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My Blog Has Moved!

2008-08-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

Check out my new blog on wordpress: http://kmazz.wordpress.com

Victoria: Top Eats V

2008-08-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

OK, this is the last of my Victoria eats posts until my next trip (September, 2008). I haven't focused on serious restaurants because to be honest the ones we tried were not very good, albeit their fine reputations. But no matter, because there is plenty to imbibe and savor regardless.

You'll have to venture outside of Victoria for some of these. The Cowichan Valley, and notably Cobble Hill, is a haven of artisanal food and drink production. A 45-minute drive will get you there, an idyllic pastoral landscape of fields, forests, rivers and lakes. Hilary's creamery, several decent wineries, honey producers and cideries dot the hills and valleys. Many of the spirits producers have on site bistros so culinary tourists can take a leisurely break for refreshment and taste the fruit of the vine or orchard along with dishes created to complement flavors.

At Merridale Estate Cidery we sampled the eight varieties of the hard stuff, some with as much alcohol content as wine and with tastes that range from sweet to extra dry. The effervesence is slight, due to the natural process of fermenting the organically grown apples of which there are many varieties. (According to the pourer, other producers inject bigger bubbles into the drink to mask the taste of chemicals.) Read this for a view of the cider business elswhere. The Merridale is experimenting with apple brandy as well.

This is a tricky drink to produce and to store. The cider must stay refrigerated or it will continue to ferment in the bottle, so if like us you plan to take some home bring an ice-packed cooler. But the result of the high standards of production is a delicate taste, in some varieties punctuated with a snap of ginger or pepper, and in others sweetened with honey or berries.

As is the case with most of the artisanal producers, Merridale is fairly new and despite its very good product will probably improve with maturity and more trial and error. But its relative youth is not a strike against it; awards are already pouring in.

Victoria: Top Eats IV

2008-08-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

Looks like my posts on "Victoria Eats" have largely been about drinks. So here's one on more solid matter.

Our tour through the Cowichan Valley and its vineyards and ciderworks also took us past Hilary Abbot's creamery. We weren't able to stop, but later that day we found ourselves on Cowichan Bay where Hilary's Deli offers a bountiful assortment of his cheeses (and those with provenance from elsewhere). Hilary is one of those intrepid artisans who is reviving the lost art of cheesemaking on the island. He's well on his way.

Here's a generous plate of washed rind and blue examples, with slices of baguette from the wonderful bakery next door. I'm used to what Portland considers a cheese plate: $15.00 for three tablespoon-sized dollops. You get a big, lingering mouthful at Hilary's.

Victoria: Top Eats Part III

2008-08-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

Despite decades of cultural change and openness to more diversity, there is an unavoidable Anglophilia all over Canada. It is part of the country's cultural mosaic, but the one with the deepest roots.

You can find it in the many tea rooms, by watching cricketeers on Sundays, and in visits to pubs modeled on those found in the old country.

It's been eons since I've experienced the dark, low ceilinged and slightly claustrophic rooms of a hundred-years old English pub, which I can recall happily frequenting in my youth for its reassuring, ebullient din and its promise of camaraderie. Never mind the contemporary smoking ban and slightly newer digs of a new country locale, and you have the same experience again all over Victoria: darts, shepherd's pie, Queen's tartan signage and all.

As I discovered recently, not all locals enjoy a sunny summer day kayaking, hiking, biking, gardening or otherwise outdoors. The pubs start rocking early and by dinner hour are full to capacity.

For those who want the best of both worlds, as do I, here's your strategy. These pubs usually have lovely outdoor seating areas, so you can settle in after a summer day's activity, perhaps four-ish in the afternoon, to enjoy the late sun over a Ploughman's plate of local cheeses and a choice of English ales and lagers.

You'll also find wares from a slew of local breweries. My favorite:the lively and fresh tasting Victoria Pilsener from Vancouver Island Brewery. This summer, I also indulged in sampling the island's many hard ciders, a subject to be returned to soon.

China

2008-08-08T21:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't been to China in two years but after watching the Summer Olympics 2008 opening ceremony I want to return. Because in two years, it's become a different country. It is no longer an aspiring economic and political power as it was then; it now has arrived. Watching the ceremony inside the "bird's nest" stadium, which was designed to be the world's most technologically advanced stage, you could not help but realize that China has big plans to move beyond being the world's copy cat.

What struck me was not just the dazzling precision of the choreography and technical elements of stagecraft such as sound, music and lights. It was the grandeur of designer Zhang Yimou's vision, the power of his storytelling, and the enormous scale of the spectacle. Compare that to Italy's opening ceremony in Turin two years ago -- more like a tired fashion parade. A nice confection but not much underneath.

This was a very high standard of entertainment. Disney should be afraid. The Chinese have made it clear they have a grasp on a very contemporary brand of mass market magic.

Victoria: Top Eats Part II

2008-08-02T13:01:00.001-07:00

High tea is on every tourist's to-do list when in Victoria, with the most famous spots being The Empress Hotel and The Blethering Place. The price for a full set can run in the environs of $60. I reject that.

Plus, although I love my tea I don't enjoy musty places no matter how authentic they may be.

A few years ago a local tea doyenne tipped us off to the White Heather, an off the beaten track spot in a commercial block on Oak Bay Drive. It was perfect, with its fresh and soothing seafoam-colored walls, crisp white linens, porcelain pots and shiny silver place settings. It's where you can walk away having spent as little as $8.00 or so for a single scone and tea, or up to $40 for the full "muckle" of tea sandwiches, oatcakes, cheese, Devon cream, pastries and more.

The owner, a Scottish lass who is always on site and audible by her throaty laugh, worked on the recipe for the puffy scones for years before opening up the shop and they're unlike any other. Not dense or sweet, they are a nice foil for butter, homemade jam, goat cheese or lemon curd. The White Heather's objective is to make you "more cuddly." I guarantee regular visits will make you so.

Cre8teCamp Portland

2008-07-27T14:50:00.000-07:00

I attended Cre8te Camp yesterday, the first in what I hope will be many more un-conferences for the creative community.

What is the creative community? It can be interpreted narrowly, as members of creative enterprises like ad agencies and design studios, or broadly to include scientists and engineers as in the academic theory of Richard Florida. Cre8te Camp Portland included software programmers as well as film makers. Including me, there were a mere two PR people in attendance, but the other is also a jazz singer. I, on the other hand, make no claim to creativity except as a dilettante. Still, as a PR consultant to creative enterprises I was interested in what this group had to say and how I could contribute.

Portland is at a crossroads, a point at which some decisions need to be made regarding the character of its future growth. The city draws creatives like never before, but increasingly the talented young people are having a difficult time staying here due to the cost of living. We are in danger of losing what gives the city its dynamism and energy unless the city and state leaders decide once and for all that the creative economy is the linchpin to future prosperity.

As was pointed out at Cre8te Camp, the down economy is actually a good time to regroup, identify investments, and seed the foundation of future growth in areas of authentic interest to Portlanders, like sustainability. There was quite some talk about what should be the role of the city in growing the creative sector, with quite a few emphasizing that the role should be facilitator only and not driver. So much of what has bubbled up as creative energy in Portland has been organically driven, not policy driven, and getting the city involved in an ownership role would kill off the natural impulses in what should be a grass roots movement.

That means organizing all the disparate creative groups in Portland into an active entity encompassing all major groups - indie music and film, design, graphic arts, galleries, animation studios, architecture firms. That won't be easy.

It also means, as was talked about at length in a break out session, in strategically important sister cities that serve to broaden the base of ideas and innovation through collaboration and exchanges. One thought was to consider a Greater Cascadia creative sector, joining Portland, Vancouver, Boise, San Francisco. Another was to identify cities around the world that match Portland's DNA of independence, sustainability, DIY, craft and balance with which to work to expound on the values pertinent to creativity that have sustained Portland's economy for the last few decades.

My vote: Curitiba, Brazil.

Victoria: Top Eats Part I

2008-07-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

We are blessed to have our famous Portland food carts, serving up the most delectable ethnic and regional plates without which the city workforce would have few affordable and tasty lunch options. In Victoria, where prices are quite a bit higher for every single thing, the food cart craze has not yet landed, sad to say. However, there was one eatery shack we did find, and as it happens it was all we could have asked for.

redfish bluefish is open 11am to 7pm six days a week year 'round, rain or shine. That's good, because I will make the proverbial bee line for it every time I'm in town. Even now, I can easily indulge in the memory of its perfectly grilled hunk of wild salmon tucked inside a toasted bun moistened with just the right amount of dilled dijonnaise, a lovely dollop of fresh cole slaw and organic greens on the side. An order of dense hand cut fries, plain or curried, or a cup (4 oz.) of the chunky Pacific Rim Chowder with white fish, corn, garlic, chipotle and coconut milk and chances are you won't be hungry again fast enough in order to return for more.

The shack serves the obligatory fish and chips, tacos of salmon, scallops, tuna or white fish, fish "sloppy joe" and other plates of BBQ'd and spicy seafood. A nod to Victoria's English heritage is seen in the offer of Mushy Edamame ("our twist on mushy peas").

What makes this shack so popular? Well, the quality of the ingredients is one reason. The fish is wild and ocean friendly and much of the other elements are organic, fresh and local. But the experience is also a draw. On a sunny day no restaurant can compete with the seating: on the dock in view of the sea planes landing and whale boats departing.

Top Five Things to Do in Victoria

2008-07-15T19:53:00.000-07:00

If you are lucky enough to visit Vancouver Island on a clear summer day, you'll think you are close to paradise. And that's where we were last week, visiting with friends from Vancouver and Italy and then taking off on our own for a tool around the environs. Not even an extra long drive home on Monday, lengthened by the inevitable road accident (no one died) between Tacoma and Olympia, marred the memory of perfect days.

Everyone has their favorite things to do in Victoria, which by the way is leaving its twee days slowly behind and embracing an edgier future of more diversity, more young people and a more varied local economy that includes software, slow food and sustainable industries. Victoria is getting more interesting, escaping the ossified fate that awaited it before the oil boom in Alberta brought in young money.

These are things I always do when in town:

See the Emily Carr paintings at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. I was stunned upon discovering Carr about ten years ago and never tire of revisiting her works. The book store sells her autobiography which is worth a read. She was an independent creative spirit trapped in a Victorian small town with a repressive, authoritarian father. So she was a little angry. Nevertheless and against such odds, she found her way.

Discover excellent Canadian writers you've never heard of at Munro's book store. I like Munro's because of the historical building that houses it, but also because it once belonged to one of Canada's greatest contemporary writers, Alice Munro. I defy anyone to find a better writer in the English language. Her ex-husband still runs it.

Get out of the tourist-clogged Inner Harbour and take a 3-mile oceanside walk or bike ride (rentals available in town) on Dallas Road. You'll be watching marine birds, sailboats, commercial fishing boats, freighters and ferries on the Strait of Juan de Fuca with views of the craggy Olympic Range across the water in Washington state.

Taste and pick up a selection of organic tea leaves from all over the world at Special Teas on Fort Street. Nice Roobois!

Indulge in a muckle of tea at the White Heather on Oak Bay Avenue, and avoid the more famous spots where you are treated like one of the herd and charged double for the privilege. "Muckle" means "big" -- really, really high tea. The baker hails from Scotland and makes savory and sweet scones as authentic as can be and nothing like what you buy at Starbucks'. Reservations required. Don't let the non-descript shopping street facade keep you away, as it's what's inside that counts.

I'll expound on these and add another top five in a later post.

Shopping

2008-07-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

There was a social critic, can't recall the name, who wrote years ago about the canny ability of Western capitalism to mediate and emasculate any confrontational social movement by merchandising it. Co-opt and reward. When Hip Hop leaves mean streets and wins Grammys, it's something else altogether. Take the blandly cheery "eep-opp" of Italy, for example.

The author meant this in a good way, as he was writing during the tumultuous early 1970s. Don't worry, he implied. We won't have a revolution because consumerism will make protests entertaining, not angry, events.

The merits of this argument can be debated. But it came to my mind as I read about the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints and the success of their Internet sales. If Fashion Avenue does embrace the prairie outfit, will that mean we won't see FLDS as the exploitative and unlawful force it really is? Will 12 year old girls continue to be married off to middle-aged church leaders?

Because it seems the law against polygamy is already pretty toothless when these communities have been allowed to thrive and prosper despite being illegal. And while we're debating the issue, what does this state of affairs say about what the US electorate supposedly believes about marriage -- one man, one woman?

Orchestre Baobab

2008-06-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

At the end of a day of long light, when the sun shone for the first time in months and its warmth healed sore moods and old aches, the last thing anyone wanted to do was enter a musty, dusty old theater before dark. But tickets had been paid for weeks ago, and how often does Senegal's Orchestre Baobab play in Portland?

And how could I ever have thought twice about going? The dancing started right at 8pm in what passes for the mosh pit at the Aladdin and didn't stop for 2.5 hours. The Les Paul Deluxe wa-wa cried and rippled, the tenor sax scatted, the singer wailed and trilled, the three drummers pounded and got us jumping. (Can I say I coveted the band's brocaded and tie and died damask cloth shirts of indigo and white, azure and chocolate, cranberry and gold, sapphire and pink as things of beauty?) Local Senegalese in wax print shirts shouted in Wolof to the musicians and sang along. Money was balled up in a fist and then passed to the singers in effusive gratitude. Young children and babies, dressed up and with elaborate, decorated hair weaves, were shown off to the players. Twice a skinny and shy young boy joined the group on stage to applause. Everyone was lost in the dance and happiness was on every face. And to think the concert was just the evening's warm up for the band. You just know their local compatriots had some plans for them.

The music was at turns mesmerizing, wild, strange and familiar. If this was as much part of our lives as it is to West Africans, we'd have no need for aerobic workouts of any other sort. And we'd be happier, IMHO.

crimmigration

2008-05-25T15:08:00.000-07:00

Update to my "Who are we?" post: a local blogger coined a new term that relates neatly.

Who are we?

2008-05-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

Across Europe, filthy, fetid camps hold African, Albanian, and Asian illegal immigrants. Italy is rounding up gypsies again. In South Africa, Zimbabweans and Mozambicans are hunted by mobs and burned alive. In the U.S. we criminalize and now imprison Latin Americans. These people are being brutally punished for simply trying to live another day. Who among us would behave differently if in their straits? Of course immigration is a political and economic challenge. Of course the idea of immigrants en masse crossing borders requires a response. But did we always hate them so?

Social sustainability

2008-05-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

It is a sad state of affairs when the passage through adolescence requires the loss of the humanizing ritual of mealtime. Let's face it, the Slow Food movement, which tries not only to restore that ritual before it is gone for good but connect people to the idea of sustainable agriculture and living, has an uphill battle.

I read about this problem today while still mulling over yesterday's PNCA + FIVE panel on Portland and sustainability. Susan Szenasy, editor in chief of one of my favorite magazines, Metropolis, moderated the discussion, touching on a few topics that merit much more attention, one of which is social sustainability.

We don't just want to preserve biological systems so that we live, but so that we live meaningfully. The loss of mealtime as a time to come together is a sign of a degraded social environment.

Biological and social sustainability are tightly interrelated because, simply put, if we don't have a reason to sit down and enjoy a meal with our kin and clan then we fail to feed our social instincts, which for eons have been the reason for our survival and the occasion for joy in living. Sustainable systems recognize the need for planning, architecture and infrastructure not just to preserve ecosystems but to bring people together in a way that supports our desire to mix and mingle.

Americans already have largely lost touch with the daily custom of coming together over the table, and it is no wonder kids don't know or care where their food comes from, or if it is really food at all. Our degraded environment is the result.

Biophony

2008-05-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

I once heard an amateur field recording ornithologist mimic the song of a few tropical rain forest birds he had identified on various scientific expeditions. He was the late, great Ted Parker, and his passion for birds was such that he had memorized the distinct songs of more than 300 different bird species. Of all the voices of the earth, those of birds, as Ted demonstrated, carry an enormous power to delight us if we listen and hear.

