Houston 2.0

                                                                                                           

or

why did I come back to Texas?

Please find your humble and yet intrepid servant outside the largest truckstop she has ever seen. My sherpa insisted that this was a mid sized “Buc-ee’s” But we will get back to that.

The first gift of retirement is that I can go where I want and when. This miracle began after the Preakness Stakes (mid May for those of you who don’t follow the Horses). Philip came into the front room and found a sad and sorry sweetie who missed her Triple Crown Mommy and Sister. So he said, “Why don’t you go down for the Belmont?” Down meant Sierra Madre and to the house on Canyon Crest. And so I did. 

Thus it was that sometime in August I realized I could go back to Texas and see Sarah’s new place before Kathy and Jack moved back to California. Philip had to spend a short week in Cupertino for another training set and that week seemed perfect. A week, in College Station and Houston, in early September. What could possibly go wrong and am I mad?

The flight out to Hobby International Airport, Houston was sardine packed but I got a window seat at the back. This allowed me a wonderful view of Lake Powell as we flew over. It is not full yet but so much better than the last time I saw it. The skin of the Southwest is so beautiful and so complex. (Southwest Airlines really needs to improve their flight tracker to real time.) The window and my silly mystery got me to Hobby with no problem and thence to the luggage kiosk on the ground floor. For those of you who have not experienced the exquisite combination of heat and humidity that is Houston in September, allow me to elucidate. 

You walk through the double doors that protect the interior, cool and unnatural environment of Hobby Airport and are slapped in the face by the real life of Houston weather. I had Kathy on the phone and she was taking another cycle round and was on her way to me. Now it must be understood that I did not ask when it might be convenient for me to visit my friends. I just said “I’m coming” and “Kathy, here is when I land.” Why these women put up with me I do not know.

It has been stated in this space previously that Houston is the ugliest city I have ever seen. (But I’ve never been to Moscow.) It took us a solid 45 minutes of travel to get out of the damn town. We traveled up Texas Highway 290 and thence to the 6 toward College Station. (Yes, I’m from L A, I put “the” in front of all road designations.) Finally out of the city we came to the flat, water-carved land. We went past Prairie View and with that name I realized that what I was looking at was prairie, the ocean of grass. As I tried to absorb the topology, the sky beckoned, emphatically. It might be helpful to address the weather in and around Houston, perhaps even all of South Texas. The sky is huge. No mountains or hills break two thousand miles of clouds. And clouds of every type, the celestial atelier had been hard at work. There on the right were the voluptuous gold tinted cumulus nimbus of Tiepolo and straight ahead were the grey washed horses tails of Boudin. But it was the wall of slate grey, picked out by lightning flashes on the left, that concerned me. In this griddle-flat country, the sky has either just done something to you, is doing something to you or is just going to do something to you. And so it did. 

About 20 minutes outside of College Station, the sky let loose with sheets of water. Being from California I am not accustomed to this kind of rain. Each drop was about 1/8th of a teaspoon and there were so many that the wipers couldn’t keep up. If I had been driving I would have pulled over and waited till I could see. But Kathy was driving, she who has driven in the blizzards of Connecticut, and this downpour was not going to stop or even faze her. The squall lasted about 4 minutes and this Sierra Madre girl freaked out. (But Kathy is also a Sierra Madre girl so what does that say?) We got to Bryan and found Sarah’s place. It is on a pretty cul-de-sac. It shares a wall with another dwelling and she has covered parking. When you finally have a place of your own, after a hard life, is a source of great peace.

(Now I need to ask a question. Why, in South Texas, a land that floods, does everyone build their houses flat on the ground? Kathy’s house in Clear Lake/Houston and Sarah’s sweet abode in Bryan are both flat on the ground. No steps up, no french drains, no place for the water to go. I do not understand.)

We were greeted at the door by my other favorite tall blonde. When I first met Sarah, she had shiny light brown hair and was in the 5th grade. Now she is a blonde Texan, gone totally native. After the requisite hugs and greetings, Sarah welcomed us into her neat little home. We chatted and drank wine, agreeing to dine at the old hotel where Kathy and I were staying. Beautiful old downtown Bryan is everything one would want, restored to a fare-thee-well with plenty of on-street parking. The only problem is that it’s empty. Except for the hotel restaurant and bar, there is nothing going on. Odd. Our Sarah was slightly subdued that evening, it is hard to pick up friendships with so much time in between.

But joy came in the morning and breakfast was a chatty funny meeting of Sierra Madre girls. With hugs and declarations of love, Kathy and I headed back to Houston. As we drove back into the maelstrom that is the traffic of that town, the question became: what did I want to do?

A return to the Johnson Space Center and Galveston was necessary but what else? Kathy said “Let’s go to the Museum of Natural Science.” Now I have loved natural history/science museums since I was five and digging the dioramas at the old California Academy of Sciences SF. Nothing prepared me for the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It has had a total refit and is nothing short of glorious. Your first stop is the darkened atrium that contains a 3D map of the moon. It is two stories tall, lit from within and accurate as all hell. (The best view is from the second floor of the atrium, just outside the gem and mineral hall.) 

This museum is so big and dense, one really needs to plan which exhibits to see. One cannot do it all at one shot. Our real destination was the new dinosaur exhibit. But first we were sidetracked by sparkly things. The gem and mineral rooms are also new (where is all this money coming from?) and the best I’ve ever seen. The rooms are quite dark with the displays lit up like something out of Tiffany’s. Minerals that glow in fantastic shapes (yes, like a fantasy) and the gems just left me speechless. There was an important Faberge show and Kathy loves Faberge. If you want to see opulent displays of jewels, go to Houston.

