The highlight reel advances from the ceiling fan last week to the kitchen yesterday morning, where Karen is calling to me: “Michael, can you come in here for a minute?”
I am in the bedroom, dressing, in a bit of a hurry. But her tone is beckoning. Not alarmed, or hysterical, so I know it’s not a spider or a snake. It says, “No need to call 911, but there’s something in here that you really need to see, right now.” I drop my pants, walk down the hall and into the kitchen and there is Karen, standing over a dishwasher that is about one-third full of soap suds. Tongues of suds have trickled out at the corners and are spreading alluvially onto the floor. It looks like a dishwasher with rabies.
I hate this. I have had some success as a handyman in my homeowning history, but sick dishwashers are unapproachable by amateurs. You put dishes and soap in, close the door, turn it on, and behind the closed door things of unimaginable wisdom occur until the hissing stops, you open the door, and the dishes are clean. There is only one thing I know to do, before we call the appliance people. “It could be the drain is blocked,” I say.
She tells me that in fact she had found a cap loose in the bottom of the washer. It is the cap that screws into the opening of a reservoir in the door that holds a kind of rinsing product. Years ago I poured some of this rinsing product, called Jet Dry, into the reservoir and have not thought about it again since. Karen has now screwed the cap back into the opening, but the machine is not draining. I have another thought. “You were washing pots and pans in the sink while the machine was running,” I say, starting to glow with brilliance. “Maybe the volume was too much for the drain.” Karen closes the door, starts the machine, soap pours out. I shrug.
“Call the plumber,” I say, and head off up the hall. Then Karen says, “Oh no!” in a stricken sort of way that brings me back. She is standing in front of the open sink cabinet, a bottle of Dawn Dishwashing Soap in one hand, a bottle of Jet Dry in the other. They are very similar. She doesn’t have to speak; I can reconstruct the truth. Loading the washer, she finds the cap, decides to fill the reservoir, but instead of Jet Dry she has poured in a three-month supply of Dawn Dishwashing Soap. I ache with empathy for her. This is what I call an Ancillary Dilemma, when an act meant to correct some situation in fact turns it into a completely different situation that is geometrically more complex than the original. I have dozens of Ancillary Dilemmas in my handyman record. Once again, as with the ceiling fan, I feel a bit of pride stirring, this time for Karen standing there with the two bottles in her hands. As Ancillary Dilemmas go, this one is pretty good.
So good, in fact, that it resists Googling. “Wrong soap in dishwasher” yields 1,270,000 results, so common as to be plebian. From the dishwasher manual (which I recommended), she discovers that the reservoir is called simply the “rinse agent.” For historical purposes, I undertake this search myself. “Wrong soap in rinse agent” yields no results at all, but invites a further search of wrong soap in rinse agents “without quotes.” That search yields 234,000 results, with this caveat at the bottom of the first page: “Tip: these results do not include the word ‘wrong.’ Show results that include ‘wrong’.” That search yields 12,000 results, including a link to WikiAnswers, which provides this solution:
“Take the door apart and remove the jet dry reservoir. Thoroughly rinse out the reservoir, then put everything back together.” Right. This is the same as a recipe for hamburgers that begins, “Go out and kill a cow.” The appliance repair people are coming tomorrow. Though you would think that a human who can navigate himself through Google to get to a WikiAnswer for “Wrong soap in rinse agent” should be able to find his way through a dishwasher door. There are some truths that just don’t make sense.
May 13, 2009
May 11, 2009
Media Literacy: The Wizard's Toolbox
Media professionals – the new Wizards of Oz – use a deceptively simple set of tools in their work. There are 12 "event values:" conflict, progress, disaster, consequence, prominence, proximity, timeliness, human interest, novelty, sex, sensationalism, and curiosity. There is one definition: news is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo.
There are other tools that come into play as needed, but these are the basic set. Let's call them the Wizard's Tools. They are the starting place for all existing media literacy education: Media Code 101. The Wizard's Tools create the code that resides in every scrap of print, video, and audio content produced by the seven media businesses: books, movies, magazines, newspapers, radio, recording and television. Professionals who work in those businesses learn the media code in schools of journalism, public relations, marketing, advertising, script writing, filmmaking, campaigning, and terrorism.
Yes, terrorism. Terrorists in the last 20 years have realized they aren't in the bomb business at all. They're in the television business, just like the National Football League. Terrorists are frighteningly expert in the media code. A quick quiz, with one answer: the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City, and the 9/11 attacks, both occurred at the same time, 9 a.m.; and the summer, 2006, plot to blow up airliners – foiled, happily – involved airliners flying from Europe to the United States. Why? People with media literacy will know the answer immediately. The answer is at the bottom of this blog.
