Back in 2015, I wrote a post expressing my skepticism about Gardasil--I interviewed the most prominent experts I could find, in the "pro" camp, the inventor of the vaccine, and in what I regard as the cautious camp, a thoughtful physician who was involved in evaluating the vaccine for Merck. My thoughts on the vaccination have changed to the point where my thirteen-year-old daughter has received the first of the two vaccinations. With no ill effects, weeks later. Why?
•The doctors whom I trust believe the drug will protect her from cervical cancer.
•They have never seen a bad reaction--not in over ten years.
•Some types of cervical cancer are epidemic in people under the age of twenty.
•Since I've now had cancer myself--unexpected, breast--I think my daughter may be at higher risk.
I'm leaving up my earlier post for anyone researching this topic--I think the controversy hasn't evaporated. But I also now believe I've done the right thing. If anything changes--if, God forbid, she has a reaction to the second shot--I'll inform my blog readers. I'm interested in hearing from readers on this topic.
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
On Writing Christmas Cards
Writing them, with a pen, on paper, that is. That's what we still love to do. My husband takes family photos, makes up a beautiful card with a greeting, and I write something personal to friends, tuck in the little newsletter and the page of that year's fun photos, stick on a stamp, an airmail sticker, and write an address. In green ink on red envelopes. Is all this sounding too Martha Stewart? Ah, but the house lies in shambles beside me, the mountains of laundry decorate the floor, and the grading I haven't yet finished nods evilly at me from its neglected spot on the sofa. But those cards--they've just got to go out. A third of them thudded to the bottom of the mailbox today, as I sat in my office waiting for a young man to finish transferring the last few files of data from my 2009 computer to my sleek new Mac Air Book.
"Just another five minutes," said the young man who seemed to understand everything for which I grope toward even finding the right name in my new computer.
Twenty Christmas cards later, a bead of sweat on his face, he confessed that somehow it still wasn't possible for my computer to receive any upgrades. He was on it, he was fixing it, and another twelve cards later I said I'd head home. He'll be taming my computer over the next day or two, at least I hope he will.
I'll be writing Christmas cards--much more fun. I like getting them, too--not the horrid electronic kind, with the mechanical jingle bells, the fake snow, the trotting reindeer or flapping birds. The kind that come in envelopes that you open and display on the mantel or prop up in the middle of the dining room table. Do I sound very 1965? Well, I'm in a nostalgic mood. It's Christmas. I'm about to look up my recipe for refrigerator cookies, the kind you roll out and make with the aid of cookie cutters shaped like Tannenbaums, stars, half-moons, and hearts. Then you decorate them with sprinkles, glitter, and food dye. Christmas cookies. Yum.
"Just another five minutes," said the young man who seemed to understand everything for which I grope toward even finding the right name in my new computer.
Twenty Christmas cards later, a bead of sweat on his face, he confessed that somehow it still wasn't possible for my computer to receive any upgrades. He was on it, he was fixing it, and another twelve cards later I said I'd head home. He'll be taming my computer over the next day or two, at least I hope he will.
I'll be writing Christmas cards--much more fun. I like getting them, too--not the horrid electronic kind, with the mechanical jingle bells, the fake snow, the trotting reindeer or flapping birds. The kind that come in envelopes that you open and display on the mantel or prop up in the middle of the dining room table. Do I sound very 1965? Well, I'm in a nostalgic mood. It's Christmas. I'm about to look up my recipe for refrigerator cookies, the kind you roll out and make with the aid of cookie cutters shaped like Tannenbaums, stars, half-moons, and hearts. Then you decorate them with sprinkles, glitter, and food dye. Christmas cookies. Yum.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Toto, I Don't Think We're In Trumpland Anymore
Ride 'em Roy. The Marlboro Man stunt backfired when the horse tried to buck that pedophile. Roy Moore's West Point buddies remember him as a hard worker and a guy for whom a girl's virginity was important. That, they remark, is probably why he wanted very young girls.
Between Moore's wife announcing to a crowd that she wasn't against Jews because "one of our lawyers is a Jew!"--a remark she delivered with a big smile, as if she'd bowled a strike--and Moore's apparent love of the young because they're virgins, the American people just dodged a very big bullet.
It's harder to dodge that repeat-fire weapon of mass destruction who is "the president."
Toto's already pulled back the curtain. He's been yapping and nipping at our heels for months. The penalties Trump should pay for abusing women, his concealed and presumably outrageously out of line taxes, the Russian stuff, Jerusalem, the terrorist attack at the Port Authority in New York two days ago--Toto is barking loudly, America.
When Doug Jones won, America put one toe out of Trumpland. Can we go for a long jump next?
Between Moore's wife announcing to a crowd that she wasn't against Jews because "one of our lawyers is a Jew!"--a remark she delivered with a big smile, as if she'd bowled a strike--and Moore's apparent love of the young because they're virgins, the American people just dodged a very big bullet.
It's harder to dodge that repeat-fire weapon of mass destruction who is "the president."
Toto's already pulled back the curtain. He's been yapping and nipping at our heels for months. The penalties Trump should pay for abusing women, his concealed and presumably outrageously out of line taxes, the Russian stuff, Jerusalem, the terrorist attack at the Port Authority in New York two days ago--Toto is barking loudly, America.
When Doug Jones won, America put one toe out of Trumpland. Can we go for a long jump next?
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Don Doesn't Own Jerusalem--He Can't Buy Us
By the time I finish this sentence, some new awful event will have made the Jerusalem incident pale beside it, the way the Puerto Rico deaths, the Russian investigation, the taxes, and, despite Harvey Weinstein and company, the abused women terrorized by Trump, have paled before each new, dreadful Trumposity.
The bully is still bullying--and none stand up to him. I think of King Frank, the first to lead Narnia in the series' inaugural book, The Magician's Nephew. King Frank thinks he's not cut out to be king, the very characteristic that Aslan, the book's Jesus figure, knows qualifies Frank for true leadership. King Frank is a boy from the countryside, he says, used to farm work, and his accent is cockney. Queen Helen, his wife, arrives covered with soapsuds, since she'd been doing the wash when Aslan transported her to Narnia, and both feel humbled by the attention from Aslan, by his confidence in them, and by the loveliness of the Narnian landscape. Love, above all, defines King Frank and Queen Helen, along with that very British desire to do the right thing.
I feel I shouldn't put the two of them in the same sentence as Donald Trump, but they are such an ideal, the likes of which American politics rarely sees--Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama may be the only two presidents approaching that ideal. How we slid from Obama to Trump is Vladimir Putin's best kept secret. But his doped-up athletes have been exposed, and wouldn't it be nice if he and Don got simultaneously deposed.
To be governed by leaders who give a damn about the people and the planet would be the best for which one could hope in 2018. Like the German comedian Jan Böhmermann, whose "Be Deutsch" went viral, we must, in the face of Trump's divide-and-conquer strategy, all "hold together--try to be nice."
My new year's resolution is to do just that, even when I'm introducing ideas to my family or other groups that might not be their favorite. Hold together, try to be nice.
The bully is still bullying--and none stand up to him. I think of King Frank, the first to lead Narnia in the series' inaugural book, The Magician's Nephew. King Frank thinks he's not cut out to be king, the very characteristic that Aslan, the book's Jesus figure, knows qualifies Frank for true leadership. King Frank is a boy from the countryside, he says, used to farm work, and his accent is cockney. Queen Helen, his wife, arrives covered with soapsuds, since she'd been doing the wash when Aslan transported her to Narnia, and both feel humbled by the attention from Aslan, by his confidence in them, and by the loveliness of the Narnian landscape. Love, above all, defines King Frank and Queen Helen, along with that very British desire to do the right thing.
I feel I shouldn't put the two of them in the same sentence as Donald Trump, but they are such an ideal, the likes of which American politics rarely sees--Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama may be the only two presidents approaching that ideal. How we slid from Obama to Trump is Vladimir Putin's best kept secret. But his doped-up athletes have been exposed, and wouldn't it be nice if he and Don got simultaneously deposed.
To be governed by leaders who give a damn about the people and the planet would be the best for which one could hope in 2018. Like the German comedian Jan Böhmermann, whose "Be Deutsch" went viral, we must, in the face of Trump's divide-and-conquer strategy, all "hold together--try to be nice."
My new year's resolution is to do just that, even when I'm introducing ideas to my family or other groups that might not be their favorite. Hold together, try to be nice.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Big Bird: A Thanksgiving Tale
Every year, I go to the same farmer's market and ask for an enormous turkey, "at least eight kilos! Twelve would be better!" I explain we need the bird for the American holiday, Thanksgiving, and that we're having between ten and fifteen guests. Every year, the farmer gives me a bird that, although organic, juicy and delicious, weighs less than eight kilos. Well, once we had one that came in at 11.73 kilos.
With plenty of stuffing, pints of cranberry-orange relish, two batches of corn muffins, multiple vegetables, pies, we've always had enough to go around and enough for turkey sandwiches the next day. But this year, we were having sixteen guests, maybe more, and I stood on my toes and begged for a bigger bird. The farmer looked down at the pathetic American: "Well, perhaps ten to thirteen kilos," he said, as if he wished I would go away, and then, as always, the night before Thanksgiving, I went through my usual tortures: What if he forgets? What if my husband and I go there at 7:30 in the morning, the way we always do, and the man says he forgot? What if we have to go to the supermarket and get a frozen bird?
I tossed and turned.
At 7:30 the next morning, we went to the market, trundling our little red shopping cart behind us, me grumbling my obsessive worries about the turkey, my husband trying to get me to make a list of everything we hadn't yet purchased and needed.
We saw the farmer and waved. His wife started looking for the bird, and she poked around in the back of their stand long enough for visions of horrible frozen turkeys to start dancing in my head.
With a leer, the farmer lobbed a gigantic thing up onto the counter. Almost 16 kilos, and the most expensive bird we've ever purchased, at approximately 140 euros.
I could barely lift it.
Between the two of us, my husband and I got the thing into the red shopping cart. We had no room for the vegetables and potatoes.
All the way home we wrestled with the dread possibility: What if that thing didn't fit in our oven?
"We could cut off the legs," my husband offered. "It won't be pretty, but . . ."
The thought of an amputated turkey just broke my heart, but I agreed to his solution--anything was better than a cold, uncooked turkey and sixteen unhappy guests.
The bird didn't fit in our turkey pan! Crisis!
It did fit in our large baking pan, the one that fills a whole shelf on the oven. Barely. With its legs almost pressing against the glass.
For the first time in all the decades I've prepared Thanksgiving turkey, every bit of stuffing actually fit into the bird. I trussed up the opening the way you'd lace a pair of very large boobs into a Bavarian dirndl, and tied up the legs the way a sadist might fetter a victim. I closed the oven door and baked the bird for a whole six hours.
Two strong men were needed to carry the majestic beast to the table, and we feasted for hours.
A little bit of turkey skin is still stuck to the back of my oven, though.
With plenty of stuffing, pints of cranberry-orange relish, two batches of corn muffins, multiple vegetables, pies, we've always had enough to go around and enough for turkey sandwiches the next day. But this year, we were having sixteen guests, maybe more, and I stood on my toes and begged for a bigger bird. The farmer looked down at the pathetic American: "Well, perhaps ten to thirteen kilos," he said, as if he wished I would go away, and then, as always, the night before Thanksgiving, I went through my usual tortures: What if he forgets? What if my husband and I go there at 7:30 in the morning, the way we always do, and the man says he forgot? What if we have to go to the supermarket and get a frozen bird?
I tossed and turned.
At 7:30 the next morning, we went to the market, trundling our little red shopping cart behind us, me grumbling my obsessive worries about the turkey, my husband trying to get me to make a list of everything we hadn't yet purchased and needed.
We saw the farmer and waved. His wife started looking for the bird, and she poked around in the back of their stand long enough for visions of horrible frozen turkeys to start dancing in my head.
