sinlawn

I couldn’t let this go without comment! An advertisement appeared on my doorstep for “synlawn”, the “synthetic alternative to natural grass”.  While I can see someone wanting astroturf for a putting green or croquet course, this pamphlet proposes wider applications.  Get rid of muddy feet!  The need for water!   No more weeding (or as they, unsurprisingly put it, “pesticides”)  No more mowing!

So what if it smells like plastic instead of fresh mown grass and suffocates the soil underneath and all the living creatures in it.  So what if it feels harsh and spiky underneath, I mean, who would actually go out and lie on their lawn anyway?  If it looks real–better than real–then it must be real!

I’d suggest carrying this concept further and installing synflowers.  No more weeding, no more fertilizing, no more pesky bugs or thorns. No need to consider soil health or hours of sun or shade.  Your flowers needn’t go out of season.  You could look out your window and see roses in the middle of January.  You could grow orchids in Oregon.

What a wonderful technoworld!

economic disconnect

We’re all aware by now that Wall Street firms and major banks and insurance companies have been stealing the country blind trading in abstractions built on nothing.  People have finally realized the emperor has no clothes and the whole airy enterprise is collapsing like a loaf of Wonder Bread.  But what I don’t think is obvious enough yet is how divorced the “economy” has become from the tangible marketplace. I read the Wall Street Journal everyday and see terms like GDP or consumer confidence bandied about as if they were actual facts, like someone’s blood sugar level.  I mean what exactly is being “produced”?  Can all production be quantified?  Is continuous increasing production a sustainable enterprise?  What are consumers confident about?  You get the idea.

The tangible marketplace exists organically.  People need food, clothes, and shelter.  Their wants are pretty consistent, too:  entertainment, artistic pleasure, socialization.  They need education, child care, medical care, haircuts, plumbing repairs.  They need transportation, whether via private cars, planes, trains, busses, or bicycles.  The number of people in the world keeps increasing.  Surely there must be valuable work for everyone to do!  I’m not surprised to hear of unemployed mortgage brokers or advertising executives, but when I see teachers, nurses, and architects looking for work, something is askew with the system.  When I see my three talented and capable adult children, along with many of their talented and capable friends, unemployed or woefully underemployed something’s wrong with the system.  And then at the same time, classrooms overflow due to lack of teachers, patients go untreated due to lack of nurses…someone must making money here, but I bet they aren’t people providing actual goods and services.  The companies traded about on the stock exchange have little to do with the actual provision of these services. 

Frankly provision of actual services hasn’t been what’s valued in our society.  Even the profession of medicine, every Jewish mother’s dream, has been devalued in relationship to health maintenance organization administrators and insurers who can’t so much as take a blood pressure.  College professors, artists, plumbers, farmers, cooks, child care workers…everyone takes a back seat to people who trade in abstractions.  Now that those abstractions are collapsing,  it’s high time to connect economic exchange to tangible goods and services.  If the economy is built on sturdier pillars, it won’t be nearly as vulnerable to recessions, depressions, or implosions.

How to go about this is a long and very complicated process but breaking economic units down to smaller, more localized businesse would help.  It’s very hard to promote accountability in huge multinational corporations.  We may not need to get rid of the stock exchange, but we could certainly regulate its actions much more closely and not insist that companies meet Street-defined “expectations”, sacrifice long value for short term gains, or for that matter, continue to grow, like cancerous cells. We could let medical professionals run medical care (see Wendy’s healthcare plan).  We could promote small businesses (see Wendy’s bailout plan).  As a society we could value people who create real things and care for real people.  We could value beauty and craftsmanship over blind efficiency and planned obsolescence.   

It might be wise if we make those choices now, in a controlled manner, before this entire puffed up enterprise completely collapses.

wendy’s recipe file: cannellini bean salad

I buy an (admittedly delicious) preprepared version of this salad at New Seasons but was appalled to see that a small container carried an almost six dollar pricetag.  Come on, we’re talking about beans!  I’ll think I’ll be making it at home from now on.  YOu can substitute butter beans or fava beans in this; there’s an excellent canned version of butter beans imported from Italy.

TUSCAN CANNELLINI BEAN SALAD

4 cups cooked cannellini beans (canned are fine, but to save money, and for a slightly chewier taste, make your own)

one-quarter cup diced roasted red bell peppers (ideally, use your own, frozen from summer’s bounty)

one-half cup fresh basil, slivered

one-quarter cup fresh Italian parsley or cilantro, minced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

one cup extra virgin olive oil

one-quarter cup balsamic vinegar

one-quarter cup grated romano cheese

2 T sea salt

black pepper to taste (about 1 T)

feet of clay

A day doesn’t go by where you don’t hear about another politician’s career sidetracked as the truth comes out about his personal foibles, whether they be sexual or financial.  Some of these “mistakes” do reflect on them pretty badly.  Surely someone in charge of nationwide economic reform, a REGULATOR himself, should know how to dot all the is and cross all the ts on his income taxes.  Surely an elected official should know better than to chase after a seventeen year old boy and have sex with him, whether or not he was technically of age at the time.