All media has but three functions: to inform, entertain, and manipulate. The information stream includes news of all kinds. “News” has been defined in any number of ways, but the media wizards use a good generic definition: news is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo. A plane crash, an economy crash, right-doing, wrong-doing, or a city council vote changes the status quo. Anything that may happen, but hasn't yet, is a threat to the status quo. Sports and weather are classic threat stories. In fact, sports is a multi-billion dollar business based on nothing more than the threat to the status quo.
The entertainment stream reaches the public through all seven media businesses: books, movies, magazines, newspapers, radio, recording and television. The most visible, literally, entertainment stream is television. Manipulation, or persuasion, shows up in media products such as books, commentaries, terrorism and advertising, intended to influence thought, inspire reaction, impact choices, and trigger spending.
Media professionals, knowing the media code, know how it works, and how they can make it work, to inform, entertain and manipulate the public. The public, at its end, is unaware of this. The media/media code/public circuit runs in one direction only, from the media toward the public, a dangerously unbalanced equation. When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, the power equation will start to change.
The American educational system never has exposed the general student population to the code, and that is strange, and dangerous, given the dominance of media in our lives. Even half a century ago when media was slow, and arrived in a newspaper, a couple of television and radio stations, a movie house, and some magazines and books, the media was still a significant part of a person's week, both as news and entertainment, and advertising.
Now, early in the 21st century, 100 years after the media code escaped into the air, the population is inundated in a media code hurricane. With their growing power, since the 1950s, to reach, inform, entertain, and manipulate people, media producers have learned to embed the code with sophisticated skill. The media codes themselves have evolved, and in many cases mutated into forms that in turn feed the sophistication. People have become aware of this new media power, and they complain about it, without having any knowledge of the power's source. This power, according to reports published in the summer of 2007, has turned American teenagers and pre-teens, down to age six, into a fifty-billion-dollar consumer group, obviously highly prized by media producers and marketers. Shouldn't their parents, and the kids, know more about media code? Like starting in third grade? Shouldn't the curtain be pulled back, on the new Wizards of Oz?
The media code is to media as DNA is to a human being. A human being, in all of his or her improbable complexity, is based on four DNA codes, A, T, C and G. Bringing a media product to life may involve divine inspiration, hundreds of sophisticated techniques, and cadres of highly skilled professionals, but the finished product is always based on the codes created by the Wizard's tools. This isn't rocket science, but media code is as genuine, and real in its discipline, as DNA is in biology, or the physics code on which Albert Einstein founded his great equation e = mc2. Media students typically go to school for four years to learn what the media codes are, how to identify them, how to quickly find them in huge piles of raw information, and how and where to embed them in media pages, scripts, layouts, campaigns, and plots.
The 12 media values, for example, are all present, each on their individual strength scales of zero to 10, in every media product you consume. You in the general public haven't seen them, until now, because you didn't know what to look for; no one ever showed you. When you see it, you will start to understand how and why the code influences and manipulates your reactions. Those strength scales, incidentally, are grossly simplified, for illustration purposes. A human being, reacting to an event on the ground, or one in the media, effortlessly produces a code combination whose composition may be described in parts per million, and is an exact, individual measure of response, unique to that individual. That combination, in its precision, is also an exact reflection of the individual’s identity; no two of us are alike.
Much of the time, your reactions are spontaneous and legitimate as you gain information being reported to you about events as they happen in the world. And much of the time, your reactions are being manipulated by code users whose job is to make you feel a certain way, particularly desirous, or make a particular choice, or decision. These code users create vastly lucrative markets composed entirely of American consumers who are too young to get a driver's license.
In the meantime, Americans are losing faith in the media. In its 2007 report on "The State of the News Media," the Project for Excellence in Journalism said that less than 20 percent of Americans "believe what they read in print." They claim bias and manipulation, even in the legitimate news flow. The study cites "continuing doubts" about whether print journalism "is being practiced in a way people want," a phrase I want you to come back and read again, when you realize how it screams with irony.
Yet evidence routinely surfaces, indicating these same people, in their doubts, really have no idea how the media does its job. In September, 2006, my home-town newspaper, The San Diego Union-Tribune, stripped across the top of its Letters to the Editor page a series of letters complaining about some of the U-T’s recent choices for front-page stories.
One griped about a huge front-page photo of Padres pitcher Trevor Hoffman, the morning after he broke Lee Smith’s all-time major league record for saves. Another letter thought the front page should be reserved for international, national or statewide content. A third wondered about showing a photo of local teachers on the front page, where the news of the day should be.
Such reader annoyance with editorial decisions is an eternal, fascinating irony. The values and realities that editors use to make their decisions are there for all to see, right there in the page. Those values and realities are nothing more than categorization and measurement of the way people react to events, and those reactions began tens of thousands of years before the media came into being. People know, without knowing, what the values are, because they created them. In fact the media came into being simply by adopting those values and turning them into a business.
