I never wanted a TV here in the shack but I always wanted a good sound system. I’ve loved listening to recorded music since my sister’s 45’s in the 1950’s, then the big sound from the Telefunken cabinet stereo (our family’s first) my brother brought home from Germany when he got out of the army, to the sound of WLS Top 40 hits from the tiny transistor radio in my bedroom, and to countless systems and formats I’ve owned since then. While building the shack I strung wire for ear high speakers through the studs in the wall, put a sub woofer in the corner, and hooked them all up to a CD player, an FM tuner, and a turntable with a USB port.
But when I got down to serious writing I found music with lyrics distracting. So for most of the day, when I’m working up to my goal of two thousand words, I play instrumental music, saving the lyrical music for pure listening. That shortened my playlist.
I’ve turned more and more to classical music. I actually don’t know much about it, but I know what I like. And I like much of it, and most of the composers I’ve found, Chopin for one. Which, by the way, is pronounced Show pan. Show as in movie show, pan as in frying pan. Show pan. You would only know it was pronounced that way by being lucky enough to hear the name spoken while at the same time seeing it in print. His written name alone would leave you convinced he was Chop-in, pronounced like the slangy verb in the phrase “Choppin’ wood.” Pronouncing it so would fall into the realm of being an honest mistake, don’t you think?
As a farm kid growing up I learned such words primarily while reading alone. As a result, I was prone to honest mispronunciations. At ISU as a nineteen year old I distinctly remember being thrilled at finding myself in the apartment, for the first time, of a very pretty music major, a violinist. She invited me up after I attended one of her chamber music concerts. It was one of the first times I’d heard live classical music. She asked me to pick something to play out of her record collection while she fixed us drinks. She returned to the room with a bottle of wine and two stemmed glasses in her hand, which I thought was positively exotic because of the fancy glasses and also because the bottle had a cork and was neither Boone’s farm, Ripple, nor Bali Hai.
“Did you find something?” she asked.
“Yeah, I did.” I said, pulling an album up out of the many in the wooden crate. “How about this guy, Chop in?”
She laughed. Not just a giggle, a pretty big laugh. “He’s not Chop in. He’s Show pan. SHOW PAN.”
I felt like such a farmer. I might as well have had cow shit on my shoes and alfalfa hay in my hair. And while my musical faux pas didn’t ruin the evening, I sure never forgot show pan.
Forty three years later I bought a Chopin CD for a quarter at the last day of Treasures and Trash, the giant rummage sale the local women’s club has every year in our church It’s a non-descript recording made by Sony in 1994, part of its Infinity Digital series, featuring the piano playing of two Russian pianists Vladimir Shakin and Eva Smirnova. It’s titled The Romantic Piano-Chopin: Mazurkas, Nocturnes, Polonaises. Not an attention grabbing title, and likely not a big seller.
Fredric Chopin himself was something of a snob from what I gather at Wikipedia. One of those child prodigies who never worked or lived, for that matter, outside the world of high toned music, he was born in Poland, later becoming a French citizen. He hung around with the likes of Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann, moving around Europe writing music for, and playing, piano. Chopin was all about pianos, one at a time, occasionally two. At no time does his history suggest he ever once milked a cow or shucked corn.
Musicologists estimate Fredric Chopin performed only about thirty concerts in his short lifetime, preferring the solon rather than concert halls. That’s another way of saying he liked to perform privately in apartments and houses for friends and supporters rather than playing for the wider public. He lived only thirty nine years, from 1810 to 1849. Fredric (I bet he didn’t like to be called Fred) was not what you would call a robust guy. In fact, he was sick most of his life with tuberculosis. Good thing he was a composer and piano player. He would have made a lousy lumberjack.
Chopin was picky about his pianos. He was once holed up in a monastery on Majorca, nice Mediterranean island off the coast of Spain, with his lover George Sand. George Sand, the pen name of a French female author born Aurore Dupin, who published under a man’s name, I think, to improve book sales, was something of a bohemian as was Chopin. While on Majorca, Chopin complained that he could not compose properly on any instrument other than a Pleyal piano, which the company eventually shipped to him all the way from Paris. You have to think it’s a lot easier for a mandolin picker or a piccolo piper to prefer one instrument over another, but pianists? If you’re going to traipse all over Europe it would seem best to get used to other people’s instruments. Not Chopin.
Whether it was George Sand, the Pleyal piano, or the good weather his stay on Majorca turned out to be one of his most prolific writing periods. The liner notes to my cheap CD say that Chopin invented the instrumental ballade and that “his music represents the quintessence of the Romantic piano tradition and embodies more fully than any other composer’s the expression and technical characteristics of his instrument.”
Here’s how George Sand described in her own words an episode of Chopin creating music in the presence of she and a friend named Delacroix.
‘Chopin is at the piano, quite oblivious of the fact that anyone is listening. He embarks on a sort of casual improvisation, then stops.
“Go on, go on,” exclaims Delacroix, “That's not the end!”
“It's not even a beginning,” says Chopin. “Nothing will come ... nothing but reflections, shadows, shapes that won't stay fixed. I'm trying to find the right color, but I can't even get the form ...”
“You won't find the one without the other,” says Delacroix, “and both will come together.”
“What if I find nothing but moonlight?”
“Then you will have found the reflection of a reflection.”
The idea seems to please the divine artist. He begins again, without seeming to, so uncertain is the shape. Gradually quiet colors begin to show, corresponding to the suave modulations sounding in our ears. Suddenly the note of blue sings out, and the night is all around us, azure and transparent. Light clouds take on fantastic shapes and fill the sky. They gather about the moon which casts upon them great opalescent discs, and wakes the sleeping colors. We dream of a summer night, and sit there waiting for the song of the nightingale ...’
I hardly know what to say about that. I know nothing about suave modulations and color, let alone identifying notes of blue, opalescent discs, or moonlight in a song. But I do know that Chopin does a couple of things really well. He writes music that goes from fast to slow and loud to soft better than almost anyone. When I listen to his work I end up thinking he waits just the right amount of time between notes. This could be way off base but it strikes me that it is not only the notes that are played in a piece but the spaces in between the notes that make a song really good. When I close my eyes and listen to these piano players performing Chopin’s songs I find myself anticipating the next note, and when it arrives I think it’s exactly the sound that should have been played. It fits with everything else. And the music, just simple piano notes, somehow puts me in touch with how I’m feeling. It’s emotional.
The songs on the CD suffer from bad titles. You’re just never going to have the name of these songs on the tip of your tongue. Take for instance the first song “Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Opus 60.” Come on Fredric. Is that snappy? There are plenty of instrumental songs with names that either roughly describe the music or are at least memorable. Glen Miller has “Moonlight Serenade”, Pat Metheny has “As Fall Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls”, and Chopin has “Polonaise in A-flat Major, Opus 53”? I’d say marketing was not a concern in the early 1800’s. Actually if you heard “Polonaise in A-flat Major, Opus 53” you would probably recognize it. I think I probably heard Liberace play it on the Ed Sullivan Show, where he no doubt pronounced Chopin’s name correctly and I never saw how it was spelled.
On this particular Chopin CD you got your barcarolle, three mazurkas, a polonaise, a berceuse, three more mazurkas, two nocturnes, and you finish off with that famous polonaise previously mentioned. It takes a little research to figure out what is actually coming out of the speakers. A barcarolle is a song named and patterned after the long slow strokes made by a gondolier i.e., person rowing a gondola. A mazurka is a short Polish dance tune, although Chopin insisted his compositions were not pieces to which people should dance, rather they were made for listening. A berceuse is another name for a lullaby. When you listen to it that’s exactly the mood that Chopin creates. And a polonaise (simply the French word for Polish) is another dance in ¾ time “quite close to that of the Swedish semiquaver.” And if you know anything whatsoever about the Swedish semiquaver you’re a better man than I.
So there you have it; Chopin (say show pan): a man and his music. A farm boy review of that madcap Polish/French piano player and song writer from out of the classical past. He’s no Scott Joplin, but he’s worth a listen.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Thursday, January 16, 2014
We're So Smart
In a week that saw a youth shot and killed at a Chicago bus stop reportedly for his cell phone, and two college students drowned in the Chicago river trying to retrieve a dropped cell phone, I’ve concluded we treasure these gadgets way too much. Calling them merely phones, however, understates their importance and value to us. They’re smart, these phones, and have become our link to knowledge and information, everyone we know, and in many ways the world around us. I think they’ve changed us.
I own an I Phone and have set it so that little sounds come from it to alert me to its activity. When I get a text a very short whistle, a single rising note from low pitch to high, like a person’s whistle through teeth and pursed lips, tells me it’s arrived. It’s a tiny sound. When I send a text the reverse whistle, high to low, lasting only part of a second tells me it’s on its way. I get e mails on my phone as well, but only when I log onto the Outlook program. When they come in a sound like an old fashioned typewriter announces their arrival. Voice mail messages arrive with the sound of a now obsolete teletype machine. And finally my one and only ring tone that alerts me to some real telephone caller waiting for me to answer, in person, with my voice, is the sound of muted horns that are used on fox hunts. The play a five note ditty, a half note and four quarter notes I think, that seems to say “tally ho.” I picked these sounds for no particular reason except that I like them, and I think of them as my own. Actually they’re stock sounds among a big list of sounds any I Phone user can choose from.
My wife, who also has an I phone, and I had to coordinate our sounds because at first we found we both had the same alert for incoming texts. When we were together and heard the little rising whistle we thought we both had received a text. It was annoying. She chose to change her incoming text alert to a little bell. Now when we’re alone in the house and we hear the sounds we know which of us is being supplied information via which medium. We get a lot more texts these days than we do phone calls. It’s happened gradually, but it’s a definite trend. It comes I think from people not answering phone calls.
It started with our kids. They never seemed to answer when we called, but they would eventually call us back.
“I see you called this morning,” they would say, calling us in the evening.
“Yeah, why didn’t you answer?” They would always have a reason of some kind, flimsy maybe, until finally my daughter admitted she usually has turned her ringer off.
“I check it often enough that I see when someone calls. I can’t always call back. But if you need something right away text me.” Phone etiquette no longer demands answering immediately via voice.
