Barack Obama is 180 pounds of front-page potential, but this week he is taking a back seat to four pounds (combined) of bacon and Italian pork sausage.
I don't think I have ever seen a subject get such a death grip on the "Most Emailed" title at The New York Times until this week, when on Wednesday, after it appeared in the Dining section, the "Bacon Explosion" rocketed to the top and stayed there for THREE DAYS. Obviously there are bar codes on human DNA, going back to the beginning when food was scarce and a bitch to obtain, that make us perk up our ears at the report of something new to eat that serves 10 and will sustain the caloric needs of those 10 for about a full year if their arteries don't turn to rebar in the first 24 hours.
I was conflicted. I wanted to make it immediately, but my stomach picked up the phone and called my brain and yelled, "I'm a stomach, not a grease trap!" I had to agree. The Times headline on the story – "Take Bacon. Add Sausage. Blog." – suggested the editors thought it was a publicity stunt to get Website hits, or the same kind of excess we regularly see on fashion runways.
Not that I was going to turn my back on a technique that weaves thick-sliced bacon into a tightly woven mat in which other meats are rolled up and barbecued for three hours. The original recipe calls for the bacon mat, and Italian sausage innards, with more bacon, rolled up inside. The creators frankly brag that when it is put on the table, it contains 5,000 calories and 500 grams of fat. Go look at it and tell me if your stomach doesn't pick up a bat and hide behind the door. Of course 40 years ago, my pal Ray and I would have split one, with fries, and some lemon icebox pie for a touch of sweet. But that was then. I envied the youth of No. 3 son Bill who, when I emailed him the recipe, replied, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" and emailed me back a recipe for a pudding made with jelly donuts "to wash it down with."
Then came temptation. Karen is out of town, and I am batching it for the Super Bowl. Then friends Janie and Roland called and invited me over for the game. I sort of dropped the hint that there was this new thing I could try, and in fairness, by then I had modified the recipe. When I make it, I will have the bacon mat, but inside, instead of Italian sausage and bacon, will be hamburger and sautéed onions. It could still turn out to be a gutbomb. Better the thing is introduced at home, with some chicken ready just in case. If it turns out the way I think it might, it will be dynamite on a hamburger bun.
This morning, the Bacon Explosion had slipped to No. 9, and as I take pen in hand, it has fallen to No. 13. Who knows how many Super Bowl parties it will turn up at tomorrow. I am looking for a reaction story in the media next week, or maybe a wave of emergency-room reports tomorrow night.
January 31, 2009
January 30, 2009
Boiling ocean threatens to claim innocent Mexican island
No, that is not snow. That is the Pacific Ocean in a sunstorm. We have been hit by another one. It started last night. As I took this picture, the temperature on the porch was 85 degrees. This is JANUARY 30! This week, San Diegans have been wondering why the Super Bowl isn't played here every year. The NFL says it's because our stadium isn't up to standards, i.e. can't seat a minimum of 10,000 people in luxury boxes. That is true, but the real reason is that a lot of us pay quietly into a fund which pays lobbyists to influence the NFL to play the Super Bowl in places like Tampa Bay because if they play it here, television will show people in the East (average Jan. 30 temperature: 2) pictures like the one above and they will ALL MOVE OUT HERE. We don't have room for them.
January 29, 2009
Swallowing my pride for Velveeta
What else can I do? I will remain a champion of Velveeta cheese, as I have been for half a century, even though I now know I am not a preferred customer in the eyes of Velveeta’s marketers.
For this Sunday’s Super Bowl, Kraft Foods, makers of Velveeta, targeted women ages 25-50 in an email “Velveeta game-day party” campaign. More than 15,000 women responded, and 2,500 were chosen to receive a party pack featuring a 32-ounce bar of Velveeta, some chili con queso makings, and some lesser stuff including something called Ritz toasted chips, which, under the Constitution, people have every right to dip into chili con queso if they want to. Karen didn’t get the email. She is, um, not in the age range. Too bad. Velveeta is the star of her very spicy con queso, which is the best ever made. I eat it with a spoon.
I really don’t resent Velveeta’s chosen women, even though I was making green enchiladas with Velveeta before they were born. In fact, some of them must be all right. One of them, Angilyn Mathews, told The Wall Street Journal she uses Velveeta in her chimichangas. “It’s really easy,” she said. “You just roll up chicken, salsa and Velveeta in a flour tortilla and deep fry it.” You go, Angilyn! That is something I plan to try even before the Super Bowl.
To show I have no hard feelings, I will share with you the world’s best green enchilada recipe, that I got from an Abilene friend, Hugh Beck, some 35 years ago. He let me use the recipe in my cookbook, “Michael Grant’s Cookbook,” and this is how I wrote about him in the book:
“Some Texans are more Texan than others. Hugh Beck was one of these. Hugh ran a construction company in Abilene. I never saw him in anything but khakis and boots and a beat-up straw hat, and he had that peculiar squint of Texans who work outside with one eye always on the weather.
“And he was an eternal optimist. The sun never stopped shining on Hugh Beck, even on the bleak February afternoon that he shared with me the secret of his optimism. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘If it is cold outside, and the sleet blew in and froze your wash on the line, and the kids need braces, and the car needs tires, and they think it’s your dog killing the chickens, and the gutter fell down, and you’ve got a dollar and a dime in the bank, and barely an inch of Scotch in the bottle, don’t kill yourself. Make green enchiladas. You will feel better again real soon.’”
And he was right. Maybe I better send this recipe to Barack Obama. In the context of Velveeta’s Super Bowl party, the green enchiladas are meant for Monday, to make it easier for fans of the losing team, particularly if it’s Pittsburgh, who will take it real hard. Hugh would like that.
1 pound lean hamburger
½ tsp. cumin
Salt and pepper
4 tbsp. butter
3 tbsp. flour
2 cups milk
½ pound Velveeta (none other), cubed
2 4-ounce cans chopped green chiles
½ tsp. salt
1 large onion, chopped fine
2 cups grated Cheddar cheese
Corn tortillas
Season hamburger with cumin, salt and pepper and brown in a skillet. Drain the fat. In a large saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour, cooking over medium-high heat just until the flour begins to brown. Add the milk and stir constantly until the sauce thickens. Add the Velveeta, chiles and salt and heat, stirring, over low heat until the cheese melts. Soften the tortillas one-by-one in a little hot oil in a skillet. Fill each tortilla lightly with hamburger, onion and grated cheese and roll. Place the enchiladas close together in a baking dish. Sprinkle any excess onion and cheese over. Pour the sauce over and bake at 350 for 25 minutes.
For this Sunday’s Super Bowl, Kraft Foods, makers of Velveeta, targeted women ages 25-50 in an email “Velveeta game-day party” campaign. More than 15,000 women responded, and 2,500 were chosen to receive a party pack featuring a 32-ounce bar of Velveeta, some chili con queso makings, and some lesser stuff including something called Ritz toasted chips, which, under the Constitution, people have every right to dip into chili con queso if they want to. Karen didn’t get the email. She is, um, not in the age range. Too bad. Velveeta is the star of her very spicy con queso, which is the best ever made. I eat it with a spoon.
I really don’t resent Velveeta’s chosen women, even though I was making green enchiladas with Velveeta before they were born. In fact, some of them must be all right. One of them, Angilyn Mathews, told The Wall Street Journal she uses Velveeta in her chimichangas. “It’s really easy,” she said. “You just roll up chicken, salsa and Velveeta in a flour tortilla and deep fry it.” You go, Angilyn! That is something I plan to try even before the Super Bowl.
To show I have no hard feelings, I will share with you the world’s best green enchilada recipe, that I got from an Abilene friend, Hugh Beck, some 35 years ago. He let me use the recipe in my cookbook, “Michael Grant’s Cookbook,” and this is how I wrote about him in the book:
“Some Texans are more Texan than others. Hugh Beck was one of these. Hugh ran a construction company in Abilene. I never saw him in anything but khakis and boots and a beat-up straw hat, and he had that peculiar squint of Texans who work outside with one eye always on the weather.
“And he was an eternal optimist. The sun never stopped shining on Hugh Beck, even on the bleak February afternoon that he shared with me the secret of his optimism. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘If it is cold outside, and the sleet blew in and froze your wash on the line, and the kids need braces, and the car needs tires, and they think it’s your dog killing the chickens, and the gutter fell down, and you’ve got a dollar and a dime in the bank, and barely an inch of Scotch in the bottle, don’t kill yourself. Make green enchiladas. You will feel better again real soon.’”
And he was right. Maybe I better send this recipe to Barack Obama. In the context of Velveeta’s Super Bowl party, the green enchiladas are meant for Monday, to make it easier for fans of the losing team, particularly if it’s Pittsburgh, who will take it real hard. Hugh would like that.
