies the foundations of my cynicism regarding internet pleas for money.
The problem, of course, is worldwide and affects anyone with a valid email address. Most of the pleas come in the form of non-specific spam messages which most of us have come to recognize. The basic components of a “Nigerian” scam seem to include:
• A long, detailed message body
• Semi personalized greetings
• A reputable sounding author
• A detailed explanation about a unique financial predicament that requires the recipient to make certain international financial arrangements, which, if performed properly, will result in the recipient receiving a large sum of money.

“Non-Nigerian” variations on this theme can also include:
• A desperate description of a dire (medical, political) situation facing the author or author’s family
• Specific details that relate to the recipient’s situation (child of similar age, recent news topic, shared family name)
• Specific dollar amounts required
• Detailed explanation as to why the author is required to ask for help via the internet

Many of these messages are truly heart-wrenching, and easily understandable given most of our knowledge of the various terrible world and personal situations facing us. My cynicism grows out of the fact that these messages specifically target that most precious of human qualities, compassion, and twists it into a completely self-serving ploy to separate well-meaning people from their money.

Of course, in the pure Nigerian Scam, the recipient’s motive is less altruistic, as these scams rely on another human quality, greed, as their primary motivator.
The non-Nigerian scams rely upon the recipient’s underlying guilt at his/her own financial comfort and relative success, compared to the poverty that exists throughout a great deal of the world. This guilt is mixed with a need for meaning and purpose that haunts many of us in the Western World. There is a feeling that our success and comfort has separated us from true substance and moral value, so donating some of our wealth to support those less fortunate (and seemingly more desperate) than ourselves seems to be a logical way of re-attaining our compassionate soul.

The internet is a powerful vehicle for reaching literally millions of people quickly and effectively. Note how effectively President Obama leveraged the power of the internet to fund his campaign and organize his followers. This same power has long been used for various other types of fund raising for any number of excellent and worthy causes. There are so many convenient payment and verification tools now available on the internet that online fund-raising is almost painless and certainly immediate.

So how can one weigh the value that the internet can provide for worthy causes and individuals against the harm that unscrupulous individuals and organizations cause to human spirit and faith by using our own compassion against us? This is a question that I struggle with often, especially when presented with, what appears to be, a genuine plea for help that any desperate parent might resort to in order to save their child.
In a future blog, I will share some tips I have learned about quickly identifying internet scams using simple internet search tools and websites. In the mean time, I welcome your comments on this topic.

Baked Spaghetti

2009-03-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

My Niece just moved into her first apartment and asked me to send her some easy dinner recipes. So, this is an stand-by I have used for years, its nothing earth-shattering, but just makes a tasty spaghetti without meat.

Spaghetti:

1 box regular or whole wheat spaghetti
1 jar spaghetti sauce ( I like Classico "mushroom and ripe olives)
3-4 good sized mushrooms (optional)
5-7 green olives (optional)
2 green onions (optional)
1 clove garlic (optional)
1 tablespoon Italian spices (buy a mix, it's easier)
1/2 to 3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
2-3 quarts water (basically you need enough water to cover the softened spaghetti with about an inch of water)
Some salt
Some olive oil

Put water in a large pot, add a little salt and a little olive oil, bring the water to a boil
When the water boils, add the spaghetti, let it boil for about 5-10 minutes (read directions on package) but it really is "done" when you can throw a strand of it against the wall and the strand sticks...(take strand down after throwing unless you like a pasta-themed kitchen) When pasta is done, pour water and pasta out into a colander and rinse briefly with cool water. Set aside.

Pour spaghetti sauce into another pot and warm it on low to medium heat, stir frequently

Optional part:
Slice mushrooms, olives and green onions into small pieces
Crush or chop tiny the garlic
Add some olive oil, salt and Italian seasonings to a frying pan on medium heat
Add mushrooms, olives, onions, garlic to frying pan
saute all of these by stirring them frequently in the oil. You'll be done when the mushrooms are a little brown singed.
When you are done, add these to the simmering sauce.

Next,
Pre-heat oven to 350
mix spaghetti, sauce and most of the grated cheese into a single large bowl that can go in the oven (like Pyrex)
sprinkle remaining cheese on top of spaghetti,sauce and cheese mix
put spaghetti into oven and bake for 15 minutes

Then serve

Skip the optional part if you don't want the hassle or don't like mushrooms and olives. Or you can substitute with other veggies like spinach, asperigas, broccolli, tomato, zuccini, eggplant..but always do the saute with olive oil, garlic and italian seasonings.

Rock the Pot-Luck!!!

2009-03-01T11:25:00.001-08:00

OK, so you want to make a big hit at the office or neighborhood pot-luck? Here’s a salad that will do the trick. In addition to being colorful and tasty, it is heart healthy, with very low sodium and fat.

This salad takes about 30 minutes to prepare, and can be made up the night before with no problem.

So here’s what you need to get started.

• ½ pound Orzo (Roughly ½ a box of the Ronzoni Orzo)
• ¼ to ½ cup of Feta cheese
• 10 – 15 Kalamata olives
• ½ of a good-sized tomato
• 4 mushrooms (sliced)
• 2-3 cloves fresh garlic, (minced)
• 3-5 green onions (minced)
• ¼ -1/2 cup chopped basil
• ¼ cup chopped cilantro
• ½ -1 cup fresh spinach (chopped)
• 1-2 small-medium sweet peppers (chopped)
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1/8 – ¼ cup red wine vinegar

While the orzo is cooking, prepare all of the other ingredients (except for the olive oil and vinegar) and put them in a large bowl that will give you room to really stir it all together.

Once all the ingredients (except the Orzo) are in the bowl, add the oil and vinegar and mix everything well.

The following is the key to the success of this salad, so pay attention.
When the Orzo is ready, drain it and then immediately pour the drained and still hot orzo into the bowl with your ingredients. Mix the Orzo thoroughly with all of your ingredients and then let the bowl sit out(preferably covered) for about 15 minutes. This will steam-cook the spinach and other vegetables just enough to release their flavor. It will also slightly melt the cheese so that is mixes and blends in with the other flavors.

After 15 minutes, refrigerate the salad until you are ready to go to your pot-luck. This salad is best served at room temperature, so that is why it is ideal for bringing to a party because by the time you reach your destination, the salad will be perfect, and you will be a star!!!

I Believe in God and Science.

2009-01-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

I believe in God and Science. I also believe that religion and science are the creation of Man, and thus subject to the motivations and influences of Man. While these institutions may have been born of a profound personal conviction, they are not the definition of God.

So how do I define God?

Basically, I believe that the universe is too complex, too intricately interrelated, too beautiful and spectacular to be the product of mere random chance. I believe in a continuum of intelligence, so that just as my intelligence is greater on that continuum than that of an amoeba, so too must there be a far greater intelligence than my own.

Is it so much of a leap, then, to imagine that this far greater intelligence consciously designed the universe? Why do modern scientists dismiss the idea that complex systems and processes were the product of something greater than random chemical reaction? After all, where did the elements and chemicals come from? Why do they have the possibility of interaction in the first place?

I believe that each of us has been created with a set of tools that we can choose to use as we see fit. These tools include curiosity, intelligence, compassion, discipline, love, ambition, drive, fear, joy, passion and patience. We have the capacity to explore and study and discover the beautiful intricacies of the universe, and then, once discovered, to look for more.

We also have been given choice, and the will to choose those tools that we wish to utilize. I find it sad when someone chooses then to believe only the dogma and doctrine of what is familiar and claim that that is the end of their need to question and explore. That type of choice, to me, is tragically limiting and wastes the gifts that we have been created to use. Too often the constructs of religion and the Church have been used as a weapon to beat down these gifts in order to satisfy the very human need for power and control over others.

That is why I differentiate between Faith and Religion. Faith is that wonderful capacity in humans that allows us to believe in something greater than ourselves, and, perhaps even more important, to dream. What an incredible gift to be given, the capacity to dream and believe that there is always something more that can be discovered? Perhaps then, this ability to dream is the most tangible evidence of God we have. Who else could conceive of giving the product of millennia of innumerable chemical reactions the intangible capacity to feel the presence of an intelligence and power greater than itself?