But the people don't realize that. Glance up at the Wizard's tools again. For now, just look at the event values. We know now that there are in fact 12 such values, each with a strength measured on a scale of zero to 10. Every value is present in every story in the newspaper, each on its strength of zero to 10.
When a media professional, in this case an editor, looks at a photo of Trevor Hoffman on the front page of The San Diego Union-Tribune the day after Hoffman sets a new Major League record, he or she sees novelty (10), proximity (10), prominence (10), and sensationalism (7 or 8). Timeliness (7) and human interest (about a 6) are there, too, but the others are the big four behind the Trevor photo.
Novelty is the event value invoked by the unusual, the rare (Snow In San Diego! Clinton jumps to GOP!). Setting a record in major league baseball, "America's pastime," is an unusual event. People still talk about Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1974, and they were talking again in 2007 about Barry Bonds breaking Aaron's record. Setting a record for saves hadn’t been done for decades, until Trevor Hoffman achieved it in 2006. Novelty insured that the feat was noted in newspapers all over the country, even three paragraphs in The New York Times.
The proximity value means the story happened close to you, either physically or emotionally, or both. Hoffman pitches for the Padres, the home-town team. San Diegans are physically close to stories about the home-town team. If Hoffman pitched for far-away Cleveland, or even Los Angeles, in San Diego the story would have been three paragraphs on an inside sports page.
Emotional proximity is just that: the story is close to your emotions. Winning releases strong feel-good emotions; most of us like to win, and millions of Americans get a vicarious charge from watching their team win, and, in San Diego, from watching Trevor Hoffman become the best relief pitcher ever. A "sports fan" is one who gets to share the famed "joy of victory and agony of defeat" without ever doing any work.
Prominence is simple: big names make news. Trevor Hoffman is a celebrity, who achieved a novel feat, in his home town. And sensationalism, in its legitimate sense, refers to an event that is sensational. Aside from 9/11, which is in a media code league of its own, the biggest sensational story that I can remember is the farewell tour of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. His performances were sensational, and they were noted in the media worldwide, as they happened. My biggest personal sensational story is Steve Garvey’s home run (off Lee Smith, incidentally), in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series in San Diego against the Chicago Cubs in 1984. You can ask anyone who was there (all 10 million of them) if they have ever heard a louder roar.
Even after they know the code, and are able to see its presence in the page, more people than not may gripe about the front-page content selection. Why? Because of demographics, defined in the media code as "the science of dividing people into groups." Every reader, from highbrow to sports fan, has his or her own list of stories they want to see, based on personal interest. It forces editors into choices, which are usually based on another value, consequence: on any given day, which demographic represents the largest number of readers likely to react to this story?
On that day, it was Trevor Hoffman. The "largest number of readers," in the editor's estimation, may have been only 20 percent of all readers, inviting 80 percent to gripe. But because of another code phenomenon, the Second Law of Media, the 20 percent was enough. In fact, a 20 percent response is enough to make an editor, or any media producer for that matter, weep with gratitude. It would be good if the paper could please everybody, get all the news in, every day, but the paper would weigh 15 pounds, they could never sell enough ads, and 90 percent of the content would go unread by any given reader. It's the Abe Lincoln rule of media. You could give all the people all the news all the time, but it would be terrible for business. A reader knowing the media code would understand that, and perhaps be less inclined to doubt that journalism is practiced in a way that people want. In fact it's practiced exactly the way they want. As we shall see.
Quiz answer: The Oklahoma City and 9/11 attacks, and the foiled airliner plot, were scheduled on routine weekdays to ensure maximum events values, and timed to maximize the hours of daylight that television cameras could focus on the disastrous, novel, sensational, images.
There are other tools that come into play as needed, but these are the basic set. Let's call them the Wizard's Tools. They are the starting place for all existing media literacy education: Media Code 101. The Wizard's Tools create the code that resides in every scrap of print, video, and audio content produced by the seven media businesses: books, movies, magazines, newspapers, radio, recording and television. Professionals who work in those businesses learn the media code in schools of journalism, public relations, marketing, advertising, script writing, filmmaking, campaigning, and terrorism.
Yes, terrorism. Terrorists in the last 20 years have realized they aren't in the bomb business at all. They're in the television business, just like the National Football League. Terrorists are frighteningly expert in the media code. A quick quiz, with one answer: the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City, and the 9/11 attacks, both occurred at the same time, 9 a.m.; and the summer, 2006, plot to blow up airliners – foiled, happily – involved airliners flying from Europe to the United States. Why? People with media literacy will know the answer immediately. The answer is at the bottom of this blog.
