On the Menu

Cicchetti in Venice, Italy May 2018

I've always loved menus—reading them, ordering from them, putting them together. I once had a book of old Victorian-era menus, where after 14 or 15 courses for one dinner, you just lost count—and there were always ringers like “crème de terrapin” and “frog’s legs soufflé” along with leaden mutton roasts and figgy pudding.  It’s a wonder everyone didn’t weigh 400 lbs! 

Fortunately, there were plenty of dreadful diseases to catch, many of which were guaranteed to slim you right down. Before they killed you.

 

As a young chef, I enjoyed coming up with fancy menus for every occasion—an equal/opposite reaction to the lackluster holiday meals with Mom at the stove. Had Joanie taken a moment to write down the order of dishes, she might have caught the fact that no vegetables, stuffing, dinner rolls or dessert was planned. We just chowed down to a big old plate o’ pink turkey, and our table grace was thanksgiving (that no one got food poisoning.)

 

When I started frequenting nice restaurants, I’d make special note of this or that gourmet preparation, and attempt it later at home (I’m guessing mine was one of the few pantries in the 1970s that was stocked with candied violets and cans of escargots.). And since the advent of the iPhone camera, I snap-snap-snap away all through our meal, with multiple pix of every menu and every dish served. Once in a while, Steve and I will be so hungry or distracted that we polish off the entrée or sides WITHOUT TAKING PHOTOS. Whatever possesses us to forget this vital step in the dining experience? On an ideal dinner date, we may not have any time to chat, but our descendants, one distant day, will know exactly what types of exotic cheeses topped our rustic flatbread apps!

 

We all of us consult a life menu every day, don’t we? Some elements are pre-fixe (the weather, for example); most are à la carte choices.

SAMPLING OF MY MORNING MENU 

 

3 AM Coffee (Enough to Power 69-Year-Old Woman for 18 Hours)

Dannon Light and Fit Vanilla Yogurt (Original Only--No Greek, No Compromise)

Morning Meditation: Contemplating Life’s Big Questions, Including: Why Are We Here (and Not, Say, in Addis Ababa)? Why This Peculiar Antipathy Towards Greek Yogurt at Breakfast? (Taste? Texture? Lack of Yummy Chemical Preservatives?)

Online News Chaser: NYT, CNN, etc. (Deep Dive into Current Events)

Followed by Hot Shower, to Wash Away Stench of Those Current Events

Select Clothes, and the Mood For the Day (Shorts and Flip Flops in November Indicate Cockeyed Optimism)

Tweak To-Do List (Permanent Collection of Great Unfulfillable Expectations, Just Changing Date)

 

There’s definitely comfort in this routine, but do I want to be ordering from this exact same menu for the rest of my life?

 

No!

 

I need a fresh perspective. I need to wake up ready to help build a new, better world, filled with love, hope and peace. 

 

And, maybe, Greek yogurt?

Nah, not on THIS morning menu. Ever.

Important note: The Greek yogurt is STEVE'S, not mine!

My Elevator Pitch

 

photo by Bagzhan Sadvakassov on Unsplash

 

Since age four, I’ve struggled to find a phrase that means “to articulate your ideas and qualifications in a concise, entertaining fashion.” My sandbox playmates were useless; they tended to prattle on endlessly, making little to no sense. And alas, those were the BSS (Before Sesame Street) days on TV, when I had to rely on Miss Frances’ Ding Dong School for the paltry scraps of “education” that program provided. 

 

And so it went, for decades. Until finally, one magical day, I heard it. “Elevator Pitch.” Initially I was confused. Was it: “to articulate my ideas and qualifications slowly and haltingly, like one of those old-timey cage elevators that lurches from floor to floor?” Or “to articulate my ideas and qualifications in a muffled tone, while jammed with fellow riders like so many sardines in a tin?” Or maybe: “to articulate my ideas and qualifications impatiently, standing in the lobby watching the elevator floor number not change?”

