The Magi

The idea that, over the years, one slowly grows wise isn’t widely accepted in our culture. Walk the corridors of your local nursing home, and you too may reject the notion. Clothe a modern Socrates in a urine-soaked diaper and stick him in front of daytime television, and folks won’t ask him for advice.

 Still I always liked the idea that, no matter what I’m losing in vigor, I’m gaining in accumulated knowledge and the ability to make use of it. So now, in bleak December toward the end of a nasty respiratory illness and fresh from the first indignities of an outrageously expensive root canal, I contemplate the strengths I may be expected to bring to the table. 

I suspect not even the Chinese, who are very big on the wisdom of the elderly, can claim that every person whose skin is wrinkled and whose hair is white lets fall from his lips the philosophy of a sage.   

It seems to me the deterrent to growing wise isn’t stupidity, but the sin of sloth. When you’re twenty you read a few books, listen to some lectures, talk to your friends, and decide you’ve got just about everything figured out.  How easy it is to sail through your senior year and decide your education is complete.  You have your ideas, your tastes, your learning, and you stride fourth into the world looking down at lesser mortals. 

It may get you through your first round of job interviews, but if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice there’s a wider array of points of view than you considered.  There are more lifestyles from which to choose, and a mountain of unread books you’d best get started on. 

After giving up thinking how smart you are, you may find you have other traits that are a bit self-centered.  There are illusions to be given up, fears to be faced, and something called humility that wouldn’t do you any harm.  It seems like an enormous job of work, and you’re right; it is.

This is the moment when the sin of sloth is so tempting.  How delightful it is to know it all, and how uncomfortable the idea that improvements have to be made!  So you choose. Either you cling to your knowledge, your ideas, and your self-image, or you’re dissatisfied with the person you are. 

This is the moment when wisdom is needed, and either you have it or you don’t.  If you choose the path of change, the job is never done. You may come to a point when it seems you’ve altered enough, but life has a way of presenting new challenges.  Maybe it’s a job, or a marriage, or the birth of a child. 

The need for flexibility never ends, but it gets easier with practice.  You develop a taste for it.  It no longer is it enough to take the same vacation every year; you want to see the world.  You look over the menu for foods you never tasted before. 

As you grow older you’re required to let things go.  Doing eighty on the Interstate becomes a bad idea, and so eventually will driving at night.  Climbing mountains is just a memory. 

When does wisdom arrive?  In a sense you have to have it most of your life.  Your first decision not to rest on your laurels required it.  So did the choice to forego the authority of fatherhood, and pay attention to the needs of a child. 

But if you’re asking when wisdom is simply there and you possess it, the answer is don't hold your breath.  The Magi of the Bible – the Wise Men – weren’t  know-it-alls, they were seekers.  They didn’t sit on their thrones and bask in admiration for their wisdom; they followed a star on an arduous journey and lay down their gifts in ambiguous circumstances to further an end they couldn’t see. They made the decision to set out. This is what it means to be wise.

Excuse for Drinking #731

According to eternal inflation and string theory, there may be multiple universes with different properties only a few of which are capable of sustaining life. Even in those that do, it could take millions of solar systems to produce a planet where living creatures would actually evolve.  Only a small percentage of life-bearing planets may be expected to produce civilizations, and among these far-flung and disparate worlds, ours is possibly the single one to have developed Champagne.  It therefore behooves us during this holiday season to pop a cork and lift a glass.  In the vast cosmos opportunities for joy are rare and shouldn’t be missed.

Black Friday

In the days of our youth we could do our Christmas Shopping in downtown Plymouth.  This is not to say a trip to Boston wasn’t a highlight of the Christmas season, but we really didn’t need to go to Filene’s or Jordan Marsh because there was a wonderful selection of merchandise set out on Main Street.  The prices were firm, at least until the January sales.  Looking back I realize how nice that was.

 Black Friday is nearly upon us, and it’s not a comforting thought.  Thanksgiving is a busy day at our house. If we’re satisfied that the food was tasty, everyone had a good time, the dishes are washed, and the leftovers stored, we fall into bed contented and ready for a rest.  We’re not likely to haul out at two in the morning to get a deal on a Disney princess. 

But if I pay more than someone else, I’ll feel like I’ve been taken.  If they can sell something at a discount in the middle of the night, why can’t they sell it to me for the same price at a civilized hour? I consider Christmas shopping a necessary evil.  The important thing is to choose a gift that will bring delight.  That’s hard enough without worrying that later on the store will hold a one-day sale and offer the same item to someone else for 30% off.  

If they do I could find the sales slip, return the merchandise, and buy it back for the discount, but that would require a second trip to the store.  I could wait in line at the returns counter, and maybe – just maybe – there wouldn’t be a technicality that made the whole rigmarole a waste of time.

I plan to pass up the Black Friday door- busters.  I don’t want to turn up in a news item about the fogy who got trampled because he stopped to look at cookware in an aisle that led to the electronics counter.  I’ll consider that those bargain-crazed sprinters earned their discounts with the sweat of their brows.  The thought will help assuage my guilt for having paid too much.

Fish Chowder

My fish stock came in handy the Saturday before Thanksgiving when the grandchildren came to see the Plymoth Thanksgiving Parade.  I chopped the onion and peeled the potato, Annette put the chowder together, and my daughter Becky heated it up and added the cream. 

