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Difficult to say…

March 18, 2012
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I started this blog because a friend of mine one day popped up in my inbox with this idea.

He sent me, seemingly out of nowhere, a Wikipedia link to “the blue plate special.”

He said something to the effect of, “I have a feeling you need to know this; I think you can do something with it.”

I had been struggling for a way in to write about myself, because it does not come naturally to me. He had pushed me: “Everyone has a blog about themselves, you write one too!”

These are now extremely painful memories, since my friend committed suicide, and I only found out about it six months after it happened.

There are endless questions, some guilt, some blame at him, at me, at circumstances, at life, and a lot of anger. I have never before known someone near my age—he was only in his 50s—to commit suicide, and now I am even more ambivalent than ever about writing this blog. One could say that perhaps I should continue it in memory to him, since it was his idea, but in fact, one of the things he and I disagreed about was the interest anyone can, or should, have, in the day-to-day ramblings of irritation that this blog too often became.

If you know someone who has committed suicide, and you felt close to them, as I felt to him, then I think you’ll understand. His belief was that people are interested in what other people have to say about aging and getting older, and how one handles that. I can’t tell you how bitterly ironic that thought is to me now. It has taken me almost two months to be able to write about his death, because to write about it is to make it real, it is to inscribe it, it is to be forced, by the action of my own words, to believe it’s true. I have been in denial ever since I found out. I still find it hard to believe.

So, Henry…. these thoughts are for you, but I can’t continue this blog without you, my friend. There is very little point, since you will never read it again, you will never critique it or give me praise, you weren’t alive to read any of the hidden messages I left for you about Paris or Hemingway last summer. It is dreadful having to write on these subjects without you as my reader and my audience.

Regretfully, I will stop, and go back to writing the other subjects that irritated him so much when he was alive, about the things of interest to me, that were not of interest to him.

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest….

my dear friend… 

Henry Edmond Sauvageot, 1955 – 2011

Wearing his Saint Exupéry "little prince" scarf in New York, my friend Henry, a dear man, and a good writer who deserved so much more from life

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Blue Plate Special Soup

December 8, 2011
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Blue Plate Special Soup, made tonight. People who've seen this think it looks a lot like Maggot Soup, which I vehemently deny.

Here’s a good recipe I made up tonight, and since it has no real name, I have given it the name I think is most appropriate for the way I live, which is to cobble stuff together and hope for the best. 

During the important process of naming it, I tried ‘leftover soup’, but that was too boring. It makes you think you’re getting something that should have been thrown away two days ago; ‘steak soup’—too grand; it’s got some steak in it, but not much; ‘spaghetti sauce soup’—too weird; you shouldn’t mix your food forms when creating a recipe name. For example, when I hear ‘baked potato soup’ my culinary toes curl.

My daughter, upon seeing the picture of the soup taken with my iPhone-wannabe, dubbed it Maggot Soup, but that’s just mean. She’s always been dubious about my cooking. I don’t know why. She’s still alive, after all.

So, as soon as I sat down to type out the ingredients, it became the Blue Plate Special Soup, a mulligatawny stew of delightful ingredients inspired by Italian wedding soup, one of my favorites.

This particular soup sums up my approach to cooking on a day like today, when it’s cold and grey, I have no desire to go out to buy ingredients, and I have plenty of compatible-enough ingredients waiting for some imagination on my part. This is not as difficult as it sounds. You just have to know what likes to be with what, and for how long they can tolerate each other’s company.

So here goes. Try this idea when you’re stuck with leftovers (but not just any leftover; the ingredients have to at least have something to offer each other, otherwise you really will end up with Maggot Soup).

Does this look more appetizing, or does it still look like Maggot Soup?

6-8 cups of homemade broth. Mine was made from leftover Thanksgiving turkey, a large lamb bone, vegetables, and herbs. Then this is strained, everything but the broth is tossed, et voila, you have homemade broth to do with what you will.

Broth goes well with certain things that want to be thrown into it. One of the things that won’t mind being thrown into broth is a half-bag (or so) of leftover navy beans (or other white bean). I had a half-bag from some stupid earlier recipe which didn’t require an entire bag of beans. So I left this half-bag (approximately one cup of white beans) to soak overnight until they plumped up, and mixed them into the simmering broth this morning.

Then, there was the approximately 2 cups of thick organic spaghetti sauce leftover from a few days ago, which wanted to become an Italian-inspired wedding soup (or minestrone), but didn’t quite know how to pull it off.  This was comprised of chopped up and then sautéed chicken-mozzarella sausage; whole organic sun-dried tomatoes in oil and herbs; a jar of organic heirloom tomato sauce, one cup of some red wine or other (doesn’t matter what, really), plus sliced shallots and garlic sautéed gently along with the sausages, and lots of virgin olive oil to sauté in.

At the end of the spaghetti-sauce-making process, which takes somewhere between a half-hour and hour (let’s call it 45 minutes to stew properly, so all the flavours become friendly) you might end up with a very thick sauce indeed, and if you haven’t made sufficient pasta, you can count on left-over sauce. There’s always too much to throw away and not enough to bother making more pasta for.

So you throw this conglomeration into your stock with the beans, and let them all simmer together while the beans soften. This will take awhile; probably a few hours, since we’re not going anywhere, it’s cold out, and where are you rushing to, anyway? You could throw in a bay leaf if you like, but if you’re using leftovers that were adequately seasoned, you probably won’t have to add any new seasoning to this soup. It will be very flavourful on its own.

At this point in my soup-making process I had a decision to make, but it wasn’t difficult. I had a leftover grilled steak bone with plenty of meat remaining from an enormous 22 oz. T-bone steak dinner. I had had the foresight to include in my doggy bag the steamed spinach and leftover oven-seared potatoes as well (restaurants serve way too much food a lot of the time), and so, after chopping the leftover steak and throwing it and the entire bone into the soup, the vegetables followed, giving the soup some necessary greenery (and a little more starch to thicken it).

