Waiting for Chip’s Wedding

Cow Hollow, Union and Steiner across from St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal. I don’t know who designed it but it is a full craftsman with more than a little Julia Morgan.

The sun is shining on this wedding day for Chip and John. As is not unusual for members of the Volti family, the usual suspects are gathered in the church for rehearsal and I, being the bass’s chick, am sitting in a nice cafe across the street from the church. Chip and John have been together for over 10 years and it is well over about time that they made it legal. Theirs will be the first same sex wedding in this lovely place where Chip is choir director. I just saw two more wedding guests arrive at this cafe. They are both in tartans, one in a kilt. Chip offered tartans to those without and I realized that I don’t have one. I remember looking at a Buchanan shawl in Inverness, but didn’t get it. Chip’s family is old, Highland and very posh. I, an attenuated daughter of the middle border, was welcome.
More about the wedding later, once I’ve seen it go down.

This seems a good point to ask my friends and relations of the more conservative bent what they have against “mawwage”. What about Chip & John is a problem? They are standing up in front of God and this company and making the promises we all make. “To have and to hold, forsaking all others from this day forward, as long as we both may live.” Nobody laughed when they endowed each other with all their worldly goods. (They did at our wedding because everyone knew we didn’t have a cent.) How do the promises made by these good men and true diminish my marriage? I simply don’t understand.

Back to the wedding. St. Mary’s is a small sanctuary, no more than 300 pew seats. I am so glad that no one called the fire department because the place was packed. I ended up standing behind the back right pew. The dear girl standing next to me and singing in a nice clear mezzo
shared the hymnal. She also lent me her Buchanan tartan shawl so I could hold high the Scottish flag. (I’ve got to get my own tartan shawl.) Volti sang, Bob Geary conducted, I could see Philip and all was right with the world. The only time I could see the happy couple was when the Rector preached the short, lovely homely. The acoustics were a little muddy because of the crowd and the wooden church interior. It all went off without a hitch. The reception was real Baptist, red velvet cake, hot cider, sparkling cider and champagne (well, maybe not so Baptist). Just lovely.
I love weddings
I love happy endings

Here's to Helen Thomas

Hellen Thomas

1920-2013

Now let us praise famous women, and in specific, Helen Thomas. I have heard her voice all my life. That dry, clear delivery, “Thank you, Mr. President…” and then a perfectly phrased, succinct and pointed question that will direct all those that follow. Lyndon Baines Johnson did not like her at all. He didn’t have to be polite to her but he couldn’t help it.  Liz Carpenter and Bill Moyers just had to grin and bear it. Ron Ziegler, the face of the Nixon Administration, tried to ignore her but the rest of the press corps would not talk to him until he’d talked to her. Sweet Jesus, Helen Thomas was so good. And, with all honor and respect to your father, Helen Thomas was not an Anti-Semite. Thomas simply didn’t believe in the state of Israel, and neither do I.

I have loved Judaism since I was 13, when my mother, with terrifying prescience, gave me a copy of A Day of Pleasure by I. B. Singer. Judaism was the first religion I ever studied, even before Buddhism. I started reading Gershom Scholem in junior college and have never stopped. I know that Judaism is not a race, it is a religion, one of the primary religions of the world. It is the source of Christianity and the child tried to kill the mother. That is the history that I live with every day. The Church Temporal tried to destroy Judaism. That simple fact of history has formed my heretical theology. At the end of WWII, Europe and the United States had to face the blood and madness of the Holocaust. We as a nation had to face our sin of exclusion. We did not open our doors. 

We wanted to believe that a single man could make the most cultivated nation on earth crazy. We did not want to see our own common hatred of Judaism. It was looking us full in the face. 

So, when the camps were liberated, we wanted to put the survivors away from our guilt, from our blindness and cruelty. The British began the putting-away with the Balfour Declaration in 1917. A place to put the Jews, it would be so easy. Just put them in Palestine, and after the Zionist movement and the early kibbutzim, it sounded so nice. Europeans in the Middle East! Here comes democracy, the rule of law and so on. But, it was, indeed, all a lie. Palestine was populated, there were people living there.

