Slinging Hash

Autumn Pictures

2009-11-07T12:49:00.000-08:00

My husband's tortilla soup was made with some of the last vegetables from our garden. He made the green salsa on top from scratch with some particularly beautiful tomatillos from a friend's garden.

Some of our last tomatoes were already drooping toward the ground when this photo was taken in late October.

But we were still harvesting a few tomatoes at the beginning of November, which almost never happens in Portland.

The street we live on is still all decked out in autumn leaves.

Baking with James Peterson

2009-11-07T11:28:00.000-08:00

James Peterson is the author of a series of cookbooks on single themes, such as Splendid Soups, Fish and Shellfish, and Vegetables. Each book is much like the others in quality: thorough, extremely helpful, beautiful to look at, and incredibly reliable. I'm understating the case, however, and if you don't believe me you should check out his long string of awards from the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals for additional testimony to the excellence of his work.

His latest book, Baking is no exception. I've cooked just one recipe out of it so far, the apricot quick bread. He suggests replacements for the apricots, and I went with dried cherries and pecans. The bread produced has a bit drier and has more integrity than many quick bread recipes, so it slices well and holds up a little better. Oh, and of course it's absolutely delicious. This combination of cherries and nuts photographs (see below) a little like its notorious cousin the fruitcake, so you might need to take my assessment on faith until you can try out this recipe for yourself.

I'm looking forward to replacing my library copy of this excellent book with a copy of my very own.

Miracle Wheels

2009-10-21T17:10:00.000-07:00

My dog Muttley has mobility issues. Due to a combination of hip displasia and some neurological problems, her left rear leg has become unreliable. She can walk on it, but only on some surfaces and only for a few steps.

When she was younger she was incredibly energetic, a terror to anyone who knocked on our door, and the scourge of smaller animals. So it's been particularly difficult for her to put up with our efforts to help her around. And by "difficult" I mean that she thinks we're incredibly annoying, not nearly reliable enough, and hopelessly slow. For our part, both my husband and I were exhausted with the effort.

Enter Walkin' Wheels, a wheelchair designed for disabled pets. It took us about a week to get Muttley to use hers, but the training effort paid off, and now she loves her wheels and relies on them. Every day her walks become a little longer. But don't take my word for it: just check out this video of her returning from a walk through our neighborhood. She's starting to get a little tired, but some of her enthusiasm still shows:

Raspberry Crepes for Breakfast

2009-09-01T17:06:00.000-07:00

Some very kind friends recently gave us some raspberry bushes. We thought it was a single bush, but turns out they gave us several. We mistakenly planted them all in one little space, but miraculously the bushes nevertheless keep producing berries. They produced an earlier crop during regular raspberry season, and now they've produced another bunch of unexpected and so therefore doubly appreciated berries.

I picked the bunch you see just above and put them in a crepe for breakfast. I still had some whipped cream left from the banana nutella crepes, so I put that in too, making it delicious and probably too sweet for breakfast. But somehow I soldiered on and ate them anyway.

Rose City Rollers Number 3 in the West

2009-08-24T13:48:00.000-07:00

We had a great time watching the Rose City Rollers all-star team, the Wheels of Justice, compete with Duke City's Munecas Muertas this Saturday night in Portland. Above you see Miss Behavin' carrying the flag for the singing of the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of the game in which Portland defeated the New Mexico team 154 to 69. RCR particularly dominated the ring in the first half.

Watching the Wheels of Justice defense made it easy to see how these women pushed their way to number three in the regional rankings. I'm acquainted with many of the best blockers from their usual roles as jammers on other Rose City Rollers teams, so I was surprised at how well they came together to form a tight defensive network. Typically, one or two blockers would move to freeze out Duke City, Duke City would get around one or both, only to be instantly confronted with another Rose City Roller who appeared as if from nowhere. In the first half, Duke City could barely get their talented jammers through to score even a few points.

Of course the Rose City jammers were excellent too, particularly Scratcher in the Eye, from our favorite team the Heartless Heathers, Rhea DeRange, and White Flight. Below you see the two jammers lined up for the game's first jam. That's Kamikaze Kim from Duke City in the green, and Rhea DeRange from Rose City in the black and purple.

Banana Nutella Crepes

2009-08-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

Dessert expert Gale Gand's new cookbook, "Gale Gand's Brunch!: 100 Fantastic Recipes for the Weekend's Best Meal" is so good that I should return it to the library as soon as possible, before I'm tempted to cook again.

Now I don't want to mislead you. In spite of Chef Gand's expertise with sugar, this is a brunch book, and many of the recipes are not sweet. However, the recipe I chose to make this weekend, the banana nutella crepes, are so full of sugary, chocolaty goodness that I served them as an after-dinner dessert. I also made the nutella, a blend of roasted hazelnuts and chocolate, from scratch, using another recipe in the book.

You can see the consequences below. You'll want to put a less nutella and more bananas and whipped cream on your crepe, and certainly make them thinner. In fact, that's the way I made the rest of the batch, but this particular crepe looked best in the picture, probably because the eye always wants more nutella than the stomach can reasonably be expected to digest.

Pancake Breakfast

2009-08-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

I got this excellent recipe for multi-grain pancakes out of Pam Anderson's recent cookbook The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great. The pancakes have a mix of all-purpose flour, cornmeal, oatmeal, and whole wheat flour yet manage to taste so good I could eat them every day. I do wonder, however, how I'm supposed to lose weight eating food that tastes this good, even if it is good for me. But I am counting on these excellent pancakes to save my arteries (note that the butter in the picture is faux) from my sudden obsession with omelets.

Omelet Evolution II

2009-08-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

A big improvement over my last omelet, this actually tasted like a real French omelet. Sporting a delicate texture on the outside, it was somewhat creamy inside. I achieved the improvement by turning the heat down slightly and stirring in a spiral fashion from the outside toward the middle. The spiral stir made it so that the middle, which is the last part to cook through, is stirred last, and I think that's how Jacques does it (time to study the video again).

You can see the only problems in this picture: it stuck to the pan, and the process of working it loose made it a little ragged. Very likely I overcompensated for the excess of butter last time by not using enough this time, and that caused the sticking.

However, while my omelet skills seem to be improving, I have to work to make sure that my health doesn't take off in the opposite direction. As I attempt to improve, I've vowed to eat omelets only once a week and ideally no more than twice. Once I've become practiced enough to create a good-looking omelet without added ingredients, I also plan to fill them with copious amounts of vegetables. I hope these precautions prove adequate, but I'll alert you if my weight or my blood cholesterol suddenly spike upward.