And yet I still can’t get too enraged at most of these screwups.  Embarrassing as they may be, they pale at the outrages perpetrated by political and business leaders who send young people to die in pointless wars, who imprison innocent people, who order waterboarding and extraordinary renditions, who knowingly send salmonella-contaminated food out on the market, who manufacture costly drugs that are life threatening at worst and useless at best.  Some of these folks might pay their taxes on time and never ever cheat on their spouse, but they are perpetrating much worse evils.  They get away scot free while we are distracted by the Mc Guffin of these relatively minor infractions.

Ideally, I would like my leaders to be individuals I could admire in all respects. I think we need to maintain reasonable standards for our elected officials.  But I respect that people come in complicated packages, and often you have to balance the good with the bad. Politicians , like actors and rock stars, seem to need constant approval and ego gratification, which apparently makes it really difficult for them to keep their pants on.  Politicians tend to be wealthy, with abundant household help , investments, honoraria, and employment perks, tending to complicate their tax returns more than the average Joe.  None of these failings necessarily mean  they can’t enact good health care legislation or broker a peace agreement in the Middle East.

I think we go after these public servants with feet of clay because it is easier and safer to attack their relatively minor infractions than to bring truly evil people to justice.  If we want real change, it’s the CEOS of Monsanto and Halliburton, and people like them who need to be shamed and brought down, not the Daschles and Adams of the world.

wendy’s recipe file: red pepper beef goulash

Fans of my lamb stew with fennel:  this winter comfort food may be even better!  I developed this recipe (adapted from The New Basics Cookbook, by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins) while planning a meal to entertain some Romanian friends.   It’s Hungarian, but whatever.  Serve with pappardelle noodles.

RED PEPPER BEEF GOULASH

2 T p;ove po;

2 pounds boneless beef stew meat

1 large onion, chopped

1 orange and 1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and chopped

About 8 oz roasted red peppers (I used peppers that I roasted and froze last summer.  You can substitute a jar of roasted peppers, though it will not have the same rich taste)

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 T caraway seeds

2 T smoky paprika (don’t substitute cheap flavorless red powder for the real thing!)

2-3 cups beef broth (homemade or Imagine brand aseptic)

one-third cup tomato paste (again, I used tomato jam that I made during the summer.  To replicate, you could use good quality tomato paste with a dash of cinnamon, a dash of hot pepper, and a pinch of brown sugar)

one-third cup heavy cream

one-third cup sour cream (I like Nancy’s)

1) Heat the oil in a Dutch oven.  Brown the beef over medium high heat, in batches if necessary.  Using a slotted spoon, transfer the beef to a bowl and set aside.

2)  Add the onion, orange and yellow bell peppers, garlic, caraway, and paprika to the Dutch oven. Cook over low heat, stirring, until just tender (around 10 minutes)

3) Add the stock and tomato puree, deglazing the pan. Return the meat to the mixture. Cover and simmer until meat is fork-tender, around one and a half hours.  Season with salt and pepper if needed.  Add the roasted red peppers and cook, uncovered, another 10 minutes.  Meanwhile, combine heavy cream and sour cream in a small bowl.

4) Add creams to the goulash and serve.

danger to oneself and others

Well, we’ve had our own Columbine here in downtown Portland, and while there’s been lots of information about the promising young lives the shooter snuffed out or did irreperable damage to, there hasn’t been a whole lot of detail about him, save that he was a “student of concern” at his high school, had been “depressed and on medication” and was calm and provided proper documentation when buying his gun at a Tigard store.  And, as seems to be the case with most mass murderers, his neighbors didn’t know him very well and didn’t sense anything amiss.  He was “quiet”.  His former employers rated him highly although the woman in the neighboring cubicle found him “peculiar” and complained to no avail. 

No one accepts blame yet so many deserve it.

I can’t blame the owner of the gun shop–who, to his credit, admits feeling guilt–but I do blame the laws under which he operates. Gun ownership is legal in this country.  I admit the eight years of the Bush administration have weakened my opposition to the Second Amendment.  Should Cheney et al have staged a military coup, I would have regretted not owning a gun.  I couldn’t get it out of my mind that in prewar Germany Jews, unlike their Christian countrymen, did not own guns. Nevertheless, some degree of restriction is necessary for public safety.  To drive a car, a device with the capacity to be a lethal weapon, you need to take lessons, prove your capability to drive, have your vision tested, renew the license periodically with further testing, and present twenty zillion kinds of ID.  Surely to buying a gun, whose sole purpose is as a lethal weapon, should require a comparable degree of proof of responsibility? Not in this country.