If one were an Ashkenaz, and specifically, a secular, or even better, non-believing Ashkenaz, then one was a real Jew. One could be Hagana or Irgun, blowing up hotels and police stations and mowing down families and villages to clear the ground for incoming refugees. But because the people who lived in Ramallah listened to Hitler’s imam in Cairo and the poison coming out of Damascus, we have ever since accepted that Palestinians are unworthy of their own land. And so it has gone, for the last 60 years. Palestinian kids have gotten crazier and crazier, with no chance of college or jobs, cant’ fix the house, and nothing to do but blow themselves up and take as many people with them as possible. This is madness.

The Ashkenazim are Europeans. Helen Thomas was right and Europe would have been much better off if it had been required to deal with its own citizens after the War. The great communities could have been rebuilt and the Christian Poles, Czechs, Germans and all would have had to deal with their own guilt and fix their own societies. We Americans would have had to face our own complicity with the Holocaust. Now, 60 years later, we just bark, hey, we support Israel, that’s all we need to do.

Helen Thomas was not an Anti Semite, and neither am I .

Travel Bible

A travel Bible, what am I doing with a travel Bible?

It was a high bright Memorial Day in Oakland and we headed Up the Hill. This means the three-hour trip to Murphys and wine pickup and the three-hour trip home. The music was chosen and I was stoked. As I’ve said before, I do love a drive in the car. If my ears and tongue were longer, I’d just stick my head out the window and let them flap in the wind. But, as usual, I digress.
The travel Bible was bought in a lovely little used bookstore in Mendocino. Philip was rehearsing with the Music Festival; I was on my own and found, of course, a bookstore. In a tall narrow clapboard house there was a fine collection of children’s books but nothing I needed. But there was a lovely small Bible, in leather that hadn’t started to crack. It was so pretty and cheap. What’s a girl to do but buy it and call it a travel Bible. On last Memorial Day, on the road, I read, out loud, St. Paul’s letter to the church in Rome from the Travel Bible.
Why? Because D is in recovery and is hearing a word that he doesn’t understand, Grace. He did me the honor of asking me about the word and what it means. I stood there, at the cash wrap, and started to talk. Very soon I realized that Grace is a subject that cannot be described in a sentence, or paragraph. It is first delineated in an introductory letter from an itinerant evangelist to the nascent Christian church at Rome. Why D agreed to study this text with me is a gift that I don’t understand. But he did. So the Harvard classics scholar, non-believer and recovering Baptist from West-by-God-Virginia will sit with me and the other recovering-Baptist West Virginian and examine St. Paul’s Letter to the Church at Rome. (What is it about recovering Baptists?)
An epistle is a public statement, to be posted in any open forum, for all to read. St. Paul’s letter to Rome is his only true epistle. (The other authentic Pauline letters are personal, addressing specific people, congregations and questions.) The letter to the church at Rome is a self introduction, from St. Paul to a congregation he knew only by reputation. Here he is, introducing himself to people he does not know and wants to know. He wants to know them and he wants them to listen and believe what he says. He also wants them to support him. St. Paul wants to go to Spain and he needs the funds for his mission. For this purpose, the second most important person in Christianity writes the most important letter in our history. 
The Little Blue Opera House, with my West Virginian at the wheel,  passed the Seminary exit on 580 East and I waved at Bishop O’Dowd High School, go Dragons. Then I picked up the Travel Bible, turned to St. Paul’s letter to the Roman Church and began to read it out loud, I had to. Unlike my beloved, I was not raised in the Baptist Church and don’t have reams of Scripture memorized. To prepare for our bible study, I needed to address Romans as a complete statement. For a Christian to read the Book of Romans straight through is rather difficult. You can’t stop and break it down. You can’t ask for direction other than that which St. Paul gives in his complex, lawyerly way. There is no way to ask, why insert the question of sexuality? Why does he talk about it all the time? Why is he so hung up about it? The great soul does get to the point of Grace in chapters 8 & 9. And it is a hard point to make because Paul, who believes in the Risen Lord, in Christ Jesus and Him crucified, is still a Pharisee. He is at war with himself, trying to hold on to free will and accept Grace at the same time. Welcome to Christianity, Father Paul. This work is tough.
In our little bible study, we will use Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans as our guide. Three translations will be used: the KJV (known to the West Virginians as the One True Word of God); the Jerusalem (my college notes are in that); and the Moffatt (because I always turn to James Moffatt, 1870-1944, a great scholar who translated the whole Bible). From these translations and commentary we will try to understand Grace.
Thus we begin this work. The three of us are reading the text, from three different directions. I don’t know what the Mountaineers are getting out of this, but this believer is looking forward to a very good time. It just shows one the value of a travel Bible.