Once we tore ourselves away from the sparklies we entered the new dinosaur rooms. Laid out from the oldest to the latest, the curatorship of this collection teaches and entices. Although this collection is smaller than Chicago’s Field or LA’s Page, this stuff is real. Most dinosaur bones on display are copies, with the originals safely in the back room. But at HMNS all of the bones are on display. Yes there is filler but the bones are real. This matters a great deal, especially because of their T-Rex. One of the great things about this museums are real, live docents. They know their stuff and we attached ourselves to the comet tail that followed a tall, sandy haired and very smart young man who gangled. (And now, those of you who care about such things need to sit down.) After a very clear and rather funny description of the difference between hot- and cold-blooded dinos, and how you can tell, we came to Houston’s Thunder Lizard. The docent told us many things, including that there is a paper that is due out in December that will release the bombshell. This skeleton has, on the end of its tail, a piece of skin, T-Rex skin. And the skin has feathers. Just let that sink in for a bit.

Still reeling from the most important dino fact I’ve heard since the discovery of Utah Raptor, we walked out into the muggy air of Hermann Park. This is the nicest area of Houston, with lots of other museums and Rice University right close by. Here were the beautiful, tree-canopied residential streets of Houston. This is one of the areas where the money lives. We lunched there and spoke as women of what we had seen. My mind was blown and we headed back to Clear Lake. One of the things I wanted to do this time was get some real Texas barbecue. After much discussion it was decided by my darling hosts that we would go to a place that Nick, Kathy’s son (who now lives in Santa Monica) found. It was perfect. Through another dark Clear Lake evening, we came to a Western looking place. (Think the Longbranch Saloon rather than the Ponderosa.) 

You walk into a large dining room and back to the counter to make your order. To taste Texas, one must eat brisket. So I got that and pulled pork, corn pudding and slaw. Trying to get unsweetened tea is a little difficult. The corn pudding was heavy and rather dull. The slaw was nice and the beans were very good. The pulled pork was good and the brisket was what all the shouting is about. I am so glad we went there.

Galveston is a necessity for my trips to see Kathy and Jack. This time she and I walked along the Strand, in the historic downtown. The sidewalks of the Strand are very high, perfect for getting out of and into carriages. But we were in a small SUV so it was a hoot to watch me get into and out of the car. This is how air conditioning works in Galveston/Clear Lake/Houston. Even if you keep your doors wide open, rather necessary for gift shops on a tourist street, the stores are cooler and the air is moving. I can’t imagine the BTUs needed to do that. I found postcards and sea-themed Christmas ornaments. (That took care of my sister’s birthday present.) We drove the inner streets of the town and found beautiful, restored Victorians and all of them were built at least half a story above the street. That was the original design and I can only ask again, why isn’t everything built that way there? At least Clear Lake has those canals dug into what was the bayou. And my darling, crazy friends rode out Hurricane Harvey (2017) at home and swore to me that no water got in their lovely home. But following that storm from Oakland took years off my life.

Finally we get back to Buc-ees. My flight home was in late afternoon and Kathy insisted that I had to go to her closest emporium of all things Texas to deepen my understanding of that great state. Tchotchke is a Yiddish word meaning a small object that is decorative rather than strictly functional; a trinket. So try to imagine a store about the size of a common Target filled with Texas tchotchkes, a food kitchen, a bakery and the good Lord only knows what else, everything is bigger in the Lone Star state. Restaurants, churches and even grocery stores are huge. Maybe it’s the flat topography of the place, the pure expanse, that makes them feel that large is necessary to make a thing seen. All I have seen of Texas is some of the Houston area and the place still confuses me. When I interact with the people they are just lovely, open, chatty and very polite. Their politics make me crazy but I’m a liberal Christian from California. Kathy and Jack are coming home to the Russian River and I doubt that I will return to Texas. But I’m glad I went. 

Cannelloni

      Once upon a time, there was an Italian red house in Pasadena called “Dino’s.” Their drinks were strong, their portions were large and their house salad was a meal unto it’s self. (That chopped salad has influenced every salad I have made in the last 45 years.) When we went to “Dino’s” my sister always ordered the cannelloni, which is a dish of pasta or crepe, stuffed and rolled with ricotta and either meat or veg. Then it is covered with red sauce and baked. That’s the way they did it in Pasadena.
Now that I know a little bit more about the multi-verse that are Italian cuisines, as informed by the great Marcella Hazan and Lidia Bastianich, my own cannelloni is different. I made it last night. There was no bechamel and the ricotta is replaced by whole cottage cheese. But like so many pasta dishes that came to the United States, this dish has already been, shall we say, amended. What we now enjoy as main dishes, in large portions, were originally small portioned as part of a larger meal, in fact, a festival meal. The cannelloni I made last night would have been served as one roll per guest before the meat, or fish course.
The formal Italian meal is the ur text to the French haute cuisine. (Stay with me now, cause we’re going to do a little history,)  Two Tuscan princesses married into royal families of France. Catherine D’Medici in 1533 into the Valois line and Marie (of the same house) into the Bourbon line in 1610. What is really important is that both of these ladies brought Italian chefs with them. Mayonnaise, marinara, demi glaze, bechamel all came to France from Italy with the Medici princesses. As did the order of a formal meal. (You did wonder when I would get back to that didn’t you.) Ok, here it is.
Primi (pasta, rice or soup)
Secondi (fish or meat)
Le verdure (vegitables)
Le Insalate (salad)
Il Formaggio (cheese course)
I Dolci e La Frutta (sweets and fruit)

Cannelloni , though a first course, has turned into a main dish, as have many other baked pasta dishes. My favorite at “Dino’s” was their lasagna. And at that great red house, the cannelloni was made with crepes rather than pasta. So let’s start with the crepes.