1 pound lean hamburger
½ tsp. cumin
Salt and pepper
4 tbsp. butter
3 tbsp. flour
2 cups milk
½ pound Velveeta (none other), cubed
2 4-ounce cans chopped green chiles
½ tsp. salt
1 large onion, chopped fine
2 cups grated Cheddar cheese
Corn tortillas
Season hamburger with cumin, salt and pepper and brown in a skillet. Drain the fat. In a large saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour, cooking over medium-high heat just until the flour begins to brown. Add the milk and stir constantly until the sauce thickens. Add the Velveeta, chiles and salt and heat, stirring, over low heat until the cheese melts. Soften the tortillas one-by-one in a little hot oil in a skillet. Fill each tortilla lightly with hamburger, onion and grated cheese and roll. Place the enchiladas close together in a baking dish. Sprinkle any excess onion and cheese over. Pour the sauce over and bake at 350 for 25 minutes.
January 26, 2009
Saturday night fever, Sunday morning sweat
Karen's Medal
Saturday was one of those days that just sails along. First we drove up to Carlsbad to get Karen’s bib number and other I.D. for Sunday’s Carlsbad Half-Marathon in which she was entered. Bright, sunny morning, even though rain was forecast. No traffic at the check-in site, though nine thousand people were entered in the thing. We picked up our friend Nataly, who was entered also – she is a veteran of events like this. She showed us a trick to beat the traffic on Sunday morning.
Driving home, we stopped for birthday cards and wine. We were going to a party Saturday night, one of those where couples get together regularly because they like getting together, they laugh a lot, and they’re all good cooks, plus this time two of the guys were celebrating birthdays. The first two cards we looked at were perfect. At the end of the card aisle and around the corner, we ran straight into a shelf on which sat the perfect gifts for these gentlemen. We found two good bottles of Cabernet (beef tenderloin was the entrée) for a combined $11 off, and were out of the store inside of five minutes. At home I didn’t even bother with lunch, preferring to entertain visions of the goodies to come at 6:30.
Can you see where this is heading? I sat down for a short snooze. Thirty minutes later, I woke up feeling weird. The day was still beautiful, but it didn’t much interest me. My appetite was gone. In my head was a tiny, whispering ache that said, “So you thought you were having a good day, did you?” I walked to the back and told Karen, “I don’t feel very good.” She felt my forehead and said, “You feel warm.” We took my temperature. It was right at 100. I would have preferred it to be 101 or 102, the hot, nasty kind that involves pain and toilets. But no, just 100, just enough to poke me in the gut and sneer, “No party for you, Mr. Hot Stuff.”
Karen called and cancelled and went to the store to get me some chicken noodle soup. She called Nataly to ask if they could meet and drive together to Carlsbad, since I probably couldn’t go. It was Karen’s first half-marathon, and I wanted to be there. But when she left at 5:30 a.m. I felt just bad enough to be happy to get on my back again. I hate those fevers that make you feel just bad enough, like, well, it’s not even the flu, you have just been having too much fun lately and now you are going to have to pay.
Karen got home at midday with cramps in her legs and a medal around her neck. She was very happy. “I did it in 3:45,” she said, where she had gone in reckoning on a 4:20. But that was if she walked the whole route. “I jogged part of the way,” she said. "About an hour." After the Breast Cancer 3Day in November, she saw the local half-marathons as good training for next November. She now has the first leg of the San Diego “triple crown” under her belt. Next is the La Jolla Half-Marathon in April, and the San Diego Half-Marathon in August.
“How do you feel?” she asked. “Better,” I said. The temperature was down to 99. This morning, our spring semester classes started at Grossmont. Guess what my temperature was . . . .
Saturday was one of those days that just sails along. First we drove up to Carlsbad to get Karen’s bib number and other I.D. for Sunday’s Carlsbad Half-Marathon in which she was entered. Bright, sunny morning, even though rain was forecast. No traffic at the check-in site, though nine thousand people were entered in the thing. We picked up our friend Nataly, who was entered also – she is a veteran of events like this. She showed us a trick to beat the traffic on Sunday morning.
Driving home, we stopped for birthday cards and wine. We were going to a party Saturday night, one of those where couples get together regularly because they like getting together, they laugh a lot, and they’re all good cooks, plus this time two of the guys were celebrating birthdays. The first two cards we looked at were perfect. At the end of the card aisle and around the corner, we ran straight into a shelf on which sat the perfect gifts for these gentlemen. We found two good bottles of Cabernet (beef tenderloin was the entrée) for a combined $11 off, and were out of the store inside of five minutes. At home I didn’t even bother with lunch, preferring to entertain visions of the goodies to come at 6:30.
Can you see where this is heading? I sat down for a short snooze. Thirty minutes later, I woke up feeling weird. The day was still beautiful, but it didn’t much interest me. My appetite was gone. In my head was a tiny, whispering ache that said, “So you thought you were having a good day, did you?” I walked to the back and told Karen, “I don’t feel very good.” She felt my forehead and said, “You feel warm.” We took my temperature. It was right at 100. I would have preferred it to be 101 or 102, the hot, nasty kind that involves pain and toilets. But no, just 100, just enough to poke me in the gut and sneer, “No party for you, Mr. Hot Stuff.”
Karen called and cancelled and went to the store to get me some chicken noodle soup. She called Nataly to ask if they could meet and drive together to Carlsbad, since I probably couldn’t go. It was Karen’s first half-marathon, and I wanted to be there. But when she left at 5:30 a.m. I felt just bad enough to be happy to get on my back again. I hate those fevers that make you feel just bad enough, like, well, it’s not even the flu, you have just been having too much fun lately and now you are going to have to pay.
Karen got home at midday with cramps in her legs and a medal around her neck. She was very happy. “I did it in 3:45,” she said, where she had gone in reckoning on a 4:20. But that was if she walked the whole route. “I jogged part of the way,” she said. "About an hour." After the Breast Cancer 3Day in November, she saw the local half-marathons as good training for next November. She now has the first leg of the San Diego “triple crown” under her belt. Next is the La Jolla Half-Marathon in April, and the San Diego Half-Marathon in August.
“How do you feel?” she asked. “Better,” I said. The temperature was down to 99. This morning, our spring semester classes started at Grossmont. Guess what my temperature was . . . .
January 25, 2009
January 23, 2009
A peachy (maybe) cobbler idea
During the holidays we were at a party where the talk turned to peach cobbler. At the first mention of the words, "Peach Cobbler," you can instantly spot the Southerners in the crowd. Their cheeks turn rosy, their teeth show, and their eyes take on more intense values of blue, brown, green, or in my case, hazel.
One by one, the Westerners, Northerners and Easterners peel away from this Southern core, because they realize they have heard enough about peach cobbler when it is apparent the Southern core is just getting started.
It is an amazing thing. Over the years, I have noticed that, wherever I travel, domestic or overseas, when I mention to a local that I am from San Diego, that local will immediately say, "Oh, I've got a sister in Chula Vista!" Chula Vista is a principal city in the San Diego metropolitan area, and I have often thought I should stand on a street corner there and announce in a strong voice, "I have been to Italy!" and see how many women stop, and turn, and say, "I have kinfolks there!"
Likewise in a circle of the peach cobbler-savvy, every person's mother, or grandmother, in the group makes, or made, the best peach cobbler on the planet. Including my grandmother Susie. Her secret was the bottom crust, only it was not a crust so much as it was a peachy, steamy, savory-sweet dumpling. I have tried and tried, and every time, my bottom crust gets brown on the bottom and thus becomes as ordinary as pie crust. I brag about Susie's bottom crust, to the extent that soon most of the core has peeled away, save for an exceptionally polite Southerner or two who don't want to see me standing alone, naked as an artichoke heart, gushing to no one about a dumpling bottom crust.
Then last night I made a discovery. I lunched yesterday with Jon Standefer, my old Texas pal, at The Fish Market on the bay in San Diego. When we were finished, there were three slices of sourdough bread left, thick and slightly toasted at the edges. I asked Oscar, the oyster bar chef, to put them in a bag to take home.
Last night I put the slices in the bottom of a baking dish and spooned in a middle-sized can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. The weather had turned sprinkly and I was aiming for something simple and hearty. I heated it for half an hour in a 325 toaster oven. The result was excellent. I fished to the bottom and cut off a bite of bread, now soft and steamy and sauced, and not only did it hit the spot, it reminded me of a dumpling. A very good dumpling, in fact. Dumplings are not all that hard to make, but if simple and hearty is your aim, why not use thick-sliced sourdough instead?
Then, just now, as I was sitting down to write this, I asked myself: What if you made peach cobbler with thick sourdough slices for the bottom crust? If I had a Webcam, you would see that my cheeks have become rosy, my teeth are showing, and my eyes are a roaring hazel. Don't try this at home until I have experimented; it may not work with peaches. But it damn sure does with Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Try it sometime. Just be sure the sourdough is an inch thick and has a good bite, not that cottony supermarket stuff. Trader Joe's has good sourdough, and a great whole-grain, maple-y, wheat loaf. Hey . . . .
One by one, the Westerners, Northerners and Easterners peel away from this Southern core, because they realize they have heard enough about peach cobbler when it is apparent the Southern core is just getting started.