With a leer, the farmer lobbed a gigantic thing up onto the counter. Almost 16 kilos, and the most expensive bird we've ever purchased, at approximately 140 euros.
I could barely lift it.
 |
| One very heavy bird (35 pounds, American) |
Between the two of us, my husband and I got the thing into the red shopping cart. We had no room for the vegetables and potatoes.
All the way home we wrestled with the dread possibility: What if that thing didn't fit in our oven?
"We could cut off the legs," my husband offered. "It won't be pretty, but . . ."
The thought of an amputated turkey just broke my heart, but I agreed to his solution--anything was better than a cold, uncooked turkey and sixteen unhappy guests.
The bird didn't fit in our turkey pan! Crisis!
It did fit in our large baking pan, the one that fills a whole shelf on the oven. Barely. With its legs almost pressing against the glass.
 |
| Pre-trussing. Oh, did I tie those legs together |
For the first time in all the decades I've prepared Thanksgiving turkey, every bit of stuffing actually fit into the bird. I trussed up the opening the way you'd lace a pair of very large boobs into a Bavarian dirndl, and tied up the legs the way a sadist might fetter a victim. I closed the oven door and baked the bird for a whole six hours.
Two strong men were needed to carry the majestic beast to the table, and we feasted for hours.
 |
| The bird that didn't fit in the turkey pan . |
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Access Trump: Locker Room Talk
"Sir, does the president still accept the authenticity of the Access Hollywood tape?"
We didn't get much of an answer. Nobody expected one. The real question is why anyone's asking when we know what kind of answer we'll get.
Would I rather have Francis Underwood as President? Don't we already? Frank's charm is, perhaps, more dangerous than Donald's "Yeah, I said I apologized, but actually, that doesn't work with the conversation now, so I didn't do it." If Chuck Schumer mysteriously drops dead tomorrow, I'll know who's behind his sudden demise. That scene in House of Cards in which Spacey whips out a blade, terrorizes his tough, Hillary Clintonish secretary of state, who's just snapped, "I'm not afraid of you!" must be all too real.
The kicker would be Melania turning out to be Claire Underwood, that steel magnolia Lady Macbeth. Melania's style might be more that of Livia, the wife of Augustus Caesar, who allegedly sweetly poisoned him. If I were Melania I'd want to poison my husband. But I suppose I wouldn't actually do that, because I'd want some real revenge. I'd think of something much more embarrassing. You wouldn't want to make him a martyr, done in by the young wife he trusted so much, would you? But you'd find a way to get those taxes out there. You'd find a way to remove him to the very same facility as Harvey Weinstein. You'd get him on his knees, wouldn't you?
You go, girl.
We didn't get much of an answer. Nobody expected one. The real question is why anyone's asking when we know what kind of answer we'll get.
Would I rather have Francis Underwood as President? Don't we already? Frank's charm is, perhaps, more dangerous than Donald's "Yeah, I said I apologized, but actually, that doesn't work with the conversation now, so I didn't do it." If Chuck Schumer mysteriously drops dead tomorrow, I'll know who's behind his sudden demise. That scene in House of Cards in which Spacey whips out a blade, terrorizes his tough, Hillary Clintonish secretary of state, who's just snapped, "I'm not afraid of you!" must be all too real.
The kicker would be Melania turning out to be Claire Underwood, that steel magnolia Lady Macbeth. Melania's style might be more that of Livia, the wife of Augustus Caesar, who allegedly sweetly poisoned him. If I were Melania I'd want to poison my husband. But I suppose I wouldn't actually do that, because I'd want some real revenge. I'd think of something much more embarrassing. You wouldn't want to make him a martyr, done in by the young wife he trusted so much, would you? But you'd find a way to get those taxes out there. You'd find a way to remove him to the very same facility as Harvey Weinstein. You'd get him on his knees, wouldn't you?
You go, girl.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
A Ballet Boo-Boo
What was I thinking? Demonstrating a jig in high heels on a hard floor? One leap into second position and a muscle in my upper thigh groaned.
It was like this: my students were reading Laura Ingalls Wilder, the part where the grandma wins the jigging contest. They didn't know what a jig was. I thought I'd demonstrate.
Despite that rather sharp and sudden pain, I'd thought all I needed was a very hot bath. I'd feel okay by the end of the day.
But that slightly exploited muscle announces its painful presence every time I walk up stairs or try to run.
Actually that jig was more of a highland fling.
Massage? Blackroll? Red wine? Half a jar of Tiger Balm? Next ballet class swathed in sweats? Tincture of time?
Oh, that particular commodity, time, is in such short supply.
It was like this: my students were reading Laura Ingalls Wilder, the part where the grandma wins the jigging contest. They didn't know what a jig was. I thought I'd demonstrate.
Despite that rather sharp and sudden pain, I'd thought all I needed was a very hot bath. I'd feel okay by the end of the day.
But that slightly exploited muscle announces its painful presence every time I walk up stairs or try to run.
Actually that jig was more of a highland fling.
Massage? Blackroll? Red wine? Half a jar of Tiger Balm? Next ballet class swathed in sweats? Tincture of time?
Oh, that particular commodity, time, is in such short supply.
Sunday, November 5, 2017
The Palbociclib Blues, Part Two
I've been in a clinical trial--Penelope B--for five cycles of what is presumed to be Palbociclib, the Pfizer drug marketed under the name Ibrance, and which is now used to extended the lives of women with metastatic breast cancer. Which I'm lucky not to be enduring. Last April, after sixteen chemos, two operations, and twenty-eight cycles of radiation, I got to keep my breast, minus eleven lymph nodes, and was declared cancer-free. I
take a nightly tablet of Letrozol (2.5 mg), which is supposed to prevent a recurrence, and side effects include feeling old--I call Letrozol my miracle aging pill, and counteract the stiff hands with one of
those rubber porcupine balls that I squeeze any chance I get. I take
ballet and tap when I feel well, which is not lately.
Since I my tumor was small (Stage 1b) but aggressive (Grade 3) I was eager to take part in a clinical trial designed to further reduce any chance of recurrence.
During the last five weeks, I've been experiencing side effects. Two rounds of antiobiotics (Twenty tablets of 1000 mg of Amoxicillin-Trihydrat followed by ten days of Cefuroxim 500 mg twice a day) were not quite enough to get rid of the bronchitis against which I could not defend myself, my low white cell count, a common side effect, remaining insufficient to jump start my immune system's normal efficiency. As I type, I'm still snuffling with my endlessly stuffed nose, popping a Sinupret three times a day, and coughing.
So would it be worth my while to continue on this clinical trial? According to Dr. Second Opinion (but I did consult him before the bronchitis, when my only real complaint was the unusual fatigue) "Yes, yes, yes!" He whipped out charts and graphs, none of which I understood, but I banked on his enthusiasm for the figures, which clearly meant something.
I've never needed a second round of antibiotics for any throat or lung infection, except for the time I had pneumonia more than eight years ago, when my kids were very young and I never got enough sleep, and ended up in the hospital.
So I asked, and am asking anyone who knows, the following questions, since the leaders of the study I am in don't really have definite answers, and perhaps no one does:
(1) With the 2,5 mg. of Letrozol daily that I now take, what is your best estimate of a cancer recurrence without the Palbociclib? I know that some women take a higher dose of Letrozol. What difference would that make?
(2) What are the long-term consequences--in terms of exposure to viruses, bacteria, cancer--of the low white cell count that I now have?And how would anyone really know the answer?
(3) Can you say for sure that this medication benefits me, personally? Is it possible it only benefits the study?
By the way, my blood was tested, as usual, at the hospital, now that I just have a cold instead of bronchitis, and was pronounced fine. In fact, good! I could start taking the Palbociclib again right away!
Before, I felt fine but my blood looked just awful.
Is it possible there's no test to measure correctly the effect of Palbociclib on my blood? Theoretically, there may be no medical reason for me to feel lousy when my blood looks dandy. And dandy is how it looks, folks. But I feel anything but.
When I Google patient information, I get what everyone already knows. When I Google medical studies, I get, for example, this: https://www.iqwig.de/download/A16-74_Palbociclib_Extract-of-dossier-assessment_V1-0.pdf but I feel inadequate to the task of interpreting the data. I don't understand the charts and I don't understand the medical lingo. I did ask my doctor, and she probably would not want to be quoted, so I will just say that my impression of what she said, strictly my very own interpretation, legally distinct from whatever may actually have emerged from her mouth, is that the German government needs to find ways to save money, because this extremely expensive drug, which I am getting for free, costs too much, so if one study says the tumors get smaller but the life expectancy remains the same, then that's a way of broadcasting the conclusion that too much money is being spent (notice how I deliberately used the passive voice there?) The criteria of good care is increased life expectancy. And one truth is still that it's really hard to tell what treatment or what drug did the increasing.
If I had metastatic breast cancer, I'd down this drug with no complaints. What's a month of bronchitis when you get to live?
But I don't. I want to live the way I like to live. So tell me, doctors, prophets, women with the same experience, anybody who knows more than I do (I really hope some brilliant cancer researcher is reading this): SHOULD I STAY ON THIS CLINICAL TRIAL or SHOULD I GO?
Since I my tumor was small (Stage 1b) but aggressive (Grade 3) I was eager to take part in a clinical trial designed to further reduce any chance of recurrence.
During the last five weeks, I've been experiencing side effects. Two rounds of antiobiotics (Twenty tablets of 1000 mg of Amoxicillin-Trihydrat followed by ten days of Cefuroxim 500 mg twice a day) were not quite enough to get rid of the bronchitis against which I could not defend myself, my low white cell count, a common side effect, remaining insufficient to jump start my immune system's normal efficiency. As I type, I'm still snuffling with my endlessly stuffed nose, popping a Sinupret three times a day, and coughing.
So would it be worth my while to continue on this clinical trial? According to Dr. Second Opinion (but I did consult him before the bronchitis, when my only real complaint was the unusual fatigue) "Yes, yes, yes!" He whipped out charts and graphs, none of which I understood, but I banked on his enthusiasm for the figures, which clearly meant something.
I've never needed a second round of antibiotics for any throat or lung infection, except for the time I had pneumonia more than eight years ago, when my kids were very young and I never got enough sleep, and ended up in the hospital.
So I asked, and am asking anyone who knows, the following questions, since the leaders of the study I am in don't really have definite answers, and perhaps no one does:
(1) With the 2,5 mg. of Letrozol daily that I now take, what is your best estimate of a cancer recurrence without the Palbociclib? I know that some women take a higher dose of Letrozol. What difference would that make?
(2) What are the long-term consequences--in terms of exposure to viruses, bacteria, cancer--of the low white cell count that I now have?And how would anyone really know the answer?
(3) Can you say for sure that this medication benefits me, personally? Is it possible it only benefits the study?
By the way, my blood was tested, as usual, at the hospital, now that I just have a cold instead of bronchitis, and was pronounced fine. In fact, good! I could start taking the Palbociclib again right away!
Before, I felt fine but my blood looked just awful.
Is it possible there's no test to measure correctly the effect of Palbociclib on my blood? Theoretically, there may be no medical reason for me to feel lousy when my blood looks dandy. And dandy is how it looks, folks. But I feel anything but.
When I Google patient information, I get what everyone already knows. When I Google medical studies, I get, for example, this: https://www.iqwig.de/download/A16-74_Palbociclib_Extract-of-dossier-assessment_V1-0.pdf but I feel inadequate to the task of interpreting the data. I don't understand the charts and I don't understand the medical lingo. I did ask my doctor, and she probably would not want to be quoted, so I will just say that my impression of what she said, strictly my very own interpretation, legally distinct from whatever may actually have emerged from her mouth, is that the German government needs to find ways to save money, because this extremely expensive drug, which I am getting for free, costs too much, so if one study says the tumors get smaller but the life expectancy remains the same, then that's a way of broadcasting the conclusion that too much money is being spent (notice how I deliberately used the passive voice there?) The criteria of good care is increased life expectancy. And one truth is still that it's really hard to tell what treatment or what drug did the increasing.