Skyfall

“Skyfall” starts out like any other James Bond film with the secret agent battling a bad guy on top of a train.  We settle back and get ready for the fun.  But the mood shifts – not just in the picture, but in the series.  Bond is wounded and presumed dead.  We know, of course, he isn’t really dead because, even with a senior discount, the tickets were a little costly, and they’re not going to get us to vacate our seats ten minutes in.  Our hero reappears with a drug and alcohol problem that gives him the shakes so every time he shoots at something, he misses. We fogies are not surprised.  We learned long ago that which does not kill you is liable to make you weaker. 

It gets worse.  Bond is in handcuffs, and the bad guy opens his shirt and begins caressing the super spy’s manly torso.  He makes a lewd suggestion, implying that Bond is in for a new experience.  James replies, “What makes you think this is my first time?” 

Huh?

Sean Connery’s Bond in “Goldfinger” converted Honor Blackman’s Pussy Galore to the side of the good with a roll in the hay.  The tradition of the Bond girl started with Ursula Andress in “Dr. No.” When Connery removed a sea urchin spine from her foot using his teeth, that was kinky enough for 1962. Bond picked up women everywhere and ended up with one as the picture closed.  He’d turn off the homing beacon on the life raft and drift away into the vast ocean and the movie-goer’s imagination. 

Fantasy was the main attraction.  Bond could identify a Faberge egg at a glance, but you never saw him in a museum or a library. He executed impossible shots, but never frequented the firing range.  He had sex without complications.  When he was finished with the women, they disappeared, and casting began for the next picture. 

The old Bond movies were comedies.  The villains he conquered were larger than life.  It may have occurred to you as it did to me that the undersea or island hideouts would have been pretty easy to find, having required engineers, contractors, shipments of building materials and huge labor forces.  No one ever explained how a functioning orbital rocket was conveyed into an underground lair without anyone knowing about it.  You chuckled at Bond girl’s names such as Dr. Holly Goodhead, and when your hero dispatched a bad guy, he always had a quip. 

James Bond was a man without a past, and “Skyfall” changes that.  You realize that, if he can shoot and miss, the old rules don’t apply.  Although Bond is English, the movies are American, and maybe we were a little cockier in 1962, less than twenty years after World War II when we were still getting used to being a superpower.  Now we feel older and a little shaky.

But perhaps that’s too psychological.  It may be that all the super villains have been done.  Nuclear devices with digital countdowns are passé. We were getting a little tired of them, and Austin Powers dealt the final blow.  Bond had to change. 

The critics are divided.  Some are nostalgic for the old hero, and others say this is the best Bond film yet.  I’ll still watch a James Bond marathon on TV, but I liked the new movie.  As a fogy I still find James Bond a fantasy figure.  Even though he is diminished, I like to see him fighting hard and doing pretty well.

Stocking Up

The Jews, the schools, and the auto companies all have the right idea.  The year begins in the fall.  The cooling of the weather puts you in the mood to restart your life.  Naturally I’m making resolutions.  One is that I’ll keep the freezer and refrigerator full of material for good homemade soups.

I made a batch of chicken broth.  Old cooks say that you can’t make chicken soup properly without the feet so when I’m near a Chinese market I buy a pound of them to keep on hand, but my supply was a little outdated, and a freezer burned chicken foot is not a pretty thing.  I omitted them in this latest batch. I got two family packs of drumsticks on sale and put them in a tall pot with parsley, celery, onion (including the skin for color) carrot, and peppercorns.  I added no salt; it can be put in later if needed. Why you have to pay extra for salt-free chicken broth in the store, I couldn’t say. 

I simmered the stock slowly for about six hours, occasionally taking off the gray scum  that rises to the top.  Then I cooled the stock in the refrigerator.  When it was cold, I skimmed the fat from it and froze it in two-cup portions in Zip-Lock bags.  I recommend the name brand product for this because the store brand bags tend to leak.  Remember to label and date the bags before you start filling them. 

Chicken stock is a useful ingredient to have on hand.  With it you can make a soup out of almost anything, and it will have that long simmered flavor.  You can use it in sauces, casseroles, and stir fries.  I make beef stock as well, but chicken is more versatile.  Stocks you make yourself are better and cheaper than those you buy in the supermarket.

Today I made fish stock. This used to be easier because all fish markets cut their own fish, and you had only to get there early in the morning before they threw away the bones.  Now you have to order them, and they’re no longer free, but this morning I found myself in Brant Rock having breakfast at my favorite restaurant, Arthur and Pats.  I popped over to Brant Rock Fish Market because its owner, Henry Dunbar, still cuts his fish.

My fish stock recipe is based on that of Jasper White.  I admire him as a chef, and have never gone wrong with his cookbooks, but I started breaking the rules while I was still in Brant Rock.  I got two cod frames, or racks as Dunbar calls them.  White says cod makes an inferior stock, but he uses his stock for delicate sauces that might be overpowered by the stronger flavor of cod.  I use mine mostly for chowder, and I want the heartier taste. 

White tells you to trim off all the skin, but the same old time housewife who insists on using chicken feet says you can’t make good chowder without the head so I put it in the pot.  After that I followed the recipe pretty closely. 

I cut up a leek, an onion, two peeled carrots, and three stalks of celery.  I melted two tablespoons of butter in the bottom of my stock pot and sweated the vegetables along with some parsley.  I think White calls for six parsley stems, but I like parsley so I tore a handful off the bunch and threw it in the pot.  I’m a little bit haute cuisine and a little bit rock and roll.

I also used more fresh thyme than he called for on the theory that all this flavorful cod can stand up to more herbs than flounder.  I’m not going for nuance, I want bold flavor.  I tossed in two bay leaves and a handful of peppercorns.

