August, 2006: You take your mentors where you find them. It was a turkey buzzard, minding his own business, who made me see that anything is possible.
I thought he was a condor. Huge, black bird, circling and soaring in a hot midday sky around and above my house, several years ago. I was impressed that I might be looking at a condor, a rare bird to which much symbolism is attached. When I spotted him, I thought that some mechanics of symbolism might be in place, guiding him to this house, where I might see him.
Such is vanity. I felt so special that I went inside to telephone the zoo, to report a sighting of this endangered creature far from his natural mountain habitat.
“Probably just a turkey buzzard,” said the voice from the zoo. “We get calls like this all the time. Does he have an ugly head?”
I couldn’t answer that question. I found the binoculars, took them outside, and found the bird, ranging back and forth not more than 200 or 300 yards above and beyond our deck on the hillside, and not more than a quarter-mile to either side. Yes, he had an ugly head, red and wormlike. I watched him anyway. Watched him for a couple of days. He had the span and the presence of a condor, soaring and wheeling on wide wings whose elegant tips and trailing edges flicked in fine-tuned equilibrium with the faint signals from the hot, still, noonday air.
At his wingtips were long, slender feathers, fanned out aristocratically, individually changing pitch (I could see through the binoculars) with every nuance of lift and drift. Not many creatures enjoy such rapport with their element, and I envied his.
The sun was directly overhead. The bird was in a low, watchful glide over the hillside when he apparently had a change of mind. He let the air lift him higher, and turn him in lazy circles, until he was several hundred feet above me. I tracked him with the binoculars. He could see me – I thought he looked at me – though I don’t suppose he was watching me. I wanted to imagine some communication going on, and so I did, even if it was me with me.
He drifted toward the sun. It was so bright that I had to look away. I picked him up again on the other side of the brightness. He came back to the center, circling the brightness as I watched, spiraling nearer to it. I thought it was magnificent, and symbolic at least of opportunity. I watched as long as I could, until I saw him touch the edge of the sun. Then I looked away. I blinked my eyes for only a couple of seconds, then lifted the binoculars again, to pick him up.
But the bird was gone.
I dropped the binoculars and scanned the wide view, from sun to horizon. I turned quickly around the 360-degree circle, searching the sky, feeling very much on the earth point of an axis. The bird was not there.
“Wait a minute,” I said. I looked back at the brightness. Maybe he was still orbiting there. I watched the vicinity for 10 minutes, and the bird didn’t emerge. For the next half-hour I tried to watch all of the sky at once, looking for him. I had watched the bird fly into the sun, liking the symbolism of it, and then the bird had disappeared. For a minute I wished it had been a condor, then was glad it was not. Condors should fly into the sun only for holy men. My turkey buzzard, though lacking romance, had made the same mysticism perfectly accessible to an ordinary man with the sun in his eyes.
The bird did not reappear. I was compelled to wonder what it might mean, to see what I had seen, when a man saw a bird fly into the sun. If I, for whatever reason, had been assigned to be the one to find out, then I was willing. And that changed me.
I saw the bird a couple of hours later, cruising the hillside as before. So I had not been chosen, or assigned, after all. But I was changed nevertheless. I still have no idea how he got out of the sun, but I am not disappointed. In those minutes when I believed he might be gone, I accepted the contention that anything is possible. And when anything is possible, what is there to fear from the unknown?
July 31, 2009
July 30, 2009
Stretch Cooking: An apology to corn
I was fiddling with what I thought would become a very interesting recipe last week when I made a discovery: corn is like hamburger. We all know that no matter what you do to hamburger, it remains hamburger. Same thing with corn, it turns out.
This is not a bad thing. The best way to eat corn is fresh, hot, and straight off the cob. No butter, no salt, nothing. You can swirl it in a stick of butter, nothing wrong with that, and you think you've got buttered corn. In fact, what you have is corned butter. It's the butter that changes, in the relationship.
So why, if corn is so perfect all by itself, would someone try to modify it? Good question. It must have something to do with the human brain. Every human brain has a superiority complex. The song from "Annie Get Your Gun": "Anything you can do, I can do better." Potato chip manufacturers: "New! Improved!" boast the bags of their latest flavored chips, when they understand in their heart of hearts that there is no improving on the original product, a thin slice of plain potato fried in hot oil.
Yet it's because of the brain's superiority complex that potato chip people make insane profits off the flavored chips. It's called demographics: a "demographic group" is people banding together to insist that their choice is superior to all others. Once Lay's discovered there was a "Barbecue Flavored" superiority out there, the age of potato chip innocence was over. It's so easy for Americans to believe that they are No. 1. Before the season starts, football fans on 100 college campuses will all be brandishing index fingers, insisting, "We're No. 1!" They will still be doing that in November, when their team is 3 and 5.
I am guilty. I thought I could create America's No. 1 recipe for Southwestern Corn Salad. The secret would be freshness, and subtlety. I chopped half a large onion and diced three bell peppers: green, red and yellow. These I placed in a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet, over low heat. The idea was to let the ingredients cook very slowly, so they would soften and weep out their natural flavors without any intrusion of the browning effect. Surgical, eh?
After 20 minutes, I added one large zucchini, diced, and four diced tomatillos, for that distinctive tomatillo flavor. I added some salt and fresh-ground pepper. I shucked four ears of corn and cut the kernels off the cobs, and scraped the cobs, to collect the flavorful pips and a bit of pulp. After 20 minutes, I added these to the skillet and let the completed mixture gently simmer another 20 minutes.
When it was finished, I spooned up a bite and thought I would be blasted by primal goodness. It was not bad, by any means, but I had had a vision of guests, tasting this, to burst spontaneously into "America, the Beautiful," and I knew that was not going to happen, and I was disappointed. It tasted like corn.
Of course I will make Southwestern Corn Salad again. I will go to Trader Joe's for bags of frozen white corn and mixed peppers, already chopped. I will sauté the peppers and onion over medium heat, toss in the zucchini and eight (this time) diced tomatillos, and finally the corn. It will be done in 20 minutes, and it will be colorful, and good. It will taste like corn. Can't go wrong.
This is not a bad thing. The best way to eat corn is fresh, hot, and straight off the cob. No butter, no salt, nothing. You can swirl it in a stick of butter, nothing wrong with that, and you think you've got buttered corn. In fact, what you have is corned butter. It's the butter that changes, in the relationship.
So why, if corn is so perfect all by itself, would someone try to modify it? Good question. It must have something to do with the human brain. Every human brain has a superiority complex. The song from "Annie Get Your Gun": "Anything you can do, I can do better." Potato chip manufacturers: "New! Improved!" boast the bags of their latest flavored chips, when they understand in their heart of hearts that there is no improving on the original product, a thin slice of plain potato fried in hot oil.
Yet it's because of the brain's superiority complex that potato chip people make insane profits off the flavored chips. It's called demographics: a "demographic group" is people banding together to insist that their choice is superior to all others. Once Lay's discovered there was a "Barbecue Flavored" superiority out there, the age of potato chip innocence was over. It's so easy for Americans to believe that they are No. 1. Before the season starts, football fans on 100 college campuses will all be brandishing index fingers, insisting, "We're No. 1!" They will still be doing that in November, when their team is 3 and 5.
I am guilty. I thought I could create America's No. 1 recipe for Southwestern Corn Salad. The secret would be freshness, and subtlety. I chopped half a large onion and diced three bell peppers: green, red and yellow. These I placed in a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet, over low heat. The idea was to let the ingredients cook very slowly, so they would soften and weep out their natural flavors without any intrusion of the browning effect. Surgical, eh?
After 20 minutes, I added one large zucchini, diced, and four diced tomatillos, for that distinctive tomatillo flavor. I added some salt and fresh-ground pepper. I shucked four ears of corn and cut the kernels off the cobs, and scraped the cobs, to collect the flavorful pips and a bit of pulp. After 20 minutes, I added these to the skillet and let the completed mixture gently simmer another 20 minutes.
When it was finished, I spooned up a bite and thought I would be blasted by primal goodness. It was not bad, by any means, but I had had a vision of guests, tasting this, to burst spontaneously into "America, the Beautiful," and I knew that was not going to happen, and I was disappointed. It tasted like corn.
Of course I will make Southwestern Corn Salad again. I will go to Trader Joe's for bags of frozen white corn and mixed peppers, already chopped. I will sauté the peppers and onion over medium heat, toss in the zucchini and eight (this time) diced tomatillos, and finally the corn. It will be done in 20 minutes, and it will be colorful, and good. It will taste like corn. Can't go wrong.
July 27, 2009
Media Literacy: What you mean "We," media pundit?
Media critics like to describe Oprah Winfrey as "The Queen of Media," but this is an illusion. In reality, Oprah is "The Queen of the Third Law of Media."
In the media literacy toolbox, the third law of media states: "The most misused word in the media-public relationship is 'we.' " The third law is set up by the second law: "The media is an exercise in the power of small numbers."
Here are a couple of common examples:
Dwight Garner, The New York Times: "Why are we willing to shell out $24.95 at the local Barnes & Noble to read about someone else's pets?"
Kyra Phillips: CNN: "I mean, are we just so pathetic and so lonely that we have to live through people like Paris Hilton?"
Garner was writing about a cluster of books on the best-seller lists that told stories about animals. His specific interest was in "Water for Elephants," which, in a nation of 303 million, had sold about 248,000 copies.
Instead of writing, "Why are 248,000 people willing . . . ," he wrote, "Why are we willing . . . ," as if "Water for Elephants" had the entire nation in thrall. Why does he do that?
Kyra Phillips was one of a group of media professionals talking about media coverage of the hot celebrity Paris Hilton's on-again off-again time in jail. Remember, that was the story with the photo of Paris bloated with tears, through the window of a car, that ran on the front page in an embarrassing number of newspapers.
I don't know about you, but I don't think Kyra should have counted me among those who are so pathetic and lonely that I have to live through people like Paris Hilton. I have the Nielsen Ratings to back me up. Hilton's celebrity is essentially a creation of magazines like "People," whose circulation is a little under 4 million, in a nation of 304 million, and of cable television breathlessers like "Access Hollywood," whose Nielsens don't reach a 3 rating, in the nation's television universe of about 114.5 million homes.
"We"? Not me. If I am going to do some living through somebody else, it would be somebody more like Willie Nelson. A part of me aspires to sound like him and look like him. Seldom has so compelling a voice so nearly matched the persona. I'll bet I could find at least 10 million people in the country who would agree with me, and buy a million copies of his latest CD.
But, we? All 304 million? Don't think so. The celebs don't need nearly all of us, anyway. Dwight Garner was writing about "Water for Elephants" because its author, Sara Gruen, on the strength of 248,000 copies sold, had signed a contract to write two more books, for which she would be paid an advance of five million dollars.
Therein lies platinum proof of the media code's second law, about the power of small numbers. If just one-half of one percent of the population buys a copy of each of those books, the publisher, Spiegel & Grau, will be delirious with joy. If a tenth of the nation's high schools adopt "Michael's Media Literacy" as a contemporary studies text, I will get my own monogrammed chair on "Oprah."
Then a media pundit would go on the air and say, "This is the book we have been waiting for," and of course that would be wrong. The correct word, in any discussion of the media-public relationship, is "you." If Kyra Phillips would just look into the CNN camera and say, "Are you just so pathetic, etc.," it would provide me, and 95 percent of the 250,000 watching CNN at that moment the opportunity to yell back, "No!"
That leaves just five percent of the 250,000 – 12,500 viewers of this particular program in real time – to yell "Yes!" at Kyra Phillips and defend Paris. Not many. But they're out there, hard as that may be to believe, and they're enough. Enough to make Paris famous, and to mislead media pundits into opining that somehow paying attention to Paris Hilton represents a bad end for us all. The next time you hear someone say that on television, or read it in a newspaper, fire off an email explaining the Second Law of Media.
In the media literacy toolbox, the third law of media states: "The most misused word in the media-public relationship is 'we.' " The third law is set up by the second law: "The media is an exercise in the power of small numbers."
Here are a couple of common examples:
Dwight Garner, The New York Times: "Why are we willing to shell out $24.95 at the local Barnes & Noble to read about someone else's pets?"
Kyra Phillips: CNN: "I mean, are we just so pathetic and so lonely that we have to live through people like Paris Hilton?"
Garner was writing about a cluster of books on the best-seller lists that told stories about animals. His specific interest was in "Water for Elephants," which, in a nation of 303 million, had sold about 248,000 copies.
