We're having an exhibit of some of my dad's paintings. As part of the publicity, I agreed to be interviewed.
I thought they were asking one of us to be on the radio. Wouldn't you think that? When someone says "WFSB wants to do an interview," doesn't that sound like radio? I think it sounds like radio. So I say sure. Lee had already done the interview with The Courant, and El just plain has her hands full. Plus she'd hate to do a radio interview.
An email comes from the show: the attachment is called ALL GUESTS SHOULD KNOW. I glance at it on my screen, then print it out.
"Clothing: wear what you are comfortable in! We suggest bright colors as opposed to white or something with a complex pattern."
What the..
Then "We do not have a hair/makeup team -- please arrive camera ready."
Jiminy cricket! I thought. This must be TV.
It turns out most folks around here know this show. Better Connecticut. Go ahead: let's all laugh together here. Do you see all the funny things about this? There are several, and they're all tied together into a funny little knot.
Today I set a timer so I would remember to watch Better Connecticut to see what it's all about, and to get a sense of what bright colors people are wearing.
Oh, my. The hosts are comedians! That's their schtick! I'm sunk. I'll either go flat (no breast jokes here, please) or I'll go goofy and won't be able to stop laughing. Both scenarios seem equally likely, equally mortifying.
Let me freeze-frame that scene of the damsel in distress and say one thing. I must comment on the strangeness of what I saw during one hour of TV this afternoon. If you nearly never watch TV, it's a real jolt when you do. There's a whole world in there. It's very intense -- that world and the experience. I think I hardly blinked, and it's possible my mouth was agape.
Anyway, during one of our "What the heck am I supposed to wear for this television thing?" conversations, I say to Laura, "Maybe I should wear the foobs." I've never yet worn them, but being on TV seems like the kind of occasion that might call for the illusion of breasts.
"Oh, hon," La says, unsure if this is a moment when I might cry, or if I'm being goofy. I'm not sure either, but I decide to chuckle so that she can, too.
"Nah, I can't do that. I'll just wear a scarf. A brightly colored scarf."
My hair is so thin these days that I'm worried the studio lights will make my scalp shine through, giving me a little head-glow. That's a thing, I think.
But the kicker is that bit about arriving camera ready. Since I have never been camera ready in my life, I have given my well-made-up neighbor the task of getting me there.
Oh, boy!
Stay tuned, as they say in the biz.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Thursday, January 23, 2014
a pile of all the food you've ever eaten
Raise your hand if you don't have this thematic fantasy: seeing a pile of all the food you've eaten in your lifetime. It's in a giant room, right? Or maybe there's just a place floating in the space of your mind, and in that place there is a pile of all the butter that you've ever eaten. A pile of all the apples -- from the perfect sliced Cortland to all the dimpled ones you've found in the grass near an apple tree.
A pile of all the noodles. All the berries. For a moment, memories flash by as I add to the pile: our old raspberry patch, wild strawberries in the woods, or blackberries along a trail.
A pile of all the bacon. For a horrible millisecond: a pile of all the pigs.
A pile of all the licorice, maybe a sub-pile for Good & Plenty alone. Remember when some of them didn't have any licorice -- just a blob of pink or white sugar? Those pieces wouldn't count.
All the black beans. I might break that down into a pile for when I was in Guatemala, and a pile for the rest of my life. I think fondly of Guatemala for a second or two.
There's a very tiny pile of eel. One bite of octopus. One oyster.
Certain items don't lend themselves as easily to piling. When I picture a pile of all the eggs I've eaten, it ends up such a mess. Milk requires a giant imaginary container, maybe like the size of the pond we used to have. Or would it be more like the size of our neighbors' pool? I think for a minute about the pond, with that great birch tree. I think about dips in the pool.
I've had a lot of milk.
All the insects! I would love to see a pile of all the insects I've eaten. All the worms that were blithely steamed into broccoli, flies that took a little road trip from farm to store to belly -- stowaways pressed against a piece of kale. I imagine it wouldn't be a gigantic pile, but there'd be enough to stare at for awhile with your eyebrows raised.
All the lettuce: this could even be sorted into piles by decade. There is a pile of iceberg from the 1960's, for example, towering over the pile of 1960s romaine. Then, beginning with maybe the piles for the 90s, the iceberg lettuce starts to fits into a couple of wheelbarrows, then into a small flower pot. It came on sandwiches, or soggy and flattened under some sushi.
