coming home

I've been home for a week and four days now, after being away for nearly three weeks wandering the wilds (and the not so wilds) of the great nation of New Zealand. Such a wonderful, beautiful trip it was that it's been hard being home again. Not only because of the 100-degree weather, made worse by soul-sucking humidity, though that certainly hasn't helped any. But because the trip itself was so very magical, these weeks spent driving around truly stunning countryside, seeing amazing things--sperm whales just before their descents into the deep to feed, a group of baby seals playing at dusk in a pool at the bottom of a 150+ foot waterfall, penguins, glaciers, dolphins cavorting around our boat in the middle of a fiord surrounded by mountains, waterfalls too numerous to count, an entire town that smells constantly of sulphur, eels lurking in murky stream water under a bridge, kiwis and other strange and exotic birds, cows mounting each other and parakeets flagrantly getting it on, sheep at pasture in the vineyards, an unlit tunnel of living rock gouged through a mountain to get to the sea, an underground power plant hewed out of stone two kilometers into the ground, a sky so full of stars that I thought it was cloud cover only to have Nathan point out to me that no, this is the Milky Way.

And the food! Delicious mussels and oysters, fish and chips, lamb, venison, and more wine than we knew what to do with. Actually, we drank it all, with the exception of a couple bottles horded and brought back to the States. We stayed in hostels, usually in our own room, and cooked amazing meals, at one place in a tiny cabin with no hot water, no bathroom, and heated only by a wood stove.

It's Sunday night, and I'm home and alone and bored (just finished making a small present for Mom for her big 60th birthday coming up, though that can't possibly compete with my brother's present to her--being home for her birthday), and so I was perusing the website of a huge wine store here in Manhattan. Particularly I was looking at their New Zealand wines and recognized quite a few of them from our three days of wandering around the various wine regions there. And it's fun to think that I saw where they grow these grapes, where they make these wines, that I know if they're any good or not, at least to my untrained tastes. They have a Seresin sauvignon blanc, and I happen to know that this particular vineyard is all handpicked, the wine all organically produced, and delicious besides. I know that Spy Valley is trying to market itself to the younger, hipper crowd, with its space-invaders style label, its brand new cellar door blaring techno music, its t-shirts and outdoor sculpture. Their wine, however, sucks, in my humble opinion. We visited the winery that buys its grapes from the vineyard where Nathan worked last winter (their summer, of course) and it was gratifying to find out that their wine is actually pretty good despite the one bad bottle we had here in NY last year. Framingham, just for the record. Good stuff.

But the most magical thing of all, in this trip full of special moments, was being able to spend this time with Chris and Nathan, the two people in the world most dear to my heart. The two people who, more than anyone else, make it okay to laugh and giggle like a child at the beauty of the world (or a good or even a not so good fart joke) and even okay to cry sometimes. The two boys are still traveling together, in Australia now, and even though I find traveling to be pretty stressful, even though I'm a complete homebody, it was sad to leave them, to end this time together. But Chris will be home, for awhile at least before heading off to begin school in New Haven, in less than a week. And Nathan, that dear silly boy who can't help but wander all over the globe it seems, might be coming back to New York sometime in the not too distant future too. He has to see about a girl, you see. And what better reason is there than that.

Pictures to be posted soon, when Chris comes home with the digital camera.

culture wars

The GOP has been making one rather desperate push after another in the last few weeks, and coming up short again and again. First they lost their second attempt to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment and send it on to the states for ratification, thank god. Then they lost an attempt to finally and fully repeal the Estate Tax (because god forbid rich people pay lots of taxes), praise the lord. And finally, and yet again (though granted by the narrowest margin yet), they lost their attempt to end once and for all the scary and threatening epidemic of flag burning that has never actually happened outside their imaginations. Which, by the way, I really don't get. Isn't it more respectful to burn a flag in protest, attributing to it a great and powerful symbolism, an embodiment of all that could be good in this country and yet is so often bad, than to turn it into a t-shirt, or a paper napkin, or a bandanna?

And this is all very well and good, as long as it doesn't backlash against those who held firm in their commitment to common sense, decency, and respect for both the flag (to withstand a burning now and again) and the Constitution (to continue to protect rather than to oppress) and the notion of fairness (those who have more should pay more).

Now all we need is for Congress to stop giving itself salary raises ($31,000 since 1997) and instead raise the damned minimum wage already ($0 since 1997). Despite my ambivalence about Hilary Clinton, I think her introduction of a bill to harness increases in minimum wage to increases in Congress's own salaries is brilliant. $5.15 per hour is shameful in a land blessed with an embarrassment of riches.

birthdays

Birthdays are such strange things. When I was little, birthdays were a pretty big deal in my family. We had a special birthday cake that my mother would make for each of us once a year, chocolate cake with marshmallowy white frosting, the most amazing cake in the entire world, despite the cake itself coming out of a box. We would savor each and every slice, each and every bite. And my birthday, falling on the summer solstice, always seemed a little bit magical to me. The four of us would get up early, whether it was a weekday or not, and gather around the table in the big dining room, a glorified screened-in porch. And it was always near the end of the school year, those long summer vacations just around the corner, and it always seemed like the sun was shining in through all those windows in that room, filtered through green, making the room glow.