At the point when the soup starts to thicken and the beans soften, you can add approximately 1-2 cups of elbow macaroni (I had, inexplicably, two mostly-empty boxes with a cup of macaroni each sitting in my pantry). You let these simmer until they’re done, about 20 minutes or so (any more and they get mushy) and then you eat the soup, which should be done by now, with grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese on top.

If the soup becomes too thick, just add more broth to it.

The soup is now divine, but it only attained this state of perfection because it comes from a long line of previously cooked food, all of which could have been thrown away, but was instead rescued and put to work.

Mangia!

So here are the real ingredients:

  • 6-8 cups broth
  • Tomatoes, herbs, red wine, chicken-mozzarella sausage (chopped and sautéed), a jar of heirloom tomato sauce, all cooked together, leaving you with a thick sauce or paste, if you will.
  • Cooked and seasoned T-bone steak, the meat cut into pieces, bone included for added flavour and because there’s still meat attached to the bone, but the only way to get to it is to let it simmer in the pot.
  • One cup steamed spinach, drained, obviously.
  • One half-cup (or more, if you like) oven-roasted vegetables (I had potatoes, although you could easily use green beans, chopped up asparagus, anything that will hold up over hours of simmering and won’t become mush).
  • One cup (approximately) dried navy beans, soaked overnight and drained.
  • One to two cups (approximately) elbow macaroni pasta noodles.
  • As much grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese as you like on top.
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from → Diversions, Enlightenment, Self-acceptance, Self-esteem, Stuff, Truth

Do You Hear What I Hear?

December 4, 2011
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Oh god: The annual assault on the senses begins

Why am I always the only person annoyed by things others take completely for granted?

While opening my front door earlier this evening, in the hopes of convincing the cat that he really does want to go out, I was forced, once again, to ‘appreciate’ Christmas muzak filtering loudly across the neatly vacuumed lawns of suburbia. Some years ago, a manic neighbor decided that we should all participate in the annual wonder of “Here Comes Santa Claus” and hundreds of other Christmas carols as they lift in irritating crescendo from this guy’s front porch stereo system, reaching their screechy pinnacle of volume on Christmas day. 

The day after Christmas, mercifully, Mr. Noisemaker turns off the free, repetitive, unasked-for concert, because Christmas, as we all know here in middle America, where consumerism has been raised to a fine art, shuts its doors definitively on December 26th, when we move into ‘end-of-year’ sales in the hopes of squeezing whatever possible profit still remains from the Season of Excess. Christmas, whose meaning exists solely in relationship to healthy sales, officially ends when you stop making a profit on candy canes.

We have begun our sad decline into the last days of America, which I predict will end on New Years’ Eve 2032, when America will be up for grabs in an online e-bay bidding war, which will of course be won by China, owner of most of our Treasury bonds. 

Before America is finally sold on that dark day, however, we are going to be forced to listen to idiotic neighbors blare Mr. Christmas Lights and Sounds of Christmas from their front porch to ‘entertain’ the cul-de-sac audience. Now, where this audience is, I don’t know. It’s the 4th of December, it’s 38˚; everyone’s indoors. There’s no one out there to entertain with your excess and lack of taste, not even my cat, who sniffed the air and twitched his tail in high dudgeon, telling me in no uncertain terms he doesn’t like muzak or near-freezing temperatures, thank you very much.

Though you might think that my cat and I are unfriendly curmudgeons who lack appreciation of Christmas music, in fact, I am responding to a much larger issue reflected by the state of mind of America in general, as seen through the behavior of people who live in cul-de-sacs and want to impress their neighbors through acts of unnecessary excess. 

In The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream, John F. Wasik warns that suburbia represents an unsustainable lifestyle, wherein the habit of entertaining others through spectacle (think: faux old-world fountains; Hawaiian ponds stocked with koi; tennis courts, and other large architectural marvels intended to amaze) means we have ‘upgraded’ our lifestyle without having to leave home. Who needs to see Rome when you’ve got the Trevi fountain in your front yard?

In cul-de-sac heaven, foyers were transformed from mere vestibules to grand portals of paradise. Private spaces became statements of pure ego and the subjugation of nature. Why venture out into the wilderness to see a waterfall or hot springs when it could be produced in your very own shower or bathtub?

Following this ego-driven logic, the cul-de-sac mentality attains its purpose when, during the competition the days after Thanksgiving have become, extravagantly-lit houses are capable of being spotted from space. “Upgrading one’s lifestyle … meant producing a spectacle, something that would entertain you and your friends … owners wanted to project the image that their home was a must-see.” Also known as ‘house lust,’ this “nearly loony infatuation with the image homeowners hoped to create” has taken over the burbs, if my neighbors are anything to go by.

One of the problems with this mentality is that it betrays a fragile underlying ideology based on an almost religious belief in ownership, and the insecurity that comes of being a country comprised of homeless immigrants. Ever since Jimmy Stewart articulated this myth in It’s A Wonderful Life, that the desire for his own home is buried ‘deep in the race,’ Americans have bought the “sacred goal”—the dream of home ownership, with all its egoistic excesses—hook, line and sinker. 

This is a non-sustainable lifestyle. I'm warning you now.

In the ongoing, spiraling crescendo of insanity that the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas sales has become, each year brings a new twist on the old desire to bedeck one’s house with ever-grander illuminations. The bar is set higher and higher, and, at some point, muzak-for-all was added to the annual front-yard Macy’s extravaganza that has become the cul-de-sac Christmas.