A pile of all of it, all you've ever eaten.
This morning I apply my usual pile-of-food fantasy while eating some nut bread I'd just made. "This recipe would be good with dates," I say aloud, because that's what I do now. And then I wonder about the pile of all the dates I've ever eaten. (Sometimes I create a continuum and wonder where my [say, date] ingestion is in comparison to "other people in the US," which is different from "other people in the world" -- if I want to play with sliding up and down the continuum. For dates: well higher than the average person in the US; then still higher than average -- but less so, I think -- worldwide. Because you have to include in your calculations not only everyone in the middle east, but also all the people in other places who have never had the sticky pleasure.)
I think of how my parents always bought that date nut bread around Christmastime. They ordered loaves and loaves from the Koinonia Farm, a little community of people who decided to live together, practice peace, and try to make a simple living out of selling pecans and date nut bread. That was some good bread.
If you piled all the slices of Koinonia date nut bread I've eaten, I wonder what that would look like.
I wonder how big it would be compared to mom's pile of date nut bread.
Hm. Her pile of date nut bread would be bigger. She loved that bread.
I go back to eating my bread that should have dates in it, and I miss my mom for awhile. In fact, I could start with almost any of those imagined piles except maybe the pigs, and that's where I end up: thinking of meals around a table, thinking of my life, my family -- the good, good stuff.
As I take another bite of bread, then wet a finger to pick up a sunflower seed that is left on the plate, I consider my huge life-pile of sunflower seeds. Most are shelled, but there's a smaller pile that's impressive, too -- sunflower seeds we used to shell with our teeth, sitting together around the big, round table. There was jasmine tea, too.
Man, my dad loved those seeds.
A pile of all the noodles. All the berries. For a moment, memories flash by as I add to the pile: our old raspberry patch, wild strawberries in the woods, or blackberries along a trail.
A pile of all the bacon. For a horrible millisecond: a pile of all the pigs.
A pile of all the licorice, maybe a sub-pile for Good & Plenty alone. Remember when some of them didn't have any licorice -- just a blob of pink or white sugar? Those pieces wouldn't count.
All the black beans. I might break that down into a pile for when I was in Guatemala, and a pile for the rest of my life. I think fondly of Guatemala for a second or two.
There's a very tiny pile of eel. One bite of octopus. One oyster.
Certain items don't lend themselves as easily to piling. When I picture a pile of all the eggs I've eaten, it ends up such a mess. Milk requires a giant imaginary container, maybe like the size of the pond we used to have. Or would it be more like the size of our neighbors' pool? I think for a minute about the pond, with that great birch tree. I think about dips in the pool.
I've had a lot of milk.
All the insects! I would love to see a pile of all the insects I've eaten. All the worms that were blithely steamed into broccoli, flies that took a little road trip from farm to store to belly -- stowaways pressed against a piece of kale. I imagine it wouldn't be a gigantic pile, but there'd be enough to stare at for awhile with your eyebrows raised.
A pile of all of it, all you've ever eaten.
This morning I apply my usual pile-of-food fantasy while eating some nut bread I'd just made. "This recipe would be good with dates," I say aloud, because that's what I do now. And then I wonder about the pile of all the dates I've ever eaten. (Sometimes I create a continuum and wonder where my [say, date] ingestion is in comparison to "other people in the US," which is different from "other people in the world" -- if I want to play with sliding up and down the continuum. For dates: well higher than the average person in the US; then still higher than average -- but less so, I think -- worldwide. Because you have to include in your calculations not only everyone in the middle east, but also all the people in other places who have never had the sticky pleasure.)
I think of how my parents always bought that date nut bread around Christmastime. They ordered loaves and loaves from the Koinonia Farm, a little community of people who decided to live together, practice peace, and try to make a simple living out of selling pecans and date nut bread. That was some good bread.
If you piled all the slices of Koinonia date nut bread I've eaten, I wonder what that would look like.
I wonder how big it would be compared to mom's pile of date nut bread.
Hm. Her pile of date nut bread would be bigger. She loved that bread.
I go back to eating my bread that should have dates in it, and I miss my mom for awhile. In fact, I could start with almost any of those imagined piles except maybe the pigs, and that's where I end up: thinking of meals around a table, thinking of my life, my family -- the good, good stuff.