All I have to compare is the ordinary cacophony of early morning wake up calls coming in my open window but I'm happy for it. The wonderful sound binds me to the natural world, and its ritualization of spring is a comfort. I wake, listen and strain to make sense of the chatter. And sometimes I wonder if the finches, jays, flickers and bushtits are raising their voices to be heard over the distant roar of the highway, airplanes and other unnatural sounds.

So does scientist Bernie Krause, according to Clive Thompson of Wired magazine. Krause says biophony -- the pristine sound of the world -- is being drowned out by anthrophony, or man made noise. It isn't just that birds and other animals need to shout, it is that the spectrum on which their calls operate is being interfered with and the flow of information among and between species is interrupted. This can mean life and death for these creatures.

To my mind, this situation isn't just a matter of what we lose. Given our altered ecology, what will arrive to take their place? More red ants?

BarCampPortland 2008

2008-05-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before how much I like being around designers and tech people. Their enthusiasm is infectious and their optimism seems of an appealingly innocent nature. So I really enjoyed BarCamp Portland, now in its second year. Here's what I noticed:

*More women this year. Yeah! There are a lot of gals who love to code, not just knit.
*More men in skirts this year. Seriously, the Utilikilt company in Seattle is getting a real following with geeks and, I've heard, with Burners (as in Burning Man).
*OpenID needs to build some steam. Last year, I succumbed to Twitter. This year, I'm checking out this tech to make my life signing on to web easier much easier. But there is no groundswell yet.
*Speaking of Twitter -- I thought I really knew about this stuff. Apparently there is advanced Twitter use of which I can only stand in awe.
*I got a new way of looking at Twitter, Google Reader, YouTube and feeds. They represent the rapid fragmentation of the Web and perhaps the rise of widgets as a means to content.

Next up: Ignite Portland 3.

The horror

2008-04-19T18:13:00.000-07:00

I'm a little late posting this thought. It's been with me for a few weeks, ever since the news reports started appearing on Americans' lack of interest in Iraq themed movies.

Some say that's because Americans are so upbeat about the war's progress that any whiff of criticism doesn't resonate. Others seem to gloat about how patriotic Americans are snubbing the anti-mainstream, un-patriotic Hollywood depiction of a military behaving badly.

Pesonally, most of these movies I am not the least bit inclined to see, but not for a lack of interest in the theme but because they got bad reviews. However, "Stop Loss" received mostly good ones and it's on my list for when it is out on DVD or On Demand. I can't bear the ads and trailers at the Cineplex so tend to stick to HD at home.

At the same time that Americans are rejecting the Iraq war movies, they are rejecting horror porn. Any connection?

In the mid to late 1940s, a new genre of cinema emerged in post-war Italy that would influence filmmakers from France to Japan. The neo-realists shot films that were so raw in their depiction of the poverty and hard scrabble lives of society's powerless that few people could bear to watch. After WWII, upbeat American musicals made them feel better. And how could it have been any different?

Hollywood's body of work on Iraq is at this point far from the art and achievement of the neo-realists. But maybe the phenomenon of audiences staying away is the same. Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter -- those are the winners at the box office today. No gore, all fantasy.

I wonder if there is something else going on. If there is any morality in this world, it would provide us with a collective guilt for sending so many to their deaths for no apparent good reason and with virtually no sacrifice of our own (yet). God forbid we should want to be reminded about that at the movies.

(Painting: Goya's Saturn)

Startupalooza PDX

2008-03-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

Spent the day Saturday at the local Startupalooza, a social/business event showcasing small start-ups based in Portland. Lots of tweeps I'd never met before were there along with old pals from my old enterprise software PR days.

Observation: we will have a golden age of tech in Portland soon enough. There are more and more small companies producing ingeniously useful software being created by young and passionate people who move here to be Portlanders and who then intend to stay instead of shipping out to the Bay area, NYC or Boston.

I've already started using this creation and will soon download this one for my Facebook page.

Outsourcing U.S. clout

2008-03-25T18:28:00.000-07:00

This is a recurring theme here. We overreact on security and apply tough measures in the wrong places, we scapegoat immigrants for our economic ills and crises of identity, and we risk ending up poorer and isolated. With any luck we'll have a President of USA in 2009 who will see the folly of the current situation and apply progressive policies to fix it.

Recently I spoke with the dean of a highly regarded business school in Canada, who has ambitions to raise the school's standing so it is at a level with the best of the US schools. He said the best thing that has happened to his plans to recruit internationally was the Bush administration. Students from all over the world who are accepted by Harvard and Stanford are told by INS that visas cannot be expedited. They give up and go to Canada or other countries. Their gain, our loss.

Solastalgia revisited

2008-03-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I remarked on this term, which seemed to capture so well my feelings about changes in the landscape due to global climate change. Maybe it is
catching on. As this article states, solastalgia is a neologism that Glenn Albrecht, an environmental philosopher at the University of Newcastle’s School of Environmental and Life Sciences, created in 2003.

Now there is a new term, "psychoterratic illness" that labels the psychological response to climate change, of which solastagia is one form.

"Psychoterratic illness involves the psyche or mind and terra or earth. So a psychoterratic illness would be an earth-related mental illness, where both nostalgia and solastalgia are examples of people being made “mentally ill” by the severing of “healthy” links between themselves and their home or territory.

And ill physical health due to a degraded environment is:

"Somaterratic illness, on the other hand, involves soma or the body and relates to damage done to the human body, its physiology and/or genetics, as a result of the loss of ecosystem health by, for example, toxic pollution in any given area of land." I suppose the effect on humans of the dioxin found in mozzarella in parts of Italy recently would qualify.

Here is the part of the article that relates to what I wrote previously:

"SK: Do you see a relationship between the conquest of Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australasia, the state of environmental degradation and the experience of loss that we are seeing today? If so, what is that relationship from your perspective and research?

GA: The answer is, yes, there is a relationship between the two colonial cultures: the two continents were colonized only by the systematic dispossession of complex and formerly sustainable Indigenous societies."

Read the rest to learn more.

Photo from today's New York Times of Haiti by Marc Lacey.

Obama

2008-03-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

First cut: I went to the Obama rally here in PDX today. Got up at O'Dark to get in line early enough to get a good seat. Ate cheese sandwiches in the car on the drive down. It turned out we didn't really know where the Memorial Coliseum was, but we spotted a man walking with a sense of purpose in the general direction and he was headed there so we followed. We were about the 1000th persons to arrive and got in line. (In a sweet irony, I realized that in 1965 I had followed my older sister to our first Beatles concert in this arena.) Our seats were a couple of rows from the stage. The crowd was psyched. From the very young to senior citizens; Asians, blacks, caucasians; the well and shabbily dressed, a good cross section of PDX was present. (I just detest the TV commentators' query on whether or not Obama has the white vote; clearly he has a lot of it, at least as much as does Hillary or McCain.) Two hours later the photogs with their stylish hair cuts and huge cameras showed up, TV and other media got on their observation desks and eventually the DipDive video of Obama's speech set to song was broadcast. That was the cue. The photogs ran over to the corridor near an exit, crouched and pointed their cameras, so everyone in the crowd in the general area titled in that direction, hanging over the barricade in the direction of the doorway, cameras ready, too. As the DipDive video ended, the doorway coughed up some of the Obama entourage and then the man was there shaking hands, Bill Richardson in his shadow but gamely joining in.

Obama did his usual stump speech without betraying any of the fatigue he must be experiencing. I was reminded again how serious and almost tragic an expression he sometimes carries. It goes beyond a Lincoln-esque melancholy, but something like what I've noticed in the face of a Michelangelo Madonna and child, that ineffable sense of grave portent.

PDX Art

2008-02-17T13:20:00.000-08:00

I know Portland isn't on a par culturally with Berlin, Shanghai, New York etc. But when international cultural figures come here, we really turn out for them. A more appreciative crowd there cannot be.

And generally, artists and thinkers of a high caliber are more accessible when they are in Portland, partly because the venues and vibe are low key and less crowded, and the audience less star struck.

So it was that over this weekend I was able to hear jazz great Ornette Coleman and even get a few hours' chat with him, and hear James Turrell speak for a couple of hours at PNCA.

Turrell is an artist of light, and as he put it himself an artistic descendant of Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Monet and others who have created progressive art theories around light. However, Turrell is certainly one of the most scientific, with a degree in perceptual psychology and with a knowledge of the retinal and ocular that surely would stump most of the rest of us.

And it struck me listening to his talk how much science informs really great art today. Ornette Coleman's music is about ideas of sound, ergo, his "Sound Grammer" theses. It's not an original thought to point out that there is beauty in science, but these artists do it with a divine touch.

Ornette Coleman hearts Portland

2008-02-16T09:52:00.000-08:00

After a long trying day full of situations that were fubar and snafu'd, we were rewarded with an evening with a living treasure, jazz Hall of Famer Ornette Coleman.

The Schnitz was packed to the point of overheating, and that was before Ornette's band started playing bits from "Sound Grammar." Ornette writes an extreme form of intellectual music, one that is, in his own words, about ideas.

I'm not ashamed to admit that Ornette's invention, free jazz, is not what I normally gravitate to, as it is quite challenging. But it is also plain astounding in its ultra expression of the essence of jazz.

And Portland was most appreciative. Post-concert, we sat with Ornette, invited to visit with him by our friend who was part of the musician's entourage. Ornette (and what a nice name) seems to be one of those greats who became an outsized genius out of an inner urge to explore originality, humbly, at the feet of the masters. In Ornette's case, these were Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk among others. He speaks softly and with a touching sincerity.

On Portland: "People here are so nice. So nice. I just can't get over it. So nice."
On his performance: "At first I was a little nervous, but after feeling that the audience was so nice, so quiet, I knew I could try any idea I could think of, and so I did."
On his music: "Improv isn't a style; it's an idea."

He is the Picasso or the Pollock of music.

Recovery culture

2008-01-26T09:34:00.000-08:00

Here's the gut-wrenching line from the Joe Nocera business column in today's NYT:

"Are you ready to face a world in which your two biggest assets, your retirement account and your home, don't automatically go up?"

As he points, there was a time a generation ago when Americans didn't need the stock market or home appreciation to live well. "Now we do."

The economy runs on spending, and borrowing against those assets, to spend more than we make (I use the "we" figuratively, btw) and keep those assets humming along.

We may be on the threshold of a massive, countrywide cold turkey withdrawal from the addiction of shopping.

No Crying

2008-01-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

Several posts ago, I wrote about my concern of the, well, Argentina-ization of the U.S. economy. OK, I was exaggerating to make a point, but the point is still valid. My point is that the U.S. could, through mismanagement of our economy, squander our riches and create an institutional rut of impoverishment that would remake our society, none for the better.

Here's another parallel: boom and bust cycles.

The causes are different in the U.S. and Argentina cases but the crippling boom and bust cycle of Latin American economies of the 20th century could see a parallel in today's bubble and pop cycles. The question to ask: is our economy now structurally dependent on these cycles? Economists would probably laugh their heads off at what I am writing here, but the issue is one that worries people more erudite and knowledgeable than I.

Detritus as Art

2008-01-17T18:31:00.001-08:00

One of my clients has me thinking about how artists engage with global problems, render them visually expressive, and thereby raise awareness of them with leaders and sometimes the general public. This certainly seems to have been a function of art for a while; witness the harrowing paintings of some of the Blaue Reiter, the early German Expressionists, predicting WWI when state leaders scoffed at the idea.

Artist Valarie James scours the Arizona desert for shards, leave behinds and things forgotten by the Mexican migrants making their furtive journey to work in the U.S. From them, she makes timely art. It strikes me how much of this detritus is so much a part of our own Anglo culture: the Spanish translation of everyone's middle school favorite, "The Diary of Anne Frank"; Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo; the Barbie and Batman backpacks; the scraps of torn denim; and Bibles. But for the grace of God, go we.

Now, why would fathers, mothers and children make this trip if not out of desperation? The routes are littered with trash, evidence that this is a steady stream of would be workers, not a small trickle. Some of course die in the desert during the trip. "For those of us who live close to the border, the humanitarian crisis is not an abstraction," says James.

"If these clothes weren't found and brought in, we wouldn't know these people existed," she says. Today I took a close look to see if I saw them: the landscape crews in my neighborhood, the painters and drywallers at a client installation, the clean up crew at my gym. Maybe a local artist should interview them and make them visible.

(Painter: Franz Mark)

The authenticity of hope

2008-01-06T15:21:00.000-08:00

So, IMHO the Obama and Huckabee surges come down to this: authenticity. It is a sweeping cultural trend, particularly in the U.S., particularly among young adults, and as such has a huge impact on the electoral campaign. I say "campaign" because I don't hazard a guess as to how strong an impact it will have ultimately, once it passes through the meat grinder of electoral politics and machinery.

With both of these candidates, there is a sense of "what you see is what you get." No artifice, no spin, no obfuscations. Authenticity is very powerful if you have it, because it is a shield against slings and arrows in the form of barbs and attempts to get you to make a gaffe. If you are yourself, there is no such thing as inconsistency.

A client has done a lot of thinking about this and has created a tidy framework within which authenticity operates. One factor is time and place -- yeah, that would be NOW, a demographic moment. Another is story -- yeah, Obama and Huckabee both have strong personal stories rooted in place. Something to say, a strong point of view are others. In other words, what's the moral to your story? Transparency is also an important factor.

People are summations of their stories, and if they have a good one and can communicate it, they tap into the human need to hear them. It goes back to that primitive urge to sit around the campfire which evolution has not deprived us of just yet.

I like this Fast Company article
and this line: the opposite of authenticity isn't "fake"; it is cynicism.

Solastalgia for Joshua Tree

2008-01-02T16:33:00.000-08:00

See previous post (and comments section) and then this update.

Solastalgia

2007-12-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

I think last year I wrote here about the sadness I, and presumably other people, were feeling at the thought of our landscape -- esthetically, economically, culturally -- under threat from global warming. What is Italy without its vineyards and olive groves?

Now a great writer at Wired magazine has given this feeling of sadness a name: solastalgia. Appropriately in my view, he likens the feeling to what indigenous people felt as they were taken from their traditional homelands.

Dislocation can be mental as well as geographical. The Inca, Aztecs and Mayans suffered through it even though they never migrated elsewhere; in a relatively small but deeply felt way, my mother and her cohort of pre World World II Triestines, raised on Austrian wine, pastry and waltzes, and German culture, lost a part of their personhood when that all disappeared with the armistice; and older generations here in Oregon probably aren't sure of where they are when former cow fields turn into strip malls.

But what we are facing with climate change is a fundamental loss of bearings that is worldwide and simultaneous. Five hundred years later, the Incas' descendants in Peru and Bolivia still sing plaintive, haunting songs about their history of cultural upheaval and impoverishment. As writer Clive Thompson postulates, we will suffer an enormous toll on our mental health alone from the loss of our sense of place.

Ars Americana

2007-12-25T11:52:00.000-08:00

When we moved to Portland Oregon in 1994, I feared cultural isolation. I had reason to, since the city was still not the indie, creative epicenter it has become. And it has a way to go before it matches my former home towns of New York, Paris, Rome and Washington, D.C. for world class exhibitions and performances. But thanks to the Internet and lots of travel there are few times I feel deprived of culture.

There are moments, however, when I wonder where the new ideas are now coming from, and whether our exposure to them is being limited. It is important that it not be, now that technological, scientific and creative breakthroughs are happening in China, India and elsewhere.

How will we know the state of our ideas? Will we be aware if the window onto the world shrinking? Who has the power to make it so or to prevent it from happening?

Culture is formed by so many things, including politics. And values. For a long time America drew artists and thinkers here not only because its culture was infectious in its freedom and tolerance, but because artists knew to be successful they had to contribute their own ideas to it.

Which is why I shuddered when I read these words from one of the latter 20th century's greatest performance artists, Mikhail Baryshnikov (who I had the privilege of seeing dance many times):

"I travel so much in Europe; there is so much interesting theater that has never been in New York."..."The political fallout from the unpopularity of America's war in Iraq and other policies could be responsible...Maybe it also spills into art...they don't care even what Americans think anymore..."

Is this how darkness falls? Artists just don't show up?

Baryshnikov defected from behind the Iron Curtain, escaping a world of narrow possibilities, to live, work and experiment culturally in the U.S. and the West. And he's still doing it...but if he's worried about dim horizons then I'm worried.

