by Ralph Maltese | Nov 27, 2016 | Uncategorized
Most Memorable Meals
Polley and I were driving home the other day, when one of our favorite DJ’s shared some trivia involving fast food. His claim was that a fast food chain featuring Mexican food produced the first crisp taco. Polley’s reaction was swift and forceful. “I know that is not true. In the early sixties my family stopped in a small café in Colorado Springs which served free nachos and cheese, and we ordered tacos and they were crisp tacos. The walls were decorated with paintings of tall cactus, and the pork filling of the tacos was delicious.” I never argue with her about restaurants and meals we shared. Her memory in this regard is far superior to mine. On the other hand, when it comes to memories, I usually wrap them in failures and successes in fly fishing. I have a hard time recalling what I had for breakfast this morning, but I can tell you that in early July 2004 at the Big Bend underneath an overhanging aspen tree 300 yards below Hamilton, Montana, I caught an 18 inch brown trout on an olive streamer. Or in 2006 3 miles above Milner Pass on the Cache La Poudre River in Colorado in a Lodge Pole Pine tree I lost one of my favorite flies, a Missing Link Caddisfly pattern. I bet it is still there, and I know that if I return I can find the tree and attempt, again, to retrieve the fly. Polley is not nearly as good at remembering this important stuff.
Funny how memory works. Years ago I read an article about anthropology and the way females and males give directions. The author was suggesting that in early humankind, women were basically gatherers, their directions were placed-oriented. “To get to the stream go down to the berry patch look for the big cactus. At the big cactus go downhill to the big black rock–there is the stream.” I do not know if this is true or not, but I have heard women say, “Drive to the first gas station on your left, across from the mall, make a right, and by the Schultz bakery make another right, and next to the police station is the body shop you want.” According to the article, men, searching for and following herds of game, give directions differently. My personal opinion is that early males not only hunted for food, but went on these trips to escape child rearing responsibilities. “Me no can watch little Fred. Must join other men to hunt mastodon. Be back maybe seven moons.” If one asked Big Fred how to locate a herd of wildebeest, he might say, “Go north for two days, follow canyon wall till feet tire. Go south along river till you see herd.” I tend to give directions this way. “Drive about five miles north on highway 95, get off at the Barclay exit, make a right, go down a half mile, and on your left is the peanut factory.” I don’t know if the premise of the article is accurate, but it is fun to consider.
What I do know is that Polley and I have our memories peppered with culinary high points and low points. “When did we last see Aunt Marge?” I might ask. “It was the time we stopped for lunch at that small Italian restaurant and had that delicious Caprese salad with the smoked mozzarella.”
Our earliest recalls of our relationship are notched by famous…..and infamous…..meals. When we were graduate students at Indiana U. (Go Hoosiers!) driving back from a visit to a friend in Kentucky, we stopped at a roadside eatery. We were both very hungry. Scanning the menu, Polley decided, “I am going to get the fried chicken platter. I love fried chicken.” That sounded good to me. “Me, too. I’ll order that as well.”
Polley peered over her menu. “Sweetie, that might not be enough for you. Get the chicken dinner. Peas, mashed potatoes and chicken. I know you are hungry. Get that.” There was a three dollar difference, and we were surviving on a student’s tight budget. “No, I’ll get the fried chicken platter.” “Honey,” the voice of Eve insisted, “the platter only has maybe two or three pieces. Get the dinner.” The picture of the fried chicken platter made my mouth water, but I was hungry. “Okay. I’ll spring for the dinner.”
When our orders arrived, Polley’s plate was piled high with engaging aromatic fried chicken—wings, drumsticks and thighs. My dish had a mound of mashed potatoes, a pile of green peas, and two skinny slivers of boiled chicken, barely a forkful which I ate in one bite. Polley laughed as she apologized. “Sorry I talked you into that one.”