So we found ourselves texting our kids simply because they respond more quickly. They can text back anywhere, in a meeting, in the bathroom, on the L train. Texting doesn’t bother other people, its private, and you tend to get right to the point. It’s always more direct than a voice call, and shorter. I prefer texting now. I text rather than make a voice call most of the time, to nearly everyone. But then I’ve always preferred writing over talking. That’s why I’ve always loved e mail. But e mail with the kids? Pretty old stuff. If I send them something by e mail I text them to let them know so they check it. An effective way to contact a young person these days? Send a Face Book message. They live on Face Book. To tell the truth, I reside there quite often. No need to message one or a group of people there. You can talk to all your friends at once, along with those people you call friends but barely know.
And it’s not only communicating one to one that makes our smart phones so important to us. They are our guides. Gone are the days of detailed directions for smart phone users. We saw a lot of out of town relatives over the holidays and when they needed to go here or there we gave them old fashioned step by step directions like these we explained to our nephew.
“You take 80 to Route 47. At the top of the ramp go South, which is right, through the sort of North end of the business district, not the downtown you know, the new stuff up by the interstate. Follow that main drag till you go over a bridge. It’s not the Illinois River bridge, it’s more of a viaduct over railroad tracks and stuff. As soon as you’re off the bridge, at the very first right, take that street. Their house is about eight blocks down on the right. You’ll see their white van parked in the driveway. They have a concrete goose dressed up in clothes, probably as Mrs. Santa Claus. The house has a glassed in porch.”
My nephew, patient and politely attentive through the whole explanation, replied by saying
“Thanks but all I need is the street address. My phone tells me where to turn. Just give me the street and number.”
We don’t always know the street and number. We know how to get there. But that’s no longer necessary for smart phone users. Neither do they need phone books, maps, encyclopedias, dictionaries, the Physician’s Desk Reference, newspapers, magazines, books, flash lights, cameras, or watches. You name it and it’s available on your smart phone. You can look up anything at anytime from anywhere by using your smart phone. The format may not be convenient. You may prefer to look something up on your computer screen or tablet, because it’s easier to view, but you can get anything on your smart phone, especially when it is connected to Wi Fi.
Last spring we had a big party with young couples in attendance and their kids. Those that didn’t bring kids brought dogs, and some both, but that’s another story. So a five year old is in my kitchen, sitting at the counter flipping his finger over the screen of his I Pad while I’m making coffee.
“Mr. McClure?” he asked politely.
“Yes.”
“Does your house have Wi Fi?”
“Yes it does.”
“May I have your password?”
His digital experience (I have no idea what he was doing or why he wanted to be connected) and his life in general was, I guess, going to be enhanced in some way if he was connected to the internet. So I gave him my password. There is no reason not to give those you know, especially a cute five year old boy, access to the internet in your house. Understand that at five he knew independently how to log on to my network, plug in the password, connect and go on his merry digital way. It blew me away. I don’t know why. He’s grown up with the internet while I’m still catching on.
Actually I’m no less hooked than that five year old. My smart phone is with me constantly, except when it is charging, which is every night. That puts it within my reach every waking hour. I think I’m not unlike a lot of people. It’s my most useful tool, and most used. Without it I feel out of touch.
I visited my doctor this week and he and I had something fairly important to discuss about my health. I like this physician because he talks to me directly and personally. We were sitting across from each other in the little exam room, discussing something private, trying together to solve a sort of riddle posed by my aging body. He was asking me about symptoms and I was answering as carefully and accurately as I possibly could. At one point he said
“There’s a reason you need to watch out for this you know. There’s a possibility this could…”
And as the word “could” came out of his mouth a short rising whistle, not a second long, went off in the little exam room, interrupting the conversation.
“Is that your phone?” I asked.
“Yes, the damn thing. I swear I’m going to throw it away. That means I got an e mail.”
“I have the same sound. It could mean I got a text.” We both checked our phones. He had gotten an e mail. We finished our conversation. I’m going to be OK by the way.
“You can’t throw that phone away doc,” I said when we had finished with our anatomy discussion. “You have to respond when people need you, and now you can be reached all the time.”
“Yeah, but I hate it for that very reason.”
“Look, I keep my phone on all the time too even though I’m retired and don’t even have to respond anymore. I choose to. It could be my kids, my wife, one of my friends, someone else in my family. They stay in touch with me and I do the same. It’s the way we live now.”
“Yeah, but it’s sad in a way isn’t it?”
“It is. But it’s also good. I’ve never been in touch with so many people nor communicated better or more often. I think it makes us closer. It’s a trade off, I admit, but I choose frequent contact.”
“I know,” he said. “But it can still be a giant pain.”
He tapped an order for a medication into the laptop in the room and e mailed it to my pharmacy. He also wrote an order for a simple diagnostic test and e mailed that off to another part of the organization.
“You can go to the lower floor and get that test done right now before you leave if you like. They have my order already.”
That was never easier. I read the results of my blood tests now on line via e mail, not that I know what they mean. This same outfit sends me e mail reminders of appointments. My credit union sends me a text when my account goes below a level I determine. I can send a text back which prompts yet another text with my last few transactions. The world as we know it is not going digital, it’s already there. The train has left the station. We’re plugged in. And if you’re not plugged in now with via a smart phone, I predict you soon will be.
You are either reading this blog through a link in an e mail or as a link in a Face Book post. The device you are using could be your smart phone. But whatever device you use please stay in touch. You can comment on the Face Book post which brought you the blog link. If you received this piece via e mail you can close the blog link and simply reply to the e mail. Or you can comment on my blog itself in the comment section. However you communicate I’d love to hear from you. It’s easy. Have a good weekend.
I own an I Phone and have set it so that little sounds come from it to alert me to its activity. When I get a text a very short whistle, a single rising note from low pitch to high, like a person’s whistle through teeth and pursed lips, tells me it’s arrived. It’s a tiny sound. When I send a text the reverse whistle, high to low, lasting only part of a second tells me it’s on its way. I get e mails on my phone as well, but only when I log onto the Outlook program. When they come in a sound like an old fashioned typewriter announces their arrival. Voice mail messages arrive with the sound of a now obsolete teletype machine. And finally my one and only ring tone that alerts me to some real telephone caller waiting for me to answer, in person, with my voice, is the sound of muted horns that are used on fox hunts. The play a five note ditty, a half note and four quarter notes I think, that seems to say “tally ho.” I picked these sounds for no particular reason except that I like them, and I think of them as my own. Actually they’re stock sounds among a big list of sounds any I Phone user can choose from.
My wife, who also has an I phone, and I had to coordinate our sounds because at first we found we both had the same alert for incoming texts. When we were together and heard the little rising whistle we thought we both had received a text. It was annoying. She chose to change her incoming text alert to a little bell. Now when we’re alone in the house and we hear the sounds we know which of us is being supplied information via which medium. We get a lot more texts these days than we do phone calls. It’s happened gradually, but it’s a definite trend. It comes I think from people not answering phone calls.
It started with our kids. They never seemed to answer when we called, but they would eventually call us back.
“I see you called this morning,” they would say, calling us in the evening.
“Yeah, why didn’t you answer?” They would always have a reason of some kind, flimsy maybe, until finally my daughter admitted she usually has turned her ringer off.
“I check it often enough that I see when someone calls. I can’t always call back. But if you need something right away text me.” Phone etiquette no longer demands answering immediately via voice.
So we found ourselves texting our kids simply because they respond more quickly. They can text back anywhere, in a meeting, in the bathroom, on the L train. Texting doesn’t bother other people, its private, and you tend to get right to the point. It’s always more direct than a voice call, and shorter. I prefer texting now. I text rather than make a voice call most of the time, to nearly everyone. But then I’ve always preferred writing over talking. That’s why I’ve always loved e mail. But e mail with the kids? Pretty old stuff. If I send them something by e mail I text them to let them know so they check it. An effective way to contact a young person these days? Send a Face Book message. They live on Face Book. To tell the truth, I reside there quite often. No need to message one or a group of people there. You can talk to all your friends at once, along with those people you call friends but barely know.
And it’s not only communicating one to one that makes our smart phones so important to us. They are our guides. Gone are the days of detailed directions for smart phone users. We saw a lot of out of town relatives over the holidays and when they needed to go here or there we gave them old fashioned step by step directions like these we explained to our nephew.
“You take 80 to Route 47. At the top of the ramp go South, which is right, through the sort of North end of the business district, not the downtown you know, the new stuff up by the interstate. Follow that main drag till you go over a bridge. It’s not the Illinois River bridge, it’s more of a viaduct over railroad tracks and stuff. As soon as you’re off the bridge, at the very first right, take that street. Their house is about eight blocks down on the right. You’ll see their white van parked in the driveway. They have a concrete goose dressed up in clothes, probably as Mrs. Santa Claus. The house has a glassed in porch.”
My nephew, patient and politely attentive through the whole explanation, replied by saying
“Thanks but all I need is the street address. My phone tells me where to turn. Just give me the street and number.”
We don’t always know the street and number. We know how to get there. But that’s no longer necessary for smart phone users. Neither do they need phone books, maps, encyclopedias, dictionaries, the Physician’s Desk Reference, newspapers, magazines, books, flash lights, cameras, or watches. You name it and it’s available on your smart phone. You can look up anything at anytime from anywhere by using your smart phone. The format may not be convenient. You may prefer to look something up on your computer screen or tablet, because it’s easier to view, but you can get anything on your smart phone, especially when it is connected to Wi Fi.
Last spring we had a big party with young couples in attendance and their kids. Those that didn’t bring kids brought dogs, and some both, but that’s another story. So a five year old is in my kitchen, sitting at the counter flipping his finger over the screen of his I Pad while I’m making coffee.
“Mr. McClure?” he asked politely.
“Yes.”
“Does your house have Wi Fi?”
“Yes it does.”
“May I have your password?”
His digital experience (I have no idea what he was doing or why he wanted to be connected) and his life in general was, I guess, going to be enhanced in some way if he was connected to the internet. So I gave him my password. There is no reason not to give those you know, especially a cute five year old boy, access to the internet in your house. Understand that at five he knew independently how to log on to my network, plug in the password, connect and go on his merry digital way. It blew me away. I don’t know why. He’s grown up with the internet while I’m still catching on.
Actually I’m no less hooked than that five year old. My smart phone is with me constantly, except when it is charging, which is every night. That puts it within my reach every waking hour. I think I’m not unlike a lot of people. It’s my most useful tool, and most used. Without it I feel out of touch.