Disintegration thoughts

2007-12-23T19:20:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking about disintegration lately. In a world united by the sharing culture of the Internet, where "friends" share all kinds of information through Twitter, Facebook and MP3, our broader global society is not holding it together.

It is hard not to be aware of this, considering the fracturing beyond recognition of nations such as Chad, Sudan, Iraq, Kenya, Pakistan and even Belgium. "Boring" old Belgium is more interesting than ever, now that the thin veneer of statehood holding its Walloons and Flamands together is disintegrating. The fact that it is interesting now doesn't mean it is in better shape than before; just that it is demanding attention as a manifestation of an idea whose time may have come: the breakup of nations into smaller societies of common values.

The disintegration of some of these states was probably inevitable. They were never nation states with sturdy institutions to begin with, just federations of tribes with innate irreconcilable differences that never desired inclusiveness.

But is the idea taking hold that being once joined doesn't mean never splitting apart? Does it indicate that the whole within which small states thrive does not have to be a nation, but could be a federation of autonomous states? Belgium may go away, but tiny Flanders and Wallonia could still be part of Europe and the European Union.

You have to wonder if a nation the size and cohesiveness of the U.S. but with today's polarized electorate, could also fall sway to deep divisions. Already the push and pull between federal and state power is occurring over divisive feelings that relate to beliefs, the limits of freedom and the option of controlling one's own destiny. Will a progressive, creative Cascadia emerge, linking Northern California to British Columbia? Will a fundamentalist Christian Core become an inland nation? Is it conceivable that the U.S. may someday need to consider making room for a Hispanic autonomous zone in the Southwest, much as as Spain's Catalonia, France's Basque southwest, Canada's Quebec and Italy's alpine Tirol regions?

When listening to public discourse, I hear lots of indications of rifts, but few of unity. What happens when people can easily name more things that divide than unite us?

There is probably more than one underlying reason for disintegration of states, some more relevant than others depending on the geography. Perhaps globalization is breeding a familiarity that arouses contempt. More likely, globalization threatens cultural identity, and in dividing peoples into winners and losers elicits opposition. Globalization and technology makes people painfully aware of who is winning. Losers could include not only those who have lost jobs, but those who are poisoned by toxic environments or starved of staple crops by climate change.

It might all come down to scarcities -- water, food, power, security, wealth. These might open the way for bigger wedges like religion, nationalism, and hostilities from other societies.

Jared Diamond believes the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s was spurred by resource scarcities resulting from population pressure.

Once disintegration starts, how does it end? Lebanon was once a peaceful, multi-cultural, prosperous country. Will it ever be again or will its parts ever be whole and able to live alongside each other?

China recognizes avoiding disintegration is critical to the country's success. Whether or not they will find a solution is another matter. By distributing the benefits of globalization to rural areas, China's leaders could ensure that a culture of optimism that unites the country.

And that's where Belgium comes in again: these antagonistic societies, if they find a way to live with each other, might create a model of fractious states coexisting.

For now, it seems the U.S. will remain united because of pervasive post-9/11 culture of fear replacing the national, unifying pride in individual freedom. As Jared Diamond suggests, societies have choices to make. The 2008 election could be a values vote for sure.

Olives, avocados and water

2007-12-23T12:57:00.000-08:00

About a year or so ago, I wondered here about the impact of climate change on small farms. I still think it would be valuable to hear stories from farmers about what changes they are seeing and, as a result, what they anticipate could be the consequences. If nothing else, it might helps us be realistic about our future food supply and prepare. These farmers are the experts, after all. Today's New York Times carries a few op-eds on this subject for those willing to dispense with holiday cheer.

Violence on the border

2007-12-18T19:43:00.000-08:00

As Arizona gets ready for a new law to go into effect that penalizes employers of illegal (Hispanic) immigrants, California is the launchpad for illegal attacks into Mexico. I'd say that takes vigilante justice a tad too far.

Now, the Mexicans cross illegally, yes they do. But to work for us. And mostly, they work their asses off. Our illegal attacks occur only to HURT them, and to show them we hate them, in case they didn't know. Maybe the Commander in Chief ought to send in the National Guard...oh, wait, wrong century.

I just keep asking myself: What have we Americans become? Certainly we're less "christian" than ever, despite what savethemiddleclass has to say in this comment to the ABC story:

"If the present trend of illegal alien growth continues, the US will be a third-world country by the year 2040. I do not believe it is ethical to leave our children and grandchildren a third-world country when we have the power to stop it. We do not have to "house" everyone's mother, father, brother, and sister in this country. How many are you providing housing to in your home (something to consider). Third, who appointed you as the judge of people's motivations (ie, racist)? I am a Christian and my guidebook (the Bible) states that no one except God has the right to judge anyone's motivation."

Note to savethemiddleclass: if we become a third world country it will be because of an unscientific approach to problems of climate change, foreign oil dependency, education, health, innovation and social conflict, all problems not being taken seriously while people take pot shots at economic refugees.

Immigration now

2007-12-05T14:30:00.000-08:00

Despite all its economic, social and cultural shortcomings, one of the really big things the U.S. has had going for it was its openness. This situation didn't exist entirely out of altruism, as immigrant labor was essential for our economic growth, but it had the side effect of enriching us culturally as well and imbuing our national values with something extraordinary and almost unique -- a lack of fear of others.

To listen to the GOP candidates during their debate before Latinos is to realize that this openness and our formerly innate optimism are at risk.

Where is this anti-immigrant fervor coming from? It's certainly not very
rational.
Immigration to the U.S. is actually in decline, as the world's poor looks to Europe, Canada, Asia and emerging countries like Brazil for less jingoism and more opportunity. And economically, anti-immigration measures are demonstrably counterproductive.

Is it to deflect attention from this?

"The lesson to be learned from the election is that voter distrust of their leaders, fueled by corruption and inaction concerning critical problems, is a key issue heading into the 2008 election. While immigration is an important issue, it is not the bogeyman that Republicans hoped it would be." The Reform Institute, Nov. 27, 2007

The one GOP candidate to boycott tonight's debate, Tom Tancredo, had this comment:
“It is the law that to become a naturalized citizen of this country you must have knowledge and understanding of English, including a basic ability to read, write, and speak the language. So what may I ask are our presidential candidates doing participating in a Spanish speaking debate? " and " “Bilingualism is a great asset for any individual, but it has perilous consequences for a nation," Tancredo said. "As such, a Spanish debate has no place in a presidential campaign." Scandinavians, who perhaps not coincidentally enjoy prosperity we can only envy, speak five or so languages and might disagree with Tancredo's beliefs.

Remember when Spain spent a few hundred years kicking out Jews and Arabs, groups that had brought architecture, engineering, math, music and other learning to Iberia? As a result, Spain quickly became "the sick man of Europe". Running out of ideas for how to accommodate a growing population of idle lesser sons, they took that sickness, in the form of the Inquisition and other oppressive institutions, to the New World. One could say Latin America has yet to recover 600 years later.

The daily bread

2007-11-25T19:04:00.000-08:00

About a year ago, I wondered here about the projected impact of climate change on our food and also remarked on the newly hospitable climate for olive trees in southern England. Today I learned some smart minds were studying the topic and more.

The developed world will go through some unpleasant dislocations. But the poor countries are about to get really screwed again. They'll be the ones to go really hungry.

The rest of us still have resources to get us through the climate transition.

"For the truly pessimistic, there is always the "doomsday vault," a seed bank being constructed in a Norwegian mountainside that nations around the world are stocking with every kind of seed imaginable."

Or do we?

"After all, you never know what kind of plant trait is going to save humanity if the climate makes an unexpected turn, said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is leading the effort and who has boasted that the vault will be protected in part by the region's polar bears."

Polar bears? What polar bears? Hasn't Fowler heard? They won't be here anymore! Get another plan!

It is difficult to imagine that for the generations to come, one's daily bread won't be quite a serious matter.

Oh, well, we'll adapt. It won't be fun, but for eons to come we'll still be here. (As the Washington Post article implies, GMO is the answer to crops that withstand saltier water, drier weather, encroaching desert and chronic floods from hurricanes and typhoons.) And by "we" I mean humanity, not you and I. For us, it is probably too late for adaptation. We probably face a dotage in which our descendants tire of stories about the old days' cornucopia, of the reminiscences of seasons and the useless nostalgia for a Pacific Northwest free of tropical pests.

Argentina R Us

2007-11-24T17:17:00.001-08:00

For some years now, I'd say since the first Bush president, it has occurred to me that the USA was inexorably sliding towards a position once enjoyed by Argentina. In the early 20th century, Argentina was one of the world's richest countries, prompting the phrase "to be rich like an Argentine." Argentina was a top immigration destination for Italians in the 20th century because of the economic opportunity it offered. Of course, not EVERYONE was rich. The society was stratified into rich and poor, with little in-between.

As the lower economic groups and the middle class felt increasingly pinched by the fallout of bad industrialization and landowning policies, they came under the sway of populist politics and its false promises. During the decades of the Peronist populist era, Argentina was bled dry so that by the 1960s the whole world would "tsk tsk" over the country's fall. Essentially, the government spent money it did not have to buy, to put it baldly, votes, until it had no more to spend.

This situation set the stage for the gross distraction in the form of the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1970s which saw up to 20,000 men, women and children either disappeared, or victims of torture and murder (I say children for this reason: I sat next to an Argentine women on a plane some time ago, who told me she'd moved to the U.S. after her brother almost died. Eventually the whole story came out. He'd been a boy scout leader, who due to illness had not been able to accompany the troop to a field trip, during which the entire group was ambushed and massacred by goons. It turned out that the other troop leader had been suspected by the military to be running a communist cell with the scouts. After learning this appalling rationale for their wholesale slaughter, the woman and her family left the country. Plus, there were babies born in torture chambers and secretly given up for adoption.)

During this infamous period, Argentina was also suckered into borrowing billions from global banks. Ok, they didn't HAVE to borrow it. But petrodollars were flooding into the banks, and they had to put them somewhere, and they offered the bankrupt Argentine government what appeared to be a way out of the hole. Public banks had reached the limit of what they could lend. So private banks GLADLY stepped into the breach. When the loans came due, Argentina could not pay and the "debt crisis" vicious cycle began.

During these decades of crisis, who was the most revered figure? Eva Peron, possibly the single biggest source of all their problems. And who was left unaffected? The descendants of those landowners and industrialists who made sure the structural changes required to reform Argentina never happened.

Now, in some ways, this is what we have going on here where not only are the poor bankrupt, but so is the government and many in the middle class. Private banks have laid out loans to people who cannot repay them (OK, they didn't HAVE to borrow) and will now lose their homes. Savings are below zero and spending is out of line with earnings.

We are distracted by sodden celebrities, meaningless flag waving and immigrant scapegoating, while we face an economic abyss. Ronald Reagan' funeral was a celebration of forgetfulness over the man who started it all. Structurally, it is hard to imagine economic reform that isn't killed by the agro, pharma and military industrial complexes and the spawn of Wall Street.

Black Sesame

2007-11-18T17:45:00.000-08:00

Japanese cuisine has never been one of my absolute favorites, but on my recent trip there I was happy to discover several native foods that perfectly match my palate. Black sesame is one. I don't know that the flavor of the seed itself is any different from the white version, but I can tell you that the black sesame crackers, mochi and as in this photo, ice cream, were among the very best culinary memories I brought back with me.

Caveat: I have been known to bang the drum for sweets that find no takers among my circle. Red or mung bean paste desserts leave most people wondering if they can ever again take seriously my food recommendations. Same thing happens when I recommend avocado milk shakes (with chocolate!). But a food culture that can make a bland bean into a sweet confection is one I can really respect. Hey, it's nutritious!

I discovered on the web that this ice cream, on your right in the picture - with a delicate but distinct nutty flavor -- can be obtained here in NYC. I'll be stopping by next time I'm in the area.

Chestnut Nostalgia

2007-11-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

It is one of my comfort foods. Resistant to cultivation outside its native geography, and forced to unequivocally mark the arrival of autumn and autumn alone, the edible chestnut is something to look forward to this time of year if you are lucky enough to live in its environs. It is not just a great snack on its own -- sweet but not a bit cloying like a persimmon, that other wonderful autumn fruit, can be. It is healthy and nourishing if simply roasted or boiled. It takes me way, way back to the days of chilly legs poking out of my scratchy tweed coat with the velvet cuffs, standing on frosty cobblestones for a parent to hand me the warm paper cone of singed chestnuts, with the aroma of charcoal and burnt peel wafting around us. The farinata of chestnut taken with a glass of red wine in Florence on days prior to Christmas as the temperature plunged is a memory of adulthood.

So while in Japan last month, I was delighted to learn that there the chestnut is even more evident in autumn than in Italy. It was difficult to find them roasted, but no problem finding chestnut as a sweet paste in mochi, as soft serve ice cream with tiny nuggets of chestnut meat, as filling for a fist-sized pancake, as flour for cookies or crackers, as a glacee or in the center of chocolates. Every sweet vendor -- and there are many -- had their own version of the seasonal treat. What heaven. This cake is an example of what I encountered, even if unfortunately I did not get around to sampling this one being quite sated already with that day's intake of chestnut wafers.

Luckily, less than one week after returning from chestnut land, I stumbled upon a menu item here in Portland at the well-regarded Giorgio's that compensated for this area's relative lack of a chestnut season: home-made chestnut tortellini in an apple and celery coulis. Delicate, light, the sweetness of each ingredient nicely balanced, the dish is highly recommended. Go now as chestnut season will soon be over.

Spooked

2007-10-31T19:33:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was ending a two week trip to Japan. As in previous vacations, I made a point of not being connected electronically to any device, except when I went online in the hotel lobby to email our daughter for about ten minutes a day. As news junkies, we did buy the English-language Japan Times almost daily, which covers the top three or four US/World headlines and major Japan news.

And it struck me once deprived of the devices was that this mania for Facebook, mySpace, Twitter, IM, games, iPhone, blogs, "unboxing" videos and other time-consuming tech tools have filled our days with so much digital entertainment that we've developed a very shallow, very narrow, very short-term capacity for absorbing large events. I am guilty as charged.

It may be that the digital distractions came first; or that the overwhelming quantity and complexity of news as we increasingly operate on a global stage are responsible for our retreat from engagement into digitalia.

Whatever the cause, the effect is that the worst things can take place and all we do is shrug, mouth some cynical remark, and go back to updating our profiles and sending snark.

The last few days in Japan, however, despite the typically frenetic pace of our sightseeing, the effect of all those distractions wore off. And I experienced a scary feeling that lasted for days.

People, we have reason to feel this way if we just stop for a moment. Just to remind you:

1. We are about to bomb a second middle east country, which could set Kurds, Turks, Russians, Pakistanis, Indians, Saudis, Israelis, Lebanese, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda upon each other and us.
2. The ice caps are melting much faster than anyone imagined.
3. Iraq is safer today because ethnic cleansing is almost complete.
4. GMO is rampant with potentially ruinous consequences for agriculture in the future.
5.Atlanta, Georgia might run out of water in less than 90 days.
6.Our Attorney General nominee knows water boarding is repugnant but doesn't know if it is illegal.
7. The dollar, and Americans' savings such as they are, are rapidly losing their value. (Remember Argentina in the, oh, last half of last century?)

Luckily, we have the holiday season starting to keep us spending and bingeing like there is no tomorrow.

Meat grinder shoes

2007-10-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

My generation came of age during the rise of feminism, and one of the facets of traditional womanhood that it attacked was fashion. In particular, the dogma opposed high-heeled shoes. While they apparently make the foot and leg look seductive to males, for the wearer they misalign the spine, cause bunions and warp the foot in other ways, and result in insecure footing.

But if you thought stilettos were a bad idea, you ain't seen nothing. Can this crop of offensive shoe designs have any purpose at all except a misogynistic one? What's next, foot binding?

The Unbearable Bleakness of Being

2007-10-03T21:22:00.000-07:00

Is it the early rains? Being tired of lugging my painful foot around? I think it's the hangover from watching evil run amok in Ken Burns' "The War" combined with the malaise from reading The Bookseller of Kabul, yet another dispiriting account of what passes for life in Afghanistan.

