Driving Through What & To Where

Last Sunday K’s family had a reunion in a park to the west of the Twin Cities. We occupied an open shed, and before the food, we prayed and sang, and after the food we chatted. It was a pleasantly informal gathering and had the feel of people who don’t see each other very often getting better acquainted.

I’ve been around K’s family for decades but am not part of it, so no one knows quite what to do with me, and, I must admit, the converse is equally true. But lots of smiles and chatter about ancestors made it all quite tolerable.

Now I can confess that the part of the day which made me truly glad was the hour and some drive away from the city and through countryside, which when I traversed it on occasion as a child, was rural. Nothing but farm houses, fields, silos and the usual accoutrements of the agricultural trade.

That was several decades ago, and the intrusion of national enterprises, from gas stations to restaurant chains to big box retailers, has changed all that.

Even so, there are stretches where one sees nothing but corn and soybeans, growing quickly towards the harvest, and behind the fields or next to the road were family farms, one after another. Occasionally, there would be an informal sign about the “Fresh Corn” for sale, and one could see members of the family gathered around a table under a shade tree, drinking coffee and chatting, while they waited for customers to stop by.

The day was pleasant, full to the brim with sun and blue sky, and the hum of the car lulled me so that I felt I was floating along, in a time not quite the past and not the present either, and that my trip had some meaning beyond a drive to and from a family reunion.

I do not know what great significance there might be in several members of a family, sitting around a table drinking coffee, eating home baked muffins, and talking to each other, whether they are at a reunion or just waiting for somebody to buy a dozen ears of corn.

In a world of frequently fetid monologues, demagogues, and spinning of the truth, a family conversation may be both rare and undervalued, as much for what is not said as what is.

And in the silence between the words, one can be struck by the sounds of the wind through the trees, songs of the birds, and even the sound of the traveler in the car passing by, headed for a conversation down the road.

No radio, no tv, no game boy, no cell phone, no PDA…what could be better on a fine clear August morning than the songs sung by families along the open road?

Remembering Julia Child

One of the first cookbooks I ever bought was “Mastering The Art of French Cooking,” by Julia Child and Simone Beck, and to this day, I am unable to explain why I did. As a bachelor in his first teaching position, my idea of cooking was cubed steak, chipped beef, hot dogs, and hamburgers. There was the occasional tuna salad, but rarely any fish, and nothing ever very complicated.

The core of my my bachelor cuisine was the hamburger, and it was clear that this apple had not rolled very far from the tree.

My parents’ idea of dinner was meat, potatoes, sometimes accompanied by soup or a salad, and dessert, and my mother was happiest if someone else would prepare it, and any bipedal mammal met her minimum qualifications. When she found herself desperate on Tuesday…nearly every Tuesday, she would prepare cheese soufflé, and in the summer this would be accompanied by petit pan squash. I learned early on to get on the phone Tuesday morning to see whether I could cadge a dinner in a non-cheese soufflé home, and to my good fortune, there were many such households.

About two years after I had been cooking for myself, I realized that I was in a rut which was beginning to resemble an abyss, so it was Julia Child who helped me climb out. Most of the recipes were far too complex for me, especially the one for making French bread which took more than a dozen pages, and I will confess that I didn’t prepare many of her dishes.

What Julia Child did for me was to show me that cooking could be serious and fun, and that the journey could be fascinating and very tasty, and the easiest way for me to learn was to read cookbooks. So I have for the last several decades, and they have led me in interesting directions, just not as far as I once might have hoped.

It’s taken me a long time to be comfortable in the kitchen, and over the years I’ve subjected lots of guests to some good food and some flaming failures, and invariably the failures are more interesting than the successes.

These days, I keep things simple – having a bad hip tends to limit my time standing at much of anything, but come the autumn, I’ll be back making bagels (I never have had the courage to return to that French bread recipe.)