The Prodigal Son

Edward Villela (1960)

George Balanchine, choreographer

Once upon a time, a man had two sons. There was a good and dutiful son who did everything right and never bothered his parents. His younger brother was always a problem, willful and impatient. The younger thinks life at the farm is boring; even while he loves his family, he wants out, he wants away, he wants, he wants, he wants. Thus, the younger son asks for his inheritance and leaves home. The Prodigal asks. He doesn’t wait for the gift of Love, and he is rude in the request. But, he does ask, of his own free will.

Love is the name of our God. It is patient, kind and all of the other attributes delineated by St. Paul. And it is subversive. Love waits to be asked, to be called upon, to be desired. It is always waiting 

What little we know of the elder son is not pretty. He is whiney, he is petulant and he just doesn’t get it. He stayed home, did all the work and never asked for anything. The elder son never asks and Love needs to be asked, asked for, from and to. By that asking, Love demands participation, you can’t just get. The elder son never puts himself out, to ask or to receive. Love must be asked. The elder son just waits for daddy to tell him how good he is. But daddy never will.             The father is the fulcrum of this whole story. This daddy isn’t real bright. Why hasn’t he honored his elder son? Why does he agree to split the property? The father is Jesus’ catspaw, a tool to make a point. (He makes the same point in the parable of the workers. He has to repeat Himself because we are so dim.) And what is the point? That Love is always there, always waiting, always happy to take us back. What Love doesn’t do is acknowledge difference. Have you worked forever, oh, I love you so. Have you just walked in the door, oh, I love you so. This is the most difficult problem with Love (God): it doesn’t differentiate between deserving and undeserving. God just loves.

And there is the rub with the nature of God made manifest as Christ. Love never dies, it never forgets and it never holds a grudge. The elder brother wants to be first, best, but there is the younger brother, begging forgiveness. And God loves them equally. Love is not fair, and that is the hardest thing for us to accept. The good, honest hard working heart is equal to the prodigal, not better. No matter what we do or how long we stray, God is there waiting for us when we stagger back, to our home and family. 

Jesus Bar Lentil Soup

Jesus Bar Lentil Soup
 finally written down on February 15, 2013

Kirk, from his hospital bed, has asked for food. Thus food he shall receive. But then the divine Emilia asked the rational question, “What are you going to make?”
What indeed? It needs to be all foods in a bowl, heavy on the protein but with lots of veg and carbs. There is only one answer to that question: Jesus Bar Lentil Soup.
The Jesus Bar is the Barri Gotic in Barcelona. I can’t tell you the address but can give you directions. Come out of the Cathedral of Barcelona and walk down the long, lovely steps. Once on the flat small plaza, walk until you are in front the hotel, about 60 ft, then turn left.  There you will find a warren of small streets fanning out into the Gotic. Turn broad left and get lost. I think it’s two streets and Philip just likes the idea of getting lost.
The Jesus Bar is medium size for the neighborhood. When you walk in, there is a glass cold case on the right next to the reception desk. If you are a tired Gotician you can drop in, pick up some good stuff and heat it up at home. Thru the doorway on the left are the two dining rooms. The tables are small and rickety, the menu is in 4 languages and the service is quick. We went there twice and that’s how I learned the soup.

