Department of Culinary Affairs

Today, I have several worries to discuss. My sanity, for one. Also, my hearing. Plus, the strange state of restaurant names.

Last things first. There are a couple of restaurants in the Miami area whose names have caught my attention recently and, frankly, horrified me. The first, in South Beach's trendy SoFi neighborhood, is called La Gloutonnerie. Yep, that's right, the restaurant is named Gluttony. Isn't that a sin? Not, apparently, to the restauranteurs who opened the place in 2012. "Go ahead. Indulge," the website invites. "Sin is in." This is, after all, South Beach, fabled for its hedonistic tendencies, but still, isn't there something unseemly about gluttony? Wouldn't the same food served under a different name taste the same?

Friends of ours had tried La Gloutonnerie and raved about it. They are bonafide food experts and wonderful cooks themselves, so I overcame my reaction to the name and suggested to E. that we try it. The setting was lovely and the portions were, fittingly, large. Unfortunately, on the evening we ate there the food didn't measure up to my expectations. Perhaps the chef had an off night, or literally had taken the night off. Given the high prices, I should probably be glad that my meal didn't make me long for a return visit.

Continuing with the theme of worrisome names, just last month a new restaurant opened in Coral Gables. It's called Swine. Really. To be exact, the full name of the establishment is Swine Southern Table & Bar, which doesn't, in my view, do much to mitigate the shock value of the word swine. I realize that in addition to meaning a contemptible person, swine is also defined as "any of various stout-bodied short-legged omnivorous artiodactyl mammals (family Suidae) with a thick bristly skin and a long flexible snout." The restaurant does feature pork, but its name certainly seems intended to titillate or even offend.

So, here's where the insanity comes in. After having already been disappointed by one restaurant with an unsavory name, and despite the fact that I mostly eat vegetarian, I convinced E. that we should try Swine, on the theory that with a name that bad, the food had to be good. We decided to go for lunch and invited another couple to join us. 

After the waiter swore that the pork was from pigs that had been humanely raised (but can you really believe a waiter in a place called Swine?), E. and I decided to split the pulled pork sandwich. As it turned out, the food was good, especially the pork, which was lean, smoked, and flavorful, with a nice mustard barbecue sauce that had just a little kick to it. The crispy fried shoestring onions were delicate and delicious, and the red cabbage slaw and steak fries were fine.

But the service was not. My Arnold Palmer (half iced tea, half lemonade) was all lemonade, my friend's Diet Coke never arrived, and the waiter didn't split our sandwich as we'd requested. While I ate, I really began to wonder whether the poor pig I was consuming had been humanely raised. 

But the main issue we all had with Swine was the noise level. Through the roof, or at least through the ceiling. The corrugated tin ceiling, that is, which certainly accounted in part for the deafening decibels. The design of Swine was great—lots of natural wood, that rustic tin ceiling, cool exposed light bulbs. Casual chic. It would have been charming if only I could have heard myself think through the blasting music and the din of other patrons shouting to be heard over it.

Not that I'm seriously worried about my hearing. Loud though the restaurant was, it didn't reach the level of ear damage. But it did prevent me from having a conversation with my friends. E. may have enjoyed the respite from my chatter, but it was hard for me to be sitting with two good friends and unable to communicate. 

Why is it that the trendiest eateries are so often noisy? What's the cachet of having to shout to be heard? And why am I so frequently among the oldest diners in such establishments? Could it be that it's not my sanity or my hearing I should be worried about, but whether I've become stodgy and set in my ways? 

I reject that conclusion. Even at age 21, I didn't like raucous restaurants, crowded bars, or noisy cocktail parties. I simply prefer a quiet, calm experience with a dash of style, good food, and interesting companions who find me endlessly fascinating. Is that too much to ask?  

An Unkind Cut

By definition, an accident is something unintended and unexpected, an innocent mistake. In hindsight, so simple to avoid, but in the moment just before it happens, not even on the radar. I worry about accidents, but never about the right one. An accident is something that occurs when you're not worried.