And the birthday parties that my parents threw for me! I was not exactly popular in elementary school, was in fact quite miserable quite a lot of the time. But all the girls wanted to come to my birthday parties. Only five or six were ever invited, you see, always limited to the number of little girls who could sprawl in the oversized, very old, slightly mildewed army tent that my father would set up every year just for the big day in our back yard. The girls would arrived in the afternoon and we would all go down to the lake to go swimming, and then we would come back to the house for a dinner of teriyaki chicken grilled out back, and a big fruit salad with strawberries and kiwis, and potato chips and that amazing birthday cake. And then, as it grew dark outside, the glow sticks would be passed around, the flashlight batteries checked, and we'd make our way out to the tent, sleeping bags and pillows in hand, for a night of ghost stories and make-believe. In the morning, bright and early, we'd wander in for pancakes or waffles with maple syrup and whipped cream and more strawberries, satisfied for another year with our night of excitement and adventure.

Then high school came along, and suddenly it wasn't popular to have your own birthday parties any more. Other people were supposed to plan little surprises, or take you out to the movies, or otherwise show their love and affection, or at least awareness, of you. And somehow, what with my birthday being always during finals, it sort of slipped under the radar, or was overshadowed by all of the end-of-year parties. At least one year I attended one of these parties on my actual birthday, and sort of kind of kept hoping that a cake with candles and my name would suddenly appear, or at least that everyone would spontaneously and inexplicably burst into a rendition of "happy birthday." It's amazing how easy it is to feel invisible, sometimes.

But this year my boy threw me a birthday party, and though I'm a little bit embarrassed by how much I've wanted someone to do this for me for years, I'm also pleased as punch, giddy as a schoolgirl, to have actually had a birthday party for the first time since seventh grade. To have someone care so much that they would plan such a lovely evening, and to be at a place in my life, a lucky and wonderful place, where I can feel surrounded by dear friends. And such friends, to not only brave the wilds of northern Manhattan, but to endure our excruciatingly overheated apartment for hours on end that night. And there was a birthday cake. Chocolate, with white frosting, with my name on it in red. There may have even been a bit of singing.

girl with a pearl earring

Chris's parents, a few years ago, gave me a copy of Girl With a Pearl Earring. I, surrounded by my shelves and boxes and piles of books, never quite got around to reading it. But the other night we watched the film version of this book finally, and it was strange. It was like watching a moving breathing re-enactment of a still life, and not a movie in the traditional sense, with characters and plot developments or twists. The details were taken straight out of Vermeer's masterpieces, the brocade fabric and the way the light slants down through the windows and washes over a table, across a black and white tiled floor. Every scene is staged as if it could have been a Vermeer painting, even though really he only left behind about 35 paintings by the time he died. And the Girl is in almost every scene, a nearly silent observer, the still center of a still movie, moving between the saturated colors of helping her master with his paints and the billowy empty whitness of hanging the laundry to dry in the house's courtyard.

But there is little emotion in the movie, little sense of gravity to keep it from flying off into a beautiful and amazing and hollow embodiment of a painting. Nothing much happens, and the Girl's blank stare and open mouth, the awe and fear reflected in her huge wide eyes, can't carry the film forever. In the end, I felt both moved by and disappointed in the emptiness at the core of the movie. So I decided I'd read the book, and am now almost done with it. The book provides the Girl's inner world, the thoughts that fill in those long spaces between her words. Yet it cannot possibly capture in words the simple sensuality of grinding down lapis lazuli or burned and blackened ivory tusks into a powder and mixing it with linseed oil to create paint.

In the end, while neither the book nor the movie stands entirely on its own, they complement and complete each other in a lovely balance of lush, saturated visual images and distilled thoughts and speech.

america surveyed

"If only 23 percent of those polled approve of the way Congress is doing its job, how is it that 96 percent of incumbents in the House are re-elected?"
-Letter to the editor, NYTimes

I read this to my boy this morning and he said, and rightly, "Duh! It's all those other guys who are bad!" I might paraphrase slightly, as he doesn't generally employ the term "duh."