When you sweat vegetables and herbs you don’t sauté them.  You turn the heat down and let them loll around in the melted butter over low heat until they give up some of their flavor.  One rack weighed three pounds, which was the amount the recipe called for.  I cut it into small pieces and put it in with a cup of white wine. 

Will my chowder have the flavor of wine?  Not really, and you can leave it out and use water.  I had a bottle of vermouth in the refrigerator. It makes a great cooking wine and is handy when you’re in the mood for a martini.

This wine settled down among the sweaty vegetables and made a fragrant steam that gently cooked the fish.  After a few minutes I covered the fish bones with water and brought it to a boil. I skimmed the surface and then turned it down to a simmer.  You can simmer chicken stock all day, but ten minutes is all White recommends for fish stock, and that’s what I gave it.  Then you let it sit for ten minutes more.  Don’t walk away and read a book during this operation.  Big flavor is great, but it can be overdone. 

We poured the stock through a fine strainer.  I say “we” because it’s a good idea to have a helper hold the strainer while you wrestle with the heavy pot.  The bowl of stock went into the refrigerator to cool before freezing.  For some reason, Annette prefers plastic freezer containers over bags for fish stock.

The nights are getting colder, but I’m ready to warm body and soul on dark winter evenings.  Annette will use the stock to simmer a haddock or cod fillet cut into chunks, adding potatoes, onions, salt pork and whatever else her recipe calls for. She adds milk at the last minute. A grind of pepper, a sprinkle of fresh thyme leaves, and a pat of melting butter, and I won’t wish it was summer -- at least not as much.  

Sunset with Windmills

 

Night falls over Plymouth Harbor as windmills turn slowly in the evening breeze.

The Windmills of Your Mind

In those first days when every chimney sprouted a television antenna, people thought the gray aluminum appendages were discordant notes in otherwise pleasant architecture. My grandmother remarked that folks complained about telephone poles when they were new on the scene.  If you think about it, telephone poles are unbeautiful. We’re so used to them we’ve learned to look at the landscape as though they weren’t there.  

Now it’s windmills.  They’re large, sometimes huge, and pretty hard to ignore.  There’s one in Plymouth that stands before the graceful line of the Pine Hills, and it’s not getting good reviews.   I wonder if the Dutch, or for that matter the Cape Codders, ever  thought those early windmills with the canvas sails were a blot on the countryside.  They were necessary and designed for function rather than esthetics.  Perhaps they got in the way of the view. 

I’m taking what may be a minority stand on windmills.  They remind me of modern sculptures moving slowly and gracefully.  I like to think of power coming from the wind, which is going to blow anyway.  I’m pro windmill.

Antique windmills are a popular motif in oil paintings and those that have survived are admired by sightseers.  The tall, fan-like windmills that pump water on the Great Plains are symbolic of rural America and have become the subject of knickknacks sold in gift shops.  Perhaps today’s giant windmills will be thought picturesque, but they’ll have to become scarce first.

We can imagine an era when another power source displaces wind, and the controversial behemoths are one by one dismantled and sold for scrap.  As their number dwindles there’ll be committees of citizens who want to preserve those that are left.  Like lighthouses they’ll be seen as quaint.  Tourists will admire them for their sleek functionality.  Cameras will snap, or whatever cameras do in that future time.

Progress

He was a figure of fun as fogies often are.  From boyhood he’d learned his skills – how to put on the harness and hitch up the horse, how to doctor it when it was ailing, how to attach the feed bag.  The automobile required a different routine.  You had to choke it, crank it, throttle it, shift it, and break it.  You had to adjust the spark.  His hands knew how to slap, tug, and twitch the horse’s reins, but the steering wheel was something entirely new. 

Accessories for the horse and wagon included saddle soap to make the leather subtle, barn cats to keep rats and mice out of the oats, and a pick to pry foreign matter out of the hooves.  A curry comb kept the animal looking spiffy, and of course from time to time it had to be shoed. 

He might call the car Dolly or Nell, but he couldn’t stroke its warm velvety nose or bring it a knobby apple from the barnyard tree.  The iron tires of the wagon didn’t get a puncture and have to be changed on a wet day.  With an automobile you had to check the water in the radiator and the oil in the crankcase, the gas in the tank, and the car didn’t know the way home from the tavern late at night. 

On the other hand it was faster.  You didn’t have to feed and water it or muck out its stall on days you weren’t using it.  It wouldn’t spook at a windblown sheet of newspaper.  If the car was wrecked, it might have to be towed away, but it didn’t need to be humanely shot. 

The automobile was what our great grandfathers called progress.  It’s a word you don’t hear much these days, although technology forges ahead.  I’m thinking these thoughts because I have a new computer, and my old version of Word won’t work with Windows 7.  My mouse used to go smoothly to the button I wanted, but for now I have to search the cluttered tool bar.  I feel awkward and unskilled.

When I got my first computer with Windows I mourned my small, but hard won collection of DOS commands that had been made obsolete by drag-and-drop.  I don’t miss them now.  On the day I got this new computer I learned that there’s already Windows 8, but 7 will do.  When it has to be replaced I’ll regret having to adapt all over again. 

Mental challenges keep the old synapses firing and provide exercise for the brain. Naturally we resist.  Fogiedom is often about letting go, but it also requires accepting the new.  We grumble, but we soldier on.

