Tag: Musings

OH! WOW!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Gourmet is one of those words I’ve come to detest, in large part because it’s lost any genuine meaning. Well, these days it’s usually an excuse to charge more for an assembly-line product, but that’s about it. As an adjective to suggest quality, it rarely reflects excellence. As for its other definition, as a noun, we have glutton or pig.

So here I am thinking once more of the “wow factor” on our tongue and palate. It’s the surprise that accompanies an amazing first morsel or sip, when our reaction is “Oh! Wow!” in discovering the treasure before us. Often, it’s uttered before we’re fully conscious of doing so.

I know those who take the over-the-top approach here, adding and adding to a dish until it’s simply overwhelming. Or taking a drink to near-lethal alcohol levels for its whammy.

For us, the “wow factor” is more simply direct. It honors the ingredients and makes them shine. It knows there’s no substitute for freshness, and its techniques aim at enhancing that.

If you want to read more of this philosophy, Angelo Pellegrini’s writings, as my wife attests, lay it out delightfully. A generation before Julia Child, he began instructing fellow Americans on the ways of applying homegrown herbs and spices and appreciating the pleasures that follow. His lovely essays are about gardening as much as cooking, along with a few diversions like making your own wine or the joys of being a granddad.

I come back to this each year as our own garden kicks into gear. Forget any argument that gardening is cheaper – it’s not, even before you consider your own labor. It’s the taste that accompanies freshness – sometimes while the strawberry’s still warm from the sun or the lettuce was crisped earlier in the afternoon. Real tomatoes in contrast to the impostors at the grocery are another matter altogether. I’ll go ten months without the latter, if necessary.

We managed an overnight getaway to the Cape recently and decided to try the bakery-bistro combination across the highway. There are good reasons the line’s out the door in the morning. As for the evening, when we decided to stop for drinks and appetizers, we figured we could walk home rather than drive.

As I was saying about Wow? From start to finish. Let me warn you, it wasn’t cheap, not even by today’s average. But it was worth every penny – something I won’t say for any of the chains where I’ve eaten in the past few years. And what they’ve done to the former clam shack in the past six years is amazing – you’d never guess something this charming could come out of something that had been so decrepit.

I’ll try not to go into a restaurant review, but let me say I never imagined corn (fresh, local) could be pureed with (forget the cooking-school terms) the sweat from a baked salmon to produce a cold soup this heavenly. As for the oysters on the half-shell, the presentation was breath-taking – generous in the ice, accompanied by the in-house sauces – but the oysters themselves were fat and succulent, the way they are in November or December, fattened up for winter, rather than this time of year. Responding to that observation when chef/owner Philippe Rispoli stopped by our seats at the bar counter, we heard his pride in working with Richard Blakeley and paying top dollar for the best. I know this was Wellfleet, but I’ve had Maine oysters that have surpassed what I’ve had in other establishments in town – until now. As for their variant on Oysters Rockefeller, we go back to Wow.

We ordered wine by the glass – and our sauvignon blanc was priced reasonably, and the portions were generous. Perfect.

My wife, always a critic when it comes to food, declared her pate to be everything she’d hoped for, even before she got to the accompaniments and salad. The vinaigrette, as she noted, was amazing – whatever measurements he’d worked out, there’d be no changing this recipe.

Curiosity taking priority over any appearance of sophistication, we also ordered a side of pommes frites – or French fries, to most of us. They arrived in a glorious presentation with a red-and-white checkered napkin – and one bite once again went Wow. The chef asked how we liked them, grinned in response, told us he made them himself.

I should explain that we’ve decided fries are often a reliable test of a restaurant’s ability. Are they straight from a supplier’s frozen batch – or made from scratch, like these? Are the outsides hot and crusty and well seasoned, like these? Or limp and flavorless? Are the insides creamy and yummy, like these, or merely whatever?

The test also extends to a restaurant’s attention to its frying oil and batters – fried onion rings are another big litmus test here. Light and fresh? Old and heavy? As we say, “They do cooking oil well.”

OK, if you’re planning a trip to Cape Cod (I first typed that Cape Cook, make of it what you will), I won’t keep the place secret. Just click here.

BOULANGERIES AT THE BASE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Julia Child liked to emphasize technique as the foundation of French cuisine – starting with the ability to create traditional sauces and custards.

But lately I’ve been thinking of something even more basic and yet distinctive – bread. Yes, the transformation of dough into a baguette or croissant. Seemingly simple, yet utterly heavenly when masterfully done – and so often delivered and sold in pale imitations, probably even in France today or more commonly across America. Admittedly, there’s a great deal of technique required in doing these right – along with the unique steam-infused, high temperature ovens designed expressly for the purpose.