Religion can provide guidance, solace and direction to a large number of people. In it’s purest form, an organized religion creates a safe and wholesome community that is united by shared beliefs and ideals. Unfortunately, too often religions can fall prey to the baser nature of mankind, especially the hubris, greed and lust for power that can consume even the most devout of humans. When this happens, religion is tainted and twisted into a mechanism for prejudice and hate.

I am not condemning religion, nor am I condemning those who ascribe to any specific denomination. My objection with organized religion is when the very human leadership of these religions too often choose to supress the gifts of imagination, free choice and curiosity that we have been given, and instead choose to further their own agendas of prejudice and hate through twisted doctrine and dogma.

Our lives and existence are truly miraculous things, and to ignore them is to miss a fundamental component of being human. Science may not consider itself a religion, yet it ascribes to the same ultimate purpose as any religion, to explain our own existence and all of the infinite details that that explanation entails. Discovering these details for ourselves does not lesson the greater wonder that these details were there for us to discover in the first place. Why not ask, “Who put these details there?” or, at the very least, admit that this continual cycle of the discovery of new details indicates an order and system to the universe that we have yet to discover the nature of.

Admitting to the wondrous complexity of the universe in no way diminishes our quest to explore that complexity. Admitting that this self-same complexity may be the product of a greater intelligence than our own, merely means incorporating the human capacity for faith into our consciousness and our explorations.

Retinking McCain

2009-01-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

So yes, the election is over and Barack Obama is now firmly ensconced in the Whitehouse. So why discuss John McCain’s choices during his failed attempt to run for president?

Well, I still have some lingering questions about how John McCain, a man who is admirable and politically savvy, decided to use the negative campaign strategy team that launched George Bush into office. Certainly, on the surface, the choice to go with a team (and tactics) that have a proven track record of success would seem a logical choice, especially when facing the juggernaut of momentum that the Obama campaign had generated. Still, the Obama juggernaut indicated that America was ready for a new type of government, built on a foundation of Hope and Possibility, rather than Fear and Arrogance. John McCain has been a fixture in American politics for 3 decades. The question then is, how could he miss such an obvious movement, and not try and capitalize on it himself? Or, at the very least, not tie himself to a campaign machine built on the principles and tactics that the evident trends indicate are being rejected by the voters?

There are two possible answers to this question:
1. John McCain was desperate and turned to the Bush-Rove-Cheney strategy team as a last ditch effort to tap into the power and influence of the neo-conservative movement.
2. John McCain is actually quite politically savvy, and he indeed recognized the strength and value of the Obama (Hope and Possibility) movement, and so he intentionally chose the Bush-Rove-Cheney campaign strategy BECAUSE he knew that it would fail, in essence, throwing the election.

The reasons for possibility #1 are obvious, and were John McCain not such an experienced politician and savvy political survivor, this would seem to be the only logical choice available to him. By choosing this path, he stays true to his Republican base, tosses a sop to the neo-cons and remains in power (with enhanced national recognition and influence).

The reasons for #2 are less obvious, though indicate a far savvier political strategist than first thought. By engaging a campaign strategy and team that is in the process of being rejected, and that is intimately tied to an outgoing administration that has the lowest approval ratings ever, McCain was actively putting the final nail in the entire Neo-Con revolution, a revolution that he himself had never fully endorsed or participated in.

In addition, it has become evident that John McCain has maneuvered himself to be a very prominent and influential player in the new Obama administration, basically becoming the poster child for the Obama administrations to truly “reach across the aisle” and mend the political rifts caused by divisive tactics that have defined the past eight years.

John McCain is a proven survivor, in life and in politics. No one questions the courage and fortitude that he displayed during his time as a prisoner of war, and he has leveraged that same strength and fortitude into his long political career. Perhaps he learned in prison that one can stand against a powerful force on the strength of one’s convictions, and that by doing so, outlast the powerful force.

Essentially, John McCain is a good and honest man, who has built a career of “being his own man”. He has also learned to become a wise political player who recognizes the value and strength in being flexible in alliance and temporary ideology so as to achieve a more lasting and broader objective. Some would call this flip-flopping or some other type of derogatory term…others might call it savvy political survival.

Quaint-O-Rama in Montmarte!

2008-10-14T16:28:00.001-07:00

Montmarte has more quaint streets per square mile than just about anywhere on earth. The little village on the hill overlooking Paris has been a favorite of artists, actors, philosophers, writers and the folks who love to drink with them for centuries.

Topped by the imposing Sacre Couer, Montmarte offers some of the best views of Paris as well as a dizzying maze of narrow cobble stone streets that wander into open squares where you weave through an endless array of portrait artists who will gladly turn your Euros into a caricature that you will treasure all the way back to the hotel.

As you stroll through these little winding streets, and really, that’s the only way to travel these kinds of streets, its easy to both imagine what it might have been like 200 years ago, staggering up to one of the café’s to drink and talk with local intellectuals and bohemians; as well as forget that these ancient feeling streets are also part of a modern city.

We wove our way downward off of Montmarte and suddenly found ourselves in … a modern city, with traffic, grimy buildings, regular shops and noise. People were walking with purpose and direction. The spell of Montmarte, while not broken, was simply replaced.

The Angelina Drip

2008-10-12T03:08:00.000-07:00

Angelina’s is a restaurant on the Rue de Rivoli that is famous for its hot chocolate. It also is famous for its desserts, tarts and confections including something called the Mont Blanc which resembles a cupcake with cornrows (and will send Diabetics running from the contact sugar high).

We arrived for lunch on a Saturday and the place was packed with tourists enjoying the cuisine. It is a large and elegant feeling restaurant with molded sconces and marble tables. It is easy to imagine the social set of old Paris lunching here in the glory days when the Louvre was still a palace.

Well, easy if you squint out the tourists with “J’Aime Paris” t-shirts sitting at all the tables.
But don’t squint too hard because you will miss something that is uniquely Angelina. You see, everyone who comes here does so because of the hot chocolate. It doesn’t matter what time of day, or how hot it is outside, if you come to Angelina’s then you have to get the hot chocolate.

The hot chocolate served here is served in small white pitchers along with a little ramekin of whipped cream. You then pour the chocolate into your cup and add a dollop of cream, stir until the cream is dissolved and then sip. It takes a moment to get used to the thickness of the drink, which is close to gravy in texture, American’s used to packaged Swiss Miss are going to be surprised. But the flavor is incredible and so much worth the effort of getting there.

I noticed, however, that because of the thick viscosity of the chocolate that it is virtually impossible to pour it without a thin line of the stuff running down the pure white pitcher from the lip. The chocolate is so thick that it does not even run down the full length of the pitcher, rather it makes it as far as the pitcher’s fat belly.

I was embarrassed to see this obviously messy occurrence in such an elegant surrounding, until I noticed that every other table was graced with a pitcher that had the same telltale drip. In fact, upon closer examination, my own pitcher had the ghosts of numerous such previous drips that had been washed off over the years.

The Angelina Drip is a badge of having enjoyed something truly sublime, and uniquely Parisian.

Long Island to the Rue de Rivoli

2008-10-12T03:03:00.000-07:00

The Rue de Rivoli is the street that borders the north side of the Tuileries and the Louvre. It is lined with a long series of arches that open to a sidewalk that fronts many souvenir shops, café’s and, of course, Angelina, the restaurant famous for it’s hot chocolate.

We had gone there specifically to visit Angelina’s and bring K****’s sister a bag of the precious hot chocolate mix. We had had our lunch and purchased the mix and were just strolling along looking for postcards when we were treated to that most American of American sounds, the classic Long Island Honk of a woman calling out to her husband, “Michael…They’re Jewish in here!”
She wasn’t content with just that, as she insisted on loudly repeating her call several more times, letting all of the tourists walking the street know that the proprietors of that specific shop were in fact Jewish.

I actually suspect that Michael has long since become deaf to that particular Long Island honk tonal range, or at least he wishes that it were so.

Oh Look, it’s the Eiffel Tower…again

2008-10-10T09:44:00.000-07:00

K**** really is very wise. She kicked me out this afternoon. She is still not feeling well and I was hanging around the room brooding and basically I think it was kind of driving her crazy, so she kicked me out.

I decided to take a loop back through the Eiffel Tower and then down along the Seine toward the Concorde. It was sunny and fresh and the walk did me a world of good.

But sitting there in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower I started wondering how the French really feel about the big old thing. I mean yes, it is very impressive and tall and attracts millions of people every year and has come to be THE symbol of Paris, worked into every type of logo and t-shirt and gee-gaw that you see in the tourist shops…but really, it is just a big fancy erector set project that is always …THERE.