Diet for Canine Cushings: natural vs. commercial pet food

2009-08-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

If your dog has Cushings, there are several sources for dietary information on the Internet recommending that you abandon commercial dog food in favor of home prepared meals. I'm writing this because I want other pet owners to know that while this can work very well for your pet, under certain circumstances you need to stick to commercial pet food.

At the time we discovered that our dog Muttley has Cushings, we switched her over to home-prepared pet food. I tried to follow the advice from VetInfo.com in particular, since they seem to be the only authoritative source that also manages to explain the bias of their information:

"The only dietary recommendations I can find are in Small Animal Clinical Nutrition III by Morris, et. al. It says to feed a high protein, low fiber, low fat, low purine diet. It suggests that it is important not to oversupplement calcium. It is also important to make sure potassium levels are adequate and that sodium is not restricted in any way if mitotane (o'p'DDD) is being used to treat the hyperadrenocorticism. Also, it is important not to restrict water intake, as you might imagine. Feeding Hill's i/d diet is one way to meet the requirements for these things. One of the book's authors is the son of the veterinarian who founded Hill's, so there may be a little bias in the recommendations, at least as to the recommended diet."

As per their advice, I stuck as strictly as possible to low-purine, high-protein foods when preparing her meals, and the results were fairly immediate and impressive. Muttley was more alert, and more importantly her thirst and subsequent urination problems were reduced to a manageable level. Since we were in the process of waiting for a complete diagnosis (adrenal vs. pituitary Cushings) and then for a prescription for trilostane which is only available in our area through the mail, we were lucky that the home-made food worked so well. In the meantime, needless to say, she loved that food, and so did our other dogs.

However, Muttley, like many Cushings sufferers, is an older dog, and her health is delicate. We've found out through trial and error that the home-made food causes harmful side effects. She's had several bouts with both diarrhea and constipation, which can be very problematic for any senior animal, but which proved especially difficult for her, given her mobility problems. I'm sure there must be some way to give her exactly the amount of fiber she needs naturally. However, I didn't realize that by attempting to adjust the amount to suit her - and I tried a couple of times to get it right - I was essentially treating her as a lab experiment, and she's in no shape for that.

The solution was to put her back on straight kibble, to which I add some chicken stock (either strained home-made chicken stock or low-fat, low-sodium canned chicken stock) for flavor. We did, however, switch from the less costly Purina One to Natural Choice, Large Breed Adult, from Nutro. It seems to be worth the high price, because it returned Muttley to normal in about one day. And we know it's the Natural Choice that made the difference because of my failed attempts to make the home-made food work for her; each time, the return to kibble fixed the problem.

In general, home-prepared dog food is probably more nutritious, and if you've got the time to prepare it and a dog who responds well to it, I would recommend it over manufactured dog food any day. But if your dog is older, in fragile health, or under treatment for Cushings, and you find that home-prepared foods are causing her digestive or intestinal problems, you should feed her instead the best manufactured kibble you can find. Remember that dog food manufacturers do have the scientific knowledge to supply all your dogs minimal nutritional requirements and provide them with the correct level of fiber, and that can make all the difference.

A Visit to the Portland Zoo

2009-08-12T16:06:00.001-07:00

Hippos, lounging and eating.

Steller sea lion

Weaver bird caught in some glare

A goat tolerating the petting zoo

Omelet Evolution

2009-08-11T10:39:00.001-07:00

Inspired by watching Jacques Pepin make omelets, my breakfast today was a two-egg omelet filled with a slice of Tillamook medium cheddar cheese, as shown above (the picture features a surprise guest appearance by my thumb).

At the beginning of the lesson, Jacques tells us that a restaurant often tests prospective chefs by asking them to cook an omelet. By Jacques' standards I did not get the job; but the good news for the aspiring omelet maker is that even a flawed, imperfect omelet can be delicious.

This was not my first omelet, but viewing the Pepin video was enough to improve my technique immediately. To remove the omelet from the pan, he first peels it away from the edges, folds it half way over, and then folds the other half on top like an envelope. I had been attempting to fold the omelet exactly in half before removing it, and that's definitely more difficult. I had also been using an all-American egg-flipping spatula for the job, as though I were making fried eggs. Jacques on the other hand uses a fork, which is more maneuverable. Since he's cooking with what appears to be a non-stick fry-pan, the fork made my husband wince repeatedly as we watched Jacques rapidly stir and manipulate the eggs, bringing the tines into frequent contact with the pan. My substitute, a heat-resistant narrow rubber spatula, will probably keep peace in the family and is a huge improvement on my old utensil.

The biggest visible flaw in today's effort is that it's supposed to be a French classic but is browned like a country omelette. I used too much butter and I left the omelet in the pan too long after I folded it, causing the browning. You can also see that the eggs aren't uniform (see those white bits, especially toward the front of the plate?), so maybe I'll use a whisk to beat them next time. It's also difficult to know when to stop stirring the eggs and when to fold them without a great deal more experience.

Of course I'll need to make more omelets before I can even approximate Jacques' perfect technique. I think I can persevere, however, as long as I get to eat the practice results.

Devil Cat

2009-08-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

No, this isn't Devil Cat. This is Rocco, who was forced to hide out behind our furnace for several hours, waiting to make sure that Devil Cat was really in custody and no longer stalking her and her litter mate, Jasmine.

This is Devil Cat. Doesn't she look sweet? But don't be fooled, because in real life she's experiencing her second bout with possession. Normally the sweetest of cats, she'll suddenly decide that she must maim or kill anything else living in her domain. You'll think I mean the normal type of fighting that breaks out between house cats, but I'm talking more the type of fight-to-the-death territorial aggression that happens between rival male cougars in the wild.

She came down with a new mess o' demons this last Monday. Since then we've had to keep her garrisoned in the downstairs bathroom by herself, until such a time as a successful exorcism can take place. Last time this happened it took several weeks, and yes, I do periodically let her out to test her just in case she's suddenly decided to let the other cats live. No luck so far, and I feel bad about it, but I feel worse when the cats are made to bleed and suffer. And that includes Spook, because Rocco and Jasmine do put up a fight.

Ice Cream Sandwiches

2009-08-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

I made these homemade chocolate ice cream sandwiches with vanilla ice cream filling for my husband's birthday. Normally he asks for chocolate cherry roulade, a rolled chocolate cake filled with cream and cherries, but I was happy to hear he wanted to try something different this year.

They're very easy to make, although time consuming since you have to chill everything between steps, but the results make them well worth the effort. It would be difficult to exaggerate the difference between a store-bought ice cream sandwich and the homemade version. The texture of the homemade cookie is somewhat crisp yet soft inside, and the ice cream just seeps into it to soften it a little more. Store-bought sandwiches by contrast have the consistency of a thin layer of wet cake.