As long as America overspends recklessly, with no thought for the future, it will continue to devolve.  As I write this, muzak fills the cul-de-sac, presumably entertaining the squirrels and backyard dogs, since normal people are indoors where it’s warm. I imagine the squirrels’ furry heads beating in time to the rhythm of “O, Come All Ye Faithful,” an animated Chip and Dale musical going on outside my front door—although it has to be said, most squirrels have trouble with the English language. You’d have better luck with Border Collies; with the intelligence of 12 year-old children, these dogs can more reliably be trained to understand Christmas lyrics.

I expect muzak is part of this extravaganza, don't you?

When I moved into the cul-de-sac, some ten years ago or more, I came because my parents, raised in a more innocent time, promised me that only quiet, tired, boring old people live in suburbia. This was a truth they devoutly believed. Times have changed, though, and suburbia is now implicated in creating a new dimension of crazy-making behavior. People here are in almost total denial about too many things, only one of which is how annoying they are, and how spendthrift their endless desire for more.

They forget that suburbia contains the hidden word ‘urban.’ Here in suburbia, we in fact live in the cheek-by-jowl urban landscape, making the lyrics of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and its plea for world peace all the more poignant, when you live in a land of ego, excess and greed.

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The Ironic British Take on The Iconic American Diner

November 29, 2011
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Fine dining, no. Comfort food, yes.

America is, apparently, unique in our institution of The Diner, aka The Wayside Canteen.

According to the British, the closest they get to the diner experience is at the pub, although the only real similarity I can think of is the quality of the food.

A ‘diner’ is not, however, synonymous with ‘bad food’; it has more to do with enormous quantities of meat and potatoes served quickly, all day long. Haute cuisine it is not, of course, but with the reputation for the ‘bottomless cup of coffee’ and huge American-size portions, I suppose comfort might be implicit.

Since they do not slather everything in gravy, their food is simply not as comforting as American diner food, and I think that’s the attraction for countries outside of the States: we provide comfort, American style, in a manner they have not yet found a way to replicate. One similarity with pub grub is that American diner food is heavy on carbohydrates and salts. One dissimilarity with pub food is that at least America makes a stab at providing a vegetable, albeit not the roasted tomato skirting the edge of the fry-up you come to expect in the greasy English spoon caff (British for ‘café’). For the Brits, their overcooked ‘veg’ is usually off to one sad side of the plate, easy to ignore until it’s too late; you’re full from the bangers and cold, white toast, and never quite get around to the desperately tired-looking fried mushrooms or yellowing tomato slice. Now that I think about it, no wonder the British wax lyrical about American diners, since diner grub isn’t half-bad, actually.

This is not America, no.

The British are as fascinated by our lowly diner as we are with their Queen, it seems, since they have begun a BBC Four Radio show discussing the history and meaning of the diner, from a cultural perspective, of course. This might sound like the highbrow version of trying to give universal meaning to a slab of meatloaf and a scoop of mashed potatoes served on a plate, swimming in brown gravy; but in fact, commentator Stephen Smith manages to ennoble the diner, giving it a place of importance in American history:

…[T]he diner is the last vestige of a vital part of the American psyche—the frontier. Like the Dodge City saloon it is a place where strangers are thrown together, where normal rules are suspended and anything can happen. And it is this crackle of potentially violent and sexual energy that have drawn so many artists to the diner, and made it not a convenient setting but an engine room of 20th century American culture.

On a more prosaic note, the British explain their obsession for American culture, and, specifically, the American diner, by providing historical facts (very helpful for my purposes, but written in British-speak, just FYI):

So why are these kerbside kitchens a landmark of US culture?

The first such establishment opened in 1872 in Providence, Rhode Island – a “night lunch wagon” to serve those who worked and played long after the restaurants had shut at 20:00.

Its mix of open-all-hours eating and cheap, homemade food proved a hit, and the formula has been repeated ever since.

Today the diner occupies a place in the American heartland. The closest British approximation is not a retro-chic replica diner where hip patrons eat gourmet burgers, but the local pub.

You can listen to an ongoing radio broadcast about the history of the American diner here, but be warned; BBC Four doesn’t leave their broadcasts up for very long, so if you’re interested, you have to listen to them now, since soon they will be gone.

Also, if you want to cook “American style”, the British have been collecting recipes for our most mundane foods, like pancakes. When I’m in the States, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how pancakes are not a global food, but they aren’t, so other cultures end up revering them and, presumably, missing them when they can’t get them in their own country. I don’t remember ever being able to get a pancake in England, actually, so maybe American-style pancakes are more important to them than I knew, and they pine for them when they can’t get them, just like I pine for bangers and mash and the occasional haggis.

Five typical diner dishes (not all fried, surprisingly):

  • Pancakes with sausage
  • Eggs over-easy with home fries and toast
  • Cheeseburger deluxe
  • Turkey club
  • Meatloaf dinner

“It’s comfort food, made from recipes like Mom used to make,” says diner owner Otto Meyer (you’ll have to look at the BBC site for more from Mr. Meyer).

Comfort food ingredients. I don't see gravy anywhere on this chart.

A cup of joe

(It can be helpful having other cultures explain our own history to us, n’est-ce pas?)

  • US colloquialism for coffee
  • Origin unknown, says the OED
  • First recorded use in Jack Smiley’s 1941 book Hash House Lingo on the slang of roadside diners
  • Other diner lingo included “dog soup” for water and “sea dust” for salt
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from → Diversions, Enlightenment, Material goods, Stuff, Things Older Than I Am, Travel, Truth

The Elephant in the Room

November 4, 2011
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The Elephant in the Room: Big As Life And Twice as Fat

There was a time, which lasted far too long, when I was in denial about the impact my weight was having on my health. I used to say I was the healthiest fat person I knew. Ha. I was an idiot.