You can’t really go anywhere in Paris without seeing the damned thing. You’re on the Champs-Elysees and there it is; you are at the Louvre and look, there it is over there; you’re at the freaking Laundromat and there it is peaking over the rooftops like some big awkward cousin at Christmas…nice kid, grew really fast in the last year and now he never seems to go away.

I haven’t asked any French whether it bothers them or not, mainly because my French is a bit spotty and I may end up actually telling them that their socks are adorable or something else that will cause them to give me the classic blank French stare of miscomprehension.

Suffice it to say that the thing is really big and always there. Its not like they can fold the thing up and tuck it away for winter, or just haul it out on Bastille Day or something like that. No, they have to deal with it all the time…sometimes they can dress it up with lights and such, but that’s about it.

So be a nice boy and take your cousin outside, its just too close in here for such a big boy. C’mon cousin…watch your head there.

Paris Walk

2008-10-10T00:05:00.000-07:00

I strolled this afternoon. K**** wasn’t feeling well, and encouraged me to go see Paris. I strolled down past L’Eglise du Dome and the through the gardens behind the Invalids to the Seine where I lingered a long time at the Pont d’Alexander. Then on along the Seine toward the Tuilleries where I say and watched the sunset in one of the most comfortable metal chairs I have ever encountered.

After the sunset I wandered back through the streets of the Left Bank, cutting down narrow side streets with small specialized shops and tucked away restaurants.

I know that we will be leaving Paris soon, and I suppose I am ready to do it. My excitement about coming here has dimmed somewhat and I find the rigors of trying to make myself understood tiring. The Parisiens that I have encountered have all been pleasant and helpful and very tolerant of my fractured attempts at conversation, but beyond the most rudimentary phrases, I am woefully ill-equipped to carry on any type of substantial exchange.

I think that I was caught up in the magic of my first visit to Paris 22 years ago, and have lived on that memory ever since. My imagination took me on long romantic walks along the Seine, afternoons spent sipping café in small bistros watching the people pass by.

But the reality of my return is now tempered with my own 22 years of experience which colors my view so that it tamps down to muted tones. I see it as a city now, beautiful yes, but still just a place where many people live their lives, conduct their business, drive, shout, laugh, talk, eat and play…and then fall into bed to rest until they get up to do it again.

There is no magic spell here, save in the eyes of romantic young men far from home. I do see ghosts of the young man I was. He is there standing at the Seine eyes wide before the fountain; there sipping wine at the corner bistro; there strolling in the bustling streets; there in the galleries of the Louvre. He has a smile that he is unaware of, glistening eyes and breath that is taken away.

He is a lucky young man and I envy him his birth of a dream.

Statues are Bored

2008-10-10T00:04:00.001-07:00

I noticed something today as I walked around Paris. Statues are, for the most part, bored. Not boring, as their beauty and the skill needed to create them is clearly evident, rather, if you look at their faces you see that they are exquisitely bored.

Their eyes are almost always dull and flat, and sit in a face that is the picture of bland ennui. It makes sense really because what has a statue to do to keep it entertained? After the first several thousand people walk by and point a camera at it, or the millionth gallon of water cascades off of it there just isn’t that much to do.

You sit or stand in some odd pose and then you…um, sit and stand in some odd pose some more. Even Rodin’s Lovers must really be getting tired of kissing each other. I can imagine them thinking, “Boy, it sure would be nice to put on some cloths and go get a ham and cheese sandwich”.

Is Existentialism Catching?

2008-10-09T04:50:00.001-07:00

I just spent some time sitting and sipping café in a little café around the corner from our hotel. K**** is really not feeling well and needed to sleep, so I figured that I would just go and give her some peace. Besides our room is much too small to simply hang out in.

As I sipped the café and was bathed in the Gauloise smoke and deep musings of the old Frenchmen sitting at the table next to me, I started to scribble thoughts in my journal. I was pensive and probably a bit disappointed that our health and various other things have limited our stay here in Paris. We will still do as many of the things that we had intended, but not nearly what we had hoped.

So sitting there, letting the busy street and café wash through me, my thoughts wove through a random stream of personal insights and reflections. I ignored the cliché that this presented, of the solitary American, trying to scribble deep thoughts in a Paris café…and instead just let the thoughts flow as they should.

I will not share (or bore you with) these reflections, aside to say that there is real truth to the cliché. Sitting in a little Paris café sipping espresso, one can easily slip into a pensive mood, especially when surrounded by the leisurely French.

But as for the deep thoughts, well, they come in their own way I suppose.

So excuse me, I think that I need to go buy a beret now.

First Day in Paris: Metro to the Hotel

2008-10-09T03:07:00.001-07:00

We arrived in the afternoon after the 4 hour train ride from Amsterdam. The train was comfortable and peaceful, but that ended the moment we arrived. Gare de Nord was packed and crazy with travelers and commuters alike. We hurried through the crowds first to the ticket machine to purchase Metro tickets, which didn’t work as the machine only seemed to accept French credit and atm cards. So, I had to dive right into using my very rusty French with a ticket agent. He seemed to understand my request and we now have two Metro passes for our time here.

The next challenge was to get to the correct Metro stop. I had already plotted out our route and, at least on paper, it seemed easy.

Don’t you love how paper can do that?

But what paper doesn’t tell you is that it is necessary to walk a long ways through crowds of rush hour Parisians, dragging suitcases and trying to interpret the multitude of directional signs within the huge Gare du Nord train station.

Of course, then we got to the platform for the first train and it was easy from there on out…except if you count the 942 flights of stairs we had to climb or descend to get to the actual platform.

But we made it to the first train, and after swiftly discovering that we were headed in the wrong direction, and making the ever-so-easy switch to the correct platform (leave train, go down two flights of stairs, up two other flights…with suitcases in tow) we settled into the correct train and were on our way.

To the transfer station where we had to get off, and hike through 765 more stairwells, up and down until we reached our correct train.

We made it on and settled in for the long ride to the stop near our hotel.

Now, Parisians are renown for a certain style, a certain je ne sais quoi? A certain flair. And it was evident on the train. The people, even coming home from work on a train all had a look and style that seemed almost second nature.

I suspected that my current state of profusely sweating, bedraggled, slightly wild-eyed determination fit right in.

That must have been why they gave me so much room on the train.

Leaving Amsterdam

2008-10-07T23:23:00.000-07:00

We’re on the train to Paris and we are a little sad about leaving Amsterdam. Funny that we should be missing a place where so many things went wrong, the weather, the hospital, never seeing E***, the rail strike stranding us for another day…you’d think that we would be glad to be rid of the place, but K**** told me this morning that she could live here for a year.., .and I could see why.

The city is beautiful and interesting with many parts that we didn’t get to see, or only saw fleetingly through a tram or canal bus window. Each canal bridge we crossed provided a sublime view of peaceful water, trees, boats and bikes…always the bikes.

While the city is busy, with people always riding their black and white bikes somewhere, there is not the hurried and frantic feel that we feel back home. The shopkeepers, waiters and tour guides we met were all friendly, helpful and patient. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they know that so few people speak Dutch., or perhaps it is just that they are more relaxed and less focused on money and status and wealth.

Perhaps I am romanticizing them because I am on vacation and relaxed myself. But this is a welcoming city for us, and we have already decided to come back somehow, perhaps for the marathon next year…perhaps as just a dream because it took us so long to get here this time…but it is a dream that is so wonderfully real.

Its Monday, the Belgian's Must Be On Strike

2008-10-06T23:41:00.000-07:00

We arrived at the train station early, all ready to take the Thalys bullet train to Paris, only to find out that the rail workers in Belgium had called a general strike which shut down any outgoing train service from Holland to France...because all trains have to pass through Belgium. The station agent was tired, having answered endless inquiries since 3, but she was cheerful in a sort of fatalistic way.

So we shrugged and headed back to the hotel, got our same room back and then spent the afternoon writing postcards and catching up on rest. I also hopped on the internet to see if I could find out more about the strike.

I Googled "Belgium, Rail strike" and waited tensely for the results. I received many hits and I figured that "Well, this is a big thing, look at all the articles!" that is until I started checking the dates of the articles...October 6, Jun 10, May 14, April, February...the Belgians seem to go on strike quite a bit, and while it causes a great deal of disruption, they never seem to actually achieve anything with their strikes, aside from perhaps getting an extra three day weekend on a fairly regular basis. (Hopefully they haven't planned to travel that weekend).

