Week of July 21st

Thank Heavens the Heat Wave has broken. That means we can turn on the oven!

Alvin and Kate G. came over today for impromptu lunch. I decided to see how fast I could make my strawberry cake. The answer is about 40 minutes to get to the point where you can assemble in front of guests.

 

Meanwhile, I recently bought La Tartine Gourmande cookbook. I was kind of intimidated by it actually. It reminded me a lot of the Anthropologie catalog, all shabby chic eclectic french food with a splash of exotic. I can never pull off anything from Anthropologie I always feel like displaced mental patient from the 40's when I try on their clothes but I do like looking at the pictures. So it was with some hesitation that I put my toe into La Tartine Gourmande.

I tried the red lentil and carrot soup. It is crack I tell you crack. It's awesome and simple (pics above), I'll definitely try more from the book, I was thinking of returning it but more recipes like this one and we may have a home run.

 

Meanwhile we also made scones from the King Arthur Flour Co. (Thanks Jen C!). I don't have a picture of the finished scones cause they too are also crack.

 

With the break in the heat Ger and I took Matt to the Wissahickon to try out his bike.  Can you believe Matt actually WORE HIS HELMET!!!!????!!!!

Book Review

Boomsday by Christopher Buckley

When the greatest political satirist of our time (Christopher Buckley) decided to take on the most controversial political subject in our time (Social Security) by writing a modern take of the greatest satire of all time (Swift’s “A Modest Proposal), well, let’s just say: You knew I had to hit that.

Buckley’s heroine, Cassandra, is a Gen-Xer screwed in only a way a Gen-Xer could be screwed. Unlike most Gen-Xers, Cassandra finds her way onto the political periphery and decides to do something about it. She wants to introduce a bill that entices senior citizens to kill themselves in return for tax breaks. She calls her idea, “voluntary transitioning”. Without giving away the plot, she finds an unlikely champion in Jepperson, the junior senator from Mass. Her boss, Terry Tucker, a PR executive, rounds out the top characters.

Buckley’s genius is for characterizing the evil quasi-intellectual bubble that upper class office workers in major east coast cities live in. He’s got the jaded voice of the Washington insider down pat. Buckley’s other genius is his sensitivity to class and regional distinctions. The southern preacher and the New England heir each have their own voice and mannerisms that rings very true.  Cassandra’s dad as a California silicon-valley type was hysterical. However, I thought the book was a bit harsh on the Gen-Xers. Cassandra is the only character who isn’t a boomer, the rest he paints as a mob particularly prone to violence (which may or may not be fair).

But the book is less a contrast of generational attitudes and more a study in how politics work (or rather don’t work). Left unsaid is that despite all the money, effort and work the main characters put into getting their particular cause made into a reality, nothing really happens. The characters are changed, but the reality is not. There is a pessimism and fatalism that permeate the book.  I wonder if Buckley wrote this in intentionally, since this is a book about Social Security and Washington after all. Boomsday was amusing enough, and I’m normally a fan of Buckley, but this satire only rates a “neutral”. When you decide to re-invent perfection (Swift’s “A Modest Proposal), you are almost dooming yourself to fall a bit short.

June into July 2012

I’m behind on the postings –time to clean out the digital camera.

Another shot from the original building in Pennsylvania Hospital. I had posted about this hospital, first in the US previously.



Better view of the tile, with an antique colonial error fire pump. The door leads to the CMO’s office.
Just wanted to jot down a few thoughts on something that came up recently while a Pennsy. Apparently researchers have had a hard time lately because HIPPA rules never expire. So health records of the early colonists are still under HIPPA privacy protection. There is a bill underway to have HIPPA expire in 100 years, but it’s not being pushed by researchers – it’s being pushed by genealogists. Apparently all those people hunting down their family tree also want to know the medical records of their great great great great great grandfathers. This has huge long term implications obviously. Apparently in 100 years – people WILL care.
Meanwhile, Mid-Late June Ger and I were able to take quick weekend trip to NY. We met Anna for some hanging in the east village.

Anna @ Rice to Riches. Packed on a late Saturday night.
The class I was taking was Edward Tufte’s visualizing information. The class was in his art studio.

He had a lot of large scale sculptures, like this giant fish. His studio was in chelsea, I was kind of shocked by how clean and posh Chelsea was.


Not all the grit ball when I took classes at FIT in high school.


I grabbed a quick lunch at a place recommended by Gwyneth Paltrow’s NY guide. We only had a short break for lunch and it was right up the block.  A bit pricey, but tasty and I didn't want to miss a second of the class.


The big event though was Ger’s graduation from residency. Here we are at the graduation dinner hosted at the Mutter museum.