It is an amazing thing. Over the years, I have noticed that, wherever I travel, domestic or overseas, when I mention to a local that I am from San Diego, that local will immediately say, "Oh, I've got a sister in Chula Vista!" Chula Vista is a principal city in the San Diego metropolitan area, and I have often thought I should stand on a street corner there and announce in a strong voice, "I have been to Italy!" and see how many women stop, and turn, and say, "I have kinfolks there!"
Likewise in a circle of the peach cobbler-savvy, every person's mother, or grandmother, in the group makes, or made, the best peach cobbler on the planet. Including my grandmother Susie. Her secret was the bottom crust, only it was not a crust so much as it was a peachy, steamy, savory-sweet dumpling. I have tried and tried, and every time, my bottom crust gets brown on the bottom and thus becomes as ordinary as pie crust. I brag about Susie's bottom crust, to the extent that soon most of the core has peeled away, save for an exceptionally polite Southerner or two who don't want to see me standing alone, naked as an artichoke heart, gushing to no one about a dumpling bottom crust.
Then last night I made a discovery. I lunched yesterday with Jon Standefer, my old Texas pal, at The Fish Market on the bay in San Diego. When we were finished, there were three slices of sourdough bread left, thick and slightly toasted at the edges. I asked Oscar, the oyster bar chef, to put them in a bag to take home.
Last night I put the slices in the bottom of a baking dish and spooned in a middle-sized can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. The weather had turned sprinkly and I was aiming for something simple and hearty. I heated it for half an hour in a 325 toaster oven. The result was excellent. I fished to the bottom and cut off a bite of bread, now soft and steamy and sauced, and not only did it hit the spot, it reminded me of a dumpling. A very good dumpling, in fact. Dumplings are not all that hard to make, but if simple and hearty is your aim, why not use thick-sliced sourdough instead?
Then, just now, as I was sitting down to write this, I asked myself: What if you made peach cobbler with thick sourdough slices for the bottom crust? If I had a Webcam, you would see that my cheeks have become rosy, my teeth are showing, and my eyes are a roaring hazel. Don't try this at home until I have experimented; it may not work with peaches. But it damn sure does with Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Try it sometime. Just be sure the sourdough is an inch thick and has a good bite, not that cottony supermarket stuff. Trader Joe's has good sourdough, and a great whole-grain, maple-y, wheat loaf. Hey . . . .
January 20, 2009
With a hand on a Bible, history closing and opening
In California at this moment it is 9:50 a.m. but I feel like I have lived a whole day.
America 2. America II. America 2.0. America Two. America Too. America at 9:50 is not the same America I woke up in this morning. That America has lived its whole day. In that day, as Barack Obama pointed out, his father could not get served at a café in that America. A sign on the television screen: "We Have Overcome." Well, yes we have. Yes we could.
But that isn't what Obama meant in months past when he was saying so memorably, "Yes We Can." That challenge became the reality in the America that was born this morning. In an instant with a man's hand on a Bible, the massive challenge of "We Shall Overcome" is transformed to the massive challenge "Yes We Can." Talk about history being made.
Can we? Obama thinks so, with emphasis on the "we." His inaugural speech let some air out of the balloon. He's not going to be able to snap his fingers after all. America 2 begins with his dropping a lot of responsibility into our laps. America 2 is going to have to be America Too. JFK said "Ask not," etc. Obama said. "You can't just think about yourself anymore, you have to think about America Too."
He jumped all over his first chance to lead. At the second line of the Oath, he didn't hesitate to correct the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
He built his campaign on the theme of inclusion, and I got the impression he didn't waste any time, in his first minutes in office, in putting inclusion into play. I have the feeling his speech didn't stand out any more than it did because it was a part of a quartet. Rick Warren may have political baggage, but he can bring white thunder at a pulpit the way Elvis brought white thunder to black music. Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem sketched the late America in a way that completed Obama's café snapshot.
Finally, The Rev. Joseph Lowery, the old leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, played stunning counterpoint to Rick Warren, providing his new America 2 compatriot a lesson in cadence, structure, and climax, while carrying the "Yes We Can" theme for Obama into a sparkling blue-sky cathedral of inclusion, all of them – black, brown, yellow, red, white – coming together in tens of thousands to shout, "Amen! Amen! Amen!" Inclusion. It occurred to me as Obama came forward and hugged Rev. Lowery that in Obama there is a generosity that lets him give the best words to other people to say. I have already seen that generosity, first-hand, in someone very close to me, and have remarked how special it is, in setting an individual apart.
Damn this blogging business. In the old days, newspapermen could watch the whole thing, then go back to the office when it was dark after everyone had gone home, and write the story for the next day. But here I sit, in the study, and I can hear the television from the living room. I refuse to miss any more of it. My God, there's a whole day left.
America 2. America II. America 2.0. America Two. America Too. America at 9:50 is not the same America I woke up in this morning. That America has lived its whole day. In that day, as Barack Obama pointed out, his father could not get served at a café in that America. A sign on the television screen: "We Have Overcome." Well, yes we have. Yes we could.
But that isn't what Obama meant in months past when he was saying so memorably, "Yes We Can." That challenge became the reality in the America that was born this morning. In an instant with a man's hand on a Bible, the massive challenge of "We Shall Overcome" is transformed to the massive challenge "Yes We Can." Talk about history being made.
Can we? Obama thinks so, with emphasis on the "we." His inaugural speech let some air out of the balloon. He's not going to be able to snap his fingers after all. America 2 begins with his dropping a lot of responsibility into our laps. America 2 is going to have to be America Too. JFK said "Ask not," etc. Obama said. "You can't just think about yourself anymore, you have to think about America Too."
He jumped all over his first chance to lead. At the second line of the Oath, he didn't hesitate to correct the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
He built his campaign on the theme of inclusion, and I got the impression he didn't waste any time, in his first minutes in office, in putting inclusion into play. I have the feeling his speech didn't stand out any more than it did because it was a part of a quartet. Rick Warren may have political baggage, but he can bring white thunder at a pulpit the way Elvis brought white thunder to black music. Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem sketched the late America in a way that completed Obama's café snapshot.
Finally, The Rev. Joseph Lowery, the old leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, played stunning counterpoint to Rick Warren, providing his new America 2 compatriot a lesson in cadence, structure, and climax, while carrying the "Yes We Can" theme for Obama into a sparkling blue-sky cathedral of inclusion, all of them – black, brown, yellow, red, white – coming together in tens of thousands to shout, "Amen! Amen! Amen!" Inclusion. It occurred to me as Obama came forward and hugged Rev. Lowery that in Obama there is a generosity that lets him give the best words to other people to say. I have already seen that generosity, first-hand, in someone very close to me, and have remarked how special it is, in setting an individual apart.
Damn this blogging business. In the old days, newspapermen could watch the whole thing, then go back to the office when it was dark after everyone had gone home, and write the story for the next day. But here I sit, in the study, and I can hear the television from the living room. I refuse to miss any more of it. My God, there's a whole day left.
January 19, 2009
For the First Lady, some elements of style
Since America's fashion pride appears to depend entirely on what Michelle Obama wears in the next few days, I thought I could do my bit by offering her some advice from maybe the best paragraphs on style ever written, by E.B. White in Chapter Five of "The Elements of Style."
White's subject was writing style, of course, but it doesn't take too much paraphrasing to see that style is style, whether in lines on a page, or lines on a woman. Getting right to it, with apologies to Mr. White and hoping he would have enjoyed some mirth from it:
"In this final chapter, we approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing. Here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of fabrics, causing them to explode in the mind? . . . These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised. There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good fashion . . . "
"Style is an increment in fashion. When we speak of Jackie's style, we don't mean her command of the Empire silhouette, we mean the gleam her clothes bring to the eye."
"With some women, style not only reveals the spirit of the woman, it reveals her identity, as surely as would her fingerprints."
"Young fashionistas often suppose that style is a garnish for the form, a dressing by which an ordinary dish is made attractive. Style has no such separate entity; it is non-detachable, unfilterable. The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is herself she is approaching, no other; and she should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style – all mannerism, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity."
"The first piece of advice is this: to achieve style, begin by affecting none – that is, place yourself in the background."
"Dress in a way that comes easily and naturally to you, using fabrics and colors that come readily to mind . . . Never imitate consciously, but do not worry about being an imitator; take pains to admire what is good."
"Work from a suitable design. Design informs even the simplest structure. You raise a little black dress from one sort of vision, an inaugural gown from another."
"Do not be afraid to seize whatever you have chosen and cut it to ribbons; it can always be restored to its original condition in the morning, if that course seems best. Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your ensemble ends up in need of major surgery."
"Do not overdress. When you overdress, the party will be instantly on guard, and everything that has preceded your overstatement, as well as everything that follows it, will be suspect in their minds because they have lost confidence in your judgment or your poise."
"Do not reveal too much. It is seldom advisable to tell all."
There is more – "Prefer the standard to the offbeat," for example – but this is a suitable place to close. I don't know how many women I have stood next to, who were revealing too much, and had to defeat the urge to ask, "Have you ever read E.B. White?"