All media has but three functions: to inform, entertain, and manipulate. The information stream includes news of all kinds. “News” has been defined in any number of ways, but the media wizards use a good generic definition: news is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo. A plane crash, an economy crash, right-doing, wrong-doing, or a city council vote changes the status quo. Anything that may happen, but hasn't yet, is a threat to the status quo. Sports and weather are classic threat stories. In fact, sports is a multi-billion dollar business based on nothing more than the threat to the status quo.
The entertainment stream reaches the public through all seven media businesses: books, movies, magazines, newspapers, radio, recording and television. The most visible, literally, entertainment stream is television. Manipulation, or persuasion, shows up in media products such as books, commentaries, terrorism and advertising, intended to influence thought, inspire reaction, impact choices, and trigger spending.
Media professionals, knowing the media code, know how it works, and how they can make it work, to inform, entertain and manipulate the public. The public, at its end, is unaware of this. The media/media code/public circuit runs in one direction only, from the media toward the public, a dangerously unbalanced equation. When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, the power equation will start to change.
The American educational system never has exposed the general student population to the code, and that is strange, and dangerous, given the dominance of media in our lives. Even half a century ago when media was slow, and arrived in a newspaper, a couple of television and radio stations, a movie house, and some magazines and books, the media was still a significant part of a person's week, both as news and entertainment, and advertising.
Now, early in the 21st century, 100 years after the media code escaped into the air, the population is inundated in a media code hurricane. With their growing power, since the 1950s, to reach, inform, entertain, and manipulate people, media producers have learned to embed the code with sophisticated skill. The media codes themselves have evolved, and in many cases mutated into forms that in turn feed the sophistication. People have become aware of this new media power, and they complain about it, without having any knowledge of the power's source. This power, according to reports published in the summer of 2007, has turned American teenagers and pre-teens, down to age six, into a fifty-billion-dollar consumer group, obviously highly prized by media producers and marketers. Shouldn't their parents, and the kids, know more about media code? Like starting in third grade? Shouldn't the curtain be pulled back, on the new Wizards of Oz?
The media code is to media as DNA is to a human being. A human being, in all of his or her improbable complexity, is based on four DNA codes, A, T, C and G. Bringing a media product to life may involve divine inspiration, hundreds of sophisticated techniques, and cadres of highly skilled professionals, but the finished product is always based on the codes created by the Wizard's tools. This isn't rocket science, but media code is as genuine, and real in its discipline, as DNA is in biology, or the physics code on which Albert Einstein founded his great equation e = mc2. Media students typically go to school for four years to learn what the media codes are, how to identify them, how to quickly find them in huge piles of raw information, and how and where to embed them in media pages, scripts, layouts, campaigns, and plots.
The 12 media values, for example, are all present, each on their individual strength scales of zero to 10, in every media product you consume. You in the general public haven't seen them, until now, because you didn't know what to look for; no one ever showed you. When you see it, you will start to understand how and why the code influences and manipulates your reactions. Those strength scales, incidentally, are grossly simplified, for illustration purposes. A human being, reacting to an event on the ground, or one in the media, effortlessly produces a code combination whose composition may be described in parts per million, and is an exact, individual measure of response, unique to that individual. That combination, in its precision, is also an exact reflection of the individual’s identity; no two of us are alike.
Much of the time, your reactions are spontaneous and legitimate as you gain information being reported to you about events as they happen in the world. And much of the time, your reactions are being manipulated by code users whose job is to make you feel a certain way, particularly desirous, or make a particular choice, or decision. These code users create vastly lucrative markets composed entirely of American consumers who are too young to get a driver's license.
In the meantime, Americans are losing faith in the media. In its 2007 report on "The State of the News Media," the Project for Excellence in Journalism said that less than 20 percent of Americans "believe what they read in print." They claim bias and manipulation, even in the legitimate news flow. The study cites "continuing doubts" about whether print journalism "is being practiced in a way people want," a phrase I want you to come back and read again, when you realize how it screams with irony.
Yet evidence routinely surfaces, indicating these same people, in their doubts, really have no idea how the media does its job. In September, 2006, my home-town newspaper, The San Diego Union-Tribune, stripped across the top of its Letters to the Editor page a series of letters complaining about some of the U-T’s recent choices for front-page stories.
One griped about a huge front-page photo of Padres pitcher Trevor Hoffman, the morning after he broke Lee Smith’s all-time major league record for saves. Another letter thought the front page should be reserved for international, national or statewide content. A third wondered about showing a photo of local teachers on the front page, where the news of the day should be.