I visited my doctor this week and he and I had something fairly important to discuss about my health. I like this physician because he talks to me directly and personally. We were sitting across from each other in the little exam room, discussing something private, trying together to solve a sort of riddle posed by my aging body. He was asking me about symptoms and I was answering as carefully and accurately as I possibly could. At one point he said
“There’s a reason you need to watch out for this you know. There’s a possibility this could…”
And as the word “could” came out of his mouth a short rising whistle, not a second long, went off in the little exam room, interrupting the conversation.
“Is that your phone?” I asked.
“Yes, the damn thing. I swear I’m going to throw it away. That means I got an e mail.”
“I have the same sound. It could mean I got a text.” We both checked our phones. He had gotten an e mail. We finished our conversation. I’m going to be OK by the way.
“You can’t throw that phone away doc,” I said when we had finished with our anatomy discussion. “You have to respond when people need you, and now you can be reached all the time.”
“Yeah, but I hate it for that very reason.”
“Look, I keep my phone on all the time too even though I’m retired and don’t even have to respond anymore. I choose to. It could be my kids, my wife, one of my friends, someone else in my family. They stay in touch with me and I do the same. It’s the way we live now.”
“Yeah, but it’s sad in a way isn’t it?”
“It is. But it’s also good. I’ve never been in touch with so many people nor communicated better or more often. I think it makes us closer. It’s a trade off, I admit, but I choose frequent contact.”
“I know,” he said. “But it can still be a giant pain.”
He tapped an order for a medication into the laptop in the room and e mailed it to my pharmacy. He also wrote an order for a simple diagnostic test and e mailed that off to another part of the organization.
“You can go to the lower floor and get that test done right now before you leave if you like. They have my order already.”
That was never easier. I read the results of my blood tests now on line via e mail, not that I know what they mean. This same outfit sends me e mail reminders of appointments. My credit union sends me a text when my account goes below a level I determine. I can send a text back which prompts yet another text with my last few transactions. The world as we know it is not going digital, it’s already there. The train has left the station. We’re plugged in. And if you’re not plugged in now with via a smart phone, I predict you soon will be.
You are either reading this blog through a link in an e mail or as a link in a Face Book post. The device you are using could be your smart phone. But whatever device you use please stay in touch. You can comment on the Face Book post which brought you the blog link. If you received this piece via e mail you can close the blog link and simply reply to the e mail. Or you can comment on my blog itself in the comment section. However you communicate I’d love to hear from you. It’s easy. Have a good weekend.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Four Days from the Shack Journal
Monday, January 6, 2014: Some January 6th in Illinois may have been colder than January 6, 2014. It most likely was, given how long the earth has been around, which scientists armed with radiometric age dating gadgets say is 4.54 billion years old plus or minus .05 billion years. Fundamental Christian theologians armed with bibles they believe are divinely inspired and literally true say the earth is 6,244 years old. The bible centered folks don’t go much for plus or minus as a concept. As you can see there is a whole lot of difference between those two estimates. But neither of them matter particularly in this discussion given that we’ve only been keeping accurate and organized records of daily air temperature for 120 years or so. That is a drop in a bucket geologically. Hardly a drop even. For the very short record the coldest temperature in Illinois since they’ve been keeping records was recorded in Congerville in 1999 when it was -36. Nice little town, Congerville. It’s close to Danvers and Goodfield, in case you can’t place it.
So to be accurate January 6th has not been this cold since they have been keeping records. It was pretty cold in 1970, 44 years ago, but not this cold. On that day it was -12. I’m sure that was one of the nights I toted the car battery from my 63 Ford Galaxy V-8 into our college apartment by the railroad tracks on Hovey Avenue in Normal, Illinois so I might have a chance at starting my car in the morning. Today it is --17 and still going down. And there’s that wind to deal with. I have been burning wood like a bastard in the shack since 6:30 a.m. and have only gotten the inside temperature up to 51 degrees. Snow, tracked in hours earlier, is still not melting on the floor.
Speaking of snow I ignored it as long as I could. From the time it started piling up on Saturday night till Sunday night about 9:00 p.m. I simply walked through it. Then I realized if my daughter and her boyfriend were going to get their car off my driveway and back to Chicago we would have to shovel it. We made a skinny path to the street that I later widened. Glad they were here to help me.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014: It’s pretty gorgeous this morning. We have ten inches of snow, at least, maybe a foot. It is piled on the tops of the bare deciduous tree limbs, not melting, pure white against the dark bark. Our neighborhood has pines, behind me a blue spruce and a balsam, some others I can’t identify through the ravine. Snow packs the needles and weighs them down, making their green more striking and their shape more stately. The sky is clear and the sun bright. I filled the feeder with black oil sunflower seeds and the birds are mobbing it. Must be the only food around. The cardinals are out in force, along with the blue jays and wood peckers. I don’t know how they make it, or where they go at night. But it’s good to see them.
It’s quiet out here. Schools are closed, along with lots of businesses, and there is little traffic. Salt won’t melt ice when it’s this cold. Caton Road, the street in front of my house, is snow packed and almost polished slick. I got the Buick out and went to the store, looking to buy some salmon. The fish case was empty. Truck didn’t come in they said. No hamburger either. I settled on a nice skirt steak and we made fajitas, heavy on the peppers and onions, served with rice, beans and tortillas. The Mexican market on Madison was open and we got some good chorizo to flavor everything up. We stopped at Herman’s, our favorite liquor store, to stock up on provisions there as well. In this weather you can’t be too careful. The roads could drift shut at any time and then where would you be?
I went to church to clear the sidewalks and steps. My friend Steve Malinsky and I worked together. I ran the snow blower and he scooped. I love running the snow blower. I pretend I’m back on the farm driving the tractor. The church’s snow blower is a powerful beast that walked through that deep snow like it was nothing.
It was still below zero and during the forty five minutes or so we worked I got cold. I was wearing leather “chopper” mittens with thick wool inserts made in Bemidji, Minnesota. I thought my fingers would never get cold in those things but they did. My feel stayed pretty warm, with thick wool socks, my regular shoes and five buckle rubber boots. However, my moustache froze stiff. It was hard to smile. When we finished Steve and I stood in the alley and talked a while, but not long. Sub zero temperature limits outdoor conversations.
Wednesday January 8, 2014: I’m going through a lot of wood. I came out early, about 6:00 a.m., which is an hour and a half before sunrise. As I started a fire in the stove and estimated the wood supply that remained in the stack below the stove I figured I’d be good until 9:00 or so. But just as the sun was rising, close to 7:30, I was back outside at the wood pile filling a bucket and a milk crate with more wood. The cold just doesn’t let up. I have both pine and oak in my wood pile. The oak burns hotter. I keep the air intake wide open so the stove really cooks.
I’m doing some different writing this week. I’m part of a group, I Care International, which is going to Trujillo, Honduras in February to conduct eye exams, dispense glasses, and do cataract and other eye surgeries. Forty five volunteers will donate their time and pay their own expenses to make the ten day trip. This year we’re having trouble getting donations of supplies. We need eye drops like artificial tears and diabetic testing stuff; the little finger prickers called lancets and the test strips you put in the monitors. Companies seem to have tightened up on donations. Bill, my friend in Chicago, has a contact at a big retail drug store and we’re putting together a short proposal for their foundation. My job is to briefly summarize the history, purpose, and mission of the organization. I’m writing a one pager to go on top of his more specific proposal. I Care International has been around for 25 years and conducted 71 such missions. It’s hard to capture that on one page.
My other job this week is to write no more than five hundred words on child abuse for an annual report by a statewide outfit on the statistical state of the state for children. They want short narratives preceding each section of numbers. It’s harder for me to write 500 words than it is to write 2,000. Heck I’m at 1,156 right now and what have I said exactly? So that’s what I’m doing out here. Burning wood, writing, and listening to music. I listen to music without words when I write because lyrics are distracting. I’ve got Chopin on right now. I’m glad I’ve gotten to know that guy. I might write a review of his stuff one day as an update.
I’m looking forward to choir practice. We haven’t sung since Christmas Eve and I miss both my choir friends and just plain singing.
Thursday, January 9, 2014: They’re talking about it warming up and snowing again. I really have too much to do to shovel more snow. In addition to the I Care proposal and the 500 word deal for the statewide outfit I have to write the weekly piece for my blog. I thought one of the other pieces I was writing this week might serve as an update but I’m not sure they do. So I’ll crank out one more. It will be nice to get back to the normal and the novel. It’s been quite a week.
So to be accurate January 6th has not been this cold since they have been keeping records. It was pretty cold in 1970, 44 years ago, but not this cold. On that day it was -12. I’m sure that was one of the nights I toted the car battery from my 63 Ford Galaxy V-8 into our college apartment by the railroad tracks on Hovey Avenue in Normal, Illinois so I might have a chance at starting my car in the morning. Today it is --17 and still going down. And there’s that wind to deal with. I have been burning wood like a bastard in the shack since 6:30 a.m. and have only gotten the inside temperature up to 51 degrees. Snow, tracked in hours earlier, is still not melting on the floor.
Speaking of snow I ignored it as long as I could. From the time it started piling up on Saturday night till Sunday night about 9:00 p.m. I simply walked through it. Then I realized if my daughter and her boyfriend were going to get their car off my driveway and back to Chicago we would have to shovel it. We made a skinny path to the street that I later widened. Glad they were here to help me.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014: It’s pretty gorgeous this morning. We have ten inches of snow, at least, maybe a foot. It is piled on the tops of the bare deciduous tree limbs, not melting, pure white against the dark bark. Our neighborhood has pines, behind me a blue spruce and a balsam, some others I can’t identify through the ravine. Snow packs the needles and weighs them down, making their green more striking and their shape more stately. The sky is clear and the sun bright. I filled the feeder with black oil sunflower seeds and the birds are mobbing it. Must be the only food around. The cardinals are out in force, along with the blue jays and wood peckers. I don’t know how they make it, or where they go at night. But it’s good to see them.
It’s quiet out here. Schools are closed, along with lots of businesses, and there is little traffic. Salt won’t melt ice when it’s this cold. Caton Road, the street in front of my house, is snow packed and almost polished slick. I got the Buick out and went to the store, looking to buy some salmon. The fish case was empty. Truck didn’t come in they said. No hamburger either. I settled on a nice skirt steak and we made fajitas, heavy on the peppers and onions, served with rice, beans and tortillas. The Mexican market on Madison was open and we got some good chorizo to flavor everything up. We stopped at Herman’s, our favorite liquor store, to stock up on provisions there as well. In this weather you can’t be too careful. The roads could drift shut at any time and then where would you be?