With Julia Child’s passing, an era in cooking, cookbooks, and cooking on television has drawn to a close, but it was Julia who led us down the path of discovery. As she said once, if it hadn’t been she, it would have been someone else, but someone else might not have been as warm, as self-effacing, as natural as Julia was.

She was not only a cook; she was one of the great teachers in our lives, and we were oh so lucky to have been able to come along on part of her long and wonderful life.

Bon appetit!

Not A Headache But A "Conceptual Emergency"

On my recent holiday, I was on staying on one of my favorite islands off the West coast of Scotland. Not many people live on the island, and the ones who do appear to breathe life in deeply, push their lives forward without much strain, and always say hello or make a friendly wave when one car passes by another on one of the island’s narrow roads. Over the years, I have returned again and again to the island to be reminded of how much more important mono-tasking is for the soul than multi-tasking ever will be.

In one of the towns on the island, there is a combined gift shop and book store, and we were meandering around, trying to look hard enough so that we could take in what we liked visually and thereby avoid buying it and lugging it home to have another "objet" to dust.

My habits took me into the book part of the shop, and one section – the one emphasizing Scotland, and especially its islands, is very small, U shaped, with one chair squeezed into it, so I sat down and had lots of books within arm’s reach.

My eyes fell on one, a little (they would say “wee”) paperback titled, “Ten Things To Do In A Conceptual Emergency,” and when the bells ringing in my head slowed down, I picked it up, read a few pages (of its fewer than forty), and decided that this was definitely worth taking home.

One thing about traveling to another country is that it allows more time for rumination about the country you’re from; one is not surrounded by the amazingly syncopated drumbeats from the mass media, the distance is not just geographical, it is emotional and psychological. Things…life…your own personality seem clearer or at least outlined in a way which never happens at home. ( Unless you’re in middle of a long, hot, contemplative shower, and that’s a topic for another time. )

I guess I reacted to the title because for a long time I have felt that we Americans are trying to deal with or are trying not to deal with some sort of continuing emergency in our lives. It might be governmental, attitudinal, diplomatic, societal, or all of them, if one has to start thinking about it, maybe conceptual is a good place to start.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the book’s introduction so that you get a flavor of it:

This is a new world. It is raising fundamental questions about our competence in key areas of governance, economy, sustainability and consciousness. We are struggling as professionals and in our private lives to meet the demands it is placing on traditional models of organization, understanding and action. We are losing our bearings. This is a conceptual emergency.

One very human reaction is to give up the struggle to make sense of what is going on and to lapse into short term hedonism or longer term despair. Another is to strive mightily to regain the comfort of control by reasserting old truths with more conviction, stressing fundamentals, interpreting complexity in simple terms. [Page 5]

Issues we need to consider include...

Design For Transition To A New World
Give Up On The Myth of Control
Trust Subjective Experience
Take The Long View
Form And Nurture Integrities
Practise Social Acupuncture
Sutain Networks of Hope
Converge Ideas and Action

If you are tantalized by some of this, then you should visit the source for the book, The International Futures Forum by clicking here. (The Forum is located in St. Andrews, Scotland, and is associated with St Andrews University.)

This is the sort of book which can be read in a single sitting and would make for good discussion in homes, and schools, and other informal communities. And it might help. Us. Now.

Medicare Is Just Around The Corner

Recently I’ve been giving some thought to the subject of birthdays; the primary reason was that I was approaching the birthday where you hear from our government about your new health coverage and the direct monthly deposit of S***** S******* checks. I knew I was about to arrive at that station in life’s journey – I’d begun to laminate membership cards and the like and realized that an interest in lamination is an indication of some Impending significant shift.

This was not a birthday to look forward to, either for chronological or attitudinal reasons: I don’t like getting old, at least by other people’s definition, and I think age depends much more on attitude than mere counting like growth rings on a tree.

In my youth, there were birthday parties, or so I have been told. They were fun, full of candles and cake, and I have learned that I enjoyed myself at these events. It may be true, but I don’t remember, to be honest about it.