Maybe there are people who can cruise through their entire life looking like the Michelin Tire guy, without at least the threat of a medicine cabinet full of pills to keep them company through their waning years. I was not one of them. At the first sign of trouble, as with most things, I ran shrieking to the canebrake, because I had no intention of dying before the age of 50 from a heart attack.

So, I mended my errant ways, got off the hard drugs—the processed sugar and other white substances put here on this earth to tempt us to madness—and started loving vegetables in a way I did not know humans could feel for legumes. Yes, of course I dropped a bunch of weight, but the best news is that I might be healthy during my remaining years, until I’m hit by a bus, when none of my efforts to reform will amount to a hill of edamame.

I worked on ways to accept myself. I did not succeed.

The point is this: even though I was in almost complete denial, I was, at the same time, extremely embarrassed. I had not always carried extra rolls. At one time, I was quite svelte, actually, and my mother, her skinny ashes now scattered to the four winds, used to remind me of this fact often. So when I read that there are women vying for Fattest Mother of the Year Award, I was, to put it mildly, aghast. What happened to shame?

I spent many years feeling ashamed of what had happened to my body, and those were years when if I’d understood what sugar and carbohydrates do to my system, if a doctor had said to me “you are now officially on track for a heart attack and diabetes,” I honestly would have paid attention… but no one did. I wish they had; I wish a doctor had smacked me upside the head and gotten my attention, but in fact, it took a long series of mishaps involving broken bones and not being able to walk for a year, to teach me that I could do better than be a lard butt for the rest of my days.

Oh dear.

There is such an enormous premium placed on thinness in this society—it’s more than a health issue. It’s also a matter of self-esteem. I can honestly say that there were days when I didn’t want to leave my house due to my adipose tissue buildup. I was raised by a couple of relatively thin, narcissistic people who, like most in their generation, grew up ingesting whole milk, butter, eggs—all things people of my generation were taught to avoid.

When it turned out that in fact, what we should have been avoiding was the crap scientists added to perfectly good food, I think most of us started to figure out a) we’d been lied to by our parents’ generation, but that was nothing new and b) green beans taste pretty damned good if you’re going to die any minute from an embolism.

You’d be amazed how motivating being faced with a heart attack can be. For one thing, heart attacks hurt. Then there’s the Afterlife Social Stigma, which you can carry with you to the grave and beyond if you have an imagination and shame. You have to understand that in my imagination, I’m listening to gossip between the nurses after I’m dead. They’re rolling me off the hospital bed, onto the gurney, preparing to take my rotund form to the morgue. The scene goes something like this:

First nurse: (One of those thin ones you figure never ate a Snickers in desperation, not once): “Do you know what she died from?”

Second nurse: (Skinny, but she buys a box of Krispy Kremes after work every single day, the bitch): “No, what?”

First nurse: [Emits grunting noises from exertion of lifting dead weight; sighs, rolls dead weight onto gurney]: “She was only 52, and she keeled over from a heart attack!! At 52!! God, can you imagine?”

Second nurse: “Well, what do you expect? With flab around the middle? Everyone knows flab around the middle is a heart attack waiting to happen!”

And then the judging, knowing looks, the rolling eyes, the pointed reference to undue quantities of Krispy Kremes, the snide comments about my saggy breasts; the snickering. You get the picture.

Now, the women vying for the title of “World’s Fattest Fatty” apparently do not care about heart attacks, nor must they spend their time imagining nurse-vultures pecking over their bodies once they’re dead. I guess they live in the moment, because it only takes a moment to find something else to eat. Please do not send cards and letters; I know not all fat is about food, but come on. Most is.

I know fat-bashing is not politically correct, and I do not expect to be forgiven, but this is not about that extra 15 lbs. you can’t get rid of no matter how hard you (or I) try. I think we can admit, this is more serious than a few extra pounds that society will never quite accept. This is pathological behavior; it’s much more than odd. Their patent denial of everything we are taught to revere in this society, all the standards women are told to aspire to, makes me wonder what motivates these women, and what we might have to accept about fat, for those standards of thinness to nudge a little bit. These women claim not to be hurting anyone, but the extent to which they are hurting themselves is disturbing, to put it mildly.

I didn’t know you could be happy being fat, or that it was something to aspire to, and I’m left wondering if they will change the face of self-acceptance, or whether they are just rather obviously in denial, avoiding their very own elephant in the room.

It's so large, you'd think she'd see it...

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from → Anxiety, Ego, My aging body, psychology, Pure Vanity, Rants, Self-acceptance, Self-esteem, Women

I’m so old, even stewardesses feel sorry for me (via The Blue Plate Special)

September 21, 2011
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What with the new show about the defunct Pan Am coming on TV, I thought I’d reblog this post, which a bunch of guys from some flying club in Colorado or somewhere absolutely loved back in February when this was first posted. Stewardesses of the 1960s were young, wore short skirts, and chatted male passengers up, when they weren’t fluffing the guy’s pillows, rearranging his blanket, and refilling perfume bottles in the lavatories. It was a very different world, and if the TV show is accurate, it will show that even though those girls were fairly hard workers, I guess, they were really looking for husbands. If they make it appear as though they were doing anything else, they’ll be lying to you. Just warning you now.

I'm so old, even stewardesses feel sorry for me Okay: flight attendants, flight attendants. I hope you're happy. Jeeze. I've noticed that flight attendants are allowed to age now. This is a clever marketing gimmick, because I'm aging too, and flying has become so unpleasant that any tiny sop intended to calm me down is good for business. They pass me by, pushing their narrow silver carts down the aisle, and I watch to see if their joints work better than mine as they kneel and bend, their litt … Read More

via The Blue Plate Special

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I’m here to get away from you. Go home.