The photos of the cookies did not turn out nearly as well, and I picked out the picture above as the best of the bad (it's a little better if you click on it and enlarge it, so that you can at least get some idea of the cookie's texture from its appearance). Since we ate the sandwiches at night after dinner, I attempted to photograph them at the same time. Since early morning and early evening light glares directly through the windows, I think it might wipe out some of the the contrast in a picture. Of course, using a white plate as the background for vanilla ice cream probably didn't help. It seems easier to get a good picture at about mid-morning, probably because the sun's overhead and helps to diffuse the light. At any rate, I'm trying to get some help so that I can understand how to take food pictures more easily and reliably in the future.

March photos, part II: Dale Chihuly in Tacoma

2009-04-07T12:32:00.000-07:00

Dale Chihuly is a native of Tacoma, Washington and the success of his career has helped to make the Northwest famous for glass art. It comes as no surprise then to find his works all over the Museum of Glass and all over downtown Tacoma. In fact, Chihuly and the Museum of Glass were joint partners in building the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, a pedestrian overpass that links the Museum, which sits above an inlet of Pudget Sound, to old downtown Tacoma.

Approaching the bridge, you would first notice the two enormous Chihuly-made towers of blue rock-candy crystal. The two-tone gray snowcone you see rising in the background is the Museum of Glass building.

What looks like a gray metal bookcase, partly hiding the Museum of Glass building, is one of a few structures on the bridge that contain Chihuly sculptures. This photo shows one of the divisions within such a display case, containing a glass cupid perched atop a green base. Notice that the background of the case is translucent, and if you stare hard enough you can just make out the freeway below the bridge.

Walking under parts of structures on the bridge is like being under the ocean floor and looking up to see the creatures on the bottom - that is, if all the living things on the ocean floor were turned to glass.

Just across the bridge is old downtown Tacoma, including the Union Station building, now a courthouse, which contains yet more glass art by Chihuly. Twisted glass snakes squirm around on the chandelier he created for the Rotunda.

These orange glass bats decorate the second floor window of the Station. You can also see the Bridge of Glass through the window.

March photos, part I: Kids Design Glass

2009-04-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

These sculptures from Tacoma's Museum of Glass come from their Kids Design Glass program, and are some of my favorite works in the place. Kids designed them, and then the team of glass artists from the museum built them as glass sculptures. Take a look: they're further proof of how creative kids can be before they grow up and become dull adults like you and me.

This first fearsome monster is "Chupacabra Way (the goat succer)", designed by Morgan Thomas. The chupacabra, in case you didn't know, is a type of livestock vampire sited in places like Puerto Rico, Texas, and Maine (why Maine?). And if I ever get any goats (non-metaphorically speaking), I'm sure I'll be keeping a closer eye on them in the future.

At the other end of the spectrum from monsters we have superheros, such as Bacon Boy here. In addition to being a special hero for my husband ("bacon makes everything better!"), Bacon Boy's superpowers include Meat Vision, and "the ability to shoot bacon bits and grease from his arms, and sausage and corn dogs from his eyes". He was designed by Austin Winters, who also designed Bacon Boy's evil arch-nemesis Fry Guy.

Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-13T19:13:00.000-08:00

Because I admire cookbooks and blogs with excellent food photography, I long to use the new camera to create my own. Below is one of my early attempts. They're sugar cookies with a faint taste of almond, and while the photography will need work, I like the cookies just the way they are. They were made for Valentine's Day, and I gave some of them to friends and kept a few for us. But unless those friends can control themselve around cookies lots better than I can, they're gone already.

Truck Stop Cinnamon Rolls

2009-02-13T18:26:00.000-08:00

I found the recipe for these great cinnamon rolls in the cookbook Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Traditions from Around the World by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

I highly recommend this cookbook, and all cookbooks by Alford and Duguid. Even if each cookbook did not contain outstanding recipes collected from all around the world, I would recommend them for the photography alone. Home Baking, like every Alford & Duguid cookbook, would suffice as a coffee table book even if you never used it to actually bake. However, I wouldn't recommend the book to a first-time baker, because of the complexity of many of the recipes and because I've found some mistakes.

This recipe, for instance, contained a small error. If you use their proportions you will need to roll out your dough in two batches and you will create a couple of cookie sheets full of gigantic cinnamon rolls, not the single tray-full of twelve the authors describe. I halved the recipe to begin with because of the huge proportions, and not only was I lucky to squeeze all my rolls onto one large baking sheet, but, as you can see, each roll is the size of a large grapefruit. Cinnamon rolls don't get much bigger than this, even at truck stops.

I also made a mistake when I rolled the dough out. I always try very hard not to use unnecessary flour, which can toughen bread, but I went too far this time. As a result, the dough stuck to the board when I went to roll them up. If you've ever tried to make such a huge piece of dough covered in damp sugar and cinnamon into a jelly-shape roll you can appreciate that you don't need the extra level of difficulty caused by sticky dough. As a result, the rolls don't have the perfect spirals you see in the commercial version. But that's the great thing about baking. Even imperfect products can be delicious, and these were.

Next time, however, I might quarter the recipe or cut the rolls smaller. I found that a single cinnamon roll made for an almost too-filling breakfast.

Some of our more Elusive Pets

2009-02-13T18:07:00.000-08:00

Of course it would be nice to show pictures of each of my animals, but some are more difficult to photograph than others. Above you see our cat, attention-junkie Spook, nosing our gray cat Rocco aside. Spook, whenever possible, would rather not relinquish any human attention or camera time to another cat.

On the other hand, Jasmine, our calico cat, is very affectionate. In the following picture she's glad to have me pet her and photograph her, as long as it's okay for her to embed her claws in my hand:

And finally Mr. Bear, below, would prefer to nap. He's got nothing against photography, he just wishes I would make an appointment with his secretary first.

Helping the Economy One Splurge at a Time

2009-01-29T13:26:00.000-08:00

This Christmas, in an attempt to help out our sadly beaten-down economy, we bought ourselves two big presents we could almost afford: a camera and season roller-derby tickets. Both will make their presence felt on this blog. We're using the camera to produce a never-ending series of pet pictures, and, as for the tickets, I'm eager to tell you about roller derby here in Portland Oregon.

But first the pets. I've put up a picture of Muttley, our Shepherd mix, previously. Since Muttley is only one of six pets, we'd better get started posting those pictures. Below is our St. Bernard, Bruno.

And here is our lovely cat, Spookworth.