I scanned the rest of the news to find that CNN, BBC and the rest of the international news sources were very uninterested in the latest Belgian trainworkers little tantrum.

My friend had since told me "Now you have really experienced European travel."

We will leave today without disruption I am sure, because as far as I can see, the strikers seemed to have failed to bring he European Union to its knees.

From The ER to Flinckx – A Good Bad Day in Amsterdam (Part 1)

2008-10-06T06:40:00.001-07:00

I woke uo and knew that my cold had decided to follow its usual course and slipped down from my nose, to me throat to my lungs. I get such colds at home and know how they run, so while it was expected, it was also disappointing. At least at home I knew what to do, and where to go. But here it was in Amsterdam on a rainy Sunday and I knew that unless I got to the doctor, I would be spending much of the upcoming week in Paris, coughing and feeling miserable.

I was supposed to meet Herman today so that he could give us a personal tour, instead I called him to tell him that I would be late as I was going to go to the hospital ER that the hotel clerk told me about. A few minutes after I hung up with Herman, he called me back and said that he would drive me to the hospital. I was very grateful.

The Oosterpark Hospital is very modern with an ER waiting room that is right out of the Jetsen’s. Cheery green walls and smoothly rounded glass walls provide a calm and non-threatening waiting area. I was triaged by a nice nurse and then K**, Herman and I waited for the doctor. There were several people ahead of me, so we waited bout an hour.

The doctor who saw me was a young woman who explained that the Dutch medical philosophy is to wait and see what develops in the body, because in many cases the body is able to heal itself better without the intervention of needless medical treatment. She examined me and said that she was reluctant to prescribe anything as I had no fever and my lungs were clear. But she also paid attention to my symptoms and accepted that I was aware of my own health patterns, and so, based on the strength of my prognosis, she prescribed me some antibiotic and wished me luck in Paris.

Herman then drove us to a Pharmacy that was open on Sunday. In Holland, Pharmacies only dispense drugs, a Chemist is where you will go to get over-the-counter medicines. The Pharmacy I went to was run by two Muslim women. I entered the door and was separated from the drugs and the women by a clear glass wall with a slide through slot that I could place my prescription in and the pharmacist would pull the drawer through to her side to refill it.

I suppose the partition served the dual purpose of preventing drug thieves from getting easy access to narcotics as well as protecting the Pharmacists in side form getting any germs that the customers may have…a thought that worried me a bit being on the narrow germ-ridden side of the partition.

After a few moments my prescription as pushed back to me through the little drawer and I was on my way.

From the ER to Flinckx – A Good Bad Day in Amsterdam (part 2)

2008-10-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

It has been raining steadily all morning and afternoon. After we pick up the antibiotic, Herman suggests that we go to the new library to have some lunch. We agree, but I feel bad for Herman as he is forced to drive the confusing streets of Amsterdam. He is very used to riding his bike and knows exactly how and where to go to get to the library by bike, but in the car there are an endless array of one way streets that tease and torment him.

Finally we reach the dock areas of Amsterdam and are treated to a soggy view of the harbor. The large green Nemo museum, an interactive museum, much like the Exploratorium in San Francisco, that is housed in a large green building that is shaped like the prow of a ship. Herman tells us, that on nice days, it is very pleasant to sit on the steps atop the museum and have lunch.

It would not be so pleasant to do so today.

The parking garage beneath the library is large, clean and well lit. We take the elevator up to the main floor and then have to dash across the open walk to the library entrance, getting mildly soaked along the way.

The library is very new and wonderfully modern, with 5 floors of open bookshelves and unique reading/study areas laid out at various points, each study area sporting its own unique seats and design. Herman shows us his favorite, some totally enclosed study cubes in which someone can sit alone and undisturbed. Kiss marks on the little window in the cube indicate that sometimes the cubes may be used for something more than reading books.

We reach the top level which houses the cafeteria. It is nicely laid out with an impressive array of pre-made and quick cooking choices. My favorite is a stir-fry counter where you can select your own choices and then hand it to the cook who cooks it up for you.

After lunch we briefly stepped out onto the observation deck to take in the great view of the harbor and the oldest part of Amsterdam. We would have stayed out there longer but for the unrelenting rain.

Later Herman tells me that on this day, more rain has fallen than normally falls during the entire month of October.

From the ER to Flinckx – A Good Bad Day in Amsterdam (part 3)

2008-10-06T06:38:00.000-07:00

Later that evening, we arrange with Herman to meet at a little restaurant around the corner from our hotel. Flinckx is a very small restaurant run by a very expressive woman who teases and flirts equally well in Dutch and in English. K** and I arrived a bit before Herman and his family and this woman asked us if we happen to be meeting “Someone named Van Gessel, who wants a party for 6?” I say yes, then she turns down her mouth in a classic moue and says, “I don’t know anything about that.”

Herman and his family arrive soon after and we sit. Herman’s son, G***, sits across from me and soon devours most of the bowl of bread as well as some Chocolate Milk which A*****, Herman’s wife, informs me is his favorite. Herman’s daughter B***** sits across from K** and she is soon engaged in conversation with K***. B*** has only been studying English for a short time, but she is quite fluent and really seems to enjoy speaking with native speakers like us.

The dinner is quite good, though A***** is mad with herself because she had bought us some Strope Waffle cookies and forgotten to bring them for us. She had served them the night before when we had dinner at their house and we liked them very much.

K*** has hare, and I tried some as well. It was good, a bit denser than chicken and more rich, with a slight gamey quality. I have lamb in a rich basilica sauce. The meal is wonderful, but it is Sunday night and I am aware that they must work in the morning and the children need to get up for school. Also, it is G***’s birthday tomorrow (he will be 9) and A**** informs me that he will be up at 4 AM wanting to get started on all his presents. The woman who runs Flinckx brings G*** a special ice-cream treat with a sparkler in it, and we all sing Happy Birthday in English, which I find a little odd, especially when the other patrons join in.

We walk out into the cool night and walk a short ways to where Herman has parked his car. It is sad, but I am so glad to have reconnected with him after so many years. I am also glad that he has such a nice family. Hopefully it won’t be so long before I see him again.

Epilogue:

The next morning K*** and I are rushing around packing and readying ourselves to leave for Paris. We eat early and while K*** goes back up to the room, I head outside to hit the ATM once again. As I step outside the hotel, I hear “Hey Scott”.

Herman is riding up on his bike and he has a bag with him. I know immediately that it is the cookies that A*** forgot to bring. She is a very organized person and I know that she wouldn’t tolerate such an oversite, so she had Herman deliver them on his way to work. We say good-bye again, a bit more personally this time.

My bad day in Amsterdam, turning into a very wonderful experience in the end.

Vrolic Medical Museum: Fascination and Sadness

2008-10-04T16:35:00.001-07:00

The Vrolic Medical Museum is a vast collection of medical specimens collected primarily by Dr. Anton Vrolic in the 1900s. The museum is part of the vast Amsterdam Medical Facility that serves as the primary hospital and medical center for the city of Amsterdam.

While housing a large number of medical specimens, by far the largest portion of the museum is focused on preserved fetuses of babies born (or nearly born) with horrendous physical malformations. There are babies with twisted limbs, grossly expanded hydrocephalic skulls, external organ growth and various permutations of undivided twins.

There were also certain samples that basically defy description, aside from saying that they resembled a human only so far as there had recognizable flesh, and the semblance of other features. Essentially, these were monsters and though fascinating from a purely medical oddity point of view, it is hard to ignore the devastating effect that giving birth to such a child would have on the mother and father, and the physicians, nurses and any other attendees.

Was Dr. Vrolic a ghoul for collecting these specific types of specimens, or was he driven by pure scientific curiosity for the ways that the human form can go tragically wrong in its earliest development? Am I a ghoul for been drawn on in looking at these specimens, despite my visceral and emotional revulsion?

Perhaps the answer is yes to all these questions.

Tapas At The Van Gogh

2008-10-03T23:02:00.000-07:00

The Van Gogh Museum is open late on Friday night. It houses the largest collection of Van Gogh’s work in the world and is arranged in galleries that progress through the artist’s life according to where he lived and how his work developed, I didn’t know much about Van Gogh aside from the ear incident and that he was supported by his brother. This progression through his life was facinating.