If I had metastatic breast cancer, I'd down this drug with no complaints. What's a month of bronchitis when you get to live?
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Where Was Brianna Brochu's Mom?
I can't help wondering whether she's as horrified as I am when I Google the measly "five facts"--Brianna's "an actress" who hails from Harwinton, a scenic New England town filled with wide open spaces and big white churches, complete with steeples. Litchfield County isn't as rich as Fairfield, the home of Old Greenwich. But Harwinton's website and the pre-mugshot photos of Brianna, one of her holding a fat pumpkin against a backdrop of fall leaves, intimate prosperity. Brianna's wide grin suggests, with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, Salome with the head of John the Baptist.
That her parents accompanied her to her arraignment, that somebody paid that $1,000 bail (only a thousand? Really?) suggests enough familial concern to want to keep her out of jail, or at least a hope that the case will evaporate sooner if Brianna's out on bail.
I'm left with the usual unanswerable questions: Did her parents ignore her? Are they racists? Is Brianna trying to get their attention by doing something outrageous, or is she just a girl with a serious personality disorder and sweet, concerned parents? Is the whole incident something to be pinned on Brianna forgetting to take her meds?
We're not likely to get the real answer, but I continue to speculate: did she and her roommate fight over a boy? Or was it just the radiator, which Brianna wanted off (how like a New Englander) and Chennel ("Jazzy") Rowe, from Queens, New York--turned up. I'm siding with Rowe on that radiator! My New England step-siblings always seemed not to notice when the house was freezing, and never bothered with their sweaters. For a native New Yorker, New England is chilly, in atmosphere as well as attitudes. That certain reticence--with which Brianna seems not to be afflicted--is still there.
I can't know her motives, but observe the following, as an English teacher: Ms. Brochu writes well for a college freshman--vividly--and the well-constructed sentence that proved her undoing is a model of parallel verbs and the kind of humor you'd tolerate in villains of summer beach reading:
After 1 1/2 month of spitting in her coconut oil, putting moldy clam dip in her lotions, rubbing used tampons on her backpack, putting her toothbrush places where the sun doesn't shine, and so much more I can finally say goodbye Jamaican Barbie.
Spitting, putting, rubbing putting (again--repetition--she might have said "sliding" or even "hiding" but I can hardly fault her grammar. True, there ought to have been a comma before the "I." Her choice of poisons--moldy clam dip, menstrual blood, and excrement--are not what you'd find in a Dan Brown novel, but one of his miscreants poisons an allergic man with peanut dust.
What a shame Ms. Brochu's imagination took such a dark turn--that a bright girl like her would go to so much effort to harm someone who'd tried to be a good roommate and who appears to have done her no wrong--apart from having been born with a different skin color.
But really, Ms. Brochu, really?
It's still so hard for me to believe either that a girl who is educated enough to construct a sentence is that malicious--though of course I ought to know better. I do believe that education, rather than punishment, is the real answer to dealing with folks like Brianna Brochu, but the kind of education I'm thinking of usually devolves to parents--especially moms. Which returns me to my original question: Did Brianna do something of which her mother actually approves?
That her parents accompanied her to her arraignment, that somebody paid that $1,000 bail (only a thousand? Really?) suggests enough familial concern to want to keep her out of jail, or at least a hope that the case will evaporate sooner if Brianna's out on bail.
I'm left with the usual unanswerable questions: Did her parents ignore her? Are they racists? Is Brianna trying to get their attention by doing something outrageous, or is she just a girl with a serious personality disorder and sweet, concerned parents? Is the whole incident something to be pinned on Brianna forgetting to take her meds?
We're not likely to get the real answer, but I continue to speculate: did she and her roommate fight over a boy? Or was it just the radiator, which Brianna wanted off (how like a New Englander) and Chennel ("Jazzy") Rowe, from Queens, New York--turned up. I'm siding with Rowe on that radiator! My New England step-siblings always seemed not to notice when the house was freezing, and never bothered with their sweaters. For a native New Yorker, New England is chilly, in atmosphere as well as attitudes. That certain reticence--with which Brianna seems not to be afflicted--is still there.
I can't know her motives, but observe the following, as an English teacher: Ms. Brochu writes well for a college freshman--vividly--and the well-constructed sentence that proved her undoing is a model of parallel verbs and the kind of humor you'd tolerate in villains of summer beach reading:
After 1 1/2 month of spitting in her coconut oil, putting moldy clam dip in her lotions, rubbing used tampons on her backpack, putting her toothbrush places where the sun doesn't shine, and so much more I can finally say goodbye Jamaican Barbie.
Spitting, putting, rubbing putting (again--repetition--she might have said "sliding" or even "hiding" but I can hardly fault her grammar. True, there ought to have been a comma before the "I." Her choice of poisons--moldy clam dip, menstrual blood, and excrement--are not what you'd find in a Dan Brown novel, but one of his miscreants poisons an allergic man with peanut dust.
What a shame Ms. Brochu's imagination took such a dark turn--that a bright girl like her would go to so much effort to harm someone who'd tried to be a good roommate and who appears to have done her no wrong--apart from having been born with a different skin color.
But really, Ms. Brochu, really?
It's still so hard for me to believe either that a girl who is educated enough to construct a sentence is that malicious--though of course I ought to know better. I do believe that education, rather than punishment, is the real answer to dealing with folks like Brianna Brochu, but the kind of education I'm thinking of usually devolves to parents--especially moms. Which returns me to my original question: Did Brianna do something of which her mother actually approves?
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
It's Reformationstag: Happy Halloween!
Among Martin Luther's vast writings, his 1543 treatise, "Jews and Their Lies," remains among the more shocking, and not remotely atypical. His latest biographers claim that he probably didn't actually nail his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, but just sent them round the way you'd bang out a staff email: "the hammering episode," writes Joan Acocella in The New Yorker, "so satisfying symbolically—loud, metallic,
violent—never occurred. Not only were there no eyewitnesses; Luther
himself, ordinarily an enthusiastic self-dramatizer, was vague on what
had happened."
Acocella highlights the constant presence of bowels in Luther's imagination, a theme that dominates German comedy to this day: she recounts his proud moment when his little son "crapped in every corner of the room.” That brought me back to the days when some of our German friends recommended their foolproof method of toilet-training: just let the child run naked in the garden, poop in the soil, and then somehow, miraculously, the kid will develop a longing for nice, clean indoor toilets and plumbing.
The more fools we, trying that method on our firstborn, who was only around eighteen months old, but big enough to have grown out of the largest size of pampers. While we weren't looking, he went back in the house, pulled on his nice new Lederhosen, and came back out to the garden, slyly making his way to the hole he'd dug and into which we assumed he would relieve himself. And he did! While wearing his Lederhosen.
“I am like a ripe shit,” Luther said when he was about to die, “and the world is a gigantic asshole. We will both probably let go of each other soon.” I can never read that--one of the more pungent quotations offered by Acocella--without recalling a few scenes from the German version of Saturday Night Live: rows of comedians seated behind closed toilet cubicles, their feet tapping away. Stefan Raab playing a farmer who is considering using a shovel to wipe himself.
Happy Halloween! You can buy, for less than three euros, a playmobil Martin Luther. The little figure smiles in a friendly fashion you can't imagine ever appearing on the face of a man with the tummy troubles afflicting the real Luther. Quill in one hand, golden Bible in the other, open to a Gothic-lettered Das Neue Testament, translated by Doktor Martin Luther.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll take the jack o' lanterns carved by my kids; when lit, these orange faces glow with real menace.
But hey, Luther's notions of conscience and bible-reading have enjoyed a certain heyday. If we credit him with increasing the desire to think for oneself and read, read, read, then I'd be happy to see him ascending, complete with halo, to the heaven of his choice.
Acocella highlights the constant presence of bowels in Luther's imagination, a theme that dominates German comedy to this day: she recounts his proud moment when his little son "crapped in every corner of the room.” That brought me back to the days when some of our German friends recommended their foolproof method of toilet-training: just let the child run naked in the garden, poop in the soil, and then somehow, miraculously, the kid will develop a longing for nice, clean indoor toilets and plumbing.
The more fools we, trying that method on our firstborn, who was only around eighteen months old, but big enough to have grown out of the largest size of pampers. While we weren't looking, he went back in the house, pulled on his nice new Lederhosen, and came back out to the garden, slyly making his way to the hole he'd dug and into which we assumed he would relieve himself. And he did! While wearing his Lederhosen.
“I am like a ripe shit,” Luther said when he was about to die, “and the world is a gigantic asshole. We will both probably let go of each other soon.” I can never read that--one of the more pungent quotations offered by Acocella--without recalling a few scenes from the German version of Saturday Night Live: rows of comedians seated behind closed toilet cubicles, their feet tapping away. Stefan Raab playing a farmer who is considering using a shovel to wipe himself.
Happy Halloween! You can buy, for less than three euros, a playmobil Martin Luther. The little figure smiles in a friendly fashion you can't imagine ever appearing on the face of a man with the tummy troubles afflicting the real Luther. Quill in one hand, golden Bible in the other, open to a Gothic-lettered Das Neue Testament, translated by Doktor Martin Luther.
Thanks, but no thanks. I'll take the jack o' lanterns carved by my kids; when lit, these orange faces glow with real menace.
But hey, Luther's notions of conscience and bible-reading have enjoyed a certain heyday. If we credit him with increasing the desire to think for oneself and read, read, read, then I'd be happy to see him ascending, complete with halo, to the heaven of his choice.
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
What to Do When Your Teenagers Hate Each Other
(1) Take a deep breath. Remember they won't hate each other forever. How do you know? Well, you've seen this pattern before. Teenager A gets mad at/insults/ignores Teenager B. Then the two insult each other ("!@#$%^&*()_!!! ")
Very unprintable.
(2) If you're a praying type, pray. Otherwise, just take another deep breath and hold your ears.
(3) Lurk upstairs in your study trying to write, until you hear Slam #1 (Teenager A is in his room) and Slam #2 (Teenager B is in her room).
(4) Wait. But probably you won't. You'll rush downstairs, knock on Teenager A's room because it happens to be nearer to your study. You'll beg him not to use the F-word and tell him doing so is "absolutely unacceptable." You'll tell him to apologize to Teenager B.
(5) Knock on Teenager B's room. Tell her you just told her brother his language is totally unacceptable. Explain that she wasn't all that nice to him. ("What, Mommy?") Telling your bro, you say, that he can only have a single cookie and then has to wait a long time is not very nice.
(6) Don't be surprised when Teenager B, a young lady, cannot understand (or feigns not to understand) why telling her fifteen-year-old brother he can only have a single cookie "until later" is not all that friendly.
(7) What to do about the cookies that were thrown and now reside on the recently cleaned kitchen floor? Along with the body parts of the water filter that accidentally got knocked off the counter? When Teenager B (now sobbing) indicates that she is "not going to clean it up when it's not my--extra sob--fault!!!"
(8) Lurk in your study, part two, for another hour or so.
(9) Come downstairs, talk to Teenager A in his room and ask him to apologize to Teenager B. He will, Mom, but later.
(10) Same procedure with Teenager B.
Meanwhile, Mom, get over your cold. Have a glass of red wine. Sleep.
Very unprintable.
(2) If you're a praying type, pray. Otherwise, just take another deep breath and hold your ears.
(3) Lurk upstairs in your study trying to write, until you hear Slam #1 (Teenager A is in his room) and Slam #2 (Teenager B is in her room).
(4) Wait. But probably you won't. You'll rush downstairs, knock on Teenager A's room because it happens to be nearer to your study. You'll beg him not to use the F-word and tell him doing so is "absolutely unacceptable." You'll tell him to apologize to Teenager B.
(5) Knock on Teenager B's room. Tell her you just told her brother his language is totally unacceptable. Explain that she wasn't all that nice to him. ("What, Mommy?") Telling your bro, you say, that he can only have a single cookie and then has to wait a long time is not very nice.