Aren't these gorgeous animals well worth the price of a camera? We think so, but maybe I'll also write down some of the techniques we've been using to save money. That's a central topic of interest for us these days as we attempt to recover our equilibrium after our splurge and continue to work on our long-term goal of paying off our credit debt.

Fear of Election Fever

2008-10-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

I'm voting for Barack Obama for President, and for Jeff Merkley as U.S. senator for Oregon. If I haven't said much about that recently it's out of FEAR - the fear of sounding like some of these people, who seem to represent the norm these days:

Web Sites That Will Take Over Your Life: Pandora

2008-10-02T12:54:00.000-07:00

Spending too much of your time being productive? If you like to listen to music - and who doesn't? - Pandora can take care of that.

Pandora, a site created by the Music Genome Project, claims to be using information from its users to create “the most comprehensive analysis of music ever”. A swell idea, and it’s good to think I’m somehow adding to our knowledge of music, even as I sink deeper into addiction.

The concept is deceptively simple. You create your own music “channels” by specifying the artists and songs you want to hear, and then voting on the songs presented to you. Simple, yet surprisingly compelling. Do it right, and you’ll soon find you’ve created several channels you’ll want to listen to all the time.

The friend who recommended this site warned me about the addictive side-effects, but I thought I was immune, at least at first. What you quickly realize is that you’ll build amazing channels perfectly reflecting your tastes once you figure out how to pick the right starter artists or songs for each channel.

For me, Townes Van Zandt was one perfect selection. Van Zandt was a folk singer, an outstanding song-writer, and enough of a cross-over artist to attract attention from the rock world, so the channel plays folk singers like Woody Guthrie, country singers like Johnny Cash, and folk-rock people like Neal Young, Bob Dylan, and Wilco. Best of all, the channel plays a bunch of contemporary artists covering the same musical territory, people I might never have discovered otherwise. Other songs and artists wouldn’t have produced that kind of diversity or quality, but Van Zandt has a distinctive style, so picking him seemed to tell the Pandora database a great deal about what I like.

By contrast, starting out with REM proved to be a mistake. Pandora took that to mean that I like random pop music - again, not an unreasonable assumption given REM's long history on pop radio, but I wanted something more specific.

So check it out, select carefully, and make sure you've got good food and a comfortable chair near your computer. You're going to be spending some quality time there.

Good Advice

2008-06-20T15:10:00.000-07:00

One sign of wisdom is knowing when and how to listen to advice. It’s especially important to give careful consideration to advice provided by experts on a topic. I know that, but seem to have forgotten it last night when I repeatedly ignored some very insistent signs from our household expert.

The dog in the picture is my Shepherd-Chow mix, Muttley. Both German Shepherds and Chows were bred as watch-dogs, and Muttley lives up to her inheritance with her even-bigger-dog bark and with a strong determination to protect and serve not likely to be rivaled by any real-life law enforcement agent. Thanks to her constant vigilance on the landing next to our front door, I tend to respect rather than resent any salesperson persistent enough to stand there while I open the door, since she could get out.

She loves our fenced in back-yard too, and protects that as well. But the stairs down from our deck are steep and rickety, and since Muttley’s getting older she’s starting to have some mobility problems; so I don’t want her climbing up and down them anymore. Instead, I try to take her out the front door and let her through a side gate into the back yard. She usually likes going that way, although she often climbs up the back stairs to come back inside. I was thinking of putting up some kind of obstacle so she’ll stop doing that.

Anyway, last night was warm, and so we closed just the screen separating the kitchen from the back deck to let the cool air in, and when I walked into the kitchen I found all three of our dogs sitting there waiting to be let out. I went up to the landing and called Muttley, thinking I would let her out first. But she wouldn’t even come when I called. So finally I called all three and they came and sat at the top of the stairs going down to the landing, looking at me. I tried to call Muttley to come down to me, but again she wouldn’t budge. The other dogs finally came down though, so I took the two of them out front and then let them into the backyard.

When I came back, Muttley was again sitting at the back door, now whimpering to go out. I tried to let her out two more times through the front door but she wouldn’t budge. It was the back door or nothing. Now Muttley has a special bond with my husband, so of course when she misbehaves I refer to her as “his dog”. I confess to stooping so low as to think it would be fun to tell my husband (who had already gone to bed) in the morning that for a change his dog, normally the paragon of her little pack, was misbehaving and acting kind of dumb. Couldn’t she figure out that she would end up in the same back yard as the other dogs no matter which way I took her out? I understand that she probably doesn’t think of space in the same way as a human, but surely after many trips in and out she must know that the destination is the same. I should add that every time I got up to try Muttley again, I had to put on my socks and shoes back on and pause my DVD. Hey, I was trying to enjoy the Final Cut of Blade Runner, and this was getting really annoying.

But the whimpering wasn’t stopping so I tried one more time, and this time, very reluctantly, she cooperated. I figured by now the other dogs had been out long enough and I should let them in to avoid further interruptions. I slid open the screen, and there stood a big fat rat. I would like to say he scampered away – that’s normally the appropriate cliché to use in such situations. But this rat, who really did have pretty good rat judgement, instead sauntered slowly and defiantly (I thought) off. Oh, also he was kind of a fat rat, so sauntering probably came more naturally to him. He realized that finding the best exit from our porch was the highest priority, what with 300 pounds of dog wondering the back yard. An apparently catatonic human, standing there ineffectual and horrified, would present far less threat to him, as he correctly assessed.

Now I understand what Muttley was trying to say. She’s the best hunter of the three, and she wanted to grab that rat before it could find an escape route. She probably also wanted to protect her house, her pack, and her human, however undeserving, because that’s what she does. But somebody had been acting kind of dumb, and it sure wasn’t her. I can’t plead ignorance either because I knew that rats had started to come into our yard again. We recently hung up bird feeders on our deck, and not long afterwards the dogs started to take a renewed interest in the space underneath the deck, sure signs.

I’ve been punished further for ignoring her too. Today from the basement window that looks out beneath the deck I saw not one but two rats, one kind of chunky, making their way up onto our deck. So what have I learned? Well, clearly she’s the expert. She knows her backyard at night, she knows her rats, and she knows how to protect the house from creatures of all sizes, from mice to UPS men. I should’ve listened, and we’d already have one less rat. Rats scare the crap out of me, but I hate to think of them suffering. Muttley would have either chased it off or at least killed it quickly, something I’m not sure can always be said about traps.