Such reader annoyance with editorial decisions is an eternal, fascinating irony. The values and realities that editors use to make their decisions are there for all to see, right there in the page. Those values and realities are nothing more than categorization and measurement of the way people react to events, and those reactions began tens of thousands of years before the media came into being. People know, without knowing, what the values are, because they created them. In fact the media came into being simply by adopting those values and turning them into a business.
But the people don't realize that. Glance up at the Wizard's tools again. For now, just look at the event values. We know now that there are in fact 12 such values, each with a strength measured on a scale of zero to 10. Every value is present in every story in the newspaper, each on its strength of zero to 10.
When a media professional, in this case an editor, looks at a photo of Trevor Hoffman on the front page of The San Diego Union-Tribune the day after Hoffman sets a new Major League record, he or she sees novelty (10), proximity (10), prominence (10), and sensationalism (7 or 8). Timeliness (7) and human interest (about a 6) are there, too, but the others are the big four behind the Trevor photo.
Novelty is the event value invoked by the unusual, the rare (Snow In San Diego! Clinton jumps to GOP!). Setting a record in major league baseball, "America's pastime," is an unusual event. People still talk about Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1974, and they were talking again in 2007 about Barry Bonds breaking Aaron's record. Setting a record for saves hadn’t been done for decades, until Trevor Hoffman achieved it in 2006. Novelty insured that the feat was noted in newspapers all over the country, even three paragraphs in The New York Times.
The proximity value means the story happened close to you, either physically or emotionally, or both. Hoffman pitches for the Padres, the home-town team. San Diegans are physically close to stories about the home-town team. If Hoffman pitched for far-away Cleveland, or even Los Angeles, in San Diego the story would have been three paragraphs on an inside sports page.
Emotional proximity is just that: the story is close to your emotions. Winning releases strong feel-good emotions; most of us like to win, and millions of Americans get a vicarious charge from watching their team win, and, in San Diego, from watching Trevor Hoffman become the best relief pitcher ever. A "sports fan" is one who gets to share the famed "joy of victory and agony of defeat" without ever doing any work.
Prominence is simple: big names make news. Trevor Hoffman is a celebrity, who achieved a novel feat, in his home town. And sensationalism, in its legitimate sense, refers to an event that is sensational. Aside from 9/11, which is in a media code league of its own, the biggest sensational story that I can remember is the farewell tour of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. His performances were sensational, and they were noted in the media worldwide, as they happened. My biggest personal sensational story is Steve Garvey’s home run (off Lee Smith, incidentally), in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series in San Diego against the Chicago Cubs in 1984. You can ask anyone who was there (all 10 million of them) if they have ever heard a louder roar.
Even after they know the code, and are able to see its presence in the page, more people than not may gripe about the front-page content selection. Why? Because of demographics, defined in the media code as "the science of dividing people into groups." Every reader, from highbrow to sports fan, has his or her own list of stories they want to see, based on personal interest. It forces editors into choices, which are usually based on another value, consequence: on any given day, which demographic represents the largest number of readers likely to react to this story?
On that day, it was Trevor Hoffman. The "largest number of readers," in the editor's estimation, may have been only 20 percent of all readers, inviting 80 percent to gripe. But because of another code phenomenon, the Second Law of Media, the 20 percent was enough. In fact, a 20 percent response is enough to make an editor, or any media producer for that matter, weep with gratitude. It would be good if the paper could please everybody, get all the news in, every day, but the paper would weigh 15 pounds, they could never sell enough ads, and 90 percent of the content would go unread by any given reader. It's the Abe Lincoln rule of media. You could give all the people all the news all the time, but it would be terrible for business. A reader knowing the media code would understand that, and perhaps be less inclined to doubt that journalism is practiced in a way that people want. In fact it's practiced exactly the way they want. As we shall see.
Quiz answer: The Oklahoma City and 9/11 attacks, and the foiled airliner plot, were scheduled on routine weekdays to ensure maximum events values, and timed to maximize the hours of daylight that television cameras could focus on the disastrous, novel, sensational, images.
May 10, 2009
Add journalism to the list of national stories
One of the revolutionary features of the Internet is that news is no longer local. Whether it is The Abilene Reporter-News or The New York Times, the news in that newspaper is available globally.
That means I, from where I sit in Southern California, can refer all interested parties to a powerful story I read this morning in The Times. Those parties, if they agree, can forward the story on. Frank Rich this morning wrote about the future of journalism. His topic was the first law of media, which states: the media is a business. Hence a conflict: a democracy such as ours depends directly on journalism, but somebody has to pay for that journalism. Thus the crisis of the journalism business – who will pay for it – is also the crisis of democracy.
The print circulation of The Times is minuscule, compared to the power of the Internet to distribute this news. The Internet, representing a death threat to the journalism business, is also the voice that shouts the threat to a circulation without boundaries, in which some new business model exists. Revolutionary times. Quoting Mr. Rich, ". . . the time will soon arrive for us to put up or shut up. Whatever shape journalism ultimately takes in America, make no mistake that in the end, we will get what we pay for."