Maybe that’s why two of our favorite bakeries – or boulangeries – each share their building with a celebrated New England restaurant, one in Maine, the other in Cape Cod. These restaurants know the importance of bread.

Put simply, let me argue that based on its breads and pastries alone, French cuisine would rank high on any global listing. You can add other categories as you wish – from soups to wines to desserts – but let me return to that moment of sitting on the back porch of the house where we were staying, sipping coffee and white wine and munching on bread and pastries we’d just picked up across the highway before dashing back. We were there, in line, at opening – and when the doors opened a few minutes after the official time, all we got in greeting was cheerful “Bonjour,” sans apologie.

Not that we’re complaining. Definitely not.

We’re both still marveling at the sight we’d caught of a baker transferring the rows of baguette dough from the tray to the rack for the oven. I’ve kneaded hundreds of loaves of bread, and none have ever been so smoothly gorgeous. It was like watching a fisherman with his catch, actually. We can only imagine how each armlike roll feels to the touch or the baker’s gentle caress in lifting it and arranging it anew in its rows for baking.

Coincidentally, my wife’s started reading Bread Alone, Daniel Leader’s eye-opening discoveries as an American who backed into preserving the old ways of French baking artistry. Since then, he’s made a success of it in Upstate New York, of all places. His is a delightful story full of unlikely twists of fate and French characters, along with some definite opinions about flour and approaches and some detailed recipes for the exacting aspirant – or professional baker.

I return to a concept of simplicity as leaving one with no place to hide, no disguises for shoddy workmanship, no excuses. Simplicity instead as a goal of mastery, competence, elegance. In other words, good work.

For now, though, I’ll just savor the delight of what’s fresh, carefully crafted, and unpretentiously good – slices of crusty bread with soft butter and a glass of chilled vinho verde, for instance, to accompany a green salad of lettuce straight from the garden. Well, the homemade vinaigrette might take some finessing.

For me, a perfect summer repast, especially when shared in good company.

WATCH THOSE DRINKS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

A soft drink of local note – or notoriety, depending – is thick, dark, bitter Moxie. Think molasses. Or patent medicine, as it originated.

The soda has a cult following, something that mystifies many of us. Well, in our part of New England it’s something like Dr. Pepper is elsewhere. Hardly a universal taste. Either you get it or you don’t.

Well, there’s also Red Bull, which commonly gets teamed up with Jagermeister – as the Jagerbomb. The rumor is it’s so popular with underage drinkers that anyone buying Jagermeister at the State Liquor Store will get carded, regardless of age.

So the other day I noticed one of our neighbors sitting out in the sun and sipping … Moxie.

What, no Jagermeister with it?

No, he said smoothly. Moxie goes with Captain Morgan.

OUT OF THE FLATLANDS AND ONTO THE SEA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Another blast from my past:

I spoke in Meeting about being a flatlander from a landlocked place and my ongoing fascination with the tides and moods of the ocean, leading into my first experience on a sailboat which was also my first experience out on the Atlantic and my first time of seeing a whale, which popped up in front of us.

I then mentioned another trip when my boss asked me to take the till and my surprise at feeling the wind pull the sailboat in one direction while the current tried to turn it in the opposite and how I was trying to steer to a compass point in-between – me, who would rather avoid conflict. On top of it all, it was a day when we could not see our destination, the Isle of Shoals, but had to trust our maps and calculations. Then, too, Peter’s girlfriend laughed, realizing my fear of having the boat be blown over. “Don’t worry,” she said. “If the boat tips that far, the sails will deflate and we’ll right again.” She paused before adding, “Besides, if there’s really a big gust, there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s how I lost my boat.”

As I spoke, I admitted the associations of wind to spirit (inspiration) and, as I’d now add, intellect, and of water to emotions and the unseen, while we are here in our own little vessels steering in the hope of an unseen destination.

Afterward, one Friend told me of the importance of finding that point of critical tension in our lives, where things can be accomplished. I now see this in contrast to the Tao, path of least resistance or way of falling water.

A second round of memories involves an ability to choose the right sail or combination of sails to fit the wind, as well as the lulls. The emerging harmony, too, between the winds and the waves, the lift and fall along the way.

WAKING UP, AT LAST, TO REALITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Gee, it’s rather incredible to hear all the new voices finally recognizing that this Supreme Court, with its longest members and majority appointed by their side, is indeed running wild.