The Decadent Vegetarian Diet

2008-06-20T00:29:00.000-07:00

Nope, the title isn’t an oxymoron. Vegetarian food can be decadent, even downright fattening. I should know - I was a vegetarian for years at some time in the distant past. Lately I’ve been a carnivore, but right now I’m starting a new vegetarian diet for health reasons. So I’m writing this post to remind myself of the ways in which even vegetarian diets can go woefully wrong.

First, to succeed at losing weight or becoming healthier on a vegetarian diet, I would advice that you eat or drink strictly limited amounts of the following: beer, baked desserts, frozen desserts, and cheese. My problem with each of these foods is about the same. Eating some leads to eating a lot.

Notice that beer is the only non-fat food in this list, and also the only food containing no animal by-products. Yet beer-drinking has other consequences, and the phrase “beer belly” speaks for itself. I find it particularly difficult to limit beer because the more I drink the less I care about calories and other such mundane considerations.

Among the many baked desserts that threaten my diet, cookies are a particular problem for me (see photo above, which has haunted me for a couple of days now), especially since I like to bake. Speaking of baking, I always like to warn non-bakers that it’s futile to eat commercial muffins and scones in an attempt to escape fat and calories. I promise you that one of those gigantic muffins contains as much fat as a piece of cake or a donut, and if you don’t believe me you should go read some recipes. But with baked goods, at least, I practice what I preach. Why only today I ate a donut to avoid eating a cherry-almond scone instead. Okay, I confess that this particular donut was not a good example. With chocolate icing and cream filling, it had to be more fattening than a muffin. But before you judge me consider that it also had a vanilla happy-face iced onto its top, and that put me over the edge – I can only resist so much.

Moving onto our next food group, it’s important to remember that frozen desserts are tricky. I’m always tempted to think I can simply replace ice cream with frozen yogurt, buy smaller containers, and therefore escape harm. Right. That’s a very good idea for people who have never found themselves accidentally eating a whole pint straight from the box while watching TV, but not such a good idea for me. Many commercial frozen yogurts are still high enough in fat, even if they don’t quite compete with ice cream for the most lard per ounce, and contain ample calories besides. As for substitutes like sorbet, they’re good, but they don’t satisfy the same craving.

Finally we come to cheese, the other inspiration behind my return to vegetarianism. You see, as I was researching how to change my diet to lose weight and lower my cholesterol, I came across copious advice telling me to moderate my intake of foods such as meat, nuts, and oils, and to eliminate certain problem foods like fatty desserts and cheese. Eliminate CHEESE? Who do these people think they’re kidding? I am more open to abandoning my home to go live in the brush, subsisting only on berries and cactus. So something had to be done, and by that I mean something other than giving up cheese. Besides, the brutish barbarians who would recommend such solutions need to be taught a lesson (and should also be given some free high-quality cheese, I think, since they’ve clearly never tried it or they wouldn’t run around talking like that). So I remembered how skinny and healthy I used to be as a cheese-eating vegetarian, and there you have it. Sure, I’ll moderate my cheese intake as best I’m able, but each of us must draw some kind of line between eating well and preserving the pleasure of excellent food, and this is mine.

But there is still one more looming threat to the vegetarian diet. It’s not a specific food but a process, and an insidious process at that. If you work to control your intake of beer, frozen and baked desserts, and cheese, and you eat lots of healthy fruits, vegetables, grains, and beans instead, you will soon discover one of the wonders of the vegetarian diet. Suddenly, you’re not so hungry at meal time anymore. You feel content with smaller portions. You feel healthier. But beware. If you get too overzealous about limiting your meals, the consequences creep up on you. One night you’ll suddenly realize that you absolutely must have a glass of stout beer and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia with a chocolate donut on the side, followed by a cheese course, a box of crackers, and several nice Lambics. You will wake up bloated and hung over the next day, missing the good old days when it was just a pint of frozen yogurt you had to worry about (and by “you” I continue to mean “me”). Ironically this happens because you’ve not been eating enough. Of course, that’s the goal of most diets, or at least for diets that don’t work. By contrast, the goal of a vegetarian diet is to eat and get full so that you’re not blind-sided by sudden cravings.

You know, this is all pretty good advice if I do say so myself, and I hope I take it. I’ll keep you posted.

Is Logic Over-rated?

2008-06-04T00:04:00.000-07:00

One of the curses of modern times is the beaten-up and sorely used intellectual baggage we still carry around from the Enlightenment. No, I don't mean the ideas generated by thinkers at the time of the European Englightenment, I mean the mutated, dumbed-down versions of those ideas created by modern pop culture.

In particular, I got pretty disgusted today with the idea that Logic, now elevated to the status of a god, is the solution to everything, and that furthermore, it was non-existent before the European Enlightenment.

Logic solves an incredible range of problems, as I'm sure almost everyone would agree. However, it's sad to watch sentient adults act as if political, personal, or religious questions can always be resolved by logic. Logic, in this mythology, replaces morality in that we can all look forward to a magic time when everyone becomes totally logical. Then and only then will humanity achieve the heaven of total agreement. Has some human being perhaps already attained perfect logic? Is he or she even now sitting around, sad and lonely, yet patiently waiting for the rest of us to catch up? If so, I can't imagine it. The reality is that each of us believes our ideas are generated by reason, while everyone who disagrees with us is woefully confused by a combination of emotion, faulty psychology, rickety logic, and too much junk food (too much junk food - yummmmm).

Okay, now I should site an example of some Enlightenment thinker who saw a limit to logic. I know for a fact that David Hume wrote about that, and I know approximately where he said it, but I don't feel like looking it up right now. Also, I should prove how important logic was in the middle ages, for instance, but same excuse. I'm tired, I'm cranky about the whole business, I don't even feel like typing in the facts I already know, and I'm going to go to sleep instead.

High Hopes, Little Faith in "The Uniter"

2008-06-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

Remember the Barack Obama who began his campaign for president as "The Uniter"? Well here's a review, courtesy of an article from the Washington Post:

"Obama Says He Can Unite U.S. 'More Effectively' Than Clinton"

MANCHESTER, N.H., Aug. 14 -- Drawing a sharp contrast with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama said in an interview that he has the capacity she may lack to unify the country and move it out of what he called "ideological gridlock."

But talk is cheap, especially for politicians, and even more so for politicians with a short public record. Now Obama actually has the power to unite the Democrats. I like to think he's more than talk and that he'll soon use that power to do something for Senator Clinton and all of the people who've supported her. But I'm too old to place my faith in anyone who's asked us to believe in him but has yet to do much to earn our confidence. So while I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for him to live up to the image of himself he's spent so much time promoting, I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised.