I had a little accident the other day. So minor that I can afford to make fun of myself about it. A dumb mistake, but also a cautionary tale.

Here's what happened. I have a nifty little pair of scissors with a comb attachment that I use to trim my eyebrows (that's another story). The comb is removable for cleaning but it doesn't come off easily, and refitting it back onto the blade is even more challenging. After several frustrating attempts to insert the comb's protruding ridge into the groove on the blade, I finally succeeded. I also succeeded in cutting myself.

In pushing the comb onto the blade, I apparently also pushed the blade into the soft pad of my index finger. It was a small cut, about a quarter inch, but deep. I felt nothing at first, not until after I noticed blood, a surprising amount of blood for such a tiny wound. I thought of Sylvia Plath's poem, "Cut," in which she describes cutting her thumb:

Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Never mind the fact that in her poem, Plath slices the tip of her thumb almost entirely off. In my alarm at seeing the bright bloom of my own blood, I allowed myself a moment of maudlin identification. Then I calmly set about stanching the blood, first with a tissue, then with a tightly applied band-aid.

I had been about to wash up before the cut, but now found myself stymied when it came to flossing my teeth. I couldn't figure out how to do so without involving my injured index finger. I refused, however, to forego my morning flossing, which for me is a sacred ritual. My grandfather lost all his teeth and my mother lost most of hers. I'm determined to do everything possible to avoid a similar fate. Hence, twice a day, religiously, I floss. It takes longer than all the rest of my toilette and is not something I would set aside lightly.

With much difficulty, I accomplished the task by wrapping the floss around my middle finger. I won't go into detail, other than to say there was a lot of drooling involved. I then washed my face with one hand, not wishing to wet my bandaged finger and start it bleeding again. This sounds simple enough, but since the cut was on my dominant left hand, I felt more than a little uncoordinated. By the time I'd put on moisturizer and gotten dressed, I realized the process had taken me about twice as long as usual.

I was reminded of a simple truth—even the slightest injury to the smallest body part affects my ability to function. I take my wondrous body for granted until something happens to make me notice how interconnected every part of me is.

When I was in college, I sprained my ankle badly and couldn't bound across campus with my usual speed for several weeks. I remember feeling a newfound appreciation for the agility I'd always taken for granted. But once my ankle healed, that appreciation faded to a memory rather than a daily awareness.

Now, a little cut had shown me how much I rely on a single fingertip. I couldn't type comfortably for a couple of days and I had to be constantly mindful of my finger while doing a variety of tasks, from preparing food to taking a shower. Even retrieving a tissue from my pocket risked re-opening the wound.

The cut has healed, thanks in part to a wonderful product called liquid bandage, which protected my finger far better than band-aids. Since then, I've been appreciating my intact hand. And I've been trying to avoid accidents. I'm sorry to report that so far I'm not making much progress in that regard. A couple of days ago, while simultaneously walking and admiring a pelican flying overhead, I stepped off a curb and twisted my ankle. No harm done, but clearly I have a long way to go in my accident avoidance program.

The Worry Displacement Solution

I haven't posted for a while, but that doesn't mean I've stopped worrying. Lately, I've been particularly worried about my failure to post a new blog about worrying. Have I run out of things to say? I haven't run out of things to worry about, that's for sure.

The harder I try not to worry, the more worried I become. Like alcohol, cigarettes, or chocolate ice cream, worry is apparently addictive. Living with E. has made the depth of my addiction particularly apparent, since he's not a worrier.

Oddly, on the rare occasions when E. does become worried, I calm right down. Recently, as we were about to leave for the airport, he realized he couldn't find his driver's license. He became understandably anxious and began frantically searching for it. I reacted with composure. I reminded him that he could bring his passport along as a photo I.D. and I could drive the rental car once we reached our destination. While in this state of serenity,  I methodically retraced his steps and located his license in the pocket of the slacks he'd been wearing the prior evening.