1 cup cold water
1 cup cold milk
4 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 & 1/2 cups flour
4 tb melted butter

Put the liquids, including the eggs, in the food processor or blender and, well, blend.
Add the flour, salt & melted butter and blend till smooth.
You can use a crepe pan or cast iron pan to cook these.
I use a stove top griddle because I can make 3 at a time.

Filling:
cottage cheese, Romano cheese, and an egg (or two)

2 16oz containers of whole cottage cheese
1/2 a cup of grated Romano cheese
2 medium eggs or one jumbo
salt & pepper

This is the basic filling. I used fresh baby spinach but any green veg or meat (though chicken may be too delicate) and mushrooms would also do very well.

Lay the pancakes out, fill them and roll them and put them in your favorite long baking pan.
There will be left over veg and cottage cheese. Spread them over the rolls before you lay on the marinara

Now let us talk about marinara. I don’t know what the Italians used before there were tomatoes in Europe, but now there are canned tomatoes.
Sauté one onion (yellow or white) in canola oil
add 2 14.5 oz cans of tomatoes
cook together till saucy
(yes, you may add oregano if you wish)

pour the sauce over the rolled pancakes and bake
in a 350 degree pre-heated oven for about 1/2 an hour.
(bubbly is what your are looking for)

Eat this.
It will make you happy.

Oakland

My mother always says, “Write about what you see out your window.” Ok Mommy, here is what I see. The sky is clear with that peculiar light blue that is Marine. Nothing in the world looks like the heavens over the sea. Just ask Eugene Boudin who taught Monet. It is through this singular light that I see Kaitilyn’s vegetable beds in what was our ignored back yard. Through the chain fence that separates our places from the schoolyard, the live oaks shade the platform that the kids at the school built a couple of years ago. They study local flora & fauna there during the school year. Right now their yard is being torn up. I do believe that all that tar and concrete has been torn up to put down sod for a real field. It’s got be done before they come back to school in August. Ain’t life grand?
I am of Oakland. I used to be of Sierra Madre but now, after 22 years, I am of Oakland. When we got here the Maze was only just finished after the Loma Prieta earthquake. Decades ago Los Angeles lost a portion of the Santa Monica Freeway and the traffic was even worse, but it took only six weeks to repair. Please excuse me if I don’t understand why it took nine years to fix the Maze. This is just one of so many things about this beautiful maddening town that confuse me.
When we first moved into sunny and lovely Adams Point, downtown was derelict. From Grand all the way down to Jack London Square, on handsome tree-lined Broadway, it was just one abandoned office building or store after another. Just one more curse of the Loma Prieta. But now, out my window, beyond the roofs of First Congo Oakland (UCC) and Westlake Middle School (OUSD) the first thing I see is a huge (five or six stories high) yellow construction crane. This is the current symbol of Oakland, the construction crane. They are everywhere and especially here in Adams Point. On Broadway, where Auto Row used to try their very best, new buildings are going up. Some, very few, have worked to save the old facades. They did it at the Whole Paycheck (oh, I am so sorry, Whole Foods) at the corner of 27th and Harrison. It had been a Cadillac dealership, with huge windows to display the beautiful wares. When we got here it was empty like so many other beauties here in town. When Pasadena redeveloped Old Town, 30 years ago, they didn’t care what you put in the building as long as the old frontage was saved. Ah the advantage of a functioning planning department.
One of the first things we noticed when we got here were micro-climates. In those days we had dear friends who lived in upper Rockridge. That’s how we discovered the seven-to-ten-degree difference between the uplands and sunny Adams Point. By the blessings of the housing gods, we moved from Altadena to one of the warmest parts of this great city. And then there is the Lake. I didn’t know about Lake Merritt when we got here. Yet there it was, glowing in the sun, decorated with grebes and ducks, the heart of a wonderful city. The best thing about the Lake is how well it is loved. Joggers, walkers, parents with strollers, drummers, barbecuers and folks just hanging out. And let us not forget Children’s Fairyland, a rite of passage for generations of Oakland children. The best night views of Lake Merritt, in her string of pearls, is from the restaurant in the Lake Merritt Hotel.
But the Lake and her neighborhoods are only a small part of this city. One of my first flights back to OAK from BUR my under-seat carryon was a large purse filled with ten pounds of chorizo from the Argentine Market near my dad’s old place in Bungalow Heaven. This was simply because I hadn’t found my own Mexican butcher/grocer up here. And then I discovered Mi Tierra, on San Pablo, a block down from University. Everything I could possibly want, from veg to crema to votives to meat. Oh yes, a full service butcher counter that includes five different kinds of chorizo. For the years I worked at Cody’s on 4th St. that was my go-to place. When I moved on to Books Inc. I discovered International Blvd. and there, at 29th, was Mi Puebla, with its own fabulous meat counter. And the store seems to be owned and operated by Arabic speakers. International is exactly what its name says, a little Chinese, a lot Vietnamese and the majority Mexican, with a sprinkling of Guatemalan. It reminded me of what downtown LA used to be, before the upgrades.
How to address gentrification? I am so torn by the entire process. Living cities change, and that means their neighborhoods, Harlem being only one example. That place has gone through the cycle of development, decline and renewal at least eight times since it was founded by the Dutch. So it is with Oakland. After one more futile search for sour cherries in the halal markets above University, I wended my old way down 6th to Hollis and over 47th to the freeway. What had been a somewhat unkempt but very lively street, with kids on bikes and folks on porches and music coming out of windows, 47th had changed in the ensuing years since Cody’s demise. It had been a street of rentals and was now, obviously, a street of owned homes. The landlords have sold out to owners who can afford new paint and gardeners. Where did the renters go? Did they go up to Pinole or Hercules or Richmond, to endure horrendous commutes to work? This is the price of gentrification and renewal, real people with real lives in a place are displaced. And in this insane market, they certainly can’t afford to move to Adams Point or Temescal let alone Skyline. So we come back to the huge crane outside my window.
It seems to have begun with the restoration of the Fox Theatre. My first sight of the old movie palace broke my heart. There she was, broken and forgotten, with all her little shops, bars and other places, empty. The old queen was a metaphor for downtown Oakland. And then it happened, the Fox and her diamond shaped block were restored and became a magnet. Bars, restaurants and music venues opened, spreading lakeward like so many green shoots in Spring. At the same time the rebuild of Broadway began. All those clouded titles that kept all those properties empty suddenly cleared and the building began. Jerry Brown’s dream of bringing ten thousand people to live downtown was being realized. (It’s an odd thing between me and Jerry, I have voted for him, legally, 16 times.) Condos are busting out all over.
The way to bring down the price of housing is to make more housing and it’s finally happening in Oakland. Just look at what’s being built a block and a half from my front door. Not high end places like the Essex, these are just normal condos and there are lots of them coming. You need to understand that Adams Point has lots of apartment buildings, right next to those million dollar rehabbed Edwardians. We have always had both kinds of housing here. All this building is already changing Oakland and the streets are totally clogged with detours. From the bus route down International to the pothole repair (FINALLY) on Monte Vista, the work of the city is being done.
Outside my window there is Kaitilyn’s yard, Oakland First Congregational Church and Westlake Middle School. And there, between two live oaks, is the new symbol of Oakland, a huge yellow building crane.