Instead of writing, "Why are 248,000 people willing . . . ," he wrote, "Why are we willing . . . ," as if "Water for Elephants" had the entire nation in thrall. Why does he do that?
Kyra Phillips was one of a group of media professionals talking about media coverage of the hot celebrity Paris Hilton's on-again off-again time in jail. Remember, that was the story with the photo of Paris bloated with tears, through the window of a car, that ran on the front page in an embarrassing number of newspapers.
I don't know about you, but I don't think Kyra should have counted me among those who are so pathetic and lonely that I have to live through people like Paris Hilton. I have the Nielsen Ratings to back me up. Hilton's celebrity is essentially a creation of magazines like "People," whose circulation is a little under 4 million, in a nation of 304 million, and of cable television breathlessers like "Access Hollywood," whose Nielsens don't reach a 3 rating, in the nation's television universe of about 114.5 million homes.
"We"? Not me. If I am going to do some living through somebody else, it would be somebody more like Willie Nelson. A part of me aspires to sound like him and look like him. Seldom has so compelling a voice so nearly matched the persona. I'll bet I could find at least 10 million people in the country who would agree with me, and buy a million copies of his latest CD.
But, we? All 304 million? Don't think so. The celebs don't need nearly all of us, anyway. Dwight Garner was writing about "Water for Elephants" because its author, Sara Gruen, on the strength of 248,000 copies sold, had signed a contract to write two more books, for which she would be paid an advance of five million dollars.
Therein lies platinum proof of the media code's second law, about the power of small numbers. If just one-half of one percent of the population buys a copy of each of those books, the publisher, Spiegel & Grau, will be delirious with joy. If a tenth of the nation's high schools adopt "Michael's Media Literacy" as a contemporary studies text, I will get my own monogrammed chair on "Oprah."
Then a media pundit would go on the air and say, "This is the book we have been waiting for," and of course that would be wrong. The correct word, in any discussion of the media-public relationship, is "you." If Kyra Phillips would just look into the CNN camera and say, "Are you just so pathetic, etc.," it would provide me, and 95 percent of the 250,000 watching CNN at that moment the opportunity to yell back, "No!"
That leaves just five percent of the 250,000 – 12,500 viewers of this particular program in real time – to yell "Yes!" at Kyra Phillips and defend Paris. Not many. But they're out there, hard as that may be to believe, and they're enough. Enough to make Paris famous, and to mislead media pundits into opining that somehow paying attention to Paris Hilton represents a bad end for us all. The next time you hear someone say that on television, or read it in a newspaper, fire off an email explaining the Second Law of Media.
July 26, 2009
Knowing to keep mouth shut: $68. Result: priceless
To make a long story short, in 1991 I was stopped for speeding, eastbound on Interstate 20, in Callahan County, Texas, by a Department of Public Safety trooper. As I remember, his name was West. This happened in early afternoon, on a Sunday.
On the shoulder, I got out of my rental car, and he got out of his cruiser. He was burly, and belligerent. Approaching me, hatless, he said in a loud voice, "Sir, I have three charges against you." As I say, it was a long story. The point is, as soon as I heard his tone, I knew he wanted to arrest me. For the next 15 minutes, he behaved toward me in a way that invited a reaction. The instant I did react, he would charge me with resisting an officer, and I would be arrested. That was what I believed. At one point, he said he was going to take me before the county justice of the peace, and if, on a Sunday, that official was not in his office, "then you are going to JAIL!"
I am not kidding, He said it exactly like that. My burden during this time was to keep quiet and give short, respectful answers. Finally he commanded me to follow him off the interstate into Baird, the county seat. We stopped in front of the Callahan County Courthouse. I got out of my car. After 10 minutes, he got out of his. He said the JP was not in his office, and that the fine was $68. I would have to pay the exact fine in cash. If I did not have exactly $68, he said, "you are going to JAIL!"
I had the exact $68: three twenties, a five, and three ones. Did they feel good. I held them out to him. He said, furiously: "Sir, I am not going to take your money!" He had me hold up the bills, one at a time, while he copied the serial numbers onto a document on his clipboard. To this day, I think of that $68 as bail before jail. He handed me a copy of the document and an official envelope and instructed me to place the money and the document in the envelope and drop it into a mailbox at the curb where we were parked. Then he turned, and walked back to his cruiser.
I felt compelled to say something. "Sorry for the trouble," I said. His back to me, getting into his car, he said, "No trouble, sir, I ENJOYED it." He drove up the street to the corner and turned right. I went back to the interstate and drove on, ashamed for the longest time of being proud to be a Texan.
Now we have a cop-citizen confrontation in the national headlines because the citizen is well known and the President is involved. Present indications are that the arresting officer is not a bad cop. If he is, then he's been caught and deserves every penalty that can be thrown at him. If he isn't, then he deserves, in his actions, a benefit of doubt. All cops – the good ones – carry the same burden as journalists, as they go about their duties. They are trained to react to things that "just don't look right." This cop, Crowley, was arriving at a scene that had been reported to him as a possible break-in. He needed things to look right in a hurry.
Unfortunately, he was dealing with a suspect who had just gotten off a long flight from China, had a cold, found his front door stuck, and was a black historian with personal and professional knowledge of racial profiling. The burdens, in that living room confusion, were real, on both sides. There may have been other ways to resolve the situation, but I know of one that was sure to work. If it worked on a bad Texas cop setting speed traps (I was going 71 in a 70 zone; I checked as soon as I saw the westbound cop power-slide across the median to fall in behind me), it would work on a good, presumably, Massachusetts cop who only needed help figuring things out. Professor Gates, with all respect, couldn't do anything about the cop's burden, but he could do something about his.
On the shoulder, I got out of my rental car, and he got out of his cruiser. He was burly, and belligerent. Approaching me, hatless, he said in a loud voice, "Sir, I have three charges against you." As I say, it was a long story. The point is, as soon as I heard his tone, I knew he wanted to arrest me. For the next 15 minutes, he behaved toward me in a way that invited a reaction. The instant I did react, he would charge me with resisting an officer, and I would be arrested. That was what I believed. At one point, he said he was going to take me before the county justice of the peace, and if, on a Sunday, that official was not in his office, "then you are going to JAIL!"
I am not kidding, He said it exactly like that. My burden during this time was to keep quiet and give short, respectful answers. Finally he commanded me to follow him off the interstate into Baird, the county seat. We stopped in front of the Callahan County Courthouse. I got out of my car. After 10 minutes, he got out of his. He said the JP was not in his office, and that the fine was $68. I would have to pay the exact fine in cash. If I did not have exactly $68, he said, "you are going to JAIL!"
I had the exact $68: three twenties, a five, and three ones. Did they feel good. I held them out to him. He said, furiously: "Sir, I am not going to take your money!" He had me hold up the bills, one at a time, while he copied the serial numbers onto a document on his clipboard. To this day, I think of that $68 as bail before jail. He handed me a copy of the document and an official envelope and instructed me to place the money and the document in the envelope and drop it into a mailbox at the curb where we were parked. Then he turned, and walked back to his cruiser.
I felt compelled to say something. "Sorry for the trouble," I said. His back to me, getting into his car, he said, "No trouble, sir, I ENJOYED it." He drove up the street to the corner and turned right. I went back to the interstate and drove on, ashamed for the longest time of being proud to be a Texan.
Now we have a cop-citizen confrontation in the national headlines because the citizen is well known and the President is involved. Present indications are that the arresting officer is not a bad cop. If he is, then he's been caught and deserves every penalty that can be thrown at him. If he isn't, then he deserves, in his actions, a benefit of doubt. All cops – the good ones – carry the same burden as journalists, as they go about their duties. They are trained to react to things that "just don't look right." This cop, Crowley, was arriving at a scene that had been reported to him as a possible break-in. He needed things to look right in a hurry.
Unfortunately, he was dealing with a suspect who had just gotten off a long flight from China, had a cold, found his front door stuck, and was a black historian with personal and professional knowledge of racial profiling. The burdens, in that living room confusion, were real, on both sides. There may have been other ways to resolve the situation, but I know of one that was sure to work. If it worked on a bad Texas cop setting speed traps (I was going 71 in a 70 zone; I checked as soon as I saw the westbound cop power-slide across the median to fall in behind me), it would work on a good, presumably, Massachusetts cop who only needed help figuring things out. Professor Gates, with all respect, couldn't do anything about the cop's burden, but he could do something about his.
July 25, 2009
Archives: Locked out of the future
August, 2005 - Medical research suggests that as men and women start to get older, a man’s brain atrophies – “dies,” actually – three times faster than a woman’s.
This news comes at a bad time. I have reached a stage of maturity where a perfect stranger might glance at me on the street and think, “There is a man who is starting to get older.”
I don’t feel particularly older, and I don’t think I am old. Mature, maybe. All my parts are 1943’s, and I wouldn’t hesitate to drive them long distances across the desert at night. But I couldn’t walk up to a perfect stranger on the street and say, “If you think I am starting to get older, you are wrong,” while looking him straight in the eye. I am more realistic than that. I am at an age where, in the context of medical research, I can look forward to a rate of personal brain deterioration that is three times that of a woman, and I just want to say to the scientists how grateful I am for the information.
In a way I expected it. I remember feeling inferior in adolescence on learning that girls “matured emotionally” faster than boys. Why should it be any different on the other end? Women my age will still be playing bridge well into their 70s, while I have retired to a corner to drool. The researchers apparently are aware that men are not likely to be happy about that. One researcher, a younger man apparently drawing conclusions while he still could, said the study “may predict that men are more likely to get grouchy with age than women.”
The research indicates that women apparently lose brain cells equally on both sides of the brain, while men tend to lose “about twice as much brain on the left side as the right.” The research also supplies the information – letting me know what I’m in for, I guess – that the brain’s left side (the side where my cells begin to slough off in heaps) involves language, speech, logical reasoning and analytical thought.
At the very hour that I learn my brain is turning into compost, I am dependent on at least a dozen different sets of numbers, passwords, etc., to get through an ordinary day. There are numbers and passwords that I am supposed to remember. The ATM people and the voicemail people and of course the Webmeisters are forever warning me not to write those numbers down anywhere. I can count at least a dozen. I may have other codes, but I can’t remember them right now. That is a bad sign.
The other day I was in a modern public building that required a code to get into the men’s room. In light of the research I think that is sexual discrimination but it’s not going to do me any good. Before I am dead but after I am so right-brain heavy that my head lolls on my shoulder, all makes of cars will be unlocked by number codes. Groceries will be bought by number codes. Homes will be entered by number codes.
It will be a woman’s world. I don’t mind that. But I don’t look forward to becoming such a burden. I don’t look forward to being a blithering old grouch, yelling from the garage, “Get up from that bridge table and come out here and unlock the car for me!” at my wife. If any woman will have me.
This news comes at a bad time. I have reached a stage of maturity where a perfect stranger might glance at me on the street and think, “There is a man who is starting to get older.”
I don’t feel particularly older, and I don’t think I am old. Mature, maybe. All my parts are 1943’s, and I wouldn’t hesitate to drive them long distances across the desert at night. But I couldn’t walk up to a perfect stranger on the street and say, “If you think I am starting to get older, you are wrong,” while looking him straight in the eye. I am more realistic than that. I am at an age where, in the context of medical research, I can look forward to a rate of personal brain deterioration that is three times that of a woman, and I just want to say to the scientists how grateful I am for the information.
In a way I expected it. I remember feeling inferior in adolescence on learning that girls “matured emotionally” faster than boys. Why should it be any different on the other end? Women my age will still be playing bridge well into their 70s, while I have retired to a corner to drool. The researchers apparently are aware that men are not likely to be happy about that. One researcher, a younger man apparently drawing conclusions while he still could, said the study “may predict that men are more likely to get grouchy with age than women.”
The research indicates that women apparently lose brain cells equally on both sides of the brain, while men tend to lose “about twice as much brain on the left side as the right.” The research also supplies the information – letting me know what I’m in for, I guess – that the brain’s left side (the side where my cells begin to slough off in heaps) involves language, speech, logical reasoning and analytical thought.
At the very hour that I learn my brain is turning into compost, I am dependent on at least a dozen different sets of numbers, passwords, etc., to get through an ordinary day. There are numbers and passwords that I am supposed to remember. The ATM people and the voicemail people and of course the Webmeisters are forever warning me not to write those numbers down anywhere. I can count at least a dozen. I may have other codes, but I can’t remember them right now. That is a bad sign.