 

But then, I understood! The phrase was meant to convey speed, as in, “Can you make your point in the time it takes to travel from the bottom to the top of a building in an elevator?”  But OK, how fast are we talking? I did ride in one in Taiwan to the top of Taipei 101 last year, a breathtaking ascent from the 5^th to 89^th floors in 37 seconds. 

 

That’s a little TOO fast, I think. 

 

Plus, I was riding with Steve, who was not about to hire me. 

 

Since then, I have been working on matching my length of spiel to the correct elevator.  Hydraulic elevators travel at roughly 150 feet per minute, whereas the Gearless Traction elevator whisks passengers along at up to 2000+ fpm. So, on average—hold on—45 x 792 ÷ .668, carry the 13…anyway, I do not have time to lollygag. 

 

Now then, the other requirement: the presence of an editor or event-booking person. This decision maker would need to be on the same elevator, in a receptive mood, preferably reaching out first: “I couldn’t help but notice that you seem to be a very gifted writer/speaker. Fortuitously, I am headed to a big staff meeting to discuss our next speaker/writer for my magazine/conference! Tell me about your ideas and qualifications!” 

 

At which point I would reach deep into my bag and rummage for my notes. I would pull out a few receipts and fast-food napkins, and finally locate my “cheat sheet.” I would take a deep breath and commence, “My essays are funny, most of them, and spiritual, some of them, and about my family at times and my friends once in a while and…wait, where are you going? I haven’t told you about my speech topics yet!” as the door closed behind Mr. Random House/Ms. Corporate Event Planner.

 

Clearly, this concept needs work. 

 

How about: “Crawling or Slow-Animal-Drawn-Cart Pitch”? As we crept on hands and knees, or were transported by snail-drawn cart, I’d have PLENTY of time to make my case!

 

Much better.

The Droste Effect

If you live long enough--and boy, have I!--eventually many, if not most, of your questions about life are answered. Or you get so darned old that you no longer remember those questions. At age almost 70, I have learned the following:

Q: When will I forget my phone? 

A: When my car breaks down on a remote road, at midnight. In the rain. Or I’ll have my phone, but the battery will be dead.

 

Q: What guarantees my developing a significant coughing, sneezing, really yucko cold? 

A: Having tickets to a chamber music concert on Saturday (rock concert in a stadium? No one would hear me hacking, so I will remain healthy.) 

 

Q: How will I regain the weight I just lost? 

A: I will merely glance at cake and pie photos in Bon Appetit, or smell the pizzas being churned out as I pass Rosarios. Or wait two days after I have gone down a size and bought a new dress. Bingo! +10 lbs.!

 

Here’s another mystery solved: 

I went many decades before learning the term for an image that duplicates itself, getting smaller and smaller, to infinity.  Several of M.C. Escher’s artworks utilize this device, RECURSIVITY, as the staircase in the mirror reflects a smaller staircase in a smaller mirror, ad nauseum. Ditto two advertisements, lest you think I’ve become too highbrow for this blog. In one, for Land O’Lakes butter, a lovely Native woman holds a box of butter with the image of the woman and butter replicating until the size is so small as to be undetectable. And in the logo for Laughing Cow cheese, the cow’s ear tags are images that repeat, on and on and on. 

 

Other examples can be found in the works of Salvador Dali, and even medieval triptychs, so the fact that this visual phenomenon is familiarly called The Droste Effect does NOT mean that the Dutch chocolate package designers came up with this on their own. But that image from the cocoa box WAS my first exposure to it, and now I’m finding it popping up all over. A Pink Floyd album cover (Ummagumma). The Mel Brooks classic movie Spaceballs. Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody music video. 

 

WHOA! WHOA! whoa! whoa!  (and so forth)

 

Fractals are another, more scholarly example. These replicating patterns are seen in nature in ferns, nautilus shells, the bronchioles in the human lung, a snowflake, and the Milky Way. 