I went to church to clear the sidewalks and steps. My friend Steve Malinsky and I worked together. I ran the snow blower and he scooped. I love running the snow blower. I pretend I’m back on the farm driving the tractor. The church’s snow blower is a powerful beast that walked through that deep snow like it was nothing.
It was still below zero and during the forty five minutes or so we worked I got cold. I was wearing leather “chopper” mittens with thick wool inserts made in Bemidji, Minnesota. I thought my fingers would never get cold in those things but they did. My feel stayed pretty warm, with thick wool socks, my regular shoes and five buckle rubber boots. However, my moustache froze stiff. It was hard to smile. When we finished Steve and I stood in the alley and talked a while, but not long. Sub zero temperature limits outdoor conversations.
Wednesday January 8, 2014: I’m going through a lot of wood. I came out early, about 6:00 a.m., which is an hour and a half before sunrise. As I started a fire in the stove and estimated the wood supply that remained in the stack below the stove I figured I’d be good until 9:00 or so. But just as the sun was rising, close to 7:30, I was back outside at the wood pile filling a bucket and a milk crate with more wood. The cold just doesn’t let up. I have both pine and oak in my wood pile. The oak burns hotter. I keep the air intake wide open so the stove really cooks.
I’m doing some different writing this week. I’m part of a group, I Care International, which is going to Trujillo, Honduras in February to conduct eye exams, dispense glasses, and do cataract and other eye surgeries. Forty five volunteers will donate their time and pay their own expenses to make the ten day trip. This year we’re having trouble getting donations of supplies. We need eye drops like artificial tears and diabetic testing stuff; the little finger prickers called lancets and the test strips you put in the monitors. Companies seem to have tightened up on donations. Bill, my friend in Chicago, has a contact at a big retail drug store and we’re putting together a short proposal for their foundation. My job is to briefly summarize the history, purpose, and mission of the organization. I’m writing a one pager to go on top of his more specific proposal. I Care International has been around for 25 years and conducted 71 such missions. It’s hard to capture that on one page.
My other job this week is to write no more than five hundred words on child abuse for an annual report by a statewide outfit on the statistical state of the state for children. They want short narratives preceding each section of numbers. It’s harder for me to write 500 words than it is to write 2,000. Heck I’m at 1,156 right now and what have I said exactly? So that’s what I’m doing out here. Burning wood, writing, and listening to music. I listen to music without words when I write because lyrics are distracting. I’ve got Chopin on right now. I’m glad I’ve gotten to know that guy. I might write a review of his stuff one day as an update.
I’m looking forward to choir practice. We haven’t sung since Christmas Eve and I miss both my choir friends and just plain singing.
Thursday, January 9, 2014: They’re talking about it warming up and snowing again. I really have too much to do to shovel more snow. In addition to the I Care proposal and the 500 word deal for the statewide outfit I have to write the weekly piece for my blog. I thought one of the other pieces I was writing this week might serve as an update but I’m not sure they do. So I’ll crank out one more. It will be nice to get back to the normal and the novel. It’s been quite a week.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Inside the Shack
Two of my nephews came to visit over Christmas. Their Mom, my sister in law, told me a while ago they wanted to drop by to see us and visit the shack, but I knew their schedule was busy on their short visit back home. I was pleasantly surprised when they pulled in the driveway. I hadn’t seen either of the brothers in a while. Both of them have a lot going on.
Jim, an engineer living in Manila (the Philippines) is starting his own company there with the hopes of attracting overseas firms wishing to outsource projects. His brother Tim is a graphic artist and stand up doghouse bass player living, working, and playing honky-tonk joints in Austin, Texas. They came with their sons, both three. The great nephews had a good time playing in the yard on the tire swing and in the snow, while their Dads and I were in the shack having a Christmas drink. We kept an eye on them through the shack window. I got out the better Bushmills whiskey for my nephews, the single malt stuff old enough to drive that I keep tucked away. It tasted so good we had another. Tim was at the house and had seen the shack when it was halfway built but Jim had not.
“I’ve seen the outside of the shack on line,” Jim said. “But I always wanted to see what the inside looked like.”
Both Jim and Tim read this blog. I forget who’s reading this thing. By reading regularly they feel as if they knew what I was doing. But they wanted to know more about the shack. It’s a small place you know, 121 square feet, but they were curious as to where I got the idea for the design, how it was all working out, the insulation, the wood stove. As we talked they kept looking around and asking me about things they saw. Tim spied a little black and white framed photo on the wall.
“Is that Dylan?” Tim asked.
“Yeah. I snuck a cell phone picture of a picture in the Rock and Roll hall of fame.”
“How about that mask up there?” Jim asked looking up at the peak of the rafters. “Looks like a blue eyed devil.”
“It is. Dean and I bought it at the market in Chichicastenango in the Guatemalan highlands. We were there on an I Care mission.”
“And that blue circle thing up there?” He pointed to the opposite gable end.
“A gift from Kerem, Moe’s old boyfriend from Turkey. I forget the name of it. It keeps away the evil eye.” Kerem helped a lot while I was building the shack.
“Is it working?”
“So far.”
“And how about that picture?” They stepped closer to a little black and white on the wall.
“That’s the original shack. Two Australians and I built it on the Pacific coast of Ecuador, on land that no one seemed to claim, outside a little town called Sua. Hacked out a little clearing in the jungle on the edge of a cliff looking over the ocean. I lived there about three months. See? It had stick half walls on the bottom and plastic you could roll and unroll on the top half, with a plastic roof covered by palm leaves. So close to the equator down there you didn’t need much shelter, more a place to get out of the sun.”
“Lots of bugs?” Tim asked.
“Yeah. We each slept under full mosquito nets. And rats. We hung our food up at night with a coconut shell as a baffle on the rope so the boogers couldn’t get to it. Small inconveniences for such a beautiful place though. Went into town about every five days for supplies. Had to time the trip with the tides or the beach would be gone and you’d be washed against the cliffs and the rocks. We ate papayas off the trees. Closest I ever got to completely free living.”
“Uncle Dave,” Jim said. “I keep thinking you’re going to write that story about Scotland but I haven’t seen it on the blog.”
“What story?”
“About working with the Irishmen. You got a job through some people and they paid you cash? You were just out in the countryside and there was no safety or anything? They didn’t even know your name?”
“Did you read that or was it something I told you?”
“You told us at our house in Level Acres.” When I met Tim and Jim they were little kids living in a split level house in a nice subdivision near Geneseo before their Mom and Dad moved to a bigger place in the country. “I don’t know if you told us in particular or whether you were telling the grown-ups and we just listened. But I never forgot that. It was quite a story. You remember it Tim?”
“Yeah. They called you Yankee.”
“That they did,” I said. “Why do you think you both remembered that story?”
“I think because I’d heard of people doing things like that, I mean I was somehow aware of backpacking and hitch hiking, I’d seen it on TV or something, but I’d never really met someone who did it. And there you were. And you were a regular person.” Jim said.
“Yeah,” Tim said. “I mean we knew people that traveled with their job, or took foreign vacations. Our Dad traveled to Europe for work back then. But to quit work, to go places for that long, not knowing what was going to happen, to just improvise. That was brand new. And because you did it we knew it could be done.”
“Yeah, and it sounded so cool to us as kids,” Jim said. “Heck it still sounds cool.”
“I don’t know that I’ve written that down,” I said.
“Well, maybe you should.”
“You know Uncle Dave, we didn’t know that story you wrote about Dad working on the railroad in LaSalle till we read it in your blog. He never told us. Now we know.” Tim said. When I wrote a story their Dad Tom told me about burning down a freight car, I never thought I’d be communicating something new to his family.
“Yeah, you might be right. Maybe I should write that story about Scotland. But do you think you like it because you know me and we’re part of the same family? Or would you like it just as much if it was written by someone you don’t know?”
“I don’t know,” Tim said. “How did your other readers, the ones that don’t know Dad, like the railroad story?”
“They liked it. I had good feedback on that piece.”
My great nephews Kyle and Lex, Tim and Jim’s sons, interrupted our conversation by bursting through the shack door, simultaneously reporting on an altercation, airing grievances as it were, related to someone pushing someone else down in the snow. It wasn’t clear from their account of the incident exactly what occurred or who was at fault. To remedy the situation their Dads took their sons in their arms and held them on their laps. They needed to warm up anyway. It was nice and warm by the woodstove. The fight didn’t last long. Jim was still looking around the shack.
“And what about that hammer?” He was looking at an old tack hammer I have hanging on a nail by the stained glass windows, which we’d discussed earlier, custom made by a friend of mine especially for the shack.
“Uh, I’m afraid that’s just an old hammer. Not everything in here has a story.”
“You should make one up.”
Catching up on old relationships is the best part of the holidays. I realized I’d known those brothers, my nephews, for over 34 years. I’d watch them become men. If I can stretch this out I have a chance to see their sons grow up too.
It came time for them to go and we said our goodbyes. “Don’t stay away so long next time. And bring your boys back to see their Great Uncle when you come.”
“We will. Keep the stories coming,” they said.
“I’ll try.”
E mail, Skype, and Face Book are great but nothing beats a real visit.
Jim, an engineer living in Manila (the Philippines) is starting his own company there with the hopes of attracting overseas firms wishing to outsource projects. His brother Tim is a graphic artist and stand up doghouse bass player living, working, and playing honky-tonk joints in Austin, Texas. They came with their sons, both three. The great nephews had a good time playing in the yard on the tire swing and in the snow, while their Dads and I were in the shack having a Christmas drink. We kept an eye on them through the shack window. I got out the better Bushmills whiskey for my nephews, the single malt stuff old enough to drive that I keep tucked away. It tasted so good we had another. Tim was at the house and had seen the shack when it was halfway built but Jim had not.
“I’ve seen the outside of the shack on line,” Jim said. “But I always wanted to see what the inside looked like.”
Both Jim and Tim read this blog. I forget who’s reading this thing. By reading regularly they feel as if they knew what I was doing. But they wanted to know more about the shack. It’s a small place you know, 121 square feet, but they were curious as to where I got the idea for the design, how it was all working out, the insulation, the wood stove. As we talked they kept looking around and asking me about things they saw. Tim spied a little black and white framed photo on the wall.