Activist? Where were they when the high bench, for the first time in history, crowned a president? Or later transformed our republic into a government by the super-rich, for the super-rich, and of the super-rich, as it has in Citizens United?

Utter silence.

But now, with a few recent flukes in its record, just listen to the outrage. If you’re trying to make sense of their decisions, good luck.

You can count me among the outraged, long ago – when our cries were ignored. When esteemed law school deans and professors warned of the top justices’ threats to our very legal system and its foundations. When we scratched our heads for any underlying sustained rudder in their course from one ruling to the next.

I’d crow now, except that the problem remains.

In its polarized atmosphere, the question keeps coming down to the swing vote — and it’s like watching a pinball machine. Which flipper will sway the course of action? The question everyone asks is who was the swing vote this time?

Who, even before Why.

With every ruling, we watch, often with horror. Will it be on the side of broad justice or instead on the side of big money? Will it be for the common American and justice for all? Or for something else, however vaguely defined?

My conclusion? What we’re seeing is not so much a matter of deciding case by case on its merits as it is an imposition of personalities from the bench. An opinion that includes “just ask a hippie” is hard to take seriously, no matter if you agree or disagree with the vote. America needs more judges of the people, for the people, and by the people throughout its ranks — more humanity and compassion rather than pompous circumstance. Not more political ideologues for the wealthy, as Republican senators have been doing in asserting privilege to obstruct presidential nominations. They even cloak themselves in anonymity in doing so without any grounds whatsoever.

When a Senate majority seeks a rubber-stamp to endorse one side only, perhaps an activist court is a foregone conclusion. And as long as we’re stuck with a Supreme Court lacking a stable center, we’ll have to wonder where the real authority is. The kind that endures rather than sways in the wind.

Maybe, in the new outcry, we in the public can come together. Wouldn’t that be something?

 

 

REACHING FOR A HEADLINE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Being employed as a newspaper editor meant I had to be scrupulous about avoiding the slightest appearance of partisanship in public. Too many people assume bias on any pretext and extend that to an assumption you cannot hear their position fairly. In reality, these are the ones who want you to be actively in their group rather than neutral in reporting both sides.

Admittedly, I’ve long felt a tension between avoiding any appearance of having a position and upholding moral values. Can you be objective without any sense of what’s true or how it all fits together?

For many of us, there are unwritten rules about what’s acceptable and what’s not, and the code I followed came largely from the Kansas City Times, where your community participation is limited largely to your church. I wonder how it would have handled my joining a denomination known for its social justice witness – one where I could gently encourage others in the congregation to activism, even if I could not act with them.

Early on, as a cub reporter, I learned you cannot wear a candidate’s button or apply the bumper sticker, even if you can distance yourself in critical thinking. Some fine journalists refrain from even voting in elections, which in turn raises some questions about democratic responsibility in the aftermath.

Retirement, though, is allowing me to slowly move away from that, and this is the first time in my quarter-century-plus in the Granite State I’m attending presidential primary events – on both sides of the political divide, at that.

It’s been eye-opening.

My wife, on the other hand, is an old-pro at these things and often explains nuances to me, the one with the degree in political science. (OK, my focus was on political theory and policy analysis rather than the nitty-gritty of campaigning, elections, and legislative maneuvers.) And one daughter, seasoned in the behind-the-scenes work of running a candidate for office, has convinced me of the importance of organization, planning, and staff discipline.

It’s still early in the fray – a wonderful opportunity to observe, actually. And it’s as much fun to watch the crowd, large or small, as it is the candidate or staff. They cover the range.

One thing I notice, though, is the working press and the video crews. CNN, C-SPAN, and, I’m guessing, MSNBC News have a trio of cameras side by side staffed by college-fresh crews just about everywhere. Just in case? Who knows. The metro reporters, in their suits and loose ties (if that), are looking for the telling detail, likely for a wrap-up later, while the frumpier local papers just want a story for the next edition, daily or weekly.

And that’s had me wondering just how I would cover the typical event. Most of these appearances, after all, are pretty standard repetition of policy positions easily available online. There’s nothing new there – and thus no news.

Well, the Q-and-A portion in what many bill as a town meeting can be interesting, if the questioners are actually from the public and not just campaign plants.

We got a flash of that yesterday at Dover City Hall when Hillary Clinton was heckled by a juvenile but orchestrated ban-fracking group. From everything we saw, she responded admirably, calmly, professionally – and got a loud, standing ovation in response. Not that you’d know that part from the headlines or news stories.