Rainbow

As I drove to Vermont dark rain splashed upward from the pavement, streamed from passing trucks, and made driving an anxious chore.  I could detect the presence of fall foliage, ghostly in the gray dimness, but I concentrated on the traffic made semi-visible with each wiper stroke across the windshield. Forecasters predicted fine weather for the day we were to return, but we awoke to noise of downpour. Scrubbing plans to wend southward on country roads, we grimly hit the Interstate.

As we went along there were intervals between the showers, and flashes of sun ruined my right to grumble that we hadn’t seen it for the entire time. Mostly it rained.  But then we passed a valley veiled in mist and drizzle, but brilliant with sunlit autumn color and arched by a rainbow. I contemplated this splendor for a one-second glance to my right as I held my lane at sixty-five miles an hour.  There was a rest area coming up, and I pulled in, hoping for another look, but it was surrounded by dripping forest and afforded no view.

But the moment was enough.  Time is a peculiar dimension.  We all know it flies when we’re having fun, and drags when we’re faced with a wearisome chore, but in this case the fleeting glimpse stayed in my mind as though I’d wandered for days through an enchanted vale.  In fact it’s surprising how soon we become bored and turn away from the most spectacular vista. Beauty starved, I took the vision in, and it is with me now.  It’s good for fogies to remember that quality of life is as important as the duration thereof.

The Rye Tavern

By Richmond Talbot

The September sunshine on the meadow was descending into beautiful twilight.  The setting, which had been rural in my youth, has been grudgingly set aside by developers and is surrounded by golf courses and condos. Even the dusty road had been preserved like an artifact in a museum.

The hostess at the Rye Tavern inquired whether I would like to eat indoors or dine al fresco.  It was a decision I was certain to get wrong.  The air conditioning inside the historic eatery, a godsend perhaps on sultry nights, gave the place a dank atmosphere evoking dripping stalactites and fluttering bats. I made my doomed choice, and Annette and I were seated on the patio.  The gentle breeze that fluttered our menus foreshadowed a night wind.  I was comfortable in a suit jacket and tie, but Annette was cold, and we moved inside.

When reviewing Stone Soup, the restaurant that previously occupied the space, I wrote, “You may notice a slight ripple in the space-time continuum when a server moves from (the modern kitchen) into the dining room, which has wide floorboards, hewn beams, a tin ceiling, and a fireplace.”  Changes have been made.  The kitchen is no longer so plainly in view, but behind a bar a huge TV displayed a golf game so despite the surrounding shrubbery the true atmosphere of The Pine Hills prevailed.

As the restaurant filled, the warmth of humanity displaced the chill, but the sound of voices became defining.  Women exhilarated by cocktails and wine squealed with laughter, and assertive men raised their voices to be heard over the din. Relaxed dining and civilized conversation were impossible.

As for the meal, my martini was perfect and the service was excellent. I began with clam chowder, which turned out to be a base of cream and potatoes topped with fragments of fried clams.  It was better than it sounds, but it won’t replace the traditional version on chilly nights.  My pork chop was done exactly as I had requested.  This is something achieved these days in only the better restaurants, and I offer my compliments to whoever cooked it.  The topping of pepper jelly isn’t something I’ll imitate at home, but it did no harm.

You may find this report a bit scanty but I’m basing it on one visit.  I think you’ll find the food innovative and good.  The atmosphere is such that we skipped dessert, and won’t be back.  I recommend thick carpets and heavy drapes to deaden the sound.  My daughter the museum curator will skin me if she reads this, but they might even replace the vintage ceiling with acoustical tile.  I’m with Aesop who wrote, “A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.”

Working the Phones

By Richmond Talbot

My father, who passed away last week at the age of 97, taught me to mow tall grass with a scythe. You don’t swing it with your arms; you hold the blade at the proper height and twist from the waist with a smooth, easy motion.  You conserve energy because the tool was perfected before the invention of the mowing machine, and a man might have to use it all day.

Someone taught my father the skill, and he passed it on to me as something I should not grow to manhood without. I’m thinking of this because today I had to program a new telephone.  Being a fogey I didn’t find it easy, but I read the instructions carefully and set out early in the morning when I was rested and calm.

I’d done this before, but telephones are not the durable instruments they were in the days when I learned to mow.  You lifted the receiver, and the operator said, “Number please.”  You told her the number, and she got it for you.  When the dial system came in, my grandmother read the instructions.  They didn’t make a lot of sense, and when she wanted to make a call she walked over to my house. I went back with her and dialed the number, and she paid me a dime.  I offered to teach her the technique, but she felt it was beyond her abilities.  She made a superb apple pie but dialing was not for her.

What she lacked was confidence, and I tried to be confident when I programmed the phone.  The instructions were sketchy.  There was something about telling the phone your area code so it could recognize local calls. I thought that might be a good thing, but when I put down the booklet I lost the place and decided it wasn’t necessary.

I entered the date and time.  I’m good at that.  Even my camera knows the date and time.  I made what the booklet called an announcement telling people that I was out and they could leave a message.  I had to press 5 to indicate the announcement was complete.  I had to check the booklet because I couldn’t remember what number to use, and there was too long a pause before the beep.

OK, I could delete the announcement and leave another.  The second time there was an audible intake of breath before the announcement, and I sounded anxious and tired, which by then I was.  Someday I’ll leave another message that sounds jaunty and casual, but for now this one works just fine.

Besides recognizing calls from my area code, there are a lot of things my new phone can do that I haven’t taken advantage of.  It can remember numbers I often call and dial them when I select them from a list.  My oldest grandchild is six and a little shaky in her spelling so it’s too soon for her to program it for me, but there’s hope for the years ahead.  For now I’ll do things the old fashioned way.