While I enjoyed the rare role reversal, I felt as if I were disturbing the natural order of things. I was born to worry and E. is meant to assure me there's nothing to worry about. Balance was soon restored. As we headed for the airport, E. with his license in hand, I realized that had he not found it I would have worried for the entire flight about my promise to drive the rental car once we reached our destination.

Not that I'm a bad driver. Actually, I like to drive and I'm pretty good at it. But, as with so many other aspects of my life, I worry. About taking the wrong exit. About crazy drivers on the road. About getting a speeding ticket. I've begun to believe my worries are a displacement solution—if I worry about the small things, about every small thing, I can avoid paying attention to problems that are truly worthy of worry. And maybe even worthy of a blog entry.

Perhaps in future posts I'll try to tackle some of those big worries, the ones we all share, along with those that are uniquely the product of my own anxious mind. For the moment, though, at least I can cross one worry off my list. I've finally posted a new blog entry!

Isn't It Romantic?

Picture this—A beautiful spring day in 1969. A handsome college sophomore (E.) and his new girlfriend (me) sit on a lush green lawn on the campus of UMass Amherst, listening to a blues musician who calls himself Taj Mahal. The girl wears a pretty white Mexican dress with colorful embroidery on its yoke. Her hair is long and loose. E. wears jeans and cowboy boots. His dark hair and a Western-style mustache add to his cowboy appeal.

Taj Mahal's music is an engaging amalgam of blues and Caribbean rhythms, derivative but entirely original. Among the songs he plays that day is a number called Corinna. The girl (me) instantly loves it. A few years later, when she moves in with E., she's thrilled to find that he owns the record album, Natch'l Blues, on which "Corinna" is featured. They listen to it incessantly. Still later, after they've married, they jokingly agree that if they ever have a baby girl, they'll name her Corinna.

Now picture this—Forty-three years have passed since that concert at UMass. The couple is about to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. They have two sons, so no Corinna in the family, but the wife (me) feels transported back to her youth every time she hears the song. She wonders whether Taj Mahal might still be performing. To her delight, she discovers that he will headline at the Newport Blues & BBQ Festival later that summer. She surprises E. on their anniversary with plans to spend a weekend in Newport, culminating in Taj Mahal's performance at the Blues Festival.

*          *          *

The day of the festival dawns rainy and cool. So much for repeating the past. At least E. and I have brought umbrellas. The festival is scheduled to start at noon, with a total of five acts, culminating in Taj Mahal's performance at 8 p.m.

After forty years, E. has long-since lost the mustache and I don't know what happened to my Mexican dress. We put on sensible shoes and warm clothes and venture forth. We walk along sodden streets to an enormous semi-permanent tent right on the harbor. The tent is closed on three sides. Unfortunately for the BBQ vendors, they aren't under the tent and can't offer their customers much protection from the elements.

E. and I hand over our tickets and get our hands stamped. The wind has whipped up and the rain is really coming down, so we enter the tent. There's plenty of seating on folding chairs, plus there's an open area in the front where fans can stand or dance if they wish. We find that there are still seats available in the front row. Feeling pleased, we grab them.

The first act, a British blues artist, Joanne Shaw Taylor, starts promptly at noon and we realize that we've forgotten a vital fact about music festivals—sound systems are LOUD. The front row turns out not to have been the best idea, after all. And Taylor's style of blues isn't really to our taste. E. and I decide to leave the festival for now and find some earplugs and a lunch that doesn't involve pork, since we're both vegetarians.

The stamps on the backs of our hands are in danger of being washed away by the rain, so we roll up our sleeves and get stamped a second time high up on our arms before exiting the venue. Then we trudge along in search of a CVS where we can buy earplugs—not exactly the idyllic day I had imagined. And while lunch at Panera is fine, it's hardly the charming waterside spot I'd fantasized about.