The strident outburst seized the coverage and nearly hijacked the event. But it was also allowed to remain, standing silently, with its banner, in one corner of the hall. Did it advance its cause?

I doubt it. We come to these appearances to hear positions, not to dictate their answers. We want honesty, not pandering.

As we heard Ohio Governor John Kasich say earlier in the week, in front of a much smaller gathering, New Hampshire voters serve as an X-ray machine, looking at both a candidate’s outer and inner qualities. He’s right. It’s not a responsibility we take easily. Just consider standing more than an hour in a long line snaking through the steamy summer confines of a city hall corridor before standing another hour-and-a-half through the event itself, as the audience did for Hillary.

I’d urge the protesters, by the way, to take their banner and voices to stand outside the Republican hopefuls’ events and see where that goes.

In the meantime, I’m reminded of the gap between what is often experienced in a situation like this and what we read of it in the news story. What I experienced and what I read aren’t the same. And, no, I wouldn’t accept a campaign sticker – I was there to watch and listen.

As for that public responsibility? We’d hoped to get up to Laconia later in the afternoon, where the Donald was to appear at a rally – no Q-and-A, I presume. But we agreed, we’d had enough for one day. You can absorb only so much at a time. And, as I search for that coverage this morning, apparently there was nothing newsworthy to report there.

NOT MINE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

New Hampshire has more than its share of vanity license plates, a practice that often provides amusement in the thick of traffic or parking lots. For a number of years, mine said QUAKER, which spurred some lively conversations — to say nothing of what happened when parked next to Bob McQuillen’s QUACKER plate. (His goes back to his days of teaching high school shop classes — the result of one day when a student I will not name accused him of sounding like a duck when he got angry.)

So we were driving through downtown the other day when we noticed this plate:

We need to talk.
We need to talk.

Only in the photo do I notice the second D rather than O — representing another variant on the root surname Hodgson. Still, it can be unsettling when you have a rather uncommon one to see another around.

A LITTLE TRASH TALK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The SUV pulls out from in front of a neighbor’s house and tosses a plastic iced-coffee cup, straw, and lid onto the elderly woman’s driveway across from me as I’m weeding.

I retrieve it, put it in our recycling bin.

So they want a clean interior?

It’s not their vehicle that needs purging.

Oh, Lord, help us!

NO, HISTORY CANNOT BE ERASED

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 8 Comments

“Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history,” Abraham Lincoln wrote to Congress in December 1862.

Wednesday night, in her impassioned and reasoned impromptu plea to her colleagues in the South Carolina House of Representatives, fellow Republican Jenny Anderson Horne broke through a logjam of tactical delays so that her state – and the entire South – might finally address history.

We’ve long heard the argument that the War Between the States (there was nothing civil about it) was over states’ rights rather than slavery – a bogus case, at best, when one considers the 1857 Dred Scott v Sanford Supreme Court decision that stripped Northern states of their right t0 defend the human liberty of escaped slaves. No, the South decisively denied states’ rights. Or at least its powerful slaveholders did, when they wanted.

Like Horne, I have Southern roots – not as many or as distinguished as hers, but enough to make me aware of the complications Southern whites faced. On my father’s side, the North Carolina Quaker identity long meant opposing both slavery and the bearing of arms. Theirs was a difficult witness, long before the war and in its destructive aftermath. And I have a copy of the memoirs of another family member, my great-great-grandmother’s uncle, an Ohio farm boy who died from wounds in the Battle of Stones River, one of the deadliest outbreaks in the war. My mother’s side included slaveholders and soldiers, mostly Confederate, along with a wealthy individual not enlisted who gunned down isolated Union troops he ambushed as a guerrilla – one who was apparently hanged, not that we ever heard that story. Instead, it was always my great-great-grandfather’s long walk to deliver the last message of a comrade to his family – the journey that planted the family in Bowling Green, Missouri.

Still, I’ve long been offended by the flying of the Confederate flag. Its intention has been all too blatant … and racist. Period.

If you want another view of the cost of slavery on the South, black and white, look up Wendell Berry’s essay, The Hidden Wound, arising in his own childhood in Kentucky. He saw through any pretense of honor masking at least one prominent citizen.

Most remarkable in Horne’s speech was her readiness to move beyond family identity. As she told the Washington Post after the vote, “It’s not about ‘Oh, my great-grandfather was killed in the Civil War and he gave his life.’ That’s not what we are here to talk about. What we’re here to talk about is what’s in the here and now. And in 2015, that flag was used as a symbol of hatred.”