I thought I’d get the car washed so it wouldn’t disgrace me in my father’s funeral procession.  The gas pump offered me a discount if I had the car washed, and I told it I’d like that.  The screen at the car wash asked me for a code, which it turned out was on the receipt I got at the pump.  I was glad there was no impatient customer waiting behind me as I figured out what to do.

I seem to be spending more and more time communicating with machines, and each new encounter involves something to be learned.  I remember my grandmother and try to brace up.  I wonder what skills my grandchildren will need to learn when their hair is gray and fogiedom is upon them.

The scythe I used hangs upon a wall.  It is really a beautiful object, although a little frightening with its long curved blade.  I think it belonged to my great grandfather, although that is one of the many things I never asked my father when he was alive.  A few swipes with a sharpening stone and it might mow again, but actually it’s just a relic of the past as obsolete as a rotary phone.

An Advantage of Fogidom

We were headed for our home port of Vancouver, British Columbia.  There was an all night party in one of the ship's bars, and the cruise director boasted, "We're gonna rock it 'till we dock it. I'm a little old for that sort of thing, but I was up early and out on deck. 

The First Sentence

About a month ago I took my daily walk in Boston and ended up in my favorite used book store, where I admired a book with a beautiful red leather binding embossed with gold leaf. It was The Short Stories of Dorothy Parker. I had under my arm two books that I absolutely needed, and the price of $30 was more than I was willing to leave behind. I don't mean it was unfair; it was a tremendous bargain for so fine a volume. I am a fan of Dorothy Parker's poetry, but I had never read her prose, so I decided that I'd get it from the library instead.

The Plymouth library didn't have it, but I requested it on interlibrary loan. The other day I picked it up, and the librarian remarked that not many people these days know who Dorothy Parker is. The book is an old Modern Library edition and there is a Post-It inside the cover noting that it was received in Plymouth with a broken binding. I can't help comparing it with that red leather edition, which had the stiffness of a book that has been displayed, but never read. I don't mind the tattered condition. I come behind a long line of readers and I don't mind being in their company.

Just now I opened it. The first sentence of the first story reads; "The woman with the pink velvet poppies twined round the assisted gold of her hair traversed the crowded room at an interesting gate that combined a skip with a sidle, and clutched the lean arm of her host." I read it with enormous pleasure, as though I'm beginning a delightful journey with a friend.

Mother

Books I Must Read – Or Not.

I read about sixty or seventy books a year, a little better than one a week.  This includes heavy tomes of 1000+ pages and light whodunits that can be devoured on a rainy afternoon. For purposes of calculation let’s round the number off to sixty-five.  Now say I live to my father’s age of 97; that means I can read 65 x 26 =  1690  more books, not allowing for a slowing of my mental processes or carelessness crossing the street. 

It’s not enough, and it’s about time I made every book count.  Annette read War and Peace and thought it was wonderful. She said Tolstoy is the only author who can get her to enjoy a battle scene.  She thinks I’ll love it, but I haven’t started it yet. I haven’t finished The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In fact, I’ve only gotten through the first volume and have two more to go.  No fair calling each volume a book either. I’ve got to read to the last page or it doesn’t count.  Burton’s translation of The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night is also three volumes and I’m only on page 266 of volume I. 

I finished Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past – read the whole thing.  Looking back I have only vague impressions of the book.  Someone recommended that you race through it and then go back and savor it.  Does that mean it’s only half read?  There’s a new translation in print, available in seven volumes with a more literal rendering of the French title In Search of Lost Time. I could try that. 

Then there’s Ulysses.  I heard that one does not read Ulysses; one rereads it, so I read it twice. Maybe three times is the charm.  I’m settling for reading a page or two at random when I walk by it on the shelf. 

Nowadays everyone talks about rereading the books of your youth.  Perhaps I was too immature in high school to really appreciate David Copperfield and should go back and see what I missed.  Then there are the books I really loved.  I really should read John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row one more time before I die. 

There are a lot of books I need to get to if I’m to consider myself well-read.  I was looking at someone’s list of must-read books, and it was topped by the Bible.  I’ve read a lot of it, but I can’t check it off. There are parts of the Old Testament that do not call out to me from the shelf, and I’ve attempted “The Book of Revelation” a few times, but keep dropping out.

On the same list is Washington Square.  So far the only Henry James I’ve been able to enjoy was The Turn of the Screw, which isn’t as terrifying as “The Book of Revelation,” but is scary enough.  Am I now mature enough to appreciate Washington Square?  It remains to be seen. 

But, come to think of it, there isn’t going to be a test.  There’s not even going to be anyone to be impressed.  Casually mentioning at a cocktail party that you’re reading Sophocles doesn’t endear you to your fellow drinkers.  The book that has given me the most delight so far this year is Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin.  It’s actually a children’s book of 48 chapters, 278 pages with lovely illustrations in the Chinese manner.  My daughter gave it to me for Christmas knowing I’d love it.  I don’t know if it will become a classic, but like Alice in Wonderland, it will stand rereading many, many times.  There are still some mysteries and thrillers in the pile waiting to be read.

My conclusion is that junk food is tasty, but after eating it for a while you crave healthier fare. There is a time for french fries and a time for brown rice.  (I think that’s from “Ecclesiastes.”) I’m going to let my cravings be my guide.  The heck with being well read.