 

Scientists believe that the reason fractals draw us in, is that the brain treats each copy-within-a-copy as both an independent image and part of a larger whole. It can feel like you’re in the middle of an optical puzzle. Which image came first? Are they getting bigger, or smaller?

 

I personally love them because they remind me of our beautiful interconnectedness. We are, at our core, all of us made of star stuff, and therefore we have within us, multitudes. 

 

A lofty thought.

 

But I confess, there’s another, more honest, reason that I love the Droste Effect.

 

It’s great with marshmallows. 

image by Yuriy Vertikov on Unsplash

Waitpower

'member these guys?

I don’t know about you, but I’m not feeling very powerful right now. Living in this country today is like helplessly watching your beloved car being driven by lunatics into a ditch, then fished out, stripped and sold for parts—and knowing that we, the people (a lot of people anyway) GAVE THEM THE CAR KEYS. 

When I’m feeling like this, I turn to The Good Book for consolation. The thesaurus, I mean. Flipping to “power,” I want to know it all—synonyms, antonyms. Example: power is strength, it is not weakness. Although an argument can be made for weakness as a gateway to spiritual power. As Saint Paul writes in the “other” Good Book: Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. – 2 Corinthians 12:9. In general, though, being weak is not a "power play" in this world. 

 

Moving right along.

 

There are many kinds of power: Battery Power. Turbo Power. Power Point. Power of Suggestion. Power of Attorney. Power Lifting. Turtle Power. All of these imply some kind of agency—something or someone can do this or that because it (they, we) have (has) the capability. The power, one might say.

 

I recently read the title of a motivational article about three kinds of power: Willpower, Waypower and Waitpower.  I didn’t bother reading the actual article, but I did want to mention the clever title. I can guess the content, though—to effect a desired result, you need Discipline, Direction and…you need to Wait (something like that, but starting with D).

 

Hold on a minute (wait!) No wonder I don’t feel powerful—I hate to wait! I lack waitpower!

 

Yet, like it or lump it, waiting is the condition we’re all in. We can’t move the clock hands forward—well, technically we could, but I’m being theoretical. Also no one has clocks with hands anymore. What I mean is, time takes its…time. November 3rd  will be here when it gets here, right? 

 

So OK, where’s the power? For that, let’s turn to the ancient philosopher Frederick (the Wise) Rogers, who sang, “Let’s think of something to do while we’re waiting, while we’re waiting for something to do.” Plant a seed, and wait—but also, water, weed, give it sun. Nurture. Active waiting, not the sitting-around- doing-nothing kind. I can spend the next two weeks paralyzed with anxiety and dread OR I can keep trying to make a difference. The two weeks will pass either way, but only one way is powerful. 

 

Which is why today, Saturday, October 17th, I will be at a Vote Early event with some friends. I've even made a sign that reads: YOUR VOTE IS YOUR VOICE. We’ll help people register to vote (October 19th is PA deadline), and tell them where ballot boxes and polling places are located. 

 

What will you do with the next 336* hours? I urge you, dear readers, to use your waitpower wisely. 

 

More power to us!

*Assuming you’re reading this on Tuesday, October 20th

Yes, we MUST

Autumn Reflections

  

You think this is pretty? Whatever. (photo by Marta Wave on Pexels)

Ah, mid-October! The leaf-peepers are wending their bumper-to-bumper way through New England, because the only townes with leaves worth any peeps at all, have ye olde village squares with white-steepled churches, and air that is redolent of maple syrup and Yankee gumption. People I know, people I CARE about, are joyfully bundling up in heavy, really unflattering sweaters, scarves and wool socks, sipping their hot apple-pumpkin-spice-cocoa lattes from Starbucks, and loudly proclaiming their great love for this magical season. 

 

Why? I sincerely want to know.