(6) Don't be surprised when Teenager B, a young lady, cannot understand (or feigns not to understand) why telling her fifteen-year-old brother he can only have a single cookie "until later" is not all that friendly.
(7) What to do about the cookies that were thrown and now reside on the recently cleaned kitchen floor? Along with the body parts of the water filter that accidentally got knocked off the counter? When Teenager B (now sobbing) indicates that she is "not going to clean it up when it's not my--extra sob--fault!!!"
(8) Lurk in your study, part two, for another hour or so.
(9) Come downstairs, talk to Teenager A in his room and ask him to apologize to Teenager B. He will, Mom, but later.
(10) Same procedure with Teenager B.
Meanwhile, Mom, get over your cold. Have a glass of red wine. Sleep.
Thursday, October 19, 2017
The Me in "Me, Too."
Can you say "I was a victim" and feel empowered at the same time? I think you can. The victimhood, the part where some guy forced you into a position or a state of mind that poisoned your life for decades, is ameliorated by the confession: here's what I did or did not do to stop him, here's what I did or did not say to change my situation. Here's what happened.
But the best--often the most excruciating--confessions are the ones you make to yourself. You can confide your experience to the world, and the world should know these confessions, but looking yourself in the face is the part that comes before, the part that often makes you wince. Was I that dumb? Was I that naïve? Was I so scared that I couldn't shove or hit back hard enough? Was this rape/assault/intimidation somehow my fault? Since I know it wasn't, why do I feel that it was?
In my case, did I want to admire him that much? When I ought to have known better?
When you still feel like he grabbed you because you were pretty, and "this is the way of the world," confessing your experience won't do much for you.
At twenty-five, I sat in my esteemed professor's office, in a chair right by his desk. He liked to swing his legs up on the desk, lean back in his swivel chair, and cock his head ironically. He'd written a book I thought brilliant at the time. He knew much more than I did, and I believed he knew much more than he actually did know. From my current vantage point of sixty years old, I can see how easy it is to get a twenty-five-year-old person to feel how little she knows and how much you know. Granted, I might as well have been five, in terms of self-awareness.
If I sense from any student of my own the kind of admiration I must have broadcast to my professor, I leave my office door wide open and try to indicate that I am only someone who has lived long enough to have read much.
My professor, however, lived and breathed admiration. Looking back, I realize how much he needed it. Napoleonic in height, he looked up, literally, at girls of average height like myself, and his gaze roamed. At the time, I pretended to myself that his gaze wasn't roaming, because I wanted to continue admiring him and I didn't want his gaze to be roaming over my breasts. I wanted him to be interested in me and my ideas, the ones I'd typed and re-typed on my IBM Selectric, the ones on those pages he was now holding in his hand. I practiced the "it's not there" form of problem-solving and went gamely into his office with the thought that I had to get my paper that he'd just graded, and I would learn something from him.
Then there was the nagging fact that I found him very attractive. My blood raced when I saw him. Brilliant and handsome, he made my palms sweat.
I cringe when I remember how witty I thought him: when I ran into him in the checkout line at the local grocery store, he was buying ice cream and I was buying broccoli. He stared at my broccoli, sniffed, and said, "I win!"
But he was my teacher, and I never thought of pursuing any personal relationship with him. Had he actually laid a glove on me, I'd probably have felt terror. Even disgust. Not that I'd never been with a man before, but the men I'd been with were boys my age. Here was this revered gray-templed scholar, bookshelves sagging with tomes, desk piled with manila folders filled with his research. Part of my attraction to him lay in my ability to keep him way up there on that very sturdy pedestal on which his big old clay feet continued to be well-hidden.
So I sat by his desk as he looked through my paper--I imagined he was finding my ideas interesting. I assumed he wanted to tell me what he thought of those ideas. Instead:
"Ya know, I'm finding out a lot about all of you from the papers you write!"
"You are?" I was completely startled.
"Yeah!" He winked. "Your personalities."
"What do you mean?"
"Yeah, Ms. __________, you're spread-eagled on the page!"
I remember time stopping. I remember staring straight ahead, rising to my feet without quite knowing what I was doing, heading down the hall to the classroom, for his class was about to start--I'd been one of the last students to see him right before class. I pulled out my chair at the long seminar table and sat down. It seems to me now that I'd actually managed to entirely forget my conversation with him by the time I'd retrieved from my bookbag my notebook, pens, and other materials for the class. Shame and shock flooded through me, and something else I didn't recognize at the time--extreme disappointment. But I was--oh, this is the excruciating part!--determined to feel exactly as I had before about my professor. I wanted to go on admiring him--I would soldier on as his admirer, because how else would I exist? I needed an example of scholarship, and he was it. The understanding that typically comes with age--that here was a pathetically flawed half-drunk guy who'd been through several wives and whose children had landed in mental hospitals and unhappy relationships, who was probably drunk during that brief encounter in his office, who was randomly trying to make himself feel better--none of that occurred to me. I need a god to worship in order to get through my studies, and he was it.
How silly it all seems, how shameful, now.
Is this the worst that ever happened to me? No, of course not. Had I been in a healthier frame of mine to begin with--as were many of my fellow students--I'd have seen through this pathetic professor whom I continued to defend. The more I saw what a jerk he really was, the more I defended him. Because I needed a god, and he was the one I'd chosen. Once you've picked your god--once you're in that sad mindset in which you need one--it is awfully hard to find a different path.
I wish I'd known anyone in whom I could have confided. I did have, like most women of my background, a psychoanalyst on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, who listened to my every confession. And with whom did he side? The professor, naturally. I must have done something. I was a slut--the shrink's definition of slut being a girl who felt attracted to boys--and I should forget all this and buckle down and study.
Is there a moral to this story? Learn to be wiser when young, not when you're my age. When a situation smells wrong, don't let your longing for perfection do you in. It does seem to me that young people have a very hard time getting over the need to admire the imagined perfection in some one or some thing--one of my kids was just talking to a (thank goodness!) wise older person about his longing to be "the best!" and the wise older person said, "You shouldn't think of being the best but of being yourself." I might not have taken that advice as a twenty-year-old, but now I love it.
Yes, I feel empowered by my understanding: how young and silly and ignorant I was, how pathetically a grown-up who should have been helping me demanded the admiration I was all too willing to give him. How much perception could have helped me--had I been able, or willing, to perceive what he was. But at the time, I could not do so.
So, tell your stories! As Emily Fox Gordon has observed, and I'm paraphrasing: confess them to yourself--then confide them to the world. Once you have understood what happened to you.
But the best--often the most excruciating--confessions are the ones you make to yourself. You can confide your experience to the world, and the world should know these confessions, but looking yourself in the face is the part that comes before, the part that often makes you wince. Was I that dumb? Was I that naïve? Was I so scared that I couldn't shove or hit back hard enough? Was this rape/assault/intimidation somehow my fault? Since I know it wasn't, why do I feel that it was?
In my case, did I want to admire him that much? When I ought to have known better?
When you still feel like he grabbed you because you were pretty, and "this is the way of the world," confessing your experience won't do much for you.
At twenty-five, I sat in my esteemed professor's office, in a chair right by his desk. He liked to swing his legs up on the desk, lean back in his swivel chair, and cock his head ironically. He'd written a book I thought brilliant at the time. He knew much more than I did, and I believed he knew much more than he actually did know. From my current vantage point of sixty years old, I can see how easy it is to get a twenty-five-year-old person to feel how little she knows and how much you know. Granted, I might as well have been five, in terms of self-awareness.
If I sense from any student of my own the kind of admiration I must have broadcast to my professor, I leave my office door wide open and try to indicate that I am only someone who has lived long enough to have read much.
My professor, however, lived and breathed admiration. Looking back, I realize how much he needed it. Napoleonic in height, he looked up, literally, at girls of average height like myself, and his gaze roamed. At the time, I pretended to myself that his gaze wasn't roaming, because I wanted to continue admiring him and I didn't want his gaze to be roaming over my breasts. I wanted him to be interested in me and my ideas, the ones I'd typed and re-typed on my IBM Selectric, the ones on those pages he was now holding in his hand. I practiced the "it's not there" form of problem-solving and went gamely into his office with the thought that I had to get my paper that he'd just graded, and I would learn something from him.
Then there was the nagging fact that I found him very attractive. My blood raced when I saw him. Brilliant and handsome, he made my palms sweat.
I cringe when I remember how witty I thought him: when I ran into him in the checkout line at the local grocery store, he was buying ice cream and I was buying broccoli. He stared at my broccoli, sniffed, and said, "I win!"
But he was my teacher, and I never thought of pursuing any personal relationship with him. Had he actually laid a glove on me, I'd probably have felt terror. Even disgust. Not that I'd never been with a man before, but the men I'd been with were boys my age. Here was this revered gray-templed scholar, bookshelves sagging with tomes, desk piled with manila folders filled with his research. Part of my attraction to him lay in my ability to keep him way up there on that very sturdy pedestal on which his big old clay feet continued to be well-hidden.
So I sat by his desk as he looked through my paper--I imagined he was finding my ideas interesting. I assumed he wanted to tell me what he thought of those ideas. Instead:
"Ya know, I'm finding out a lot about all of you from the papers you write!"
"You are?" I was completely startled.
"Yeah!" He winked. "Your personalities."
"What do you mean?"
"Yeah, Ms. __________, you're spread-eagled on the page!"
I remember time stopping. I remember staring straight ahead, rising to my feet without quite knowing what I was doing, heading down the hall to the classroom, for his class was about to start--I'd been one of the last students to see him right before class. I pulled out my chair at the long seminar table and sat down. It seems to me now that I'd actually managed to entirely forget my conversation with him by the time I'd retrieved from my bookbag my notebook, pens, and other materials for the class. Shame and shock flooded through me, and something else I didn't recognize at the time--extreme disappointment. But I was--oh, this is the excruciating part!--determined to feel exactly as I had before about my professor. I wanted to go on admiring him--I would soldier on as his admirer, because how else would I exist? I needed an example of scholarship, and he was it. The understanding that typically comes with age--that here was a pathetically flawed half-drunk guy who'd been through several wives and whose children had landed in mental hospitals and unhappy relationships, who was probably drunk during that brief encounter in his office, who was randomly trying to make himself feel better--none of that occurred to me. I need a god to worship in order to get through my studies, and he was it.
How silly it all seems, how shameful, now.
Is this the worst that ever happened to me? No, of course not. Had I been in a healthier frame of mine to begin with--as were many of my fellow students--I'd have seen through this pathetic professor whom I continued to defend. The more I saw what a jerk he really was, the more I defended him. Because I needed a god, and he was the one I'd chosen. Once you've picked your god--once you're in that sad mindset in which you need one--it is awfully hard to find a different path.
I wish I'd known anyone in whom I could have confided. I did have, like most women of my background, a psychoanalyst on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, who listened to my every confession. And with whom did he side? The professor, naturally. I must have done something. I was a slut--the shrink's definition of slut being a girl who felt attracted to boys--and I should forget all this and buckle down and study.
Is there a moral to this story? Learn to be wiser when young, not when you're my age. When a situation smells wrong, don't let your longing for perfection do you in. It does seem to me that young people have a very hard time getting over the need to admire the imagined perfection in some one or some thing--one of my kids was just talking to a (thank goodness!) wise older person about his longing to be "the best!" and the wise older person said, "You shouldn't think of being the best but of being yourself." I might not have taken that advice as a twenty-year-old, but now I love it.
Yes, I feel empowered by my understanding: how young and silly and ignorant I was, how pathetically a grown-up who should have been helping me demanded the admiration I was all too willing to give him. How much perception could have helped me--had I been able, or willing, to perceive what he was. But at the time, I could not do so.
So, tell your stories! As Emily Fox Gordon has observed, and I'm paraphrasing: confess them to yourself--then confide them to the world. Once you have understood what happened to you.