My Version

This adobe church is Motif #1 in Taos, New Mexico, and naturally I had to take a crack at it.  That was a long time ago, but I've been going over my old slides and fixing them on Photoshop.  I converted it to black and white, got rid of some dust spots on the Kodachrome.  Then I caused a distracting electric wire to vanish.  I'm not the first to notice the sculptural quality of this building, but here's my attempt at it's capture.

The Big Sweep -- The Fine Art of Letting Go

I am of Yankee heritage and descended from frugal people.  “Waste not, want not” was ingrained in my conscience at an early age.  This makes it hard for me to throw things away.  When Annette called upon me to help her weed out the refrigerator, I knew I must be strong.  The very first “Good Eating” column I wrote was about cleaning the fridge.  The title was “Spoiled Food Guilt.” 

What about the jar simply labeled chili powder?  I looked at it. I sniffed it.  I put some on the end of my finger and tasted it.  I’m a man who’s serious about chili.  I like to get it from Chimayo, New Mexico, preferably in person.  This powder was suspect and of indeterminate age.  Out it went.  So did a bag of dried chilies of questionable provenance. 

And so it proceeded. There was a large bottle half full of fish sauce.  I’ve cut my salt intake and have been making less Thai food lately.  The bottle hit the trash followed by some peanut oil that had a suspicious smell. 

I began to realize I was giving up more than ingredients; I was acknowledging a change in the style of my life.   I’m not only eating healthier, but more simply.  I need to face facts. I may become inspired to cook a fancy meal once in a while, but it happens so seldom it makes sense to buy what I need in small quantities, and not keep the stuff on hand. 

The principle has spread to other aspects of my life.  I pondered over a biography of Omar Bradley on the living room bookshelf. It has stood there for thirty-five years impressing visitors with my erudition, but not improving my mind.  If you think you’re more likely to read it than I was, it will be for sale at the book table of the Antiquarian Society Fair next August. 

I haven’t discarded my hiking boots yet, but I’m now more apt to stroll than hike.  I’ve lost some weight since last year’s cardiac scare, and the heavy down parka with the fur-fringed hood may fit me again, but it’s too warm for any but below-zero days, and I might just spend those inside from now on. 

Not everyone accepts the inevitability of letting go.  At 97 my father wouldn’t agree to give up driving his car, and I had to take the keys.  Twice he has asked for them back. For me there are harder sacrifices ahead than musty books and salty sauce. It helps to look at them as liberations from the past.  I have more room on the bookshelves and in the kitchen.  Of course I too have an expiration date.  It’s a little blurred, and I can’t quite make it out, but it will come.  Up to now the liberations haven’t been so bad.  About the final one, we’ll see.    

Alone

It was my elder daughter's first day at school. I took the the obligatory snapshots of her and her classmates with their new clothes and lunch boxes.  When they had gone, my younger daughter stood for a long time just looking down the walk.  Now both my daughters have given me grandchildren, and they're still very close.

Shucked

We were in the West Winds Bookstore in Duxbury looking for a gift for a friend.  Actually Annette was buying the gift, and while she made her choice, I browsed the small but well-chosen stock.  I picked up a book with a picture of an oyster on the dust jacket. The title was Shucked.  The subject was the Island Creek Oyster Company right there in Duxbury.  Some years ago I’d interviewed the Island Creek owner, Skip Bennett for a food column.  I was impressed with him and especially with his oysters, of which I’ve been a fan ever since. 

The book was by Erin Byers Murray who was a Boston food writer.  The photo inside the back flap showed a girl with a bored smile that implied she was way too beautiful and sophisticated to try to impress a prospective reader like me, but a larger picture on the back of the book showed a beaming woman wearing waterproof clothes and a Red Sox baseball cap sitting on a float next to a crate of oysters.  She was holding a plastic foam coffee cup, and her cheeks were rosy as though bitten by a cold wind.  She looked completely happy and more like someone I wanted to hear from.

Annette and I have pretty much gotten out of the habit of making impulse purchases, but she saw me regarding the book with a wistful eye and bought two gifts that day.  The difference between the pictures was one of the many stories I found in Shucked.

Erin moved from the classy world of posh restaurants to the hard physical toil of oyster farming.  In the beginning it so devastated this stylish city girl, she could hardly drag herself out of bed in the morning. At one point she says, “I’d gradually gotten used to living with the endless throb in my lower back from lifting the boxes which were all fattening up to about eighty pounds.” The nickname her coworkers gave her, which lasted for her entire time at Island Creek, was Pain. 

This working class labor was in contrast to the Deluxebury milieu. The oyster farmers got their morning coffee at French Memories which they called, of course, Frenchy’s.   Erin evolved.  Her back got stronger, she got used to ungodly hours commuting from the Boston area, and she bonded with the crew. 

But Shucked isn’t just a tale of suffering. Pain came to love the job. She became a “seed girl,” meaning she was entrusted with the care of the seed oysters that arrive at the farm the size of pepper flakes and have to be carefully handled until they grow to a size when they can be released onto the bay.  The seed girls called them the babies. They excreted a sludge the growers called fouling and the workers called oyster poop.  “It was disgusting,” she says, “but it would soon become my life.” 

It wasn’t all gross substances and heavy lifting.  Murray also became involved in the social and culinary events that are part of the promotion of the Island Creek brand.  She loved the Nantucket Wine Festival.  She describes a hostess “pouring glasses of Laurent-Perrier rose Champagne for her friends like it was water.”  But even at some of these events she suffered.  She undertook her first attempt at shucking oysters for the public.  “My fingers were covered with stinging cuts, nails caked with grime. The muscles in both hands and forearms ached from my perma-grip on the knife,” she writes.