September 5, 2011
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Gamla Stan, Stockholm, more interesting to me than you are. Sorry.

In my younger years, I came across the term ‘brutti Americani,’ which means those horrible Americans who have such a terrible reputation in the rest of the world, for good reason. If you travel, you know who I’m talking about. They’re loud and they’re proud.

I encountered this dynamic repeatedly this past summer. Summer is the worst possible time to travel, because everyone, including people who don’t know how to travel, comes out of hiding from their boring suburban lives, equipped with Rick Steves’ guidebooks and sturdy walking shoes, ready to tackle the Unknown.

The Unknown includes basic etiquette you should have learned prior to leaving home, like: adapting to dress codes, learning how to modulate one’s voice, developing the ability to share seats that don’t belong to you in a crowded airport that is not your living room; not being shocked that other countries are possibly just as, if not more, advanced technologically, than we are, and my all-time favorite Ugly-American-While-Abroad Hobby, Giving Strangers Advice, aka: Telling Others How To Live Their Lives.

These skills are all apparently a huge challenge for those who have been insulated from the world since birth. Americans are uniquely good at remaining insulated, and when we leave our front porch, we want the rest of the world to provide us with only the challenges we’re ready for. This doesn’t leave the rest of the world a lot of wiggle room to be who they are, of course, but we don’t care. We’re here on the planet, like missionaries of old, to educate Foreigners in the error of their ways, and to reform them, so they’ll come around to our way of thinking about the supremacy of shopping malls and fast food.

American brutishness takes different forms, but it boils down to a pernicious inability to fit in to the culture you find yourself in. Now, this is an attitude I utterly deplore, as I have always lived by the tenet I was taught as a child growing up overseas: you are a guest in someone else’s country, behave yourself accordingly.

Paris and its amazing light. If you think you're more important than this, I've got news for you.

How do I deplore Americans when they’re abroad? Let me count the ways.

The woman in Paris at the corner of Des Invalides on Bastille Night during the fireworks who was dressed like she was about to roll craps in Vegas. I think she honestly believed she rivalled the simple elegance of Parisian women, who, when they are well dressed, don tailored clothes that adhere to their forms, but are never flashy or shiny. The overall impression I got in Paris is that if you’re wearing glitz, for god’s sake, keep it small and low to the body, and do not shine all over like a traffic light. Or a fireworks’ show, for that matter.

Another woman, this time at my lovely hotel in Paris, informing the staff, loudly, after the televised state funeral earlier that day for seven French soldiers who had given their lives for their country in Afghanistan and Iraq, how they had no business there, and should never have gone to war in the first place.

The woman in the airport in Dublin who, when I needed to sit down in a communal area, said, loudly to her husband, “Just look at that Steven! Would you just look at that!” I had pulled a seat toward me and sat in it, and when this woman started shrieking, I looked up from filling in my customs’ forms to see who was committing a federal crime in broad daylight, only to discover it was me.

Shocked at my own rudeness for needing to (briefly) use a communal seat in a communal area that was not in any way marked as “theirs,” since we were not actually in their living room at the time, I cried out, “Oh, is this seat yours? It was not in any way marked as ‘taken’, since we are not actually in your living room right now!” (Actually, I didn’t say that about the seat being taken; anyone with a brain could see the seat was not taken, except in their minds, which are small and narrow as the suburbs they come from in southwest Idaho or somewhere close to a pumpkin patch).

So the husband, as charming as the wife, mutters, with great forbearance and tolerance of my overweening rudeness, “No, no, don’t worry about it,” and pulls another seat into their magical circle, this time being smarter and wiser, marking it as “taken” with a suitcase. Good for him. He learned something new that day about how to comport yourself while traveling, something the rest of us learned in kindergarten.

Then the happy married couple muttered loudly about the third party they were waiting for, wondering, loudly, where she was. Within a few moments, I had filled out my customs’ form, and was on my way, as is typical in an airport, where nothing belongs to anyone and it’s no one’s front parlour and a chair is just a chair, it’s not part of the set of your personal drama.

A glimpse of Edinburgh Castle, while walking and not thinking about your problems.

Then there was the woman with a head scarf in the five star restaurant seated in the booth in front of me the night before I left Paris. I now know, from being forced to overhear her far-too-loud conversation with a quiet mouse of a dinner companion who kept her voice low and modulated, being from Europe and all, that the woman in question

a) lives in Paris, an expatriate who deplores loud Americans;

b) survived cancer, hence the headscarf;

c) survived a divorce, hence the cancer;

d) has no intention of ever returning to America due to deploring loud Americans but

e) has trouble making ends meet in Paris, so boy this five star restaurant is a wonderful treat, said with a large dollop of bitterness at the way her life has turned out.

I wanted to cry out, in umbrage: But you get to live in Paris, for god’s sake, shut up!

But I didn’t, because if I’m going to share my opinions with anyone, I prefer for it to be here, in private where only you can read my thoughts.

These are all things I didn’t need to know, but now I do, and I’m passing this knowledge on to you, because you know full well this blog is about umbrage, and traveling gives me plenty of it. Others get heartburn while rolling their suitcases over cobblestones; I get umbrage.

Then there was the woman traveling with her son in Gamla Stan who decided that their Italian waiter isn’t living the life she wants him to, and so he should move back to Italy. She told him this while he kept pouring glass after glass of some nice wine for her, allowing her to become ever more voluble.

I know all of this because, once again, I had the grave misfortune of being seated far too close to Americans abroad. I leave the States to get away from you people, and I wish you’d stay home, where you belong, since you bring far too much of yourselves with you when you travel. But I digress.