2 lbs lentils
2 lbs fresh chorizo
2 cups chopped ham
one large onion
5 cloves of garlic
2 stalks celery
1 large carrot
1 red bell pepper
2 small or 1 medium zucchini
2 medium red or white potatoes

Okay, this is really simple.
Chop up your aromatics and sweat them in your big soup/pasta pot. Use your favorite oil; mine is canola.
While that is happening, cube the potatoes and zucchini and dump them in the pot.
Put in the lentils and fill the pot ¾ with water and turn up the heat.
Put in the skinned chorizo and ham. You want to make sure the chorizo is melting.
Add at least 3 bay leaves, put on the lid, and set the whole mess on simmer.
That’s it. The cooking will take about 2 hours. But, it is always better the next day. DO NOT SEASON UNTIL THE COOKING IS DONE AND YOU HAVE TASTED. The chorizo and ham have a lot of seasoning. Happy Cooking ♡ß

De Feo & Johns

DeFeo & Johns

Now, I do understand that museum exhibits are not competitions and painting is not a contact sport. That being said and on the basis of their career-spanning shows at SFMOMA, Jay DeFeo wiped the floor with Jasper Johns. She was simply a better painter than he is.
Last Sunday was cold and four of us went to to see what all the shouting was about on 3rd Street. The early reviews, especially in the Chronicle, had spent most of the ink on Jasper Johns, I suppose because he is a bigger name and still alive. From the writeup I was expecting a small show for Jay, maybe one room. But what we found was an extensive life review of Jay’s work. ( My usage of DeFeo’s first name will become clear.)
Starting with her school and jewelry pieces, the curator of Jay’s show walked us through her life in art. It was in this first room that pieces of my own very early history came. Standing in front of the display of Jay’s jewelry, I saw an earring I remember her wearing. For those of you who’ve seen the show, it is the wire piece in the shape of a treble clef.
My parents were friends with Jay DeFeo and Wally Hedrick. My father, Robert Jenkins, went to school with Wally and there is at least one Sierra Madrean who still calls him “Wally Bill.” I don’t remember Jay and Wally coming over to our place on Hayes, three blocks from the Park (don’t make that face, it was 1958/60 and the rent was cheap), though they may have; I was a little kid so things that happened at home were normal. I do remember going over to their place, a second-floor flat in what I understand is a known address. (Hayward King lived in the same building.) There were always paintings stacked in the ground floor hall on the left of the stairs.
There is a big photograph of Jay working on “The Rose” in the SFMOMA show. On the edges of the picture you can see the doorways of the kitchen on the right and the front room on the left. The adults would sit at the kitchen table and visit while my sister and I would settle down in the bedroom, she reading and me restless until I fell asleep. Wally put a leather-seated swing in the doorway between the bedroom (the old dining room) and the front room. He let me swing on it a little. The original bedroom was Jay’s studio.
One more memory, just to tell you what a sweet woman she was. For Valentine’s Day one year, Jay filled cardboard hearts with Conversational Sweeties for my sister and me. She also included Avon testers of lipstick and nail polish. I don’t think my mother appreciated the gift but I loved it.
By the time you leave the first room of Jay’s show, you understand that she was a monochromaticist. Primarily she worked in shades of black on white canvas. And in the series she called “Veronicas,” there are various shades of brown. One of them is in the biggest room of the show. Motion in two dimensions is Jay’s genius and it is manifest in almost all of her mature work. There are three monumental sculpted paintings that sing that genius. All I will say about her most famous work, “The Rose,” is that I finally understand why it lives at the Whitney. I was not prepared for its effect on me. No photograph can describe it. You really must go see it.
Unlike the curator of this show, I will not tell you what Jay meant by “The Jewel.” To these eyes, it looks like a monstrance. It is made all the more compelling by the broken rays that seem to be bleeding. The cross at its center is pushing forward, toward the observer. The other paint sculpture on the same wall as “The Jewel” is the mind-altering image named “Incision.” From the same period (1958-66) as the other paint sculptures, “Incision” looks for all the world like a topographical map of the San Andreas Fault. Sculpted primarily in black lead paint, augmented with lead white and string, this piece is completely involving. Or is my response because I love maps?
Lead paint, she sculpted in lead paint. In search of the three dimensional image, Jay put her health in jeopardy. There were a couple of paintings referencing her gum disease and subsequent dental work from the early 1970’s. Jay breathed lead paint fumes for ten years. And she smoked (like everybody else). These sculpture/paintings taught her eye how to make three-dimensional depth on a flat surface. Her later paintings manifest the lessons she learned from the sculpture, and it was a hard lesson. Her photographs and collages are wonderful but the paintings are my favorites.
It might be noted that I’m not writing about Jasper Johns. He is more famous and less interesting than Jay. It was informative, nay, surprising to see these shows side by side. Having seen one, two or maybe a room of Johns, I did wonder what I was missing. This is the great Jasper Johns, why don’t I care more? Having seen the whole retrospective at SFMOMA, what I missed was the passion of the artist. Johns is a mechanic, and I ain’t talking Smokey Yunick. For Johns, process is all, with no final statement. Maybe he never wants to finish. Whatever he is up to, it leaves me cold. Art, among so many other things, is a conversation between the artist and the observer. Jasper Johns speaks a language that I don’t.
  This review is way too late. The DeFeo show will close on February 3rd. When I saw Duane on Tuesday, he a great fan of Johns, I simply said, “You have to go and see. There are only two weeks left.” Jay was lovely and very kind. But that is the memory of a little girl. What I saw last Sunday was the life of an artist in all of her depth and glory.