Years ago, I saw the films Osama and Kandahar and experienced a bowel-shaking terror of the Taliban's evangelical Islam. These films' narratives centered on the female gender, and I could not help identifying with the characters.

There is no doubt that the Taliban, and other crusaders for fundamentalist Islam, stand for a travesty of everything human: free will, thought, feeling, artistic expression, the yearning for freedom and equality. Imagine a place where to laugh, dance or sing is suspect. Of course, if you are female in Afghanistan, chances are you will never have any reason to do any of those.

But women are just the ones who are in for the most brutal treatment, as a rule. The message I get when I ponder these pitiful states of being is that when history doesn't go your way, whoever you are, you are really screwed. Things may eventually improve for humankind in general, the brutal war or ruthless regime may end, but in the meantime individuals will suffer to no end.

This is an apocalyptic condition. And those who believe the end of time has a set date, need only read the daily news to see it has already arrived for many people.

Italy's Multicultural Music

2007-09-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

Back in July 2007, I used this space to provide some impressions of rapidly changing Italy, as a person who was born and partly raised there and who has spent some long periods of time in the country.

Today, one of my musings has been answered by this article in the New York Times.

“The world around us changed,” Mr. Tronco told me backstage, before the concert. “Immigrants started arriving. For Italians it’s still strange for the baker to be Chinese and the butcher Bengalese.”

And out of what could be a new melting pot, could emerge some amazing music. And film. and art. And design. And TV.

Portland's Good Eats

2007-09-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

Today's New York Times has the usual tales of woe: our new Iraqi allies, the Sunnis, are targeting our erstwhile allies the police and tribal chiefs, for death; it seems that the Bush friends who are managing the oil drilling on federal lands were taking favors from oil companies; a New Jersey town that drove out illegal immigrants is in economic hardship as a result; women no longer report being happier than men because they have a longer to-do list than ever; and ping-ponging rather than the procedural conference committee is now the way partisan bills become law. Sigh.

But hey, for those of us living in Portland, day to day eating is still a prize, as the Times finally gets around to
reporting.

Playing Hard to Get

2007-09-24T11:43:00.000-07:00

It is really difficult in this day and age to experience discrimination as a white man, but there's one Japanese restaurant in Beaverton where you can have just that. I won't mention its name, just because I'm nice and I don't want to cause trouble for it and therefore all the Japanese natives who depend on it for a delicious reminder of home, but I won't be going back for more of that treatment. Not that the young woman owner would care, truth be told.

Three times we called and made reservations. Our reservations were taken. When we showed up, lo and behold, there was no such reservation on record. And none of the empty tables were available for us because they were set for people who did have their reservations on record.

The first time, we believed the line that a mistake must have been made and waited 45 minutes for a table, simply because I'd heard from Japanese clients that it was the best home style Japanese restaurant in the entire Portland area. And it was worth the wait. Soft and succulent scallops, blackened cod, and salmon. A mild but savory eggplant. Smoky soba. Sapporo on tap. The second time, it was on an off night and we only had to wait 15 minutes. The third time, we were simply turned away.

I don't think the owner stops to say, "Oh, white person. I won't seat them." I think she simply doesn't treat our call as importantly as she does the calls from Japanese. That is indeed a form of discrimination.

So, I'm ready to try some of the other homestyle, small plate Japanese eateries in town (I hear there's a good one in Hillsboro), and even if they aren't quite as good, the experience hopefully will compensate for it.

The expulsion of the global creative class

2007-09-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

Update on my previous post: Just as occurred to Rohinton Mistry a year or so ago, musicologist Nalini Ghuman has been brutally denied re-entry into the U.S., as reported today in the New York Times.

She's British, of Welsh and Sikh descent, and an esteemed authority on Elgar. Until her apprehension at SFO she was also an assistant professor at Mills College in California. Consider this:
- armed immigration officers met her at the airplane door when she landed in SFO and during the next eight hours they:
- tore up her H-1B visa which was good for another two years
- defaced her British passport
- described her as "Hispanic" (in addition to being thugs, they are idiots)
- held her incommunicado and did not let her contact the British Consulate
- groped her during a body search
- told her she would be considered to be attacking her armed female searcher if she moved
- told her she was "a nobody" and "had no rights"
- threatened to transfer her to a detention center if she did not take a flight back to London that night, which she did.

She said "For the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means."

Despite many letters from musicians and intervention of the British Embassy, this case has been unresolved for 13 months.

Why would she ever want to return?

She'll be going to Quebec for a conference soon. As the article states, "At least...she can expect Canada to let her in.

Nicole Kidman and the Ideal of American Womanhood

2007-09-16T14:13:00.000-07:00

There is one other reason, besides food, that I prefer to shop at New Seasons or Whole Foods rather than the older supermarket chains. Before the racks of celebrity rags at Safeway and Albertsons, my appetite always dissipates to be reminded that American womanhood is in such crisis. Look no further than the once fabulous Nicole Kidman on the current cover of Vanity Fair, to see how even a woman of enormous artistic talent who is economically secure can be so afraid of maturing that she gives up her face, and in the process IMHO, her individuality. Take her collagen plumped skin, the jowls that have been cut away, the eyes no longer heavy lidded, the strangely full lips, and at age forty, brand new breasts. Her skin looks younger than it did 20 years ago. People, this is like building towns in the desert -- it is not meant to be! Nor is it sustainable. What will she do when she turns 50?

The main reason I used to enjoy watching Kidman was her actor's face...now encased in rigor plasticus and devoid of any personality, mystery or honest beauty.

Toronto the new New York?

2007-09-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

I was stunned this week to learn that Richard Florida had moved from the Washington, D.C. area to Toronto. He's a hugely influential researcher on what makes geographies dynamic and prosperous, and he is taking his work to the highly esteemed Rotman School, led by the exceptional Roger Martin.

On the one hand, in a global world talent is highly mobile. But on the other, does Florida's move indicate that the U.S. is going to be less attractive to that kind of talent?

It might mean that Florida sees Canada, and specifically Toronto rather than Washington or other U.S. cities, as having the right criteria for a geography of the future: open, diverse, tolerant and creative. Such a geography is making the shift from manufacturing to creativity as its economic engine.

Florida is not the only one working in this vein. Daniel Pink has said that creativity is the new international currency, and the current fascination in business with the idea of collaboration and the plethora of tech tools to achieve it has to do with the goal of encouraging creative thinking among workers.

Are we in the U.S. seeing a pattern of laws and regulations that promote insularity, the opposite of curiosity and openness on which creativity thrives? Is our famously un-curious President the emblem of our post 9/11 culture?

Whether it is Mexican manual laborers or Chinese and Indian engineers, our immigration policies indicate we are concerned about "the others." But we're not just keeping out workers, who by contributing to cultural diversity in the past have exposed Americans to lots of ideas, but artists too.

These policies have ensnared artists and creative thinkers like the Canadian Rohinton Mistry and the British Lily Allen.

What would American music and the music industry been like without the British invasion of 1964?

The WSJ today writes that due to post 9/11 immigration and visa policies, "some companies say they have had more trouble bringing in talented people from abroad."

Maybe that's why the Toronto Film Festival has become a global magnet lately. There are indeed alternatives to New York and Los Angeles.

Florida has warned in his recent writing that the U.S. could lose in this creative economy. But we literally cannot afford to lose. We can't rest on our laurels, now that Stockholm, Krakow, Tallinn, Buenos Aires, Vancouver, Shanghai, Mexico City, Melbourne, Dublin, Dakar and Kuala Lumpur are producing powerfully creative ideas about work, life, science, education -- all the things that the 21st century is transforming.

Does Florida's move mean that we're already shutting down?

Pavarotti and the rose

2007-09-06T18:27:00.000-07:00

So long ago I hate to contemplate it, I was a college student in NYC and a culture vulture. I so loved ballet that I signed up to usher at the Met Opera so I could catch the Kirov, ABT, the Royal and the Stuttgart during the dance season. Of course, I could not pick and choose the nights the Met called me in to work and I ended up working opera nights as well.

Pavarotti was singing night after night, the Verdi, Puccini, Bellini repertoire, alongside star after star soprano, his voice at its prime, just before he became household name. To this day, I unfairly measure all opera performances against his, because it is impossible not to experience the sublime and then hope to find it again.

La Boheme, I Puritani, Rosenkavalier (what a cameo!), Un Ballo in Maschera, Rigoletto: how fortunate I was to lose my opera virginity with the tenor of the century. A more liquid, mellifluous voice in opera did and does not exist.

One night, I was called to help hold the curtain for the umpteen curtain calls that followed a Pavarotti performance. Another usher and I stood together to hold it back, as it was very heavy, as the singers filed past to receive their applause. You could hear a constant thumping as the bouquets of flowers hit the stage. For his last bow, Pavarotti picked up a single rose, held it up in homage to his audience and disappeared from them behind the curtain, and towards the place where I was holding it. Suddenly the star of the century stood in all his corpulent grandeur before me, a young new opera fan working for music. Inches from my face, he held up the rose, and bent it towards me as a gift. I took it with a barely audible, choked "grazie".

Unforgettable.

Fast

2007-08-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when you don't take it slow. The family visit from Canada was just over, and my mind turned to the admin caca kind of work that was piling up, the irritating general disorganization of the house, the sadly empty fridge and I seemed to need to just pile it on even higher. In my mad (might be literally so) rush to super achieve last Saturday, my left foot went out from under ("Stop it! I just can't move that fast!") and broke with a sharp stabbing snap.

For five days I was mostly immobile, but, god forbid, not idle. Thanks to high speed Internet and home networks, I put in 7-8 hours a day from bed. Now with my boot cast, I sit anywhere and plug away. Makes me really proud that I haven't lost any time.

But I have six weeks recovery to go. I'm starting to give in to the limited ability to move. So here's what I've begun to notice about being forced to take it a little more slow:

It helps to have a life partner. I don't know what I would do without my husband to do stuff for me. I'm reminded that I need to not take that for granted.

I've listened to an entire 2-CD set in one sitting, something I haven't done in too many years to recall. I could swear I'd heard "If It Be Your Will" by Leonard Cohen on this CD before, but I don't think I had realized how much I liked it until yesterday.

I've read the NYT and WSJ and this week's New Yorker cover to cover, something I haven't done all in one week let alone day in too many years to recall. I have started to notice the small bits of coverage that you know will emerge as page one stories in a few months or years. If you are in a rush, chances are you'll miss these and gripe about the lousy reporting job the MSM is doing, like I do all the time.

I visited 1:1 with a friend for an evening that stretched to almost midnight (way past MY normal weeknight bedtime) without once twittering, checking email, updating my Facebook page or scanning the daily blogs, and I came away with a few new things to think about that I would not have gotten from afore-mentioned activities.

The next month will be tough for a mad dasher like me, but there's lots to savor in the down time.

Going Slow

2007-08-20T18:49:00.000-07:00

There are many wondrous things we would probably rediscover, or discover for the first time generationally, if we were to go slow. Occasionally I chide myself for rushing non stop and piling on the multiple tasks in the interest of efficiency and "lots to do", and try to remember to look up, at the clouds, at the treetops and at the stars. Tilting my head away from the ground is easiest way for me to literally open up to new perspectives. Usually I see something worth stopping for.

Last week the Perseid shower blew by, and for about a second I actually thought about stealing away at midnight to find a dark spot from which to catch sight of shooting stars. I have done so a couple of times in my life, but I never really had the patience to stick it out for the prime viewing time of 2am. Still, the memory of those shooting stars -- as I pulled the curtains for the night from a window in Trieste, during a summer night in Vermont, bundled in fleece during an August night in Wilsonville, Oregon -- make me feel like a child again, or a natural-state primitive man, marveling at the mysterious power of the universe.

It would be a really good exercise in slow to take a day to sit and watch it get dark, and then wait for the stars. When was the last time I did that? I can remember watching it get light at least a few times in college. Of course most of the time day turns to night before my eyes, but I'm not usually paying attention.

The New Yorker has a touching article in the August 20 issue, by David Owen, about a little known but exciting trend in U.S. cities to minimize light pollution. The purpose is not just to save lots of money and energy, but to design night lighting so that it is the least disruptive to enjoying the experience of dark and all it entails. Part of that means restoring some places to a state of dark similar to that which existed before artificial light -- a state which allowed Galileo to see the Milky Way, Saturn, Jupiter and Venus with weak telescopes or even the naked eye.

We should save our dark areas for the same reason we preserve wilderness. Owen talks about the International Dark Sky Association and quotes a founder saying "We're sort of a nighttime Sierra Club."

What a wonderful idea. The fact is, lighting can be reduced without sacrificing safety, and the benefits could extend to giving kids something other than a computer screen to look at. If we can manage to create the habit to take it slow.

NOT to-do lists for slow living

2007-08-14T10:56:00.001-07:00

I'm as addicted to the Internet as the other guy, but I do recognize the need to disconnect occasionally, like on family vacations. Nothing like it to feel as though you are living in the present and savoring each moment.

So in my ongoing interest in SLOW, I am sharing this helpful post I found while surfing and hitting some of my favorite web sites.

Mexicans and the Mines

2007-08-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

When I first heard of the latest mining disaster, this one in Utah, my mind conjured up an image of the men trapped in the pit. I imagined them as Mexicans.

Mexicans have been miners forever. In the 16th century, the Spaniards sent them down the mines to dig out silver and didn't let them out until they dropped dead. That is one reason why their population was practically depleted in one generation. The Spaniards didn't really see them as humans so they treated them like expendable beasts of burden.

Sadly, I turned out to be right wrt the Utah situation. If native sons of Utah had been in those mines, would the roof had been more secure?

Is it any accident that as we are demonizing Mexican immigrants, they are doing some of our most dangerous work?

The story of racism in Latin American is rooted in the dehumanization of the Indians by the Spaniards. Something to keep in mind.

The Artic Gold Rush

2007-08-12T18:28:00.000-07:00

Not all that many years ago, we'd take a summer trip annually to the Oregon coast to cool off. I mean, really cool off. In fleece and windbreakers, we'd forget for a time that Portland was undergoing temperatures in the 90s. The icy Pacific water was always alluring to me though, and inevitably I'd run through it, only to emerge a short time later with serious pain in my feet as they went through a thaw.

This week, the water was only cold. After a while, I got used to it and it didn't bother me. How disappointing. How things are different with a little global climate change.

So it makes sense that the people who rule have taken notice. And now another major powers conflict is brewing and this time in that most delicate of ecosystems, the Artic.

As if we don't have enough wars and conflicts going on as is.

And wouldn't you know it would be about energy, namely oil and gas. Global warming caused by an oil addiction is making Artic ice melt, which means now nations can fight over who has the right to drill into the resulting water to feed our oil addiction. How's that for warped logic?

If there are future historians and a planet to write about, oil will go down as a dirty word, our downfall. The stuff of senseless wars, economic servitude, and environmental devastation.

Wouldn't it be saner to take all that money and time and diplomacy and invest it in a non-oil future and leave the Artic waters be?

San Francisco, Minneapolis and Infrastructure

2007-08-02T18:11:00.000-07:00

All I can say is, people, you get what you pay for.

You enjoy those tax cuts until one day, driving that Lexus Hybrid SUV across a bridge, you might feel a wobble. Of course there is blame to throw around, but we're all complicit unless we develop a social conscience that befits the world's oldest democracy.

This SHOULD be an election year issue illustrating why we pay taxes.

Meanwhile, MSNBC has a chart of bridges in peril so you can determine your safety level.

MI-5

2007-07-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

We watched season 4 of one of my favorite TV series ever (disclosure: I don't watch much on the boob tube), MI-5 ,or "Spooks" as it is known in the UK.

The first three seasons were brilliant. Dazzling, laser sharp dialogue and tightly-woven narrative, sympathetic, close knit characters, fine acting by some of Britain's best, mordant humor that blew by so quickly it was hard to catch, and suspense that had us addicted and desperate for the next episode. We watched all three seasons in a matter of days last summer. Since then, I've referred to MI-5 as "24" for brains. The show wasn't just about chasing terrorists. It had drama and depth and in the course of events raised questions about the age we live in and the difficult choices we make.