A few years later on our honeymoon in Montreal, we discovered that French Onion Soup could be delicious and dangerous. I wanted to treat my new bride to a classy and memorable meal. I could sense that she was getting tired of the A&W menu. I was successful. St. La Mere Michel was an upscale, richly decorated (and richly priced!) classical French restaurant where the waiters spoke only French and the interior was decorated in rococo or late Baroque ornamentation and the clientele dressed in suits and evening gowns. We ordered French Onion soup. In a few minutes the sounds of clinking crystal goblets and Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and the hushed patter of French was accompanying by my new bride’s gagging on a glob of melted cheese that withstood slithering down her esophagus. The sounds of St. La Mere Michel stopped as Polley finally gained control of that blob. Ever since I consider the danger factor when ordering any dish.
One non-dangerous but curious eating engagement occurred on a trip back from St. Louis visiting inlaws. The ride back in the hot July sun was especially tiring, the sun glare wearing down the eyesight which is pretty important to driving. Zanesville, Ohio had four motels, all of which were full. Exhausted we pushed on into West Virginia and found a room. The establishment also had a restaurant, and, far more importantly to me, a bar. At that moment of my life history all I wanted was a drink, a little something to munch on, and a pillow…in that order. The hostess guided Polley and me to a nice table in the air conditioned dining room, and Polley ordered her usual glass of Sauvignon Blanc. I knew what I wanted five hundred miles earlier.
“A Gibson, please.”
Our waitress’ face twisted into a visage of puzzlement. “I’ll go ask the bartender.” For those of you who still have a shrine to Carrie Nation on your front porch, a Gibson is a dry martini (six to one) with a cocktail onion instead of an olive.
Our waitress returned. “Sir, the bartender says he does not know what a Gibson is…but he heard of it in bartending school.”
I was hoping he graduated. “Sure, a Gibson is a dry martini, six parts gin to one part dry vermouth with an onion instead of an olive.’
Our young waitress’ face broke into a very pretty smile. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”
Several minutes later, she walked toward us holding a martini cocktail glass. Behind her in the partially opened doorway to the kitchen, were three heads, one atop the other, like a Mo, Larry and Curly movie. The bartender and his associates were awaiting my reaction to their concoction.
The waitress placed in front of me my drink. Floating like seaweed among the incoming tide was a slice of onion, skin still on. I looked at my cocktail, at the suspense-filled heads, and at the waitress. Hell, when you get the opportunity to make someone happy, you should jump at it. I lifted the cocktail, watching the quarter-of-an-onion slosh back and forth, and extended my arm in salute toward the stacked heads. I took a sip. I smiled and nodded. Four faces broke into huge smiles. It had been a long day.
There are good memories as well. We might return to Carbondale, Colorado and the Red Rock Diner just so we can enjoy the double decker hamburger which included a soft taco and its filling. That would be fine with me, because nearby is the Frying Pan River where I caught a twenty inch rainbow trout just two miles east of Basalt on an Elk Hair Caddis fly.
This habit of recording our common history is basically a good thing, but sometimes we are trapped by our historical habits. For example, Polley possesses an almost religious avoidance of having any food delivered to our door—whether the door is at home or on the road. We could be in the middle of a blinding blizzard where the drive to the restaurant for a pickup meal is fraught with hazards, and she will insist on making the drive instead of having it delivered. I do not know why this is, but I am working on it. I figure she still owes me for that chicken “dinner” she talked me into. But rethinking the whole memory thing, it is not so much the experience, the meal or the fish caught that frames the memory. It is the person I shared it with. And that fact makes it memorable.
by Ralph Maltese | Nov 20, 2016 | Uncategorized
My Body of Thanks
I was feeling rather sad the other day. No, not because of him. We survived Harding and Coolidge. We will survive him as well. We probably will not thrive, but we will survive. Thanksgiving is around the corner, and I am really looking forward to it because all my children and grandchildren will convene at my oldest daughter Christie’s home, and that is enough to make me extremely happy and thankful. But there is also a twinge of apprehension. Would my Parkinson’s symptoms slow the holiday down? Can my vocal chords hold up to a conversation? I am planning a small magic show for my grandchildren. Will my digits fumble the playing cards? Will my shaking bungle the tricks? When we sit down at the dinner table, will the pain in my back allow me to last the meal?