Some say that these restrictions could be readily evaded by criminals, as evidenced by the saying “if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns”.  That’s probably true.  I’m sure the Mafia would still manage to get the weapons they needed.  Drug dealers shouldn’t have any more trouble obtaining illegal weapons than they do illegal substances.  But it would be a lot harder for psychopaths to buy guns, and they’re a lot more likely to kill innocent people.

In Oregon–and this is a recent development–gun buyers are required to prove they haven’t been convicted of a felony or committed to a mental institution.  They don’t need to reveal whether they’ve ever been treated for mental illness.  That’s protected by “privacy laws”.  While privacy laws were enacted in response to legitimate abuse, and while a history of mental illness is irrelevant for many purposes–bank loans and most employment, to name a couple–it is relevant to the purchase of a gun. 

And as for the committment to a mental institution, business, forget it.  As anyone whose had contact with what passes for our mental health system knows, you can’t even commit yourself voluntarily to a mental ward unless you are a “danger to oneself and others”.  It doesn’t matter if you, or someone you love, are standing there in the emergency room babbling that God is telling you to murder the infidels.  You’ve got to literally shove that knife up to somebody’s throat.

I don’t know what the problem is.  I don’t know if health personnel are more afraid of legal liability than mad gunmen, or whether it runs even deeper than that and they are terrified of the personal risk and accountability they incur when they reach beyond the letter of the law and accept responsibility for another human being.  We are very protective, as Americans, of the right of people to destroy themselves.  That’s why troubled people are not enclosed within a circle of protection, why they are set adrift to live in anonymous apartments and play video games and work temp jobs and be “quiet”–until they’re not.  When people destroy themselves, they all too often take innocent others along with them.

I realize there is no specific person to blame. Our fascination with firearms is to blame.  Our atomized society is to blame.  Our reliance on law and regulation as a substitute for responsibility to the human community is to blame. All the people who encountered the troubled Erik Ayala and passed the buck can now breathe a sigh of relief that they are free of legal liability.  He’s proved beyond a doubt that he’s a danger to himself and others.   Too bad that he and the others are dead.

wendy’s recipe of the day: savory bread pudding

Neither my son Lukas nor I like ends of bread and we are the biggest consumers of loaves of bread in our house.  I can’t bear to throw them away, though, so ends of bread accumulate until they take up half the freezer.  I was excited to find this recipe for savory bread pudding, which claimed to use up 24 slices of bread.  I found the number of slices excessive and the liquid content on the low side; I’ve tried to adjust for that in this recipe but you still may find the result tastes more like a baked breakfast sandwich than a pudding.  No matter, it’s good and my freezer has empty shelves again.

 

SAVORY BREAD PUDDING

enough old bread to fill a 9×13 pan three times over

butter for the bread (I used Earth Balance, a no trans fat vegetarian spread)

one-quarter pound ham

one-half cup olives, pitted and diced

eight ounces garlic and herb flavored goat cheese

8 eggs, lightly beaten

3 cups milk  (at least 2% fat)

salt and pepper to taste

diced fresh herbs if desired (parsley and basil are good)

2 ounces cheddar cheese, grated

1) LIghtly butter pan.  Cover bottom of pan with buttered bread.  Top with half the goat cheese, olives, ham, and any herbs used.  Add another layer of buttered bread and repeat.  Top with a third layer of buttered bread.

2) Whisk eggs together with milk, salt, and pepper.  Pour over bread.  Top with two ounces grated cheddar cheese.  Let sit for an hour or two in the refrigerator, covered with aluminum foil.

3) Place in a larger pan (a roasting pan works well) and fill with boiling water until it reaches halfway up the casserole dish.  Bake for half an hour; then remove the aluminum foil and bake for a half hour longer.  Cut like a lasagne to serve.

the demise of 23rd street books

The other day I was walking down 23rd Street and saw an empty space where 23rd Street Books used to be.  The demise of this 29-year old neighborhood landmark was not a surprise.  Their hours of operation had been shrinking along with their inventory; the owners had laid off most of their staff, including their daughter (who’d gone to work for Powell’s, only to be laid off there).

Still, it hurt.  23rd Street books did not have the broad selection of Powell’s, but the books they did sell were carefully chosen.  If you didn’t know what you were looking for, just wanted something good to read, it was less overwhelming that Powell’s miles of books.  Their children’s book selection was excellent and my youngest son and I spent many happy hours there.  Authors, both local and nationally known, gave readings often.  In the interest of supporting a local merchant, I bought books from 23rd Street even when it involved placing an order, running through almost as many book cards as Torrefazione coffee cards (another long lost tenant of 23rd Ave). I confess that after my daughter Rhianna started working at Powells, getting a fifty percent discount on her books, I stopped buying at 23rd Street as frequently.  But as it was right down the street, right on my walking path, I still stopped at the sales table now and then.  I just bought a calendar last week.  With both the bookstore and Music Millenium gone, I don’t have much reason to go down to 23rd Ave except to go to the bank and every now and then to Lucky Jeans.