White's subject was writing style, of course, but it doesn't take too much paraphrasing to see that style is style, whether in lines on a page, or lines on a woman. Getting right to it, with apologies to Mr. White and hoping he would have enjoyed some mirth from it:
"In this final chapter, we approach style in its broader meaning: style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing. Here we leave solid ground. Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of fabrics, causing them to explode in the mind? . . . These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised. There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good fashion . . . "
"Style is an increment in fashion. When we speak of Jackie's style, we don't mean her command of the Empire silhouette, we mean the gleam her clothes bring to the eye."
"With some women, style not only reveals the spirit of the woman, it reveals her identity, as surely as would her fingerprints."
"Young fashionistas often suppose that style is a garnish for the form, a dressing by which an ordinary dish is made attractive. Style has no such separate entity; it is non-detachable, unfilterable. The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is herself she is approaching, no other; and she should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style – all mannerism, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity."
"The first piece of advice is this: to achieve style, begin by affecting none – that is, place yourself in the background."
"Dress in a way that comes easily and naturally to you, using fabrics and colors that come readily to mind . . . Never imitate consciously, but do not worry about being an imitator; take pains to admire what is good."
"Work from a suitable design. Design informs even the simplest structure. You raise a little black dress from one sort of vision, an inaugural gown from another."
"Do not be afraid to seize whatever you have chosen and cut it to ribbons; it can always be restored to its original condition in the morning, if that course seems best. Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your ensemble ends up in need of major surgery."
"Do not overdress. When you overdress, the party will be instantly on guard, and everything that has preceded your overstatement, as well as everything that follows it, will be suspect in their minds because they have lost confidence in your judgment or your poise."
"Do not reveal too much. It is seldom advisable to tell all."
There is more – "Prefer the standard to the offbeat," for example – but this is a suitable place to close. I don't know how many women I have stood next to, who were revealing too much, and had to defeat the urge to ask, "Have you ever read E.B. White?"
The thrill of the bugle call
I can't forget the scene in the aftermath of Sept. 11 where President Bush learned the second plane had hit the World Trade Center. He was on television, seated in a classroom, speaking to very young schoolchildren. An advisor entered the picture and whispered the news in the President's ear. He looked stunned. After a second, he turned back to the children and continued talking. He didn't know what to do.
I said: "Uh oh." People routinely hesitate, trying to avoid bad news, hoping 1) it will go away or 2) someone else will take care of it. But this was the Leader of the Free World, being decidedly unleaderly at a time of the greatest national disaster in his presidency. It was a harbinger. He declared a war on the wrong country, which was his presidency's second-greatest national disaster, and Katrina, his third-greatest disaster, caught him again like a deer in the headlights, staring out the window of Air Force One at the ground he should have been on.
Now, the day before he leaves office, national leadership has become a disaster of its own, and Inauguration Day is approaching like a cavalry charge. Barack Obama shows signs of actually understanding leadership concepts, and if he needed any help, last week a sympathetic Greek Chorus laid out an amazing tableau of leadership on the Hudson River, in the media capital of the world, no less, so all could easily see. Leadership originates with principles, preparation and training, but on television it first shows up as instant action, and Thursday's events were so stirring in part because instant action was arriving from all sides. Gail Collins had a great line in the Times: ". . . you may just be wondering how that rescue in the Hudson River would have gone if it had been led off by the Department of Homeland Security rather than New York Waterway’s director of ferry operations."
It amazes me that two great subjects in the American experience – Understanding Leadership, and Reading the Media – are not required subjects in the American high school curriculum. Leadership was taught indirectly in high school: to do good things, you have to do things good, and if you succeed, people will look up to you. But my only formal exposure to leadership principles was in a long and comprehensive class in Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill, Okla.
Variations on these principles appear in probably hundreds of so-called “leadership” books, but I prefer them as they were presented at Fort Sill, in Army Field Manual 22-100. They were the definitive source on national leadership, because FM 22-100 applied to the soldier’s Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States.
The first thing I remember about FM 22-100 is how it defined responsibility. A leader, or a commander, is responsible for everything his or her organization does or does not do. Simple as that. It was the “does not do” that got to me then and gets to me now, big-time, because it explains perfectly my own recent conclusion, following the headlines, that winning without principle is the saddest form of defeat, not only for the loser, but for us all.
Responsibility must have been not only the first, but the original, leadership principle, and it was inspired by the need to survive. At some point, there were the original people on this planet, and their original need was to be led through real and constant danger and primal, uninformed, fear. Somebody had to lead. Fascinating, to wonder what spark must have struck in the minds of the few individuals, within those masses, to cause them to believe they must be the ones to lead.
When the spark struck, it made a person instantly different, and distant, and everybody knew it. This person had accepted responsibility, and everybody was relieved, because they knew somebody had to do it, and now they had someone to follow.
From responsibility, the original leadership principle, other principles emerged, created by and for people as they desperately needed to be led, and the leaders responding to the need. The leader was strong and brave, but not only that, to his group, the leader seemed to understand things that they didn’t, or couldn’t. He seemed to know the land and the sky and sounds and the wind, and as he grew comfortable in his responsibilities – leaders are scared as hell, too – principles of leadership emerged.
The principles are essentially unchanged from those primitive days to these complex ones. People know a leader the instant they see one stand up to lead them. The principles, after all, were formed from the needs of the people. Leadership principles were the first pencil marks of humanity, on the doorjamb, that measured human growth. The pencil marks are there still, can’t be erased, negotiated or litigated. Our departing President couldn't reach them. I have the audacity to hope the arriving one can.
I said: "Uh oh." People routinely hesitate, trying to avoid bad news, hoping 1) it will go away or 2) someone else will take care of it. But this was the Leader of the Free World, being decidedly unleaderly at a time of the greatest national disaster in his presidency. It was a harbinger. He declared a war on the wrong country, which was his presidency's second-greatest national disaster, and Katrina, his third-greatest disaster, caught him again like a deer in the headlights, staring out the window of Air Force One at the ground he should have been on.
Now, the day before he leaves office, national leadership has become a disaster of its own, and Inauguration Day is approaching like a cavalry charge. Barack Obama shows signs of actually understanding leadership concepts, and if he needed any help, last week a sympathetic Greek Chorus laid out an amazing tableau of leadership on the Hudson River, in the media capital of the world, no less, so all could easily see. Leadership originates with principles, preparation and training, but on television it first shows up as instant action, and Thursday's events were so stirring in part because instant action was arriving from all sides. Gail Collins had a great line in the Times: ". . . you may just be wondering how that rescue in the Hudson River would have gone if it had been led off by the Department of Homeland Security rather than New York Waterway’s director of ferry operations."
It amazes me that two great subjects in the American experience – Understanding Leadership, and Reading the Media – are not required subjects in the American high school curriculum. Leadership was taught indirectly in high school: to do good things, you have to do things good, and if you succeed, people will look up to you. But my only formal exposure to leadership principles was in a long and comprehensive class in Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill, Okla.
Variations on these principles appear in probably hundreds of so-called “leadership” books, but I prefer them as they were presented at Fort Sill, in Army Field Manual 22-100. They were the definitive source on national leadership, because FM 22-100 applied to the soldier’s Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States.
The first thing I remember about FM 22-100 is how it defined responsibility. A leader, or a commander, is responsible for everything his or her organization does or does not do. Simple as that. It was the “does not do” that got to me then and gets to me now, big-time, because it explains perfectly my own recent conclusion, following the headlines, that winning without principle is the saddest form of defeat, not only for the loser, but for us all.
Responsibility must have been not only the first, but the original, leadership principle, and it was inspired by the need to survive. At some point, there were the original people on this planet, and their original need was to be led through real and constant danger and primal, uninformed, fear. Somebody had to lead. Fascinating, to wonder what spark must have struck in the minds of the few individuals, within those masses, to cause them to believe they must be the ones to lead.
When the spark struck, it made a person instantly different, and distant, and everybody knew it. This person had accepted responsibility, and everybody was relieved, because they knew somebody had to do it, and now they had someone to follow.
From responsibility, the original leadership principle, other principles emerged, created by and for people as they desperately needed to be led, and the leaders responding to the need. The leader was strong and brave, but not only that, to his group, the leader seemed to understand things that they didn’t, or couldn’t. He seemed to know the land and the sky and sounds and the wind, and as he grew comfortable in his responsibilities – leaders are scared as hell, too – principles of leadership emerged.
The principles are essentially unchanged from those primitive days to these complex ones. People know a leader the instant they see one stand up to lead them. The principles, after all, were formed from the needs of the people. Leadership principles were the first pencil marks of humanity, on the doorjamb, that measured human growth. The pencil marks are there still, can’t be erased, negotiated or litigated. Our departing President couldn't reach them. I have the audacity to hope the arriving one can.
January 18, 2009
One more vivid reason to hate prostate cancer
An old acquaintance of mine died this week of prostate cancer. He was about 68. We were not friends, but he was a vivid figure in my life and his wife, who is a friend, notified me of his passing.