The Prancing Pony

“Since you will be coming in while we are out of the house, here it the drill. The key will be under the mat (I’m really not kidding.) Your bathroom is the first door on left in the front hall. Your bedroom is at the end of the back hall, through the kitchen. Your password for the in house wifi is on the desk. Welcome.)
Barliman Butterbur was the master of a hostel, named the Prancing Pony, in Bree. (If you don’t know where Bree is, please apply yourself to a map of Middle Earth. It is a boarder town, just out of the Shire,) Our house here in Adams Point, Oakland is named for that worthy establishment. But none our windows are round.
Now let’s get this straight. I started the Prancing Pony for the money. Taking in paying guests kept our heads above water in some pretty bad times. I didn’t know what I was doing, keeping the room clean and the beds properly dressed. (Y’all know I’ve never been a doting house keeper.) Once I started having guests, there was dust everywhere, there were spider webs in abundance and who is going to wash those windows? Leaving our bedroom door ajar in the heat of Fall can be problematical.( We still need to put cat doors in three access points.) But with time and well placed criticism, we slowly pulled ourselves together and got in the groove of looking after people.
B & B means bed and breakfast. And I really do offer breakfast, it says so on my page. All I need to know is what a guest might want. But nobody tells me, nobody asks. They just wander through the kitchen on their morning way to the loo. On their way back I ask if they want tea or coffee. Our most recent guests were from South of the border, from Bogota and Mexico City. I do not like coffee but I know how to make it. I’ve been concocting the elixir vitae almost 28 years, for the middle son of the Star of Havana. If you can’t see through it, it’s almost strong enough. My guests like their coffee black.
And then there is the question of water. Many of our guests arrive with water bottles, mostly plastic, and I offer them glasses of water. When they see me open the tap, they are taken aback. I’m from the Pasadena area and we call that water “Pasadena crude.” But the water here in the Bay Area is simply wonderful. On the East Bay side, it comes from the Mokelumne River, which is fed by the snow in the Sierras. San Francisco and the Peninsula get their water from Hetch-Hetchy reservoir, which is fed by the snow in the Sierras. So yeah, our water is really tasty. The Germans think it has too much chlorine. They can be hard to please.
One of our earliest guests were a lovely young couple on the last leg of a very long honeymoon, all over South East Asia. She was graceful and tall as a young linden tree. He was taller, 6’4’’, and when he saw that their bed was a king, he just fell on it with a small yelp of joy. The young husband had been folding his long Finnish frame into beds designed for much smaller people. So far, these folks are why we have a pin in Helsinki on the map of Europe. In our front hall, between the guest bath and the kitchen, are the maps. On one side are the National Geographic maps of the United States and The World. On tuther side is the Michelin map of Europe. On the top shelf of the cookbook library is a pretty crystal bowl. The bowl holds pins with round colored tips. When guests come to the Prancing Pony, they are offered a pin from the bowl and asked to place the pin in one of the maps. I ask them to put the pin in either their current place of residence or the place that they come from. Just recently a guest, looking at the sea of pins in the L A area, chose to put her pin in the Philippines, her mom is from there. Two sweet girls were here from Moscow. One of them was from Sakhalin Island. I’m very proud of that pin. And then there is the small but mighty nation of the Netherlands. There are so many pins between Utrecht and Amsterdam that there isn’t any more room. Is there a trail of bread crumbs from these two great cities to the Prancing Pony? The Dutch love to travel.
There are the places with no pins at all. I’ve only got one in the entire continent of Africa. And let’s talk about Tornado Alley. Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas where the hell are you? Come to the Bay Area, come to Oakland and stay at the Prancing Pony, you will have a wonderful time. Oh and speaking of time, we need to talk. My darling guests come from all over the world and many of the dears can’t read a map. They look at a map of my great state and say to themselves “Hey, there is Yosemite, we can get there and back in a day.” Sure you can sweetheart, you will spend 4 & 1/2 hours getting to the Groveland Gate and then 45 minutes to get to the Valley Floor. It just looks close but it ain’t. The lines you see on the maps are not freeways, they are highways. The 120 is two lanes in each direction, sometimes. When you go up the New Priest Road into Groveland, it is really circuitous and takes about 25 minutes. I am not being fair to those who do not know this state. It is a Tardis, much bigger on the inside than on the outside. And the distances are so much longer and higher and slower to travel than they look.
So they come to my house. They come with international sized luggage all the way from SFO to start a full tour of the Southwest. They come with overnight backpacks to enjoy a concert at the Fox or Paramount. They come for music festivals and to work at Kaiser. Sometimes they check themselves in, sometimes they come in late, just as long as they come. Because I love to look after them and am having a wonderful time.