There were other contributors to my melancholy. As a youngster in suburban northern New Jersey, I would rise early Thanksgiving morning and join my father in a small game hunting trip for pheasant or rabbits. Walking the leaf strewn floor of the deep woods and the fields of a crisp November morning, breathing in the cool, fresh air, and sharing the experience with my dad was, simply, pure happiness. We would return home around noon, and our senses would embrace the warmth of the kitchen, the smells of roasting turkey and pies baking in the oven, and my mother’s smile as we shed our hunting clothes, donned our best clothes and our best behavior and enjoyed the day together.
I miss the feelings of those Thanksgivings. I can no longer walk the woods as I once did. I miss my parents and my brothers. I was deep into this woefulness which is not a good thing because sadness is very contagious. I began to take stock of my ills. Shaky left hand (making it difficult to write), shaky left foot which thumps at every keyboard entry, eyes which burn because my brain forgets to blink, nausea that comes and goes, legs which won’t obey my commands, loss of smell….no scent of roasting turkey. What usually comes to my rescue at these moments is my metacognition—my ability to step away and form perspective, to see the Big Picture. So I began a hunt, not for small game, but for facts about the human body….the amazing structure we utilize every second of every day. For example, my opposable thumb—useful for sticking in a pie, hitching a ride, signaling everything is good, or grasping a drumstick. So allow me to share:
With the 60,000 miles of blood vessels inside the average human body, you could circumnavigate Earth two and a half times. That’s a lot of plumbing.
Considering all the tissues and cells in your body, 25 million new cells are being produced each second. That’s a little less than the population of Canada—every second! So I am a mass producer of cells, eh? Once again, Canada’s population is used as a reference, eh?
We exercise at least 36 muscles when we smile. For some people I know, that is too much exercise for them to exert.
We are about 70% water. I keep on telling my family doctor not to worry about my weight gain. “It’s just water, doc.”
A person can expect to breathe in about 45 pounds of dust over his/her lifetime. Triple that if you look under my bed.
When you blush, the lining of your stomach blushes too. I thought it was gas. How did scientists discover this? Shudder……
Nerve impulses travel to and from the brain at speeds of up to 250 miles per hour, faster than a Formula 1 racecar. A few of my students drove a ‘64 Volkswagon with a faulty clutch.
When in love, the human brain releases the same cocktail of neurotransmitters and hormones that are released by amphetamines. This leads to increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and intense feelings of excitement. I am still crazy in love with Polley, so that explains the above symptoms.
A full head of human hair is strong enough to support 12 tons. Oops! My head of hair cannot support a feather.
The atoms that make up your human body today are the same atoms that formed during the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. No wonder I feel old.
In 30 minutes, the human body gives off enough heat to bring a gallon of water to the boil. If I could harness this my natural gas bill would decrease. “Tea, my dear?”
We make around 1 to 1.6 litres of saliva a day. Quadruple that figure if you are a Parkinson’s person. I could be a rich man if I could locate a saliva market.
I felt better. The failures of my body became lost in the incredible things my body still does. I can think, I can smile, and I can laugh. I can love and be loved. Like everyone else on this planet, I am a miracle, and that is something to be thankful for. Some people discredit Thanksgiving, decrying the abuses the pilgrims inflicted on the local natives, the treaties broken, (and, in truth, the treaties the Native Americans also abrogated).. But I think they are missing the point. I am grateful for my current family, but I am also thankful for the commonness shared by all humanity, besides the shared miracle of our amazing bodies…our ability to exhibit compassion and empathy and to recognize that we are all adrift on a small planet, and all of us are working hard to simply make it through the night. To me, the pilgrims and the people they asked to share their dinner table demonstrated the best of humanity. To me, that is what Thanksgiving is really all about—that special moment when different cultures rise above their differences and embrace their human commonalities. Ultimately holidays are symbols, and we invest in those symbols what we choose to invest. I choose to invest gratitude and hope. I am thankful. I hope you have the time to reflect and be thankful as well. Start with your opposable thumb. Happy Happy Thanksgiving.