As she emphasized, “We’re not fighting the Civil War anymore. That war has been fought. It’s time to move forward and do what’s best for the people of South Carolina.”

All the people.

What a contrast to Rep. Michael Pitts, a white Republican, who had told the House earlier in the debate: “I grew up holding that flag in reverence because of the stories of my ancestors carrying that flag into battle.”

Maybe he should have heard the “into battle” part more clearly – battle against freedom for all. Battle, however indirectly, against his black neighbors, as well, and not just the North. And often in battle against the poor.

More telling for me was Rep. Eric Bedingfield, also a white Republican and defender of the flag, in his declaration: “I have wept over this thing. I have bathed this thing in prayer. I have called my pastor to pray for me,” before adding, “You can’t erase history.”

No, you can’t. The history is the war’s over – and the Confederate flag lost. Put it away. Look at the full history, then, black and white, rich and poor. As much as I love genealogy, it fits into a larger story — and rare is the family chart without shame or guilt or human failure somewhere.

History? The Confederate cause has been accurately described as a rich man’s war fought by the poor. I still wince reading of the brutal torture of pregnant women or the elderly at the hands of the Home Guard – in North Carolina, at least, comprised largely of men owning 20 or more slaves and thus exempted from Confederate Army service. We need to break out of the prevailing mythology or fairy tales and instead open out on the wider story stripped of its masks.

As for the prayers, you and your pastor weren’t listening – Moses could tell you about slavery in Egypt and the way Pharaoh’s losing army was swept away in the Sea of Reeds (or Red Sea). Maybe there are good reasons Cairo never bothered with its side of the encounter. Later prophets in the Hebrew Bible could tell you about slavery in Babylon and its emotional burden. It’s all there in the open to be read.

If anything, the decision to remove the rebel battle flag from the state capitol dome can be seen as a response to the flood of prayers in the aftermath of the Charleston church massacre. In the eyes of many, a photo of the accused killer and the flag said everything. In contrast to my fellow citizens — or my fellow Christians.

The reality could no longer be ignored. It was all about racial hatred.

The Post report continues: “Some call it the war between the states, some call it the Civil War,” Pitts said, defending the Confederate flag. “Growing up, in my family, it was called the war of Northern aggression; it was where the Yankees attacked the South, and that’s what was ingrained on in me growing up.”

Hidden in that defense is a slap at the rest of the country. Black and white. Along with a denial of what the North experienced as escalating Southern aggression in the decades building up to Fort Sumter.

You can’t erase history. You can’t escape history. You can get trapped in it, when it’s distorted, the way propaganda does.

You can, however, make history. And break free.

The way Jenny Anderson Horne has, for us all.

ANSWERING THE CALL OF DEMOCRACY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

It’s started. It’s definitely started. The 2016 presidential race.

Those living in New Hampshire can assure you by one indicator, the sudden rise in home phone calls. If you’re registered to one political party or the other and have a number listed somewhere, you’re getting invitations to meet its hopefuls — even the ones who haven’t yet filed. And if you’re registered as an independent, you get them all. And everyone’s asked to express opinions, though not all of the surveys are scientifically neutral. Did I mention the pleas for donations?

We view it as our quadrennial state sport – as well as an obligation to serve as guinea pigs for the rest of the nation. We’re not as rural as many think — much of the state’s really an outer suburb of Boston, so we get our share of big-city problems. And we’re more diverse, as well. We’re small enough to give deserving underdogs an ear – rather than just those who already have the most money. In face-to-face encounters, some of them in neighbors’ living rooms, we work to look through the mass-media image – and often we see somebody quite different than what you’ve assumed. Some highly qualified individuals are warm and witty in intimate settings but stiffen up in front of a big crowd or the television cameras — while some who look great on a tightly scripted screen are truly uncomfortable, even incoherent, in an everyday setting. We’re diligent enough to recognize the congestion of clown cars can be wildly entertaining, so we pay close attention. Besides, we know that just because these hopefuls can pay the registration fee doesn’t mean they can manage anything, but we still hope they enjoy their extended vacation in New England. They do put the rest of the crowd in perspective.

I’ll let folks in Iowa weigh in with their version of this winnowing process, but this is something we in the Granite State take seriously, no matter how eccentric or even lunatic the messenger. It’s a job somebody has to do, and staying informed isn’t always easy. We’ll be ready to kick back when it’s over.

Oh, would you excuse me? The phone’s ringing again. It just might be …