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Harvey Weinstein's Mom
How well I remember a time when one of my greatest concerns was to make sure neither of my sons (then about ages one and three) grew up to be anything like George Bush (junior). Or his dad. I can't help but wonder, watching the continuing drama of the bullying, predatory Harvey Weinstein, whether his mother could possibly have influenced him to be a decent person.
Am I blaming her? How could I, when I think of Roy Cohn's desperate mother keeping on a piano teacher (a colleague of my dad's) in order to know, for a single hour, the location of her wayward son.
It is a curious oddity of life that women have so little agency--are so often prey to men of power, money, and influence--but that mothers have the power of life or death. If your kid is born a basically decent human being, his loving mother makes him a wonderful person. If he's a high-forceps delivery, or weirdly hateful from birth, what's a mom to do?
I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the Weinstein home. But I wasn't, and all I know is that Madame Weinstein lived to be 90, and seems to have been thrilled when her sons, Harvey and Bob (yes, the son whose kicking his bro out of the company) named Miramax after her and her deceased husband, Max. Did she love Harvey? Did she intrude into every bit of his life, make inappropriate erotic advances, beat him up? Think of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's horrorshow of a mom, doing everything in her considerable power to destroy any happiness he and Eleanor may have had. But FDR didn't become anything like Weinstein--or Trump.
An old New York magazine article quotes Weinstein as follows:
Of course, they always ask me about my mother, Miriam. And the trick about Miriam is, my brother and I love her. She was widowed maybe 30, 40 years ago, so we grew up, you know, with Mom. She was incredibly supportive and tough on the both of us. She’s still, you know, the one person you, we have to toe the line with, you know.
So she was tough. Too tough? Who knows.
My sons are well on their merry ways to being very different indeed from anyone in the Bush family.
Thank goodness. I'll take credit for that. Even if credit is due only to a favorable constellation of genes.
Am I blaming her? How could I, when I think of Roy Cohn's desperate mother keeping on a piano teacher (a colleague of my dad's) in order to know, for a single hour, the location of her wayward son.
It is a curious oddity of life that women have so little agency--are so often prey to men of power, money, and influence--but that mothers have the power of life or death. If your kid is born a basically decent human being, his loving mother makes him a wonderful person. If he's a high-forceps delivery, or weirdly hateful from birth, what's a mom to do?
I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the Weinstein home. But I wasn't, and all I know is that Madame Weinstein lived to be 90, and seems to have been thrilled when her sons, Harvey and Bob (yes, the son whose kicking his bro out of the company) named Miramax after her and her deceased husband, Max. Did she love Harvey? Did she intrude into every bit of his life, make inappropriate erotic advances, beat him up? Think of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's horrorshow of a mom, doing everything in her considerable power to destroy any happiness he and Eleanor may have had. But FDR didn't become anything like Weinstein--or Trump.
An old New York magazine article quotes Weinstein as follows:
Of course, they always ask me about my mother, Miriam. And the trick about Miriam is, my brother and I love her. She was widowed maybe 30, 40 years ago, so we grew up, you know, with Mom. She was incredibly supportive and tough on the both of us. She’s still, you know, the one person you, we have to toe the line with, you know.
So she was tough. Too tough? Who knows.
My sons are well on their merry ways to being very different indeed from anyone in the Bush family.
Thank goodness. I'll take credit for that. Even if credit is due only to a favorable constellation of genes.
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Five Household Hints for The Kid Who Flew the Coop
Oldest son on his way to college? As his siblings declare that they miss him (while he's still on the road toward his new student apartment) his mom thinks up recipes and tips:
(1) "Soft" kinds of rice, like Jasmine and Basmati, should be cooked in only slightly more water than the rice. Tougher kinds, like whole grain rice ("Natur," for Germans) or brown Basmati or parboiled Uncle Sam's take twice as much water as rice. Never open the rice cooker for the proverbial nanosecond while the rice is making. Do stir your rice with a wooden or plastic paddle before you cover it and turn on your rice cooker.
(2) Bulgur is a great, simple meal. Chop and sautée a red onion and a bell pepper; feel free to add other vegetables. While the onions are getting transparent, boil water and add a heaping teaspoonful of powdered chicken broth to a cup. Pour the bulgur into the pan first and let it brown a little before adding boiling water to the cup and pouring that over the bulgur, while stirring continuously. You will need to add another mug of water. You can add cheese once the bulgur is done.
(3) For really stinky clothes, add about half a cup of vinegar and an envelope of baking soda ("Natron" for Germans) to the washing machine, in addition to the laundry soap.
(4) Here's a fancy-seeming meal for two or three that takes about an hour to make:
4 chicken breasts, with the bones
Plain white mushrooms (if you can get them already sliced, great.) Slicing takes about three minutes, though.
Cream
Canned mushroom soup
Salt and pepper.
Rinse the chicken breasts, pat dry with a paper towel, and arrange in a buttered baking dish. Add salt and pepper. If you've got that extra nanosecond, add a dash of paprika. Dump the mushrooms over the chicken. If you don't have time to slice the mushrooms, that's okay. Dump the cream over the mushrooms. Dump the canned chicken soup over the cream. No need to stir. Put in oven, bake at about 190º (about 375ºF) for about an hour. Serve with rice and a steamed vegetable. A fast sophisticated dessert: pour either Cointreau or Kahlua over vanilla ice cream. Not both.
(5) Don't forget to buy a toilet brush and toilet paper.
(1) "Soft" kinds of rice, like Jasmine and Basmati, should be cooked in only slightly more water than the rice. Tougher kinds, like whole grain rice ("Natur," for Germans) or brown Basmati or parboiled Uncle Sam's take twice as much water as rice. Never open the rice cooker for the proverbial nanosecond while the rice is making. Do stir your rice with a wooden or plastic paddle before you cover it and turn on your rice cooker.
(2) Bulgur is a great, simple meal. Chop and sautée a red onion and a bell pepper; feel free to add other vegetables. While the onions are getting transparent, boil water and add a heaping teaspoonful of powdered chicken broth to a cup. Pour the bulgur into the pan first and let it brown a little before adding boiling water to the cup and pouring that over the bulgur, while stirring continuously. You will need to add another mug of water. You can add cheese once the bulgur is done.
(3) For really stinky clothes, add about half a cup of vinegar and an envelope of baking soda ("Natron" for Germans) to the washing machine, in addition to the laundry soap.
(4) Here's a fancy-seeming meal for two or three that takes about an hour to make:
4 chicken breasts, with the bones
Plain white mushrooms (if you can get them already sliced, great.) Slicing takes about three minutes, though.
Cream
Canned mushroom soup
Salt and pepper.
Rinse the chicken breasts, pat dry with a paper towel, and arrange in a buttered baking dish. Add salt and pepper. If you've got that extra nanosecond, add a dash of paprika. Dump the mushrooms over the chicken. If you don't have time to slice the mushrooms, that's okay. Dump the cream over the mushrooms. Dump the canned chicken soup over the cream. No need to stir. Put in oven, bake at about 190º (about 375ºF) for about an hour. Serve with rice and a steamed vegetable. A fast sophisticated dessert: pour either Cointreau or Kahlua over vanilla ice cream. Not both.
(5) Don't forget to buy a toilet brush and toilet paper.
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Seven Tips for When Your Eldest Child Soars from the Nest
Hint, Mom: you are the one who is sad around here. No, the kid is too, but you are so sad you pretend that he isn't. But here are seven of the 7,000 things you know you'll want to tell him:
1. The Golden Mean is actually pretty cool. Extremes can seem more fun, but they tend to make you come down with hangovers, mononeucleosis, or bad colds.
2. A Back-to-Basics philosophy cures you from those interesting moments when you've deviated from that Golden Mean. Which basics? Oh, a healthy breakfast, including things like whole wheat bread or muffins, scrambled eggs with toast, yogurt; enough sleep, warm socks, regular habits, staying hydrated; an habitual method of grounding oneself after an unsettling day (regular practice of musical instrument; regular trip to gym; regular morning dance class, for example). While I'm at it, the usual stuff: brushing, flossing, showering, footcare.
3. "Neither a borrower nor a lender be," and you won't regret losing your guitar to your best friend, or your own loss of that twenty euros somebody loaned you.
4. Find humor in worst-case scenarios. Remember Dorothy Parker:
"A heart in half is chaste, archaic,
But mine resembles a mosaic."
If she could laugh at a broken heart, so can you. Statistically speaking, sooner or later you will endure one, and it will bring you as much fun in later years as it brought torment in early ones. Yes, "the worst returns to laughter."
5. Select friends who are deeply engaged in their work. These will be with you for life. Drinking buddies come and go.
6. Enjoy your studies, and don't cringe when older people insist "these are the best years of your life!" They've forgotten. But these early years are the ones that launch you, and they can be thrilling.
7. Contemplate the meaning of George Bernard Shaw's axiom: "Youth is wasted on the young."
1. The Golden Mean is actually pretty cool. Extremes can seem more fun, but they tend to make you come down with hangovers, mononeucleosis, or bad colds.
2. A Back-to-Basics philosophy cures you from those interesting moments when you've deviated from that Golden Mean. Which basics? Oh, a healthy breakfast, including things like whole wheat bread or muffins, scrambled eggs with toast, yogurt; enough sleep, warm socks, regular habits, staying hydrated; an habitual method of grounding oneself after an unsettling day (regular practice of musical instrument; regular trip to gym; regular morning dance class, for example). While I'm at it, the usual stuff: brushing, flossing, showering, footcare.
3. "Neither a borrower nor a lender be," and you won't regret losing your guitar to your best friend, or your own loss of that twenty euros somebody loaned you.
4. Find humor in worst-case scenarios. Remember Dorothy Parker:
"A heart in half is chaste, archaic,
But mine resembles a mosaic."
If she could laugh at a broken heart, so can you. Statistically speaking, sooner or later you will endure one, and it will bring you as much fun in later years as it brought torment in early ones. Yes, "the worst returns to laughter."
5. Select friends who are deeply engaged in their work. These will be with you for life. Drinking buddies come and go.
6. Enjoy your studies, and don't cringe when older people insist "these are the best years of your life!" They've forgotten. But these early years are the ones that launch you, and they can be thrilling.
7. Contemplate the meaning of George Bernard Shaw's axiom: "Youth is wasted on the young."
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Who Trump Isn't
A CNN commentator mentioned we were still asking who the guy is, months after the election. But that's not the question to ask. The question is not who Trump is, but who he isn't. What wouldn't he do? Say? Think? Oh, don't assume he thinks. But don't assume he doesn't. The idea that Donald Trump has a fixed identity is lame. We thought we knew. We know he lies, cheats, steals. Maybe he murders; I wouldn't be surprised. Does any limit to his personality exist? To his actions? He's just announced that the hermit kingdom's dictator is on a suicide mission. Can we take that as a projection? A prediction? A random blast of ego? See, none of us knows. From the get-go, we've wanted to know whether Trump was crazy like a fox or just crazy. Why not both? He wouldn't be the first. Hitler. Stalin. The Hermit King. God help us all, but God's probably on the side of the bigger battalions. Does it all come down to a question of comfort? When the president's had a glass of wine, he doesn't push red buttons under silos deep in the heartland, releasing atomic energy. When he has a hangnail, he does. Yes? No? Maybe?