Facts from medicaldaily.com
by Ralph Maltese | Nov 13, 2016 | Uncategorized
Ignorance is Bliss…..And Dangerous
In ninth grade I learned that Washington Irving was the Father of American Fiction. Classrooms are fond of making kids memorize fathers of things—Father of Modern Astronomy (Nicholas Copernicus), Father of Quantum Mechanics (Max Planck), Father of the French Sailing Navy (Jean-Baptiste Colbert—-remember, you learned it here). I think it is gender-ironic that with all these Fathers of Things we use the phrase “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.” But I digress. Irving received this accolade because, at a time when the United States, struggling for independence and recognition on the world stage, Irving gave the new nation a “cultural past.” He did this by “borrowing” the plots of old Germanic folk tales and setting them in the Catskills and other New York environs. The Knickerbocker Tales, Rip Van Winkle, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are examples. So early Americans could say “Yippee! We gots a cultural past. Some American guy wrote a book I can’t read!” In graduate school, I learned something else. Washington Irving contributed to our nation’s legacy of anti-intellectualism. Take The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The schoolteacher, Ichabod Crane, is bested by Bones Brummel, a bare chested frontiersman whose SAT scores would have kept him out of Jed Clampett’s Finishing School. The theme is apparent in the story (and in Irving’s other works). If the nation is to survive we don’t need smart, educated people. We need to produce the Bones Brummels to fell the forests, to explore the wilderness, and to fell the local natives so the nation could grow.
It would be understandable, ethics aside, if the wave of anti-intellectualism ended on the sands of our country’s origins. But the history of the United States is replete with the ridicule of educated minds, of “egg heads,” of nerds who actually read books. Candidates for high office worked hard during campaigns to insure the voters that they were not “one of them,” that they were not book learners—that they were not college schooled but emerged wholly ignorant from Hicksville.. Even into modern times, office seekers distance themselves from any supposition of intellectualism, non-referencing their Ivy League backgrounds and posing for the cameras while chain sawing twigs, and strolling through factories, hard hats on heads and sleeves rolled up, and pretending to drive tanks.
Our education system is still predicated on a post-World War II factory model. During the war we massed produced tanks and ships and planes and GI’s. Why not mass produce students, most of whom did not need to learn a great deal (or possess high level thinking skills) to work on assembly lines? A few students would have to learn more to run the factories and an even smaller group would have to fill their brains with additional skills to own those institutions.
I was raised on science fiction movies in which the subtle (and not-so-subtle) anti-smart motifs surfaced. The hero of the movie was always a well-built lad who faced the monster, the gigantic ant or gila monster or radiated newt, with courage and persistence. He saved the world and the pretty young thing (best known for holding the back of her hand up to her mouth as the monster came closer). Her uncle or father or grandfather was always an aged scientist sporting an Albert Einstein hairdo. This character could build a complex nuclear device that would eventually destroy the monster, but he could not find his shoes or the glasses atop his head without the aid of his niece/daughter/granddaughter. Message sent: you can be smart OR practical…..as if both adjectives are mutually exclusive.
The truth is that, in the United States, we celebrate, even idolize, the know nothings, the blissfully ignorant, and we treat with disdain, distrust, and scorn those who are actually book smart. This reality was reinforced during my tenure as high school teacher. “Cool kids” did not open books or study history or ask great questions (they were aspiring Fonzies without the moral compass), while those who did were forced to spend too much time avoiding the bullying of their small-minded classmates. Too many parents were more concerned about their child’s social status than their academic status. These would also be the first parents who would want the federal government to “do something” about the fact that the best jobs would go to the deserving and hardworking non-Americans rather than their lazier cherubs.