Five years ago, when he was diagnosed, she sent an email. She remembered that I was a prostate cancer survivor. After a diagnosis, a man is presented options. Surgery, radiation, or "wait and watch." Her husband had to make a choice, and she asked for my advice. I gave her the same advice I would give you.
Without hesitation, I emailed back: surgery, a radical prostatectomy to remove the entire prostate. Background: the prostate is a gland, the size of a walnut, and through it pass the urethra, on its route from the bladder to the urinal, and the seminal vesicle, on its route from the testes to an orgasm. Older men may encounter two kinds of trouble with the prostate: enlargement, or cancer. Mine was cancer.
I am not an advocate for surgery. Consider this nothing more than information. Every man's decision is personal, driven by personal reasons and medical percentages, both of which can be confusing. A report released last year concluded "nobody can tell (men) what type of treatment is most likely to save their lives."
When my diagnosis came down in January, 2002, I was driven by personal reasons that made my decision relatively simple. Twenty months earlier, in July, 2000, my wife, Meredith had died of breast cancer. Now I had the damn disease, and I was pissed, and still combative, if not outraged. I was going to have to drive down the same freeway to the same hospital that I had driven her down so many times for treatment of her version of the disease.
I met with a urology nurse, who was a sort of triage counselor, who explained my options. I decided I was too young – 59 – for "wait and watch." Prostate cancer is relatively slow-growth, and a man diagnosed in his 70s or 80s may die of other causes before he dies of prostate cancer. I rejected radiation. I remembered what radiation did to my late wife's breast and armpit in her losing battle with breast cancer in 1998-2000, and I did not want any effects of that kind down there where prostate cancer grows.
That left surgery. I would have chosen it anyway. The counselor addressed side effects: impotence (of course), which at 59 didn't matter to me; incontinence, which did matter; and erectile dysfunction, which mattered also. She gave percentages of likelihood, and she described a "nerve-sparing" procedure that improved a man's chances of getting it up afterwards. Not all the way up, but 80 percent. Drugs like Viagra would provide the other 20 percent.
Many men are repelled by those risks and realities. I read the opinion of one man who said he would rather die than live like that. Not me. Regarding the medical percentages, mine was a basic decision. Medical science is way more likely to figure out what to do about incontinence and erections, than it is reversing death.
So a surgeon and the urologist went in, snipped out the prostate, pulled my urethra across the inch gap where the prostate had been and stitched it to my bladder. They used the "nerve shielding" process that gave me the best chance of obtaining future erections, which would be an inch shorter because of the urethra-pulling. Fun, eh?
The nine months after surgery were tough. I leaked profusely, my sex member was as lively as a frozen hotdog, and I had a couple of bladder infections, which present a man with pain that challenges the imagination (friendly hint: keep a supply of Cipro on hand). Then the hotdog started to thaw, and even tingle sometimes. The urologist fixed the incontinence by breaking and stretching scar tissue (where urethra was stitched to bladder) with an hilarious albeit humbling procedure involving long, blue, flexible rods resembling knitting needles. A nurse, setting me up (so to speak) for this procedure, was fiddling around down there and suddenly asked, "You're Michael Grant, aren't you?" The moment made my entire media career hyper-worthwhile. "You know everything about me now," I told her and we laughed, which had benefit for the occasion.
With my advice five years ago, I advised my friend of these side-effect adventures and the slow but steady progress that had followed up to that point. Her husband decided to go a route that spared the prostate. She said he chose "cryosurgery, resulting in freezing just the section that was cancerous." Last November, she notified me that the cryosurgery "didn't work. After 5 years, it has metastasized to bone cancer. He tried two different types of horrific chemo."
Then, this week, came the report that he had died. I can still leak a couple of drops if I sneeze wrong, and I hate that. I have to plan my sex life around Levitra, and I hate that. I hate all ED commercials and their impossibly goofy men, and I hate it that I can only spring to 80 percent attention when I am in the shower with my wife.
But she and I just got back from an hour-long walk. And a vivid, robust man I knew and admired is gone. I hate that most of all.
Five years ago, when he was diagnosed, she sent an email. She remembered that I was a prostate cancer survivor. After a diagnosis, a man is presented options. Surgery, radiation, or "wait and watch." Her husband had to make a choice, and she asked for my advice. I gave her the same advice I would give you.
Without hesitation, I emailed back: surgery, a radical prostatectomy to remove the entire prostate. Background: the prostate is a gland, the size of a walnut, and through it pass the urethra, on its route from the bladder to the urinal, and the seminal vesicle, on its route from the testes to an orgasm. Older men may encounter two kinds of trouble with the prostate: enlargement, or cancer. Mine was cancer.
I am not an advocate for surgery. Consider this nothing more than information. Every man's decision is personal, driven by personal reasons and medical percentages, both of which can be confusing. A report released last year concluded "nobody can tell (men) what type of treatment is most likely to save their lives."
When my diagnosis came down in January, 2002, I was driven by personal reasons that made my decision relatively simple. Twenty months earlier, in July, 2000, my wife, Meredith had died of breast cancer. Now I had the damn disease, and I was pissed, and still combative, if not outraged. I was going to have to drive down the same freeway to the same hospital that I had driven her down so many times for treatment of her version of the disease.
I met with a urology nurse, who was a sort of triage counselor, who explained my options. I decided I was too young – 59 – for "wait and watch." Prostate cancer is relatively slow-growth, and a man diagnosed in his 70s or 80s may die of other causes before he dies of prostate cancer. I rejected radiation. I remembered what radiation did to my late wife's breast and armpit in her losing battle with breast cancer in 1998-2000, and I did not want any effects of that kind down there where prostate cancer grows.
That left surgery. I would have chosen it anyway. The counselor addressed side effects: impotence (of course), which at 59 didn't matter to me; incontinence, which did matter; and erectile dysfunction, which mattered also. She gave percentages of likelihood, and she described a "nerve-sparing" procedure that improved a man's chances of getting it up afterwards. Not all the way up, but 80 percent. Drugs like Viagra would provide the other 20 percent.
Many men are repelled by those risks and realities. I read the opinion of one man who said he would rather die than live like that. Not me. Regarding the medical percentages, mine was a basic decision. Medical science is way more likely to figure out what to do about incontinence and erections, than it is reversing death.
So a surgeon and the urologist went in, snipped out the prostate, pulled my urethra across the inch gap where the prostate had been and stitched it to my bladder. They used the "nerve shielding" process that gave me the best chance of obtaining future erections, which would be an inch shorter because of the urethra-pulling. Fun, eh?
The nine months after surgery were tough. I leaked profusely, my sex member was as lively as a frozen hotdog, and I had a couple of bladder infections, which present a man with pain that challenges the imagination (friendly hint: keep a supply of Cipro on hand). Then the hotdog started to thaw, and even tingle sometimes. The urologist fixed the incontinence by breaking and stretching scar tissue (where urethra was stitched to bladder) with an hilarious albeit humbling procedure involving long, blue, flexible rods resembling knitting needles. A nurse, setting me up (so to speak) for this procedure, was fiddling around down there and suddenly asked, "You're Michael Grant, aren't you?" The moment made my entire media career hyper-worthwhile. "You know everything about me now," I told her and we laughed, which had benefit for the occasion.
With my advice five years ago, I advised my friend of these side-effect adventures and the slow but steady progress that had followed up to that point. Her husband decided to go a route that spared the prostate. She said he chose "cryosurgery, resulting in freezing just the section that was cancerous." Last November, she notified me that the cryosurgery "didn't work. After 5 years, it has metastasized to bone cancer. He tried two different types of horrific chemo."
Then, this week, came the report that he had died. I can still leak a couple of drops if I sneeze wrong, and I hate that. I have to plan my sex life around Levitra, and I hate that. I hate all ED commercials and their impossibly goofy men, and I hate it that I can only spring to 80 percent attention when I am in the shower with my wife.
But she and I just got back from an hour-long walk. And a vivid, robust man I knew and admired is gone. I hate that most of all.
January 15, 2009
Leadership on the wing
I have a blog on leadership all drafted and ready to revise and post next Monday, the day before the Inauguration. In the minds of many, leadership, or the potential return of same to The White House, will be the big story of the day.
The gods appear to be in agreement. They are so excited, they are giving us a preview. Forgotten what good things can happen when leadership is exercised? Let's give you an afternoon of television about a jetliner being crippled on takeoff. Less than two minutes into his climb, the pilot feels power failure in both engines. He's about 3,000 feet above New York City with 150-plus people on board. His first thought is probably reflexive. Power. Hit the throttles. No power. His second thought: where can I land. Speed, altitude, weight, maneuverability, airport locations, flashing into calculations. His third thought: the Hudson River.
He may remember these thoughts passing through his mind slowly and clearly, though in real time it may have been 15 seconds. Real time in critically short supply has the effect of triggering hyper-speed circuits in the brain, which played back later appear naturally to be slow. Many people have experienced this phenomenon. It feels like your life has passed before your eyes.