On my 21st birthday, after I had righted myself following an academic misadventure, my mother presented me with an envelope, more in it than a card….cash, perhaps?

No, it was nothing that trivial. Inside were a pair of apron strings – honest to God, cut apron strings. I was on my own, trembling but - at last.

The next birthday I remember was my 50th, when Karen persuaded me to go on a breakfast picnic, followed by, perhaps a dog show in Saint Paul, and a visit to her Mother who was in the hospital after hip surgery.

Controlling person that I am, I had invited a small group to the house, cooked the chicken in advance, and by mid-afternoon, I had to get home. Running so late, that I didn’t have time to get ice to keep the beer cold, I came down the road vexed, no, frustrated.

When we turned into the driveway, there were all kinds of friends from the worlds I’ve inhabited, meandering about, a tent had been erected, a whole pig was being roasted, musicians were playing Swedish music, and I was embarrassed at how easily fooled I had been, angry at the same thing, and amazed that such a conspiracy had been cooked up by several friends months in advance, and I hadn’t gotten wind of it, not even a slight rustling of the leaves. In spite of all, to be cosseted in that way was, ulitimately, a delight.

And with that birthday, I declared an end to such celebrations – please. OK, send me the cards with really old guys in wheelchairs, with walking sticks, no teeth…even the one I got this year with a man in his hospital gown lying face down on a gurney in the company of a nurse and doctor who are looking at the patient’s fanny from which is…well, let me paraphrase the punch line by the nurse, “He says the instructions on the tube are to squeeze from the bottom.” I laughed and laughed, until I opened the next card which was identical to the first. Then I began to wonder, not about my friends and relations, but about me.

This year I wiggled and feinted and managed to have my birthday at home with Karen; we explored some of the finest from my favorite Scottish distillery, and it made for a fine celebration.

I still don’t like, in the words of Curt Gowdy, once a broadcaster of The Boston Red Sox, to be thought of as “rounding third and heading for home,” in spite of the stark reality which the obituary pages display every day.

There is a business to run, a house to be managed, remodeling projects to be worked on, trips to be taken, genealogies to be updated, a basement to be organized.

No more birthday celebrations, no retirement in view, just a modest change in gears.

If I’m careening toward the abyss, I would like to be driving a clown car, with a bunch of my pals jammed in along side me, telling wonderfully raunchy stories as we go – good friends and good fun, that’s the gear for m

The Tale Of The Toto Toilet

Last week my older sister sent me a column from the Washington Post…it was about a toilet, and after reading it, I thought, “Darn, that writer beat me to it!” So, here I am with the same topic but a different approach….

I have a new toilet, and I’m only slightly afraid to confess that I really like it, and I do mean really. You might think of a toilet as not much more than necessary (which is what I think they used to call it, a necessary), or a device to facilitate contemplation, meditation, retreat – or just a fine place to read. But some would say it’s just a toilet, and, speaking friend to friend, not a topic for social conversation.

But it is. And having just looked at the preceding sentences, part of me cannot believe that I am going to sail on and explain to you why this is so. I promise I shall do it as nicely and tidely as I can, and with respect.

When I remodeled the guest bathroom downstairs in my old farmhouse, the building code had changed, and I was required to put in one of the new 1.6 gallons per flush devices, rather than the previous “Controlled But Extremely Satisfying Maelstrom” model.

After construction and during a party, one of our guests who, no doubt, dines strictly on substantial quantities of whole grains, beans, rice, and extremely dense vegetables, reported that the then device had not been able to perform to a minimum acceptable standard, in spite of several successive flushes.

With my minimal plumbing skills, I was able to solve the problem and decided to equip the bathroom with heavy duty rubber gloves, a couple of plungers, very thin “bathroom tissue,” and the fervent hope that other guests would not find themselves in a situation which might require my intervention. This strategy, I thought would eliminate the middle man (me) and encourage the kind of self-reliance which Ralph Waldo Emerson admired.