So the waiter is defending himself against this unwarranted attack and rude speculations on his life, his beliefs, his financial situation, his family history… he was very polite and countered all suggestions about how he really belongs back in Italy, and why wouldn’t he want to live there, it’s such a beautiful country… oh, except for those who actually are Italian and have to live in an economy that cannot support them.

As he said to this woman, in English, possibly his 3rd or 4th language, “I belong here in Sweden, where I can make a living. And all my family lives here.” You’d think that simple reality would shut her up, but no, the zeal of righteousness was fueled by copious amounts of alcohol, which he poured for her liberally. The irony was lost on her, but not on me, a casual observer. For her, Italy is only beautiful country, since she’s American and on vacation and all; his reality is of little importance to her. For him, she is yet another brutti Americani to take advantage of, since all that wine cost her a tidy sum, a fair amount of which went into his pocket in the form of the large tip she left him.

Then there was the overly zealous American on the train from Stockholm, who was shocked and amazed (“oh these guys!,” he expostulated, all shocked and amazed and condescending, but so fond of them and their cute little minds!) to find that Sweden a) has pull-down tray tables ON TRAINS! Who knew the Swedish could be so clever? and that b) the seats on trains can face toward the front OR the back of the train! Gosh these Swedish people are AMAZING in their ability to come up with innovations, aren’t they? Cause we all know that only Americans are innovative, right?

Autumn in Copenhagen, not a brutti Americani in sight, cause you all went home.

In fact, the plastic bag, those ubiquitous shopping sacks we are now trying to do away with here in the States, originated in Sweden back in the 60s. Just FYI. In other words, Sweden has been at the forefront of some innovative designs we in the States take completely for granted, and we should stop thinking we invented everything, cause we didn’t, and you have to stop having high-pitched epiphanies about how amazing and modern! other countries are, cause you’re making my brain tumor throb.

And here’s some history, written in Italian by an Italian person, who lets you know that the history of Italians in America has been no cake-walk. There’s a reason they leave their native land to live in places of economic prosperity, just like your forebears did in days of yore.

Here’s why overhearing other people’s conversations will drive you crazy. Now read all of this quietly, and if you’re reading this alone in some airport, for god’s sake, keep your opinions to yourself.

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from → Anxiety, Anything new and suspect, Complaining, Diversions, Ego, Enlightenment, Irksome things, Material goods, Pure Vanity, Rants, Self-acceptance, Self-esteem, Stuff, Technology, Travel, Truth

Writing to Persuade: Proven Techniques That Convince Others To Listen To You, Take You Seriously, And Change Their Minds

August 25, 2011
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Plato and Aristotle in a highly condensed, readable form!

My book about how to argue effectively is now available on Amazon.com! I am in the process of getting them to ‘unlock’ it so that the reader can look inside it. I had no idea there was so much involved in the self-publishing process, but then, I’m a noob. You’ve gotta start somewhere, after all.

So, the book is called Writing to Persuade: Proven Techniques That Convince Others To Listen To You, Take You Seriously, And Change Their Minds, and is intended to be a guide for those who need to construct an effective argument.

These days, argumentation can include anything from writing political blogs, to letters to the editor of your local newspaper, to asking your father to buy you a car, to convincing a wide audience that their perspective is limited by a lack of information. What connects all of these writing situations is the need to persuade the listener or reader of your way of seeing something.

The goal with persuasion is not, in and of itself, to be proven ‘right,’ no matter how satisfying that might seem in the moment. Being right is often attained at the expense of furthering the conversation, and will also usually lose your audience. Your audience isn’t as concerned with who is right or wrong as they are with results. Effective argumentation shows you how to see an issue comprehensively, holistically, so that instead of focusing on ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ you become aware of the issues at stake.

An effective argument is usually an impassioned argument that contains enough believability and factual evidence, that it impresses your listener with the power of your position. To persuade is not to cajole, manipulate, or ‘sell’ someone on an idea. Instead, a truly persuasive argument educates. You broaden your audience’s awareness of a subject, with the goal of helping them understand the subject, and see it from your perspective.

To argue effectively is to gain the respect of your listener, no matter how opposed s/he is to your position. Anything less is not oratory or rhetoric in the traditional sense; it’s mud-slinging and manipulation, neither of which I believe in. If the goal of argumentation is to educate and enlighten, nothing comes of ad hominem attacks, or any of the many tactics used against one’s opponent.

That’s why I wrote this book: to provide an easy-to-read, quick, and accessible view of argumentation, and to show that it’s actually quite simple to persuade others when you have the goal of understanding each other in mind, rather than ‘winning’. This book is not about winning an argument, being right, or appearing smarter than your opponent; it’s about approaching the person you disagree with, with respect, realising that they have a right to their position.

And yet you will show them how your position is ultimately the better, more reasonable, sensible approach. That’s the essence of effective argumentation, just as it is in creative writing: show, don’t tell.

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from → Anything new and suspect, Diversions, Ego, Enlightenment, Material goods, Pure Vanity, Self-esteem, Stuff, Technology, Truth, Women

Facing Fears About the French in Five* Days

August 19, 2011
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It's Paris. Need I say more?

First, let me say, it turns out I actually stayed six days in Paris. I only thought it was going to be five because I can’t count. Obviously, however, ‘facing fears about the French in five days’ sounds better than stumbling over the word ‘six’, what with alliteration and all, so let’s say I lost a day in there somewhere due to rain, which is true.

During the week I was there, it rained four out of six days, except on my birthday, which was gloriously sunny. Every day while there, due to the weather, the song “April in Paris” reverberated in my head. That sounds romantic until you take into account that when a song plays like a broken record in your mind, you start to go insane.