Liturgy

 Imagine if you will, a meeting room, probably in a church. Folding chairs and a table off to one side holding a large coffee urn and paper cups. Once the assembly has been called to order and the request for statements has been made, a tall white haired, white bearded man stands. “My name is Philip and I am a Baptist. I have been clean and sober for 47 years.”

Somewhere in Altadena, Felix is still shaking his head at a memory. We were at Liz & Tim’s and Philip had just expressed his love of the Mass. “But Philip, you’re an atheist, how can you love the Mass??” And that, my dears, is the whole point. How can one love the form and not believe the words? How can a cradle-Baptist atheist embrace the Anglican Liturgy?

lit·ur·gy (lĭt′ər-jē) n. pl. lit·ur·gies 1. A prescribed form or set of forms for public religious worship.

Ok that’s clear enough and, even better, broad enough to cover all religions. And all religions have liturgies, great services and daily prayers, marking the year and marking the changes in life. Humans not only commune with their gods through liturgy, they celebrate birth, coming to maturity, marriage and death. The Bris is a circumcision ceremony usually done at home (the baby boy is only eight days old) and has its own gentle cycle of prayers. These are usually sung and they make a liturgy. There are many in the Baptist confession who would bristle at their services being called liturgy, but they are. There is an order to their worship and that’s all it takes. It is in this rock-ribbed and foursquare tradition that Philip came up. And which, at the age of 16, renounced.
This West Virginian hard head did not hear the Mass until he sang for the Episcopal Cathedral of the Diocese of San Joaquin, Fresno. By the time I heard him sing the “Libera me” in the Faure Requiem at Pasadena First Christian, he was already a church singer. And slowly the spell of the Roman Liturgy was cast over a non-believer. The spell was made of history and form (you do know that all good musicians are part mathematicians, don’t you) but especially music.
All liturgies have music, all. By accident of history and geography, the Church Temporal (Christianity in history) has the greatest canon of liturgical music because it is so broad. Starting with the Greek services of the early Church, Christianity moved across the face of Europe, west north and east, absorbing music everywhere it went. (Think of the horn nosed monster in “Yellow Submarine.) Forms of service sprang up like dandelions and so did the music to support them. Since at least the 6th century C.E, monks sang the offices of the day.
Matins: 2 am
                                                Lauds: sunrise
                                                Prime: 6 am
                                                Terce: 9 am
                                                Sext: noon
                                                None: 3 pm
                                               Vespers: sunset
                                               Compline: bedtime
Those are a whole lot of prayers to set to music. And that music was different wherever it was made. In what would become Russia, France, Norway and England, music bloomed in the garden of Christian liturgical practice. And England brings us closer to the original point (you did wonder, didn’t you?) There were multiple rites on that island; York was one and so was Sarum. Before the present, beautiful and now really weird Salisbury Cathedral was built, there was the monastery and church of Sarum and they had their own, highly influential liturgical rite. But when you go to that wonderful place and ask about the Sarum Rite, the docents will blink, smile sweetly and say, “Well, there is the historical reproduction, in the close.” That is all they know. Just try to get a copy of the Sarum Rite, just try.
It was this musical and historic spell that fully hooked the lapsed Baptist. The Canon opened itself to the musician and he dove right in. Now it is possible that William Byrd and Thomas Tallis had something to do with the dive, but I couldn’t possibly say.

“If you throw the lucky man into the Nile, he will come up with a fish in his mouth.”