Why was his third thought the Hudson River? Because he's had it before, probably with every takeoff he has ever made out of La Guardia. The Hudson is no airport runway, but in a situation without choices, it is softer than the ground and doesn't have buildings poking out of it. I doubt there's ever a pilot who took off from La Guardia who didn't know and understand that.
But not many of them have ever been in the captain's seat 3,000 feet above New York City in an airliner with no power and 150 people on board. Here's where leadership comes into play. Conceptualizing the Hudson River as a landing strip, and actually taking action to land on it, are two different things. That captain had to act, based on the information at hand, and on his best estimates of providing his people their best chance to survive.
I have specific knowledge of one other airliner captain at that instant before taking action. His name was Charles L. Kageler, commanding a chartered DC-3 with 27 people on board on the afternoon of Nov. 28, 1958. He saw a military jet fighter coming toward him and acted. He cut all power and rolled his 25,000-pound aircraft hard left, standing it on its left wingtip, and dropped 1,000 feet straight down before recovering. I was in the back of that airplane, a passenger, and in that 1,000-foot drop, my life passed before my eyes. Kageler estimated the jet missed us by 25 feet. Without his action, I am not writing this today.
A strange thing about that experience: there was no panic on the airplane, because, I believe, there wasn't time for the brain to sort things out. That must account for the reported relative calm of the passengers yesterday when their pilot acted to save their lives. What about the pilot's brain? Insane as it seemed, he committed to a decision, a hard left turn into a powerless glide down to the river. That commitment was leadership, based on information at hand, best estimates, and willingness to act instantaneously, and it saved everyone on board. I am writing this only four hours after the accident, but if Obama's people haven't already sent an invitation to the U.S. Air pilot to be on the Inaugural dais next Tuesday, they are missing a terrific symbol for the day.
The gods appear to be in agreement. They are so excited, they are giving us a preview. Forgotten what good things can happen when leadership is exercised? Let's give you an afternoon of television about a jetliner being crippled on takeoff. Less than two minutes into his climb, the pilot feels power failure in both engines. He's about 3,000 feet above New York City with 150-plus people on board. His first thought is probably reflexive. Power. Hit the throttles. No power. His second thought: where can I land. Speed, altitude, weight, maneuverability, airport locations, flashing into calculations. His third thought: the Hudson River.
He may remember these thoughts passing through his mind slowly and clearly, though in real time it may have been 15 seconds. Real time in critically short supply has the effect of triggering hyper-speed circuits in the brain, which played back later appear naturally to be slow. Many people have experienced this phenomenon. It feels like your life has passed before your eyes.
Why was his third thought the Hudson River? Because he's had it before, probably with every takeoff he has ever made out of La Guardia. The Hudson is no airport runway, but in a situation without choices, it is softer than the ground and doesn't have buildings poking out of it. I doubt there's ever a pilot who took off from La Guardia who didn't know and understand that.
But not many of them have ever been in the captain's seat 3,000 feet above New York City in an airliner with no power and 150 people on board. Here's where leadership comes into play. Conceptualizing the Hudson River as a landing strip, and actually taking action to land on it, are two different things. That captain had to act, based on the information at hand, and on his best estimates of providing his people their best chance to survive.
I have specific knowledge of one other airliner captain at that instant before taking action. His name was Charles L. Kageler, commanding a chartered DC-3 with 27 people on board on the afternoon of Nov. 28, 1958. He saw a military jet fighter coming toward him and acted. He cut all power and rolled his 25,000-pound aircraft hard left, standing it on its left wingtip, and dropped 1,000 feet straight down before recovering. I was in the back of that airplane, a passenger, and in that 1,000-foot drop, my life passed before my eyes. Kageler estimated the jet missed us by 25 feet. Without his action, I am not writing this today.
A strange thing about that experience: there was no panic on the airplane, because, I believe, there wasn't time for the brain to sort things out. That must account for the reported relative calm of the passengers yesterday when their pilot acted to save their lives. What about the pilot's brain? Insane as it seemed, he committed to a decision, a hard left turn into a powerless glide down to the river. That commitment was leadership, based on information at hand, best estimates, and willingness to act instantaneously, and it saved everyone on board. I am writing this only four hours after the accident, but if Obama's people haven't already sent an invitation to the U.S. Air pilot to be on the Inaugural dais next Tuesday, they are missing a terrific symbol for the day.
January 14, 2009
A better butter sunset
The Sun in California has its particular ways of setting into the ocean. From our house, it provides us this treat for about a third of the year. In the lower photo, see the dark mass arrowing into the Pacific from the right? That is Point Loma. The Sun in a few more weeks will transit Point Loma, and until late in the fall, all our sunsets will be over land. I always watch for the Point Loma transit, because it is so cool to watch, but it can be hard to catch. I hope I can post a transit photo when the time comes.
In the meantime, what we have here, from last night, is the maximum butter puddle effect. I have never seen one like this. On some evenings the Sun gives the appearance of a cool ball of butter spreading out into the warm ocean. The actual facts are the opposite, a hot Sun contacting a very cold ocean, thanks to a cold and deep Alaskan current that protects San Diego from the summer and fall Pacific hurricanes that move northward from the Mexican coasts until they hit that current and fall apart. I have mixed feelings about this. I would love three or four tropical storms a year, but they never get here.
But I never argue with the ways Nature chooses to present beauty to me, and every way unique. If Nature can cause a hot Sun to puddle like butter into a cold ocean, hooray. I have been watching sunsets from this location for 20 years, no two alike. This is the first butter puddle effect that sustained itself so long. And that doesn't count the melting of the ball into the puddle. The effect you see, which looks for all the world like a bright city on the horizon, was in sight for almost two minutes. If you want a closer look, click on the photos and they will expand.
In the meantime, what we have here, from last night, is the maximum butter puddle effect. I have never seen one like this. On some evenings the Sun gives the appearance of a cool ball of butter spreading out into the warm ocean. The actual facts are the opposite, a hot Sun contacting a very cold ocean, thanks to a cold and deep Alaskan current that protects San Diego from the summer and fall Pacific hurricanes that move northward from the Mexican coasts until they hit that current and fall apart. I have mixed feelings about this. I would love three or four tropical storms a year, but they never get here.
But I never argue with the ways Nature chooses to present beauty to me, and every way unique. If Nature can cause a hot Sun to puddle like butter into a cold ocean, hooray. I have been watching sunsets from this location for 20 years, no two alike. This is the first butter puddle effect that sustained itself so long. And that doesn't count the melting of the ball into the puddle. The effect you see, which looks for all the world like a bright city on the horizon, was in sight for almost two minutes. If you want a closer look, click on the photos and they will expand.
January 12, 2009
Sunstorms rage, people get to work anyway
I am so glad I have another week off from work, because San Diego is getting ripped with a brutal series of sunstorms right now, and it looks like they won't let up until at least Friday. I take my coffee outside at 7 a.m. and sit on the glider in shorts and t-shirt and grieve for those people in their cars down on the freeway, plowing grimly through a bitterly balmy morning toward the office. I see neighbors down the hillside stepping into their driveways. For a long minute, they look up at the eggshell-blue sky, searching for a cloud to take the edge off. They stand there, hands on hips, looking around as if trying to make up their minds about something. Finally they grimly pull open a car door, step inside, and drive slowly down the street.
I'll have to join them in another week. Oh, sunstorms blast us all winter long, from December into March. All it takes is a bit of a high pressure system forming over what we call "the great basin," up Utah way. Winds rotate clockwise around the system, get dried out over Nevada, Utah and Arizona, then blast into our mountain passes and foothills at speeds up to 60 miles an hour. In summer and fall, these are the winds that whip tiny blazes into gargantuan firestorms. The Cedar Fire, in October of 2003, raced from the back country down into eastern San Diego at a speed of 6,000 acres an hour.
Sunstorms are different. They hit during the rainy season, when the fire threat is minimal. Outside with my iced tea an hour ago, the hillsides were all a soft green. The January winds serve mainly to blow out all pollution, send humidity plunging, temperatures roaring into the 70s by sunrise, and burying Southern Calfornia beneath blue skies you can see Hawaii through.
Against this, humans have to get up as usual, drag themselves out of bed, shuffle through breezes as soft as a baby's breath to get the paper, and somehow get to work because they know that schools and businesses are not going to close. In 36 winters in Southern California, I have never known of schools and businesses ever closing, not even once.
I'm not asking for pity. People who move to Southern California learn very quickly what they've gotten into. It only takes two years to become a sunstorm veteran. I remember grumbling about it in those early days, because we never got any credit. The Midwest and East have been battling snowstorms for the last week. It was all over the media. Brave Americans doing their best to get to work and school through horrific whiteouts and sheets of ice on the streets. They didn't want to, but it could get so bad that authorities would close schools and businesses and urge everyone to stay home, out of danger. The economy could wait.