When the unsolvable happened a second time at another party and Emerson didn’t appear, I joined the cadre of those who believe that 1.6 gallon per flush toilets are an invention of the devil, an unnecessary governmental requirement, and besides they just don’t work worth a, well, darn. Two of the 1.6 gallon flushes comes quite close to the 3.5 gallon flush versions of yore, so if your loo doesn’t work virtually all of the time, well that’s money down the drain and sometimes not much else.

Then I had the good luck to come down with a knee problem, such that sitting down on and getting up from the aforementioned device became quite painful, and I thought myself too young for the plastic lifter devices you see from time to time.

One day, in the midst of my wrestling with this quandary and trying to understand the advantages of the double roll of bathroom tissue, the one that doesn’t unroll without it and me fighting and cursing, I had a conversation with my older sister and explained my dilemma.

“Toto,” she said.

“Toto? What on earth are you talking about, and I know I’m not in Kansas anymore.”

“Toto toilets,” she said.They’re Japanese, come in a taller model, and will accept any offering without difficulty. I have a couple of them, and they are terrific.”

So, I began to do my research; I went to the company web-site, visited a local dealer and just spend some time “sitting around,” and decided that a Toto might just be the answer.

The plumber had never installed one, but he did a fine job, and the ten year old toilet went out to the garage (after pausing in the back yard for two days to create a little neighborly excitement at the sight of a substantial piece of white porcelain post-conceptual, post-industrial and altogether tasteless yard art.

Testing of the Toto has continued on a regular basis ever since. Not once has it failed to perform at a very high level with its friendly gurgle – not once has it required multiple flushes It uses the same 1.6 gallons as its predecessor, but there is something about the design which makes it work perfectly. And my knees don’t hurt the way they used to.

A month ago, the former tea room proprietress in the building where our offices are called to catch up on things. For some reason I decided to talk about my new Toto. When she started to giggle, I overlooked it. But she kept on giggling, until I asked, “Is it that funny?”

“You sound like my husband. We got a Toto a year or two ago, and he just can’t stop talking about it…we just love it.”

Then I knew I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t just my sister and I who had affection for our Totos…there were others, quietly talking up their Totos and recommending them. One friend of mine dropped by just to “test sit the Toto,” and now he’s getting one. In the meantime, my sister has Totoed her place in Maine.

Now, I know, gentle reader, how silly you must think all this fuss is over a toilet…a device we all use and rarely think about.

But if you owned a Toto – well, first you would understand, and second, you would find yourself talking about it to a friend, a neighbor, or a relative, and talking about relief – that is, the relief of having all the confidence in the world that your toilet problems were behind you (sorry, I just can’t help myself….)

I must say that I didn’t know how satisfying it would be just to be able to talk about toilets without flushing.

But I’ve moved on, and I’m presently working on understanding how geometric patterns in loo paper allow the paper companies to use less cellulose which increases profits. And you probably thought it was just an attractive design…

We Could Learn A Little From The Baboons

On April 13th, the New York Times published an article about some research into the behavior of a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya. Now, normally, baboons are not high in my reading priorities, no matter whether they’re overpaid corporate executivess, full-of-hot-air politicians, or celebrities enjoying their fifteen minutes, but the headline persuaded me to read on.

“No Time For Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture,” it said.

It seems that researchers have been studying one particular troop of baboons for a couple of decades. At the outset, this troop was dominated by a small group of truculent – no, downright aggressive – males. They were in a tussle with a neighboring troop of baboons over the rights to a the spoils – literary – at garbage dump not far from a nearby lodge.

Unfortunately, the meat in the dump was tainted, and the dominant males all died.

The males who survived were of the non-dominant kind, along with the females and the young. With the disappearance of the aggressive males there was, in the words of the Times’ article “a cultural swing toward pacificism, a relaxing of the usual baboon hierarchy, and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats, swipes, and bites to foster a patriotic spirit.” And there was less stress throughout the troop.

But here’s what’s really interesting: This change has lasted for twenty years – in spite of new males arriving to enliven the community (the males born in the troop leave the community and pursue their interests elsewhere).