Now the main three characters are gone, with the exception of the excellent Harry, played by Peter Firth (I saw him in "Equus" on stage many years ago). Harry has a strong moral center. He lives in the past when having said moral center mattered to an idealistic lot. He provides an avuncular but hard-boiled anchor to the work of MI-5.

So, now that the first three have been dealt with, each in their own unpredictable way, we have new characters. They are appealing to be sure, and don't lazily fit into the old formula, but none measure up individually or as a unit to the threesome of the past. We care less about them. They are more thinly drawn.

The writing seems to have suffered a bit. I'd call it smart, but not brilliant except in an occasional flash. The humor is harder to place, and there are traces of a plot line getting desperate.

Still, it is riveting. One of the interesting things about a counter terrorism program made in and set in Britain is the different perspectives you get on things, like torture. MI-5 doesn't patronize, or glamorize, or fetishize it, but neither does it back away from the reality that it is an attractive tool even outside today's USA.

Speaking of which, there are lots of references to "you'll talk because otherwise you know what we'll do: turn you over to the Americans."

Restoring the travel experience?

2007-07-22T18:30:00.000-07:00

After making it plain all summer they deserve the same fate as the US auto industry, the US airline industry is going to be facing some overseas competition. I, for one, am delighted at the arrival of Virgin America.

First, they refer to passengers as "guests." What a concept.
Second, they put a stake in the ground and promise to offer the lowest fares. That's value. Check this out: $44 from SFO to LAX.
Third, they will try to offer an overall great experience. Leather seats, mood lighting, connectivity everywhere, on-demand entertainment, "fresh food." (Make that organic and they'll really set themselves apart.)
Four, they know how to communicate to their "guests." Check out the web site.

Now, I have to say I flew Virgin a few times in and out of Heathrow, and it was not great. I did have extra legroom and the food selection was broader than normal, but the attendants had attitude and there were not enough toilets on the aircraft.

But the US airline industry is now so plainly not interested in its customers, I'll give Virgin a shot. I might even join their frequent flier program.

Scary Thoughts

2007-07-22T13:38:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me to say something I have not heard before. It came to my mind this afternoon after reading Senator Kit Bond's letter to the editor in the New York Times. Bond is vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

In it, he criticizes the Democrat "twist" on the National Intelligence Estimate that says Al Qaeda is as strong as ever.

The Senator writes that "our efforts to combat terrorism worldwide have prevented Al Qaeda from attacking the US since Sept. 11, 2001." Okay, I know this is Republican spin and to be expected. But I'm starting to think folks like Bond actually believe it.

He also writes that the US is safer now in part because "other terrorist groups now perceive the US as a harder target to strike."

So what I want to say is that the terrorists' leaders are smarter than our own. Not an original thought, but a very scary one and perhaps why it isn't spelled out too often. It may be why I don't like to dwell on it too much myself. But if Congressional leaders don't get it, what hope is there?

History shows that the terrorists take their time, seal off leaks, test their plans, wait for the right moment like when the Dow is at an all time high and allow us to become lulled or fooled into complacency before they strike. When they strike, they strike big and only exploit our gaping weaknesses. Weaknesses that aren't bolstered very much to this day, e.g., cargo shipments, nuclear and chemical sites and interstate and international channels of commerce. In fact, our weaknesses may have only grown, e.g., depleted National Guard and depleted FEMA which are nothing compared to our depleted sense of national unity.

Slow Focaccia

2007-07-15T18:23:00.000-07:00

While in Tellaro for a stroll and photo-taking, we stopped for lunch at a trattoria specializing in fish. Of course, this being in the province of Liguria, focaccia was also on the table and darn good it was. I stopped in the kitchen at the end of the meal to compliment the baker, who was in the midst of preparing another round of the ubiquitous slab of bread. He held out the dough for me to touch. It was soft as slik and punchier than a marshmallow. The "secret" to a great focaccia? Let the dough rise for 5-6 hours, punch it down, and give another 5-6 hours. Even more if you like.

I asked the server at the convent where we were staying about their own foccacia. Same deal. Apparently no one in his right mind in Liguria goes by the standard instructions of a 1.5 hour rising time. They prepare it the day before baking it in a very hot oven, usually in the morning.

I can handle that. It's something worth the wait.

Best Place to Live: Italy

2007-07-07T15:03:00.000-07:00

For years my husband and I have fantasized about living an everyday life, not some "Under the Tuscan Sun" fantasy, in the city of Trent. Gorgeous, prosperous, progressive and creative, the city is a great blend of the best of Italian and Austrian cultures, with a wonderful cuisine and a beautiful setting at the foot of the Italian Alps.

While in Italy last month, I read that Trent has been named the No.1 city in Italy for livability, and the sixth in Europe (No. 2 was Bolzano and No. 3 Aosta. My mother's home town, Trieste, was No. 4). It is interesting that these cities should feature so high on the list. They are not towns well known to tourists, and rarely get any notice. They also have a political and economic history with northern Europe.

Should have looked for a teeny plot back when the dollar was riding high (before Bush II).

Slow City

2007-07-07T14:43:00.000-07:00

Being an advocate of Slow Food (of which pizza can be a part even if it takes seconds to actually bake), I am now taken with the concept of a Slow Cities. In Portovenere, I read about how the town was adopting the strictures of Citta Slow (officially Citta Lente, but in everyday parlance the term has been Anglicized). It struck me as a great way to salvage what is integral to the meaning of Italy -- balance, preservation, artisanal values, the rhythms of a life lived fully on a daily basis. It is a way of saying "Basta!" to speed for the sake of speed, an American affliction that I too often share.

Any chance of making Portland a Citta Slow?

Well, first we have to have something to slow down for...besides good restaurants and cafes. European mayors have lately been very creative in finding ways to bring people into the piazzas and have them linger. For example, the city of Cremona sponsors crafts markets, concerts, and other diversions every Thursday of the summer. In Verona, the churches and villas are sites for free jazz, classical and rock concerts. In Mantova and other cities, summer solstice celebrations involve dinners on historic bridges and fireworks. These activities create new attachments between citizens and their cities and deepen the sense that they live someplace special.

Imagine a coffee hour or microbrewery tables on the Steel Bridge, while fireworks are set off from a boat on the Willamette. We can do it too.

Italian Fast Food

2007-07-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

It was good to see our favorite pizza place outside of Verona was still thriving, seeing so many establishments have turned over. In fact, the pizza was so good we went two days in a row. I'd have gladly returned a few more times.

Great ingredients and technique make for a perfect specimen! A 700 degree oven in which the pie goes for merely seconds, super savory olive oil and tomatoes, the singular taste of native made mozzarella...some things you just have to travel to experience.

How Italy Looks to Me

2007-07-07T10:02:00.001-07:00

It had been two years since I'd visited Italy, and that was for a short spell. This summer, the three of us returned after four years for a longish (3 weeks) stay. As always, I'm on the lookout for how things have changed and what has endured.

Cheap intra-Europe travel, a relative novelty, means that Europeans are traveling their continent more than ever. Flights for as little as $70 round trip are available from, say, London to Florence. There were certainly more Europeans than Americans or Chinese by far. It used to be that besides Italian you'd hear mostly German, some French and British English and lots of American English in the tourist towns, but now you hear Polish, Russian, Romanian, Spanish everywhere.

By "everywhere" I mean that the swarms have explored every part of Italy. It is a beautiful place, with art and landscape worth savoring in almost every small town, so Italy Minore is no longer off the beaten path.

But many of these tourists travel simply for a change of scene and care little for the Piero della Francescas and Pontormos, and really just want to eat, drink and be merry without spending a lot of money. Italian businesses have begun catering to these crowds, with a not so pleasant result at times.

Italy has really learned how to merchandise and market itself as a brand -- the good life, beautiful people, food and wine, art. The advantage of that is that now you can actually have longer access to more museums and historic buildings, and the lavatories are better.

It is not only possible, but downright probable, to find really bad food in the tourist towns of which there are more and more. It used to be that restaurants actually cared deeply about what they served. Now, if you don't know where to go and are not willing to pay, you will be really disappointed, or not note any difference from eating a bad Italian restaurants at home. I can now get better pizza in Portland than in a lot of places we visited.

The markets are now the domain of Chinese vendors, selling very cheap "Made in China" clothing, imitations of name brands and bric a brac.

Italy is multiracial! France got there 30 years sooner, but now Italy has its share of Italians of African and Chinese origin. The Church is actively seeking adoptive parents for African orphans and is getting lots of takers, a situation that Italians of previous generations might not have embraced. Today some of the best African musicians live in Paris; tomorrow in Milan?

The dollar's crash is terrible news for travel to Euro land. Japan is cheaper. Hard to imagine being able to budget for a return any time soon.

And yet...you still gasp on a daily basis at the driving habits of Italians; when you go to your favorite pizza place or regional trattoria you still marvel at how they turn out such fabulous dishes; you still slow down at midday to recharge for an evening of outdoor eating and clinking of glasses; and the landscape still summons up the inner artist.

Heathrow

2007-07-05T18:31:00.001-07:00

So, we ended a luscious three week vacation in Italy with a flight home through London's Heathrow. It was everything I had dreaded about the experience, and more. As one Brit was heard to say, "Ah, Heathrow. Just as I've always remembered it. An obscene place to be."

Poor London, besieged by terrorists on a chronic basis. Its citizens' famous ability to cope and weather through is admirable and to be emulated. They deal with the constant alerts stoically. So I feel churlish complaining about a small thing like the ordeal of having to travel through its airport. But what goes on at Heathrow is a bit of future shock, I think. So how we experience it is worth considering.

The day prior to our departure, the terminal had been evacuated due to a bomb scare. People in saris, hajib, jeans and African damask were squatting to eat or wrapped in airplane blankets dozing on the yoga mats that had been distributed to those left stranded. Two days' worth of international travellers mobbed all the check-in counters, filling every available space inside and outside the terminal, to wait for their flights to be called. When their flight was finally called, human traffic jams slowed movement through the terminal to a crawl. The proverbial babble of tongues added to the sense of confusion. At times, one caught the odor of those who had been unable to wash. Some people were crying, desperate to get home. But most had a look of weathered resignation. Perhaps many had been through this enough times before to have built up some tolerance.

I thought about the P.D. James book and movie "Children of Men." And for one frightening moment, I imagined the chaos of a refugee camp.

But I did not hear any voices raised, or see any scuffling for the front of line. The British Airways personnel, who on a daily basis must wonder if their jobs have a future in this environment, never behaved as if conditions were anything other than normal. Our flight left a mere one hour late. If only our roads were examples of such civility.

Nevertheless, this scenario may be the new normal for travel. If so, there may be less of it.

Via, via!

2007-06-12T08:12:00.000-07:00

Folks, it's vacation time. Finally. Time to cash in that euro bank account (sagely set up back in 2000 when the dollar was king) and return to the ancestral homeland. I am also doing the unthinkable and vowing to stay unconnected during the trip. How's that for trying to go back in time? Honestly, being unconnected is the new luxury and I'm going to indulge.

First stop, a short stay in Pisa and Lucca. Then on to Bocca di Magro in Liguria (see marina photo) for visit with friends. Back to Lucca for visits to the Garfagnana, after which we spend a few days in Cremona of the photo above (I have a sentimental attachment to the Emilia-Romagna province, not to mention to its food and wine), before visiting friends in Mantova and Verona, some of whom will join us on a hiking expedition to San Candido
in the Dolomites. All in all, six provinces, some old favorites, and some new discoveries.

Will it be hard to return? What do you think?

Airport Madness

2007-06-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

Had a rush trip to NYC last week. Flew out Thursday morning from PDX, arrived late afternoon in Newark. College roommate friend picked me up. Visited a couple of hours, then was on the New Jersey train into Penn Station. 7:10pm, checked into hotel. Met client for dinner and crashed around 11pm EDT. Up early Friday, joined my client at 7:30am, left for meetings at Strategy+Business, Business Week and American Craft. Strolled old stomping grounds on West Broadway, Houston, Bleecker and Thompson for a half hour, then crawled through 3pm traffic back to Newark.

Beat. Hot. Grimy. Eager to slump into my little airplane perch and let sleep and fatigue take over.

But nooooooo.

Just prior to boarding time, hear that our plane had been taken out of commission. We wait. Our senses are drummed into pain by the merciless, mindless TV, incessant boarding announcements, screaming children and other airport gate din.

I buy food and water. I change into shorts. Wash my face and hands a few times. Read my suspense novel to stay awake. Try to get online but Wi-Fi is not free. Wish I could lie down and sleep but the carpet is dreck and I might miss some important news about my flight.

I think: Why doesn't some intrepid entrepreneur open up a super short term mini-hotel in airport terminals? Why aren't there neck and shoulder massage stations all over? What about emulating the services of Asian and European airports and installing super clean showers in the most congested airports? Hey, a small movie theater showing short films is another idea. Especially if wi-fi isn't free. (Which bonehead came up with that?)

We board three hours later, wait to get to the head of the runway line, then just prior to our turn a woman takes her two kids to the bathroom and we go to the end of the line again. No one yells. What a miracle. Another miracle: none of the babies on the plane cry during the flight.

The plane lands in PDX. I feel as though I've flown to Europe and back. Get home and take a soak and crash.

I think: "I don't like travel. I never want to be on another airplane. I'm tearing up my mileage credit card and getting a cash-back reward card instead."

Wong Kar-Wai

2007-05-20T17:20:00.000-07:00

It was said about the great painter Monet that in the partial blindness of his old age, "He only had one eye, but what an eye!"

I've never seen a photo or TV interview with the great Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai when he wasn't wearing dark glasses, but I know this artist sees better than most. Maybe his sight is too piercing, too clear to go without shade. His images, like Monet's, capture that fleeting moment, one that is so beautiful you want to grab at it, hold it, never let it go, but that, like time itself, poignantly escapes our permanent grasp. These moments can take place in dingy hotels and can be tragic or ineffable but they are rendered beautiful by Kar-Wai's eye. They make up a celluloid canvas that is unlike any other and mark him as an old-fashioned auteur.

Who knew red-painted toenails on white skin could make such an artistic statement? Or that a wisp of a hem of a luxurious cheongsan in motion would stop the clock? Or that artificial light in a dim interior could vy with the sky for how it bestows beauty?

His work is flawed, perhaps because his appetite for the lush image is insatiable and difficult to balance with narrative. But any new Kar-Wai film is an occasion for cinephiles to get excited.

Speaking of narrative, there is not much there. "In the Mood for Love" was a series of scenes of brief encounters and the subject mostly unspoken longing. The characters in "2046" went farther than longing, but there wasn't much in the way of dialogue and in the end, there was not much action to account for outside all the weeping despite its (excessive) length. But the visual esthetic was expansive and rich. No one makes use of color and composition like Kar-Wai.

So, I'm running to "Blueberry Nights" as soon as it gets here.

Update: Turning off the lights

2007-05-16T07:37:00.000-07:00

The lights are really going out in Jackson County, thanks to citizens like this. These are the kind of people who thrive on making the world a sorrier place.

Maybe Ashland will no longer be one of the "best places to retire" in the next annual survey. Culture, after all, adds value to a community. And culture starts with a cultured mind, not a closed one.

Gilroy Garlic

2007-05-13T19:41:00.000-07:00

Melamine in the food chain got you scared?
A friend told me last night that her net bag of Gilroy garlic was not all that it seemed. The small print, if you cared to look for it, said "imported from China."

BarCamp Portland

2007-05-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

I spent nine hours yesterday at BarCamp Portland, the local spinoff of the national unconference founded in Silicon Valley as a response to Foo Camp (to the best of my knowledge). BarCamp is free, supported by sponsors and volunteers, and brings together mostly young emerging tech entrepreneurs who are breaking rules. Because Open Source is so big in Portland, many of the sessions dealt with that issue. I learned a lot.

I also met loads of interesting locals that I don't normally run into as a matter of course. Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki; Marshall Kirkpatrick, former TechCrunch blogger and now a strategist at cool Splashcast; Raven Zachary, an Open Source analyst for the451.com; Justin Kistner who has a real web 2.0 job where he roams around evangelizing, inspiring, soaking up data to use in company strategy, and socializing. I got to sit down and touch the $100 Laptop of Nick Negroponte fame, think about changing currency models (creativity, reputation are new currencies) and drink free bubble tea.