 

Here is what autumn symbolizes to me:

 

Raking the yard. A Sisyphean exercise in futility, as the grass will be re-coated with dead oak remnants within minutes. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I personally do not rake. I have less pointless things to do.)

 

Retiring my flip-flops. The saddest moment of the entire year, a moment I put off as long as possible. Only when my tender toesies freeze into icicles, do I stop wearing my Havianas. 

 

The end of edible produce and decent looking flowers. I do not root for “root” vegetables, not the way I adore asparagus and swoon over strawberries. Frankly, I mash one or two turnips and I’m done. And florally? Mums the word. Mums galore, mums unending. Mums, in the same  drab, dreary shades of orange and brown as the trees and the rutabagas. 

 

Halloween. I’ve written before about my antipathy towards dressing your kids up in ridiculous costumes and releasing them into the neighborhood to ask for, and receive, candy that is far inferior to what is already in the cupboard at home. Boo, humbug! I say.

 

Encroaching darkness. Every late dawn and early dusk, I am reminded that the days are short and getting shorter. As I do not drive at night, autumn puts a definite damper on my social life. Meeting a friend for Happy Hour in the fall, I dash from the restaurant mid-drink, no later than 4:30 PM, praying I’ll make it home before the Black Curtain of Doom descends. 

 

Having fun yet? 

 

It doesn’t help that winter follows immediately. Oh sure, there’s Christmas, yada yada, but after that? One long, snowy stretch of misery. Don’t talk to me about Valentine’s Day, either. All the heart-shaped boxes of off-brand chocolates in the world do not compensate for February’s bitter wind and slush. On crisp, clear fall afternoons, that’s what I think about: winter. And death. 

 

I suppose a case could be made against summer, but it would be thrown right out of court. Too hot? Much easier to cool down than warm up. Kids out of school with nothing to do? Simple solution: max out that Amex to spend the equivalent of Harvard on Camp Hip-Hip Hurray. Sitting in a beach chair and gazing dreamily at the ocean is boring to you? You LIKE the way you look in a puffy coat? That’s insane. 

 

In closing, I suggest: a world without “wonderful autumn,” would be a far, far better world (bangs flip flop on table for emphasis).

Poor little Patrick, raking uselessly (Fall, 1993)

Captcha-ing

CAPTCHA is obsessed with traffic lights

“My bumper sticker reads Just Another Version of You.”

                   --Norman Lear

 

Remember the classic Sesame Street song: “One of these things is not like the others,” with a video of three things with wheels, for example, and one umbrella? The kiddos are supposed to choose what “doesn’t belong here.” The grownup version of this game is, of course, CAPTCHA, that annoying online grid filled with photos, where you have to click on only the ones with wheels (what is it with wheels, anyway?) If you are correct, you may be “allowed” to enter the website where you can view your credit card bill. Listen, if I wanted to read a horror story, I’d pick up Stephen King. 

 

We humans are wired to differentiate, to sort everything according to certain criteria. Laundry: whites and colors. People (sadly all too often): whites and colors. Sometimes it makes sense—the taller kids in the back for class pictures, the heavier items on the bottom of the stack. Many other times, it’s a random, and very subjective, separation. Is there a real reason for labeling Regular and Petite sizing…in scarves? Maybe so that the people who are never called “petite” can experience the thrill of wearing something “tiny”? Who knows? Though personally I adore the designers who vanity size! Just saying!

 

Since identifying, then demonizing, the “other” is so prevalent nowadays (and frankly, oldendays too), I think we’d do well to expand our definition of “similar.” Italian calzone, Indian samosa, Chinese bao, Polish pierogi—it’s all stuffed bread, baby! Cajun and Celtic fiddling, American basketball and Dutch korfball, and the list goes on. My point being, the eye, and the heart, that are trained to see commonalities, become less and less likely to isolate and reject what they encounter. Even when the resemblance is a stretch, it’s worthwhile to find the common ground.