What we didn’t expect was that the museum was such a happening place to be on Friday night. The main lobby acts as a casual meeting area that is decked out with deep blue furniture that sits on a carpet of the same deep blue. There is a bar where you can buy wine, mixed drinks and a fruit smash that was very good. A DJ spun 45s of jazzy pop from the 60s to add a very ironic, retro hip feel to the place.

People lounged and ate and drank, while others explored the galleries to the fun music. The second floor houses the main collection and while we wandered through we noticed the reason for the lovely blue carpet in the main lounging area. Using the same blue screen technology that is commonly used on newscasts, the lounge area was filmed and projected onto the blank walls of the upper part of the museum, the blue replaced with a rotating display of Van Gogh’s paintings so that the people sitting in the chairs appeared to be sitting, drinking and walking through the paintings themselves. It was a very cool effect.

After strolling the galleries, K** and I sat and had tapas of various cheeses, nuts, and bread along with a glass of wine and a fruit smash. It was definitely the way to go to this Museum.

Dutch Stairs

2008-10-03T15:11:00.001-07:00

Amsterdam is called one of the first and best “planned cities” in the world, and it is clear why this is so. Every street and canal is laid out in a series of concentric semi-circles that radiate outward from the central district (Centrum). All the streets are lined brick-to-shoulder with narrow multi-story “canal-houses” which are a marvel of optimizing usable space. Rooms are small, but livable with every nook and cranny of possible space utilized in some type of fashion.

As I said, no wasted space, so when it comes to getting people to move between floors these Amsterdammers don’t hesitate to cram the most amount of utility into the least amount of space. The result is a harrowing spiral climb up narrow wedges of steps that climb steeply up (and down), almost as if a ladder had somehow been twisted and fooled into believing that it no longer belonged in the yard, but rather had been civilized into indoor duty.

These stairways are seriously challenging to walk up or down, and probably are a large reason(along with the bike riding everyone does) why most Amsterdam residents appear thin and fit.

The Red Light District…Meh

2008-10-03T00:09:00.000-07:00

We made the trek to the Red Light District mainly because everyone who knows we are going to Amsterdam has asked “Are you going to see the Red Light District?”. Well, that and if we are going to go into one of “those” cafes…you know, wink wink. There’s a lot of “wink-winking” that goes on when you mention Amsterdam I’ve found.

We arrived at the Red Light District via a Canalbus that let us off right at the Central Train Station. It was raining pretty heavily and it was also right around 5:30 so the streets were filled with a soggy mix of business people rushing home and tourists thronging toward the district. The streets were packed, and about half the people had umbrellas, whose stays seemed to hover right at my eye level making navigation hazardous, if not nearly blinding.

As we entered the district the crowds thinned a bit and we were able to walk a bit more freely. We spent a little time in several of the Dutch souvenir shops, and actually considered buying some “wink-wink” related t-shirt for our friend Jonathan, but we relented and moved on.

There are many narrow alleys that lead off the main street and in the rain and gathering dusk, it is easy to see how this area is well suited for skulking and seemy exploration.

We were intrigued by one alleyway mainly because at the end of it was a church. We headed down the narrow walk and came out upon a winding walkway lined with a few offices, and then several of the display rooms. I’m sure that they have a more official term, but the feeling that I had was of looking at a human sized version of a vending machine. Each small cubicle had a woman in it, dressed in some variation of red underwear and lingerie. The women were all foreign born, dark skinned and well fed. They also looked bored as they watched us watching them. Toward the end of this little block was a day care center that must have served the women in the windows. Quite a clever little business opportunity actually, if you think about it. None of the offices where I have worked had day care right there where I worked.

We circled on around the alley that encircled the church we had seen. The church was closed, and I suspected that the women in this little area may have done quite well simply because they could tap into the “doing-it-in-the-shadow-of-the-church” crowd.

The rain was coming harder and it was getting darker, so we headed back to the train station to catch the canalbus back to the hotel.

So we saw it, but Meh it really didn’t do much for me.

The Ubiquitous Dutch Bike

2008-10-02T21:06:00.000-07:00

Everyone rides bikes here in Amsterdam, and it seems, they are all riding the same bike. It is a black cruiser style with curved handlebars, black and white fenders and a single utilitarian light poking out in the front. They are the epitome of basic street transportation, and they are everywhere. Filling the narrow, flagstoned streets, overflowing racks; casually locked against trees, poles or special curved pipes…or leaned against walls, railings and each other.

They all seem to be of an indeterminate age, somewhere between 10 and 50 years old. Some have been customized so that they can cart children in wheelbarrow-like appendages lashed to the front, or sporting some other type of portage device in front or over the rear wheel.

Perhaps the most heartening thing about seeing so many of these unglamorous, utilitarian vehicles everywhere is the attitude that the riders have about them. You see men and women, young, old, black, white, professional, working class and funky, fathers, mothers and children…none of whom are wearing brightly colored spandex togs with slick racing helmets and sleek I’m-so-very-serious sunglasses. No, these are people who remember that a bike is just a very handy way to get from here to there.

Early The First Morning

2008-10-01T22:20:00.001-07:00

We are really here. It is early morning, the clouds are sort of scattering and the city is waking up, like every city in the world wakes up. Cars hissing along wet streets, trucks banging and wheezing. I peak out our window, pulling the curtain aside only a little so as not to let in too much light because K***** is still sleeping. Across the street from our Hotel, I can see into the cupola room of an apartment…a Dutch apartment in Amsterdam! I am excited and scared and eager to get out and see everything.

But there is time.

Yesterday was a long blur of planes, airports and then a long taxi ride through the Amsterdam rush hour talking with our Pakistani driver, Pas. His English difficult to understand, we talked of Pakistani’s problems in policing the borders with Afghanistan and how he has a friend in San Francisco. He then spoke proudly of his daughter, the doctor who will be moving to England to practice gynecology, and his son the MBA. He had one other daughter who was 12 and he shared as how it is expensive to send your children to college. When we arrived at the hotel I paid him with a 50 Euro bill and told him to give me back 5, he said “No, that is too much” and handed me back 7. I thanked him.

We travelled for 16 hours all told, and slept almost as much. I am not certain of the date and have a little fear that somehow I will lose track of what day it is and then miss the train to Paris and fall into a domino effect of missed connections. It’s a silly fear I know.

We are really here, I wonder when I will start to believe it.

Off For Europe

2008-09-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

It has been 22 years in the making, but my great return to Europe is about to happen. We leave tomorrow for two weeks. We fly on Virgin Atlantic from here to Heathrow, and then hop a British Airways flight to Amsterdam where we will stay for 5 days. We have about 200 things that we want to do there, but will probably narrow it down to seeing a few of the main museums, the medical museum as well as reconnecting with some friends.

We will then take a train from Amsterdam to Paris. A four hour ride that should be lovely. We will then stay in Paris for a week. The first time I was in Paris, 22 years ago, I was alone and I thought then that it was ridiculous to be in this beautiful, romantic city all by myself. That situation will be corrected this time as I will be there with K******.

To be honest, we are both nervous and still a little numb to the fact that we are actually going. But come tomorrow at 4:30, when we are settled into our Virgin Atlantic seats, it will start to become more real.

So stay tuned as I will be posting updates on the trip for any and all to enjoy.

The Fear of Success

2008-09-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

I know, it's funny. Who would be afraid of success right? I mean, success is what we all dream of, or at least we here in America are taught from very early on that success is something to be desired, something to be aspired to.

Be it financial success, fame, a healthy family and house...success, while defined in many different ways, is still the thing that we are told is the the thing to have.

So, now that I find myself suddenly faced with the very real possibility of achieving success, why am I hesitant to step through and commit myself to going for it?

Sure, the success that I am being presented is in the form of an opportunity that has never been offered to me before. The opportunity to step into a true leadership role in a company and start defining its culture and future from the beginning. I will finally be in the position to be the guy who makes the decisions about how the company handles itself, how it conducts its business and how it treats its employees, customers and the public. I can be the guy who I used to grumble about. I can be the jerk who we all can't believe did that stupid thing. I'll be the guy that gets whispered about in the break room because of some stupid decision or policy or idea that I had...or simply be the guy that somebody hates just because I am "that guy".

