48

It's been a busy week. I did not read 48 books. I have finally visited Arkansas. Can you see where it is? It touches 6 states that I have visited in the past. How could I have missed Arkansas? I decided to drive to California to get my car registration renewed. While the world was watching Obama's inauguration, I was driving away from D.C. I left that Tuesday morning and drove south through Virginia to Tennessee and then west to California. I got to South Pasadena at 7:00 on Friday night. It was raining cats and dogs as I drove over the coast range. That was the only bad weather I experienced on the trip. There were snow flurries in Tennessee, but they were just pretty, not wet and hard to drive through.

The drive was easy because I listened to a bunch of books along the

 way. It was very difficult to get through Waking Giant. This is about the period between 1812 and 1843 in the U.S. That should be a very interesting time, but it seemed like the author dwelled too long on cults and strange new religions. I did enjoy the political parts. I think I finally know the first 10 presidents' names. At last.

I also listened to two Paul Temple books. They are total pulp fiction or mysteries that had been dramatized for radio. I drove many enjoyable miles thinking about the process of reducing pulp fiction into total pulp and zapping that into digital mush. It was a long drive, lots of time to let your mind wander. Each book lasted half a day. They were perfect relief for the litany of new religions started in America before 1843.

Mysteries seem to be the best thing for a long trip. I enjoyed Heat Lightning. John Sandord writes a couple of series based on detectives in Minnesota. I think my friend Dean likes these too. This one was about people who are being killed and then a lemon is stuffed in their mouth. Very Viet Nam War, according to the author. It was good and, for once, no women were put in jeopardy. This is good when you are a woman driving alone across the country. I don't mind a little mayham, but I slept much easier without that.

The second book was one I bought from Audible because they were having a sale. Just $5.00 for first books in series. I'd read a lot of the 

books that they had on sale and I may have read this one. But it has been decades since I read any Ngaio Marsh. This is A Man Lay Dead about murder in an English country estate. They are playing a murder game that turns out to be real. Totally mindless. This was also perfect for the long drive.   

 I started An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination while I was on the road. I just finished it. Elizabeth McCracken wrote The Giant's House, which my friend Marilyn sent to me. This was non-fiction, about the still birth of her first child. She's a wonderful writer. She was in my favorite Southwest France when she lost that baby. She says she will never return because it would be too painful. I hope that doesn't happen, although she has a pretty good reason for making that decision. I would recommend this book for people who want to know how to approach people who have experienced a devastating event. I learned a lot from this.

I forgot to bring my adapter to download pictures from my camera.  I'm having so much fun visiting friends. Adrian and I are driving to the bay area this weekend and then I will be driving back to Virginia next week. Stay tuned.

The Civil War is Over

Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy is over, read, absorbed-ish. What a fantastic writer. He covers every battle, but it never becomes "then they went here, then they went there; 1500 killed, maimed, captured." He tells you all that stuff, but he tries to make the leading characters real. It helps that they were real. Another thing is that Foote is/was a Southerner. He understands the Southern point of view in this conflict. It is far to easy to look at them in a bad way, since they lost and all. And they supported slavery and all. And they attacked first and all.  

In fact, on that slavery issue, they had a really hard time at the end of the war. There were just not any men left to fight.  They'd already called on boys and old men. What they had left was slaves and the North was using free black men to fight.  The South had a dilemma. If the slaves were allowed to fight white Northerners, maybe they would come back and fight white Southerners. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

Another interesting story about black soldiers relates to an attack on a fort. One of the Northerners had a really good idea to build a tunnel under the impregnable fort then load it with explosives. The General wanted to send in the black troops first for a reason I don't remember. But the folks above him thought that would be seen as exploiting those troops. The problem was, the general had spent a lot of time instructing the troops on how to enter the damaged fort. One couldn't stay in the huge pit created by the blast, one had to rush out of the tunnel and fan out at the top. The white troops who eventually entered the fort first didn't know that. They stayed in the crater and the Southerners had time to regroup. By the time the black troops came through and tried their dispersing technique, they were killed just like all the white troops that went before them. And we still do silly stuff like that. That's how being politically correct gets such a bad name.

Did you see the concert on Sunday night?  Too cool. It was hard not to sing along with many of those old songs. I'm so happy that Eric and Cindy have HBO and DVR so I can watch it whenever I want. Loved Jamie Foxx's impersonation of Obama. He has him nailed. And Garth Brooks was crazy cool. Tomorrow is inauguration day. I wonder what those Southerners would have thought if they had only known. 

West Side Story

We saw West Side Story on Sunday.  The link goes to the Baltimore Sun review. I love this musical. It came out as a movie when I was in High School.  My drama class got on a bus and went into Los Angeles to see it.  I still remember how I felt when all those colors flashed on the screen. I played the music on the piano in my bedroom and sang until the neighbors commented on it. So when Cindy asked if I wanted to go see the new production at the National Theater, I was in the car and ready to go.

Cindy, Caitlin and I went.  The theater is very close to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. That alone was pretty cool.  Seating has already been set up across from the theater for the inauguration parade. This was a pre-Broadway production.  It felt a little rough around the edges. Some of the elements should be changed, like the guy who played Tony.  Some were interesting, like singing some of the songs in Spanish.  And some were great, like Anita and the dancing.