That means I, from where I sit in Southern California, can refer all interested parties to a powerful story I read this morning in The Times. Those parties, if they agree, can forward the story on. Frank Rich this morning wrote about the future of journalism. His topic was the first law of media, which states: the media is a business. Hence a conflict: a democracy such as ours depends directly on journalism, but somebody has to pay for that journalism. Thus the crisis of the journalism business – who will pay for it – is also the crisis of democracy.
The print circulation of The Times is minuscule, compared to the power of the Internet to distribute this news. The Internet, representing a death threat to the journalism business, is also the voice that shouts the threat to a circulation without boundaries, in which some new business model exists. Revolutionary times. Quoting Mr. Rich, ". . . the time will soon arrive for us to put up or shut up. Whatever shape journalism ultimately takes in America, make no mistake that in the end, we will get what we pay for."
May 08, 2009
Archives: The Circle of Life, arriving at Gate 34 - January, 2005
Interesting flight. Nonstop, Singapore to Heathrow. At one point, 361 cellphone conversations under way all at once. Seventeen arraignments on assault and battery charges before the magistrate in the tiny but sumptuously appointed court chambers on the lower deck between the Baccarat Lounge and the Raquetball Court.
But now the captain brought the superjumbo Airbus 380 to a full and complete stop at the Heathrow gate and 800 passengers rose as one to collect belongings from overhead bins.
At the back of the aircraft, Laura, in Seat 221-T (aisle), made eye contact with Tommy, in 223-W (window). The airplane’s vastness made it possible for them to stand upright, even beneath the overhead bins, and Tommy could readily appraise Laura’s bosom, as her eyes surveyed his lean jaw and wide shoulders. Though her bin was above Row 219, Laura glanced up at the bins over 223, the last row in the aircraft, as if her belongings were there and so the reason for her maneuvering back to 223.
In the silence typical of passengers waiting to deplane, but made distinguished by their number, like 800 people riding one elevator, Tommy whispered to Laura: “Hello.” She smiled at him and said “Hello.” Several hours later, they were holding hands and could speak at conversational level, the silence having dissolved into numerous conversations between and among passengers discovering mutual backgrounds, making business deals, comparing childhoods, starting novels, falling in love. And for a time there was the thrum of cellphone conversations until batteries steadily began to go dead.
At the front of the aircraft, passengers struggled with overstuffed luggage, skis and ski poles, baby carriages, musical instruments in their hard cases, exotic Malaysian totems, disassembled rickshaws, office equipment, computers, mystery crates strapped in duct tape and yellow “Police Control” ribbon, etc., until one by one the items yielded and fell heavily to the aisles, making room for the next passenger’s struggle. With each success, the victor joined the queue at the stairway descending to the metered ramp for merging into the queue of passengers moving forward from below.
Just as they detected the first deplaning motion far ahead, Laura and Tommy shared their first kiss. It was at Row 207 that Tommy said, “Laura, will you marry me?”
“I need time,” Laura said, smiling and pleased, but confused. Eddie was waiting to meet her, out on the concourse. Yet she had never known the pleasure of lovemaking such as she and Tommy had shared at Row 214, where they had paused to watch a movie.
At 199, Laura embraced Tommy and said, “The answer is yes.”
“I’ll make your wedding dress,” said a kindly woman behind them. “My Singer is in the overhead bin, and several bolts of Javanese silk.”
At 171, Laura’s dress was ready. The magistrate married them in Row 167, and they drank champagne and danced at their reception in the galley between Rows 165 and 164 while the London Chamber Orchestra (flying in from Sydney) played.
They honeymooned at 143 and enjoyed the birth of twins behind the curtain separating Coach and Business Class. The children, Full and Upright, completed first and second grades in the 20-seat elementary school below First Class and emerged with their parents from the jetway into the concourse happy children well adjusted to the new age.
Furtively, Laura searched for Eddie and actually walked right past him but didn’t recognize him for the beard.
But now the captain brought the superjumbo Airbus 380 to a full and complete stop at the Heathrow gate and 800 passengers rose as one to collect belongings from overhead bins.
At the back of the aircraft, Laura, in Seat 221-T (aisle), made eye contact with Tommy, in 223-W (window). The airplane’s vastness made it possible for them to stand upright, even beneath the overhead bins, and Tommy could readily appraise Laura’s bosom, as her eyes surveyed his lean jaw and wide shoulders. Though her bin was above Row 219, Laura glanced up at the bins over 223, the last row in the aircraft, as if her belongings were there and so the reason for her maneuvering back to 223.