Did we see or hear a word about brave Southern Californians, windows rolled down, navigating through hideous lightouts, fighting off hallucinations of lawn chairs and tall cool pitchers of refreshment? Not that I saw or heard. I feel guilty, because I can stay home this week. This cry for equal treatment is not for me. It's for them. They deserve at least a few paragraphs of coverage.
January 11, 2009
Football history is made
If you watched today's Chargers-Steelers game, I am 99.9 percent sure you saw football history, certainly at the NFL level, but I would imagine also the college and high school levels.
In the third quarter of the game, the Chargers ran one play. It was a pass, tipped at the line of scrimmage, and then intercepted by the Steelers.
I am a relative youngster, but I have been watching football games since 1947 or so, and I have never seen anything like that. I was damned impressed when, in the 1955 Texas Class AAAA state high school championship, the Tyler Lions only got off five plays in the first quarter against the Abilene Eagles for a net gain of 11 yards.
Tyler was a great team, undefeated, and I am sure the Lions players remember that first quarter to this day. I don’t doubt the Chargers players, and a number of their fans, will remember the third quarter against Pittsburgh, 2009 playoffs, for a long time. There may not even be a category in the NFL record book for minimum plays run in a quarter. There is now. In San Diego, we'll be talking about this for a long time, even after the Chargers win the 2010 Super Bowl.
There is an interesting twist. Minimum offensive performances typically are categorized in the defense side of the record book. Not this time. The Steelers' offense was totally responsible for this rarity. The best offense is a good defense, the old football saying goes. Not this time. In this record book, it will show the best defense was a good offense.
In the third quarter of the game, the Chargers ran one play. It was a pass, tipped at the line of scrimmage, and then intercepted by the Steelers.
I am a relative youngster, but I have been watching football games since 1947 or so, and I have never seen anything like that. I was damned impressed when, in the 1955 Texas Class AAAA state high school championship, the Tyler Lions only got off five plays in the first quarter against the Abilene Eagles for a net gain of 11 yards.
Tyler was a great team, undefeated, and I am sure the Lions players remember that first quarter to this day. I don’t doubt the Chargers players, and a number of their fans, will remember the third quarter against Pittsburgh, 2009 playoffs, for a long time. There may not even be a category in the NFL record book for minimum plays run in a quarter. There is now. In San Diego, we'll be talking about this for a long time, even after the Chargers win the 2010 Super Bowl.
There is an interesting twist. Minimum offensive performances typically are categorized in the defense side of the record book. Not this time. The Steelers' offense was totally responsible for this rarity. The best offense is a good defense, the old football saying goes. Not this time. In this record book, it will show the best defense was a good offense.
January 10, 2009
On the move this morning
I'm sitting outside on a Sunday morning, enjoying dawn events at a time when the world appears most perfectly still.
Then I go inside and read in the paper that astronomers have made a new discovery that has changed the way they must think about the universe. I would hate to be an astronomer. They work their tails off for five or six years, trying to understand the universe as it now appears. It is reported to be very hard work, bordering on the unfathomable. They keep at it, because that is what they do. Then comes a "new discovery" that, overnight, forces them to change the way they think about the universe. What kind of life is that?
The new discovery this time is the speed at which our solar system – the Sun and planets – orbits the center of the Milky Way. Before, they thought that speed was about half a million miles an hour. Now they believe it to be nearer 600,000 miles an hour, and not only that, the Milky Way apparently is actually broader and has 50 per cent more mass than was previously believed. The Milky Way has been up there for millions of years, and scientists have been looking at it hard for at least 100 years, and until now they didn't know any better than this how fast it was spinning, how big it was, and how dense it was.
But that's another story. My immediate interest is in going back outside to the glider, sitting perfectly still, feeling a bit of breeze, seeing only a couple of cars on the freeway in the distance. But now the story has reminded me of something scientific that I heard decades ago, that the Earth is moving in nine different directions at once. Therefore, so am I. I am remembering this at the moment the Sun rises (now below Tut's folded hands). Of course the Sun only appears to rise. What has actually happened is that the Earth is spinning from west to east, and it has just spun east far enough to let me see the Sun.
The Earth is 24,000 miles, roughly, in diameter. That means in 24 hours, the planet has rotated from where it was at yesterday's dawn, full circle to this dawn. It is rotating from west to east at a speed of 1,000 miles per hour, and me along with it. Sitting here perfectly still on the glider, I am riding a Tilt-a-Whirl going 1,000 miles an hour.
And of course the Earth is moving around the sun, giving us seasons, and the Winter Solstice at Tut's eye, and so forth. I know it takes 365 days (plus a fraction) for the Earth to circle the Sun, but I don't know how far it is. For this, I need Google.
Google takes me to the Astronomy Café, operated by Dr. Sten Odenwald, whom I take the liberty of quoting:
"The speed of the Earth in its orbit around the sun is 29.79 kilometers per second. The Sun and the solar system are, in turn, in orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The orbit takes about 225 million years and currently the direction of this motion is in the general direction of the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra The Harp. The speed of this motion relative to stars near the Sun is 19.7 kilometers per second, however, the Sun and Vega along with other local stars are orbiting the center of the Milky Way at a speed of 225 kilometers per second. The entire Milky Way is, in turn, in orbit around the Virgo cluster of galaxies located 19 million parsecs away. The speed of this motion is about 365 kilometers per second."
I have yet to make the intellectual shift from miles to kilometers, so I ask Google to provide me a converter from kph to mph, and compliance is, of course, instant. Thus: The Earth is orbiting the Sun at 66,638 mph. I skipped the "speed of this motion relative to stars near the Sun" because I didn't understand a word of it. Then we come to the speed of our solar system around the center of the galaxy, which translates in Dr. Odenwald's reckoning to 502,311 mph, but of course that is an old figure replaced this morning by the new reckoning of about 600,000 mph. Then the entire Milky Way is in orbit around "the Virgo cluster" at a speed of 816,482 mph.
So in my dawn repose on the glider, I am simultaneously moving at speeds of 1,000 mph, 66,638 mph, 600,000 mph, and 816,482 mph, in directions unknown to me except for east. Not accounted for is the speed at which "the Virgo cluster" is orbiting something, and what that something is orbiting, but that's okay because my head is spinning much too fast to care.
January 08, 2009
No, we can't go around again
The airplane you see is on approach to San Diego's Lindbergh Field. Imagine the colors in the cabin.
Ring, ring! Tinnitus calling
In the summer of 1972, as I was working in downtown San Diego, I suddenly sneezed sharply. After the sneeze, I had a weird physical sensation, like a bucket of water had been dropped over my head but the water stayed in the bucket, around my head.
That feeling went away after a couple of minutes, thank God. I did not have to spend the next 40 years adjusting to life with a full bucket of water over my head. But when the bucket went away, it left something behind. There was a ringing in my left ear. As I sit here writing this, the ringing sounds the same as it did in the summer of 1972. Same volume, same tone, a high pitch like you could hear on the radio when you turned the dial a certain way, when radios had dials.
I don't know if I am hearing this sound, or transmitting it. Neither does medical science, which calls the sound "tinnitus," from the Latin tinnere, to ring. Webster's online defines it as "a sensation of noise (as a ringing or roaring) that is caused by a bodily condition (as a disturbance of the auditory nerve or wax in the ear) and typically is of the subjective form which can only be heard by the one affected." I am awfully happy, in terms of having found women who would marry me, that I am afflicted by the subjective form, and not the objective, which other people, horror of horrors, can hear. Can you imagine that, and snoring, too?
The Mayo Clinic offers more information than I ever thought or hoped I would find on the subject and none of it relates to my circumstance, which is sneeze-induced tinnitus. I had a ruptured eardrum, and was present at the birth of rock and roll, and was in the artillery, and had my share of ear wax, but this was all before 1972. My own suspicion is that the sneeze jiggled my stirrup off the anvil (you remember, the ear bones we learned, for some reason, in school) just enough to cause a high-pitched rattle, like a loose muffler on a car going near the speed of light. Are you listening, Einstein?
Does it bother me? I don't know. It has been almost 36 years since the sneeze, and I have forgotten what silence, auditory solitude, the breathing of angels, must sound like. I sleep fine, I use the left ear to listen to people on the telephone, I can hear a hotdog hit the grill from half a mile, so I guess I have gotten used to living with it. It comes up because I wrote a column about it years ago, and a reader, Pam, a fellow sufferer, remembered it and sent me an email wondering what I knew now. I am flattered she asked me, instead of the Mayo Clinic, but I can't give her much more information than they can.
She said hers had gotten worse, and she asked about my concentration for writing or reading. I have no problems there. My problem with reading concentration is the racket my imagination makes as I try to focus on sentences. Pam said she now has new "sounds" in her ears, two or more variations on the original high-pitched sound. She said she had trouble hearing conversations, on TV and in person. Pam, please understand the spirit in which I say this, but regarding TV, you aren't missing much.
"I was hoping to be selected for a tinnitus research project, but was denied for the current study," she said. "I did not meet their requirements since my 'ringing' changes in volume."