It turns out, aside from all of the unique medieval buildings, museums, culture, food, and architecture, Paris is like any other large city across the globe. It was good I found that out at what is supposed to be the ‘midway’ point in my life, so that I can continue on with my existence no longer glamorizing the French any more than is absolutely necessary. Whereas before I had them up on a pedestal of unattainable perfection based on eight years of French classes (and Catherine Deneuve, whose cheekbones haunted my youth), having experienced the real thing, I can say that I was completely wrong to worry. The real French are wonderful, and forgiving of American strangers who engage in the dual faux pas of speaking their language badly and wearing unfashionable shoes.

Even in the 1100s, the French were concerned with fashion

For most of my life, my litmus test of whether or not I would buy an article of clothing was whether or not I could be seen wearing it dead in Paris. Now, the upside of this way of approaching shopping is that it prevented me from buying an awful lot of baggy dreck. The downside is that I felt highly intimidated by the French, who I imagined in daytime couture, spitting in the general direction of Americans, and eating croissants but never gaining weight.

I have read books claiming that French women match up their blacks perfectly, and never go out wearing anything but a form-fitting slim skirt paired with high heels in exactly the right height to match the length of the skirt. Rumors of the daily effort of the chignon continue on this side of the Pond. All of this is highly intimidating to someone whose hair refuses to bow to authority, and who has a tendency to think pink is wearable under all circumstances. Also, if you are not a stick insect, I figured, you will drop into Paris like a fat toad in the middle of a tea party, and be just about as welcome.

Therefore, Paris, and the French people it contains, became my lofty mountain, my ascension to Olympus, my own personal K2.

So first thing, I got lost at Charles de Gaulle while looking for vendors of the very useful Paris museum pass, well worth the price, since it helped me avoid long lines at Saint-Chapelle and the Louvre. I also managed to leave all my carefully printed-out backup documents on the vendor’s counter; hopefully they’ve been shredded by now. Getting lost at the airport put me in the wrong terminal for the bus to St. Germain des Prés, so I took what I could find, a bus that bypassed my street, taking me instead to the Gare du Nord. This side-trip, which I like to think of as a free tour of parts of the city I didn’t know I needed to see, necessitated an hour-long hike back up to St. Germain.

It’s a good thing I firmly believe in walking to see a new city. Moving at a faster pace means you miss a lot, and I am there to see the place, dammit, and absorb its essence into my pores. So I walked and walked until finally my tucked-away hotel on a side street off St. Germain des Prés in the 7th arrondissement appeared before me, a quiet, sedate oasis in a very noisy city.

By walking, I discovered that not all Parisian women wear couture in daylight, so that myth died a good death. I also discovered that Paris is much larger than Saigon, the only other city I’ve stayed in also built by the French. When you walk everywhere, details become much more pronounced. Doorways can be extraordinary in Paris, for example. It is the city I will always remember as the place where my passion for photography emerged from its cocoon.

The golden light of Paris is incomparable

From antique shops with objets d’art placed just so in the windows, to pâtisseries, with gâteaux placed just so in the windows, everywhere you look, you are surrounded by art. The natural light is so glorious at times, I defy you to go there and not become a photographer. You can fall in love anywhere; for a beginning photographer, though, it is helpful to have marvelous subjects and great light, and Paris supplies both at every turn.

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Although they say this is a city for lovers, the Paris I experienced, along with being extraordinarily beautiful, was also extraordinarily smelly. Descending staircases from Quai Voltaire to the Seine to hop on the Batobus (a marvelous invention that takes you to almost all of the touristy sites along the river), brings with it the unpleasant aroma of some 2 a.m. drunk’s inability to hold his vin rosé.

Expensive perfume is the only reasonable antidote to the stench of urine, so thank god you’re in the right country to buy Chanel. Although I tested perfumes at Le Bon Marché (where the lovely young salesman let me practice my crappy French and bore with me while I stumbled over grammar I really should have learned a long time ago), I actually bought the perfume at the duty-free shop at the airport gate, because the prices are 20% cheaper, since they’re so happy you’re finally leaving. They want to reward you for coming, and, mercifully, going. Lest you fear for the French economy, I bought a very nice Sonia Rykiel wool scarf from the lovely salesman, so his time was compensated.

Once I was ensconced in my charming hotel, the Duc de St. Simon, the icons of Paris beckoned. I chose to arrive on July 14th because it’s the night before my birthday. However, July 14th is also Bastille Day, and it occurred to me rather late in the game, oh god, what if everything in town shuts down like it does in the States on July 4th? However, it seems the French are, by day, unsentimental about this festivity, so all services functioned.

The location of my hotel allowed me to walk to the Boulevard des Invalides and watch the fireworks over the Eiffel Tower, which came as a huge surprise, since I really don’t plan trips, I just take them.

This means I followed the crowds of people rushing up the street towards something, I wasn’t sure what, since I didn’t realise how close the hotel was to the Champs de Mars. But, there I am, after a wonderful gourmet dinner at La Ferme Sainte-Simon, a five star restaurant (or, at least four stars, and conveniently located less than a block from the hotel), and all of these people are rushing by. A lemming, I followed them, and arrived at the corner of des Invalides in time to overhear Americans talking about the fireworks show to come.

This, dear reader, is how I find out what’s going on, by listening in on other people’s conversations. So tacky (but useful, because if there’s one thing I absolutely deplore, it’s looking like a gawky tourist, and I am silly enough to get lost rather than appear lost. What? Yes, you read that right. If I can’t find a friend who knows the city better than I do, I get lost a lot, in the vain attempt not to appear like the noob I am—such is the price of ego).