 

Of all people, the television pioneer Norman Lear, who gave us All in the Family and The Jeffersons, filled with bombastic, in-your-face characters, was a true believer in seeing our essential sameness as humans. He made sure the audience saw themselves in even the most outrageous caricatures he created. Archie was usually a jerk, sure, but could also be quite lovable (like you and me at times, maybe?) Lear’s genius was the way he bound us all together, hapless mortals stumbling through life.

 

Animosity born of insignificant variations is the scourge of civilization. Latina, Asian, or Native American, moms are moms, right? I loved taking my confirmation classes to visit other houses of worship, just so they could see all that we have in common. Hard to hate all Muslims when our hosts at the mosque were so very kind. 

 

Next time you meet someone who seems totally different from you, try telling yourself—this person is just another version of me. Me, if I’d been born in another body, in another time and place, in a different culture. Then shake your twin’s hand, and go have coffee together somewhere. 

 

This, my friends, is how our fractured world will begin to heal.

Mirror scene from Duck Soup

Help Wanted

Say it ain't so, Chuck! (photo by Noah Smith on Pixabay)

It’s one tough job market out there, gang. As people continue struggling to find employment, that Walmart greeter position is looking better and better—even to Harvard Law grads!

 

We need to get creative (I mean YOU, not ME, of course--I am a very successful full-time writer making several dollars per week). I think LinkedIn only goes so far, listing its boring career opportunities; I myself would hate to be trapped in a cushy corner office, toiling away as a CFO or UFO or whatever it is those cushy office-dwellers are. 

 

As a public service to the current crop of job-seekers, may I suggest the following, actual opportunities? 

 

Grand Carver of England: A royal position dedicated exclusively to slicing and serving meat for monarchs and special state guests. BYOK (bring your own knife)

Shoelace Ironer: King Charles reportedly employs staff to press his shoelaces flat with an iron and immediately replace them with a fresh pair if they look threadbare. Rumor has it that His Majesty is eyeing some slip-ons. Uh oh.

Ludacris’s Game Boy Battery Changer: The rapper employs someone to keep his portable gaming devices charged, with fresh batteries. Is he really that lazy? Well, that’s just…ludicrous.

Mariah Carey* reportedly paid people to lower her onto a talk-show sofa so her gown wouldn't get crushed. 

Lady Gaga* employs staff whose job is to carry her around when she’s wearing her outlandish stage costumes. *A real, muscular hustler could handle both jobs; MC and LG are rarely at the same events.

White House Chief Calligrapher: All you bar mitzvah and bridal shower pen-persons, please take “note”!

The Pope’s Astronomer: Responsible for the beloved annual Papal Blessing of the Quarks

New York City Rat Czar: Is this job to get rid of the rats? Or to become their king? Apply and find out, I guess…

 

Now that I’m writing about Jobs Serving the Rich and Famous, I’ll add tasks I would gladly compensate MY staff to execute, if I were ever to become staffed. These chores would include:

 

Climate Controller: It’s not as cut-and-dried as “Steve hates air conditioning and I adore it.” No, I personally need someone on the payroll to constantly adjust the thermostat so that I am perfectly comfortable 24/7, no matter what I’m wearing, and before, after, and during physical activity. Warning: I can intuitively tell 67 from 68 degrees, so don’t try slacking off!

Dust Buster: There has to be a better technique than mine (the quick, fruitless “company’s coming” swipe). I seek a soul who can “Pledge” to keep my environs mote-free at all times.

Meal Announcer: They would roam our house and yard every evening at 6 sharp, yelling “DINNER IS ON THE TABLE AND IT’S GETTING COLD!!!” at top of lungs. This would require at least 5-20 repetitions before the last little straggler ambles into the dining room and complains that dinner is, in fact, now cold.

 

Happy hunting! I look forward to carefully considering, then throwing away, your applications soon! 

Rodent Monarch Wanted (but the pay is not very...Gouda)