Once we've purchased earplugs and eaten, we return to the festival locale. The rain is still coming down, but we hear lively Cajun rhythms emanating from the tent. We make it back inside just as Marcia Ball's set is ending, unfortunately for us. The next performer, Shemekia Copeland, is a disappointment, so we opt not to stick around. We spend a pleasant but damp couple of hours exploring the shops of Newport, then return to our hotel room to dry out. We decide to skip the next performer, John Lee Hooker, Jr., entirely and plan to return to the festival after an early dinner, in time for Taj Mahal's performance.

By now, I'm anticipating the worst. Taj Mahal probably won't play a single song I recognize from his early days. After all, he's made well over twenty albums, with forays into Hawaiian music and other genres. Maybe his voice is shot and he won't sound anything like his old self. I'm feeling a little gloomy. But as we're finishing our dinner, a miracle occurs—the sun comes out. We stroll back to the tent in a festive mood.

The place is jammed with happy, mostly intoxicated, people. I only catch one whiff of marijuana. This is more a BBQ and beer bunch. People tend to be in our age range, with a few younger blues fans here and there. We find seats in the middle of the crowd. Shortly after 8 p.m., Taj Mahal walks onto the stage. He's heavier than he used to be, wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt to hide a substantial paunch, but he's still got that unmistakable voice.

He starts off on electric guitar, singing a song I know, though not one I particularly like, followed by several I haven't heard before. At this point, E. and I decide to leave our seats and stand outside the tent's open end, where we can still see the musicians and hear the music while enjoying the now-lovely summer evening.

Taj Mahal puts down his electric guitar and picks up an amplified acoustic. He launches into an old favorite of mine, Fishin' Blues. E. and I smile at one another. This is more like it! The song ends to cheers and applause. Still holding his acoustic guitar, Taj Mahal says, "Now I'm gonna play a little love song I wrote a long time ago." And he starts playing "Corinna".

An almost mystical joy takes hold of E. and me. In unison, we grab one anothers' hands and run from the back of the tent up the aisle all the way to the front, right next to the stage. It doesn't matter that we're in our sixties, surrounded by drunken strangers. At that moment, we're back on the lawn at UMass, where a carefree young musician is singing a catchy song that we'll forever associate with our budding romance.

Click on the photographs to enlarge them. Click on the song titles to hear them and on the artists' names to hear examples of their music.

Thinking of Neil Armstrong

During the summer of 1969, after my sophomore year of college, I was living at home on Long Island and working in the billing department of a commodities firm. I watched the moon landing with my parents. A few weeks later, on August 13th, I was heading out to lunch, completely unaware that the astronauts were being celebrated with a ticker tape parade on Wall Street, right around the corner from my office.

As I walked out of my building, I encountered a crush of people and could see ticker tape flying. I followed the throng and got a distant glimpse of the trio of astronauts—Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins. It was a thrilling moment, marked by the odd realization that I was almost the only woman in sight. Wall Street was then so dominated by men that even the secretarial pool couldn't make a dent in the impression that the street was men-only.

*          *          * 

On July 20, 1989, the twentieth anniversary of Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon, I was in my car listening to the radio. To mark the occasion, the host of the program played a recording of the famous words Armstrong uttered as he set foot on the moon's surface. I found myself unexpectedly moved and wrote the following poem:

Moonbound

One small step for man
watched by a billion eyes.
We shared a moment in space
but I failed to notice
at the time,
I thought only of
one man's glory
and what it would be like
if I were there.

Now, twenty years later,
listening to a ghostly replay,
I travel through time and space
moonbound, enfolded in the arms
of the universe,
entitled by my mere humanity
to be there,
I take a giant leap 
with the rest of mankind.

