Everything And Nothing

At the Hoedown

Here are the pictures from Quentin's Kindergarten Hoedown on Friday. For some reason, I could never to get them to transfer to Flickr correctly, so I just gave up and put them on my Yahoo! Pictures page. Here are a few of my favorites...

A Bookmark

A Bookmark
By Tom Disch
From Yes, Lets!: New & Selected Poems

Four years ago I started reading Proust.
Although I'm past the halfway point, I still
Have seven hundred pages of reduced
Type left before I reach the end. I will
Slog through. It can't get much more dull than what
Is happening now: he's buying crepe-de-chine
Wraps and a real, well-documented hat
For his imaginary Albertine.
Oh, what a slimy sort he must have been—
So weak, so sweetly poisonous, so fey!
Four years ago, by God!—and even then
How I was looking forward to the day
I would be able to forgive, at last,
And to forget Remembrance of Things Past.

Happy Halloween!

From The Writer's Almanac:

Today is Halloween, one of the oldest holidays in the Western European tradition.

Today, 70 percent of American households will open their doors and offer candy to strangers, most of them children; 50 percent of Americans will take photographs of family or friends in costume; and the nation as a whole will spend more than six billion dollars. In terms of dollars spent, it is the second most popular holiday of the year in this country, after Christmas.

For the Celtic people of Northeastern Europe, November 1st was New Year's Day, and October 31 was the last night of the year. Celts believed it was the night that spirits, ghosts, fairies and goblins freely walked the earth. Archaeologists aren't entirely sure what all the traditions were, but they believe the holiday involved bonfires, dressing up in costumes to scare away evil spirits, and offering food and drink to the spirits of family members who had come back to visit the home.

It was Pope Gregory III in the eighth century A.D. who tried to turn Halloween into a Christian holiday to divert Northern Europeans from celebrating an old pagan ritual. He made November 1st All Saints Day, and October 31 became All Hallows Eve. Instead of providing food and drink to the spirits, Christians were encouraged to provide food and drink to the poor. And instead of dressing up like animals and ghosts, Christians were encouraged to dress up like their favorite saints.

In the United States, Puritans tried to outlaw Halloween, in part because of its association with Catholicism. So it was the Irish Catholics who brought Halloween to this country, when they immigrated here in great numbers after the potato famine in the 1840's. Since the Irish were largely poor and oppressed, Halloween became a holiday for them to let off steam by pulling pranks, hoisting wagons onto barn roofs, releasing cows from their pastures, and committing all kinds of mischief involving outhouses. Treats evolved as a way to bribe the vandals and protect homes.

But by the late 1800's, Victorian women's magazines began to offer suggestions for celebrating Halloween in wholesome ways, with barn dancing and apple bobbing. And by the early 20th Century, it became a holiday for children more than adults. In 1920, the Ladies' Home Journal made the first known reference to children going door to door for candy, and by the 1950's it was a universal practice in this country. By 1999, 92 percent of America's children were trick-or-treating.

What's interesting about Halloween is that it has no real connection to the majority religion of this country, it does not celebrate an event in our nation's past, it does not involve traveling to visit family, and it doesn't even give us a day off work. But it gives us the chance to try out other identities. For one day, people can feel free to dress as the opposite gender, as criminals, as superheroes, celebrities, animals, or even inanimate objects. But Halloween retailers report that the most popular costumes remain some variation on witches, ghosts, and devils.

Book Notes

"We read to know we're not alone."
~ C.S. Lewis

'Tis the Season

A zip-top plastic bag can separate fat for stocks, soups and drippings adequately but try a fat separator, like this one from OXO, for a faster, cleaner job. (And it's all about fast during the hectic holiday season.) Because at Thanksgiving, after all, the proof is not in the pudding - but in the gravy.