Election '08: My Plan to Never Decide Ruined by Indecisive People

2008-05-01T12:58:00.000-07:00

Voters in other states have failed to do their duty, and now for the first time ever I’ll have to cast a vote for the Democratic nomination for president in the Oregon Primary that may actually matter.

I couldn’t be more disgusted. I remember a time, recorded in this blog, when I wanted to think about Democratic politics. That inclination has since been thoroughly squashed, and since approximately late March I’ve just wished to hell it would all be over.

But nooooo, now I need to think about it whether I want to or not, because I need to decide who to vote for, Clinton or Obama. I confess that I kind of want to vote for Clinton just to thwart Obama supporters in Oregon. I suppose that makes me sound anti-Obama, but if that were so my choice would be easy. And I stated my objective accurately: it’s some of his freaky supporters I can’t handle. Supporters aside however, I like Obama more each day because his economic message sounds increasingly like Edwards: he wants to encourage businesses that provide work for Americans, and clean up corporate corruption. But then too I’m angry over the sexist way people have treated Clinton, and I’m impressed with her abilities and truly incredible determination. On the really negative side, however, she’s a bit of a corporate suck-up, and Obama’s a bit of a snob masquerading as an underdog.

So back and forth it goes, and you people from states that have already voted are to blame. Couldn’t you have been a little more decisive? I hate it when people can’t make up their minds.

My Favorite Movies: A Reluctant List

2008-03-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

A friend emailed me recently with a list of his favorite movies. We’re both movie fanatics, so I understand the impulse to make such a list, and I appreciate receiving it. I like to peruse other people’s favorite movie lists for films I might like to see, especially if the writer is a critic I admire or a friend with either similar or admirable taste. So I feel compelled to warn people that my own list, posted below for your perusal, is not useful in the same way.

I have to admit I would hesitate to recommend some of the movies on my own list. First of all, some of my favorite movies come from critically despised genres. Zoolander, for instance, is intentionally stupid. I like it because I like really stupid comedies, and in the stupid comedy genre it shines, at least for me. Other movies are favorites because they appeal to me for personal reasons or because of excellent cinematography. Signs is not even director M. Night Shyamalan’s best movie, and while I love the movie I don’t care so much for the ending, even though the ending is probably supposed to be the profound part. The first two Batman movies are simple action-hero stories, but I had trouble not adding even more Tim Burton movies for the same reason: I love the way his movies look.

On the other hand, I intentionally didn’t add many critically acclaimed movies to the list because, however much I admire them, they just aren’t my faves. I admire Citizen Kane, for instance - what serious film snob doesn't? - but I don’t enjoy watching it all that much, probably for the very reasons it’s such a remarkable movie. Citizen Kane is complex, even at the technical level, and that makes it difficult for me to simply sit back and enjoy it without analyzing it to death.

As for a movie like The Birds, a film most people would acknowledge as excellent, Hitchcock obviously made better movies. But I must have been about eight years old the first time I saw The Birds on TV, and not only did it scare the crap out of me as a kid, it left a lasting impact. It’s impact changes depending on my age, but every time I’ve watched it since, it seems a different and remarkable movie. It's also no coincidence that many parts of Signs can be viewed as a tribute to The Birds.

In short, my list of favorite movies is in no way equivalent to the movies I would put on a list of the most excellent movies, and I don’t necessarily claim to love each of them for rational reasons. Actually, my admiration for these movies isn’t even internally consistent. For instance, some of the movies on my list are complex, like Citizen Kane, but somehow they still grab me and engage me in a way that Citizen Kane cannot.

One last warning for anyone who might want to see some of these movies. I’m not even willing to stick by my list, or at least not for much longer than a day. Some of these movies, like The Birds and The Wizard of Oz, I’ve liked since I was a kid, and I will no doubt still love them years from now. Others I began to doubt shortly after adding them to the list. I saw Y Tu Mama Tambien for the first time quite recently, and I’m not yet sure if it’s one of my favorite movies of all time or just another excellent movie from Alfonso Cuaron. So here is my list, which simply shows my favorite movies as of March 1, 2008.

The Wizard of Oz
Wings of Desire
Eyes Wide Shut
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
Wild at Heart
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
Mountains of the Moon
Dersu Uzala
Dreams
Say Anything
Moulin Rouge
The Grifters
The Shining
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The Birds
Nights of Cabiria
Y Tu Mama Tambien
A Little Princess
True Romance
Dark City
Signs
Batman I and II
Edward Scissorhands
The Fisher King
American Beauty
Zoolander
Prospero's Books
Ghostdog
Night on Earth
Children of Heaven
Terminator 2
Aliens
The Quiet Earth
Shaun of the Dead
Donnie Darko

Now You Too Can Think Just Like the Mainstream Press!

2008-02-08T13:26:00.000-08:00

"Facts are stupid things."
- Ronald Reagan, Former U.S. President

While it’s difficult for me to pick a new presidential candidate, it’s easy for the press. They are all very busy these days telling us just how easy it is. They are also busy telling us what we should think about the candidates, so that it will be easy for us too. Perhaps it’s time, then, that I help them out. So I’ve thoughtfully provided the following EZ list of stuff to think, according to the mainstream US press. So save yourself some time. Ignore mainstream news and just memorize this handy list.

My own smart-ass comments follow in parentheses.

* McCain stands for HONESTY. Clinton stands for COMPETENCY. Obama stands for HOPE. (I wish they would just get t-shirts with the words on them. That would save us from most of the “political analysis” we have to otherwise endure.)

* Clinton and McCain stand for the OLD. Obama stands for the NEW. (That is, Hillary and JM have reached their pull dates. When will you reach yours, or have you already? Or do you imagine yourself exempt from such judgments? But it’s good to know that we’re all just products – it gives me a nice, democratic feeling of unity with the rich and famous.)

* The candidates are all pretty much identical. (Yep. The press also convinced us there was little difference between Al Gore and GW Bush. Thanks US press.)

* There was sexism in the campaign, but the press stopped it. Now they avoid discussing what Hillary wears and they rat out anyone else who mentions it. (Yep, now we've finally defeated sexism in the world, since that's all that was left of it. We women want to be paid less and given fewer opportunities by choice, apparently, but when somebody comments on our clothes, by gosh, those are fighting words!)

* If anyone says someone is racist, they are racist. (This is very different from a witch hunt. If it were a witch hunt, we would say “they are witches”! It is very different from a witch hunt.)

* We should pick the next President based on the impression created by their public performances. Does Hillary seem trustworthy when she says something? Does Barack seem sincere when he says something? Does McCain seem friendly when he says something? (What candidates say is actually quite unimportant. Let’s see, who have we elected lately based on the same theory?)

Who Moved My Candidate?