But what is really worrying me is not that I may be disliked. It is that I know that this role will require me to reach beyond who I have come to believe myself to be. I have been the observer who does his job and jokes about the absurd decisions because I knew that I had nothing to do with those decisions, and that I had no power whatsoever to affect anything, aside from the quality of my own work.

The reason that I am being offered this opportunity is because someone believes that he has seen the potential in me, and he believes hat I am capable of being that guy.

And that is what terrifies me, his belief in me. His belief does come with very high expectations. He expects me to be the person that he thinks I am. I wonder if I really am that person. I want to believe that I am, but the fear is that I really am not and will disappoint him as well as myself in a huge and devastating way.

Blessed Silence at the DNC

2008-08-28T09:19:00.000-07:00

I've been watching the DNC for the past several nights on C-span, and I noticed something...the silence.

Not from the endless parade of speechmakers, nor from the house band cranking through every 70's and 80's Wedding Reception uplifting dance song they have in their book..

No, the silence came from my television itself, because C-Span does not fill every empty moment with some yammerhead "analyst" reinterpreting what was just said as they are addicted to doing on every other network. I don't need Chris Matthews or Tom Brokaw or all the othertalking head "experts" telling me what to think about the speech I just heard, I don't need to be subjected to the innane rambling of some political correspondent's reminiscences of his time on the campaign bus when Hillary spilled grape juice on her pant suit.

Hey, I have a brain, I have ears and I can make up my own mind on what has just been said. Too often these days, we allow ourselves to be subjected to this analysis for analysis sake, while nothing of any real significance is being said, only dead air being filled with dead words.

I can hardly wait to watch the RNC next week on C-Span.

Global Warming...A Choice?

2008-08-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

PG&E has taken it upon themselves to run a series of radio ads that manage to combine Global Warming, California environmental smugness and selling washing machines. These commercials all have the same basic format: a series of "real" people come on and share their "sincere" statements about how wonderful they are because they are "choosing" to end global warming...as implying, of course, that they are sanctimoniously better than the rest of us slobs. One woman even comes on and masterfully guilt trips her kids by earnestly saying "I'm doing this for you guys."

But what exactly is she doing anyway.

Aside by the environmentally-holier-than-thou attitude that smugs its way through every word, there is one big problem here, Global Warming really isn't up to us, its this naturally occurring cycle that we have exacerbated, but it isn't up to us.

Sure, we can make some personal choices that may reduce our personal carbon footprint, like choosing not to buy that new Escalade (like our masterfully guilt-tripping Mom above) but we don't have the power to stop (much less reverse) global warming.

It is this type of self-satisfied hubris that most annoys me about these types of campaigns. They skirt the true issues by making us feel good about using PG&E and buying their approved appliances.

That's why I turn those commercials off when they come on.

My Boy Can Cook

2008-08-12T19:43:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about my brother a lot lately, which really isn't unusual as I think about him often. People think about the people that were important to them, especially when those people have killed themselves and there are a lot of unanswered questions.

He was my older brother and for much of my growing-up years, I idolized him, though he tormented me no end, in my eyes he was a god. That's just how it is with younger brothers and older brothers.

I could run through a maudlin self-indulgent list of why he was so wonderful to me, and maybe convince you as to why I thought so, but the reality is that you would just read the words and never see the man I looked up to and tried so hard to emulate. You just wouldn't get it, so I am not going to try...and we'll both be happier that way.

We had several things in common: music, fantasy football, pinochle, and cooking. My Mom made sure that we both knew how to cook. She had told us both, "If I die before your father, then you have to get him remarried right away because he would starve otherwise. My Dad could cook toast. My Mom made sure that my brother and I could do much more than that.

Both my brother and I worked our way through several different restaurants on our way to landing in our respective careers. We liked talking about food and cooking, it was a safe subject for us and we were both very passionate about it. As time went by, and we grew older and our lives drifted apart (while his demons and mine grew) we communicated less and less, though invariably, when we did talk, we would touch on each of the subjects...including cooking.

Over the years, my brother adopted a kind of country bumpkin/biker look that confounded the rest of the family. He adopted the pose of the outsider and tended to live up to the "family black sheep" persona. After a while, even his speech patterns shifted toward a rural-rough-edged mannerism that was completely contrary to how we were raised. He became an Oakland Raiders fan and thus tended to adopt certain speech patterns. I still understood his words though, because I was listening with that eager "little brother" ear that yearned so for his approval and recognition.

That's why I was thinking of him tonight. Why, when I was cooking a chili-lime seasoned salmon with picatta sauce, herbed rice and peach-strawberry-blue cheese fruit salad I was listening with my "little brother" ears for his voice, standing behind me saying,

"My boy can cook."

God how I wish I could hear him say that.

Break the silence

2008-06-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

It whispers

But not as the soft susurration

Of a breathless lover’s sigh

It whispers

As the fiend in the shadows

Hissing secrets so dread to hear

Yes

It whispers

Yet we can scream against the silence

And force the fiend from the shadows

Yes

It whispers

But our voices raised are fierce

For we scream with the voices lost

Yes

It whispers

But we can break the silence

With the fury of our hope

Dedicated to those who have been touched by Ovarian Cancer

Support the efforts of the NOCC and other such organizations

Facebook, Privacy, and Common Sense

2008-06-01T10:53:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago, a friend talked me into getting my own Facebook account when I mentioned that looking at my 17 year old niece's My Space account felt like hanging around a schoolyard. Sure, Facebook is a bit more grown up, but it is still geared toward the younger, Web 2.0 hip crowd in their 20s. The next step up from a hot singles bar. Again, not a scene that I was particularly interested in getting involved in, though to give it the old college try, I did check out some other friend's Facebooks.

What I found was a dizzying array of strange little surveys, odd games of cyber tag (Vampires) and innumerable pictures of friends, or pictures posted by friends usually of the host in some type of compromising position (drunk, passed out, drinking, undressed...all of the above). Sure, it all looks like fun and games and that everyone is living out one big extended frat party for everyone to see and enjoy.

My question is, do you really want your life to be portrayed in this way to the world. Sure its fun to party and get goofy and do foolish things that you may regret later in more sober moments. But aren't those types of memories best left to reminiscing with old friends in the privacy of your living room? As opposed to say sitting in front of an interviewer for that big grown-up type job that you are yearning for.

The fact is that employers and others with a vested interest in finding out more about the moral fiber and personal responsibility of their applicant are all surfing the net as well. This type of background check is becoming increasingly common and before long will pretty much be standard operating procedure for the interview process.

Your resume may be all sparkling clean and proper, glittering with good schools, recommendations and experience, but when that gets paired with those pictures of you downing jello shots with your underwear on your head, well, the glitter on the old resume kind of flakes off.

I read today of a 27-year old special ed teacher in Florida who is now in trouble because parents found his Facebook page that states "I'm 27 years old and horny as hell" and that he is " an A+++ in bed". While certainly commendable in some circles, I doubt seriously that the PTA is one.

I think that the main truth that may emerge from the Web 2.0 social networking movement is that NOTHING DIES ON THE INTERNET. Once it is out there, it is out there forever. Oh sure there are companies that will do a purge of all your unwanted internet data, for a hefty fee, but maybe there is another, cheaper alternative that could do the trick. A little something called "Personal Responsibility."

If you don't post those underwear-headgear-jello-shot photos in the first place, then they won't come back and haunt you later. Basically, just because you can, doesn't mean that you should.

Driving Jaguars in Marin

2008-05-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Marin County California, it happens to be one of the wealthiest counties in the country. This is a fact that I have been aware of for the entire time that I have grown up in it. It is wealthy for a number of reasons: it's proximity to San Francisco; it's beautiful landscape; its temperate weather and it's sublime aura...all of which make it one of the ideal places for people outside of Marin and California to target as THE place that they want to live to demonstrate that THEY have indeed made it in life. The problem is, that for those of us who did actually grow up here in modest suburbia, living here has , for all intents and purposes, become financially impossible.

Yes I still live her, but I have rented all my adult life and the prospect of me ever being able to afford any of the freakishly overpriced homes here is less than anorexic to non-existent. So why do I stay? Why have I stayed? Simple, it is home. This is where my family is, where my roots truly are and where I have found solid and gainful employment all of these years.

Sure I could move away from the place that everyone seems to want to move to, but where would I go? Stick a finger in a map and hope for the best?