“Is that Dylan?” Tim asked.
“Yeah. I snuck a cell phone picture of a picture in the Rock and Roll hall of fame.”
“How about that mask up there?” Jim asked looking up at the peak of the rafters. “Looks like a blue eyed devil.”
“It is. Dean and I bought it at the market in Chichicastenango in the Guatemalan highlands. We were there on an I Care mission.”
“And that blue circle thing up there?” He pointed to the opposite gable end.
“A gift from Kerem, Moe’s old boyfriend from Turkey. I forget the name of it. It keeps away the evil eye.” Kerem helped a lot while I was building the shack.
“Is it working?”
“So far.”
“And how about that picture?” They stepped closer to a little black and white on the wall.
“That’s the original shack. Two Australians and I built it on the Pacific coast of Ecuador, on land that no one seemed to claim, outside a little town called Sua. Hacked out a little clearing in the jungle on the edge of a cliff looking over the ocean. I lived there about three months. See? It had stick half walls on the bottom and plastic you could roll and unroll on the top half, with a plastic roof covered by palm leaves. So close to the equator down there you didn’t need much shelter, more a place to get out of the sun.”
“Lots of bugs?” Tim asked.
“Yeah. We each slept under full mosquito nets. And rats. We hung our food up at night with a coconut shell as a baffle on the rope so the boogers couldn’t get to it. Small inconveniences for such a beautiful place though. Went into town about every five days for supplies. Had to time the trip with the tides or the beach would be gone and you’d be washed against the cliffs and the rocks. We ate papayas off the trees. Closest I ever got to completely free living.”
“Uncle Dave,” Jim said. “I keep thinking you’re going to write that story about Scotland but I haven’t seen it on the blog.”
“What story?”
“About working with the Irishmen. You got a job through some people and they paid you cash? You were just out in the countryside and there was no safety or anything? They didn’t even know your name?”
“Did you read that or was it something I told you?”
“You told us at our house in Level Acres.” When I met Tim and Jim they were little kids living in a split level house in a nice subdivision near Geneseo before their Mom and Dad moved to a bigger place in the country. “I don’t know if you told us in particular or whether you were telling the grown-ups and we just listened. But I never forgot that. It was quite a story. You remember it Tim?”
“Yeah. They called you Yankee.”
“That they did,” I said. “Why do you think you both remembered that story?”
“I think because I’d heard of people doing things like that, I mean I was somehow aware of backpacking and hitch hiking, I’d seen it on TV or something, but I’d never really met someone who did it. And there you were. And you were a regular person.” Jim said.
“Yeah,” Tim said. “I mean we knew people that traveled with their job, or took foreign vacations. Our Dad traveled to Europe for work back then. But to quit work, to go places for that long, not knowing what was going to happen, to just improvise. That was brand new. And because you did it we knew it could be done.”
“Yeah, and it sounded so cool to us as kids,” Jim said. “Heck it still sounds cool.”
“I don’t know that I’ve written that down,” I said.
“Well, maybe you should.”
“You know Uncle Dave, we didn’t know that story you wrote about Dad working on the railroad in LaSalle till we read it in your blog. He never told us. Now we know.” Tim said. When I wrote a story their Dad Tom told me about burning down a freight car, I never thought I’d be communicating something new to his family.
“Yeah, you might be right. Maybe I should write that story about Scotland. But do you think you like it because you know me and we’re part of the same family? Or would you like it just as much if it was written by someone you don’t know?”
“I don’t know,” Tim said. “How did your other readers, the ones that don’t know Dad, like the railroad story?”
“They liked it. I had good feedback on that piece.”
My great nephews Kyle and Lex, Tim and Jim’s sons, interrupted our conversation by bursting through the shack door, simultaneously reporting on an altercation, airing grievances as it were, related to someone pushing someone else down in the snow. It wasn’t clear from their account of the incident exactly what occurred or who was at fault. To remedy the situation their Dads took their sons in their arms and held them on their laps. They needed to warm up anyway. It was nice and warm by the woodstove. The fight didn’t last long. Jim was still looking around the shack.
“And what about that hammer?” He was looking at an old tack hammer I have hanging on a nail by the stained glass windows, which we’d discussed earlier, custom made by a friend of mine especially for the shack.
“Uh, I’m afraid that’s just an old hammer. Not everything in here has a story.”
“You should make one up.”
Catching up on old relationships is the best part of the holidays. I realized I’d known those brothers, my nephews, for over 34 years. I’d watch them become men. If I can stretch this out I have a chance to see their sons grow up too.
It came time for them to go and we said our goodbyes. “Don’t stay away so long next time. And bring your boys back to see their Great Uncle when you come.”
“We will. Keep the stories coming,” they said.
“I’ll try.”
E mail, Skype, and Face Book are great but nothing beats a real visit.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Blue Christmas
It’s just me, the two Sergei’s, and a couple of musicians out here in the shack this morning. I’m writing while Sergei Prokofiev and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s notes are filling my shack through the magic of digital recording. The musicians are Yo Yo Ma on cello and Emanuel Ax on piano. It’s amazing how much music you can get out of just a cello and piano. They’re playing Prokofiev’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in C Major Opus 119, and Rachmaninoff’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor Opus 19. The CD cover has the rapturous faces of Yo Yo (did his Mom and Dad have a sense of humor or what?) and Emanuel playing merrily away. My question, which should get top billing, the composer or the musicians?
Musicians tend to hog the credit. Lots of people can play the cello and piano, and those guys do a fine job, but who can write the kind of inspired music that emerges from their instruments, into to some gizmo or other, and later out the shack speakers into my ears this morning? It’s beautiful stuff. My vote is for the composers. These guys, Prokofiev born in the Ukraine in 1891 and Rachmaninoff in Russia in 1873, wrote music their whole lives, beginning when they were pre-schoolers. I imagine the notes in these sonatas taking shape in their heads, them hearing and seeing with no noise the sound of them, playing the notes perhaps, stringing them together, feeling the notes of one instrument complement the other, then writing it all down. I love the flow of these pieces, the beauty, the tenderness, the energy. I’d call them geniuses. They had a gift they shared with us, the Sergei’s. If they weren’t dead I’d thank them. Maybe I just did.
It started out overcast but the sun has broken through on this morning after Christmas Day. I don’t know what’s up with the squirrels in this neighborhood but five of them are chasing each other all over the place. From time to time they scamper on a dead run past the big window in the shack. Just a while ago they ran across my roof, jumped on a tree, and disappeared into the ravine. That must be where the expression “squirrelly” originated. Animals lead such simple lives, each day the same as their last. At times I envy them.
I’m quietly enjoying a new cast iron teapot, a Christmas present from my wife, and some high mountain green tea, yet another gift from Julie, my daughter’s friend in Taiwan. The best part of Christmas is the people we connect with. It’s them that make Christmas I think.
So what happens if Christmas Day comes and goes and the tension and anxiety you‘ve been feeling does not? What if you do everything; put up the tree, bake the cookies, buy the presents, cook the meal, attend the church service, greet the guests-and no Christmas miracle happens? What do you do then?
Sadly or not, I think we fake it, trying not to ruin everyone else’s Christmas. We certainly don’t talk about it. It’s kept inside. Blue Christmas is real for many people. And really, how can we expect one day, however well orchestrated, to cure our sorrows? How can we pin all our hopes, desperate as they might be, on the back of one little infant child, no matter how holy? Is it fair? Is it realistic?
If Christmas didn’t happen for you, if you found yourself silently in despair, you’re not alone. We’re deep in winter. The ground is frozen and the nights are long and dark. It’s okay if you weren’t touched by joy. We have each other and we have the rest of our lives. Most importantly we have today and the days ahead. Take it slow. Do what you can to make each day better. Don’t allow small defeats to weigh you down. Find peace in small things. And above all don’t be hard on yourself, or you’ll miss comfort and joy when it does happen in your life. It’s like not hearing the music when it plays.
Today’s Christmas has evolved into a single day but in the church it’s a season. In the liturgical calendar Christmas has twelve days, ending on January 5th. Even if you’re not religious you should take this concept and run with it. Today is only the second day of Christmas. You have time. Wait for it and be patient so you feel it whenever it arrives. Listen closely.
Musicians tend to hog the credit. Lots of people can play the cello and piano, and those guys do a fine job, but who can write the kind of inspired music that emerges from their instruments, into to some gizmo or other, and later out the shack speakers into my ears this morning? It’s beautiful stuff. My vote is for the composers. These guys, Prokofiev born in the Ukraine in 1891 and Rachmaninoff in Russia in 1873, wrote music their whole lives, beginning when they were pre-schoolers. I imagine the notes in these sonatas taking shape in their heads, them hearing and seeing with no noise the sound of them, playing the notes perhaps, stringing them together, feeling the notes of one instrument complement the other, then writing it all down. I love the flow of these pieces, the beauty, the tenderness, the energy. I’d call them geniuses. They had a gift they shared with us, the Sergei’s. If they weren’t dead I’d thank them. Maybe I just did.
It started out overcast but the sun has broken through on this morning after Christmas Day. I don’t know what’s up with the squirrels in this neighborhood but five of them are chasing each other all over the place. From time to time they scamper on a dead run past the big window in the shack. Just a while ago they ran across my roof, jumped on a tree, and disappeared into the ravine. That must be where the expression “squirrelly” originated. Animals lead such simple lives, each day the same as their last. At times I envy them.
I’m quietly enjoying a new cast iron teapot, a Christmas present from my wife, and some high mountain green tea, yet another gift from Julie, my daughter’s friend in Taiwan. The best part of Christmas is the people we connect with. It’s them that make Christmas I think.
So what happens if Christmas Day comes and goes and the tension and anxiety you‘ve been feeling does not? What if you do everything; put up the tree, bake the cookies, buy the presents, cook the meal, attend the church service, greet the guests-and no Christmas miracle happens? What do you do then?
Sadly or not, I think we fake it, trying not to ruin everyone else’s Christmas. We certainly don’t talk about it. It’s kept inside. Blue Christmas is real for many people. And really, how can we expect one day, however well orchestrated, to cure our sorrows? How can we pin all our hopes, desperate as they might be, on the back of one little infant child, no matter how holy? Is it fair? Is it realistic?