In the silence typical of passengers waiting to deplane, but made distinguished by their number, like 800 people riding one elevator, Tommy whispered to Laura: “Hello.” She smiled at him and said “Hello.” Several hours later, they were holding hands and could speak at conversational level, the silence having dissolved into numerous conversations between and among passengers discovering mutual backgrounds, making business deals, comparing childhoods, starting novels, falling in love. And for a time there was the thrum of cellphone conversations until batteries steadily began to go dead.
At the front of the aircraft, passengers struggled with overstuffed luggage, skis and ski poles, baby carriages, musical instruments in their hard cases, exotic Malaysian totems, disassembled rickshaws, office equipment, computers, mystery crates strapped in duct tape and yellow “Police Control” ribbon, etc., until one by one the items yielded and fell heavily to the aisles, making room for the next passenger’s struggle. With each success, the victor joined the queue at the stairway descending to the metered ramp for merging into the queue of passengers moving forward from below.
Just as they detected the first deplaning motion far ahead, Laura and Tommy shared their first kiss. It was at Row 207 that Tommy said, “Laura, will you marry me?”
“I need time,” Laura said, smiling and pleased, but confused. Eddie was waiting to meet her, out on the concourse. Yet she had never known the pleasure of lovemaking such as she and Tommy had shared at Row 214, where they had paused to watch a movie.
At 199, Laura embraced Tommy and said, “The answer is yes.”
“I’ll make your wedding dress,” said a kindly woman behind them. “My Singer is in the overhead bin, and several bolts of Javanese silk.”
At 171, Laura’s dress was ready. The magistrate married them in Row 167, and they drank champagne and danced at their reception in the galley between Rows 165 and 164 while the London Chamber Orchestra (flying in from Sydney) played.
They honeymooned at 143 and enjoyed the birth of twins behind the curtain separating Coach and Business Class. The children, Full and Upright, completed first and second grades in the 20-seat elementary school below First Class and emerged with their parents from the jetway into the concourse happy children well adjusted to the new age.
Furtively, Laura searched for Eddie and actually walked right past him but didn’t recognize him for the beard.
May 07, 2009
Surviving in the age of fruits and vegetables
I am a man in his 60s who is married to a gorgeous woman who tells me she wants me around for 30 more years. To that end, at my age, it becomes important to eat healthy. Eating healthy, she says – insists, actually – means eating more fruits and vegetables. They are not only healthy, she says, but eating five servings of them a day means less room for things like charred-rare ribeye and calamari fritti.
In decades prior, I would have argued that life was not meant to be spent in a way that on the day you die, you will be in a state of perfect health. In my 60s, though, I can start to see this lovely woman's point. Through no fault of mine, or hers, my appetite for death-hastening cuisine has declined in what I can only describe as a natural sort of way. No longer will my body let me consume six tacos for dinner. I can go two, at the max. If it is a natural thing, that must mean something.
I wouldn't have a problem if five fruits and vegetables a day left room for two tacos at dinner and a brisket sandwich for lunch, with a few chips. But they don't. A "serving" of fruits and vegetables is one cup. You'd be surprised (if you haven't tried it) how much focus is required to pack in five cups of fruits and vegetables a day and leave room in the 60-year-old appetite for just a little of the good stuff.
There is a secondary problem. I am a man who does not much like fresh fruit, or frozen, canned, jarred, dried, candied, powdered or juiced fruit, for that matter. Oranges aren't bad. Strawberries are okay, but NOT A CUP AT A TIME. After long consideration - months, she says - I decided I could probably handle one orange every morning, and some strawberries, if they were disguised, and so I would try joining her in the fruits and vegetables – aficionados call them F&Vs – routine.
After three weeks, I am holding my own, mainly because I like vegetables, even spinach. Three cups of packed fresh spinach cooks down practically to nothing and tastes great with a skillet-grilled steak with onions and mushrooms (which of course contribute to the F&V count). I realized that the F&V scheme can be connected to the traditional Southern "meat and three" (meat and three sides of vegetables) style of eating. This cheered me up.
Then, Tuesday afternoon (it was Cinco de Mayo), F&V merged with Stretch Cooking. In celebration of my new direction, Karen had given me a sturdy, skillet-shaped wire basket from Williams-Sonoma, with which to grill vegetables over charcoal. Last Saturday, on the Weber, I grilled a big batch of carrots, zucchini, summer squash, baby broccoli, onions, mushrooms, and green and red peppers, in batches, with this device, then dumped them in a baking pan and left them in the covered Weber (I was worried about the carrots being done) for half an hour. They turned out very nicely.