Sunday, September 10, 2017
The Critical Mom Does London Fashion
If you're looking for a little excitement in the form of gorgeous design, lovely blends of colors, originality, quality, movement, then the heart and soul of London fashion is located in Camden Town. Everywhere--from the store selling Bakelite Betty Boops to the tiny booth in the worst corner of the outdoor market hawking a certain Italian wool make you'd drop $800 or so for on Madison Avenue--the place rocks. Oooh, those long, lovely jackets in vibrant colors--I can tell you the label says "Mr. A" but it doesn't pop up online. I can't think of a better antidote to the horrors of Belgravia, that antiseptic, cynical, overpriced set of fashionista folly. As I believe I've already said, you couldn't pay me to wear that hairy newsboy cap with the bolts that I saw in the window of Prada--well, unless I took the money, ran, tossing the cap in the gutter, right back to Camden Town, where I'd buy yet another aesthetically envigorating bag or scarf. For elegance, harmony and quality, my favorite places there include Araucaria, filled with the aroma of jasmine and polished wood, vintage Kantha jackets and bags, brightly patterned shirts and Carpe Diem MMVIII, which features beautifully tooled leather, both located in the Camden Lock Place Market Hall. Stroll by the Gekko stall too. Long velour coats in greens or purples or blacks, leaf designs sewn in. Slightly reminiscent of Desigual, only nicer. Across from the hall, check out Gohil& Co. Handmade Leather Goods. And enjoy the food and the eternally lively ambience! In the Dantesque circles of women's clothing, the Camden Hall Market is paradise. You can guess what hell is, and we've all seen clothing purgatory, somehow worse than even that.
Friday, September 8, 2017
An American Hears London
Bussing in from Stansted, we saw a sign in an apartment complex yard: "No exercising of dogs." A more elegant euphemism for "Leash, gutter, and clean up after your dog," My son leaned over and said, "Hmm, how about roasting of dogs?" I'm more accustomed to directness, as in:
Language can be more lyrical here. Consider this bus announcement: "For Great Ormond Street hospital alight at Russell Square." Sounds more poetic than "Get off at . . . "
"You'd never hear that," I said to my son. "In Romantic poems, Sparrows alight on branches."
"Gimme a light," he replied. As we ambled toward the British museum and I explained the controversy surrounding the Elgin Marbles, he summed it all up: "How the Greeks lost their marbles." Around here, the F word is pronounced with an "o" instead of a "u," that is, rhymes not with "luck" but with "cock," as in "Cockfosters." Wikipedia suggests family names or "chief forester" as the origin of that one, but it sounds like a Prince Albert to me. We walked through (should I say "trod?") Knightsbridge, Piccadilly, Belgravia, and the best of all, Camden Town ("Help a punk get drunk" said the sign around which sat certain inebriated young persons with neon hair, braying same message). In Belgravia I kept muttering, "my God, Prada is no longer Prada (hairy newsboy hats with bolts, day-glo felt handbags) and "Laura Ashley is no longer Laura Ashley," (synthetics, synthetics, synthetics) but in Camden Town I bought a gorgeous vintage Indian Kantha and some wool-and-silk Pashmina scarves. While listening to Joy to the World (or was it "Hot Child, summer in the city . . .") at a jewelry stand and Dinah Washington while scooping up a sturdy leather knapsack for my son. Amazing leather. A-whole-lot-better-than-Coach-bags-leather. When I asked for help with a scratch on the perfect bag I'd bought in Rome, I heard Imperial British English, the kind German gymnasium teachers swoon over, from an elderly gentleman of Indian descent. Oh, enjoy Camden town. Belgravia is all snobbery and repression (burquad women in Dior sunglasses being shepherded from limo by driver to butler-in-store). Wifi didn't work as we sought a Chipotle, which we obviously weren't going to find around there.
The languages, from neighborhood to neighborhood, are fun, but London is the loudest city I've ever been in: street noise in Westminster and Bloomsbury, from drills to horns to sirens, is enough to make you plug your ears with your fingers and howl in pain. But when the British speak, they are so interesting. It's not just the accents. I asked for Miller and Bens tap shoes in five stores, and the clerks (that word rhymes with "harks" around here) seemed genuinely sad they couldn't help me: "I'm so sorry!" they chirped.
"You'd never hear that," I said to my son. "In Romantic poems, Sparrows alight on branches."
"Gimme a light," he replied. As we ambled toward the British museum and I explained the controversy surrounding the Elgin Marbles, he summed it all up: "How the Greeks lost their marbles." Around here, the F word is pronounced with an "o" instead of a "u," that is, rhymes not with "luck" but with "cock," as in "Cockfosters." Wikipedia suggests family names or "chief forester" as the origin of that one, but it sounds like a Prince Albert to me. We walked through (should I say "trod?") Knightsbridge, Piccadilly, Belgravia, and the best of all, Camden Town ("Help a punk get drunk" said the sign around which sat certain inebriated young persons with neon hair, braying same message). In Belgravia I kept muttering, "my God, Prada is no longer Prada (hairy newsboy hats with bolts, day-glo felt handbags) and "Laura Ashley is no longer Laura Ashley," (synthetics, synthetics, synthetics) but in Camden Town I bought a gorgeous vintage Indian Kantha and some wool-and-silk Pashmina scarves. While listening to Joy to the World (or was it "Hot Child, summer in the city . . .") at a jewelry stand and Dinah Washington while scooping up a sturdy leather knapsack for my son. Amazing leather. A-whole-lot-better-than-Coach-bags-leather. When I asked for help with a scratch on the perfect bag I'd bought in Rome, I heard Imperial British English, the kind German gymnasium teachers swoon over, from an elderly gentleman of Indian descent. Oh, enjoy Camden town. Belgravia is all snobbery and repression (burquad women in Dior sunglasses being shepherded from limo by driver to butler-in-store). Wifi didn't work as we sought a Chipotle, which we obviously weren't going to find around there.
The languages, from neighborhood to neighborhood, are fun, but London is the loudest city I've ever been in: street noise in Westminster and Bloomsbury, from drills to horns to sirens, is enough to make you plug your ears with your fingers and howl in pain. But when the British speak, they are so interesting. It's not just the accents. I asked for Miller and Bens tap shoes in five stores, and the clerks (that word rhymes with "harks" around here) seemed genuinely sad they couldn't help me: "I'm so sorry!" they chirped.
Saturday, September 2, 2017
A Nine-Bucket Bail: Climate Change in Germany
While I was stuffing the eggplants this afternoon, my daughter, who had checked her cell phone and promised no rain, rushed downstairs, opened the patio door, and started hauling in the racks of laundry that had been drying so nicely a few minutes before. I hadn't noticed the downpour--I was distracted by the need to grate the cheese that was going into the stuffed eggplants and peppers--and the sun was shining brightly outside. But it was Noah's-floodlike out there. Hail started clattering down.
"Should we bring the guinea pigs in?"
"I dunno--the cage is covered. If it stops in five minutes . . ." I stuffed another pepper and stuck it in the tray, ready to go into the oven.
The rain didn't stop. With a doorman-sized umbrella, I went outside to retrieve two slightly damp, indignant guinea pigs, who looked as if they were wondering what took me so long. Having taken refuge in one of their little houses, the piggies were dry until I had to chase them to get them into their carrier.
When we were in Italy a few weeks ago, staggering around the Villa Torlonia and the Colosseum in 101º-105º-degree heat, we got hit with a storm in Venice, fortunately after we'd already taken our gondola ride. The clouds unfolded, rains of Biblical proportions slammed down, we huddled in a doorway watching the shopkeeper next door poke a broom into the awning over his shop, letting gallons of water slosh out.
On the way home, uprooted trees lay all over the road.
This afternoon the hail stopped, and I went down to our basement to check laundry. The storage room often floods, but this time the water was an inch up around the wall.
Nine buckets full. Nine.
Ten, actually. If you count the one I filled.
"Should we bring the guinea pigs in?"
"I dunno--the cage is covered. If it stops in five minutes . . ." I stuffed another pepper and stuck it in the tray, ready to go into the oven.
The rain didn't stop. With a doorman-sized umbrella, I went outside to retrieve two slightly damp, indignant guinea pigs, who looked as if they were wondering what took me so long. Having taken refuge in one of their little houses, the piggies were dry until I had to chase them to get them into their carrier.
When we were in Italy a few weeks ago, staggering around the Villa Torlonia and the Colosseum in 101º-105º-degree heat, we got hit with a storm in Venice, fortunately after we'd already taken our gondola ride. The clouds unfolded, rains of Biblical proportions slammed down, we huddled in a doorway watching the shopkeeper next door poke a broom into the awning over his shop, letting gallons of water slosh out.
On the way home, uprooted trees lay all over the road.
This afternoon the hail stopped, and I went down to our basement to check laundry. The storage room often floods, but this time the water was an inch up around the wall.
Nine buckets full. Nine.
Ten, actually. If you count the one I filled.
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Remembering Dick Gregory in our Trumpesque World
I woke to the sad news that Dick Gregory--a favorite comedian and
activist--had died at 84.
"We don't serve colored people," said a waitress to Dick Gregory.
"That's okay," he answered, "I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried
chicken." I remember, as a child, laughing in front of our family's black-and-white
TV as Gregory revealed the ludicrousness of race prejudice:
Dick Gregory nudged the United States toward racial
harmony using tactics similar to the delightful Tom Lehrer, who is
thankfully still among us but, alas, silent in the age of Trump. Lehrer's 1965 classic, National Brotherhood Week (“Step
up and shake the hand / Of someone you can’t stand. / You can tolerate
him if you try”) attacked the absurdity of trying for racial healing
with a single week's devotion to tolerance and "brotherhood:
Return the worst to laughter: that's what these comedians teach us. Don't react to Trump or Nazis with rage and despair: laugh them into the ground. Trump deserves our constant ridicule. If we must fight, we should fight over statutes, not statues. Statutes, the ones that prevent gay people from getting married or transgender folks from using the restroom. True, statues are fun to pull down--the satisfying clonk of Saddam Hussein's metal counterpart hitting the ground in Baghdad back in 2003 was an occasion for joy--like the dismantling of the Berlin wall, pieces of which you may still buy as a souvenir. Walls were made to be breached, not built, and the likes of Dick Gregory and Tom Lehrer were made to send that message entertainingly. Ellen DeGeneres, get busy.
In one of his last interviews, Gregory became a prophet who wears his gravitas lightly, like the fool in King Lear:
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
Death of a Washing Machine: So Unexpected
We were in total denial thinking our sturdy Miele (Americans: think GE, Speed Queen or Maytag) was in vibrant health. Looked the same. Sounded the same. Until one afternoon when an agonized crunch of metal followed by a distinct burning smell catapulted me to the basement, where the machine's lights were blinking in all the wrong places. I unplugged the washer and sniffed around, trying to determine whether that burning smell (I'd hauled out the wet wash, which also reeked of smoke) was coming from within our walls or the drum. The drum. Yes, that would be the case. Drum rolls seem to go with death, or execution, and our machine had worked itself to death, as the repairman confirmed when he paid his call.
Attaching a gizmo with a cord to his computer and plugging the other end of the cord into our machine, he determined that the washer built to last around twenty years was actually--if one measured its life in terms of wash loads--a whopping thirty-six years old. Plus, now that I think of it, we'd really tortured the poor dumb creature. All those grains of sand I hadn't completely shaken out of the kids' blue jeans back when they were in kindergarten and grade school. All those very full loads of sheets and comforters and pillows that had been vomited on (and worse) by sick kiddies. And just when we were starting to do a little less laundry, our loyal machine called it quits. We've combed Amazon and Otto and have settled on a more environmentally-correct model, and we think we got our money's worth from this one. RIP, Washy.
Attaching a gizmo with a cord to his computer and plugging the other end of the cord into our machine, he determined that the washer built to last around twenty years was actually--if one measured its life in terms of wash loads--a whopping thirty-six years old. Plus, now that I think of it, we'd really tortured the poor dumb creature. All those grains of sand I hadn't completely shaken out of the kids' blue jeans back when they were in kindergarten and grade school. All those very full loads of sheets and comforters and pillows that had been vomited on (and worse) by sick kiddies. And just when we were starting to do a little less laundry, our loyal machine called it quits. We've combed Amazon and Otto and have settled on a more environmentally-correct model, and we think we got our money's worth from this one. RIP, Washy.
Friday, August 11, 2017
Adventures with the Italians and Stamps
Where do you buy stamps? And how many stamps does one need to send a postcard from gorgeous Italia to serious Germany, or from sunny, carefree Italia to Trumpesque America (or what's left of America--congratulations, ye of the chicken balloon with T's head on the White House lawn).