If Christmas didn’t happen for you, if you found yourself silently in despair, you’re not alone. We’re deep in winter. The ground is frozen and the nights are long and dark. It’s okay if you weren’t touched by joy. We have each other and we have the rest of our lives. Most importantly we have today and the days ahead. Take it slow. Do what you can to make each day better. Don’t allow small defeats to weigh you down. Find peace in small things. And above all don’t be hard on yourself, or you’ll miss comfort and joy when it does happen in your life. It’s like not hearing the music when it plays.
Today’s Christmas has evolved into a single day but in the church it’s a season. In the liturgical calendar Christmas has twelve days, ending on January 5th. Even if you’re not religious you should take this concept and run with it. Today is only the second day of Christmas. You have time. Wait for it and be patient so you feel it whenever it arrives. Listen closely.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Jail, Bail, and Christmas
It’s never made sense to me that Sunday starts the week but three hours into this one I was wakened by a cell phone call. I answered it by reflex. Calls in the middle of the night were always about work. I forgot. On the phone was a young man I’ve known his whole life, which represents about one-third of mine. He’s no longer a minor but he’s still a kid. I had a hard time figuring out what he was saying. He was loud, talking fast, and not letting me into the conversation. I kept saying
“Where are you?”
But he ignored me. Someone was yelling in the background, telling him to get off the phone. He yelled back. Before he hung up he said
“Call the police department!”
Five hours into the first day of this week I woke up, checked my cell phone, and found the same unknown number had called me three times, leaving three voice mails. I listened to the first one. It was a recording telling me how to accept a collect call. I called the police department and inquired about the young man who had called me earlier.
“He was here, we held him for a while, but all those kids are gone. Call the county jail.”
I called. He was there. I identified myself and ask what he was charged with. It wasn’t a bad charge in the world of law breaking, fairly minor in fact. Then I inquired as to the amount of bail required to get him out of jail. I weighed my connection with him against the dollar amount.
“I’ll be there in half an hour,” I said.
Sunday was bitter cold. The parking lot was largely empty and the jail was quiet. I found the second entry door locked. I looked into the brightly lit lobby and it was absolutely empty, save for a metal detector, a desk, and a stained cloth office chair. Dark windows covered most of the wall opposite me. I didn’t know how to get in. Then I saw a sign directing me to push the buzzer on my right. Before I could talk on the intercom the door buzzed, the electronic lock clacked open, and I entered the county jail. It was going on 5:30 a.m..
I didn’t know whether to go through the metal detector or not. I went around it, hoping I wouldn’t get in trouble for doing so. I couldn’t see anyone behind the dark glass. It was thick. Bulletproof. I could see the bank of video surveillance monitors with scenes flashing on and off; the front door, the lobby, the hallway, something else, repeat. Then a face, disembodied, really just the eyes and mouth, appeared behind the glass. A voice came through a speaker
.
“Can I help you?”
I identified myself again, identified the person I was there to bail out.
“Do I pay you?”
“See the unit on the wall? Looks like an ATM? Follow the instructions. When your payment is approved an officer will talk to you.”
It was a touch screen. Enter this, enter that, hit next. The amount of bail appeared. I’d brought cash. There was a slot for inserting cash but in large letters was a notice “ANY BILLS INSERTED HERE WILL BE RETAINED. THIS MACHINE DOES NOT GIVE CHANGE.”
My Dad kept a small wad of cash on the farm in case, as he once told me “I have to bail one of you kids out of jail.”
He smiled as he said that. It was just he and I in the basement.
“You think I’m going to get thrown in jail?” I asked, smiling back.
“You’d know that better than me,” he said.
I always thought bail had to be made in cash, that’s why I brought it. Clearly, this machine preferred my VISA card. Five minutes after the machine spit out a receipt a door opened and a real person appeared in the lobby. The first whole person I’d encountered since I arrived.
“Are you here for Jones?” (Not his real last name.)
“Yeah.”
“Do you have any clothing for him? He’s here without a coat, and I came in not long ago and know how cold it is out there.”
“My car is close.” I thought it was thoughtful of him to be concerned about my friend being warm.
“Has he been cooperative?” I asked.
“Yeah. He’s been quiet.”
“It’s just the one charge, the trespassing?”
“Yeah. Just that. Housing encourages local law enforcement to make those charges you know. Helps them control their properties better.”
“I know. I’m familiar with it. Are there other warrants out on him?” I asked. “Like in other states?”
“We only check locally on a small charge like this. If there was something outside the area we wouldn’t know. I have something for you to sign. I want to show you the paperwork for court. You’ll want to make sure he shows up.”
“He will.”
“OK. He’ll be out in a few minutes. I have to check out his belongings.”
He went back through the door. It shut hard and locked. I looked at the control room but saw nothing but the glow of the video monitors. I looked around the stark lobby. Walled off, with the doors locked all around me, I felt a bit like I was in jail too.
My young friend walked through the door where the guard had exited. He looked skinny and tired. He was wearing a thin hoodie and a T-shirt. His pants sagged. His eyes were bleary. He walked up and hugged me. He smelled like beer.
“I’m so sorry you had to come here. Thank you so much.” He was carrying a big sheet of cardboard. On it was everything he had on him when he came to jail, laminated in see-through plastic to the cardboard. Keys. Cell phone. Three lighters. A wallet.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Someone buzzed the door as we approached it. In the space between the first door and the outside door my friend realized he didn’t have his hat.
“My hat. It’s gone. I just got that hat.”
“You can get another one. You might have lost it in the squad car or on the street. Let’s keep going.”
The cold air hit us hard when we walked outside. He clutched his hoodie to his neck and bent down into the wind. When we got in the Buick he was shivering.
"I’m going to court with you. It’s January 15th. You have to be there. You understand?”
“Yeah. I have to be there cause you’re responsible.”
“That’s right. Not just because I’m responsible but because you want to stay out of trouble yourself. You should plead guilty and take your fine. I’m not going to apply the bail money to the fine. You’ll have to pay that.”
“Yeah. A guy in the jail said you can pay it a little at a time.”
“You want to pay it off as soon as you can. It’s a pain for everyone-judges, court staff, you. They can’t dismiss the charge till you pay that fine.” As I was saying that, I had no idea where he would get the money.
“Did you call your aunt?” His aunt was about the only family he had.
“No. She doesn’t have any money. She couldn’t have bailed me out.”
“Where you been staying?”
“With my girlfriend. She got arrested too. I don’t know where she is. I can’t go there.”
“So where am I taking you?”
“I guess to my aunt’s.”
“Does she have a place now?”
Yeah.”
“Will she let you in?”
“I think so.”
“Are you on the do not admit list at the shelter?”
“No. Not that I know of. My aunt is I think.”
“Well, you can always go there.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then call your aunt.”
He fumbled around tearing the plastic from the cardboard to free his phone. When he got it out he powered it up and started to push in the numbers.
“I’m out of minutes.” He dropped the phone into his lap and looked out the window. “I feel so pathetic.”
“Look, you didn’t kill anybody. You got thrown in jail on a misdemeanor and now you’re out. Your future is all about work. Until you get work and some money nothing is going to change, nothing is going to get better.”
As I said that I looked at him. Scrawny kid, too old for youth programs, GED (he says), no work history, bad clothes, scraggly beard. Dishwashing maybe? I just don’t know. He doesn’t follow up on everything I suggest. But he tries. He hasn’t known much else for a long time.
I wish it was different. I wish he had grown up here and we could have served him at YSB. I wish he could have found some kind of success in our local schools. But he didn’t. He starts from where he is, and he’s not in a good place.
He directed me to his aunt’s new place as the sky was getting light.
“I’ll stay here till I see you get in.”
“OK.”
“Thanks again, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“I do. You would have stayed in jail. I can’t do this many times you know. You have to take care of yourself.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Get some minutes on that phone or call me from someone else’s after the first of the year. You’re going to make that court date, and I’m going with you. January 15. 9:00 in the morning.”
“Don’t worry about that. When’s Christmas?”
“Next Wednesday.”
“Have a good one Dave.”
“You too.”
He went up the stairs and knocked on the door. The door opened. He turned and waved, then disappeared inside.
It’s my first Christmas on a fixed income and my first Christmas away from YSB since 1978. I thought maybe I would cut back a little on my Holiday giving but I haven’t. If anything, I want to give more. Since I’ve left social work I realize how low on the radar kids like my young friend fall. Puppies and kittens in America get more sympathy than children growing up in poverty. The agencies that have the ability, and the initiative, to help families with kids like the one I bailed out of jail, need our help more than ever.
I’ve become something of my own United Way. I give to those organizations I know need the money and do the most good. Tops on my list is YSB. I hope you remember to write them a check this Christmas. By doing so, you help young people who are the casualties of families who live in poverty, suffer family dysfunction, and fall to the bottom of the heap. The kids YSB serves find few friends and even less support. We somehow blame them for their problems. Agencies like YSB, however, are there for them. Please be there for YSB.
Merry Christmas to you and your family. Hold one another tight. You make each other strong.
“Where are you?”
But he ignored me. Someone was yelling in the background, telling him to get off the phone. He yelled back. Before he hung up he said
“Call the police department!”
Five hours into the first day of this week I woke up, checked my cell phone, and found the same unknown number had called me three times, leaving three voice mails. I listened to the first one. It was a recording telling me how to accept a collect call. I called the police department and inquired about the young man who had called me earlier.
“He was here, we held him for a while, but all those kids are gone. Call the county jail.”
I called. He was there. I identified myself and ask what he was charged with. It wasn’t a bad charge in the world of law breaking, fairly minor in fact. Then I inquired as to the amount of bail required to get him out of jail. I weighed my connection with him against the dollar amount.
“I’ll be there in half an hour,” I said.
Sunday was bitter cold. The parking lot was largely empty and the jail was quiet. I found the second entry door locked. I looked into the brightly lit lobby and it was absolutely empty, save for a metal detector, a desk, and a stained cloth office chair. Dark windows covered most of the wall opposite me. I didn’t know how to get in. Then I saw a sign directing me to push the buzzer on my right. Before I could talk on the intercom the door buzzed, the electronic lock clacked open, and I entered the county jail. It was going on 5:30 a.m..
I didn’t know whether to go through the metal detector or not. I went around it, hoping I wouldn’t get in trouble for doing so. I couldn’t see anyone behind the dark glass. It was thick. Bulletproof. I could see the bank of video surveillance monitors with scenes flashing on and off; the front door, the lobby, the hallway, something else, repeat. Then a face, disembodied, really just the eyes and mouth, appeared behind the glass. A voice came through a speaker
.