The loss of small neighborhood stores hurts the economy, obviously, and frays the threads that hold a community together.  It also damages the texture of life.  We are lucky enough to live near Powells, which is hardly soulless, but its staff of underpaid and overeducated workers does not offer the personalized level of service of a store like 23rd Street Books.  And stores like Barnes and Noble or internet marketers like Amazon?   Impersonal and soulless. A local designer children’s clothing shop, owned by the mother of one of my son’s classmates, recently went out of business also.  I didn’t do my everyday clothing shopping there, but it was a good spot for party clothes and children’s clothing advice.  It put pretty things out there in the world, things that weren’t sewn in a sweatshop in Malawi.  I will miss it.

I’m hoping that these changes are cyclical, rather than an ongoing degradation of the quality of life.  A lot of corporate chains aren’t doing so well either.  Borders may be going the way of 23rd Street books.  Maybe there is a way for these small stores to stay in business if they follow an increasingly successful food model:  buying locally.  How about a store that specializes in local authors, published by local presses, books that you can’t find on Amazon or in Barnes and Noble, and increasingly, not at Powell’s either.  How about clothing stores (there are a few of these) selling clothes sewn by local designers and craftspeople?

We’re not going to get help from the top, no, not even from Superobama’s stimulus package.  Maybe it’s time to concentrate more on the grass roots.

wendy’s recipe of the day: roasted chicken with olives

ROASTED CHICKEN WITH OLIVES

2 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs

3 cloves garlic, minced

4 T olive oil

juice of one lemon

3/4 cup dried Moroccan olives, pitted

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, coarsely chopped

one-third cup sun dried tomatoes, coarsely chopped

4 oz pancetta (I like the prepped kind from Trader Joe’s)

dash white wine

grated parmesan cheese

1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2) Array chicken thighs in glass baking casserole and top with all ingredients except cheese.

3) Bake in oven until cooked and lightly browned on both sides, turning once.  Top with cheese; turn oven up to 400 and bake five more minutes or until melted.

The delicious sauce this dish effortlessly produces tastes great over tagliatelle noodles.  Serve with sauteed broccoli or spinach.

plumbing the shallows

A week before he gets flushed down the toilet of history, almost ex-President Bush gave an exit interview, reminding us why he’s destined for the sewer.  In charitable moments, I’ve wondered whether Bush’s inarticulateness obscures any deep thinking on his part.  But,no, this press conference makes clear how his mangling of the English language merely magnifies his incredible shallowness.

I’ve never seen a president so blithely unaware of the gravity of his office.  President Johnson’s eyes were filled with tears the day he resigned.  That doesn’t obviate his role in escalating the Vietnam War and needlessly killing thousands of people, but at least he acknowledged responsibility.  Even President Nixon felt the need to constantly reassure the American people that he “was not a crook”. Reagan initiated the era of President Lite, but even he projected an air of fatherly maturity.

But Bush?  He termed Abu Ghraib a “disappointment”.  A “disappointment” is when your team doesn’t win the Superbowl.  You don’t use that word to describe your reaction to horrific acts of torture.  Repulsed, maybe?  Sickened?  He termed the failure to find WMD in Iraq “disappointing” as well. Please, it was his rationale for a war that has killed tens of thousands of people  and maimed and ruined the lives of thousands more!  And he refers about it like it was a rainstorm interrupting his tropical vacation.

“I don’t know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were-things that didn’t go according to plan” he adds.  Well, George, I would call them mistakes.  Big ones.  And since when do Presidents expect “plans” to flow flawlessly in a diverse and complex world?  Heads of state implement policy.  They don’t “make plans”.

When reality didn’t line up with his perception, Bush, as is his wont, simply lied.  The federal government “plucked thirty thousand people off their roofs” during Hurricane Katrina?  Funny, I don’t remember Federal troops showing up for days.  Bush conveniently dismisses the fact that New Orleans has yet to remotely recover from Katrina.  The world still admires America?  Funny that, when both polls and world leaders say otherwise.

Bush blithely disregards the destruction–physical, economic, moral–that he leaves in his wake.  He says “burdens of the office” are overstated.  He cracks his old stupid jokes like he was a car salesman.  I think I regarded my tenure as PTA President with more seriousness. I can’t decide whether Bush’s bland indifference to the suffering he causes is worse than honest intentional evil.

So let’s hurry up and flush that toilet.  Too bad the American people are left swabbing the bowl.