Well, thats a subject for another blog. This blog entry is about the kind of people who live here and have the money to buy expensive, high performance cars, though they have no right or reason to drive them.

Unfortunately, the median age of the residents in Marin has crept higher and higher due to a combination of long term residents who still live here because they bought their houses in the 60s and 70s and newer, old residents who are usually the only ones who can actually afford to buy new homes here (at the inflated prices).

So, I would say that the median age of the residents in Marin now approaches 60+. Now I have nothing against older people. I know several, and I will be a member of that same category myself in ...well in a decade and a half or so. No, my problem is those self-same older folks who have made it to their golden years with an over abundance of discretionary income who believe that they need to spend that income on purchasing a Jaguar.

I know, a Jaguar is a lovely high performance car that is legendary for its speed and handling. I would LOVE to drive one myself, but I happen to be a part of the Honda Civic set so such luxuries are currently beyond my enjoyment.

However, that doesn't minimize my annoyance at these elders who have purchased one of these fine automobiles for the soul purpose of put-putting to and from the Whole Foods so that they can buy their organic Metamucil.

When I am stuck behind one of these grey-headed traffic-constipates is driving ahead of me in their $90,000 auto, I do tend to entertain thoughts of intentional rear-end ramming and car-jacking for no other reason than to steal the car and drive away at speeds that suit the design and performance standards of the car.

I had the mis-fortune of once owning an Austin Marina, which is a rediculous excuse for an automobile. Nothing about the car worked as it should, and I often had to take it to the only British Motor Car mechanic in town to repair. Fortunately, this gentleman took pity on me and usually did the repairs at a reduced cost. I am certain that one of his motivations for doing so was the fact that his shop was always filled to capacity with a number of Jaguars. He used to shake his head and say that the worst thing that you could do to a Jaguar was drive it to and from the store. The thing is designed to drive at 120 miles per hour, anything less is an insult and this car is very proud and doesn't suffer such indignities lightly.

So, I suppose that it is some solace to me to know that the drivers of these glacially driven Jaguars must frequently suffer the expensive attention of highly specialized mechanics. But honestly, I would much rather give in to my road-rageous fantasies and drive the things like they were meant to be driven.

Sigh...now get the hell out of my way!!!!

Pomegranates

2008-05-04T12:33:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago I discovered pomegranates.

OK, no I didn't discover them, I mean they were already there, and had been for thousands of years. But being that they were new to my own cooking repertoire, they were new to me. They are a wonderfully healthy and tasty fruit that require a certain amount of dedication and creativity to really enjoy.

They are beautiful and messy (the bane of clean white shirts everywhere) but the arils look like rubies and really are quite lovely when released from their protective rind. And, once they are released, what do you do with them? Most of the recipes that I have seen seem to revolve around using the whole arils in some sort of mixture with other things, or sprinkling them on salads. Sure POM has taken great strides in marketing pomegranate juice in any number of varieties, but really, the juice is still left inside the aril where it may be a tangy little treat, but it doesn't do much to participate in a recipe as a full fledged member of the flavor pool.

So I set about finding ways of extracting the juice and meat from the arils so that it could be used as a sauce ingredient. After several attempts I worked out the following method for extraction:

Open the pomegranates under water in a large bowl and then extract the arils beneath the surface of the water as well. Just let them sink or float in the water until you are done (hint, make the water luke warm so as to reduce the effect of cold water on your hands as the extraction takes a bit of time)

Once all the arils have been extracted, remove the pieces of rind from the water and then pour the remaining water and arils through a strainer.

Then pour the arils into a food processor (save out a handful for garnish and finishing) and grind the arils into a lovely ruby mash. Each aril is a combination of juice capsule and seed, the seed is the problem as it really doesn't add any flavor and it's small size is rather unpleasant to eat on its own. Using the food processor separates the juice capsule from the seed very effectively.

Next pour the mash into a strainer that is resting over a bowl, then use a flexible spatula to scrape the mash through the strainer so that the juice and as much of the meat gets squeezed into the bowl. After you have done the primary scraping, make sure to scrape the residue from the underside of the strainer as much of the meat and pulp clings there and you definitely want to get that into the juice in the bowl below.

You can use a touch of white wine to extract even more of the meat from the remaining seeds in the strainer.

Once you have gotten all the meat and juice off of the underside of the strainer, you can then throw the remaining seeds away. (I will keep working on some way to use these remains).

The bowl will now be filled with a pulpy ruby red liquid that will now be your base.

The wonderful thing about using this base is that it stands up delightfully well in many types of sauces, especially in reduction sauces that often separate at the most inconvenient moments (like right before serving your masterpiece dinner!). Not our hearty little pomegranate sauce. Nope this stuff works with you like it is really glad to be opened up and released from its little ruby-jeweled shell, like a beauty queen who also happens to be a member of MENSA ...this stuff deserves to be taken seriously and appreciates it when you get over it's natural attractiveness.

Next up, basic sauces to make with pomegranates.

Losing Salt and Discovering Flavor

2008-05-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize just what kind of a cooking rut I had fallen into until I suddenly had to give up one of the key ingredients in all my recipes, salt. I had been cooking for years, and had, like many seat-of-the-pants cooks, fallen into a tried and true routine of spices and dishes. You know what I mean, those recipes and flavors that you can always rely on. Sure, you can mix them up and branch out from your core team, but never too far.

My team was generally Italian-American. I went through Italian seasoning mix, garlic, green onions at a pretty even clip, and of course, there was always salt rounding everything out and making sure that all those spices played nicely with each other. Once in a while, I'd saute in a little pepper, some cajun spice, and on a wild night, we'd go for the Jerk seasoning.

The dishes rotated through a regular cycle of pastas, picattas, pomegranate and grilled steaks. I stayed with chicken, salmon, turkey, steak, the occasional tofu and pork loin. All this worked fine, because all that does work fine together. You really can't go wrong with a mix of basil,oregano,garlic,thyme,rosemary,salt and pepper. It just works on so many things, but after a lot of years, it gets stale and ...dare I say it, boring. At least for the cook.

But when my girlfriend was told to go on a salt-free diet, something clicked in me. Suddenly all my old standards seemed incomplete and inadequate. You may have read some of my early posts regarding rushing out and finding new spices and no-salt options, however, what I have rediscovered is my joy at using fresh herbs in everything I prepare. Suddenly my dishes are bursting with multifaceted tastes that are exciting and new and dangerous (at least to my safe little flavor realm). Suddenly my taste buds are waking up and digging out from beneath the layers of salt that have been coating them for years.

And with the new flavors I am trying new combinations, stretching my imagination in regard to what I want to cook next. Before this change, I would try and yank out some old standard the moment I got home, going through the motions ;until I could get it on the table and consumed...but now, my day is filled with thoughts of what I am going to make, how I will prepare it, how will the flavors mix and blend, where the new tastes will lead me, what new combination will reveal a new joy.

Truly losing my favorite spice has opened new doors of flavor and excitement.

Cooking Therapy

2008-04-30T06:16:00.000-07:00

For a long time, I have been able to gauge the stressfulness of my day by the complexity of the recipe that I create when I get home. There is a direct correlation between the amount of chopping, stirring, braising and general work involved in a recipe and the amount of *stuff* that I have endured during the day.

So bear that in mind when you hear what we had for dinner last night. I wanted to have salmon again. Salmon is a good reliable fish that has its own nice flavor but doesn't tend to overpower anything with its presence. Essentially, you always know that you are eating salmon, you just don't have to have it beat you in the skull with its presence.

Of course, being that I live in the overfished and polluted waters of the San Francisco Bay area, I have to rely on buying either farmed salmon or alaskan salmon...either of which is fine for my purposes (as I usually like to do some sort of sauce) and the fact that I don't care to spend half my paycheck for the honor of purchasing a "wild" salmon fillet.

I was looking for contrast and something different (that involved lots of prep and chopping...it was indeed one of those days) so I started out pouring a little olive oil into a shallow pyrex and then loaded the oil with a lot of salt-free cajun-creole spice, lime juice and no-salt and garlic powder. I then lay the fillet skin-side up into the pyrex and let it sit for awhile so that it would soak up the spices and get well coated with a thick layer of the stuff.