But in all seriousness, folks, can I just say that this most recent poll of America's approval ratings of Bush and his administration is really quite astounding? Much as the circa 30% approval rating of Bush as a whole is both mind-boggling and vindicating, what struck me most is that 13% of us continue to approve of his "handling of oil prices" and I began to wonder how many people are employed by the oil industry. But to keep it in perspective, I also read somewhere earlier this week, in reference to this amazing 13%, that 12% of Americans also believe that we or someone we know has had an interaction of some kind with a UFO. I use the term "we" loosely here, as I am not amongst this 12%, though numbers like these can't help but make me proud to be an American. I use the term "proud" loosely here as well.

kugel

I never imagined I'd say this, but over this past weekend I had a craving for noodle kugel. I had kugel a couple times in college. Being at Barnard, it was hardly avoidable. But really what I remember so fondly is going to the Cronen's house down at the end of our road in Mohegan Lake many a Saturday afternoon and eating their shabbat meal with them, including deliciously sweet, cheesy kugel. I found a bunch of different recipes and, never having made it before and of course not having an old family recipe or anything of my own, I ended up glomming a couple together pretty much like this:

I cooked 12 oz. of wide egg noodles just under the recommended time.

While the noodles cooked, I mixed a stick of butter (melted), 1/2 cup sugar, 2 cups cottage cheese, 4 cups milk, and 5 eggs in a big bowl. After straining the noodles I tossed them into this mixture and stirred it all up into a big mess. Spooned the noodles and all the liquid into a large rectangular buttered baking dish. In another bowl I mixed 2 1/2 cups Special K and crushed coarsly, then added 1/3 cup dark brown sugar and a bunch of cinnamon and mixed that all up. Then I poured this cereal mixture over the top of the noodles and put the whole thing in the oven at 350 degrees for about an hour.

This turned out okay, but though we both liked it well enough, I'm not entirely sure Chris got quite why I was making it or what it was for or what to do with it. It did seem a strange craving, even to me. I made it on a Sunday morning, so it was breakfast, but it was sweet enough to be dessert. If I make it again, which I probably will eventually, I'd cut back on the milk and use some sour cream and more cottage cheese, and I'd cut back on the sugar in the noodles themselves, and I'd cut way back on the butter, as it turned out a little too greasy, and I'd add some dried cranberries if I had them around. I had them around this time, which is actually one of the reasons I thought of kugel in the first place, but then forgot them in the end. Very frustrating indeed. But still, it was a nice experiment, and very easy, and made me feel like I was ten years old again.

house

Chris was working late a few nights last week, and inevitably when he does that I end up watching a bit too much TV and knitting until my fingers hurt. So last week I saw my second episode ever of House, yet another hospital drama in which poor, sick patients are plagued (literally, in that this particular poor patient had the Black Plague!) with unknown yet horribly gruesome ailments. And I realized the show is really pretty sadistic. This poor woman was being driven insane by insomnia, suffered nose bleeds and rectal bleeds and internal hemorhaging and the painful ministrations of the doctors (can I just say rectal exam, and the camera focusing on her face contorting in agony? ugh!) and ultimately liver failure. But of course in the end, her lesbian lover whom she wants to dump donates half a liver in order to be her heroine and save her and trap her into never leaving, so she lives and it's all okay. And the show opens with a Massive Attack song which is certainly something you don't hear every day on TV. But I think I've had enough of House for a little while. Coming up on my Netflix queue in not too long is Anne of Green Gables, the mini-series that they showed on Sunday nights on PBS back in 1985 and that I adored. In fact, I remember one Sunday night when the Emanuels came over for dinner and Jill and Lauren wanted to watch Punky Brewster which, of course, was on at the same time as my beloved Anne, and we got into an argument about what to watch. I think we ended up in separate rooms. Not sure if I ever confessed to the fact that we had already set up the VCR to record it...

twisted logic

Moussaoui, I have no doubt, will be sentenced to death sometime in the next few days. And if he is, this will be despite the fact that he was in jail on September 11th, 2001, despite the fact that he seems to have been a bit player in the planning of September 11th, 2001 and not the mastermind that he claims, and despite the fact that though he is clearly, if evil, also off his rocker and just dying (quite literally) to be a martyr. And all of this also despite the fact that apparently the United States has in its custody two of the men who actually were deeply involved in the September 11th terrorist attacks but whom our government has chosen not to bring to trial.

But wait. It gets even weirder. Moussaoui's defense team has submitted evidence - testimony from these two men in U.S. custody. They claim that Moussaoui didn't have much to do with the plannning of or the execution of the September 11th plot, that they themselves are responsible. But here's the clincher. This testimony was most likely obtained under torture. That's right. The U.S. government tortured these guys, they took responsibility, and now that testimony is being used against the U.S. government who is prosecuting this other guy for the same crimes. And the suspicious-minded amongst us might wonder--how did the defense get this testimony in the first place? And to what purpose? I would assume that the CIA is not just handing out secret intelligence to defense lawyers, certainly not in this administration. And yet. Maybe, just maybe, the government wants to set a precedent for trials to include testimony obtained through torture, but couldn't play that card on its own. Besides, this particular testimony hurts their case, though probably not enough to prevent an execution.