*          *          *

Later, I shared the poem with the members of my poetry workshop, a class led by the wonderful poet Kinereth Gensler. I was amazed to learn that the late husband of an elderly member of the class had been the physician for the astronauts throughout all the Apollo moon missions. She responded to the poem with great emotion, perhaps based more on the importance of the moon landings in her own life than on the content of my poem. But her reaction highlighted what is most important to me about writing—the ability to connect with others through my words.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Walking on Water

I'm not a natural athlete. As a kid I tried hard, which spared me from being the last girl picked for the softball or basketball teams, but I was never a standout player. While I had good endurance on the track, I was a klutz when it came to gymnastics—even cartwheels were pretty much beyond me. So, no one was more surprised than me when, the first time I tried waterskiing, I immediately succeeded in standing up on the skis. I was a natural.

Girls bunks, Camp Tamarac.

I learned to waterski on Yokum Pond in Becket, Massachusetts, site of Camp Tamarac, my beloved sleep-away camp. I spent eight weeks there each summer for four years, starting at age ten. What Tamarac lacked in luxury, it made up for in camp spirit and an amazing array of activities, among them scuba diving and waterskiing.

You might well wonder what kind of scuba diving experience could be had in a pond in the Berkshires. Surprisingly, Yokum Pond reached 50 feet at its greatest depth. Still, its murky waters didn't allow for the type of diving one might expect to find in the Caribbean. In fact, you could barely see two feet in front of you. Nevertheless, during my last summer at Tamarac, the camp began offering its campers scuba classes and certification.

I enthusiastically signed up for the scuba program. All progressed well until one sunny day in August. I had come to the surface after a short dive and was using a snorkel while I swam back to the dock. The snorkel was necessary because the tank on my back was heavy and unwieldy, so I couldn't get my head above water to take breaths. As I paddled toward the dock with my flippered feet, feeling pleased with my diving progress, I allowed my head to sink a little too low. Instead of air, I suddenly found myself swallowing a sample of silty pond water.

I began choking and coughing, unable to hold my head far enough out of the water to breath normally and recover. By this time, I was only about twenty feet from the dock, where a swim class had just ended. Fran, the head swim counselor, was standing on the dock and looking right in my direction. Sputtering and trying to keep my head above the water, I waved frantically to her. She waved back. I waved again. Smiling, Fran waved right back. I'm drowning and she thinks I'm saying hello, I thought. Only a moment ago, I'd been so proud of my diving prowess. Now I was going to die, not from the bends, but as a result of poor snorkeling technique.

I began to go under. Fran belatedly realized she was about to lose a camper and sprang into action, forgetting every tenet of the lifesaving program she herself taught. She failed to execute the lifesaver's jump, which would have enabled her to keep me in sight at all times. Instead, she dove willy-nilly into the water. Then she swam right up to me, heedless of the possibility that I might grab her around the neck and pull her under in my panic. Fortunately for both of us, I wasn't that far gone yet. Instead of panicking, I gratefully accepted her help as she dragged me back to the dock.

After my near-death experience, my enthusiasm for scuba diving waned. I wondered what other water sport I might pursue. Waterskiing was also new at camp that summer and not compulsory. I decided to sign up for it. The skis were unwieldy, their rubber bindings a bit uncomfortable, and the boat's outboard motor looked ominous. But in those days, my desire for new and exciting experiences far exceeded my capacity for worry, so I gamely put on the skis and positioned myself as instructed—knees bent, the tips of my skis floating just above the water, arms clutching the tow rope handle.

The boat eased forward, gaining speed. I stood up, keeping my balance, and whizzed across the pond, feeling a mixture of astonishment and pride. I was the only one to achieve the feat of getting up on skis on the first try. And the second, and third. I simply "got" this sport. I loved the feel of the wake under my skis, the speed with which the boat carried me forward. Within a few days, I was crossing the wake, back and forth, with impunity. Who knows what else I might have accomplished that summer, but sadly I had started skiing during the final weeks of camp and time ran out. Further challenges would have to wait.

My only photograph of Camp Kent.