Ask three Italians, get three answers.
One is usually sent to the "Tabacchi,"a little shop selling stamps and the knowledge of how many to use in addition to newspapers and tobacco.
At reception in our hotel (run by teenagers) I got the vaguest of answers. But very sweet, polite answers. For examples,
"Oh, to USA? I think, maybe two euro. But you ask at the Tabacchi."
Where was this Tabacchi? https://www.tripsavvy.com/what-is-a-tabacchi-in-italy-1547549
"Oh, easy, five minute!" Yes. Five Italian minutes. I did question the teenager in detail--I all but asked for a map. I walked in the directions she'd suggested. No Tabacchi. An old woman rode by on a bike, crooning in a raspy voice to her orange cat, who was in a cage affixed to her handlebars. The cat seemed eager to be taken to a party.
I had no idea where I was, and asked a bus driver if he spoke English.
"Leetle beet," said he. The standard response. But he pointed me in the right direction. When I got to "Stop," I should turn left. At least, that is how I understood his instructions. I also thought he meant "Stop at the next street." But what he actually meant was "Stop at the big STOP sign at he end of that very long street." And turn left. And go through twisty, turny alleyways until the sign "Tabacchi" appears and the shopkeeper lets you know someone sold your husband the Italian equivalent of Federal Express stamps for Germany ("He only need one euro! Not-a one euro thirty.) Plus you do get the right number of stamps for the USA--a whopping 2 euros 20 for a post card. Where do I mail them?
"The Lotto place!"
I looked. Finally a little old lady showed me the red post box, which was down the street from the "lotto place."
I shot my postcards into the Italian post box. Will they land? Anywhere?
Ask three Italians, get three answers.
One is usually sent to the "Tabacchi,"a little shop selling stamps and the knowledge of how many to use in addition to newspapers and tobacco.
At reception in our hotel (run by teenagers) I got the vaguest of answers. But very sweet, polite answers. For examples,
"Oh, to USA? I think, maybe two euro. But you ask at the Tabacchi."
Where was this Tabacchi? https://www.tripsavvy.com/what-is-a-tabacchi-in-italy-1547549
"Oh, easy, five minute!" Yes. Five Italian minutes. I did question the teenager in detail--I all but asked for a map. I walked in the directions she'd suggested. No Tabacchi. An old woman rode by on a bike, crooning in a raspy voice to her orange cat, who was in a cage affixed to her handlebars. The cat seemed eager to be taken to a party.
I had no idea where I was, and asked a bus driver if he spoke English.
"Leetle beet," said he. The standard response. But he pointed me in the right direction. When I got to "Stop," I should turn left. At least, that is how I understood his instructions. I also thought he meant "Stop at the next street." But what he actually meant was "Stop at the big STOP sign at he end of that very long street." And turn left. And go through twisty, turny alleyways until the sign "Tabacchi" appears and the shopkeeper lets you know someone sold your husband the Italian equivalent of Federal Express stamps for Germany ("He only need one euro! Not-a one euro thirty.) Plus you do get the right number of stamps for the USA--a whopping 2 euros 20 for a post card. Where do I mail them?
"The Lotto place!"
I looked. Finally a little old lady showed me the red post box, which was down the street from the "lotto place."
I shot my postcards into the Italian post box. Will they land? Anywhere?
Sunday, August 6, 2017
The Best Stovetop Chicken When There's No Oven
I love to bake chicken. Plain, with salt and pepper, or covered with mushrooms and mushroom soup and cream, or slathered with some nice mix from Oil&Vinegar, but when you have one of those vacation rentals with no oven, you've got to find a way to render crispiness, or at least flavor, unto chicken.
The basic rule: a ton of garlic and the very best olive oil. Easy for me, since I'm in Italy. Details:
For a hungry family of five: about nine chicken thighs or breasts. WITH the bones
At least two cloves of garlic
At least one shallot
Pack of very fresh mushrooms
Two packs of baby tomatoes, one red and one yellow. But feel free to substitute. You could use peppers or zucchini or both.
A massive bunch of fresh, washed, chopped parsley. But you could substitute fresh rosemary (and if you do, use less. A little rosemary goes a long way).
The juice of one lemon
Salt, pepper, oregano
Dry white wine, one cup, or red
Potatoes (I'll get to their preparation)
(1) Put around half a cup of extra-virgin Dante Olive oil in the bottom of a very large pot. (In the supermarket I asked a couple of gigantic Italian women whether they spoke English and got the answer I always get around here: "leetle beet." What was the best olive oil? Their eyes lit up and they said, "il migliore," and I knew they understood. They pointed to the Dante and I must say, that stuff is so flavorful I could almost drink it out of the bottle).
(2) While the olive oil is heating, salt and pepper the chicken. Drop it into the pot. The oil should be hot--you should hear a sizzle. Stir and turn the chicken every few minutes, letting it sizzle on high heat for around ten minutes. Cover.
(3) Meanwhile, yell at your teenagers to chop that garlic and shallot. Add these. (The garlic, not the teenagers, although by this time you'll feel like adding the teenagers). Add chopped, fresh, parsley--loads of it. A bunch the size of a small child's head.
(4) Wash and add the tomatoes--stirring--and the mushrooms--same. Realize you haven't added all the mushrooms. Do so, after rinsing and removing dirty parts of stems. Shake in the oregano, if you haven't already. Lots. Enough for a huge pizza. Squeeze in the lemon. Try to keep the seeds from entering the pot (you can strain through a small sieve)
(5) Meanwhile, you've also washed and boiled (do not peel, but do slice) some potatoes. When you can poke into the potatoes with a fork, drain them and add them to the pot with the chicken.
(6) Slosh in wine. Around a cup. I used red because we didn't have white, but white is more traditional. I must say, the red added a delightful flavor. My fifteen-year-old, who normally detests the aroma of wine, said, "Gee, that smells really good." The dominant flavors--wine, garlic, oregano, parsley--are what got him.
Let the pot boil, covered, for a good 25 minutes or more--stir occasionally. When the meat is easy to cut and not pink inside, everything's done. Enjoy!
The basic rule: a ton of garlic and the very best olive oil. Easy for me, since I'm in Italy. Details:
For a hungry family of five: about nine chicken thighs or breasts. WITH the bones
At least two cloves of garlic
At least one shallot
Pack of very fresh mushrooms
Two packs of baby tomatoes, one red and one yellow. But feel free to substitute. You could use peppers or zucchini or both.
A massive bunch of fresh, washed, chopped parsley. But you could substitute fresh rosemary (and if you do, use less. A little rosemary goes a long way).
The juice of one lemon
Salt, pepper, oregano
Dry white wine, one cup, or red
Potatoes (I'll get to their preparation)
(1) Put around half a cup of extra-virgin Dante Olive oil in the bottom of a very large pot. (In the supermarket I asked a couple of gigantic Italian women whether they spoke English and got the answer I always get around here: "leetle beet." What was the best olive oil? Their eyes lit up and they said, "il migliore," and I knew they understood. They pointed to the Dante and I must say, that stuff is so flavorful I could almost drink it out of the bottle).
(2) While the olive oil is heating, salt and pepper the chicken. Drop it into the pot. The oil should be hot--you should hear a sizzle. Stir and turn the chicken every few minutes, letting it sizzle on high heat for around ten minutes. Cover.
(3) Meanwhile, yell at your teenagers to chop that garlic and shallot. Add these. (The garlic, not the teenagers, although by this time you'll feel like adding the teenagers). Add chopped, fresh, parsley--loads of it. A bunch the size of a small child's head.
(4) Wash and add the tomatoes--stirring--and the mushrooms--same. Realize you haven't added all the mushrooms. Do so, after rinsing and removing dirty parts of stems. Shake in the oregano, if you haven't already. Lots. Enough for a huge pizza. Squeeze in the lemon. Try to keep the seeds from entering the pot (you can strain through a small sieve)
(5) Meanwhile, you've also washed and boiled (do not peel, but do slice) some potatoes. When you can poke into the potatoes with a fork, drain them and add them to the pot with the chicken.
(6) Slosh in wine. Around a cup. I used red because we didn't have white, but white is more traditional. I must say, the red added a delightful flavor. My fifteen-year-old, who normally detests the aroma of wine, said, "Gee, that smells really good." The dominant flavors--wine, garlic, oregano, parsley--are what got him.
Let the pot boil, covered, for a good 25 minutes or more--stir occasionally. When the meat is easy to cut and not pink inside, everything's done. Enjoy!
Thursday, August 3, 2017
What Small Hotels in Rome Can Do to Attract German-American Families: Five Tips
We travel with children. We do laundry. I don't mind trotting around the corner to the laundromat, but the lack of folding dryer racks tends to be a problem. Most hotels have a little retractable string over the bathtub, adequate for drying two bras and a pair of underpants. We need more. Much more. We also need to get in touch with our teenagers. When the WiFi's down and the phone has a constant busy signal, we worry. And because we worry, and we constantly sight see, and we don't get as much sleep as we need, we want coffee. Perfect coffee. Coffee strong enough to walk on. Ground Illy beans, and more of them than go to make the average cup of coffee in this hotel. I have a feeling the powers that be think Americans like weaker coffee. But we like our coffee very strong indeed. So:
(1) Provide drying racks. Don't go blank in the face when asked.
(2) Keep that WiFi up
(3) Strengthen your coffee
(4) Gladly provide stamps along with the mail service. Don't tell me to trot round to the bar at the next corner. I want one less errand to run on my vacation.
(5) The Biggie: let us redeem VAT tax refunds at your hotel.
(1) Provide drying racks. Don't go blank in the face when asked.
(2) Keep that WiFi up
(3) Strengthen your coffee
(4) Gladly provide stamps along with the mail service. Don't tell me to trot round to the bar at the next corner. I want one less errand to run on my vacation.
(5) The Biggie: let us redeem VAT tax refunds at your hotel.
Visiting Vatical City: the Pope, Shoulders, and "Free the Knee!"
We barely made it to our papal audience--by the time we'd snaked through the long lines, fending off vendors of tours and rosaries, Francis was already lyricizing about baptism and hope on several Jumbotrons. If you stood on your chair you could still make him out in the distance, but not near enough to get any good images on your cell phone. We had been warned not to expose shoulders or legs, so as the mercury crept toward 104º F (40º C) we left our hotel in blue jeans, not shorts, and in long-sleeved cotton shirts. At Vatican City, we were herded into a large building, possibly Castel Gandolfo, where I observed plenty of women wearing shorts, mini-dresses and spaghetti straps. Many a bare shoulder sported herself at the Angelus. No Swiss guards tried to cover those shoulders, and it occurred to me, when I saw folkloric national costumes from all over South America and Africa, that many of these get-ups have an off-the-shoulder component, and the church does not want to turn away the faithful.
What
I hadn't expected, when nature called and I wanted to answer, was a
lack of toilets. Predictably, lines for women's rooms were longer, but a
total of eight toilets--missing toilet paper and soap--is hardly
enough. With all the Vatican's money, not much goes into the basic
amenities for women. Those monks I saw striding across Vatican square,
with their dark cowls and their lean and hungry looks, those priests in
their black cassocks and magenta cummerbunds, do they ever consider
such things?
I had to rip up the paper bag in which my postcards had been stashed to take care of business.
What had I expected? A bunch of guys who think that Mary was a virgin apparently can't imagine her needing to pee. Think again, guys. Adoration of Mary is not the same as respect for women. Or respect for Mary. If a woman's basic needs are not met, if she is only "adored," she's not happy.
Why would I imagine that a bunch of men in black robes who don't have sex and who don't believe the virgin birth involved the passage of a baby's head through the vagina would make sure there was enough toilet paper in the women's toilets? Incidentally, bodily functions seem to be something the Virgin Mary is not supposed to have. An orgasm during the annunciation? ("God had one, presumably," says one blogger, another adding, "Where do you think the expression, 'Oh, Gawwwd' comes from?")