On a few occasions a student would say something like, “Literature is stupid. History is stupid.” I would ask the student to explain this belief. The answer was usually, “It is just my opinion.” This became a lead-in to one of my favorite explorations—the difference between an opinion and an educated opinion. An educated opinion is a belief bolstered by facts, facts garnered from history or science or math—from reality. All opinions, at the risk of sounding undemocratic, are not equal. One can have the opinion that the sun revolves around the earth or that drinking arsenic is a good thing or that the Sixers are the best team in the NBA, but an educated opinion might beg to differ on those beliefs. Our Founding Fathers (and their wives!), were products of the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason. They understood the perils inherent in a democratic system. If the nation were to progress, and the right people chosen to govern, if would have to occur by the populace using educated opinions, leaning on truth rather than emotion. There are also educated choices.
Last week Polley gave me a synopsis of a newspaper article which equated the coal industry with the defunct whaling industry. The out-of-a-job whalers were probably serenaded by politicians who promised to bring back the whaling business. I imagine the candidate promised, “I’m gonna bring the whaling business back to your town. I’m gonna bring back the whales, and, if they don’t come back, I’m gonna make artificial whales so you can hunt them.” An educated person would debunk that assertion from a scientific, historical, and mathematical set of truths. The uneducated would vote for the politician. Our modern Bones Brummels, frustrated at being out of work, do not point to their own lack of learning or inability to adapt. Instead they blame those who work hard and who have the least power to defend themselves.
Futurists believe that the students who graduate high school now will probably have five or six jobs in the course of a lifetime. Alvin Toffler, noted author of Future Shock 1970, stated that people adapting to changing economic climates will have to “learn, unlearn, and learn again.” Modern schools should be all about teaching students learning skills, particularly high level thinking skills so they can adapt and make educated opinions. The former whalers would have to learn a new profession. This might require reading.
Today our factories are gone for the most part. Our nation’s niche in the current geopolitical climate is our ability to creatively problem solve. I was fortunate to be awarded a Fulbright to study schools in Japan. I was also lucky to discuss those schools with a Minister of Education. I asked him the difference between the education of the Japanese and the education of Americans. His answer:
“Well, we built our system based on your system just after the war, like baseball. But here is the essential difference. In the United States you create a problem, you solve the problem, and you market the solution. In Japan we can make a better solution, and we can market it more efficiently…..what we cannot do is create the problem.”
Creating the problem takes smarts, and, yes, a fair amount of “book learning.” How are we going to compete in the world market if we continue to celebrate and applaud ignorance while scoffing intellect? The jobs we want our children and grandchildren to have high level thinking skills learned not on the streets, but the kind of intelligence gleaned from libraries and classrooms. How long can our nation excel on the world stage if we choose to prepare out offspring for the past rather than prepare them for the future?
Of all the possible scary realizations that arose from this past presidential election, one of the most frightening is that the tide of anti-intellectualism has gained momentum and will wash over our nation like a giant tsunami of ignorance. My book learning has taught me that empires come and go. We wear uneasily (and that is a good thing) the mantle of “American Empire.” But the demise of empires is usually rooted in laziness, lack of foresight, and ignorance. Mark Twain, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has Huck’s father, Pap, rant against Huck’s learning in school, and boasting of his own narrowmindedness predicated on bigotry and specious reasoning. Arthur Miller debunked the myth of the self-made man in Death of a Salesman. Bernard, the next door neighbor’s “nerdy” son is the only one who succeeds while Willy Loman, self-made failure, purposely drives his car into a tree. Washington Irving may have given us a cultural past, but he also contributed to a legacy of self-serving ignorance which haunts us today. And though his tales celebrate the victories of the thick headed, well, they are just stories. Don’t believe me. Make an educated opinion. Look it up.
by Ralph Maltese | Nov 6, 2016 | Uncategorized
Where There Is a Smoke Alarm, There is Battery Replacement
The Chirping, of course, begins around 2 AM. My head, commanded by strings connected to some unknown force, lifts from the pillow. I mumble, “Didja hear that?” Polley murmurs, “Can I hear a gasoline truck exploding in a dynamite factory? What am I? Deaf? Yeah, what is that?” The fog of dreams slowly evaporates from our brains. We are not fully conscious.