2008-02-04T13:37:00.000-08:00

HANOVER, NH - SEPTEMBER 26: Democratic Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appear with unidentifed bystanders.

My candidate was John Edwards, so the answer to my question is obvious. The press, and network news in particular, ignored Edwards right out of the race. As I look back on their performance, I’ll always cherish, in particular, two memories of Edwards’ press coverage. The first occurred after the Iowa caucus where Edwards placed second. The news commentators mentioned briefly that he was second and then moved quickly on to the real story: an analysis of the contest between Obama and Clinton. The second magic moment was just after the debate preceding the critical New Hampshire primary. Commentators mentioned briefly that Edwards seemed to have the best and most moving performance in the debate, and then moved quickly on to the real story: an analysis of the contest between Obama and Clinton. I’m not talking about FOX news here either. The major networks consistently ignored Edwards, and even most PBS programs seemed to fall into lockstep with this agenda. And I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb when I say that it’s harder to get votes when the television news organizations don’t seem to notice you’re in the race.

However, since I still believe that this election is of major importance to the future of our country, I need to pick some other candidate to back for president now that Edwards has dropped out. I realize this announcement will send many campaign organizations scurrying to hustle my support, but just to let them know: I won’t send off my $25 contributions or cast my pointless vote in the Oregon primary or the general election for just anyone. It will be a tough call to make, since I like all the remaining major candidates.

So how to decide? Since I’m a Democrat, I’ll need to pick between Obama and Clinton before the primary, but for the final election I’ll consider the Republican candidates too. That leaves a lot of candidates to choose from. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Time permitting, I would like to eventually write some more about the Missing Candidates on both sides. I want to discuss Edwards’ candidacy some more, and also people like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich (if Edwards was ignored by the press, Kucinich was brutalized and buried by them). The race won’t be the same without the Missing, although the TV news, predictably, barely noticed they’re gone. Since you won’t hear it from a network news show, I’ll state the obvious. What’s missing along with them is our right as voters to pick the candidates who go on to the final primaries. Does anyone really think the press is qualified to decide for us?

October Reading List

2007-11-21T14:49:00.000-08:00

I've been busy, so even though I wrote this a while ago, I'm just now getting the opportunity to post it.

And by the way, since it's that time of year already, I hope all of you will have a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving.

My Antonia
Willa Cather
In Ways of Seeing John Berger asserts that it is difficult for an artist to successfully portray the object of his desire as anything other than an object. Antonia, the title character of this book, is the object of the narrator’s desire, and also, purportedly, of the author’s. Cather triumphs as a writer however, and gives us a dynamic portrait of Antonia, a sometimes desirable, sometimes offensive woman. Antonia is as far from caricature as a real person, although I’m sure that hasn’t stopped students in college courses across the country from trying. How so? Well, here’s a faux-shocking summary for you: Cather was probably a lesbian, and Antonia has many traditionally masculine characteristics. There, now you don’t need to read any of those papers.

Ways of Seeing
John Berger
Berger’s exploration of the relationship between art and capital doubles as a short and easily understood explanation of Marxist philosophy. He’s also perceptive and entertaining on the subject of art.

Riddley Walker
Russell Hoban
Powell’s Bookstore stocks this novel, written about post-apocalyptic England, in the science fiction and fantasy section. However, it would be equally at home in the literature section. In other words, Riddley Walker is both brilliant and entertaining, and the reader will be rewarded according to what he brings to the reading.

Seven Against Thebes
Translated by Anthony Hecht and Helen H. Bacon
Aeschylus
I decided to learn more about Greek drama when I was reading Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche compared Aeschylus to Euripides, to the detriment of the latter. I like both writers, but this excellent version of Seven Against Thebes, a play often discounted by critics, actually shows Aeschylus at his best and also proves how much translation counts. The writing is stark and dramatic, like some of the best Modernist poetry.

The Eclipse of Art
Tackling the Crisis in Art Today
Julian Spalding
In spite of a long and misplaced diatribe against John Berger, the author succeeds in making his point. Spalding clearly loves modern art but he’s sick of watching so many talented artists struggle while more gimmicky artists get all the acclaim and money. He seems to miss a central irony, however. He and Berger are not so different. Both want to free art, as far as possible, from the judgment of the corporate-minded marketplace.

Cheese from Outer Space

2007-10-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

Lately I’ve been in the mood to watch pseudo-horror films, the type of movies which sound vaguely spooky in a plot summary, but which only rarely actually scare anyone. If you watch without expectations, such movies can be pretty entertaining, although not always for the reasons the filmmakers envisioned. So here are the psuedo-horror movies I’ve seen and enjoyed recently on DVD, and I recommend them to you as well, assuming that you too sometimes like your horror with a nice thick slice of cheese.

Invasion of the Body-Snatchers
Since this film was remade in the late seventies Pod-people have become such a cultural commonplace that it is difficult to understand what the characters are so upset about. Girlfriend or pod-girlfriend – who call tell the difference?

A Nightmare on Elm Street
Even here, Johnny Depp was attractive, in spite of his big 80's hair and disturbing resemblance to the 12-year old Annette Funicello. The rest of the cast’s mickey-mouse club-style acting (mental note to self: must stop obsessing about Annette before husband finds out) is deliciously bad.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse
A city relies on Commando SuperModels in various states of undress to rescue them from zombies. Unfortunately everyone else in the city gets turned into a zombie anyway, forcing the Commando Supermodels, in an excess of type-casting, to act selfishly and save themselves.

The Blob
Since the 1950's lacked Commando SuperModels, a small town must rely on a pack of teenagers, led by 28-year old teenager Steve McQueen, to rescue them from mobile grape jelly from outer-space. Although substantially less well-armed, the teens prove themselves much more community-spirited than the Commando SuperModels. These were innocent times.

Underworld
Sexy stylish vampires fight sexy thuggish werewolves for world domination. Which side looks better in skin-tight faux-Goth wear? The answer shall determine The Future (and two sequels, which I haven’t seen yet).

Guiliani on Film

2007-08-31T13:09:00.000-07:00

I just watched the video Giuliani Gets Exposed As Fraud by Firefighters, which has been up on UTube for over a month. For such a short video, it’s quite powerful, and I got emotional watching it. But let’s be honest here, I would never vote for Rudy Giuliani anyway. No, he doesn’t strike terror into my heart like some of the other candidates, and I do approve of some of his more edgy fashion choices (see above). But I’m a left-leaning centrist, and while once or twice in the past I’ve voted for moderate Republicans I can’t imagine doing it again unless the current political climate drastically changes. Polls indicate that I’m with the majority in that attitude. Turns out that most of us have somehow failed to appreciate the last seven years of corruption and bungling, or at least not as much as Fox News has hoped we would.