Before removing the fillet, I heated a little salt-free butter in a saute pan, making sure to let the pan get very hot before removing the fillet and placing in face down in the saute pan. I let it sit there for about 5 minutes, the intent being not to cook it, but to sear in the cajun/creole spice layer and blacken it. I then pulled out the fillet and placed it skin-side down on a baking rack and shoved it into the over to bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. The top was a nice evenly seared black.

I then diced some pineapple, mango and raspberries into small pieces and marinated them in a tiny amount of lime juice and balsamic. While the salmon cooked I prepped some brown rice with salt-free chicken bouillon, a generous amount of fresh cut herbs, mushrooms, no-salt, crushed garlic and scallions.

When the salmon was done, I removed it and layered the pineapple-mango-raspberry mix on top, and then served it with the rice and some sautéed spinach. The contrast of the cajun-creole and the sweet topping worked nicely, bringing out a savoriness in both that didn't hide the salmon, just perked it up.

So enjoy the fruits of my lousy day.

The Snapper Experiment

2008-04-25T22:59:00.000-07:00

OK, salmon is all well and good, but it was time to branch out. This no-salt regime has given me a real challenge and, while it is fun, it is also a little dangerous. Albeit not running fullspeed down a heavily wooded hillside dangerous, but more, "you really going to eat that?" dangerous. I mean, it's still just food right? Pretty much normal, American style food...nothing too outrageous like fried grubs over a mud-wasp pate.

Still I am breaking out of my own rut here and venturing into semi uncharted waters, at least for me...hence the snapper. Red snapper is a lovely dense fish with a mild natural flavor and a toughness that can stand up to a lot of different cooking styles. It takes flavor pretty well, especially when you let that flavor ride in on the acid in lemon and/or lime juice.

I started out with a light wheat-flour and herb dusting and a quick sear to brown the outside. Then I put it into bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. A couple days before, we had gone to a Mexican restaurant where we had salmon with a salsa on top. It was nice and I wanted to try my hand at something similar.

I chopped tomatoes and avocado, and then made a marinate of freshly chopped basil, oregano, garlic, lemon thyme and green onions. I added some red and mild yellow peppers along with no-salt, seasoned pepper, olive oil, lemon and lime juice and some balsamic vinegar. I mixed all of that with the tomato-avocado mix and let it sit while the snapper baked.

When the snapper was done I spooned the tomato-avocado mix over the fillets and served with some slices of fresh pineapple and a light side salad. It was pretty tasty, though the balsamic did lend a sweetness that wasn't particularly to my personal taste. Next time I would probably cut back a little on the balsamic and maybe kick of the heat a little with some spicier chilis.

Next stop, everyone's dreaded vegetable, brussels sprouts. My mom hated them so I never had them growing up, but I am going to try and Italian style saute. Wish me luck.

Piccata Sauce

2008-04-24T21:39:00.000-07:00

Sure you are thinking, chicken, veal or salmon piccata is not what you would consider the most healthy type of sauce, and , of course, you would be right. BUT ITS SOOOO GOOD. But the one thing about Piccata sauce is that it really doesn't call for any extra salt, it's really just white wine, butter and lemon, and of course capers which we'll get to later. So, white wine and lemon are relatively salt free, actually lemon and wine are pretty salt neutral (unless its lousy wine, and why are you cooking with rotgut anyway?)

So the problem really is the butter, and yes, you do need butter to make a real and decent piccata sauce. So I have always used a high fat content butter to make the sauce, usually the Challenge European Style butter. The high fat content in the butter is what makes the sauce set up so nice and creamy and ...well delicious.

But, I had always seen the Challenge European Style butter come in two forms, salted and UNSALTED. Bingo! I went to the store and checked and the unsalted type lists 0mgs Sodium on the label, so I grabbed me some and headed home.

The first time I tried it was in a Sole Dore. It worked well so I figured that it would have to work for the Piccata, and if push came to salty shove I could always compensate with the no salt to bring up the flavor. I was excited.

The keys to a good piccata sauce is timing and courage. Timing in that it must be given a chance to reduce properly, and courage because you have to be willing to hang in there to the last possible moment of perfect silky smoothness before the entire sauce breaks and you have a clear lemony butter sauce that just looks pitiful and embarrassing. So the challenge was on.

1/3 stick of the butter, the juice of one lemon, and a bit of wine...how much is a bit? depends on your mood and your proclivities, you decide, but it is essential that you get enough in there to impart that certain wine essence as well as allowing the alcohol in the wine to dissolve off, and in the process impart it's alchemical magic to the remaining ingredients. Throw them into a sauce pan and turn up the heat. Piccata needs high heat and a lot of stirring, constant stirring, especially while the sauce is boiling. The more stirring the better the sauce. The only problem that this presents is that anything else you may be cooking will have to wait. Piccata demands attention like an ADHD child with a flamethrower...you have to watch it all the time or else your house is toast and your sauce is devolved into burnt separated butter that your guests will politely thank you for before they surreptitiously spit the offending morsels into their napkins.

If you are like me, you cook restaurant style, fast, clean and on time. Everything comes out at the same time which requires planning and timing. I braise and bake the chicken breast first, then while it is baking I prepare the vegetables and rice, or salad (tonight was a lovely avocado and tangelo mix with a homemade (salt-free) vinaigrette...mmmmm.)

So, like Hitchcock making a movie, I did 90% before I even turned on the oven...OK, I turned on the oven to heat it up, but while it was heating I prepped the herbs and veggies, poured the wine, butter and lemon into a saucepan...and dropped the chicken breasts into the ziplock of wheatflour and herbs. The veggies were then mixed with the herbs and oil and a touch of vinegar and set aside, the chicken was braised on some high heat and then moved onto a roasting rack and shoved into the oven for 30 minutes, and the sauce, well it would have to wait.

See, the waiting is where the courage comes in. You can't make piccata sauce ahead of time, it has to be last minute, coming to creamy life at the last instant as the oven timer goes off, the vegetables are reaching saute perfection and everything is coming together like a hippie harmonic convergence. Miss a beat, get a phone call, start a fight with your girlfriend and you might as well let the ADHD kid have his way with the flamethrower.

Well, aside from doing some double handed work with stirring the sauce and sauteing the vegetables, everything came together just fine. The sauce set up perfectly, smoothing into that pale yellow ambrosia that just coats the chicken lovingly, and avoids running too far away across the plate. I mean who wants slutty sauce that just slides up all over everything. You want sauce with dignity, restraint and class. The vegetables have their own identity and while they may speak highly of the lovely piccata sauce, they don't care to just jump into the rut together unless they are properly introduced.

So what of the capers? Well, there is no avoiding the sodium in capers because of the brine that they are pickled in, but you can reduce the damage. Pour a handful into your palm and then rinse them in the tap before you add them to your sauce (and piccata is just not piccata without capers). At least by rinsing you remove the excess brine-sodium clinging to the little peppercorns. They still get to impart their tangy comment to the sauce, while overall the dish was flavorful and low sodium.

The Discovery of Hidden Sodium

2008-04-22T23:12:00.000-07:00

To start with, it is very difficult to find any packaged foods that are not packed with ridiculous amounts of sodium. Sometimes the amounts are so ludicrous that the labels have to fraction down the displayed amounts so that they don't make people start weeping in the aisles of Safeway. This fractioning down is done cleverly by the use of "per serving" listings. So that nice can of Campbell's Tomato soup that says it has 800 mgs of sodium per serving seems high, but semi-tolerable until you read the fine print and find out that Campbell's believes that you can get 2.5 servings out of one can, which translates to that little can actually having 2000 mgs of sodium (800 x 2.5=2000). The USDA recommendation for daily sodium intake is 2400 mgs (usually these USDA recommendations are listed right on the label as well...convenient huh?)

So when my girlfriend was recently told to go onto a No-salt diet, we faced quite a challenge, one that re-ignited my interest in cooking. I am the first to admit that I have a "salt-tooth" big time. But I also love my girlfriend so I set out to see what could be done. First stop, the grocery store.

There are actually a lot of salt-free spices in the supermarket. I found Italian, Mexican, Cajun/Creole and poultry seasoning mixes all salt-free. In addition I discovered crystallized Lime, cumin and chili powder.

I was very excited. Suddenly there was a whole world bursting open to me outside of my safe little realm of salt, garlic, basil, oregano, lemon and seasoned salt...oh yeah, and pomegranate (more on that in posts).

OK, so what to cook first?