The other day I was in a modern public building that required a code to get into the men’s room. In light of the research I think that is sexual discrimination but it’s not going to do me any good. Before I am dead but after I am so right-brain heavy that my head lolls on my shoulder, all makes of cars will be unlocked by number codes. Groceries will be bought by number codes. Homes will be entered by number codes.
It will be a woman’s world. I don’t mind that. But I don’t look forward to becoming such a burden. I don’t look forward to being a blithering old grouch, yelling from the garage, “Get up from that bridge table and come out here and unlock the car for me!” at my wife. If any woman will have me.
July 23, 2009
Stretch Cooking: a dish of spontaneity
The real fun of cooking is not (necessarily) the fancy stuff and trusted recipes, but instead just knowing principles that empower options.
I was in the supermarket and spied a piece of round steak, between a half and three-quarters of a pound, half an inch thick, and shaped like the lower half of Florida. With my club card, it was $3.74. I never buy "steak" steaks at the supermarket, but, at $3.74, I bonded with this unassuming standard-grade "Rancher's Reserve" bit of round steak. I was going to have it for dinner.
In my head, I had been thinking about one of my favorites, searing a steak in a black skillet, and sautéing some onions, mushrooms and fresh spinach in the same skillet. But this steak wasn't thick enough for that.
I thought about pounding it, breading it, and making a chicken-fried steak sandwich, which in Texas in the old days, we just called a "steak sandwich." In those days, you ordered a steak sandwich in any café, and you got a piece of chicken-fried steak open-faced on thick toast with cream gravy and fries on the side. My, my. In 2009, in many Texas cafes, you order a steak sandwich and you don't know what you'll get.
There would be enough of my $3.74 round steak to make two steak sandwiches, but I decided against it because we're staying mostly away from fried meats and gravy. I could make smothered steak, which involves less fat and healthier gravy, and as I was considering that, I wondered if there was a way I could make a kind of smothered steak in which a combination of meat and onions produced the gravy, without using any fat at all.
Well, I did use a scant tablespoon of olive oil, in a black skillet, to get things going. A black, cast-iron skillet is one of those cooking principles I mentioned above. If you understand a black skillet, you can get it to do some wonderful stuff with heat. A black skillet soaks up heat like a sponge, holds it evenly, and distributes it slowly, like there is a timer built into all the skillet molecules. It probably has something to do with quantum physics, but you don't need to understand the principle, just know it's there. (I was teaching a class once, making chicken-fried steak and gravy, and as I was making the gravy, a guy asked, "Why does it thicken?" "I don't know," I said, and everybody laughed.)
I got my nine-inch black skillet and put it on medium-high (7, on your electric-range dials) to take on a heat load. I splashed salt, pepper and garlic powder on the steak and put it in to sear, immediately turning the heat down to 5. I browned it for two or three minutes, checking underneath, and then flipped it over. After a couple of minutes I added a medium onion, chunked, around the sides of the steak, turned the heat down to 2, and covered the skillet.
Five minutes later I stirred the onions, which were already sweating their own juices and starting to caramelize. This is another principle. I covered it again and turned the heat down to 1. Ten minutes later I checked for dryness and added half a cup of water. Covered it again and left it for an hour. The onions were caramelized, the pan juices – the "gravy" – were dark and rich, and you could cut the steak with a fork. I love that kind of kitchen spontaneity.
I was in the supermarket and spied a piece of round steak, between a half and three-quarters of a pound, half an inch thick, and shaped like the lower half of Florida. With my club card, it was $3.74. I never buy "steak" steaks at the supermarket, but, at $3.74, I bonded with this unassuming standard-grade "Rancher's Reserve" bit of round steak. I was going to have it for dinner.
In my head, I had been thinking about one of my favorites, searing a steak in a black skillet, and sautéing some onions, mushrooms and fresh spinach in the same skillet. But this steak wasn't thick enough for that.
I thought about pounding it, breading it, and making a chicken-fried steak sandwich, which in Texas in the old days, we just called a "steak sandwich." In those days, you ordered a steak sandwich in any café, and you got a piece of chicken-fried steak open-faced on thick toast with cream gravy and fries on the side. My, my. In 2009, in many Texas cafes, you order a steak sandwich and you don't know what you'll get.
There would be enough of my $3.74 round steak to make two steak sandwiches, but I decided against it because we're staying mostly away from fried meats and gravy. I could make smothered steak, which involves less fat and healthier gravy, and as I was considering that, I wondered if there was a way I could make a kind of smothered steak in which a combination of meat and onions produced the gravy, without using any fat at all.
Well, I did use a scant tablespoon of olive oil, in a black skillet, to get things going. A black, cast-iron skillet is one of those cooking principles I mentioned above. If you understand a black skillet, you can get it to do some wonderful stuff with heat. A black skillet soaks up heat like a sponge, holds it evenly, and distributes it slowly, like there is a timer built into all the skillet molecules. It probably has something to do with quantum physics, but you don't need to understand the principle, just know it's there. (I was teaching a class once, making chicken-fried steak and gravy, and as I was making the gravy, a guy asked, "Why does it thicken?" "I don't know," I said, and everybody laughed.)
I got my nine-inch black skillet and put it on medium-high (7, on your electric-range dials) to take on a heat load. I splashed salt, pepper and garlic powder on the steak and put it in to sear, immediately turning the heat down to 5. I browned it for two or three minutes, checking underneath, and then flipped it over. After a couple of minutes I added a medium onion, chunked, around the sides of the steak, turned the heat down to 2, and covered the skillet.
Five minutes later I stirred the onions, which were already sweating their own juices and starting to caramelize. This is another principle. I covered it again and turned the heat down to 1. Ten minutes later I checked for dryness and added half a cup of water. Covered it again and left it for an hour. The onions were caramelized, the pan juices – the "gravy" – were dark and rich, and you could cut the steak with a fork. I love that kind of kitchen spontaneity.
July 22, 2009
A few words from Big Dog's favorite talking animal
Believe me, I am not going to be taking over this blog. I only have a brain the size of a lime, and my people have brains the size of cauliflowers. So I can't compete with that. I have them where I want them anyway. It's not every dog that can talk his human blogger into giving him some space, but mine does. He calls me Gulliver. I call him Big Dog. He wears a blue t-shirt sometimes that says right on it: "Big Dog." It makes me proud.
His job is media, and he knows how important animals are to media. He says: "Can animals talk?" "Yes!" I say. He says: "Who's the most famous talking animal in the world today?" I say: "Snoopy!" Can you imagine "Peanuts" without Snoopy? I can't. He is even on some of the blimps that fly through my sky yard. (If you click on the picture once, then twice, you can see Snoopy flying the blimp!) No, Big Dog says, Snoopy is pretty famous, but not this famous. What is the answer? Mickey Mouse! A mouse! A brain the size of a lentil! But Mickey presides over a multi-billion-dollar international entertainment corporation. It goes to show you, brain size doesn't always matter.
Then Big Dog says: "You know who my favorite talking animal is?" I shake my head. "You!" he says, and scratches me just below my ear, where I like it. Last week, when Bo, the First Dog, got an op-ed in The New York Times, Big Dog agreed that I should have some blog time, too. Now my dog brothers and sisters suddenly seem to be all over the papers, and on TV. Maybe they were always there and I just didn't notice.
The Times really seems to be going to the dogs. I don't say that as a bad thing. On Monday, they introduced a new feature, "The Puppy Diaries: Taking the Plunge With a New Dog." Is that cool, or what? This morning, Wednesday, two days later, that story is still No. 2 on the Times' "Most Popular Email" list. Dogs rule! Dog stories got legs! I bet you I could live to be two hundred and never see a story like that about cats.
The star of that story is Scout, who is a golden retriever. The story says Scout's breeder thoroughly checked out the people who wanted to take her home. The writer of the story, Jill Abramson, was tickled, but didn't seem to mind, because she knows that dogs are worth it. She is going to write every Monday about what it is like, "raising a puppy through its first year of life." Scout, just go on the paper and you've got it made. Jill says: "Somehow I had forgotten how much having a new puppy is like having a new baby." It brings a tear to my eye. I had to go over to Big Dog and give him a nostalgic tap on the leg with my muzzle.
There was another big story, happening right here in San Diego, but it made the national news. This one was about playing tapes of dogs barking, to chase the seals out of Children's Cove, down in La Jolla. They are ready to spend $700,000 on the project. That's a lot of Science Diet! I hereby notify the City of San Diego that I will do the job, in person, for only $350,000. Contact Big Dog.
July 20, 2009
Media Literacy: Hey, kids, Uncle Walter's here
When thinking about Walter Cronkite, it is best to remember that the most important person present at any television newscast is not the anchor, but the viewer. Don Hewitt himself, the famed CBS producer who worked right alongside Cronkite, made the distinction nicely when he brandished a remote control and said it was not a remote control at all, it was a gun, with which viewers killed people on the screen that they didn't like. It doesn't matter how famous the anchor is – Katie-Couric-famous, for example – if enough viewers kill her, she'll be gone.
In 1962, when Cronkite became the CBS News anchor, the remote control metaphor didn't work, because there were no remote controls. Anyone not watching CBS already, had to stand up, go to the set, click the channel selector, and go through a mini-engineering routine with the antenna, the vertical and horizontal holds and the fine-tuner, until the CBS picture came in clear. It speaks in Cronkite's behalf, that viewers were willing to apply such slow deaths to the competition, to make Walter Cronkite the star that he became.
This is only one viewer's opinion, but Cronkite had the best pipes, by far, of any of the 1960s anchors. If I sit quietly and concentrate, I can remember what John Cameron Swayze's voice sounded like. The Huntley and Brinkley voices were distinctive, and recognizable, but Cronkite's was not only recognizable, there was an authority chord in it, like FDR, that made it more than affable. To the ubiquitous question, "What two people would you most like having dinner with," I would answer Walter Cronkite and Charles Kuralt, just to hear those two voices in conversation.
Probably at least one TV executive in the 1950s found cause to wonder if movie stars, with their huge fan bases, should be solicited as "news stars" on this new, explosive, small-screen medium. Ronald Reagan, after all, had been in radio news. But it would have been a short-lived thought. Television news was not competing with the movies, but with the evening newspaper, so news integrity was paramount. Then, as now, with the 30-odd-million remaining viewers of (legitimate) television news, it is news integrity first, fame second, which is why Katie Couric, with all her fame as an entertainer, has had such a hard time gaining traction as the CBS anchor.
It would hardly hurt, however, in 1962, if your untested host of this untested television newscast in fact reminded potential viewers of a "looks just like him" movie star. Cronkite had the perfect not only "looks like him" but "acts like him" match: Melvyn Douglas, a legitimate star (see "Ninotchka"), but ultimately an affable, even avuncular, one (see "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House"), and a two-time Oscar winner. Douglas also became a familiar television face in the 1950s, with roles in "Kraft Mystery Theater," "The Alcoa Hour," "Goodyear Television Playhouse," "General Electric Theater," "The United States Steel Hour," and "Playhouse 90."
Cronkite, who could have played the "Blandings" role as effectively as Douglas, took the evening news anchor chair on April 16, 1962. Viewers took to him. In September, 1963, the Evening News expanded from 15 to 30 minutes, and the modern network news show was born. It continued to be shaped very much by Cronkite, who understood the viewer's power, and the reason for it. Viewers literally invite their television news providers into their living rooms. Students learning broadcast news skills today are taught to assume a mental image as they are about to go on the air: assume you are sitting on a couch in the viewer's living room, telling your friend the viewer, who is sitting just across from you, the news. Cronkite created that image. Sitting comfortably on that couch five evenings a week, Walter Cronkite became the most trusted man in America.
In 1962, when Cronkite became the CBS News anchor, the remote control metaphor didn't work, because there were no remote controls. Anyone not watching CBS already, had to stand up, go to the set, click the channel selector, and go through a mini-engineering routine with the antenna, the vertical and horizontal holds and the fine-tuner, until the CBS picture came in clear. It speaks in Cronkite's behalf, that viewers were willing to apply such slow deaths to the competition, to make Walter Cronkite the star that he became.
This is only one viewer's opinion, but Cronkite had the best pipes, by far, of any of the 1960s anchors. If I sit quietly and concentrate, I can remember what John Cameron Swayze's voice sounded like. The Huntley and Brinkley voices were distinctive, and recognizable, but Cronkite's was not only recognizable, there was an authority chord in it, like FDR, that made it more than affable. To the ubiquitous question, "What two people would you most like having dinner with," I would answer Walter Cronkite and Charles Kuralt, just to hear those two voices in conversation.