The mood of the book changes when she travels with her boss to New York for dinner at Thomas Keller’s famous Per Se restaurant.  She gets a stint in the kitchen, which allows her to watch and help with the preparation of the signature dish oysters and pearls, for which Island Creek provides the prime ingredient.  Her persona as an anxious tyro who perseveres and grows in the job is familiar to readers by that point, and one wonders if she might not exaggerate just a bit.  The five-hour dinner that followed was sheer bliss.

Besides being the saga of her personal journey, Shucked is the story of how oysters are farmed.  It takes the process through the seasons of the year and the life cycle of the oyster.  It presents a picture of a business that started small and succeeded to the point where they opened the Island Creek Oyster Bar in Boston.  Murray sat in on the planning and rubbed shoulders with some of the Hub’s celebrity chefs. 

The book is a pleasant read.  Personalities and conversations are presented as in a novel.  How she could record word-for-word what was said, without taking notes is a mystery.  I imagine she may have contemplated writing the book when she took the job and fit some writing into her busy schedule, but if she did, she didn’t make it part of the story.  The reader would assume that she sat down and wrote the book when her time at Island Creek was over.  Despite any possible misquotation, I’m satisfied that she captures the world she entered and presents it in all its richness and contrast.

Shucked is a good book for anyone interested in food, but it’s particularly fascinating for those of us who are neighbors of the business it depicts. Island Creek oysters are a local product of which we can be proud, and the depiction of the people and the process by which they are grown explains why they are so good.

Paper Whites

Philosophy

Socrates Smith,

Sock to his friends,

pondered upon

what life depends –

knowledge or pleasure,

duty or love,

a reverent fear

of the Lord above.

He spent his life

in contemplation;

thought was his only

titillation.

All of his neighbors

did what they pleased

and pitied poor old

Socrates.

The Answer

                                             It’s not only the crash of a tree

                                             falling in the forest;

                                             it’s the sound of a small waterfall

                                             pouring from a mossy stone into a pool,

                                             the taste of pure water from a spring,

                                             the shimmer of sunlight

                                             on the surface of a stream,

                                             the heft of a pebble on the bottom,

                                             and on the bank,

                                             the scent of a trailing arbutus

                                             that doesn’t really need your nose

Long Beach, Plymouth

I have beheld Cassiopeia floating above the point

when a lighthouse beam swept in my direction with a flash,

and the dint of my footstep glowed phosphorescent

on the dark, low-tide sand.

I have witnessed meteors burning across the sky,

waded in sunrise shallows probing for heavy clams,

and breakfasted with song sparrows

and the perfume of the wild beach rose. 

I have known nights when bay and harbor

were wild with lightning and torrents of thunder

and wakened to the quiet of a

pastel dawn.

I have supped while northern harriers

glided low over grassy dunes,

been visited by rabbits, acquainted with foxes,

and set upon by diving terns.

I have stepped gently past rare piping plovers nesting near the path,

harvested beach plums and sea lavender,

and played with happy children

under the summer sun. 

The Dover Ghosts: A Fable of Diversity

Dover, Ohio was a small town settled by migrants from New England, who built a Congregational church and raised corn.  Later there was an infusion of German Catholics, who erected a church of their faith and brewed beer.  After that there was electrification and other improvements, but little actual change.  The inhabitants were doctrinaire in their religions and suspicious of outsiders until they were afflicted with a plague of foreign ghosts. 

The first was a Russian mathematician named Alexi Kachenkov, who attracted immediate attention by his foreignness, his eighteenth century attire, and the fact that he was never found anywhere but the library.  No one actually saw him vanish or appear, but neither did they see him enter or leave.  

He seemed harmless enough, filling pages of foolscap with strange numbers and symbols, but he made the townsfolk nervous. High school students, who found the library a quiet place to do their homework, reverted to their dining room tables instead. 

This was during the height of the Cold War, and Helen Schultz the head librarian was not about to let some character who might very well be a Communist spy describe in code the details of Dover’s defenses. She marched up to the specter and demanded his business. 

Kachenkov looked up from his work, regarded her with a slightly puzzled expression as though he were as confused about the situation as she, and speaking in heavily accented English, told her his name.  Miss Schultz wrote it down.  She had a number of other questions, but Kachenkov’s confusion deepened, and he supplied little if any satisfying information.  

At the librarian’s insistence Kachenkov was interviewed by Howard Wells, the Chief of Police.  Wells could find no irregularities in the Russian’s activities.  It’s was true he couldn’t produce a library card, but since he never withdrew or even read any books, this hardly seemed a crime.  He was never found lingering after closing time, kept to himself, and was very neat.  Some of the later visitors from the Other Side were not so well behaved.

*****

By the mid seventies there were about thirty ghosts in Dover.  The actual count was difficult to confirm as some folks refused to admit they were harboring spirits of the dead and others boasted of colorful houseguests with little or no supporting evidence.  Some households were home to gauzy phantasms, which people glimpsed out of the corner of their eyes.  Others were haunted by ghosts of the Kachenkov variety, which appeared as substantial as anyone else. 

Such a specter was Pierre Martin who occupied a room at the Sunnyside Boarding House.  The proprietor, Maud Drew tried to evict him as he paid no rent and no border would live in the room with him there.  Maud summarily ordered him to pay or get out, but as he spoke only French, her words had no effect.  Her attempts to lay hold of him and rush him down the stairs revealed that his body wasn’t as solid as it looked.