Out of curiosity, I strolled through the report of the research, and amidst the usual tables graphs (you can too by searching online for the publication PLOS Biology and perusing the April issue).

(Other primates and some non-primates like birds and fish have elements of culture – they learn how to crack open nuts (chimpanzees) , how to get food (birds) , and how to communicate (whales and dolphins).)

But this example is different in that these baboons have maintained a kind of community which is markedly different from most baboon troops . The researchers observe in passing that “a number of investigators have emphasized how a tolerant and gregarious social setting facilitates social transmission….” Put much too simply, bullies create aggression, hierarchies, and stress, while collaborative communities create less stress and more peace.

Hmmm….maybe we should look around the world in which we primates forage to see how we’re fostering social transmission through tolerance and gregarious social settings.

Our families….well, maybe. Our schools….not nearly enough….Our government….are you kidding?

The troop of primates running our federal government has shown us very clearly that the creation of an intolerant and aggressive social setting is the way to go….to go to war, to damage our environment, to increase the national debt, to impair education, to maintain the increasing gulf between our rich and our poor, and - by the way - to run a presidential campaign.

Enough. We could use more humanity, less stress, more collaboration, less competition, less war and more concerted efforts at peace.

Ultimately we decide what kind of social milieu we want to have, and we get to make that decision – again - in November. Just be sure you vote for the baboon – sorry, fellow primate - who’s interested in helping construct the same kind of world you want.

Women's Basketball....Oh, and Men's, Too

Something odd happened in these parts Tuesday night. In the middle of the evening, there was a long, low rumble. I could hear it coming, waited for the house to stop vibrating, and listened to it move off across the lake into the distance.

This event happened at almost the same time the women’s basketball team of The University of Minnesota (the “Golden Gophers”) defeated the much higher ranked Duke University team in the “elite eight” of the National Collegiate Athletic Association championship tournament.

I sat in my chair watching the Minnesota players celebrate this almost universally unpredicted victory and realized that the odd sound which had affected our region was the sound of scales falling from men’s eyes…men who had felt in their heart of hearts that women’s athletics was a sop to equal rights, Title IX, women who wanted to be like men, women who wanted to destroy men’s athletics, women who really didn’t care, or something in that thematic area.

Several years ago I, too, might have had some sympathy for those perspectives, but one night I stuck around after a Minnesota men’s hockey game to watch the Harvard women play a game. Because few lingered, I was able to find a spot behind of the Harvard bench. (As a Harvard alumnus, I have maintained a certain and delicate loyalty through the years….) It was then that I saw how much these athletes cared about playing and about playing well, and there was a ripple of little clinks as the scales from my eyes shattered when they hit the floor. Better late than never, I suppose.

The University’s women’s program began with an incompetent coach, followed by one who gave us one year before moving to what she thought was a better program, and she was succeeded by one Pam Borton, an assistant coach at Boston College. Under Borton, the struggling program found its feet, and as public attention bloomed, we discovered the following differences between our men’s and women’s intercollegiate basketball teams:

The women play like a disciplined team.
The women listen to their coaches.
The women seem to care about each other.
The women keep their egos under control.
The women go to class.
The women get their degrees.
The women convey a sense of joy about every aspect of their basketball lives.
The women seem to understand that basketball is not life - just one element of it.
The women seem to know that for the generations of younger women behind them, they carry a special responsibility.
The women make free throws.

No doubt we are in what will soon be referred to as the halcyon days of women’s college basketball; I shudder to consider the prospect of recruiting scandals, academic infractions – the same problems which have impaired men's programs for the last eon. But while the golden glow still is with us, I intend to enjoy what these young women are doing for themselves and what delight they are giving to the rest of us.

Sunday evening, they’re up against the long-successful team from the University of Connecticut, and no doubt more men around here than ever before will be in front of the television cheering our bunch on. Win or lose, tears will be shed, and gender differences will have not a damn thing to do with it.