“Sounds like a bird got in.” I sit up and remember that, while barbequing, I left the screen door open for about five seconds. Some bird must have spent most of her adult life just waiting for that moment to sneak inside our home. Why any critter would make that choice was beyond rhyme or reason, but my brain was still extracting itself from some nether world and Parkinson’s brains can take some time in restoring full awareness. Besides, for almost forty years I taught Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, and I was pondering “weak and weary.” It must be some big bird like Rodan because the Chirping was hurting my ears.
Polley sat up. “It’s the smoke alarm.”
Right. It was the smoke alarm. I admit to being a little disappointed. My hunting skills would not be needed. I got out of bed and stood beneath the antique white plastic oval screwed into the ceiling at the top of our stairs. I looked up and waited. In a few seconds, “Chirp!!!” I looked down the stairs. No smoke. Besides, the smoke alarm was chirping and not wailing like a modern ambulance siren. I yelled to Polley, “It needs a battery!”
I went back into the bedroom and initiated a conference with Polley. We could go downstairs, choose a kitchen chair, bring it upstairs, position it below the smoke alarm, stand on the chair, open the cover and replace the battery—-providing we had a nine volt battery. Standing on a chair perched over the stairs and performing any activity while my body and brain was mostly in dreamland did not seem to be a wise option. OR, we could put up with the Chirping and wait until the morrow.
We went back to bed and fell into a Chirp filled sleep….mostly. The next day we placed a chair at the top of the stairs. I gingerly stood on it, looked down the stairs and considered the possibility of a bouncing death to the bottom. I reached up, unlatched the casing of the smoke alarm, and, with some difficulty, and with the chair vibrating from my efforts, pulled out the battery. Polley handed me another battery. I inserted it, carefully stepped off the chair, and expressed relief. We replaced the chair downstairs and sat down to our morning coffee. “Chirp!!!” We looked at each other. Polley shrugged her shoulders. “The replacement battery must be old.”
Some explanation of battery accruement is in order here. It started when our kids were small, and Santa’s gifts required a rather large investment in batteries of all shapes and voltages. Then came our own electronic devices which demanded an assortment of AAA’s and AA’s. When a device is not working properly, my first troubleshooting strategy is to replace the battery. When this tactic did not solve the problem, I saved the batteries I replaced, figuring they were still good. In short, we have an accumulation of energy providers in various states of health. Polley volunteered to go to the store and buy a brand new battery.
Thirty minutes later, the chair was back at the top of the stairs, I on top of the chair which creaked and wobbled as I once again removed the battery, inserted the spanking brand new one, returned the chair and sat down once again to our second cup of coffee.
“Chirp!!!” Can’t be!
Polley suggested the only possible answer—the smoke alarm had protected us for some time, maybe decades, and had given up the ghost. Another trip to the store.
We were getting pretty skilled at positioning the chair at the top of the stairs, and I even began to stare a potential fall down them in the face. Yes, I began to scoff at danger. Removing the old smoke alarm took a few decades to accomplish. Reaching up to unscrew the old smoke alarm from its anchored screws is difficult under any circumstances, but the Parkinson’s handy man has to struggle with a hand shakily trying to insert the screwdriver in the screw slot. It is like watching a lie detector’s needles producing a graph when a notorious liar is giving testimony. The needles zig and zag wildly. Likewise, the screwdriver is all over the place. It takes my total concentration, staring and reaching up over my head to place the tip of the screwdriver in the screw slot. I remove the battery from the old smoke alarm, am prepared to screw in the new smoke alarm when “Chirp!!!” Can’t be. Then Polley notices that the Carbon Monoxide Alarm anchored to the wall on the stairs may be responsible for our plastic noisy “aviary.”
Oh.
We replace the battery in that alarm. No more Chirping. Polley has the exceptionally bright idea of installing the new smoke alarm just above the Carbon Monoxide Alarm for easier access. Of course, this means drilling and anchoring new holes in the wallboard for Parkinson’s Handy Man. Hours go by, but it is done. No more chair at the top of the stairs. I have come to terms with the irony that I risked life and limb several times in order to install a device to keep us safe.