This from the April 17th New York Times:

"As the jury considered whether Mr. Moussaoui, the only person to be charged in an American courtroom with the Sept. 11 plot, was involved in it enough to serve as a proxy for the 19 hijackers who died that day, no one mentioned an obvious issue. What about the involvement of those who gave testimony about the plot who are in American custody? Why aren't they on trial?

The answer, not shared with the jury, is that these Qaeda officials, who include another financier and the man who was supposed to be the 20th hijacker, are being held overseas in the Central Intelligence Agency's secret prison system and have been subjected to interrogation techniques that would make it difficult to bring them to trial."

I can only imagine what those techniques may have been, and the results they may have had, but I find that last line, in all of its simplicity, to be one of the most chilling things I have ever read. And this is not the Soviet gulag, or a Latin American dictatorship, or a Chinese cultural revolution re-education program. This is our country.

the rule of four

Just finished reading a rather silly book, The Rule of Four, but this passage, read on the A train hurtling north beneath this city, I found strangely moving:

"Imagine, Paul said to me once, that the present is simply a reflection of the future. Imagine that we spend our whole lives staring into a mirror with the future at our backs, seeing it only in the reflection of what is here and now. Some of us would begin to believe that we could see tomorrow better by turning around to look at it directly. But those who did, without even realizing it, would've lost the key to the perspective they once had. For the one thing they would never be able to see in it was themselves. By turning their back on the mirror, they would become the one element of the future their eyes could never find."

perfect day

Beautiful Sundays, crisp and sunny, with no plans or obligations, seem like a rare jewel, and yesterday was one of those perfect days. We slept in luxuriously late, after not getting home until pretty late the night before from a lovely dinner party in Hell's Kitchen. We went to Angela's to get eggs & cheese on rolls and cups of coffee, brown-bagged it up to Fort Tryon Park, and ate our deliciously greasy sandwiches on a bench overlooking the Hudson River. We meandered our way through the park, admiring the crocuses and daffodils, smelling the new growth on the boxwoods, and gawking at the one lone forsythia bush frothing all over the place. Came home, basked in the sunlight streaming in our living room windows, books or crocheting projects in hand. Decided to cook ourselves a real dinner for a change. Went to the grocery store. Came home to find that our friend Sam was in the neighborhood with his girlfriend, visiting his parents. We put out some cheese and crackers we happened to have on hand, and a bowl of those wasabi rice crackers I find so addicitve, opened a nice pinot grigio. Had an impromptu and lovely mini dinner party, our groceries for two supplemented by their contribution of a couple dishes from the Indian restaurant around the corner. Went to sleep early, satiated and satisfied by a day well spent.

Minted Mashed Potatoes:
4-5 medium red-skinned potatoes
2-3 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint
1/4 cup milk
salt & pepper to taste

Dice the potatoes and boil in water until tender and easily mashable, about 20 minutes. Drain, mash, add butter and stir until butter is all melted and mixed in. Stir in milk and mint. Add touch of salt & pepper.


Spinach Salad:
Package of baby spinach, crumbled goat cheese, dried cranberries, some walnuts, and clementine slices, drizzled with simple oil & vinegar. (We stole this idea from the aforementioned dinner party, and it's deliciously easy.)

Chicken:
a couple of chicken breasts
sun dried tomatoes
goat cheese
garlic
white wine

We planned to attempt stuffed chicken breasts, and made the stuffing with the goat cheese, sun dried tomates, and chopped garlic, just all mixed up in a bowl. But what with the unexpected company, and the fact that we only had one full breast, we ended up browning the breast in some butter, cutting it up into smaller pieces, and then continuing to cook the pieces on the stove with the goat cheese mixture just thrown into the saute pan with the chicken, becoming a delicous sauce instead of stuffing. It turned out wonderfully, and there was just enough for all four of us to have a little taste.

what i'm listening to right now

Sequentia's Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper (X & XI Centuries). We were lucky enough to see Benjamin Bagby and his medieval music ensemble, Sequentia, at Corpus Christi Church on 121st Street here in Manhattan last October. I found myself entranced by this strange, charismatic man and this strange, ancient music that he so obviously adores. And a couple days ago Chris very sweetly got for me the recording of the program that we saw. My favorite description, this of a piece entitled Veni, dilectissime: "Emerging from beneath the monastic censor's black ink, this is probably the oldest surviving erotic dance-song in Latin."

more scarves (in the works)

scarves for this blustery march

elsebeth lavold alpaca/merino ribbed scarf for my boy
(six skeins, 109 yards/skein, this is a big scarf)

manos del uruguay wool (red, two skeins)
red heart lustre acrylic (green, 2 skeins, plus some bits of other colors worked in)

blanket bonanza