When the Baptist came (professionally and after a stint at St. Dominic’s SF) to St. Paul’s Oakland, he came up with a fish in his mouth.
Someone, it might have been Dr. Mark Bruce, figured out that if you have a small choir (8, maybe 10 on a good day) and don’t have enough money for both a choir director and organist, you throw yourselves on the tender mercies of Tudor choral music. This tradition not only serves the immediate needs of the choir, but it trains the singers and makes them ready to sing Josquin, Monteverdi, Palestrina and the all-father Victoria. No church choir needs a sound system and a band to sing to the Lord. They can simply stand together, listen to each other and follow their director. A Protestant church that is not afraid to hear sung Latin doesn’t hurt. It was in such a choir that the Baptist found his fish.
(Now it is time for a small rant about some of the results of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965.) Just because they said that the Mass should be said in the vernacular didn’t mean that 1700 years of liturgical had to be rejected. But it was. There is nothing wrong with guitars or the vernacular in sacred music. Ramirez’s Misa Criolla and Peña’s Misa Flamenca are only two examples of magnificent, soul-changing music written since the Council. But I don’t have a dog in that fight. Hell folks I’m not even an Episcopalian. I’m just an old Congregationalist who worships and sings at St. Paul’s. Now back to the fish.)
After the retirement of the beloved and sadly late Dr. David Farr, we kind of flailed around looking for a new choir director. During this interregnum the Baptist did a lot of conducting. He also started to write liturgy. That’s right folks, Mr. Clean and Sober for 47 years loves the Anglican Liturgy so much that he is writing it, two full masses, seven motets and several Psalm settings so far. Now that we have Prof. Kula running our choir life, he asked Philip to be his wingman and everybody is really happy.
So the moral of this story is simple. There is no single door to the life of music and all of them are open. If a cradle-Baptist atheist can find fulfillment and inspiration in the Anglican Liturgy, then anything is possible. Now I just wish they would stop baptizing babies.

Dillon Beach

the kata of Dillon Beach

Herbert Howells 17 October 1892 – 23 February 1983
Just a heads up, most 14-voice church choirs do not sing the work of Herbert Howells. They are huge, dense pieces of essential 20th-century choral music,  debuted by  Gloucester, Winchester  and Christ Church, Oxford. Now, let me tell you what we did this weekend.
Last summer it was Placerville. This year it was the dreamy, foggy shore of Drake’s Bay. St. Paul’s Choir went to Dillon Beach, West Marin County for our choir retreat. This retreat is a weekend away where all we can to is eat, drink, talk and sing and sing. It is our version of an all-day sing with supper on the ground. Our first rehearsal call was for 4:30 pm on Saturday the first of September. From Oakland it takes about an hour and a half to get there and it’s worth the drive. And it is a drive through the cattle on a thousand hills of West Marin. At this time of year, these rolling coastal hills are soft gold dotted with cattle and black green live oaks. You get to my old love, Petaluma, and take a left. It is
We were late. We are always late and P was very grumpy. But with a splendid reading of the Missa Solemnis on the car cd and a lovely ride, we got to the base of operations. There were three houses, described by Vicki as Papa (the base) Mama (our digs) and Baby (where V & R and were). The rehearsals were held in the kitchen of the Papa Bear house. I was responsible for supper that evening so was working behind the kitchen island as the rest of them sang. Ok, how do I describe this. It was a kitchen with what could be an eating area on the far side of the island. (If it was a very small table and only two chairs.) Into this space was forced an electric piano and enough seating for ten, most of the sopranos standing, and we rehearsed. So I was behind the the island making quiche. The leeks were prepped, all of the cheeses were shredded and the dough was made. Oh I was so organized. Except I didn’t bring flour to roll out the pie dough. Why did I think that a perishable comestible would be available at a beach rental property? But then, through my panic came John’s voice of reason: “Just crush up some crackers and use that.” What you need to know is that John is a musicologist, sings baritone with us and is blind. His service dog Joelle is the smartest, mellowest, sweetest pup in the whole world. John’s wisdom saved me and made for rather tasty, crunchy couple of quiches.
(It might be useful to know the make up of this choir in this tiny space. We are talking about ten Episcopalians, two Congregationalists, two Reform Jews who helped us and brought the perfect baby, one cradle Catholic and a still in recovering lapsed Baptist. Now, may I address the above mentioned perfect baby. His name is Zephyr, he is 6 months old, he has almost no hair and is the very best party boy in the world. He can sleep through any amount of singing.)
We rehearsed on Saturday and sang Sunday morning service for the sweet folks at St. Stephen’s Episcopal, Sebastopol. As we do so often, the rehearsal was for shit for the morning service. Why is Christopher so forgiving ? But we pulled it together, it being the Byrd Five-Voice mass, the first movement of the Howells Requiem that we are slaving over for All Souls Day and our old favorite, “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” by Poston (I do love it so). We sang for our new friends, had an interesting theological question (look up the word “filioque” if you want a really good time) and shared coffee with this very welcoming congregation. But we had important business at the Gravenstein Grill, which was the only local that could accommodate a party of rowdy Episcopalians. They put us in their side patio, well enough away from normal, proper Sunday brunchers that our noise would not impinge on the other diners.
We were very comfortable, with a wonderful flamenco guitarist and a great lead waitress. It was she who suggested the house gazpacho Bloody Marys and these were simply the best of that drink I have ever had. Oh my dears, you gotta go to this place, especially in tomato season. We ate, talked, drank and ogled the perfect baby. Have you ever watched 20 adults try to pay on only five checks? Joshua became our banker and with Paypal, cash and other apps we were able to make it work. (Note to restauranteurs: separate checks are simply not that hard. In this particular case, Joshua wanted the milage points, but still, it ain’t that hard.)
We went back to the various digs, changed out of our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and wandered back to the smallest choral rehearsal space in the universe. Really my loves, there are walk in closets that have more space than where we crammed 14 singers, an electric piano, a totally mad choir director and don’t forget the baby. I was sitting next to John, he of the perfect service Joelle and elegant baritone, with Joshua (my section leader and co-first tenor) behind us. It must be understood that I do not sing solfeggio. If you tell me the key a piece is in, it simply does not matter to me. What I have is tone matching directly from God, through Robert Parker Jenkins, and trained by six years of playing the violin. Director Christopher now thinks I can read music. No boss, you can read, Philip can read as can many in this miraculous choir. I listen to Joshua and make the same tone. So if he makes it incorrectly, we both go down the rabbit hole. I just copy the tone and the spaces between the notes fill in the rest.
But back to Joelle, who was sitting patiently between John and me. After about 45 minutes of singing Herbert Howells, she set her beautiful head on my knee. I gave her ear scritches and a few pets then her father explained. “She does that when she’s bored. What she is saying is ‘Aunt Elizabeth, please take me outside where I can find some interesting thing. Please Auntie, be nice to your Joelle, I am so bored.’” This went on till we broke for dinner. Sausages were grilled, salads were made and the normal St. Paul’s Choir party ensued.
Monday morning we were all breaking up, breakfasting and I was wild to get on the road home. I do not know why but, when the road points home, I need to be on it. I will say travel well to everyone else and run to the car. Vicki and Richard wanted to see our digs so we met them on our way out and gave our dear friends sketchy instructions into the house so they could look around. I hope they saw what they wanted but I so needed to be on the road. Once all were hugged and loved and bidden farewell, the little Blue Opera House took its road to Oakland. And that’s where the voice on the phone comes in.
Two years ago Philip and I traversed Portland under the direction of a map app. She, unlike Siri or Alexa, does not have a name, so I will call her Hecate, the one who stands where two roads cross. She tells us how to get where we want to go. Now I will agree, there is no direct road from Dillon Beach to the 101. It is possible that Hecate has noticed the way we like to travel. When going Up The Hill, we like either the 20 or the 4, informing our travel advisor that we like backroads. Thus she sent us over the hills and far away from Dillon Beach to the 101. Rather than sending us back up to Sebastopol and to the 101 directly, we went out the Dillon Beach Road and thence to Tomales Road. The roads got narrow, sometimes just two lanes, through the beautiful dairy lands of Western Sonoma. There are all of the cows who make our cream, milk and cheese. Finally Hecate brought us to the southernmost exit for Petaluma and onto the dreaded 101. The goddess of the crossroads does not like the 101 and avoids it until the very last minute. So we drove through the golden hills behind Petaluma before we joined the great highway.
When Christopher first suggested a choir retreat I did not understand why. Retreats have always had a corporate team-building vibe and I don’t like corporate. Now, after the second St. Paul’s Choir retreat, I understand. It was a kitchen, it was really cramped and we sang a whole lot of Herbert Howells into each other’s ears. The retreats separate us from our regular lives and focus our hearts on music. That we have such a good time with each other is pure gravy. Ok Christopher, you were right. We needed a weekend at the beach.  