Once we got to Saint Peter's, the dress code police got stricter. Women in shorts had to buy scarves from street vendors to conceal their shoulders. Or wrapped them around their thighs, since the signs required "respect."
Yes, they were turned away at the door without the scarves.
Since when do naked shoulders and thighs denote lack of respect? Oh, we know the answer to that one, having just seen the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Adam and Eve, tempted by a "snake"--really a pretty woman growing a snake out of her backside-- are getting kicked out of Eden by an angel with a flaming sword. By women came evil into the world! Well. If you'd call a little curiosity, a relaxed sense of the rules, which are made to be broken, and a healthy appetite "sin."
If the sight, smell, and consumption of that luscious fruit is sin, folks, bring sin on. Here's a gigantic breast, courtesy of Michaelanglo and with apologies to Instagram:
My daughter quipped, "Free the knee!" and pulled at her jeans. She flipped out both shoulders.
P.S. S.O.S. to Vatican: buy some toilet paper and build some toilets to put beside it. Plus soap dispensers, complete with soap. And how about towels? Or even hand dryers? One thing is for sure: the pope can afford to do this. Make it so!
 |
| The very-covered look |
I had to rip up the paper bag in which my postcards had been stashed to take care of business.
What had I expected? A bunch of guys who think that Mary was a virgin apparently can't imagine her needing to pee. Think again, guys. Adoration of Mary is not the same as respect for women. Or respect for Mary. If a woman's basic needs are not met, if she is only "adored," she's not happy.
Why would I imagine that a bunch of men in black robes who don't have sex and who don't believe the virgin birth involved the passage of a baby's head through the vagina would make sure there was enough toilet paper in the women's toilets? Incidentally, bodily functions seem to be something the Virgin Mary is not supposed to have. An orgasm during the annunciation? ("God had one, presumably," says one blogger, another adding, "Where do you think the expression, 'Oh, Gawwwd' comes from?")
Once we got to Saint Peter's, the dress code police got stricter. Women in shorts had to buy scarves from street vendors to conceal their shoulders. Or wrapped them around their thighs, since the signs required "respect."
Yes, they were turned away at the door without the scarves.
Since when do naked shoulders and thighs denote lack of respect? Oh, we know the answer to that one, having just seen the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Adam and Eve, tempted by a "snake"--really a pretty woman growing a snake out of her backside-- are getting kicked out of Eden by an angel with a flaming sword. By women came evil into the world! Well. If you'd call a little curiosity, a relaxed sense of the rules, which are made to be broken, and a healthy appetite "sin."
If the sight, smell, and consumption of that luscious fruit is sin, folks, bring sin on. Here's a gigantic breast, courtesy of Michaelanglo and with apologies to Instagram:
My daughter quipped, "Free the knee!" and pulled at her jeans. She flipped out both shoulders.
P.S. S.O.S. to Vatican: buy some toilet paper and build some toilets to put beside it. Plus soap dispensers, complete with soap. And how about towels? Or even hand dryers? One thing is for sure: the pope can afford to do this. Make it so!
Monday, July 31, 2017
The Critical Mom's Cauliflower Casserole
This is adapted from a German children's cookbook featuring Bugs Bunny. But the Bugs Bunny version has no garlic and no cauliflower. I prefer my version:
Ingredients:
One large head of cauliflower
About 250 grams noodles (rigatoni or spiral noodles)
About 5oo ml cauliflower-water, i.e. the water in which you've boiled the cauliflower
About 200 ml cream (more is fine)
About half a tablespoon of nutmeg
A pinch or two of cayenne pepper
A block of Parmesan cheese (enough for a family of five)
Butter--around 100 grams, total. More is okay.
Many cloves of garlic. Sixty, if you have the energy. But never mind. I only use one or two myself.
Five tablespoons of flour
PRE-HEAT oven to 200º Celsius (around 425º F)
(1) Boil noodles, drain and set aside in a colander. Lean toward al dente--they'll be baking too, and if you cook them for the "twenty minutes" the original recipe recommends, they'll disintegrate.
(2) Grease a largish pan with butter. Around fifty grams of butter.
(3) Cut apart a head of cauliflower. Boil, including the little crumbly bits, for about ten minutes or until you can easily poke a fork in.
(4) Put the noodles in the greased pan. With a slotted spoon or small sieve, airlift cauliflower from pot to pan, leaving water intact, with all the little bits of cauliflower that were so small they stayed in the pot when you lifted out the rest.
(5) Mix noodles and cauliflower around in pan.
(6) On a small cutting board, slice up your garlic. Thin slices, but it doesn't have to be diced. Put these in a small pot with at least fifty (but if you use more I'd jump for joy) grams of butter, and put on low heat. Gradually add, stirring constantly, the five tablespoons of flour, and add the nutmeg and cayenne pepper. NOW add 500 ml of the cauliflower water, and you can include all the little piece of cauliflower that didn't yet make it into the dish. Stir. Add the cream. Keep stirring at low heat until the mixture thickens. Pour over the noodles and cauliflower.
Grate the Parmesan and sprinkle over the noodle-cauliflower casserole. Bake for thirty-to-forty minutes. Enjoy with red wine. Or white.
Ingredients:
One large head of cauliflower
About 250 grams noodles (rigatoni or spiral noodles)
About 5oo ml cauliflower-water, i.e. the water in which you've boiled the cauliflower
About 200 ml cream (more is fine)
About half a tablespoon of nutmeg
A pinch or two of cayenne pepper
A block of Parmesan cheese (enough for a family of five)
Butter--around 100 grams, total. More is okay.
Many cloves of garlic. Sixty, if you have the energy. But never mind. I only use one or two myself.
Five tablespoons of flour
PRE-HEAT oven to 200º Celsius (around 425º F)
(1) Boil noodles, drain and set aside in a colander. Lean toward al dente--they'll be baking too, and if you cook them for the "twenty minutes" the original recipe recommends, they'll disintegrate.
(2) Grease a largish pan with butter. Around fifty grams of butter.
(3) Cut apart a head of cauliflower. Boil, including the little crumbly bits, for about ten minutes or until you can easily poke a fork in.
(4) Put the noodles in the greased pan. With a slotted spoon or small sieve, airlift cauliflower from pot to pan, leaving water intact, with all the little bits of cauliflower that were so small they stayed in the pot when you lifted out the rest.
(5) Mix noodles and cauliflower around in pan.
(6) On a small cutting board, slice up your garlic. Thin slices, but it doesn't have to be diced. Put these in a small pot with at least fifty (but if you use more I'd jump for joy) grams of butter, and put on low heat. Gradually add, stirring constantly, the five tablespoons of flour, and add the nutmeg and cayenne pepper. NOW add 500 ml of the cauliflower water, and you can include all the little piece of cauliflower that didn't yet make it into the dish. Stir. Add the cream. Keep stirring at low heat until the mixture thickens. Pour over the noodles and cauliflower.
Grate the Parmesan and sprinkle over the noodle-cauliflower casserole. Bake for thirty-to-forty minutes. Enjoy with red wine. Or white.
Friday, July 28, 2017
"Pop!" Goes the Palbociclib
I was thinking of getting off the clinical trial, gentle reader, because my white cell count spent a week hovering at the levels of a patient in the final stage of AIDS. During this hand-sanitizered time, when I went through gallons of the clear antiseptic fluid in the little plastic bottles, bottles that always got lost at the bottom of my purse, and when I put on rubber gloves when I had to pick up dishes my feverish child had eaten off of, I worried. Is taking this drug just good for the clinical trial or is it also good for me? Nobody knows, of course. That's why the clinical trial continues. If your white count rises, you get to go on a slightly lower dose of the medication. I went to the hospital twice to have blood drawn--sometimes they can't find a vein.
"What did you drink this morning?" asked the nurse.
"Coffee! With lots of hot milk," I said. She shook her head. I was supposed to drink water, lots of water, eight glasses of water.
"But then I'd have to pee all the time," I said, and she rolled her eyes.
The American hospitals seem to think you should always swallow your pills with "a full glass of water."
After my nightly glasses of red wine? And when I'm about to go to bed, hoping not to wake before four a.m. when I always have to pee? I don't think so.
The American hospitals say, "No Seville oranges." I don't know if the navel oranges I've been gobbling hail from Seville. They might actually come from Florida. But I stopped eating them until my white count climbed again. I've had to renounce grapefruit for the duration of the study. Also grapefruit juice. It's a good thing they didn't ask me to give up chocolate, red wine, or curry. They did, however, make me stop taking the pills while my white count remained in the toilet. When they called in with the first blood count, I could tell from the nurse's tone of voice that the news was going to be bad. Hesitant, shaky, doubtful: "Well, we hope that your count will go up," she said, but her unsaid warning seemed to be that if it did not, I'd be residing for the rest of my life in one of those huge plastic bubbles, like the boy in Paul Simon's eighties ballad:
I came in for the second blood test that week, and the nurse beamed and said, "I understand you are on a drug holiday?"
Now, she used the term perfectly correctly. It really does mean a required break, or a legitimate break, from a medication. But (1) I've only heard the term used by women who go off their antidepressants for a week so they can have orgasms with their boyfriends and (2) I can't help picturing a "drug holiday" as mainlining heroin or something equally evil.
My white blood cell count climbed again, so my "drug holiday" ended. Of course I don't have anything like a normal count. Just better than bad. I continue to use enough hand sanitizer to send the stocks of various companies soaring. (Check this out: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/health/washing-hands.html) And I pop a smaller pill, one with only 100 mg, down from 125 mg. The twenty percent chance of cancer returning is still supposed to be diminished, even with the smaller dosage. But oh, ye Pfizer gods, what exposures to which ailments occur when you're inhibiting cancer cells while inadvertently lowering white counts?
I've had four different answers to this question so far, none of them satisfactory. Weigh in, pharma, big and small, weigh in.
"What did you drink this morning?" asked the nurse.
"Coffee! With lots of hot milk," I said. She shook her head. I was supposed to drink water, lots of water, eight glasses of water.
"But then I'd have to pee all the time," I said, and she rolled her eyes.
The American hospitals seem to think you should always swallow your pills with "a full glass of water."
After my nightly glasses of red wine? And when I'm about to go to bed, hoping not to wake before four a.m. when I always have to pee? I don't think so.
The American hospitals say, "No Seville oranges." I don't know if the navel oranges I've been gobbling hail from Seville. They might actually come from Florida. But I stopped eating them until my white count climbed again. I've had to renounce grapefruit for the duration of the study. Also grapefruit juice. It's a good thing they didn't ask me to give up chocolate, red wine, or curry. They did, however, make me stop taking the pills while my white count remained in the toilet. When they called in with the first blood count, I could tell from the nurse's tone of voice that the news was going to be bad. Hesitant, shaky, doubtful: "Well, we hope that your count will go up," she said, but her unsaid warning seemed to be that if it did not, I'd be residing for the rest of my life in one of those huge plastic bubbles, like the boy in Paul Simon's eighties ballad:
Now, she used the term perfectly correctly. It really does mean a required break, or a legitimate break, from a medication. But (1) I've only heard the term used by women who go off their antidepressants for a week so they can have orgasms with their boyfriends and (2) I can't help picturing a "drug holiday" as mainlining heroin or something equally evil.
My white blood cell count climbed again, so my "drug holiday" ended. Of course I don't have anything like a normal count. Just better than bad. I continue to use enough hand sanitizer to send the stocks of various companies soaring. (Check this out: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/health/washing-hands.html) And I pop a smaller pill, one with only 100 mg, down from 125 mg. The twenty percent chance of cancer returning is still supposed to be diminished, even with the smaller dosage. But oh, ye Pfizer gods, what exposures to which ailments occur when you're inhibiting cancer cells while inadvertently lowering white counts?
I've had four different answers to this question so far, none of them satisfactory. Weigh in, pharma, big and small, weigh in.
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