As I take another bite of bread, then wet a finger to pick up a sunflower seed that is left on the plate, I consider my huge life-pile of sunflower seeds. Most are shelled, but there's a smaller pile that's impressive, too -- sunflower seeds we used to shell with our teeth, sitting together around the big, round table. There was jasmine tea, too.
Man, my dad loved those seeds.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
the fall of Rome
I think maybe this is how Rome first began to fall. One night someone put their cup in the sink -- and left it to be washed in the morning. Time went by, and soon an entire supper's dishes sat in the sink all night. Still, this took the Roman dish user by surprise. Did I do that? they'd ask themselves in the morning. Huh, they'd say -- originally a Latin term. As Rome fell and everything felt like an effort, Romans got tired of speaking Latin, and only wrote it now and then. Ancient graffiti remains today on some of the walls in Italy: HUH, carved into the stone. These markings, along with the equally ubiquitous semper ubi sub ubi, are undeniable evidence of the bewilderment -- and regression -- that came with the gradual approach of the Fall.
They used to pride themselves on making the bed every morning, because that's what the previous Roman elders did, and now they were elders themselves. Romans lived in the Golden Age of Making the Bed, and were a proud people. But as the Empire fell, or at least began to lean, they began to think: Why do we do this? I never come in here except to sleep, and no one else ever comes in here. They did not fully understand that making the bed was holding the fabric of society together, holding together the Empire. People began to get out of bed and then simply "close" the bed. No tucking. Just a quick throw of the blankets in the general direction of the pillows. It was a shortcut that would lead to others.
A mass of Romans went through this unraveling at the same time (they were in middle age, though that term was not to be named for another 1000 years) and each Roman thought maybe they were the only one slacking a bit. But the truth is that everyone was, in their own way. Someday, they secretly feared, they might not even floss.
They began to talk to themselves more. Recently not overheard by anyone in a kitchen I know well: "Tear along the dotted line? I'm trying to tear along the dotted line! You're not giving me much to work with here!" It was just like this in ancient Rome, except without the plastic bag of Romaine (ah, the irony!) lettuce to struggle with. No, back then they began to talk to themselves about the things of their day: Ubi est mea sub ubi? they'd ask themselves in the dark of morning.
At the peak of the Empire, Romans were famous for getting in 10,000 steps a day! It is one of the things that made the Empire so great and powerful. One day they settled for 9,524 and did not even run up and down the stairs to reach 10,000. One day, when it was 8 degrees outside, they didn't even try -- and got only 3,560. The writing, as I've said, was on the wall. Eventually, pathetically, they seemed to stop writing altogether.
Rome fell in the wintertime. I understand. I really do.
They used to pride themselves on making the bed every morning, because that's what the previous Roman elders did, and now they were elders themselves. Romans lived in the Golden Age of Making the Bed, and were a proud people. But as the Empire fell, or at least began to lean, they began to think: Why do we do this? I never come in here except to sleep, and no one else ever comes in here. They did not fully understand that making the bed was holding the fabric of society together, holding together the Empire. People began to get out of bed and then simply "close" the bed. No tucking. Just a quick throw of the blankets in the general direction of the pillows. It was a shortcut that would lead to others.
A mass of Romans went through this unraveling at the same time (they were in middle age, though that term was not to be named for another 1000 years) and each Roman thought maybe they were the only one slacking a bit. But the truth is that everyone was, in their own way. Someday, they secretly feared, they might not even floss.
They began to talk to themselves more. Recently not overheard by anyone in a kitchen I know well: "Tear along the dotted line? I'm trying to tear along the dotted line! You're not giving me much to work with here!" It was just like this in ancient Rome, except without the plastic bag of Romaine (ah, the irony!) lettuce to struggle with. No, back then they began to talk to themselves about the things of their day: Ubi est mea sub ubi? they'd ask themselves in the dark of morning.
At the peak of the Empire, Romans were famous for getting in 10,000 steps a day! It is one of the things that made the Empire so great and powerful. One day they settled for 9,524 and did not even run up and down the stairs to reach 10,000. One day, when it was 8 degrees outside, they didn't even try -- and got only 3,560. The writing, as I've said, was on the wall. Eventually, pathetically, they seemed to stop writing altogether.
Rome fell in the wintertime. I understand. I really do.
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