kata of salad

the kata of salad
(a song for Gene)

Definition of salad for English Language Learners. : a mixture of raw green vegetables (such as different types of lettuce) usually combined with other raw vegetables. : a mixture of small pieces of raw or cooked food (such as pasta, meat, fruit, eggs, or vegetables) combined usually with a dressing and served cold.
Liz and I were dining with our our divine hostess Gene in a Manhattan restaurant. The salad was served and made of romaine. “Why are all the salads in New York made of romaine?” I asked with innocent guile. Gene laughed and said, “Because it comes from California on the Salad Bowl Express.” This was a train that used to bring fresh greens from CA to NY. When Gene would grace us in Alhambra with her sweet presence she would request two things: a ride on a big freeway (well that was easy, because I picked her up at LAX at least once), and to go to the grocery store. Not just any store but a supermarket. Gene (Genevive) wanted to stand in front of the lettuce aisle of a Vons or Albertsons or Hughes and just look. I, being a spoiled rotten Californian, simply did not understand.
Growing up in plenty, being used to seeing its pastures on the 5, the 101 or even the dreaded 99, I have taken it for granted that in California, there is no season for iceberg, greenleaf, butter, or any other lettuces, they are always in the store. With three lettuce-growing seasons a year in the Central and Salinas valleys, I cannot imagine a grocery store without at least five kinds of lettuce, cabbage (napa, savoy, bok choy, red and white) four types of onions (green, white, sweet and red), carrots, celery and all the rest. Being a Californian this is not a birthright it’s just normal.
Which is why the existence of food deserts in this most blessed state is not just wrong. It is evil.
Oil and vinegar, salt, pepper and some other flavors, this is all it takes to make salad dressing. I, being a lazy slug, use Good Seasons Italian as my base. One of my salad stories is from the “Cooking with Claudine” series by Jacques Pepin. Claudine is making salad in the French style, the elements of the dressing going into the bowl first. As she mixes her father opines, “You put in too much vinegar.” To which the daughter of the great man pertly responds, “Not for Mom and me.”
And ah, my dears, there is the rub. How much oil, how much vinegar is the eternal question. The ancient adage, “Be a spendthrift for the oil and a miser for the vinegar,” just doesn’t work . I know what I like, close to half and half. I put the contents of the G S envelope into my jar and add tomato paste or mustard or anchovy paste, depending on my mood and what I’ve got in the house, and granulated garlic and Old Bay. And finally it all comes down to what’s in the bowl.
I love this time of year because it is peach and tomato time. I am a terrible tomato snob, only buying them fresh in August and September. Philip goes to the Saturday Grand Ave. farmer’s market late, about 1pm. The vendors are packing up and don’t want to haul the leftovers back home and are ready to deal. There is a guy who comes all the way from Sanger (the anvil of the Sun) and he has the best tomatoes. The perfect husband comes home with flats of these tomatoes and I go precisely hog wild. Raw tomatoes are in every salad but there are also sandwiches, you know the ones with just good bread, mayo and sharp cheddar cheese, and there is marinara. The big baking sheet comes out, the oven set at 350° and the tomatoes are cored, set on the sheet with onions, everything gets roasted, then into the food processor then into the freezer. It never lasts long. A couple of suppers or a Compline Dinner and the marinara is gone. We just eat tomatoes till our mouths are raw, tomatoes are gold.