'Tis the Season

A zip-top plastic bag can separate fat for stocks, soups and drippings adequately but try a fat separator, like this one from OXO, for a faster, cleaner job. (And it's all about fast during the hectic holiday season.) Because at Thanksgiving, after all, the proof is not in the pudding - but in the gravy.

The Secret to Great Mashed Potatoes

Everyone usually has (at least) one irrational food craving during a pregnancy. Mine was mashed potatoes. I could eat them three times a day and still want more. Unfortunately, my son is now almost six and I still crave mashed potatoes.

Courtesy of Cooking Light Executive Chef Billy Strynkowski, here are six fool-proof tips for great mashed potatoes:

1. Choose tubers with a low water content, such as russet potatoes. The less water, the stronger and more delicious the taste.
2. After peeling, dice your potatoes into one-inch squares to ensure uniform cooking time and make them easier to mash. You can dice up to a day ahead, store in a bowl of cold water and hold in the refrigerator until ready to boil.
3. Place potatoes in cold water on the stove. Never boil the water first; doing so can cause the spuds to release their starch quicker, which can resist in mealy potatoes. Boil until tender when pierced with a fork.
4. Drain immediately. Leaving them in water too long may yield runny results.
5. Mash and add your favorite ingredients, such as butter, milk and seasonings. Room temperature or warmed ingredients can help reduce lumps.
6. Serve the potatoes quickly. Allowing them to cool, or refrigerating and reheating them, can produce a gummy texture.

The Scotch Whisky Directory

The sheer number and variety of whisky brands is bewildering. Lucky for us, Scotsman Phillip Hills, founder of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, has written The Scotch Whisky Directory. (And just in time for checking off all of those manly-men on your Christmas list.)

The directory offers accessible, reliable and objective information about how whiskies taste. Hills gets assistance from four of the scotch industry's most highly acclaimed "tasters." Together, they examine over 260 whiskies, from single malts to blends. No tasting notes are included, but bar charts give a score from 0 to 10 for 15 flavor aspects (floral, fruity, smoky, nutty, woody, soapy, etc).

But don't fret if your personal favorite doesn't get four stars. Even Hills admits, "The best whisky for you is the whisky which tastes best to you."

Jungles in Paris

Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris opens on November 3 at the Tate Modern in London and will run until Feb. 5, 2006. It will include over 50 paintings - the vibrant outpourings of a retired customs official who never left France. (He was known as "the douanier" because of his day-job as a menial clerk at the Paris City Customs.) This is the first exhibition of his work to be held in the UK for the last 80 years.

Rousseau's (1844-1910) exotic jungle paintings are the fantasies of a city dweller, constructed from visits to the zoo and botanical gardens, from postcards, books and from his vivid imagination. He was a self-taught artist whose jungles have intrigued people for decades. "When I step into the hothouses and see the plants from exotic lands, it seems to me that I am in a dream," he said.

The exhibit includes an extensive group of jungle paintings, and draws comparisons between these and the artist’s other main areas of artistic interest: Parisian landscapes, portraits and allegorical paintings. Also on display is a comprehensive survey of Rousseau’s source materials, offering a fascinating insight into his working methods and the Paris of his time.

And come springtime the show moves to Paris (March 13 to June 19), to the newly restored Grand Palais, the landmark that Rousseau saw being constructed for the Universal Exhibition of 1900.

Re-creating History

Marina Abramovic, a Yugoslavian-born daughter of an army general and a mother who directed Belgrade's Museum of Revolution and Art, has spent much of her long career (over 30 years) pushing at the limits of the self and body through performance art. In November, she returns to New York, now 59, with a week of performances at the Guggenheim Museum, followed by a solo show at Sean Kelly Gallery in December.

At the Guggenheim she'll premiere a new work and re-create six pieces from the 1960s and 1970s by contemporaries such as Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman. The week-long event is titled Seven Easy Pieces. The project is premised on the fact that little documentation exists for most performance works from this critical early period - one often has to rely upon testimonies from witnesses or photographs that show only portions of any given piece.