Probably at least one TV executive in the 1950s found cause to wonder if movie stars, with their huge fan bases, should be solicited as "news stars" on this new, explosive, small-screen medium. Ronald Reagan, after all, had been in radio news. But it would have been a short-lived thought. Television news was not competing with the movies, but with the evening newspaper, so news integrity was paramount. Then, as now, with the 30-odd-million remaining viewers of (legitimate) television news, it is news integrity first, fame second, which is why Katie Couric, with all her fame as an entertainer, has had such a hard time gaining traction as the CBS anchor.
It would hardly hurt, however, in 1962, if your untested host of this untested television newscast in fact reminded potential viewers of a "looks just like him" movie star. Cronkite had the perfect not only "looks like him" but "acts like him" match: Melvyn Douglas, a legitimate star (see "Ninotchka"), but ultimately an affable, even avuncular, one (see "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House"), and a two-time Oscar winner. Douglas also became a familiar television face in the 1950s, with roles in "Kraft Mystery Theater," "The Alcoa Hour," "Goodyear Television Playhouse," "General Electric Theater," "The United States Steel Hour," and "Playhouse 90."
Cronkite, who could have played the "Blandings" role as effectively as Douglas, took the evening news anchor chair on April 16, 1962. Viewers took to him. In September, 1963, the Evening News expanded from 15 to 30 minutes, and the modern network news show was born. It continued to be shaped very much by Cronkite, who understood the viewer's power, and the reason for it. Viewers literally invite their television news providers into their living rooms. Students learning broadcast news skills today are taught to assume a mental image as they are about to go on the air: assume you are sitting on a couch in the viewer's living room, telling your friend the viewer, who is sitting just across from you, the news. Cronkite created that image. Sitting comfortably on that couch five evenings a week, Walter Cronkite became the most trusted man in America.
July 17, 2009
A few thoughts from Gulliver
If the President's dog, Bo, can write an op-ed piece and get it published in this morning's New York Times, I can certainly have some fun with the occasional blog of my own. My name is Gulliver. "Gully" for short. To my human readers, Happy Friday! To my dog brothers and sisters, Happy Dog Day!
Dogs are certainly coming up in the world. First there is Bo's column (well written! You should read it), and then on the "Today" show (I nap through most of it) this morning, a story about Pet Airways. You wouldn't get me on one of those things, but now dogs (and yes, cats) can fly out of cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, and not in the baggage hold, like in times prior, but right up in the passengers' cabin (all the people stuff has been taken out).
I’m a stay-at-home dog. You can barely get me into the car to go to the vet. Plenty of excitement here. We live on the side of a hill, and I watch the street down there for people and dogs, and when I see them, my ears and tail go up and I bark like crazy until I can't see them anymore. The hill is so steep that the telephone poles along the street are actually below my eye level, and I am all the time looking down at birds flying past. It does interesting things to dog instincts. Barkeley – Dog, I miss her – told me that when your yard is open space that you start to want to chase things like airplanes and blimps when they are flying low through your "yard." I have seen pictures of her barking and chasing a Sanyo blimp that came by pretty low one day.
I was a big puppy when they brought me home 10 years ago, obviously destined, when I grew up, to be bigger than Barkeley, who was average size for a Sheltie. That's why they call me Gulliver. Barkeley was great, a real lady, and very kind, but also a lot of fun. We had great chases, even if she was faster than I was. She was beautiful, but she had funny ears. They didn't flop over. She died a couple of Christmases ago, and I still miss her. I hear talk around here of getting another puppy, but it hasn't happened yet.
Don't get me wrong. Life is good. My people love me, and I think they even understand me a little bit. They don't mind when I run right past them to my food bowl. They just look at me and say, "Food first, people second," so they know basic dog philosophy. They also tell me I am beautiful, but I don't pay much attention to that. I am not a dog to put on airs. Give me the simple life, a good ear scratch, a shady hallway. At Alta Mira, every day is a dog's life. Bo, my friend, you can have the spotlight. I wonder if he is on Facebook.
July 16, 2009
Stretch Cooking: remembering the Baum's No. 4
This is more a reminiscence than a recipe, and you can blame – and ultimately thank – Ann Whitaker for it. Ann was an Abilene High classmate – a year behind me – and when she contacted me via Facebook, she flashed a huge credential: "My aunt and uncle owned Baum's."
Immediately, with those words, there appeared a complete memory of a Baum's No. 4. Baum's was a drive-in hamburger joint on South 7th, complete with carhops, at the corner of Ross or Meander, one of the streets in that stretch. This was in the era of 1957-61. The Baum's No. 4 was a hamburger with chili and cheese. The flat bun was six inches across and the meat was pressed flat and broiled. The complete name of the place was Baum's Broiled Burgers. Memory tells me that before it was Baum's, it was Buck's. But memory, half a century later, can be tricky. The No. 4 may in fact have been the one with barbecue sauce and thin-sliced onion. Which means the No. 1 would have been the chili and cheese. I ordered both, regularly.
You may have picked up on the adjectives "flat" and "thin-sliced" as signatures of stretch cooking. Profit margins being what they were – and are – you don't have to go any farther than a McDonald's or Burger King to see the principles at work. And they did work, at Baum's, or I wouldn't have this holographic vision, complete with aroma, of a No. 4, a hamburger I last ate in the Kennedy Administration.
At home, to this day, I always get flat, wide buns (my present bun of choice is the Orowheat Onion bun, eight to the package, and they freeze wonderfully) and 80 percent lean beef, pressed into flat patties. I slice the onions very thin, more for reasons of nuance than parsimony, and for chiliburgers and chili dogs, I use canned chili, no beans, Hormel or Wolf (the best, available online). You should never use homemade chili on hamburgers, hot dogs, or waffles. Canned has far the better generic texture and taste for mixed use.
The same holds with the barbecue burger. Homemade barbecue sauce is far too sophisticated to spoon onto a hamburger. The redder and cheaper the better. Smash the patty flat, season with salt and pepper, and either fry them in a skillet or grill them outside. It is a good idea to toast the bun, not for flavor so much as strength. These things can get soggy. Put some mustard on the bottom bun, then the patty, then chili (not TOO much) and then grated cheese, and also onion if you like. For the barbecue burger, you can use mustard or sauce on the bottom bun (Baum's always used sauce), then the patty, then some more sauce, then the thin-sliced onion.
Sorry, this recipe comes without carhops and real French fries, or 15-cent gas. In the Baum's days, four guys could chip in a quarter each for gas and we could cruise all night.
Immediately, with those words, there appeared a complete memory of a Baum's No. 4. Baum's was a drive-in hamburger joint on South 7th, complete with carhops, at the corner of Ross or Meander, one of the streets in that stretch. This was in the era of 1957-61. The Baum's No. 4 was a hamburger with chili and cheese. The flat bun was six inches across and the meat was pressed flat and broiled. The complete name of the place was Baum's Broiled Burgers. Memory tells me that before it was Baum's, it was Buck's. But memory, half a century later, can be tricky. The No. 4 may in fact have been the one with barbecue sauce and thin-sliced onion. Which means the No. 1 would have been the chili and cheese. I ordered both, regularly.
You may have picked up on the adjectives "flat" and "thin-sliced" as signatures of stretch cooking. Profit margins being what they were – and are – you don't have to go any farther than a McDonald's or Burger King to see the principles at work. And they did work, at Baum's, or I wouldn't have this holographic vision, complete with aroma, of a No. 4, a hamburger I last ate in the Kennedy Administration.
At home, to this day, I always get flat, wide buns (my present bun of choice is the Orowheat Onion bun, eight to the package, and they freeze wonderfully) and 80 percent lean beef, pressed into flat patties. I slice the onions very thin, more for reasons of nuance than parsimony, and for chiliburgers and chili dogs, I use canned chili, no beans, Hormel or Wolf (the best, available online). You should never use homemade chili on hamburgers, hot dogs, or waffles. Canned has far the better generic texture and taste for mixed use.
The same holds with the barbecue burger. Homemade barbecue sauce is far too sophisticated to spoon onto a hamburger. The redder and cheaper the better. Smash the patty flat, season with salt and pepper, and either fry them in a skillet or grill them outside. It is a good idea to toast the bun, not for flavor so much as strength. These things can get soggy. Put some mustard on the bottom bun, then the patty, then chili (not TOO much) and then grated cheese, and also onion if you like. For the barbecue burger, you can use mustard or sauce on the bottom bun (Baum's always used sauce), then the patty, then some more sauce, then the thin-sliced onion.
Sorry, this recipe comes without carhops and real French fries, or 15-cent gas. In the Baum's days, four guys could chip in a quarter each for gas and we could cruise all night.
July 15, 2009
We have found the empathetic, and they are us
Empathy – the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
Empathy-wise, I am a white, educated, married, male in his 60s. I understand, even if it has not been explicitly explained to me, things about other white, educated, married males in their 60s.
Thus I can say, plainly, that there are things we do, and do not, never will, understand about women, both in general and in their demographic subsets, including Latina. I, personally, am on record, long since, as saying that men and women are so completely different that it is astonishing that we can occupy the same general physical form. (You white men, if you are nodding, that's okay.) My wife, Karen, and I, have frequent, lively, discussions, including a humdinger yesterday, based on those differences. Empathy tells me, without it being explicitly explained to me, that this is the reality in practically all marriages.
It is from this empathy base that I have followed the Sotomayor hearings and occasionally heard a voice screaming under its breath. It is my voice, and this morning it is screaming at Sen. John Cornyn. I am not proud of it, but I fear that many white, educated males in their 60s scream under their breath while watching Sen. John Cornyn on TV, though I have no objective citation for this feeling.
Sen. Cornyn is talking to Judge Sotomayor again about her remark that a wise Latina can make better decisions than a white male. He is saying this like it is a bad thing, in a judge. My empathetic while male voice, with its awareness of the difference between men and women, is silently screaming something like, you idiot, it very well could be a bad thing, or it may be a good thing (depending on whose ox is getting gored), but it is most definitely a THING. Many times a woman's decision will be better than a man's, and vice versa. The point is, that dynamic is ALWAYS ON THE TABLE. I feel strongly that that's where it should be, between women and men, because negotiating the decision starts to develop an empathy for the negotiation.
My feeling is that Sen. Cornyn knows something about this. He is married, and if he is not aware that Sandy, his wife of 29 years, knows things about Sonia Sotomayor that he could never, ever, know, then he will never, ever, understand why Sandy starts yelling at him, when he gets home, about why he asks such stupid questions on television. But 29 years is a long time not to kick a total blockhead out the door, so I feel he must be smarter at home than he is in public, and he has figured out it is better to check his brain at the door of the Capitol. I wish that brought some relief to my empathetic self.
Empathy-wise, I am a white, educated, married, male in his 60s. I understand, even if it has not been explicitly explained to me, things about other white, educated, married males in their 60s.
Thus I can say, plainly, that there are things we do, and do not, never will, understand about women, both in general and in their demographic subsets, including Latina. I, personally, am on record, long since, as saying that men and women are so completely different that it is astonishing that we can occupy the same general physical form. (You white men, if you are nodding, that's okay.) My wife, Karen, and I, have frequent, lively, discussions, including a humdinger yesterday, based on those differences. Empathy tells me, without it being explicitly explained to me, that this is the reality in practically all marriages.
It is from this empathy base that I have followed the Sotomayor hearings and occasionally heard a voice screaming under its breath. It is my voice, and this morning it is screaming at Sen. John Cornyn. I am not proud of it, but I fear that many white, educated males in their 60s scream under their breath while watching Sen. John Cornyn on TV, though I have no objective citation for this feeling.
Sen. Cornyn is talking to Judge Sotomayor again about her remark that a wise Latina can make better decisions than a white male. He is saying this like it is a bad thing, in a judge. My empathetic while male voice, with its awareness of the difference between men and women, is silently screaming something like, you idiot, it very well could be a bad thing, or it may be a good thing (depending on whose ox is getting gored), but it is most definitely a THING. Many times a woman's decision will be better than a man's, and vice versa. The point is, that dynamic is ALWAYS ON THE TABLE. I feel strongly that that's where it should be, between women and men, because negotiating the decision starts to develop an empathy for the negotiation.
My feeling is that Sen. Cornyn knows something about this. He is married, and if he is not aware that Sandy, his wife of 29 years, knows things about Sonia Sotomayor that he could never, ever, know, then he will never, ever, understand why Sandy starts yelling at him, when he gets home, about why he asks such stupid questions on television. But 29 years is a long time not to kick a total blockhead out the door, so I feel he must be smarter at home than he is in public, and he has figured out it is better to check his brain at the door of the Capitol. I wish that brought some relief to my empathetic self.