“Can I help you?”
I identified myself again, identified the person I was there to bail out.
“Do I pay you?”
“See the unit on the wall? Looks like an ATM? Follow the instructions. When your payment is approved an officer will talk to you.”
It was a touch screen. Enter this, enter that, hit next. The amount of bail appeared. I’d brought cash. There was a slot for inserting cash but in large letters was a notice “ANY BILLS INSERTED HERE WILL BE RETAINED. THIS MACHINE DOES NOT GIVE CHANGE.”
My Dad kept a small wad of cash on the farm in case, as he once told me “I have to bail one of you kids out of jail.”
He smiled as he said that. It was just he and I in the basement.
“You think I’m going to get thrown in jail?” I asked, smiling back.
“You’d know that better than me,” he said.
I always thought bail had to be made in cash, that’s why I brought it. Clearly, this machine preferred my VISA card. Five minutes after the machine spit out a receipt a door opened and a real person appeared in the lobby. The first whole person I’d encountered since I arrived.
“Are you here for Jones?” (Not his real last name.)
“Yeah.”
“Do you have any clothing for him? He’s here without a coat, and I came in not long ago and know how cold it is out there.”
“My car is close.” I thought it was thoughtful of him to be concerned about my friend being warm.
“Has he been cooperative?” I asked.
“Yeah. He’s been quiet.”
“It’s just the one charge, the trespassing?”
“Yeah. Just that. Housing encourages local law enforcement to make those charges you know. Helps them control their properties better.”
“I know. I’m familiar with it. Are there other warrants out on him?” I asked. “Like in other states?”
“We only check locally on a small charge like this. If there was something outside the area we wouldn’t know. I have something for you to sign. I want to show you the paperwork for court. You’ll want to make sure he shows up.”
“He will.”
“OK. He’ll be out in a few minutes. I have to check out his belongings.”
He went back through the door. It shut hard and locked. I looked at the control room but saw nothing but the glow of the video monitors. I looked around the stark lobby. Walled off, with the doors locked all around me, I felt a bit like I was in jail too.
My young friend walked through the door where the guard had exited. He looked skinny and tired. He was wearing a thin hoodie and a T-shirt. His pants sagged. His eyes were bleary. He walked up and hugged me. He smelled like beer.
“I’m so sorry you had to come here. Thank you so much.” He was carrying a big sheet of cardboard. On it was everything he had on him when he came to jail, laminated in see-through plastic to the cardboard. Keys. Cell phone. Three lighters. A wallet.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Someone buzzed the door as we approached it. In the space between the first door and the outside door my friend realized he didn’t have his hat.
“My hat. It’s gone. I just got that hat.”
“You can get another one. You might have lost it in the squad car or on the street. Let’s keep going.”
The cold air hit us hard when we walked outside. He clutched his hoodie to his neck and bent down into the wind. When we got in the Buick he was shivering.
"I’m going to court with you. It’s January 15th. You have to be there. You understand?”
“Yeah. I have to be there cause you’re responsible.”
“That’s right. Not just because I’m responsible but because you want to stay out of trouble yourself. You should plead guilty and take your fine. I’m not going to apply the bail money to the fine. You’ll have to pay that.”
“Yeah. A guy in the jail said you can pay it a little at a time.”
“You want to pay it off as soon as you can. It’s a pain for everyone-judges, court staff, you. They can’t dismiss the charge till you pay that fine.” As I was saying that, I had no idea where he would get the money.
“Did you call your aunt?” His aunt was about the only family he had.
“No. She doesn’t have any money. She couldn’t have bailed me out.”
“Where you been staying?”
“With my girlfriend. She got arrested too. I don’t know where she is. I can’t go there.”
“So where am I taking you?”
“I guess to my aunt’s.”
“Does she have a place now?”
Yeah.”
“Will she let you in?”
“I think so.”
“Are you on the do not admit list at the shelter?”
“No. Not that I know of. My aunt is I think.”
“Well, you can always go there.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then call your aunt.”
He fumbled around tearing the plastic from the cardboard to free his phone. When he got it out he powered it up and started to push in the numbers.
“I’m out of minutes.” He dropped the phone into his lap and looked out the window. “I feel so pathetic.”
“Look, you didn’t kill anybody. You got thrown in jail on a misdemeanor and now you’re out. Your future is all about work. Until you get work and some money nothing is going to change, nothing is going to get better.”
As I said that I looked at him. Scrawny kid, too old for youth programs, GED (he says), no work history, bad clothes, scraggly beard. Dishwashing maybe? I just don’t know. He doesn’t follow up on everything I suggest. But he tries. He hasn’t known much else for a long time.
I wish it was different. I wish he had grown up here and we could have served him at YSB. I wish he could have found some kind of success in our local schools. But he didn’t. He starts from where he is, and he’s not in a good place.
He directed me to his aunt’s new place as the sky was getting light.
“I’ll stay here till I see you get in.”
“OK.”
“Thanks again, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“I do. You would have stayed in jail. I can’t do this many times you know. You have to take care of yourself.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Get some minutes on that phone or call me from someone else’s after the first of the year. You’re going to make that court date, and I’m going with you. January 15. 9:00 in the morning.”
“Don’t worry about that. When’s Christmas?”
“Next Wednesday.”
“Have a good one Dave.”
“You too.”
He went up the stairs and knocked on the door. The door opened. He turned and waved, then disappeared inside.
It’s my first Christmas on a fixed income and my first Christmas away from YSB since 1978. I thought maybe I would cut back a little on my Holiday giving but I haven’t. If anything, I want to give more. Since I’ve left social work I realize how low on the radar kids like my young friend fall. Puppies and kittens in America get more sympathy than children growing up in poverty. The agencies that have the ability, and the initiative, to help families with kids like the one I bailed out of jail, need our help more than ever.
I’ve become something of my own United Way. I give to those organizations I know need the money and do the most good. Tops on my list is YSB. I hope you remember to write them a check this Christmas. By doing so, you help young people who are the casualties of families who live in poverty, suffer family dysfunction, and fall to the bottom of the heap. The kids YSB serves find few friends and even less support. We somehow blame them for their problems. Agencies like YSB, however, are there for them. Please be there for YSB.
Merry Christmas to you and your family. Hold one another tight. You make each other strong.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Artifical Calamari
“So do you miss work?” And I reply along these lines:
“Funny, but I worried for years that I would miss work terribly. I’d done it for so long. I didn’t know how it would feel. But when I quit working, I liked it right away and thought of work very little. It surprised me. So no, I don’t miss it. Really.”
What I don’t miss most is the intrusion of painful reality, unimaginable happenings, into my thoughts. I have even found that I can go back to instances where I was interrupted by the reality of work, just as I was beginning to think something through, and pick it up where I left off.
That’s where I got the idea for this week’s story. While still employed I was driving somewhere, listening to an intriguing episode of This American Life on National Public Radio, when I got a call on my cell phone. It was a call I had to take. I looked at my cell phone, saw who was calling, and knew I had to have a frank discussion, probably a long one. I hit mute on my car radio. I figured I could always look up the story later. Later arrived this week. I rediscovered a trivial story too good to pass up.
I recalled this whole thing a month ago while buying Pacific Cod at Kroger. I’d never heard of Pacific Cod. I thought maybe it was a name made up to capitalize on the solid reputation of Atlantic Cod, the standard tasty fish of Friday night fish fries in the Midwest. You can get it broiled now, but the old time aficionados go for the battered deep fried kind with fries. Add hand battered deep fried onion rings as an appetizer and you have some serious grease going on. At least there’s the salad bar.
But there it was in the fish case, Pacific Cod. I baked it and found it not as firm, not as tasty, as Atlantic Cod but not bad. I looked up Pacific Cod on the Internet. Turns out no one agrees on the name of this fish. Some call that species grey cod, certainly not Alaskan black cod or ling cod, while others just call it Pollock. There must be tons of Pollock out there, along with Whiting, and someone in the fish industry must be dying to call it something else so it sells better. Whatever Pacific Cod is, in the end it is cheap protein with hardly any fat, and while it cries out for some sort of sauce to give it zing there’s no cause to turn your nose up over it.
Turns out this whole labeling shiftiness is nothing new. They even have a name for it. Surimi, the fine art of disguising one fish as another, dates back to 12th-century Japan. Basically, Surimi makers grind up cheaper fish and craft the resulting paste to mimic the look, taste, and texture of more expensive fish. I imagine it as fish sticks on a much higher level. Surimi took a giant and profitable leap forward in 1993 when Oregon State University’s Jae Park, a food-science professor and the creator of fake crab or crabstick (Park’s preferred term), began leading the Surimi School, an annual short format seminar in Astoria. Since then, he’s trained more than 4,500 people to twist, color, and mold lesser fish into fancy forgeries. Last year, Seafood Executive magazine named the professor one of the 100 most powerful leaders in the global seafood industry. Why? Crabstick sells for $3-$4 a pound. Dungeness Crab sells for $30-$35 a pound. And while crabstick is a processed food that contains lots of sodium along with cryoprotectants, artificial flavoring, and coloring all added to the base of ground Whiting or Pollock, it has less cholesterol than natural crab (before the garlic butter) and it’s sustainable. We, the bulging we of all us humans on the planet, can eat Snow Crabs and King Crabs into extinction but we’ll never, they say, run out of Pollock and Whiting.
What caught my ear that day before I muted the radio because of pressing work, which turned out to be January 11th of this year, was artificial calamari made from some kind of pork product. Calamari is Italian plural for calamaro, which is a squid. The Italians claim they made calamari famous by slicing it into rings, deep frying it, squeezing lemon over it, and serving it with marinara sauce. Truth is calamari, or squid, is served all over the world. But where ever and however it is served it has always seemed to me to have a distinctive texture and taste. How, I thought, could you possibly create a passable equivalent to calamari? I was intrigued.
This was an episode of This American Life that seemed somehow whimsical. Lots of background music building fake tension. But my mind was on much more important things and I missed it. I went to the This American Life website and listened to the whole podcast yesterday. You can do that too by going to and registering at their site and going to the archives. I borrowed heavily from NPR’s script to write this piece. Whether you listen to the podcast or read the rest of the story you have to take this in. It’s a food science horror story.