A few things I learned:
My daughter's generation will be seeking jobs that are only now starting to be defined. Many more have not yet been invented. So, throw out the old school curriculum.
Twitter is the not the waste of time I thought it was. There are various ways of putting it to good use, including getting news out faster than wires can manage.
The human brain is programmed to care for no more than 200 people (results vary). But will social media create an empathy curve that will expand people's capacity to care?
Video is the be all and end all.

I was really proud that Portland could carry such a great event, attracting 250 engaged and engaging people, and sponsors such as Wieden+Kenndy and Portland State University. Attendees were rockin' from 7pm Friday to Saturday at 11pm.

Bees, the tides and seawalls

2007-05-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

Everywhere one looks there are signs of faster change than expected. It is as if the planet is trying to get our attention, once last time.

There are the honey bees. It took a long time, but finally the mass media noticed the reports of their die-off. Maybe global warming has nothing to do with it; maybe the cause is cell phone radiation or genetically modified plants. No one knows, but it is fair to consider the impact of a few degrees of extra warmth on all creatures. And not to put too fine a point on it, on us. Ready for a bread and water diet?

The New York Times reported last week on the acres of coastline farms in England that have washed away just in the last few years. The Brits have decided they will no longer support the network of sea walls that have been in place for years. No point anymore. The land is not economically viable. Cheerio.

What the article only barely implies is the sadness locals must feel in seeing ancient farmland, a part of their personal history, and a part of the English landscape and cultural patrimony, disappear forever. What happens when warm weather hemp and jalapeno replace cold weather beets is dramatic in how that changes the character of the landscape, local food culture and other traditions. What is Italy without its olive trees and vineyards? What is Scotland without its heather? Oregon without its Pinot Noir? We are saying good-bye to who we are, who we were.

Women in these times

2007-04-20T17:09:00.000-07:00

Some bleak times, these days. The list of injustices seems endless. And yesterday, the five arrogant, all-Catholic men of the U.S. Supreme Court made a major decision predicated on the belief that women cannot decide matters of life and death for themselves.

From the New York Times editorial: "Justice Kennedy actually reasoned that banning the [intact dilation and extraction] procedure was good for women in that it would protect them from a procedure they might not fully understand..."

Thanks. But no thanks. Just get out of my life.

It reminds me of the shock I felt when watching that paragon of Catholic dogma, "The Cardinal" on TV many years ago. In a pivotal scene that takes place during World War II, the ambitious priest on a trajectory towards Cardinal-hood is asked by the obstetrician to make the decision on whether his sister, who is in a difficult childbirth, or her fetus, should live. And what made me really angry was that the heartless dolt had to think about it.

Well, we're on our way back to those days. The idea that women cannot be in charge of their bodies is a religious one. It is certainly not a scientific one. And religious, bigoted men ruled yesterday. Imagine what comes next.

Meanwhile, in the land ruled by these men's kindred spirits, the mullahs, six men were exonerated in the murders of five people for what they viewed as immoral behavior. The killers stoned their victims to death (quaint old timey method) or drowned them by sitting on their chests in a pond. (In 2004, a mullah had a 16-year old girl hung for "chastity" crimes after a monkey trial, for which he has not been held liable.)

The merest hint of sex drove these Iranian men to murder. One young engaged couple was killed because they were walking together in public.

Maybe the mullahs, and the Supreme Court, will have less to worry about once women can procreate without even thinking about men.

The stuff of beauty

2007-04-15T18:07:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time pondering the subject of beauty. In the time before man conquered nature, did our ancestors have an objective awareness and appreciation of their unadorned surroundings? Is beauty something that can be enjoyed passively? Does a lack of beauty in our surroundings stunt mental development? Why are there ugly passages in the story of beauty? Although beauty may come in many forms, is it there is an objective standard for it? Does beauty begin with nature or is beauty possible without any connection to it? Can something that arouses revulsion also be considered beautiful?

Back in college, my roommate criticized me for stating that beautiful surroundings played a positive role in my happiness. She believed happiness came only from within. Was that because she had never seen real beauty? Or was she right?

A newspaper article a few years ago described the reaction of inner city children taken to the wilderness for the first time. Looking out from the bus windows at mountains and forest, they thought they were viewing a movie. In this case, the occasion of beauty was a privilege.

As a student basking in the sun on the coast of southern France, I empathized with the Swedish girl who claimed she could not be happy far from nature. It struck me then, as it had her already, that beauty was not just visual but sensorial -- the sea breeze on warm cheeks, the saltiness of the spray, the singular odor from the deep. Modern views on beauty may regard this as skirting dangerously close to associating beauty with feeling.

Naziism found its earliest adherents among the farming people of the luminous, awe-inspiring Bavarian Alps. Afrikaners brutalized native Africans in a land some have compared to the image of the mythical Eden. Here, beauty had no humanizing effect. In fact, it was used as a basis for the oppressors' moral superiority.

Years ago, after a day of such distressing world news that I grappled with despair, I ended the day with a television broadcast of the ballet "Swan Lake." Its beauty revived me and reminded me of the duality of humankind and therein endless possibilities for good.

In yesterday's (April 14) Wall Street Journal, Michael J. Lewis reviews a book by Alexander Nehamas titled "Only a Promise Of Happiness". In appraising the book, Lewis says "Mr. Nehamas sets about reclaiming something of beauty's lost meaning by showing how it is connected to our happiness." In the end, no deep revelations about the meaning of beauty are offered, but there's this: "That it is the pursuit of happiness that constitutes happiness -- and that beauty offers but a 'promise' of this happiness -- is something of a platitude."

That sounds like my response to "Swan Lake" on that dismal day. That's ok, though. I'll take it.

Turning off the lights

2007-04-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

I keep a folder of newspaper clips and printouts on books and movie recommendations that interest me, to riffle through before my regular trips to the local library. For example, I avidly read the Wall Street Journal's Saturday interview with a cultural luminary in which they are asked to name and comment on their five favorite books, operas, films, recordings or buildings. And of course, the file with book recommendations from the Oregonian, New York Times or the New Yorker is always bulging and inexhaustible, but one can always hope.

It is my way of feeding my brain. Even if I don't get to said book or film, I've read about it and I can gain solace from the fact that it is available, and if I am not enjoying it, some other person is. We all benefit from each other's enlightenment. Like a local opera house, movie theater, dramatic troupe, a library enriches community. And for the most part, communities recognize this and vote to fund local libraries. Support, if not funding, for libraries is actually up, according to opinion polls.

I can still remember the joy of visiting the expat British library as a child living in West Africa, where bookstores were few. While learning French in a colonial school, I was also reading about the lives of children in English boarding schools and immersing myself in Agatha Christie. Our young daughter's favorite place, next to the bookstore, was the library where she'd habitually gorge herself on the most nutritious food for the mind a child could have.

Anyway, I can't say enough of what libraries have meant to me and my family. As long as they were there, we knew that the lights were on. The U.S. library system, in its essence, represents such an authentic example of what an optimistic democracy can produce. I always felt like a proud patriot frequenting one.

As one online report on the 18th century link between democratic revolution and the principles of the Englightment says: "This is one reason that Americans should study the Enlightenment. It is in their bones. It has defined part of what they have dreamed of, what they aim to become. "

Is this true anymore? What has happened in Jackson County, Oregon, where this week all the libraries closed, I hope is not a harbinger. A loss of federal funding has led to county cutbacks on jails, roads and other services. Now the status of the libraries are at stake. Calling Thomas Paine, calling Thomas Jefferson.

Of course there is a chance that funding will be found. But what a jarring thought that a solution, in a time of national near-bankruptcy, might not appear. What a game changing precedent that would be. Let's hope the lights come back on in Jackson County, for the sake of us all.

The Namesake

2007-03-31T20:34:00.000-07:00

We just saw the new Mira Nair film "The Namesake", based on the very satisfying novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. Visiting the official movie site, I read comments from viewers on how much they have been moved, how they didn't want the movie to end, how authentically Bengali were the touches of decor, dialect, and mannerisms. All I can say is that the movie narrative flows like life itself, until its somewhat awkward end, moved along by the wise, humble and affecting characters/performers in the lead roles. Tabu shines in the role of the steadfast mother who learns how to let go.

I was in Calcutta and Jamshedpur once -- can't say it was pleasant, but it was certainly memorable and unlike any other experience I've ever had -- and the way Nair films her India summons up the smells, noises, dust-on-the-skin memories. The movie's American children return to the ancestral home and are desperate to leave instantly, shocked at the heat, and the lack of air conditioning and of familar references. But in showing how packed together the people are, the proximity of the home to the street and its crowds, we understand how unnatural isolation is for most of the people of this world.

It is first and foremost a movie about family, and how families of a diaspora such as the Indian one evolve, what they give up and what they have to strive to regain. Most migrating people move for opportunity and an incremental accumulation of little compromises are endured to make the most of it. It takes work, time and sacrifices to rise to the challenge. So many Americans' parents and grandparents and great grandparents have done it.

A generation later, the feeling of what's been lost is overwhelming but they must come to terms with it. And yet, there's a loss. And it is usually connections, not just with the homeland but with what makes a home and a family. Maybe the enduring custom of arranged marriage is a means to keep what is Indian in the family.

I've remarked before about the idea and even virtue of slowness. Here is another place where it fights against the current. It simply takes time to build and maintain connections, even with those it is easy to take most for granted.

An article a friend sent recently from Italy talks about the "insatiable" demands of the market, actually its "vampirizzazione" (translation probably unnecessary) of our time. And that's it -- the frenetic pace of modern life sucks the energy out of the flow of life.

I have not been blogging lately because of a deep and painful ergonomic injury, probably brought on by too much time at the keyboard. My body was telling me something and I'm listening. I'm not going to stop blogging, but other things will have to go. Stay tuned.

Forsythia

2007-03-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

Everyone is smiling. Unexpectedly, we encounter many neighbors on our desultory walk, loping unhurriedly with children and dogs. From the trail behind the wooded lots of houses, young girls squeal over something delightful. The gardeners are all unleashed to stuff huge garbage cans with winter's debris in anticipation. The sky is a piercing blue and we pick up the perfume of early Eudora as we continue along blocks once too far to merit the additional dousing. We comment on the trill of birds busy at their seasonal rituals. A baby squirrel narrowly escapes being flattened by people on a joy ride. Forsythia is bursting out from multiple yards and stretching out to the sun like a yoga pose. On a day like today, it is easy to forget there ever was rain.

la pasta fatta in casa

2007-03-12T19:51:00.000-07:00

Embarrassing. I just bought my first pasta machine. Made in China for $25.00. So I wait for the whole "made in Italy" thing to be going down the tubes to decide to go Old World.

I know, I know. What took me so long? I had watched my mother make pasta at home from time to time, and it was just so labor intensive. Tagliatelle always made for a great meal, and I'd beg for it on birthdays and special events, but I never thought I would take the time to do it myself. And the machine only does part of the job and has that hand crank...not worth it. I thought.

But I was wrong! All those wasted years! Pasta is at least as easy as pie. Of course it took my mother forever to make it. She had six mouths to feed besides her own (and she never seemed to have time to put any morsels in it and was a rail most of her life). And she forsook the machine for the old rolling pin and knife because there wasn't a machine her whole life that she liked. As Old World as I am now about my pasta, I am modern compared to her. And, I have to say, happily, contentedly, so.

Ciggies and gurrls

2007-03-07T20:01:00.000-08:00

Back on February 15, I had a post about the new Camel cigarette packaging. It is snazzy stuff, designed to appeal to gurrls.

And here's proof! While walking the dog past the neighborhood junior high school, this is what I spotted.

Slow

2007-03-02T19:07:00.000-08:00

Time was, no one in Italy could have been accused of rushing madly through life. Meal time with family was sacred, as was the post-prandial "riposo".

A walk in the piazza, a caffe break, an apertivo at the end of the day were moments to kick back and enjoy the day. Adoption of new technology lagged behind the rest of the industrialized world, so no one was checking email or surfing the Internet.

Well, that's all changed and now Italians have to actually think about taking it slow. Feb. 19 has become the "Giornata della Lentezza", or Day of Slowness, when people are reminded that efficiency and productivity aren't everything. To celebrate the day, there was a "slow marathon" in Rome and a cloud-watching event. The media spotlighted the 55 "Cittaslow" or "Slow Cities" that are part of the Slow Food movement (also originating in Italy). And now there is even a movement promoting slowness.

Milan Kundera wrote about the dehumanizing, pleasure-depriving fact of going fast in his 1993 book Slowness.

Speed is definitely associated with our modern, Internet-time, multi-tasking (and reptitive motion injury as my chiropractor reminded me today while cracking my computerized neck) lives. An Internet search under "slowness" brings up questions and answers about slow computers. Speed is a user benefit many computer industry vendors identify when selling. We live in such a pumped-up era, that is still undergoing so much change as it hurtles into the future, that implicit in its culture is the low value placed on remembering how life was before. Kundera says slowness is associated with memory, speed with forgetting.

And where do relationships come in? If speed is a value, does depth matter? Women have always enjoyed spending time, lots of time, chatting and relishing the rapport we feel with women friends. I'm always amazed when I see the clock on the phone recording the amount of time I've just spent talking with a friend. Where o where did the time GO?

Men marvel, or perhaps more aptly, scoff, at this trait. But it is something that depends on slow and is part of the female nature. Sadly, it is hard to find female friends who aren't too busy to indulge in a good natter these days.

One local place I go, where people end up positively euphoric over the effect of lingering over good food and hours of conversation is The Busy Corner. It is the antithesis of speed and efficiency. And it fulfills a need for the solace of slow.

Beauty

2007-02-18T12:44:00.000-08:00

Thanks to art critic Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times I discovered a painter yesterday. Howard Hodgkin is well known by art lovers everywhere, but is a new one for me. Maybe I need to get out more.

In language clearly animated and inspired by the works exhibited, Kimmelman labels Hodgkin a "voluptuary", and speaks of “the ravishment of color” inspired by “emotional situations” in “the redolent fragment or vignette". (This is why I read the New York Times. You can't get this stuff in any other newspaper.)

The review prompted my Internet search on the artist, and my response to what I saw was similar to my response to works by Helen Frankenthaler. These artists care about beauty.

And in fact, Kimmelman touches on the subject of beauty and “how as a culture we got ourselves into a mind-set whereby beauty is suspect and elegance seems a weakness."

I wonder about this frequently because I grew up surrounded by aesthetic standards that seem to be out of date, but have never diminished as a standard by which I consciously or subconsciously measure the world around me.

Why is beauty no longer relevant? I wonder if it has to do with a socio-political culture that equates beauty with elitism. If one admires beauty, so the thinking might go, then perhaps it assigns low value to things that do not have it. A pretty face then would be more deserving of attention and care than a homely one. It might be okay to bomb an ugly city, but a crime against humanity to bomb world heritage sites. These are scary thoughts, and justifiably unpopular in a civilized, tolerant, diverse world where beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

But maybe we don't study beauty as a set of esthetic principles associated with the spirit and philosophy of humanism. In that context, beauty should be a source of optimism, joy and an awareness of what separates us from other animals. That's what it means to me.

Camel No. 9

2007-02-15T19:10:00.000-08:00

I’d walk a mile in my Manolo’s for a Camel No. 9!

That’s how the Camel cigarette company is hoping girls and young women respond to their new package. The made-for-Venus-by-Martians packaging reminds me of old black vinyl ballet shoe cases, which carried the near fetishized imprint of satiny pink toe shoes and ribbons, and of little girls' lunch boxes. These were themselves modeled on travel make-up cases and purses of adult women, so elegantly black outside and youthfully pink inside. Pink and black were also popular back then as the colors of tile in ladies’ bathrooms. Or, as in a black hat box lined in pink tissue, like a dainty coffin, opening to the lingering scent of Chanel No.5.

The minty green brings to mind the frothy Rococo boudoir paintings of Fragonard and Boucher; “Light and luscious”, just like the ladies' Camel cigarette slogan says. All that Marie Antoinette fashion is back of course, as are her vices – gambling, superficiality, avarice.