July 13, 2009
Media Literacy: Pulitzer learns to pull our triggers
Joseph Pulitzer is the granddaddy of modern media code.
Recognize the name? The Pulitzer Prize is the ranking award in the journalism profession, but not the career equivalent of the Oscar, which does light-years more for the winner's media codes than a Pulitzer Prize does. That is not to say I would complain if I won a Pulitzer. It would make me much more famous than I am now, which is an extremely valuable, but also risky, media code. But people wouldn't recognize me on the streets, the way they would Oscar-winner Russell Crowe, which adds millions to the fan base, and thus millions to the paycheck.
The media codes were in full development in the media in the 1870s, when Pulitzer came along, but no one had ever used them quite the way he did. He recognized the power of the media codes to manipulate response and build that into a business plan, which revolutionized the media as a business and set into motion what today we call sensational, and tabloid, media. If you want to view Pulitzer's genius first-hand, find a page or a screen showing Paris Hilton's picture, and look into her eyes. What is in there? Nothing. Why are you looking into them? That is the genius of Joseph Pulitzer, embedded there.
Because the Pulitzers and Paris Hilton both started with him, media historians pat Pulitzer's back with one hand, and slap him with the other. He was an immigrant, an Austrian, who worked in newspapers and then found his way into publishing in St. Louis, in the 1870s. He founded The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, still in business 130 years later and, on its website, still embracing as its platform these words from Pulitzer written at his retirement in 1907: "I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."
That was the pat-on-the-back Pulitzer. Joseph Pulitzer's mission as a publisher was to give his readers quality, responsible journalism that would make a difference in their lives and in their communities. The historians call it the birth of a "new journalism," and Pulitzer worked so hard to set the new standard, with the Post-Dispatch and later The New York World, that at the time of his retirement, he was blind, and afflicted with a nervous disorder so severe he could tolerate only the softest sounds.
Pulitzer, as he went to work as The Post-Democrat's publisher in 1878, also knew all that noble journalism wasn't going to make a difference to anybody if the readers didn't pick the paper up. So he attracted readers to the paper by manipulating them. Readers, he understood, were both useful and usable. Useful as informed citizens, which was the noble part, and usable as humans who could be persuaded, through strong forces they might not understand, to pick up a newspaper, just as you were persuaded by the bare curves of a beautiful leg to pick up this book. That was the business part, and it is still in wide use today. It is called the "Pulitzer rationale:" use crass manipulation on the front pages to sell the paper, at which point you have placed quality, responsible journalism in the reader's hands.
I say "crass;" manipulation is manipulation. But some types of manipulation are legitimate. Some stories and images are so powerful that the viewer can't resist being drawn in, even if he or she is simultaneously repelled. The sequence of images from the morning of 9/11, produced and directed by media code experts in Al Qaeda, is the reigning example of such power. The attraction can also be as subtle as National Geographic's photo of a beautiful Afghan girl, or a gentle story about octogenarians being married in their hospital beds. It can be as standard as wildfires raging through national forests, or a last-second pass deflection caught and carried forward for the winning touchdown, which a legion of Americans remember four decades later as "The Immaculate Deflection." Some things that happen are simply sensational. It is an extremely useful media code.
It is so useful, in fact, that media producers look for ordinary things that happen that can be made to look sensational, by tweaking the facts in some way, or a bit of artful misrepresentation, or perhaps stretching the truth slightly, or by outright lies, so long as nobody is libeled. This kind of sensationalism is at the heart of what is called tabloid media, for which there is a huge audience. For this, media guardians reach back in history and slap Joseph Pulitzer a good one on the side of his head.
But artful sensationalism shows up every day in legitimate, mainstream media. It can be as simple as a huge headline on the newspaper editions that are sold in vending machines on the streets. The headline is sized big enough to be read from a distance of 25 or 30 feet. Why? To catch the eye, and the curiosity of a potential customer who otherwise might have kept on walking. Pulitzer used that trick all the time, but not so effectively as his New York newspaper publishing enemy, William Randolph Hearst.
Pulitzer knew something else about readers being usable. He made his newspapers more appealing by making them appealing in more ways. The media codes are like DNA. All DNA is made of the same stuff, but it combines itself in unique ways that make us who we are. Media codes are all the same stuff, but show up in people in combinations that create specific interests which can be marketed to. These combinations are based not only on individual tastes, but on sex, age, income, ethnicity, nationality, education, all those groupings that today we call "demographics."
Pulitzer recognized and seized the business advantage of publishing a newspaper not for an audience, but for a group of audiences. He introduced "sections," focused on a range of demographic interests. His New York World featured national news, local news, city hall, government, business, Wall Street, editorials, sports, theater, books, music, food, homemaking, gardening, fashion, society, weddings, weather, color comics, crosswords, games, stunts.
Stunts? There has always been a substantial demographic who liked stunts, which tend to be strange and dangle an element of the unknown. In the 21st century, they have become the foundation for television reality shows. You don't see many stunt features anymore in newspapers, or that have actually been produced by the newspaper. That has become too lowbrow for the serious press. But if someone came along named Evel Knievel and launched himself on a motorcycle over a couple dozen cars side-by-side, that photo might find its way onto the front page of many serious newspapers.
Pulitzer's most memorable stunt involved a woman, and therein lay another lode of code. Even in New York, in 1887 women were expected to remain in what was then called the woman's world. Pulitzer made good use of that demographic with the sections devoted to fashion, home, garden, society. Then along came Elizabeth Cochrane, young and pretty and not at all interested in remaining behind a white picket fence. She was a very good reporter with a strong grasp of media code. Nobody had ever heard of Elizabeth Cochrane, so in the paper, she made herself more famous by using the byline "Nellie Bly," a name from a popular Stephen Foster song. She attracted readers by doing rough, totally unexpected stories, including a famous investigative story in which she faked being insane, spent 10 days in an asylum, and reported gruesome facts of the treatment of women there. The story was sensational, and caused a sensation, and an embarrassing official investigation.
It made Nellie Bly genuinely famous, and famous women newspaper reporters had rare value in the late 19th century. Pulitzer knew just what to do. He sent her around the world. Jules Verne had written a popular fantasy novel, "Around the World in 80 Days." Pulitzer decided to bet his readers it could actually be done, and not by a man, but a woman, making the stunt's media code doubly outrageous and 10 times as seductive. The paper ran a contest to guess her elapsed time, which attracted more than a million entries. When Nellie Bly completed the trip in 72 days, the stunt became real change, and therefore real news, that was reported in newspapers nationwide.
The year was 1889. People wanting to follow Nellie Bly's around-the-world adventure had to read about it in the newspaper. But as Pulitzer was introducing modern media code and the "new journalism," elsewhere in New York a researcher named Nikola Tesla was opening a laboratory to experiment with sending voices through the air from a transmitter to a receiver. In 1891, at penny arcades in New York City, Thomas Edison, with patents already on electric light and recording, introduced a machine called the kinetograph, that made pictures appear to move. In Europe and America, scientists were working with spinning discs, mirrors, electricity and selenium, a chemical element with interesting conductive properties, in pursuit of the growing conviction among researchers that not only voices, but pictures, could be transmitted through the air. How quiet the sky must have been, at the close of the 19th century. With the first tendrils of media code escaping off pages into the air, immediately finding sensational new form and dimension, the silence could not last long.
Recognize the name? The Pulitzer Prize is the ranking award in the journalism profession, but not the career equivalent of the Oscar, which does light-years more for the winner's media codes than a Pulitzer Prize does. That is not to say I would complain if I won a Pulitzer. It would make me much more famous than I am now, which is an extremely valuable, but also risky, media code. But people wouldn't recognize me on the streets, the way they would Oscar-winner Russell Crowe, which adds millions to the fan base, and thus millions to the paycheck.
The media codes were in full development in the media in the 1870s, when Pulitzer came along, but no one had ever used them quite the way he did. He recognized the power of the media codes to manipulate response and build that into a business plan, which revolutionized the media as a business and set into motion what today we call sensational, and tabloid, media. If you want to view Pulitzer's genius first-hand, find a page or a screen showing Paris Hilton's picture, and look into her eyes. What is in there? Nothing. Why are you looking into them? That is the genius of Joseph Pulitzer, embedded there.
Because the Pulitzers and Paris Hilton both started with him, media historians pat Pulitzer's back with one hand, and slap him with the other. He was an immigrant, an Austrian, who worked in newspapers and then found his way into publishing in St. Louis, in the 1870s. He founded The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, still in business 130 years later and, on its website, still embracing as its platform these words from Pulitzer written at his retirement in 1907: "I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."
That was the pat-on-the-back Pulitzer. Joseph Pulitzer's mission as a publisher was to give his readers quality, responsible journalism that would make a difference in their lives and in their communities. The historians call it the birth of a "new journalism," and Pulitzer worked so hard to set the new standard, with the Post-Dispatch and later The New York World, that at the time of his retirement, he was blind, and afflicted with a nervous disorder so severe he could tolerate only the softest sounds.
Pulitzer, as he went to work as The Post-Democrat's publisher in 1878, also knew all that noble journalism wasn't going to make a difference to anybody if the readers didn't pick the paper up. So he attracted readers to the paper by manipulating them. Readers, he understood, were both useful and usable. Useful as informed citizens, which was the noble part, and usable as humans who could be persuaded, through strong forces they might not understand, to pick up a newspaper, just as you were persuaded by the bare curves of a beautiful leg to pick up this book. That was the business part, and it is still in wide use today. It is called the "Pulitzer rationale:" use crass manipulation on the front pages to sell the paper, at which point you have placed quality, responsible journalism in the reader's hands.
I say "crass;" manipulation is manipulation. But some types of manipulation are legitimate. Some stories and images are so powerful that the viewer can't resist being drawn in, even if he or she is simultaneously repelled. The sequence of images from the morning of 9/11, produced and directed by media code experts in Al Qaeda, is the reigning example of such power. The attraction can also be as subtle as National Geographic's photo of a beautiful Afghan girl, or a gentle story about octogenarians being married in their hospital beds. It can be as standard as wildfires raging through national forests, or a last-second pass deflection caught and carried forward for the winning touchdown, which a legion of Americans remember four decades later as "The Immaculate Deflection." Some things that happen are simply sensational. It is an extremely useful media code.
It is so useful, in fact, that media producers look for ordinary things that happen that can be made to look sensational, by tweaking the facts in some way, or a bit of artful misrepresentation, or perhaps stretching the truth slightly, or by outright lies, so long as nobody is libeled. This kind of sensationalism is at the heart of what is called tabloid media, for which there is a huge audience. For this, media guardians reach back in history and slap Joseph Pulitzer a good one on the side of his head.
But artful sensationalism shows up every day in legitimate, mainstream media. It can be as simple as a huge headline on the newspaper editions that are sold in vending machines on the streets. The headline is sized big enough to be read from a distance of 25 or 30 feet. Why? To catch the eye, and the curiosity of a potential customer who otherwise might have kept on walking. Pulitzer used that trick all the time, but not so effectively as his New York newspaper publishing enemy, William Randolph Hearst.
Pulitzer knew something else about readers being usable. He made his newspapers more appealing by making them appealing in more ways. The media codes are like DNA. All DNA is made of the same stuff, but it combines itself in unique ways that make us who we are. Media codes are all the same stuff, but show up in people in combinations that create specific interests which can be marketed to. These combinations are based not only on individual tastes, but on sex, age, income, ethnicity, nationality, education, all those groupings that today we call "demographics."
Pulitzer recognized and seized the business advantage of publishing a newspaper not for an audience, but for a group of audiences. He introduced "sections," focused on a range of demographic interests. His New York World featured national news, local news, city hall, government, business, Wall Street, editorials, sports, theater, books, music, food, homemaking, gardening, fashion, society, weddings, weather, color comics, crosswords, games, stunts.
Stunts? There has always been a substantial demographic who liked stunts, which tend to be strange and dangle an element of the unknown. In the 21st century, they have become the foundation for television reality shows. You don't see many stunt features anymore in newspapers, or that have actually been produced by the newspaper. That has become too lowbrow for the serious press. But if someone came along named Evel Knievel and launched himself on a motorcycle over a couple dozen cars side-by-side, that photo might find its way onto the front page of many serious newspapers.