A reporter for This American Life (TAL), Ben Calhoun, got a tip about a farmer "with some standing in the pork industry" who is in charge of "a pork producing operation that spans several states." One fine day this farmer was visiting a pork processing plant in Oklahoma, and noticed boxes stacked on the floor labeled "artificial calamari." Asked what that meant, Ron Meek, the plant's extremely talkative and credible sounding manager, and friend of the nameless farmer not willing to go on the record, replied "Bung. It's hog rectum." For clarity, Calhoun adds "Rectum that would be sliced into rings, deep fried, and boom, there you have it."
Rectum is of course a nicer word for asshole. An individual piece of bung, hog rectum, or asshole would be a ten to twelve inch length of large intestine leading to the actual rectum end point, a pink wrinkly looking pear sort of thing on the one end. Ron Meek described them as soft tubes resembling noodles.
The farmer, who confirmed the story but chose to remain nameless, declined to go on record with the reporter about the incident because his girlfriend warned him about his name being forever linked to pig rectum in Google searches. Smart man. But manager Ron Meek did agree to speak on the record. He claimed he never personally saw the label "artificial calamari" but that's what he was told by the people he worked for, and he believed them. And in an interview, his bosses backed the assertion that pig rectum was being sold for use as imitation calamari. They just couldn't say where.
I know this sounds bad. This might be easier for me because I grew up on a farm, but consider this: if you eat sausage you’re eating various meats packed in diligently washed and cleaned intestine which lives just up the street, so to speak, from the bung in question. Bung just gets a little thicker at the end there. As for the calamari question, the plant manager wouldn't say what happened to the bung once it got out the door, but confirmed that they ship a lot of it to Asia, particularly China. Everyone assumes it primarily ends up in the sausage, most of which is after all “whole hog.” Now that’s a two edged sword. To get the hams you have to take the asshole too. Obviously it would be illegal in America to serve pork rectum and call it calamari, and the USDA says they've never heard of anyone trying to pass pork bung as squid. Officially they say that.
However one food industry attorney told TAL "the regulation we have is not designed to catch an offense like this. It's aimed mostly at sanitation and food safety. If someone wanted to do it, chances are they'd get away with it." Given the fact that pork bung is sold at less than half the cost of calamari, the financial incentive is enormous.
What sealed the deal for me after listening to the podcast, what made me believe the unconfirmed story, was the taste test. The reporter, having run into a brick wall of no solid informant he could quote, turns instead to plausibility. At that point he becomes less a journalist and more of a creative soul. He appeals to his sister, a chef, to cook pork bung side by side with calamari and conduct a taste test with his friends at the radio station. As she prepared the two products for deep frying she was doubtful. While the squid retained its ring shape the pork bung twisted into something that looked mangled. Appearance aside, she believed the bung, having been marinated for the life of the pig in its own shit, could not shake that taste. To counteract that possibility she brined half of it, soaking it in salt water for a full day, while preparing the remainder simply as fresh clean pork bung. She breaded the squid and bung the same, fried it the same, and served it blindly in three batches at her restaurant to a group of volunteers willing to help the reporter with his story.
Especially poignant was the story of a young Italian man who had just started working at the station. His family ate Calamari regularly both at family dinners and at restaurants. His grandmother used to buy her own squid and make it herself. His fear was that he would not be able to tell the difference and be forever jinxed from eating calamari again owing simply to the possibility that he could be chewing a pig’s ass.
As she was frying the bung, the reporter’s sister was amazed to see the twisted form smooth out into a presentable ring during frying. In baskets side by side in the hot oil she saw little or no difference. She figured the taste would give it away or if not the taste the texture. To her, texture is the wild card in food recognition. She believes we love the feel as much as the taste of our favorite foods. She brought the plates to the table. Standard calamari made from squid, pork bung brined in order to neutralize any bad taste, and straight up fresh pork bung sliced, breaded and fried. The tasting began.
Absolutely no difference. As many thought the calamari was pork bung as believed the pork bung was sliced fried squid. Texture, taste appearance-nothing was different from one plate to the other. It was amazing, and devastating to the Italian man. He left the restaurant early, mourning the perhaps lifetime loss of calamari and wondering what he could ever tell his family. Simply knowing he might possibly be eating a pig’s asshole led him to vow never to take that chance again.
This is not a nailed down story. It couldn’t be published in a newspaper. Some would ask why it ran on radio. I’d say its because that’s the way life is many times. You can’t prove things are true but you know in your heart they are. This American Life did not prove that pork bung is being sold as calamari. But it raised the possibility. That’s where good stories often start. Stores aren’t fact. But they are great aren’t they? From the day I heard the basics of this story on the radio I imagined a meeting where the idea, the concept of artificial calamari, was developed. And having heard the pod cast, it’s now sort of busting out of me onto this computer screen.
A small but established food distribution company holds its regular weekly meeting. It is chaired by Bob, the company president, but the agenda rarely changes. The meeting is designed by and large as a vehicle for supervising his staff, which is the management team. At the table is Art, a food scientist in charge of product development; Gary, Chief Financial Officer, and Stephanie, newest member of the team and the company’s marketing director. Alice, Bob’s secretary, takes notes. The meeting starts with a report from Art, the food scientist.
“Well it’s no secret that my staff and I have been working on developing an exciting new product, and I’m happy to say I have solid information to share with you about it. I think this is a terrific opportunity for our company. We’re at a point where I need your input and frankly, your help. It has endless financial potential but there is considerable risk involved.”
“What is it Art?” said Stephanie. “Rumor around the plant is that it could be the next crabstick.”
“I know, I’ve heard that rumor too and I’m flattered by the comparison. It’s like crabstick but with some important differences. It’s an artificial calamari. It can be sold as a frozen product, pre breaded ready for deep frying, or it can be sold fresh and uncooked with an even longer shelf life than real calamari.”
“What’s the production cost?” asked Gary. Gary had been through these ideas before with Art and found them financially unfeasible. He wished they would come to him sooner on these things so they didn’t have to waste their time on dead losers.
“Less than half the cost of calamari,” Art said. He gave Gary a steady smile, as if to shut him up. “Half.”
“That sounds too good to be true,” Gary replied.
“But what is it really? Stephanie asked. “Some kind of cheap ground fish mixed with egg whites and starch? What’s in it?”
“That’s the beauty of it and the challenge. It is not a seafood product. We can get all of it we want right here in the Midwest.”
“It’s not that freshwater Asian Carp everyone’s trying to sell us out of the Illinois River I hope.”
“No, it’s even more basic. It’s a pork product. No one would have ever imagined this. It’s a pork product and it’s so perfect, so similar in every way to calamari that you can’t believe it.”
“Pork?” Gary and Stephanie spoke at the same time. “How can a pork product even resemble a sea food product?”
Bob cut in for the first time, having been beaming since the start of Art’s presentation. “That’s what I thought too Gary. When Art first came to me with this breakthrough idea I thought it was absolutely crazy but it grows on you. It’s beautiful in its simplicity. So please, both of you. Hear Art out on this. Show them the pictures Art.”
Art brought out glossy color photos of unbreaded calamari side by side with his artificial calamari. They appeared to be of the same size and have the same color. The artificial calamari was twisted.
“The artificial calamari needs no processing. Unlike Surimi, where similar products are ground and reconstituted with other ingredients to resemble the original, this product is a single tissue, a single body part, that when sliced and cooked is virtually indistinguishable from calamari.”
“It doesn’t look wrinkly?” Gary asked.
“Miraculously, the wrinkles smooth out when it cooks. Takes on the exact shape as the squid.” Art said. He flashed two more pictures of identical plates of round, breaded, cooked appetizers, the real next to the fake.
Gary looked closely at the picture of the artificial calamari. He’d been in the food industry for a long time. “I’ve never seen a pig part like this. What part of the pig is it from?”
Art was quick to say “It’s akin to sausage casing.”
"Sausage casing is intestines. What’s akin to intestine?” He looked up at Bob and Art with a puzzled look
.
“I’m warning you, this is the hard part,” Bob said. “This is where I first balked at the concept.”
“It’s bung. Pork bung.” Art said. The room went quiet.
“Bung as in bunghole?” Stephanie said. There was a pause.
“Yes,” Art said.
“You’re proposing that this company… and I as its marketing director….try to sell a pig’s ass as an Italian seafood appetizer.”
“Stephanie you won’t believe how it tastes. It’s uncanny how much it tastes like calamari. And it’s cheap. We can undercut calamari by twenty percent and still take a huge profit on this artificial stuff. I’m telling you, this can work.”
“You’re nuts! You can’t honestly believe that people will sit down to a plate of deep fried pork ass and eat it like it was just taken out of the Mediterranean by a cute Italian fisherman. It’s asshole! You would be asking people to eat asshole. And I would be asking them to buy it with a straight face. It’s not going to happen. Alice would you eat a pig's ass as if it were seafood and enjoy it?”
Bob, usually calm and in control at these meetings, erupted. “Alice stop taking notes.”
“Stephanie do you want this company to be successful? Or do you want the Chinese to make all the money? Do you think Qingdao International isn’t looking at this very thing right now? How long do you think this will stay a secret? Calamari is a billion dollar industry for Christ's sake. With a B. If we capture even ten percent of that market…OK, maybe it doesn’t sell well in the U.S.. But if we can boost sales overseas to get a ten percent share, that’s a $100 million dollars. $100 million. Do you want to add $100 million to this company’s sales? Do you think that might result in some bigger salaries around here? Well I’ll tell you what, I do want that kind of success and so do our stockholders. I want to this company to be successful and I know we can because I’ve got one of the best management teams in the business. Now if we just stay positive and work together, we can overcome the image difficulties this product presents and meet this challenge.”
Stephanie sat back in her chair and folded her arms in silence. Gary looked at Art, then Bob. The silence was becoming uncomfortable. He turned and spoke to Stephanie.
“He’s right about the money you know.”
Art followed closely with a suggestion for Stephanie. “We’re counting on you to come up with a better name.”
“Than pork bung?” she said.
“Yes.”
Bob smiled broadly at her, putting his hand on hers. “You’re probably the key to making this work Stephanie. We’re all counting on you.”
And thus is born, maybe, a new product to feed the world. See what you can do when you think about the trivial? When you go soft on the facts and instead make up a story? God is it fun. Shut off your phone and turn up the radio. Merry Christmas.
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