Here girls and women will be gambling with their lives, falling for a cynical use of design and marketing techniques, and feeding the greed of merchants of death. Apparently, more women today die of lung cancer than breast cancer, “by a wide margin” as told to the New York Times by the American Legacy Foundation.

Thanks, R.J. Reynolds, for the Valentine’s Day thoughts. Wishing you the same.

[Photo: Tony Cenicola, New York Times.]

Global Warming and Food

2007-02-11T17:19:00.000-08:00

The way Stephen Colbert feels about bears, I feel about bees. HATE them! Nice way to ruin a picnic or a lovely time at an outdoor cafe. I've never been stung, but freak at the thought.

However, unlike bears, bees provide something very tangible and valuable to my life. I like honey very much.

Is the
die-off of honey bees reported today linked to global warming? There have been lots of studies on the impact of warmer temperatures and rising ocean levels on agriculture, but not on specific foods. At least I can't find any such studies. Anyone?

Local wine makers are thinking of replacing the Pinot Noir grapes with something else, given the warming and drying trend. God, I hope it's not Chardonnay. Oregon has some of the best Pinot Noir in the world, but in the future? Depressing.

We should just do a survey of our farmers, and I mean, local, organic small production farmers who haven't been tinkering with nature's formula like agri-business likes to do, and ask them what they are seeing. I bet we'd get some interesting observations.

Last week I had dinner at Navarre and spoke with the owner, who mentioned the effect the warmer weather is having on vegetables. He produced a plate of a braised green vegetable that I thought was a new one for me. Nay, it was just a local broccoli that had "freaked out" and shot out florets bigger and faster than usual. It was super sweet and reminded me of a Chinese green.

If this is one example, there must be others. And we should be able to paint a picture of what we'll be eating and drinking in the next generation...and what we won't.

What we eat, we are

2007-02-06T19:02:00.000-08:00

Here is a
fascinating article about how immigrants transform urban areas, make them relatively prosperous, and then find themselves starved of clientele as the neighborhood gets mixed so that they are forced to move on and start over in a different neighborhood.

Basically, the article is about the permanent impact Latin culture is having on the U.S.

I'll wager that 20 years ago few non-Colombian New Yorkers knew what an "arepa" was. It is fast becoming another one of those imported items that make it into our national food idiom, like bagels, pizza and tacos.

"Immigrant Entrepreneurs Shape a New Economy" by Nina Bernstein of the New York Times made me wonder if the U.S. shouldn't embrace this impact rather than try to officially deny it by building walls along our borders. Imagine if we:

- adopted Spanish as an unofficial second language, had it taught at an early age in schools much as Europeans are practically forced to study English. How smart we'd be.
- formalized educational exchanges between the U.S. and our nearest Latin neighbor, Mexico, so that many more young Americans experienced the culture, and so that they internalized the sense that we are dependent on each other. Less fear!
- institutionalized cultural exchanges -- film, dance, music, painting, cuisine, archaelogy at all school levels. How creative we'd be.

In other words, foreign culture as more than just another food to merchandise in an unhealthy version to the masses.

The symbiosis between us and them will exist for a long time. Their population growth is much higher than ours and their economies, for reasons ranging from endemic corruption to underdevelopment, can't support them. Ours can, apparently.

Today the Yahoo home page featured a top story on the origins of the "American classic", the hamburger. Whichever state can lay claim to it, the meat sandwich has A GERMAN NAME, probably reflecting the German immigrant culture it came from. Things always change, and in a hundred years there will a neighborhood in New York or Miami that will claim to have originated the American arepa.

Scared in the USA

2007-02-05T19:57:00.000-08:00

I've been having panic attacks lately. I wake up and my first thought is "Are we still here?"

Those mornings, I guess I am hoping that the nightmare we are living is over. With the loss of so much of what I was taught made the U.S. exceptional, things can get much worse before they get better. They did for Chileans and Argentinians in the 1970s, for Venezuelans recently, for South Africans in the 1950s and many other nations and peoples. How far back do you want to go? We are not so exceptional as to be able to avoid a similar fate if we don't pay attention. The breakdown in New Orleans is an example to me of fraying at the edges, threads in our fabric torn and unraveling.

It is not just the removal of habeas corpus, the spread of warrantless wiretapping and spying on Internet traffic, cronyism that renders our institutions into hollow shells (re: FEMA), the removal of Dept. of Justice lawyers who don't tow the line etcetera etcetera etcetera. Given the thugs running the show, I no longer trust that the truth or the good will out, or that truth is even the objective. So what have I got to depend on for my safety, my privacy, my human rights?

Today Republicans blocked debate -- debate! -- on the Iraq war, an issue literally bleeding us of our hope and security. Sen. Gordon Smith of Iraq, after professing anguish over the situation in Iraq and saying he was at the end of his rope, decided the topic wasn't worth a frank discussion for his constituents to see. We Oregonians should all feel infantilized by him. (Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon voted for the debate, thank you.)

As James Joyce once said, "History is a dream from which we do not awake." Or something like that.

Smart Car

2007-02-05T19:46:00.000-08:00

At last, the Smart car is here. Driving home the other day, I passed the exclusive Oregon dealer and stopped in for a test drive. The convertible is high on my list of desires. However, at a $29,000 tag is is low on my likely-to-buy list.

But the car has an engine as small as a motorcycle and emits little, and goes 60 MPG. So it is a green alternative to most of what is out there.

Now here is something impressive: if you buy a green home built by Randy Sebastian of Renaissance Homes, a Smart car comes with it.

Update: Worker Bees

2007-01-28T12:11:00.001-08:00

These people
have the right idea.

Worker Bees

2007-01-27T18:46:00.000-08:00

This morning I had my semi-annual visit to the dentist, or rather, the dental hygienist. I dreaded the thought of that fingernail-on-chalkboard scraping sound against my teeth, all that jabbing with sharp instruments. But I can remember the day not so long ago when I worked at a PR agency and actually looked forward to time spent in the dentist's chair. I was working so many hours that taking time to go to the dentist was a brief, tantalizing taste of vacation. One day in particular, I woke up ecstatic to realize that I -- I! -- was the lucky one that day! My root canal appointment would save me from attending a meeting everyone else on the team was hoping to avoid.

Relaxing at the dentist's, listening to the jolly Van Morrison playing on the office sound system, untethered from email, being numb and forced to remain silent for hours afterward, was a liberating experience despite the accompanying discomfort of having my tooth sawed open down to the pulp. Back then I was so chronically exhausted from juggling multiple positions -- a star "worker bee" in agency parlance -- that I could almost sleep through the dental pain just as long as they kept me quasi-horizontal. As Van sang "What's Wrong with this Picture?", I started planning a change.

So when I read in last week's Financial Times that the European Union is now increasing worker productivity faster than in the U.S., I became glum. Okay, okay, some of those French workers have it really easy, it is true. But it saddens me to see the gradual end of the Italian midday riposo, the whittling down of the Spanish siesta from four hours to something less, the opening of stores on Sundays in Germany for the mere sake of convenience, the decline of cafe society in Nordic countries. People, you are on a slippery slope!

Take it from the U.S. Decades of increasing productivity and what do we have to show for it:
* a diabetes epidemic (may I remind everyone it is not an infectious disease, and yet...) from junk food slammed down during "lunch break" at your desk
* high heart disease rates from stress, lack of exercise
* increasing divorce rate
* increasing rates of insomnia (sales of Ambien, Lunestra and like pharmaceuticals can attest to the trend)
* increasing trend in teeth grinding, which incidentally was the root cause of my root canal of yore
* rich Republicans and increasingly poor everyone else

Yeah, that's right. Who are you working so hard for anyway?

Negawatts

2007-01-20T09:34:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about my carbon footprint, as I do every time there is another freakish, freaking reminder of global climate change. This means I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

I thought our family had already done quite a bit to reduce our footprint, and compared to most Americans that is probably true. Little consolation, considering our spendthrift ways as a nation compared to, say, Japan. The three of us live in a 1700-sq ft house, which is small by bourgeois American standards, and by so doing we conserve energy. We also save money, which we then use to travel. But, it turns out, that by taking one airplane trip a year we eliminate, by far, everything we've done otherwise to reduce our carbon consumption.

This includes driving a hybrid, taking public transportation at least twice a week, buying organic, using non-toxic detergents, and -- a biggie -- working from home three times a week and leaving the dang car in the garage except for the grocery run.

So I was intrigued by the New Yorker's profile this week by global climate change maven Elizabeth Kolbert on Amory Lovins, which explains his coinage of the term "negawatt." A negawatt is "a watt of electricity that does not have to be generated because an energy-saving measure has obviated the need for it." That puts a positive spin on it! I can now honestly say we produce lots of negawatts a day.

Seriously, because this is a positive and not negative way of addressing what people can do, it could result in people actually listening. Next they might do something. Particularly if products, for example compact fluorescent bulbs, could be packaged with the term "Produces 61 Negawatts".

And, it's time for Boeing to start building hybrids.

Pioneer Place Seagull

2007-01-08T20:00:00.000-08:00

Today, a weird, unsettling odor crept over parts of New York City. Dozens of birds dropped dead in downtown Austin. Despite the season, eight homes burned in Malibu. The U.S. bombed Al Qaeda in Somalia.

And at my client's office, where I worked all day today, a seagull peered at us curiously through the third story window. Was he thinking it was time to get out of the cold? Was he suffering an identity crisis? Was he trying to tell us something?

Mexico & Us

2007-01-06T11:33:00.000-08:00

There hasn't been a trip to Mexico that I haven't enjoyed. Mexico City, notwithstanding the pollution and hassle, for its beauty, culture and vitality; Cuernavaca for its color and serenity; Taxco set in those improbably steep hills; the tiles, mole and bodegas of Puebla; the pale green of the Caribbean in the Yucatan and the quotidian hustle and bustle of more ordinary Mexican towns that always appeals to the inner cultural anthropologist in me.

Visiting the colonial heartland around San Miguel de Allende at the end of 2006, I was again struck by the powerful symbol of symbiosis between Mexico and the U.S. that Coke represents.

Coke seems embedded in the Mexican psyche. Logos and signs come in various shapes and sizes, but are never loud and in-your-face like the Pepsi ads. Apparently, they don't need to be. Instead, the Coke image impinges on brain obliquely but more pervasively and therefore more deeply.

A perfect example of this was the Indian washer woman we saw mopping up the floor of a cathedral. Her bucket was red and across it was that Coca-Cola logo.

The Abarrotes mini-store next to our rented house sold Coke in bottles shaped like Christmas tree ornaments -- big and round and adorned with festive images. The words Coca-Cola appear in small print.

So often an abarrotes will announce itself to its neighborhood with a single sign, and it will be Coke. The sign sometimes is just a plain red board with a white silhouette of the iconic bottle. My opinion is they don't even need to spell out the words at the bottom of the sign. Everyone knows what it is.

Coke needs the Mexicans. It started pitching the drink to them early in the 20th century. So Coke is about as inseparable from the relationship between Mexico and the U.S. as the image of Christ is to the crucifix.

In fact, some say Coke is Latin America's second religion.

Just as Coke economically and culturally colonized Mexico, so Mexicans have irreversibly impacted the U.S. Ads today don't depict the idealized blonde homemaker of recent years. More often, she is brunette. A restaurant menu is incomplete without at least one dish with chilis or hot sauce. Without the annual migration of Mexicans to the U.S., we would not have anyone working in our restaurant kitchens, landscaping our yards, constructing our homes and cleaning our homes.

In our very Mexican, non-gringo neighborhood outside San Miguel's centro, cars bore license plates from Washington, Illinois, California, Nevada. At a shop a salesgirl heard me saying to my husband "This won't work in Lake Oswego..." and she exclaimed "I'm from Tigard!". Every cab driver spoke fine English from years of living in the U.S. Listening to mariachis serenade a bride and groom outside the Dolores Hidalgo cathedral, a cowboy-booted, straw cowboy-hatted Mexican man told us he was from Oklahoma. Another told us he was from Texas.

And thank god for them. The myth of the sleepy Mexican should be banished from the U.S. mind once and for all. Wherever they live, these people work hard every day of the week. This makes them so much like us, we should be welcoming these people above all others. We share a continent and an intertwined history and more and more a culture -- why put up a wall now when we need friends more than ever?

Food Shack Surprise

2006-12-20T19:42:00.000-08:00

Many years ago on a work trip to Jakarta, Indonesia, to visit some health projects in the slums, of which there were many, we ate at an Indian restaurant (better than Indonesian food, in our estimation). It was just great, but the real find was the Kashmiri Naan which had bits of fruit, nuts and spices in it. A chance to try it in situ somewhere in Kashmir has never come my way. So ever since that meal in sultry, low-wattage Jakarta, I've been searching the non-Asian world for this speciality, which has its variations, and have never found it in any Indian or Pakistani restaurant.

Until this week at a lunch food shack on Fifth and Oak. This block is one of my favorite downtown lunch haunts. It beats most of the other carts and shacks around, and you get so much more value for the money than at any sit down place in the general area. It has Polish, two Vietnamese, Thai, Italian, two Indian, and other examples of global cuisine. For $5.50 at the Real Taste of India (not to be confused with the Taste of India a couple of shacks down) you get several courses with rice, and, Peshawiri Naan with fennel, almonds and coconut. You can find practically anything from anywhere in Portland!

San Miguel

2006-12-20T15:26:00.000-08:00

Getting ready for a family Christmas trip south of the border. For years I've nurtured a desire to visit San Miguel de Allende, where long ago a painter friend spent a year and returned quite inspired by the experience. I have always enjoyed my trips to Mexico. Once I attended a U.N. conference in Mexico City, and a participating junior U.S. Congressman who had done his Peace Corps service there pointed out that it has everything you'd want in a travel destination -- art, antiquities, nature, cuisine, beaches, an opportunity to explore a foreign language.

Sadly, it also has strife, standards of hygiene that can adversely impact a traveler, and crime. These prevent Mexico from becoming appreciated for its gifts outside the beach resorts.

But in San Miguel, we plan to take advantage of 75 degree weather, art galleries and Spanish colonial architecture, outdoor cafe tables overlooking the Jardin, nearby hot springs, a Unesco World Heritage Site neaby attraction, Guanajuato, and some real Mexican slow food.

Young Artists in Portland

2006-12-09T09:13:00.000-08:00

Not being able to attend the sensational Art Basel Miami Beach fair which got rolling this week, I stopped in the gallery-like space at the Pacific Northwest College of Art as an alternative.

The holiday "bazaar" is underway, featuring student art work for sale at relatively affordable prices. For art lovers in town, it is really worth a visit. One student artist, Sara Wallfisch, interested me because I just love the work of the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, and Wallfish has the potential to develop a similar mastery of silent, airy and pale still lifes of ordinary vessels. I'd spotted some of her urban landscape sketches on the main exhibit floor, and then was pleased to see that she had a small show running in an adjacent showroom.

But I also liked the "Mary had a little lamb" (my title, not artist's) drawing by another artist whose name escapes me now, regrettably. She had a few other drawings on the innocent lamb theme which were touching and trenchant at the same time.

I should highlight some of the other great student works on display, but can't get to it all. But now I'll be making regular stops at the school to see what else young artists are conjuring up.

UPDATE: Sunday Ramble

2006-12-03T18:11:00.000-08:00

To put this into context, read previous post on religious warfare.

A Sunday Ramble: The Who, Religion and the Future

2006-12-03T11:54:00.000-08:00

I was listening to the new CD by The Who the other day. There is one song that addresses religion, "A Man in a Purple Dress" and two others that carry oblique or direct references to religion, "Unholy Trinity" and "God Speaks of Marty Robbins". What is this? Irreverent Pete Townshend finding Jesus in his old age? Hardly, but yet the presence of these songs are just one more indication that religion is a resonant cultural issue.

So I returned to a regular theme of my mind searches: where is today's lethal religiosity going to take us? One can't argue that religion is behind the carnage of 9/11, the daily massacres in today's Iraq, the periodic slaughters between Hindus and Muslims in India. Religion could even be animating the blood lust of the Janjaweed in Sudan. But this is nothing new. From the Crusades to the IRA to Bosnia to the jihadis, religion has been used as a means to justify killing. Philosophers and people of real faith have tried to figure out why to no real satisfaction.