Pulitzer's most memorable stunt involved a woman, and therein lay another lode of code. Even in New York, in 1887 women were expected to remain in what was then called the woman's world. Pulitzer made good use of that demographic with the sections devoted to fashion, home, garden, society. Then along came Elizabeth Cochrane, young and pretty and not at all interested in remaining behind a white picket fence. She was a very good reporter with a strong grasp of media code. Nobody had ever heard of Elizabeth Cochrane, so in the paper, she made herself more famous by using the byline "Nellie Bly," a name from a popular Stephen Foster song. She attracted readers by doing rough, totally unexpected stories, including a famous investigative story in which she faked being insane, spent 10 days in an asylum, and reported gruesome facts of the treatment of women there. The story was sensational, and caused a sensation, and an embarrassing official investigation.
It made Nellie Bly genuinely famous, and famous women newspaper reporters had rare value in the late 19th century. Pulitzer knew just what to do. He sent her around the world. Jules Verne had written a popular fantasy novel, "Around the World in 80 Days." Pulitzer decided to bet his readers it could actually be done, and not by a man, but a woman, making the stunt's media code doubly outrageous and 10 times as seductive. The paper ran a contest to guess her elapsed time, which attracted more than a million entries. When Nellie Bly completed the trip in 72 days, the stunt became real change, and therefore real news, that was reported in newspapers nationwide.
The year was 1889. People wanting to follow Nellie Bly's around-the-world adventure had to read about it in the newspaper. But as Pulitzer was introducing modern media code and the "new journalism," elsewhere in New York a researcher named Nikola Tesla was opening a laboratory to experiment with sending voices through the air from a transmitter to a receiver. In 1891, at penny arcades in New York City, Thomas Edison, with patents already on electric light and recording, introduced a machine called the kinetograph, that made pictures appear to move. In Europe and America, scientists were working with spinning discs, mirrors, electricity and selenium, a chemical element with interesting conductive properties, in pursuit of the growing conviction among researchers that not only voices, but pictures, could be transmitted through the air. How quiet the sky must have been, at the close of the 19th century. With the first tendrils of media code escaping off pages into the air, immediately finding sensational new form and dimension, the silence could not last long.
July 12, 2009
Sunday morning extra: basted eggs
I grew up on basted eggs for breakfast. I have always called them ann-eggs, because Susie, my grandmother, would say every morning, "Do you want an egg?" "Yes," I would reply, and what she brought to the table was a basted egg, or two.
A classic basted egg is created by cracking an egg into a skillet with enough fat in it, either bacon or sausage, to spoon over the top of the egg. The hot fat cooked the raw white around the yolk and put a pale-pink, sexual sheen over the yolk, while leaving the yolk runny underneath.
You could always tell a plain diner from a great diner by the way it responded to your order for basted eggs. True basted would come out with that pink sheen over the yolks. Lazy basted would come out with yellow yolks, as if you had ordered them sunny-side up. If the yolks were runny and the white cooked, fine. Too often, the white would be cooked, but the yolks hard. That is because the diner cook put a pan lid over the eggs, clamped it right down on the griddle, so steam developing underneath would do the cooking. With this method, it didn't take any time at all for the yolks to get hard.
At home, I have always preferred basted eggs, but the tradeoff is frying enough bacon or sausage to accumulate the necessary fat for basting. Then you have to eat that bacon or sausage, which was not a bad thing 50 years ago in your outdoor years, but it is something I have moved away from in my mature years. For a long time, I have settled for over-easy, because there has been no way to do runny-yolk sunny-side-up without leaving some white uncooked.
But there IS a way to do that, and it involves a pan lid. Break the eggs into a medium-low skillet, let the whites cook a bit around the edges, then take a large pan lid and hold it a couple of inches over the eggs, for a count of 10. Then peek, and if the yolks look firm, the eggs are done. If not, give it another five seconds. The difference from the old, lazy, diner cooks, who would clamp the lid over the eggs and read a chapter of "Superman," is finesse. You hold the lid a couple of inches OVER the eggs, just long enough for heat, not steam, to collect, and cook the whites. The yolks remain yellow, without the alluring pink sheen, but they are runny, which is the point. You're welcome.
A classic basted egg is created by cracking an egg into a skillet with enough fat in it, either bacon or sausage, to spoon over the top of the egg. The hot fat cooked the raw white around the yolk and put a pale-pink, sexual sheen over the yolk, while leaving the yolk runny underneath.
You could always tell a plain diner from a great diner by the way it responded to your order for basted eggs. True basted would come out with that pink sheen over the yolks. Lazy basted would come out with yellow yolks, as if you had ordered them sunny-side up. If the yolks were runny and the white cooked, fine. Too often, the white would be cooked, but the yolks hard. That is because the diner cook put a pan lid over the eggs, clamped it right down on the griddle, so steam developing underneath would do the cooking. With this method, it didn't take any time at all for the yolks to get hard.
At home, I have always preferred basted eggs, but the tradeoff is frying enough bacon or sausage to accumulate the necessary fat for basting. Then you have to eat that bacon or sausage, which was not a bad thing 50 years ago in your outdoor years, but it is something I have moved away from in my mature years. For a long time, I have settled for over-easy, because there has been no way to do runny-yolk sunny-side-up without leaving some white uncooked.
But there IS a way to do that, and it involves a pan lid. Break the eggs into a medium-low skillet, let the whites cook a bit around the edges, then take a large pan lid and hold it a couple of inches over the eggs, for a count of 10. Then peek, and if the yolks look firm, the eggs are done. If not, give it another five seconds. The difference from the old, lazy, diner cooks, who would clamp the lid over the eggs and read a chapter of "Superman," is finesse. You hold the lid a couple of inches OVER the eggs, just long enough for heat, not steam, to collect, and cook the whites. The yolks remain yellow, without the alluring pink sheen, but they are runny, which is the point. You're welcome.
July 10, 2009
Archives: Consciousness train leaving the station
July, 2006 - This consciousness train began with a truck from a concrete delivery service backing onto a job site right next to an identical company truck, both white, both new. I passed them as I was driving back from a trip to the supermarket before lunch.
At the lumberyard where I worked during the summers in high school, there were Chevrolet trucks, same year (1959), same flatbed model with dump feature, identical in every way but one. One truck was blue and the other was green. Usually when there are two identical trucks, you still develop a preference for one or the other. But blue or green didn’t make any difference to me.
I believe it was the green truck with which I tried to bring down the telephone service on the south side of Abilene, Texas, late one afternoon in the summer of 1959. It was a house site, the foundation just poured, and I was delivering the framing lumber – studs, two-by-sixes, etc. – all neatly boomed down on the flatbed. I drove up the alley and backed onto the lot, which was muddy after an earlier thundershower. I placed the junk-lumber cross pieces on which to dump the load, got back in the cab, pulled the “Dump” lever, and up went the front of the flatbed. When I felt the load slide, I pushed in the lever, slid into first gear, and pulled forward to slip out from under the load.
But I couldn’t pull forward. The wheels spun and spun until I noticed a motion over my head and saw telephone poles swaying for a couple of blocks in either direction. The top of the flatbed was hooked beneath cables overhead.
I had no choice but to risk my life and unboom the load, which was under great tension, then back up on it, scattering the neat stacks like pick-up sticks. Then I pulled out and had to re-stack the entire load. It was after 5, and I had a date. But I wasn’t too mad, because they were telephone cables. If they had been power lines, there would still be crispy wisps of me in the dirt under the lawn where that house now stands.
I had earlier cheated death on an airplane, a DC-3, carrying the high school football team – I was a sophomore fullback – that in November, 1958, missed by 25 feet being in a mid-air collision. Our pilot saw the other guy, cut the power to his engines, stood the DC-3 on its wingtip, and dropped a couple of thousand feet before recovering and flying on.
The airplane in “The High and the Mighty” is a DC-4, the earliest four-engine airliner in the DC line. The movie, from 1954, has just been released in DVD, its first release of any kind by its owner, Batjac, a company partly owned by the late John Wayne, who is one of the stars in the movie. We ordered it from amazon.com and just watched it last night. Great theme song, but boy, disaster movies sure have changed since the 1950s. The trip in “The High and the Mighty,” from Hawaii to San Francisco, took more than 12 hours, which is about how fast the movie moved. Too many flashbacks and actors chewing the scenery, Phil Harris being the worst.
I misspelled Lucille Ball’s name in a blog yesterday. Left out an l. The consciousness train is now half an hour old. I’d like to say something about how fabulous the human brain has turned out, to enable such interesting trips that start with concrete trucks. But it’s time for lunch.
At the lumberyard where I worked during the summers in high school, there were Chevrolet trucks, same year (1959), same flatbed model with dump feature, identical in every way but one. One truck was blue and the other was green. Usually when there are two identical trucks, you still develop a preference for one or the other. But blue or green didn’t make any difference to me.
I believe it was the green truck with which I tried to bring down the telephone service on the south side of Abilene, Texas, late one afternoon in the summer of 1959. It was a house site, the foundation just poured, and I was delivering the framing lumber – studs, two-by-sixes, etc. – all neatly boomed down on the flatbed. I drove up the alley and backed onto the lot, which was muddy after an earlier thundershower. I placed the junk-lumber cross pieces on which to dump the load, got back in the cab, pulled the “Dump” lever, and up went the front of the flatbed. When I felt the load slide, I pushed in the lever, slid into first gear, and pulled forward to slip out from under the load.
But I couldn’t pull forward. The wheels spun and spun until I noticed a motion over my head and saw telephone poles swaying for a couple of blocks in either direction. The top of the flatbed was hooked beneath cables overhead.
I had no choice but to risk my life and unboom the load, which was under great tension, then back up on it, scattering the neat stacks like pick-up sticks. Then I pulled out and had to re-stack the entire load. It was after 5, and I had a date. But I wasn’t too mad, because they were telephone cables. If they had been power lines, there would still be crispy wisps of me in the dirt under the lawn where that house now stands.
I had earlier cheated death on an airplane, a DC-3, carrying the high school football team – I was a sophomore fullback – that in November, 1958, missed by 25 feet being in a mid-air collision. Our pilot saw the other guy, cut the power to his engines, stood the DC-3 on its wingtip, and dropped a couple of thousand feet before recovering and flying on.
The airplane in “The High and the Mighty” is a DC-4, the earliest four-engine airliner in the DC line. The movie, from 1954, has just been released in DVD, its first release of any kind by its owner, Batjac, a company partly owned by the late John Wayne, who is one of the stars in the movie. We ordered it from amazon.com and just watched it last night. Great theme song, but boy, disaster movies sure have changed since the 1950s. The trip in “The High and the Mighty,” from Hawaii to San Francisco, took more than 12 hours, which is about how fast the movie moved. Too many flashbacks and actors chewing the scenery, Phil Harris being the worst.
I misspelled Lucille Ball’s name in a blog yesterday. Left out an l. The consciousness train is now half an hour old. I’d like to say something about how fabulous the human brain has turned out, to enable such interesting trips that start with concrete trucks. But it’s time for lunch.
July 09, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Potato salad and still more Perini
This is the only Mashed Potato Salad recipe that I know of. I always believed it was unique to Underwood's a chain of West Texas barbecue restaurants in the 1950s and '60s. Then, in the late '80s, when I was working on a cookbook about Texas cooking, a friend named Gene Ainsworth, a transplanted Texan living in California, gave me the recipe that I am using here. It looked like and tasted like the Underwood's salad.
The featured technique is the mashed potatoes, but the featured ingredient is yellow mustard. It has to do with barbecue. Potato salad is a classic side dish for Texas barbecue, particularly brisket, and most Texas potato salads have a good dollop of mustard in them, and also chopped sweet pickles. The sweet snap of the pickles and the mustard's tart bite (sounds like the rocket's red glare), stirred into the creamy potatoes work to complement the brisket's signature, smoked-savory goodness in what must have been, the first time, an accidental way. You couldn't have planned a partnership so agreeable.
As you eat, a little of the potato salad always gets swirled into the brisket juices and barbecue sauce in the bottom of the plate. I always finish everything else first, leaving a couple of bites of brisket with which to mop up this fabulous liquor.
8 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
Milk
Butter
1 medium purple onion, chopped
5 small sweet pickles, chopped
1 ½ tablespoons vinegar
5 or 6 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
Salt and pepper to taste
Boil the potatoes until tender and mash them in the usual way, with enough milk and butter to make them creamy. Fold in the other ingredients. The salad should be a creamy yellow. If you need to, add more mustard. Refrigerate overnight, and let the salad come back to room temperature before serving.