In pursuit of French icons, I decided to see the Tour d’Eiffel on the rainiest day, thinking, logically, that rain would deter tourists. Hah. The place was packed like Disneyland, and, since I don’t plan well, I had not taken injunctions to buy tickets to ascend the tower seriously. When they say ‘buy your tickets months in advance’, they are not just whistling Dixie, so do it, if you want to see the 2nd or 3rd floors. Although the Eiffel tower is impressive, in a Jules Verne-War of the Worlds-way, it’s rather hard to appreciate in the rain, because for one thing, rain keeps falling in your eyes as you look up.

The view from inside the Batobus. Il pleut.

Walking everywhere means I never learned how to use the Metro, which became a serious detriment the day I left. I walked down to the closest RER train station, at Notre Dame, only to find that, in the two days that had passed since I’d scoped it out, it had been closed for repairs to one of the lines. This meant hoping against hope that one of the other entrances nearby would somehow still magically be opened, and lo, like Moses parting the Reed Sea, indeed, it was so. Miracles follow the Fool on the journey, it would seem, if you can comprehend enough of the language to understand what the signs say, that is.

However, if you’d stood there with me, watching me struggle to dig out tweezers from my luggage because I had to retrieve the tiny little paper ticket I’d inserted into the wrong end of the machine that then threatened to eat it, you’d realise, as did I, that I really shouldn’t try to do this stuff on my own. Fortunately, there was no line behind me, since technically, that station was closed to all but the trains going to Charles de Gaulle.

That there are negatives about Paris never occurred to me, in my hopeless naïveté, and yet discovering them helped me take the French down off their pedestal. This is possibly the most important aspect of travel; it helps bridge the gap between romantic fantasies and reality, and in the process, makes the country traveled to more human and real, thereby transforming your inner self into someone who has now been to Paris, or whatever magical place exists for you as an empty square in your passport, waiting to be filled in.

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from → Aging gracelessly, Anxiety, Anything new and suspect, Clothes, Complaining, Diversions, Ego, Enlightenment, Irksome things, Material goods, My aging body, Pure Vanity, Self-acceptance, Self-esteem, Stuff, Travel, Truth, Whining, Women

In Praise of Cosmetics

August 9, 2011
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Edouard Manet, Portrait d'Irma Brunner (1880)

It seems I’m not the only person who believes that nature, left to her own devices, is a pernicious evil.

In the Musée D’Orsay, Paris’ temple to Impressionism, a period in art history where colors were often delightfully blurry, there is a section of the museum set aside for pastels—a painting form, according to Charles Baudelaire, uniquely appropriate to showcase the charms of the aging woman.

See? This is why I love the French. Where else in the world can you imagine having the Hydra of aging and personal vanity conquered by art? Only the French accept aging with aplomb and approach it with artistic euphemisms. Only in France is the older woman a desirable commodity. Everywhere else, youth and its excesses reigns supreme.

In Paris, however, one is allowed to ‘paint,’ all the while looking for the best, pastel-washed light in which to stand so as to be seen to advantage. It’s not hard to find that perfect pastel palette in Paris since the natural light there minimizes all but the most stubborn wrinkles. In a country with a long history of cosmetics’ use, it’s considered courteous to others to present one’s best face. Of course, it would be ideal if that best face was the by-product of years of expert self-preservation, but this is not always possible.

Baudelaire was a bit too obsessed with women, primarily due to his rather warped relationship with his mother. This obsession lead him to notice women, perhaps a little too closely, especially their appearance, which he commented on frequently, through a thinly-veiled haze of resentment exacerbated by excessive laudanum use. Although concerned with aesthetics, his real interest lay in the ways in which the industrial era was changing conceptions of what should be considered natural and beautiful.

Baudelaire rejected romanticism and the idea of the ‘supremacy of nature’ espoused by the Romantics, placing himself, much like the Tour d’Eiffel, at the interstice between two worlds—the world of Belle Epoque Art Nouveau, arguably the last vestige of Romanticism, and the world of cold metal and steel which began to dominate, and define, cities. Baudelaire once wrote, “[e]verything beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation,” and he is credited with coining the term “modernity” (modernité) to designate the “fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.”

His essay entitled “In Praise of Cosmetics” is a bit too tongue in cheek to be taken with great sincerity, since his attitude toward women was infused with occasional bitterness and ambivalence, as it will be when you’re obsessed with your mother, a woman you’re not really allowed to have, after all. His belief that ‘reason and calculation’ create what is beautiful is a backhanded compliment to women who are within our rights, indeed are “even accomplishing a kind of duty,” by devoting ourselves to appearing “magical and supernatural.” You just know there’s a bitter lacing of hatred underneath that statement, a longing for something he could not have, but it doesn’t change the fact that he was utterly entranced by women and wrote beautiful love poetry (in those moments when he wasn’t obsessed by his mother).

Aging in pastels, softened by their hues

In the following poem Beauty, he reveals this ambivalence through his unsentimental view of personal appearance. Beauty inspires pain and suffering, but never to itself, since beauty is immortal and untouchable, unchanging and immutable. The adored beautiful person sits above us all, an unknowable sphinx, disdaining to move her face for fear of causing wrinkles:

I am fair, O mortals! like a dream carved in stone,
And my breast where each one in turn has bruised himself
Is made to inspire in the poet a love
As eternal and silent as matter.
On a throne in the sky, a mysterious sphinx,
I join a heart of snow to the whiteness of swans;
I hate movement for it creates lines,
And never do I weep and never do I laugh.
Poets, before my grandiose poses,
Which I seem to assume from the proudest statues,
Will consume their lives in austere study;
For I have, to enchant those submissive lovers,
Pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful:
My eyes, my large, wide eyes of eternal brightness!
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from → Aging gracelessly, Anxiety, Ego, My aging body, Pure Vanity, Self-acceptance, Self-esteem, Travel, Truth, Women
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