Religious fundamentalism is a global phenomenon varying only in degrees from place to place. It is no simple matter that Iran's Ahmadinejad wrote to Bush and called him a "brother."

In the U.S. under Bush and such tactics as "executive orders" (kind of like "ex cathedra" and papal infallibility), religion has breached the constitutional divide between Church and State, and the Supreme Court will soon hear one case brought by citizens against the White House tax-funded initiatives in favor of religious groups. There are more where that came from.

Some European and Canadian Muslims ask for Sharia law to be allowed in their communities, and Christian conservatives seek to outlaw reproductive rights for women on religious grounds.

In Asia, religious conservativism blooms in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and other countries. Governments tend to be aligned with religious institutions already.

Of major concern should be the fact that the two main perpetrators of religion as law have a strong apocalyptic vision. Jihadis believe not only in their own martyrdom, but in the belief that taking others with them, even good Muslims, confers martyrdom and paradise on all. Some Christian evangelicals want the end to come quickly so they can experience the rapture. (need IE browser to access link)

And simmering along with organized, revolutionary, fundamentalist movements are a host of other signs many people all over are grasping for direction and meaning by identifying, whether deeply or superficially, with religious beliefs, be they New Ageism, Buddhism, Kabbalah, Sufism, Scientology or something else. (BTW, it is sickening to me to read about the popularity of the Buddha Bar in Paris, and the expropriation of a powerful symbol that stands for everything that is not of the glittering classes.)

More college students are majoring in religious studies, megachurches are straining under growth, and 77% of Americans believe they are going to heaven.

And yet, in the U.S. the fastest growing group of all, according to some reports, is the "non-religious", currently at more than 14% of the population. A recent poll suggests that almost half of all Americans are uncertain God even exists, and among some Americans there is uncertainty as to whether God is female, male god or both. In this ambiguity, we should find hope and an opening to a different way.

In the 1930s, a number of socio-economic events influenced politics and led to an upsurge of statist governments. Italy had Mussolini, Germany had Hitler, Russia had Stalin, Argentina had Peron, Mexico had Cardenas and the U.S. had a benign form in FDR. The malignant dictators grew to power because they struck a responsive chord in the public, even if everything they stood for was not widely supported. We know from surveys that there are many Muslims who think the U.S. got what it deserved on 9/11. Fundamentalist Christians have been known to speak in violent, militant terms that should be incongruent with their beliefs, and yet...they continue.

Today, religion is the filter through which to begin assessing what our global village is undergoing. Note: It is not really about God. It is about being saved, but not in the way evangelicals see it. The world can be perceived as pretty scary right now, what with cloning, more women than men enrolled in universities for the first time, gays marrying, transgender toddlers, global warming, immigration out of control, porn going mainstream and pedophiles loose everywhere --all things that can be really threatening to how people define their manhood or womanhood, their values, the way they live. Nothing is as it was.

The order-imposing (trains ran on time) statist trend of the 1930s blew up in a convulsive war and took millions of victims, including opponents (as in the "non-religious"?). Where will today's fundamentalism take us, and more importantly, how? Perhaps those who live inside that ambiguity have the answer. If history is a guide, the answer is not with those who are convinced that a dying world can be saved by dictum, dogma and war.

After this is all over, assuming there's something left of the planet, will a new religion emerge from the ashes of discredited ones?

Here's what I'm willing to get on my knees and pray for: that we don't get fooled again.

Shopping

2006-11-30T15:52:00.000-08:00

Not my favorite activity. But when the time comes, it must be done. However, this time, I refuse to buy something I don't like just because I need something. I've been wearing the same two sweaters for weeks now and they're getting a little ratty but its better than shelling out good money for ill-fitting, synthetic, poorly stitched, so ugly yo' mama-wouldn't-wear-them substitutes. I've been to great stores and "value" stores and boutiques and department stores and sales and holiday collections everywhere I go I see the same dark hues and saggy seams. Dullsville. Depressing.

This isn't what shopping should be about. It feels like an insult bobbing in and out of store displays: insulting to my unwillingness to join the fray of the fiscally irresponsible, to my aesthetic sense, and to my desire to get that anthropologist-certified pulse-quickening that is supposed to occur when buying new clothes.

To a degree, it is true that what you wear is a statement about yourself. So why would I wear the unimaginative, unstylish, immature garb out there?

If I can't have fun with fashion, at least I can avoid feeling like I'm wearing someone else's clothes. My purchase

1. Red Cross T-shirt. I love the seasonal green and red combo and the classic cross icon. And buying it definitely puts my money where my mouth is.
1 Criterion Collection T-shirt. Nice agate gray atypical of the watered down shade on suits and turtlenecks all over Nordstrom's. The slightly kinetic, askew "C" is in a hip platinum shine. And it is classic, as in Criterion's mission: saving and promoting great cinema.
1 Pearl Bakery t-shirt. In a trendy, flattering color, a rich brown! And what could be more classic than bread?

And they go with everything...

Mead

2006-11-25T17:38:00.000-08:00

Back in college, I participated in the campus theater. At the end of a run of a play by Shakespeare, we had the usual closing party. A student brought some home made Mead, made according to some recipe she'd found or concocted. It wasn't very good as I recall. The heck with Beowulf.

But this week, Scruffy Dog friends just back from Lithuania brought a much better example. Now, apparently no one, absolutely no one, has the authentic old recipe. Historians and people who care about these things know there were various recipes, all made with honey and an assortment of spices like thyme, lemon, cinnamon, and fruits like cherries and juniper berries, and then fermented with beer or wine yeast. Normally mead had alcohol content of 10-16%. The stuff in the bottle I sampled was 50%. It goes higher -- up to 70%.

Just the week before, I'd had the pleasure of sampling a very high quality Armagnac -- another spirit of medieval European origins -- at the home of French friends in New York. At 40% alcohol content, the fumes alone were heady enough. But the velvety smoothness and fruity sting of flavor were impossible not to appreciate.

Mead struck me as Armagnac lite. Sweeter but not as rich, more medicinal tasting (mead is purported to have healing properties, but maybe that's only if you have worms and such in your gut that you need to kill) and definitely interesting. It is probably best sampled in a dark, dank, smelly underground tavern, in enough quantities to make you forget that it is freakin' dark for three more months. There was a purpose, after all, to all these inventions.

Thanksgiving Day

2006-11-25T17:14:00.000-08:00

I for one American was very thankful on November 23rd. I had home comforts like heat and clean water and friends and family; I am not an Iraqi trying survive a new day under civil war; I am not a Sudanese from Darfur being cleansed; I am not an eminent Russian dissident wondering when I'm going to be poisoned; I am not one of the Americans scratching out a meager living and hoping I don't get sick...I mean, I am one of the luckiest people in the world. How could I not be thankful? I have everything I need and enough of what I want.

Speaking of wants, I'm also thankful I don't have a shopping gene. Or maybe I should say I'm thankful to have better, more fulfilling things to do on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I did my Christmas shopping early and online and kept the gift list simple. I simply will not participate in the orgy of consumerism that follows the day of feasting. At the risk of drawing Bill O'Reilly's ire, I suggest we just ban the Christmas holiday. Imagine -- NO CHRISTMAS MUSIC IN THE STORES. NO SURPLUS OF SANTAS. NO CHRISTMAS PAPER TRASH. NO FORCED CHEER. SOME EXTRA MONEY IN YOUR POCKET, MAYBE TO HELP OUT SOME OF THOSE LESS FORTUNATE.

A Nazi in Japan

2006-11-12T20:29:00.000-08:00

Just before WWII, fresh out of college, my father left Portland, Oregon and fulfilled a childhood dream to travel around the world. He spent several months each in Cardenas' Mexico, Mussolini's Italy, and Hirohito's Japan. Over the years he would recount a few stories from that series of adventures in the land of the statists as the world fell apart, dwelling on events more than people, but I always wondered about the relationships he must have formed during those times of political turmoil.

When he died in 2004, I came across letters he had photocopied and saved from one of the many travel buddies he must have come to know. Alfred "Fred" K. Hesse was a self-professed "rover," a young adventurous German man traveling on the same boat to Japan with my father. Apparently the friendship they formed on that journey and then continued during those few months in Tokyo was strong enough to warrant quite a prolific correspondence once my father returned home.

What a pity none of my father's letters to him remain. The two sets together would make for dramatic reading -- maybe even a screenplay treatment! -- on the passage of time through war by two erstwhile friends and later official enemies.

Hesse worked for a major German steel company in Tokyo. From the sound of it, he spent most evenings and desultory Sunday afternoons with various "young things", his euphemism for Japanese women. Occasionally he'd travel outside Japan, to Egypt where the women didn't interest him, to China, where they did, and around Japan. His long letters detailing his romantic and professional adventures usually end with a review of "the inevitable political theme" and the "racial problems as we Germans see it". In one he provides a synopsis of the German common man's view of race.

"God did not create all man alike, but he created many races, white, black, yellow as the three main races. These 3 main races are subdivided again and as well as they differ from another by color they also differ by phisical stature and above all by mental capabilities. No doubt, there live many an intellectual jew or negro or asiatic, but what distinguishs [sic] one race is whether they have a genius to create, to build up and to use existing strengths in union for the benefit of all. Jewish people as well as the tolerant attitude of the Vatican towards the racial problem did not serve to mankind."

It goes on. "God created us and the prceious token we got is our blood. This is, fundamentally, on what we Germans build our philosophy of life."

In response to what seems to have been a rebuke by my father about the treatment of Jews in Germany, he writes:

"After the great war was lost and the German people near to starvation, humilated and contaminated in its honour and literally torn to peaces [sic] by innumerable political parties, jews from all parts of the world came to Germany and began a dirty business...In this period the jews made their huge fortunes...this should however become disastrous to them, for in the old european world exists comething called national honor...I do not hate jews and I consider them in some way a clever race, although I do not like to have them as my superiors...I do not seek their friendship....Life in Europe is once again very active and the progress which is going on now is unique in the universal history."

He tells of the harassment and even threat of blackmail of his boss, a German of Argentine nationality, by pure-blood Germans and Nazi party officials in Japan. He moves up quickly, landing a well-salaried position with Krupps Germany. Then things take a dark turn. He is watched and doesn't dare bring girls up to his room. By 1941, his mail is being censored; foreigners are restricted in their movements; their business comes to a standstill, and they are detained in Japan. His letters implore my father to send money and shoe leather.

"Honestly I am in an awkward position, having 12 pairs of shoes, yet 8 of them without soles. Next I will have to go to the office in dance shoes or ghettas...I therefore, asked you to dispatch sTraight away sole leather for two pairs of shoes. Please, Bill, I know I bother you with this request but I cannot help, I am broke, try to understand."

Meanwhile, Jews were begging for their lives.

"Here enclosed you find $24, they are my last stock in enemy currency and this bloody war has devaluated them to a good percentage."

But despite his difficult circumstances, he does not waver in his core beliefs. In Yokohama he meets a German who is returning to "the fatherland" after 14 years in the U.S. "He lost within the last 2 years all his earnings and returns actually broke. The reasons are the politics, the anti-German propaganda...everybody knows the broad American masses don't love us...as American news paper film and radio propaganda is in the hands of those, who were kicked out of Nazi Germany."

This from a representative of a country where communications were managed by the arch-propagandist, Goebbels.

"Incidentally, in the hotel were [sic] this fellow stays, ousted German jews on their way to the USA are also staying, giving each other advices on how to handle things, in completly peaceful atmosphere, of course."

The injustice of it all!

"The tragedy hereby is, that the Americans too have their jewish problem." He explains that after Germany and Italy win the war, the American jews will prevent the USA from trading with Europe to the USA's economic detriment. He suggests my father is having difficulty finding a job because of his Italian ancestry and war-time bigotry.

It is chilling reading. This man was intelligent, intrepid and probably quite charming. But everywhere he went, he carried an innate sense of superiority that drove him to a hatred of others. It blinded him to any self-awareness, any sign of irony in his position. Fundamentally, he was an unempathetic man, complaining about relatively small discomforts as his country annihilated Jews, Gypsies, the infirm and disabled and wreaked destruction on its neighbors.

Gluttons

2006-11-01T17:54:00.000-08:00

Today I took a detour home from the gym to pick up an organic whole chicken at Wild Oats, seduced by the sale price of about $.10 less per pound into thinking I was taking advantage of a real deal (did you ever hear about the experiment with a dime on the photocopier? People who found one said in interviews later that they had felt happy all day long, as opposed to people who had not "found" the dime).

The parking lot was full and I was leaving in frustration at poor planning on the part of developers when a spot opened up. Leaving with my chicken a few minutes later, I hit the traffic jam ACROSS THE STREET where a new Whole Foods was celebrating its first day of business. There were traffic guards and people in yellow jackets directing drivers to open parking spots as though the event was a U2 concert.

People, what is wrong with us?

We have more than twelve major grocery stories within seven miles of our house: two Safeways, Two Albertsons, Two Wizers, and one WinCo, Costco, Thriftway, New Seasons, Whole Foods, Wild Oats and Fred Meyer each. This list leaves out the Plaid Pantry type of mini-grocery stores, of which we have several. From May to October we have a Saturday Farmer's Market as well. When will we have enough? And I wonder how much traffic and pollution is generated by going to and fro all these food temples.

Frankly, this overabundance makes me sick. How much waste is generated by this food obsession? And what is missing from our lives or souls that we have to feed our stomachs to this exaggerated extent? Certainly all of this is not leading to an overabundance of good health, as obesity, cancer, heart disease rates testify. Plus, what's all this talk from Christians about values? Isn't gluttony one of the seven deadly sins?

Now, caring about food is a good thing. In balance, and with food that is treated with integrity and in a simple manner, paying attention to what we eat is vital for health. And enjoying food is one of nature's gifts. But take it too far and it's just another form of substance abuse.

Plus, there is enough hunger in the-world's-richest-country USA to make me ashamed when I even think about people indulging in $20 chickens and $3.00 avocados, knowing that so much gets tossed out long before it close to inedible. It's almost enough to make me want to go on one of those low-calorie longevity diets as a protest.

Finferle

2006-10-29T18:37:00.000-08:00

One August day in 2001, I stood in a sun-drenched valley of the Alpe di Siusi, gaping at the snow-capped Dolomite rock mountain formations all around me. In the distance rose the imposing Sciliar, which my husband would climb to the top in a couple of days. My legs were pleasantly sore from a 25-kilometer hike the day before. Tomorrow, we'd hike to the castle, on a path winding through farms where locals gathered the fragrant hay used for restorative "bagni di fieno" and large, happy cows dangled their clanging bells as they chewed.

The world was at peace. The Clinton years had made the U.S. admired and loved again in Europe. It felt good to be an American. The dollar had not been so valuable in decades, and all this abundance came at a low cost. I was on sabbatical and had taken eight weeks to travel and unwind from years of pounding during the tech heyday. Life was good.

And so of course, my thoughts to turned to dinner. I had noticed crates of just-picked finferle on our morning hike when we stopped for some fresh raspberry juice at the malga (mountain farmhouse where local, artisanal food and drink are offered). Might we be able to pick up a few pounds for dinner? That idea resonated with our friends, who suggested picking finferle ourselves. We found a wooded area where they were sure to be found. It was like a frenetic Easter egg hunt, with the seven of us amazed to find fat specimens everywhere we looked. But then we were told it was actually illegal to pick these, which is why the women were stuffing them in their shirts. No ranger would dare ask them to unbutton their blouses to check for contraband! Furbi!

That night the chef at our small hotel cooked us up a creamy ragu with our ill--gotten finferle and served it with hot slabs of polenta. He turned up the music and, in a state of wild mushroom inebriation, we danced: chef, chef's wife, kids and all. Life was damn good.

Now for a confession: that very day in the sun, as I took in that incomparable scene and considered my fine fortune, I could not dispel a nagging thought. Life was just too good. Something was going to give. I could feel it in my bones. And of course, everything started to change one month later.

But the finferle don't change. This weekend, we visited the Portland Farmer's Market and with a pound of funghi with the happy-sounding name, we had our scratch version of a ragu over polenta.