Late add: Tom Perini was on the "Today" show this morning, competing with two other guys in a hamburger cookoff. All three were named by The Food Network for making the best, and most unusual, hamburgers in their state. It was interesting. One guy wrapped his burger inside pizza dough and grilled that. The second guy breaded his burger and deep-fried it. Perini's burger was routine by comparison: a half-pound of Angus beef, grilled, topped with cheese, mushrooms and onions, and served on a sourdough bun. The "Today" panel voted his hamburger the best. It would go great with Mashed Potato Salad.
The featured technique is the mashed potatoes, but the featured ingredient is yellow mustard. It has to do with barbecue. Potato salad is a classic side dish for Texas barbecue, particularly brisket, and most Texas potato salads have a good dollop of mustard in them, and also chopped sweet pickles. The sweet snap of the pickles and the mustard's tart bite (sounds like the rocket's red glare), stirred into the creamy potatoes work to complement the brisket's signature, smoked-savory goodness in what must have been, the first time, an accidental way. You couldn't have planned a partnership so agreeable.
As you eat, a little of the potato salad always gets swirled into the brisket juices and barbecue sauce in the bottom of the plate. I always finish everything else first, leaving a couple of bites of brisket with which to mop up this fabulous liquor.
8 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
Milk
Butter
1 medium purple onion, chopped
5 small sweet pickles, chopped
1 ½ tablespoons vinegar
5 or 6 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
Salt and pepper to taste
Boil the potatoes until tender and mash them in the usual way, with enough milk and butter to make them creamy. Fold in the other ingredients. The salad should be a creamy yellow. If you need to, add more mustard. Refrigerate overnight, and let the salad come back to room temperature before serving.
Late add: Tom Perini was on the "Today" show this morning, competing with two other guys in a hamburger cookoff. All three were named by The Food Network for making the best, and most unusual, hamburgers in their state. It was interesting. One guy wrapped his burger inside pizza dough and grilled that. The second guy breaded his burger and deep-fried it. Perini's burger was routine by comparison: a half-pound of Angus beef, grilled, topped with cheese, mushrooms and onions, and served on a sourdough bun. The "Today" panel voted his hamburger the best. It would go great with Mashed Potato Salad.
July 08, 2009
July 07, 2009
Media Literacy: Sarah Palin's July 4 remarks, democratized
After resigning the Alaska governorship last Friday, Sarah Palin posted this on Facebook on Saturday, July 4, Independence Day:
"The response in the main stream (sic) media has been most predictable, ironic, and as always, detached from the lives of ordinary Americans . . . How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it's about country."
Palin is wrong. The media IS the country, and the documentation for that is IN Washington, in the National Archives. Most ordinary Americans, including Sarah Palin, don't understand this, because they have never been taught, that they, the people themselves, are the authors of the media principles, and thus the source of all media, particularly journalism, or what Americans have always called a "free press." That connection is consistently revealed by media professionals seeking to define exactly what journalists do. In a 1987 speech, journalist Jeff Greenfield laid it down nicely: "The bedrock theory of the free press is that once society decides to invest ultimate power in the people, they must have access to the widest possible range of information."
Thus the source of the power of the press must be the power of the people, who can access their power through only one source, the power of the press. The natural, enduring strength of this circularity is acknowledged by the deliberations of the nation's founders. The place for their guarantee of a free press was not in the Constitution, which established the government, but right at the top, No. 1 in the Bill of Rights, which protected the governed. The press belongs not to the Constitution, but to the people, who created it. Here's how it happened:
After the 1734 Zenger verdict, which established truth as a defense against libel or sedition, the young American press was free to print anything it wanted to, as long as it was the truth. It meant the public had an unchecked access to the flow of any information they might want, or need. The free press after the Zenger verdict democratized information, and democratized power. This was an astonishing development, in an American colonial society already forming the thought that some truths are self-evident regarding the rights of men, and can only be obtained through the consent of the governed.
The stature of the newspaper as a landmark democratic institution became a daily factor in the American mood in the decades leading to revolution, war, and independence. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, acknowledged that stature early in 1787, just before the Constitutional Convention, when he wrote: "The basis of government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
When the framers were finished with their work in September of 1787, and offered it for ratification, you could read the Constitution all the way through, and not come across a word about newspapers, or "the press." Word of "the press" does not appear until the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, and it is a famous Amendment, on display in the National Archives: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances."
Edited down to the scope of modern media, it reads: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press." Freedom of the press! Not a cornerstone of the Constitution? Just something thrown in out of left field, buried in an amendment? Where is the power in that?
There are three answers.
The first is in the Constitution itself. Making no mention of the press, or its freedom, the Constitution does nothing to create a free press.
The second answer is in the First Amendment. By including it there, we see it is clear that freedom of the press was in the minds of the Constitution's framers. When in the amendment they acknowledge its existence, after ignoring it in the Constitution, it must mean the framers understood that freedom of the press preceded the Constitution, and was as self-evident to them as, in another well-known Jeffersonian phrase, certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The third part of the answer is provided by the word "abridge." Defined by Webster, it means "to reduce in scope, extent, etc." This must mean that the framers saw a free press as so fundamental to a democratic society that it preceded any laws they could create, and that the laws they did create could never be used to reduce the scope of that freedom.
They gave the press permanent, vast – almost absolute – power and then placed that power in the hands of the people. They made the people the overseers of the republic. Why did they do that? What leap of faith was required?
We arrive at a point where it is useful to run history backwards. If you ran all the lines of United States of America history backwards, would they converge in the Constitution, or in freedom of the press? If, in Gutenberg's time, the Bible begat mass media, did, in Jefferson's time, mass media beget the Constitution? Are we really a nation of the opinion of the people? Eighty-seven years after Jefferson's quote, Abraham Lincoln spoke famously of a "new birth of freedom," of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, not perishing from the earth.
One hundred and forty-six years after Lincoln's quote, Sarah Palin speaks of media as "detached from the lives of ordinary Americans" and, "How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it's about country." Hers is simple ignorance, yes, but also simply dangerous, for a national leader to believe and say such things.
"The response in the main stream (sic) media has been most predictable, ironic, and as always, detached from the lives of ordinary Americans . . . How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it's about country."
Palin is wrong. The media IS the country, and the documentation for that is IN Washington, in the National Archives. Most ordinary Americans, including Sarah Palin, don't understand this, because they have never been taught, that they, the people themselves, are the authors of the media principles, and thus the source of all media, particularly journalism, or what Americans have always called a "free press." That connection is consistently revealed by media professionals seeking to define exactly what journalists do. In a 1987 speech, journalist Jeff Greenfield laid it down nicely: "The bedrock theory of the free press is that once society decides to invest ultimate power in the people, they must have access to the widest possible range of information."
Thus the source of the power of the press must be the power of the people, who can access their power through only one source, the power of the press. The natural, enduring strength of this circularity is acknowledged by the deliberations of the nation's founders. The place for their guarantee of a free press was not in the Constitution, which established the government, but right at the top, No. 1 in the Bill of Rights, which protected the governed. The press belongs not to the Constitution, but to the people, who created it. Here's how it happened:
After the 1734 Zenger verdict, which established truth as a defense against libel or sedition, the young American press was free to print anything it wanted to, as long as it was the truth. It meant the public had an unchecked access to the flow of any information they might want, or need. The free press after the Zenger verdict democratized information, and democratized power. This was an astonishing development, in an American colonial society already forming the thought that some truths are self-evident regarding the rights of men, and can only be obtained through the consent of the governed.
The stature of the newspaper as a landmark democratic institution became a daily factor in the American mood in the decades leading to revolution, war, and independence. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, acknowledged that stature early in 1787, just before the Constitutional Convention, when he wrote: "The basis of government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
When the framers were finished with their work in September of 1787, and offered it for ratification, you could read the Constitution all the way through, and not come across a word about newspapers, or "the press." Word of "the press" does not appear until the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, and it is a famous Amendment, on display in the National Archives: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances."
Edited down to the scope of modern media, it reads: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press." Freedom of the press! Not a cornerstone of the Constitution? Just something thrown in out of left field, buried in an amendment? Where is the power in that?
There are three answers.
The first is in the Constitution itself. Making no mention of the press, or its freedom, the Constitution does nothing to create a free press.
The second answer is in the First Amendment. By including it there, we see it is clear that freedom of the press was in the minds of the Constitution's framers. When in the amendment they acknowledge its existence, after ignoring it in the Constitution, it must mean the framers understood that freedom of the press preceded the Constitution, and was as self-evident to them as, in another well-known Jeffersonian phrase, certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The third part of the answer is provided by the word "abridge." Defined by Webster, it means "to reduce in scope, extent, etc." This must mean that the framers saw a free press as so fundamental to a democratic society that it preceded any laws they could create, and that the laws they did create could never be used to reduce the scope of that freedom.
They gave the press permanent, vast – almost absolute – power and then placed that power in the hands of the people. They made the people the overseers of the republic. Why did they do that? What leap of faith was required?
We arrive at a point where it is useful to run history backwards. If you ran all the lines of United States of America history backwards, would they converge in the Constitution, or in freedom of the press? If, in Gutenberg's time, the Bible begat mass media, did, in Jefferson's time, mass media beget the Constitution? Are we really a nation of the opinion of the people? Eighty-seven years after Jefferson's quote, Abraham Lincoln spoke famously of a "new birth of freedom," of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, not perishing from the earth.
One hundred and forty-six years after Lincoln's quote, Sarah Palin speaks of media as "detached from the lives of ordinary Americans" and, "How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it's about country." Hers is simple ignorance, yes, but also simply dangerous, for a national leader to believe and say such things.
July 05, 2009
Ready or not, here comes the white, right, Oprah
On this July 5, Rush Limbaugh is cursing John McCain for even being born. Bill O'Reilly has gone into 24/7 production mode on his next book, which he knows will be his last. Sean Hannity is polishing his resume to send to The Weather Channel. Ann Coulter is packing her surgical tools. William Kristol is looking into his mirror and saying, over and over, "What have I done? What have I done?"
All of these people make their living in conservative media, and they know, better than anyone, what is happening with Sarah Palin. She is getting out of politics, where she is a relative, low-paid nobody, into media, where she is still going to be a relative nobody, but an extremely wealthy, and visible, one. She is about to become the white, right, Oprah. Bye-bye, O'Reilly.
She already IS the white, right, Oprah, trapped in the wrong business. There are 20 million Americans out there who worship Sarah, who will attach themselves to everything she does, every move she makes, every product she endorses. By comparison, Oprah averages 8.6 million viewers daily, a Nielsen rating of about 5, and those levels have made Oprah an international celebrity and a multi-millionaire. Sarah only needs to switch businesses, from politics to media, and she started that switch Friday, when she resigned the Alaska governorship, which of course is a total waste of her star power.
If "Sarah" could start tomorrow, the show would be pulling a Nielsen of 6 or 7 by September, and I'm not talking about some Fox News production. She would be crazy to go to work for Fox. She has a proven business model for creating her own production company, down to the company's name, which would be Haras, Inc., just like Oprah's Harpo, Inc., which everybody knows is "Oprah" spelled backwards.
She won't have to learn anything, change the way she looks, change the way she talks, change the way she thinks. She is a media star waiting to happen. All she needs is a studio. Look for her to relocate from Alaska soon, to a media center in a conservative part of the country with a hub airport. Atlanta would be my guess.
All of these people make their living in conservative media, and they know, better than anyone, what is happening with Sarah Palin. She is getting out of politics, where she is a relative, low-paid nobody, into media, where she is still going to be a relative nobody, but an extremely wealthy, and visible, one. She is about to become the white, right, Oprah. Bye-bye, O'Reilly.
She already IS the white, right, Oprah, trapped in the wrong business. There are 20 million Americans out there who worship Sarah, who will attach themselves to everything she does, every move she makes, every product she endorses. By comparison, Oprah averages 8.6 million viewers daily, a Nielsen rating of about 5, and those levels have made Oprah an international celebrity and a multi-millionaire. Sarah only needs to switch businesses, from politics to media, and she started that switch Friday, when she resigned the Alaska governorship, which of course is a total waste of her star power.
If "Sarah" could start tomorrow, the show would be pulling a Nielsen of 6 or 7 by September, and I'm not talking about some Fox News production. She would be crazy to go to work for Fox. She has a proven business model for creating her own production company, down to the company's name, which would be Haras, Inc., just like Oprah's Harpo, Inc., which everybody knows is "Oprah" spelled backwards.