But I wish that most Americans would grasp the real lessons we should be learning from our current problems as a nation, and the lesson is surely not that Republicans are bad and Democrats are good. One of those lessons is front-row center in the Giuliani video. Once I dried my eyes over Rudy’s vicious, uncaring attitude towards fire fighters and his stereotypical Republican big-business centric corruption, I was left with the uncomfortable feeling that I had seen this somewhere before. Actually, we have all seen it before. Remember swift-boat veterans against John Kerry, John McCain’s illegitimate black child, the Clinton’s murder of Vince Foster? As I look fondly back at those stories and smile in anticipation of more as we approach the 2008 election, I can’t help but ruin my own good time by wondering if maybe I should start to reject all smear campaigns, even when they’re directed at someone like Rudy Giuliani.

But first I needed to ask, is this video informative or is it just part of a smear campaign? Well, here’s some information missing from the video. What is Giuliani’s own explanation for the defective radios provided for the fire-fighters? As mayor, would he actually have been aware of such a detail? Who was the decision-maker responsible for accepting the no-bid contract for the radios? Why did the city prohibit further excavation of the ruins of the twin towers – was it really because gold had already been recovered or did they have new information about the risks? I don’t have the answer to any of those questions either, and for all I know, Giuliani may well be an evil wealth-and-power driven maggot who prioritizes special deals for the makers of defective equipment over the lives of fire-fighters. I’m just saying I didn’t learn anything from this video that proves it. So gosh, unless someone offers me the facts, I guess I’ll just have to vote for some other candidate for the pathetically old-fashioned reason that I don’t like Giuliani’s platform.

Sure, it would be dull, but isn’t it just possible that the U.S. could be a better place if everyone voted for candidates based on their platforms and their proven records instead of reacting to unsubstantiated rumors? After all, when we need entertainment, we’ll still have Fox News.

Partying with Materialists

2007-08-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

The August 25th issue of The Economist reports that two scientists have found a way to induce out-of-body experiences in the lab. Both Dr. Olaf Blanke of Geneva University Hospital and Dr. Henrik Ehrsson of the Karolinka Institute in Stockholm use a combination of virtual reality and real sensation to create the effect. These techniques trick subjects into mistakenly locating their body or self elsewhere, although as The Economist sensibly adds, “Astral projection it is not”.

But these findings have exciting implications for consciousness research, and I’m eager to hear the results of more experiments using similar techniques in the future. What I’m not eager to hear is the monotonous drone of a certain noisy subset of materialists claiming that these results prove that existence ends with the physical universe. Such materialists have a remarkable track record of conflating their philosophy with science. So expect to be cornered soon at a party-near-you by one of them announcing that science has now proved that astral projection, life-after-death, and the soul do not exist.

But as Robert Thurman points out, such arguments are always carefully selected. For instance, it’s easy enough to stimulate the brain electronically to produce visual hallucinations. But we don’t need anything so fancy to produce visual hallucinations on demand. We could instead take a long drive through a desert on a hot day and see non-existent water ahead or we could look at any number of common optical illusions. Yet you’re unlikely to be cornered at a party by a materialist claiming that visual hallucinations prove that everything we see and sight itself are illusions.

Of course, we can try to figure out what’s real by using all of our senses on an object and getting confirmation from other people. That works fine as long as you’re looking for confirmation of something physical, and as long as you believe that other people exist and can be trusted. But the keyword there is “belief”. In other words, expect the materialist to attempt to prove his materialist beliefs with materialist arguments. To escape his circular reasoning you could attempt to achieve an out-of-the-body experience on the spot. Or, more simply, you could outwit him with his own materialist strategies by standing in some other area of the party.

Flo Finklestein hastens to add that she does not think of all materialists in this way, and that she has attempted to avoid generalization in her wording. True believers, whether materialistic or non-materialistic, tend to think that any belief system is for the naïve. They have no need for beliefs, because they KNOW. In my opinion, that is...

The Sublime Bruno Schulz

2007-08-26T19:41:00.000-07:00

I’m starting this blog because I enjoy sharing my likes and dislikes with friends and with strangers who could become friends. I call it slinging hash because my interests vary, and I expect this blog to contain mixed content, much like the inside of my head.

Of course what I really want to share are the things I love and the things I hate. Bruno Schulz is a good example of the former. I knew almost nothing about Schulz when I recently happened to see his book The Street of Crocodiles sitting on a shelf at our local branch of the library. The blurb on the front cover quotes Isaac Bashevis Singer, “He wrote sometimes like Kafka, sometimes like Proust, and at times succeeded in reaching depths that neither of them reached.” Quite a claim, and book blurbs usually exaggerate, but Schulz makes good on this promise.

Here is Schulz’s description of a night at the local theatre:

We found ourselves again in that large, badly lit dirty hall, full of somnolent human chatter and aimless confusion. But when we made our way through the crowd, there emerged before us an enormous pale-blue curtain, like the sky of another firmament. Large, painted pink masks, with puffed-up cheeks floated in a huge expanse of canvas. The artificial sky spread out in both directions, swelling with the powerful breath of pathos and of great gestures, with the atmosphere of that fictitious flood lit world created on the echoing scaffoldings of the stage. The tremor sailing across the large area of that sky, the breath of the vast canvas which made the masks revive and grow, revealed the illusory character of that firmament, caused that vibration of reality which, in metaphysical moments, we experience as the glimmer of revelation.

The passage is reminiscent of Proust’s poetic descriptions of the Paris stage, although by contrast Schulz relied only on the theatre in his home-town, Drohobych Poland, for inspiration.

The following selection, which claims powers for matter extending far beyond animism, reads like a philosophical manifesto written by Kafka:

Treatise on Tailors’ Dummies, or The Second Book of Genesis

“The Demiurge,” said my father, “has had no monopoly of creation, for creation is the privilege of all spirits. Matter has been given infinite fertility, inexhaustible vitality, and, at the same time, a seductive power of temptation which invites us to create as well.”

Schulz was a gifted artist too. He worked as a high school art teacher, and also studied architecture. He never got the chance, however, to create a large body of fiction or art. He was a victim of shooting in the early phases of the holocaust. He was apparently working on a novel to be called The Messiah at the time, and I also recommend the Cynthia Ozick novel, The Messiah of Stockholm, which alludes to this lost work.

Did I mention that The Street of Crocodiles is only 160 pages long? Think of it as a shot-size version of Kafka and Proust; I can live with that oversimplification if it persuades at least one more person to read Schulz.