let your wine sleep

Put your wine down. It is such a simple idea and makes such a big difference. Coming from me, the most spoiled I-like-it-and-want-to-drink-it-now, this might sound strange. Here’s how it works. You are standing at a tasting bar, doing a flight of reds to see what the house is putting down. (We don’t waste the house’s time with whites or even Merlots.) Like all tasters you swirl, smell and then hold the wine in your mouth and breath over it before you swallow. Somewhere in the back of your mind you know this might look pretentious, but too damn bad; this is grownup work and we get to enjoy it. Once you have tasted and decided what to buy, you have to decide what keep in the dining room and what will go down to the garage. Now the nice people behind the bar will tell you that everything they are pouring are ready to drink right now. But once they understand that you do know what you’re doing, they will actually start talking about how long the wine could go down.

This Thanksgiving we drank (along with some other really nice stuff) a 2007 Alley Cat from our old favorite, Milliaire. An Alicante Bouschet, it went down for five years and responded like a trooper. When we first tasted it, the wine was already really fine, with heft and spice and a whole lot of jammy grape. But, oh, what happened after it took a good long nap. It woke up and came to the party. Out of the undifferentiated grape came a beautiful structure. The spice and tannin did not to get in each other’s way. The grape clarified and some beautiful smoke came out. It cut through the richness of the meal, turkey and all. It was so fine, I can actually remember it in January.

Deep in a valley just outside of Plymouth (Amador Co.) there is a lovely little winery called Dobra Zemlja. Their specialty is zinfandel and they are run by an old Croatian brigand with the very best white mustache I have ever seen. In 2008 we tasted a house Zin and could have just drunk it all. It poured like a stream, just red with a little spice and when I win the lottery I’ll go back and buy cases of that stuff. Somehow, we put a bottle down and drank it on this Christmas Day. More than any other wine of the Season, this one was the most surprising. When we bought it, it was a really nice if somewhat gangly clear Zinfandel, the wine of California, but what we had on the feast day of the birth of my Lord was wonderful. The spice that is natural to Zin clarified and came to the front of the mouth. The grape took on some raisin and the copper, terroir in both Calaveras and Amador counties, clarified and brightened the whole mouth. This wine stood up to the Beef of Merrie Olde England and didn’t look back. Take a picnic lunch and check this place out. info@dobraz.com

Sharing is a very good thing,we learned that in kindergarten. But sometimes we hoard a bottle just to ourselves. We drank our Milliare Jeunesse 2007 with split pea soup on a cold winter night about a week and a half ago. The Jeunesse is a Primitivo, a proto Zin that Steve Millier has been cultivating, let us say babying, for a long time. This wine is a single pure note with a smooth, silky finish. It is hard enough to make a big structured wine like the Alley Cat, but to get so far out of the grape’s way that it can speak all on its own is even more difficult. Putting it down clarified the mouth and integrated what tannin there was. Damn, Steve, you are good. http://www.milliairewinery.com

Five to seven, that seems to be the sweet spot for the Calaveras and Amador wines. Zinfandels don’t do well much longer than seven and many of them can go down for a shorter time. The Gold Country wines are completely specific and always informed by the terroir. The dirt of the lower Sierras is so complicated but copper is obvious. You’ve heard me sing this song before: just go up, spend the night and drink the wine. Stand at those wine bars and talk to the people, and you will find what you want.

Oh, and by the way, put some of  it down for a while. You will just love it.