She won't have to learn anything, change the way she looks, change the way she talks, change the way she thinks. She is a media star waiting to happen. All she needs is a studio. Look for her to relocate from Alaska soon, to a media center in a conservative part of the country with a hub airport. Atlanta would be my guess.
July 04, 2009
July 03, 2009
Archives - Rocketing toward Service Hell
May, 2005 - If X is history, and Y is service, and you plot an ordinary parabola, then humanity has clearly reached the apogee of Service Heaven and is hurtling down a rocket roller-coaster descent into Service Hell.
The apogee was reached, of course, with Nordstrom, whose business model was the service stations (remember when they called them “service stations”?) of the 1940s. At service stations, an attendant came out, asked how much gas you wanted, pumped the gas, checked your tires, washed your windshield, checked your oil and water, and brought you change. The tab for this was never over $5. You can still see service stations in TCM movies.
Nordstrom improved on that model and was in fact Service Heaven. I remember feeling a little “this can’t last” uneasiness in Nordstrom, and sure enough, at the peak of the Service Heaven apogee, in the mid-1980s, banks introduced the ATM card. It was first presented as a “check guarantee card,” making you feel privileged and secure while the banks let you gradually get used to the idea that the ATM card made you your own teller.
When banks proved that human employees could be eliminated, along with the messy salaries and benefits, other businesses jumped on the model and Y started downhill. Slowly at first, ironically with service stations, that regressed to card-operated gas stations, and then the descent picked up speed. Overnight, it seemed, we became our own telephone receptionists and switchboards.
For a long time I assumed the phone tree was the bottom, and that Service Hell had been reached. Then just the other day I went to IKEA. It was very interesting. We walked up some stairs and then began walking through furniture groupings and displays. Our progress was along a sort of trail, well-marked, like you would follow through the great outdoors. Then we reached a stairway taking us downstairs. It was a welcome sight to me, because by then I was hot and tired and imagined we would find the trailhead, if you will, at the bottom of the stairs.
But the foot of the stairs was only the top of the peak, so to speak. At the bottom we trudged on. And on. I remembered an old movie, “Fantastic Voyage,” in which medical people, Raquel Welch among them, were miniaturized and injected into the circulatory system, from which there was no escape, of an individual whose life needed saving.
It was my situation exactly. I was trapped in a circulatory system, and my life needed saving. Raquel Welch could have run into me naked, at her movie age or her age now, and I would not have noticed. Finally we passed into a cavernous warehouse area where all the furniture and appointments and accessories had been digested into aisle upon aisle of compressed brown bundles, and at last we were extruded through checkout lines into air and sky of a sweetness I didn’t remember.
We didn’t buy anything, but we saw something we liked. A china cabinet. We shopped around and found nothing better. So we went back. We found the item and looked around for someone to do business with. In the next hour came the dawn of the real truth about IKEA: IKEA has taken the phone tree business model and CLONED IT INTO HUMANS.
I must point out that the people who work at IKEA are fine. Friendly, knowledgeable, willing to assume authority and responsibility for your shopping success. But an IKEA employee’s sphere of knowledge and authority extends only about 12 inches outside of his body. An IKEA employee in Lighting or Couches or Pickup has no knowledge of any other department in the building, upstairs or down, or the authority to ask about them.
Thus 99 percent of the shopping knowledge, labor, authority and responsibility became vested in me, the shopper. It was brilliant. Diabolical, but brilliant. Can Y go any lower? I don’t know, but lately I have been in a couple of supermarkets where you HAVE TO CHECK AND BAG YOURSELF OUT. So I think it's spreading.
The apogee was reached, of course, with Nordstrom, whose business model was the service stations (remember when they called them “service stations”?) of the 1940s. At service stations, an attendant came out, asked how much gas you wanted, pumped the gas, checked your tires, washed your windshield, checked your oil and water, and brought you change. The tab for this was never over $5. You can still see service stations in TCM movies.
Nordstrom improved on that model and was in fact Service Heaven. I remember feeling a little “this can’t last” uneasiness in Nordstrom, and sure enough, at the peak of the Service Heaven apogee, in the mid-1980s, banks introduced the ATM card. It was first presented as a “check guarantee card,” making you feel privileged and secure while the banks let you gradually get used to the idea that the ATM card made you your own teller.
When banks proved that human employees could be eliminated, along with the messy salaries and benefits, other businesses jumped on the model and Y started downhill. Slowly at first, ironically with service stations, that regressed to card-operated gas stations, and then the descent picked up speed. Overnight, it seemed, we became our own telephone receptionists and switchboards.
For a long time I assumed the phone tree was the bottom, and that Service Hell had been reached. Then just the other day I went to IKEA. It was very interesting. We walked up some stairs and then began walking through furniture groupings and displays. Our progress was along a sort of trail, well-marked, like you would follow through the great outdoors. Then we reached a stairway taking us downstairs. It was a welcome sight to me, because by then I was hot and tired and imagined we would find the trailhead, if you will, at the bottom of the stairs.
But the foot of the stairs was only the top of the peak, so to speak. At the bottom we trudged on. And on. I remembered an old movie, “Fantastic Voyage,” in which medical people, Raquel Welch among them, were miniaturized and injected into the circulatory system, from which there was no escape, of an individual whose life needed saving.
It was my situation exactly. I was trapped in a circulatory system, and my life needed saving. Raquel Welch could have run into me naked, at her movie age or her age now, and I would not have noticed. Finally we passed into a cavernous warehouse area where all the furniture and appointments and accessories had been digested into aisle upon aisle of compressed brown bundles, and at last we were extruded through checkout lines into air and sky of a sweetness I didn’t remember.
We didn’t buy anything, but we saw something we liked. A china cabinet. We shopped around and found nothing better. So we went back. We found the item and looked around for someone to do business with. In the next hour came the dawn of the real truth about IKEA: IKEA has taken the phone tree business model and CLONED IT INTO HUMANS.
I must point out that the people who work at IKEA are fine. Friendly, knowledgeable, willing to assume authority and responsibility for your shopping success. But an IKEA employee’s sphere of knowledge and authority extends only about 12 inches outside of his body. An IKEA employee in Lighting or Couches or Pickup has no knowledge of any other department in the building, upstairs or down, or the authority to ask about them.
Thus 99 percent of the shopping knowledge, labor, authority and responsibility became vested in me, the shopper. It was brilliant. Diabolical, but brilliant. Can Y go any lower? I don’t know, but lately I have been in a couple of supermarkets where you HAVE TO CHECK AND BAG YOURSELF OUT. So I think it's spreading.
July 02, 2009
Stretch Cooking: Caramelized carnivore candy, and greens
I had a finger and spoon lunch yesterday that I immediately ranked in the Stretch Cooking Top 10 for bang for the buck, measured by the value of the experience against the cost of the preparation.
It was a chunk of leftover barbecued pork shoulder (the finger food) and a bowl of leftover greens (mustard, turnip, spinach, collards) with bacon and turnips (the spoon part). I heated both in a toaster oven at 325 for 20 minutes. The pork was pure carnivore candy. I broke it apart with my fingers and consumed it deliberately, one caramelized, tender, redolent, morsel at a time, a few of them with crispy bits of fat attached. The greens were perfectly cooked to death, Texas style, with a bacon spike, sweet bites of turnip, and peppery pot liquor, and a flavor depth that only four days of refrigerator time could provide. I used a couple of warm, tightly rolled flour tortillas to mop things up.
This pork was the very last chunk of a 12-pound package of boneless pork shoulder I bought at CostCo in May for $17.46. I made "Braised Pork Carnitas" with the first six pounds, for a dinner party. The next three pounds were an experiment, based on a recipe from the "Homesick Texan" blog of Lisa Fain, who has figured out a way to make genuine carnitas at home by letting them render their own fat, and then fry in it.
Last Saturday, I thawed the last three pounds and barbecued them the same way I barbecue ribs. Stack a fire of thirty mesquite charcoal briquets and a handful of hardwood mesquite charcoal, on one side of the Weber kettle. A drip pan on the other side of the grate, just to keep fat out of the kettle bowl. Season three one-pound chunks of pork shoulder with salt and pepper and place them on the grill over the drip pan. Place the lid on the kettle so the vent is over the meat. Every 45 minutes, flip the meat over and place the opposite side toward the fire, and add six or seven briquets. They will be done in 3 ½ hours. Don't bother with sauce; you can't catch enough drippings for the job, and the pork doesn't need it anyway.
You can use a rub on these, but I prefer just salt and pepper. The fattiness in the pork shoulder bastes the meat as it smokes, leaving a signature flavor that you really shouldn't mess with.
I got the mixed greens in a huge bag at Trader Joe's, plus three turnips from the supermarket. Trim and dice the turnips and cook in water just to cover until they are tender. Dice six slices of bacon and place in a large (8-quart) pot with water to cover and place over high heat until the water boils off and the bacon starts to fry. Add one medium chopped onion, cook over high until tender and a brown glaze is forming on the bottom of the pan. Add the turnips and their cooking water and use a spatula to scrap the glaze off the bottom. Turn heat to low, heap the greens into the pot, cover, and let simmer for an hour or more. After 30 minutes, when the greens have shrunk, stir the bacon, onion and turnips into them.
The turnips act like a sweetener. For the longest time, I tried to cook greens like my grandmother Susie used to, and they came out way sharper than I remembered, even bitter. Finally I figured out adding turnips to the greens, and that did the trick. The greens still have a strong flavor, but the turnips cut the sharpness. I think Susie mashed the turnips into the greens, which is why I didn't remember them.
It was a chunk of leftover barbecued pork shoulder (the finger food) and a bowl of leftover greens (mustard, turnip, spinach, collards) with bacon and turnips (the spoon part). I heated both in a toaster oven at 325 for 20 minutes. The pork was pure carnivore candy. I broke it apart with my fingers and consumed it deliberately, one caramelized, tender, redolent, morsel at a time, a few of them with crispy bits of fat attached. The greens were perfectly cooked to death, Texas style, with a bacon spike, sweet bites of turnip, and peppery pot liquor, and a flavor depth that only four days of refrigerator time could provide. I used a couple of warm, tightly rolled flour tortillas to mop things up.
This pork was the very last chunk of a 12-pound package of boneless pork shoulder I bought at CostCo in May for $17.46. I made "Braised Pork Carnitas" with the first six pounds, for a dinner party. The next three pounds were an experiment, based on a recipe from the "Homesick Texan" blog of Lisa Fain, who has figured out a way to make genuine carnitas at home by letting them render their own fat, and then fry in it.
Last Saturday, I thawed the last three pounds and barbecued them the same way I barbecue ribs. Stack a fire of thirty mesquite charcoal briquets and a handful of hardwood mesquite charcoal, on one side of the Weber kettle. A drip pan on the other side of the grate, just to keep fat out of the kettle bowl. Season three one-pound chunks of pork shoulder with salt and pepper and place them on the grill over the drip pan. Place the lid on the kettle so the vent is over the meat. Every 45 minutes, flip the meat over and place the opposite side toward the fire, and add six or seven briquets. They will be done in 3 ½ hours. Don't bother with sauce; you can't catch enough drippings for the job, and the pork doesn't need it anyway.
You can use a rub on these, but I prefer just salt and pepper. The fattiness in the pork shoulder bastes the meat as it smokes, leaving a signature flavor that you really shouldn't mess with.
I got the mixed greens in a huge bag at Trader Joe's, plus three turnips from the supermarket. Trim and dice the turnips and cook in water just to cover until they are tender. Dice six slices of bacon and place in a large (8-quart) pot with water to cover and place over high heat until the water boils off and the bacon starts to fry. Add one medium chopped onion, cook over high until tender and a brown glaze is forming on the bottom of the pan. Add the turnips and their cooking water and use a spatula to scrap the glaze off the bottom. Turn heat to low, heap the greens into the pot, cover, and let simmer for an hour or more. After 30 minutes, when the greens have shrunk, stir the bacon, onion and turnips into them.
The turnips act like a sweetener. For the longest time, I tried to cook greens like my grandmother Susie used to, and they came out way sharper than I remembered, even bitter. Finally I figured out adding turnips to the greens, and that did the trick. The greens still have a strong flavor, but the turnips cut the sharpness. I think Susie mashed the turnips into the greens, which is why I didn't remember them.
July 01, 2009
Alta Mira Gallery
Several of you have asked to see an image of the woman in Seat 5B. Imagine getting on an airplane and running into that . . .
(Click on the image for a close-up.)
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