Tuesday afternoon, Cinco de Mayo, I contemplated enchiladas for dinner. I had half-pound packages of hamburger in the freezer, some great enchilada sauce from Trader Joe's, and Porkyland's tortillas, the best on the planet. Then I thought: how can you stretch that? I thought about the cache of grilled veggies. With the enchiladas, I had planned to scarf a mound of lettuce and tomatoes for my three evening V's. That is a lot of lettuce. And of course that is the purpose: eat more lettuce, less room for enchiladas. You see how Stretch and F&V were merging. In each, once they are opened in your life, there is a bit of the Pandora's Box.
In a 6-quart dutch oven, I browned the hamburger and added a bit of olive oil and half a chopped onion to soften the onion. I chopped and added two roma tomatoes (the V count was skyrocketing tonight) and let them cook, stirring, until they were mushy and starting to act as a thickener. I added half a cup of leftover coffee and stirred to deglaze the bottom of the pot. Then I rough-chopped and added the leftover grilled vegetables, probably six cups in all, and half a cup of the Trader Joe's enchilada sauce. I stacked four Porkyland's tortillas, sliced them into eighths, and threw them in, stirred the pot, and let it simmer for an hour.
The result was pretty darn good, packed in my three V's with ease, and made at least two meals worth of leftovers. Recipes are essential, of course, in the kitchen. But a lot of my cooking comes from head-doodling, of which this is an example.
In decades prior, I would have argued that life was not meant to be spent in a way that on the day you die, you will be in a state of perfect health. In my 60s, though, I can start to see this lovely woman's point. Through no fault of mine, or hers, my appetite for death-hastening cuisine has declined in what I can only describe as a natural sort of way. No longer will my body let me consume six tacos for dinner. I can go two, at the max. If it is a natural thing, that must mean something.
I wouldn't have a problem if five fruits and vegetables a day left room for two tacos at dinner and a brisket sandwich for lunch, with a few chips. But they don't. A "serving" of fruits and vegetables is one cup. You'd be surprised (if you haven't tried it) how much focus is required to pack in five cups of fruits and vegetables a day and leave room in the 60-year-old appetite for just a little of the good stuff.
There is a secondary problem. I am a man who does not much like fresh fruit, or frozen, canned, jarred, dried, candied, powdered or juiced fruit, for that matter. Oranges aren't bad. Strawberries are okay, but NOT A CUP AT A TIME. After long consideration - months, she says - I decided I could probably handle one orange every morning, and some strawberries, if they were disguised, and so I would try joining her in the fruits and vegetables – aficionados call them F&Vs – routine.
After three weeks, I am holding my own, mainly because I like vegetables, even spinach. Three cups of packed fresh spinach cooks down practically to nothing and tastes great with a skillet-grilled steak with onions and mushrooms (which of course contribute to the F&V count). I realized that the F&V scheme can be connected to the traditional Southern "meat and three" (meat and three sides of vegetables) style of eating. This cheered me up.
Then, Tuesday afternoon (it was Cinco de Mayo), F&V merged with Stretch Cooking. In celebration of my new direction, Karen had given me a sturdy, skillet-shaped wire basket from Williams-Sonoma, with which to grill vegetables over charcoal. Last Saturday, on the Weber, I grilled a big batch of carrots, zucchini, summer squash, baby broccoli, onions, mushrooms, and green and red peppers, in batches, with this device, then dumped them in a baking pan and left them in the covered Weber (I was worried about the carrots being done) for half an hour. They turned out very nicely.
Tuesday afternoon, Cinco de Mayo, I contemplated enchiladas for dinner. I had half-pound packages of hamburger in the freezer, some great enchilada sauce from Trader Joe's, and Porkyland's tortillas, the best on the planet. Then I thought: how can you stretch that? I thought about the cache of grilled veggies. With the enchiladas, I had planned to scarf a mound of lettuce and tomatoes for my three evening V's. That is a lot of lettuce. And of course that is the purpose: eat more lettuce, less room for enchiladas. You see how Stretch and F&V were merging. In each, once they are opened in your life, there is a bit of the Pandora's Box.
In a 6-quart dutch oven, I browned the hamburger and added a bit of olive oil and half a chopped onion to soften the onion. I chopped and added two roma tomatoes (the V count was skyrocketing tonight) and let them cook, stirring, until they were mushy and starting to act as a thickener. I added half a cup of leftover coffee and stirred to deglaze the bottom of the pot. Then I rough-chopped and added the leftover grilled vegetables, probably six cups in all, and half a cup of the Trader Joe's enchilada sauce. I stacked four Porkyland's tortillas, sliced them into eighths, and threw them in, stirred the pot, and let it simmer for an hour.
The result was pretty darn good, packed in my three V's with ease, and made at least two meals worth of leftovers. Recipes are essential, of course, in the kitchen. But a lot of my cooking comes from head-doodling, of which this is an example.
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