The Spanish was new.  As you may know, this is a play about 2nd generation European immigrants and 1st generation Puerto Rican immigrants. fighting for a miserable little corner of Manhattan. The new thing to me was the dance done to the song Somewhere.  It shows both groups dancing together it a sun-lit place.  The beach?  A little boy sang the song.  I guess this was Laurent's way of saying that we'd have to wait for the next generation to see this idylic place.  Maybe they should restage this musical with Israelis and Hamas.  Somewhere, indeed.   

German Potato Salad

My family loves my German potato salad and have all been given the recipe.  But they continually lose it.  I promised Kevin that I would post the recipe on my blog. I even gave it a new label so they won't lose it.  I've been making this for about 40 years.  I got the recipe from a cookbook I would probably not use anymore because none of the recipes take 5 hours and 9 pots to make.  But here it is:

Potatoes - should be russet because they soak up more stuff.  Peel, put in cold salty water and boil until you can stick a knife through them.  How many?  How many are you feeding?  How many left overs do you want? Really, I can't tell you everything.  Should you cut them before you put them into the water?  That depends on how soon you are eating.

Eggs - hard boil them.  I can't stand eggs, so I push them through a sieve until they disappear. You can also just cut them up if you don't mind seeing those egg whites in your salad.  Ewwwwww. Oh, there you go again.  How many?  If I use a full five pound bag of russets, I'll use a full dozen eggs.

Bacon - fry and break into pieces.  Everyone likes bacon, so a pound goes well with even two potatoes.

Green olives -  You know, the kind with pimentos in them.  Chop them up.  I emphasize green because one nephew tried this recipe and used black olives.  Ugh.  

Salad dressing - The original recipe called for Lawry's dry Caesar Salad dressing mix.  I like any of their dry dressings for this and have used any number of them because they don't always have that one.  I use the prescribed amount of olive oil and red wine vinegar.  Quantity depends on the number of potatoes.  Two packets is usually enough.

Final prep - Cut the cooked potatoes into wierd shapes by running a knife through the drained potatoes.  Throw in the eggs, bacon, green olives and dressing.  Fold everything together.  Try not to be too vigorous or you will have well flavored mashed potatoes.  

If it seems too dry, you can make more salad dressing or add more olive oil or water.  Just taste to make sure that it is really salty and not too vinegary.  I've added chopped green onions and that is good.  And chopped fresh flat parsely adds a nice color.  Just know that if you are making this for my nephews and brothers, you'd better make a lot.     

The Folly of Man - - And Woman

I've been carrying around Elmer Gantry on my iPod for some time.  It is so difficult to decide what to read next.  This was a hum-dinger, you betcha.  As I mentioned before, Sinclair Lewis is a great writer. I guess I'm not alone in thinking that.  And here we have the most self-delusional man in the history of literature. Maybe not, but he is certainly in the top ten. Elmer can't quite reconcile his desire to get into every woman's pants, to foist his belief in whatever he is believing at the moment on others, and to acquire as much power and money as possible. This is another of those books that must be listened to for complete enjoyment. The reader does various voices really well. What he does best is to tell about what predicament Gantry has gotten himself into now and then convey Elmer's unperplexed response to stepping out of the fire.  

Elmer and his wife go to Europe at one point and this section was almost as much fun as Twain's Innocents Abroad. Oh, we are/were such ugly Americans. Please say "were." I know that none of my friends would be so oblivious to the sorry image they are showing to foreigners (if they behave like Elmer Gantry.) But then, there is Sarah Palin. (Sorry, I just can't get that woman out of my mind; especially since she made such a fool of herself on the tape about how the media gave Obama the election.) Lewis thought very little of organized religion and, probably, small town America as well. In fact, he is said to have dedicated this book to H.L. Mencken.  H.L. was a champion athiest. That's why he found the Scope's Monkey Trial such fertile ground for scorn.

I've decided to take 3 weeks off to drive to California to visit friends and get my car registered. Peggy's Folly. But I almost cried at the Virginia DMV when they told me I had to get a Virginia driver's license to register my car here. What?!! When you've been a Californian for 61 years, that is just too big a hurdle to get over. It's so much better to drive for 5 days to get the car registered in it's rightful home. Right? If you disagree, you don't need to tell me. My brother already has. The lemonade in all this is that I will get to visit with my friends on the correct coast. That is very powerful lemonade.    

Cool and Not So Cool

One of the coolest gifts given at Christmas in Kansas was this laptop cooler.  I didn't get or give this gift, but I did get to try it out.  It connects to a USB port on your laptop and the fans blow cooling air into the laptop.  My laptop gets so hot that I've been afraid it will burn out.  What I did while I had this on my lap was order one for my own use.  I love it.  One day I had it upside down and it blew cool air over my lap.  That was strange, but I might try it when the weather is hotter.  