2012 Temple Residency Class…


I will miss the Gerry-Adam-Justin show.



The following weekend we went to the Trager’s for July 4th BBQ. It was a real American affair…

Here’s the punch line folks – they are 1/2 Canadian!

Meanwhile in the heat wave Ger set up the sprinkler. Matt enjoyed running though it. We didn’t think he would, but he did.

Today we decided to hide from the humidity by going to the Franklin Institute. For the first time, we took Matt in to see the planet show. He already knows his planets and was riveted by the show, though he seemed very skeptical when they starting talking about the moons around Saturn and Neptune.  I saw the same look on his face when we introduced new Thomas the Tank Engine characters. Overall though it was a nice (refreshing) time.

Book Review

Chesapeake by James A. Michener

Michener is famous for his sweeping novels that take a single location and follows the families that make their lives in an area through generations. I decided to tackle the book, because I wanted a better understanding of this part of the country we are now in. Philadelphia is an east coast, mid-Atlantic city, but it looks to the south as much as it looks to the north. Delaware and Maryland are close by, the Chesapeake and the factors that have shaped it were also at play in Philadelphia. You feel those forces here in a way you really don’t in New York, and I wanted to learn more about them.

After reading this book my first thought was “wow, it’s a miracle this place is not more screwed up.”

Chesapeake follows a section of Maryland beach, near Virginia, from the peaceful Indians that inhabit it, through the English that first “colonize” the land for England (the Steed Family), the Quakers who come to find religious freedom (the Paxmores) and  the lower class English looking to escape a hopeless fate (the Turlocks). Towards the latter half of the book, the final main family to complete the cast is introduced, the Cater family, descended from freed slaves.

There were two main themes that ran throughout the story. I was struck by the cruelty and inhumanity suffered by the Native Americans and the Cater family. I was also struck by how ill-prepared the colonists were; it was a miracle they survived at all.

On the first point, slavery, as a subject, has always been a footnote to a larger story in my reading history. I’m ashamed to admit that other than Oroonoko by A. Behn , I’m not sure I’ve read a full length work where slavery was the main subject. This will be rectified. The descriptions of the Cater family’s entrance to the novel, from being kidnapped in Africa and forcibly marched, chained in a ship and subsequent events (I don’t want to ruin the plot) almost made me throw up. It’s one thing to learn the route facts of the trade in history class; it’s another thing to imagine the experience for yourself. I won’t ruin the plot, but certainly reading the events through a perspective of a family carries a much bigger impact. I was deeply moved.

Equally projectile-vomit inducing is the fate of the peaceful Indians who were the original inhabitants. The only word to describe their fate is genocide. Here Michener points out the effects of English culture vs. Spanish culture. The English colonizers would hold out for white women from England to ship over to get married. It was not considered acceptable for Spanish women to be shipped to the new world, so the Spanish colonizers often took Indians as wives.  Make no mistake, the Native Americans did not fare well no matter who they met, but this difference carries some implications for how a culture develops.

Michener isn’t just about plot and character building, he’s also about facts. From ship building to tobacco growing, he’s going to teach you about the subjects his character’s lives depend on. It’s here where I was surprised at just how little the colonists knew in general made. They even needed instructions shipped from England on how to get salt from sea-water in mass. That they managed to survive at all has much more to do with luck then anything.

In addition to reading more about slavery, I’ll also be reading more about the Quakers. But it’s not until the end of the book that you realize that this book is really about one major character all along – the environment.  “Few places on earth compared in physical beauty and spiritual ease with the Chesapeake,” he writes. I would agree (though there are some who feel mountains trump all). The land that has sustained countless generations of Indians is irrevocably ruined in a mere 300 years or so. Filling in the swamp with concrete takes away the birds feeding grounds. (The first person perspective of the birds suddenly losing their feeding grounds is heartbreaking.) Everyone throwing their food garbage into their garbage disposal creates sewage slime that helps decimate the shell fish when a large storm comes along. It takes years to recover and never fully does. Farming practices ruin the soil. It’s almost as if Michener hooked you along with his characters all along to build up to one big smack upside the head to wake his readers from the “supine acceptance of despoliation”. You can almost feel the anger from the author in these last chapters.

Michener is long on word count but it’s worth it for the gems. Regarding the early colonies, some early settlers choose Maryland “because Maryland was almost as deplorable as Massachusetts” (that made me laugh). One heroine’s philosophy is “Ugly or not, I’ll be the best person I can” (a completely loveable sentiment). At its best the novel highlights the forces that shaped East Coast American a “challenge of different ideas expressed in different languages by men reared in different traditions.” At a bare minimum, hey it’s got pirates. Recommended.