Maud’s teenage daughter Angela saw Pierre as a romantic figure and imagined all sorts of adventures surrounding his life and death.  In her first year of high school, she signed up for French I.  “La plume de my tante est sur la table,” she declared to him after the first week.  Pierre’s usually gloomy demeanor brightened, and he responded with a stream of French she couldn’t understand. 

The full force of the sexual revolution had not descended upon the hamlet of Dover, and while Angela was enchanted with the shade, whom she imagined had been a Parisian boulevardier, her homespun methods of seduction went unnoticed by Pierre, who in fact had toiled through an undistinguished career as waiter in Arles.

Angela went on to French II and joined the French club, but communication remained poor.  By the time she had finished French III, she began to realize that the ghost’s utterances didn’t make much sense in any language.

Upon graduating from high school, Angela left the boarding house never to return.  She majored in foreign languages at the University of Chicago, spent her junior year in Paris, improved her methods of seduction, and ended up marrying an American expatriate from Waco. 

*****

Poor communication skills were a common characteristic of the Dover ghosts.  In 1979 a Chinese mandarin took up residence in a wooden bathhouse on the shore of Lake Andrews on the outskirts of town.  He was resplendent in silken robes, but silent.  Day and night he paced back and fourth along the length of the shabby building passing through the wall which separated the men’s section from the women’s. 

Mrs. Meitner, who discovered her one-piece bathing suit had grown tight over the winter, was grumpily hauling it on when she saw the mandarin heading in her direction. She lambasted him loudly and ordered him back to the men’s dressing room, but he gave no sign of having heard or seen her. 

The more modest women bathers at Lake Andrew’s beach waited for the ghost to head for the other side and then hurried through their change before he returned, but even if they missed their timing, it was plain he wasn’t ogling them.  By the summer’s end they gave him no more consideration than they would a post. 

In the early days of the Dover haunting some suggested making money from paranormal tourism, but Doverites were a shy, insular people who didn’t relish having strangers coming to gawk.  Many considered the ghosts as a sort of infestation like mice or bedbugs and felt embarrassed as though people might think it stemmed from some sort of laxness on their part.

Theories abounded, but answers were few.  There was a puzzling lack of American ghosts, who some thought would be more easily understood both in language and nature.  It was believed that the dead were uninterested in sex until the arrival of an amorous Hungarian who liked to chase girls in the park calling our endearments in his native tongue.  He could be avoided by staying out of the area after dark, and some young women claimed he couldn’t run very fast.  What he would do if he caught one was never reported by any reliable source. 

Most of the spirits were male, but there was the Balinese dancing girl who moved with classic grace between the booths of Dave’s Diner, and a gypsy woman who told impossible fortunes in back of the fire station. At fairly regular intervals students claimed to have seen a kangaroo in the high school gym, but the stories of his antics were outlandish and not widely believed. 

*****

By the nineties the ghosts came to be ignored by the townsfolk.  Their number had stabilized at about fifty, not counting athletic marsupials and other dubious phenomena, and without anything new to talk about, people passed them by the way they would sparrows and pigeons. 

Another phenomenon was affecting the Dover area.  Immigrants of a more usual nature were moving in, and encountering resistance and prejudice.  The Yuns were a Cambodian family who settled in the neighboring town of Kingsford.  Little Susie Yun entered the fifth grade where she was teased unmercifully and given the nickname, Yum Yum.  The adult Yuns were subject to more serious hostility and moved to Dover. 

The Yuns weren’t worried about the ghosts; they considered them to be spirits attached to the land, which were well known in their country and easily appeased with modest  offerings on little shrines.  The Dover citizenry were certainly not afraid of Asians, being familiar with the bathhouse mandarin, the Balinese dancer, and a Japanese peasant who seemed to be trying to raise rice in Mrs. Cooper’s goldfish pond. 

Being ignored was preferable to hostile stares, and the Yuns settled in.  In school the children noticed that Susie could answer questions asked by the teacher and was way ahead of the class in math. Mary Shultz, the grandniece of the librarian who accosted Alexi Kachenkov, offered Susie half of her Snickers bar and later invited her to a Girl Scout meeting at her home.  It turned out Susie was a whiz at jumping rope and was willing to answer questions about herself.  She seemed interested in the other girls as well.  It wasn’t long before Susie Yun acquired a green uniform and joined the troop.  She was a new kind of foreigner, and one who was easy to like. 

Susie’s parents were welcomed as well. Word spread among immigrant circles that Dover was a good place to live, and more foreigners arrived. They were different from the native born Doverites, but they hardly seemed weird. The Egyptian pharaoh in the basement of the Town Hall glowed with a greenish aura, but the immigrants sparkled with human characteristics that were recognized and appreciated.  

Unlike the ghosts, the immigrants competed for jobs, but they spent money, and the town prospered and grew.  Dover wasn’t exactly an Eden of cultural harmony; the new and old residents had their difficulties, but compared to Kingsford and other nearby communities they did very well indeed. 

The Dover ghosts didn’t fade into nothingness, nor did thy pack up and move away.  The living and the dead paid little notice to one another as though neither contingent really believed the other existed.

New Year’s Day 2012

The young, excited by the

turning of the years,

greet them like children

tearing open Christmas toys.

The joys of the dancing doll

grow stale;

faces pale before

the bathroom mirror

in the headache dawn,

while the automaton

gyrates to a tinny tune,

and yet a ray of sun

on carpet, moving

slowly with the day

entices the old to stay.