My next opportunity to waterski came a few years later at Camp Kent, in Kent, Connecticut. I was sixteen and working as a counselor-in-training—sort of half-camper, half-counselor. The camp had an excellent waterskiing program and it was there that I learned to slalom, or ski on one ski. A slalom ski has one binding behind the other, so that both feet point forward. I loved the exhilaration of speeding around the lake and carving my single ski through the wake, finding just the right balance to stay upright. The camp didn't offer tournament skiing, so I couldn't advance to the stage of competing by navigating on one ski around a series of buoys. But I didn't really care. I just loved the sensation of skimming along on top of the water.

Two years later, after a summer spent in Mexico, I returned to Camp Kent as a full-fledged counselor. As part of my job, I had to accompany my little campers to all their activities, so I didn't have lots of time to waterski, but during free periods I headed to the waterskiing dock, where I perfected my slalom skills and flirted with Allen, the handsome head waterskiing counselor.

The flirtation with Allen never panned out, but my skiing experience won me a job the following summer teaching waterskiing at Camp Wenonah, a girls camp in Naples, Maine. I would be working under Anne, a senior counselor who was an experienced waterskier and teacher. Equally important, Anne knew how to drive the Boston Whaler that would be used to tow the campers. I arrived at counselor orientation expecting to learn how to teach skiing technique to campers as young as eight years old and hoping to gain a few skiing tips for myself from my new boss.

On the first night of orientation, the head swim counselor abruptly resigned. The only person on staff qualified to assume that position was Anne. This meant that a new head waterskiing counselor had to be found. To my shock, the camp director chose me over the two other counselors hired to teach waterskiing. Anne was so overwhelmed with her new position that she couldn't help me much. One of the other counselors, deemed too irresponsible to head the waterskiing program, nevertheless knew how to drive the Whaler and gave me a crash course. Thus, the camp season began.

I'm driving the Boston Whaler.

My dreams of becoming a more accomplished waterskier that summer faded, replaced by constant anxiety that I would nick a camper with the Whaler's outboard motor as I circled back around when one of them fell. Happily, I managed to avoid that calamity and actually came to enjoy driving the little motorboat around Trickey Pond, a camper in tow. Sometimes during a break the other counselors and I would get in a little skiing of our own.

That was my last summer on a lake and, so, my last summer on waterskis. But I've never forgotten the thrill of rising up on my skis and feeling the frothy wake beneath me. It seemed a small miracle—not quite walking on water, but almost.

The only picture of me on skis (slaloming). Taken on Trickey Pond.

 

Standing Up for . . . Standing Up

Okay, I admit it. I'm sitting down while I write this blog. But for the prior 25 minutes, I was standing up as I listened to a "Fresh Air" interview with Gretchen Reynolds, who writes the "Phys Ed" column for the New York Times. Reynolds says our health will greatly benefit from standing often during the day, for about two minutes after sitting for twenty minutes. Sounds easy, right? So, I'm about to reform my life. No more couch potato for me. No more sitting in a trance in front of my computer for hours on end. I'm joining the ranks of the standers.

According to Reynolds, punctuating periods of sitting with brief standing stints helps break up fat in our bloodstream, keeps our muscles from going slack, and can alleviate back pain. She stops just short of promising immortality. But seriously, she makes it sound like a very good idea, and doable, too. All the better, she says, if you walk around your office or down the hall during your two-minute stand-in, but if that's not possible, just stand.

                                                        * * *

I'm back, after a two-minute standing appointment. Now, what was I saying? Hmm. Apparently, one of the problems with interrupting my writing to spend a couple of minutes on my feet is that I'm likely to lose my train of thought. In order to avoid that, maybe I should consider standing all the time, like former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who works at a standing desk. Whatever you may feel about his policy positions, Rumsfeld does appear fit. And far more illustrious men than Rumsfeld have used standing desks, including Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, and Charles Dickens.

I want to stand and be counted as one of the standers. In fact, I won't stand for sitting anymore. With my penchant for worry, maybe I could add pacing to my standing activities. Back and forth, back and forth. Until I can't stand it anymore.