So tinnitus elitism rears its ugly head. Pam said she had joined a tinnitus support group. Anyone out there with real experience, for her and the group?
That feeling went away after a couple of minutes, thank God. I did not have to spend the next 40 years adjusting to life with a full bucket of water over my head. But when the bucket went away, it left something behind. There was a ringing in my left ear. As I sit here writing this, the ringing sounds the same as it did in the summer of 1972. Same volume, same tone, a high pitch like you could hear on the radio when you turned the dial a certain way, when radios had dials.
I don't know if I am hearing this sound, or transmitting it. Neither does medical science, which calls the sound "tinnitus," from the Latin tinnere, to ring. Webster's online defines it as "a sensation of noise (as a ringing or roaring) that is caused by a bodily condition (as a disturbance of the auditory nerve or wax in the ear) and typically is of the subjective form which can only be heard by the one affected." I am awfully happy, in terms of having found women who would marry me, that I am afflicted by the subjective form, and not the objective, which other people, horror of horrors, can hear. Can you imagine that, and snoring, too?
The Mayo Clinic offers more information than I ever thought or hoped I would find on the subject and none of it relates to my circumstance, which is sneeze-induced tinnitus. I had a ruptured eardrum, and was present at the birth of rock and roll, and was in the artillery, and had my share of ear wax, but this was all before 1972. My own suspicion is that the sneeze jiggled my stirrup off the anvil (you remember, the ear bones we learned, for some reason, in school) just enough to cause a high-pitched rattle, like a loose muffler on a car going near the speed of light. Are you listening, Einstein?
Does it bother me? I don't know. It has been almost 36 years since the sneeze, and I have forgotten what silence, auditory solitude, the breathing of angels, must sound like. I sleep fine, I use the left ear to listen to people on the telephone, I can hear a hotdog hit the grill from half a mile, so I guess I have gotten used to living with it. It comes up because I wrote a column about it years ago, and a reader, Pam, a fellow sufferer, remembered it and sent me an email wondering what I knew now. I am flattered she asked me, instead of the Mayo Clinic, but I can't give her much more information than they can.
She said hers had gotten worse, and she asked about my concentration for writing or reading. I have no problems there. My problem with reading concentration is the racket my imagination makes as I try to focus on sentences. Pam said she now has new "sounds" in her ears, two or more variations on the original high-pitched sound. She said she had trouble hearing conversations, on TV and in person. Pam, please understand the spirit in which I say this, but regarding TV, you aren't missing much.
"I was hoping to be selected for a tinnitus research project, but was denied for the current study," she said. "I did not meet their requirements since my 'ringing' changes in volume."
So tinnitus elitism rears its ugly head. Pam said she had joined a tinnitus support group. Anyone out there with real experience, for her and the group?
January 06, 2009
3Day January report
I was in Vons – our neighborhood supermarket – this morning and at the register Nancy, the cashier on duty, asked me if I had made any New Year's resolutions."I am going to walk in the Breast Cancer 3Day in November," I said. I explained that my late wife, Meredith, had died of breast cancer in 2000, and that my wife, Karen, did the event – 60 miles in three days – this past November and wore Meredith's name, among many others, on her tshirt. I told Nancy I made the mistake of going to the closing ceremony and was so inspired that I decided to make the walk in 2009.
Nancy, who I would judge is in her late 50s, kept scanning groceries. Then she said: "I did the 3Day six years ago. And I am a survivor."
The inspiration just keeps coming. And this one from Nancy felt like a reward. I had come into Von's sweaty from a one-hour walk. For me, however fit I happen to be, the first 15 minutes are always the worst. I always feel like, well, this time, I am so whipped after 14 minutes that the 15th minute without a doubt will be the last minute I ever breathe. Then the glide sets in. Not much of a glide. It just starts to feel like if I breathe hard and regularly, and don't cough or sneeze or do anything else to upset the equilibrium for the next 45 minutes, then I'll finish okay.
But this morning, I crossed a line. I recognized it because in my fitness history I have crossed it many times. I felt a tiny tailwind of reserve. So powerful was this tailwind that I wanted it recorded. And so I begin this report. I begin on Jan. 5 and will file a monthly report up until time for the 3Day, and no doubt I will write about the walk itself if someone will hold my arms up so my fingers can work the keyboard.
I start at 223 pounds (well, hey, it has been the holiday season) by the bedroom scale. I don't know what you weigh, or how you feel, but for New Year's resolutions, you can't beat the 3Day for bang for the buck. It works for weight loss, for fitness, for general health, for well-being, for accomplishment (big-time accomplishment), and for contributing to a cause whose mission is to take down an enemy that kills 44,000 American women a year and attacks 185,000 more. If breast cancer were a foreign nation, Congress would have declared war a long time ago.
Nancy, who I would judge is in her late 50s, kept scanning groceries. Then she said: "I did the 3Day six years ago. And I am a survivor."
The inspiration just keeps coming. And this one from Nancy felt like a reward. I had come into Von's sweaty from a one-hour walk. For me, however fit I happen to be, the first 15 minutes are always the worst. I always feel like, well, this time, I am so whipped after 14 minutes that the 15th minute without a doubt will be the last minute I ever breathe. Then the glide sets in. Not much of a glide. It just starts to feel like if I breathe hard and regularly, and don't cough or sneeze or do anything else to upset the equilibrium for the next 45 minutes, then I'll finish okay.
But this morning, I crossed a line. I recognized it because in my fitness history I have crossed it many times. I felt a tiny tailwind of reserve. So powerful was this tailwind that I wanted it recorded. And so I begin this report. I begin on Jan. 5 and will file a monthly report up until time for the 3Day, and no doubt I will write about the walk itself if someone will hold my arms up so my fingers can work the keyboard.
I start at 223 pounds (well, hey, it has been the holiday season) by the bedroom scale. I don't know what you weigh, or how you feel, but for New Year's resolutions, you can't beat the 3Day for bang for the buck. It works for weight loss, for fitness, for general health, for well-being, for accomplishment (big-time accomplishment), and for contributing to a cause whose mission is to take down an enemy that kills 44,000 American women a year and attacks 185,000 more. If breast cancer were a foreign nation, Congress would have declared war a long time ago.
January 05, 2009
Flight paths
On Jan. 25, 1998, the Super Bowl was played at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego (Broncos 31, Packers 24). I heard fireworks in the distance just before kickoff and ran out onto the patio and looked west in the direction of the stadium. Couldn't see the fireworks.
But then I turned around and glanced at the eastern horizon and saw a black slot in the sky, like a slot you would slide an ATM card into to get money. I was not drunk or anything. The slot was moving toward me, getting bigger. It was too late to run for the camera, or to run, period. In seconds, the slot turned into a black Stealth bomber. It flew directly overhead, not even a thousand feet off the ground, huge, blocking out sky like the ship in "Independence Day." It was aimed right for the stadium. I ran back inside and you should have heard the roar from the stadium as it approached and did its stadium flyby. God, I wish I had a picture of that thing going over.
Alta Mira is directly underneath the flight path for stadium flybys. Only once was it the Stealth. Other times it has been four jet fighters. We hear their engines first, then run out and see them in a wide loop to the east, trailing white smoke. Then they straighten out, jack up the thunder, and go over the house toward the stadium at 500 miles an hour.
Last week, it was a blimp, maneuvering before the Holiday Bowl at the stadium. I saw him far to the south, then he turned north, still considerably east of us. But close enough to hope. I ran for the camera and got him just as he was overflying a horizon feature that we call Dolly's Right One.
"Turn left," I whispered at him. I wanted him to take a path that would go right in front of the house. It would be a great picture, and I wanted to see what Gully would do. I do, from years ago, have an ancient print photo of the late, great, Barkeley vigorously warning a Sanyo blimp, that I could have hit with a BB gun, not to come an inch closer. The things puppies get to bark at, when they have the sky for a yard. But the blimp's captain, determined to aggravate puppies to the north of us, stayed on that course until he disappeared behind the bottlebrush tree.
But he did do me the favor of reminding me it was Holiday Bowl day, so 15 minutes before kickoff I was outside with the camera, watching. No jets this time, but there did appear a couple of other aviators. One of them headed for me as if he had it in mind to fly through the front door into our living room. That happens sometimes, with sparrows and finches and hummingbirds, who are relatively easy to corner and scoop up and return to the outdoors. This guy, though, I wasn't so sure.
On he came, magnificent in his control of the air. Then he gave a little left-turn twitch of his tailfeathers, and a slight change in pitch of the pinfeathers at the tips of his wings (maybe for stabilization, maybe just to show off, like jet pilots cutting in afterburners), and he sailed past close enough to rattle me into cutting off the tip of a wing. For a flyby, it wasn't bad.
The sky did give us one little supersonic shot before sundown, a ray finding a Christmas tree ornament and blasting color onto the kitchen ceiling. A promise of flybys to come, I figured.
January 04, 2009
A tardy Happy New Year
Happy New Year! I have been trying to post these images since early New Year's Day, but it must be that the folks at Blogger took several days off. I hope we are now back in contact.
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