I read a really cool book, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He also wrote Blink and The Tipping Point. I listened The Tipping Point. Gladwell has a clear and straight-forward way of writing. Real devotees of the topics would probably call it simplistic, but I liked it. Business books are part of my reading list because I want to know a little about a lot of things. This isn't really a business book.  It shows through statistics the things that make some people more successful than other people.  A lot of it involves being born at the right time and working really hard.  At least the last part is under your control.

Eric and I listened to The Gate House on our drive to and from Atlantic City.  This may be the first time anyone was ever a little sad for not hitting rush hour traffic when coming home.  Not that the book was that good, but you do want to know how things end.  It was a very long book for very little reason. Both Eric and I have read other books by Nelson DeMille.  In fact, Eric remembers reading the prequel to this book.  It's about a lawyer who gets caught up with a Mafia Don, his wife becomes the Don's lover and then kills him.  This book takes place ten years later.  The lawyer is sarcastic and can't say anything without that sarcasm.  It was fun for a little while, but the book takes about 21 hours to listen to all of it.  Little stuff happens every now and then, so you don't really want to skip the middle 7 hours.  Actually, that might not have been a bad idea.  I had to finish it and give Eric a synopsis of the end.  Even in the shorter version, it wasn't very interesting.

Atlantic City

Eric and I decided to explore some of the East Coast.  My choice of exciting places to visit was Atlantic City in the winter.  AND I decided not to stay in one of the gorgeous casinos on the Boardwalk.  Doesn't it make more sense to stay at the Day's Inn in the middle of a deserted portion of the area?  We were just inches from the Boardwalk, over 2000 of them.  A lot of the shops and restaurants were closed.  It was very cold out so we didn't go over the Boardwalk to the beach.  But, we had a good time.     

We met a push cart "driver" who pushed us all over the Boardwalk. He was from Haiti and the rest is what he told us.  Not that it wasn't absolutely true, but you never know with sales people.  He was a teacher and politically active when in Haiti.  Because of the last part, he had to leave.  He is in the U.S. legally, has a wife and very bright child in Haiti who he would love to be able to bring here.  Now the part I believe implicitly is that he hasn't had many push jobs lately since it is so damn cold and there is not much happening at the moment. Eric said I gave him way too much money, but we weren't spending it on anything else anyway.

I did gamble a little.  Very little because Eric does not like to gamble at all.  I won $5.00 and Eric said that he is responsible for me winning.  If he had not intervened, I would have stayed much longer and lost my meager winnings.  But now I know what Atlantic City looks like and I don't have to come back when it is mega-crowded and hot.  That's a good thing. 

Edward Sawtelle has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times.  I love this review.  It is right on target AND the writer liked the book, as I did.

Happy New Year*

We had a great New Year's Eve.  Eric, Cindy and I had dinner in Georgetown and then went to the Kennedy Center to see the gentleman above, Slide Hampton, and his jazz band.  None of us had ever sat through a jazz performance before.  This was trumpets, trombones and saxaphones accompanied by a piano, a guitar and drums.  They were great.  I enjoyed it, even though my mental singer couldn't pick out a melody anywhere.  The band was accompanied by a quartet at times. Fortunately it was just "at times."  I do not like that type of singing.  It reminded me of, well, I won't say what because I'm sure to insult someone else's taste in music.  

*I just read a review of the concert.  The reviewer seemed to like New York Voices more than Cindy and I did.  First, see that picture of them above?  The two women did not look like that.  They looked like they had just rolled out of bed into ill-fitting dresses.  The cute one on the left had a huge bushy natural that she liked to whip around a lot.  She also reminded me not to wear low-backed dresses where your fat hangs over the top of the dress back.  And heaven only knows what the lady on the right was wearing.  I won't get started on her uncombed hair.  And that blended "bop-bred" harmonizing singing reminded me of too many old groups from the 50's that Mom and Dad used to watch on TV.  Yuck.  The reviewer also talked about an a capella version of I'll Be Seeing You.  Isn't a capella all alone?  What was the smaltzy piano doing?  That was the most belabored version of a sweet, simple, sad song that I have ever heard.  So.  I guess you could just say I didn't like them. But I loved the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Big Band.  

Before the music, we had dinner at Hook in Georgetown.  As the name would imply, this was all seafood.  Look at some of the starters.  They are served in flights - one raw fish prepared three ways.  It was sushi at its best.  They don't have what I ate on this internet menu.  It was tuna.  In fact, I had two kinds of tuna for dinner.  The main course was yellowfin tuna with white beans and baby bok choy.  That was seared on four sides - otherwise raw.  Heaven.  It was so much fun to be there with Eric and Cindy.  They like to try new things.  In fact, we decided to try a new restaurant every month.  I usually cook a very healthy meal to keep us fit.  That makes this especially fun.

Crudo

King Salmon smoked black olives, dill crème fraîche, shiitake mushrooms

Oysters champagne gelèe, bloody mary, dirty martini

House Cured Sardines parmigiano reggiano, capers, Smoked Salmon fennel, Boquerones sauce rouge

Mahi Mahi pickled squash, juniper cilantro oil, crispy fingerling potato

Suzuki curry salt, crispy shallots, pickled fennel

Kona Kampachi watercress, pickled red onion, chervil & lime