Peaches, some of you might not think of them and salad, but I do. Only in these months of cheap,
freestone peaches do I indulge. These slightly green fruit are perfect with ham or any other leftover pork. When not in peach season, apples will be very nice and even raisins. But let us discuss a simple salad. Only recently have I turned my bowl to single leaf salads and that was, as usual, by necessity. How does romaine or greenleaf or even iceberg taste? Romaine is slightly bitter and deeply green. Iceberg does have flavor and it is delicate, but its primary attraction is the texture. There are many who badmouth iceberg but I do love it, probably because of the way I was raised. You cannot have wedge salad (ala Scandia, of blessed memory) without iceberg lettuce. Just eat it because you love it.
So finally, we are simply blessed. We are blessed to be children of California, to live in this state of 3 to 4 growing seasons a year. There is no salad green or cabbage we cannot have. And greens are the cheapest vegetables available. Put the leftovers in it, cut the fruit up in it, fry the bread cubes in duck fat and throw them in. Feta, cheddar and Monterey Jack, just shred or cube them up into the mix. Salad is the easiest and best thing to make for supper and Gene loves salad.

Compline

the kata of Compline

  Compline: prayer for the end of the day. From the Latin meaning ‘completion.’

We had a lovely mother-and-daughter team staying with us for a couple of nights. Airbnb has space on the review page to leave a private note to the host (that would be us.) The daughter of the duo was very kind and gently suggested that if we were going to throw a big party, we might want to warn our guests. Well, yes, that is very true. But we didn’t throw a big party. We just had some people over after Compline. We do it every month.

Slowly, at the age of 63, I am beginning to understand that the rest of the world doesn’t live the way I do. Compline dinner is automatic. I send out a group email to find out how many will be here. Celeste says she’s out of town, the Larsons are going up to Yosemite so they can’t come. And I forgot to ask Christina and Aaron but they know when Compline is and that the door is always open. And anyway, I counted wrong and ran out of pasta. I’m feeding children and have to remember how they can eat. Lauren doesn’t sing Sunday with St.Pauls any more but she still sings Compline. She left us for a paying gig at St. Mary Maytag (called that because of the way it looks.) But she and the precious Derek come just because. Friends ask very politely if they can bring their sweeties. When the Larsons aren’t with us, this crowd is 20 to 35 years younger than the hostlers of the Prancing Pony. And it’s all because of the service of Compline.

Within the Protestant confession of the Church Temporal many have Sunday evening services. The Baptists, some Methodists, Pentecostal and so many others come back to church on Sunday evenings for prayer and song to end the day. (Philip’s old home church, Bellepoint Baptist in Hinton WV, served the Lord’s Supper at the Sunday evening service.) Such is the service of Compline, one of the oldest offices in Christian liturgy, prayer at the end of day. With three chanted Psalms, collects (designated prayers spoken by the priest) and communal prayers, this ancient service is a balm to the soul and a cleansing for the mind. No one is going to ask you to confess, there is no altar call and you don’t show any bona fides at the door. Just come, sit and be. So why ain’t I there? Well..... it’s complicated.

I loved Judaism before I confessed Christ. And, as I always do, I went over the deep end in my understanding of whose text belongs to whom. Deep in my heart, dear, I would have Christian services completely devoid of any Hebrew scriptures. The Church Temporal have misused our Mother’s Scriptures for so long, I just don’t want us to use them. (I must state here that both Stephen Saxon and David SchIosser insist that there is plenty of Hebrew Scripture to share. But I do hold a grudge, and this one is against my own church.) It was in this frame of mind that I sat in the narthex (front hall) of St. Paul’s, listened to three sung psalms and decided that I didn’t like the Compline Service. But I like to cook and to serve through cooking. From this impulse came the monthly Compline dinner. 

So they walk in, come straight back to the kitchen, grab a glass from the collection under the Altar, pour themselves some wine and start talking. “What have you been doing?” becomes “What have you been singing?” Tonia tries to explain the story of the opera she is currently singing. (I humbly asked if it made more sense than “Forza del Destino,” and my very favorite soprano said, “Destino doesn’t make any sense at all.”) That’s how it goes at Compline Dinner, a whole lot of music talk, some politics and even horse racing, just a whole lot of talk and eating. Perhaps this was what concerned our overnight guests was a bunch of folks drinking and talking and making a certain amount of noise. Perhaps our guests dinners are more decorous. I never mean to offend.

So I promise that, from now on, when I have guests staying, I will warn them about Compline Dinner. I will say, “There are some folks coming over for dinner after an evening service.” That is all the warning they will get. This isn’t a big party, it’s just dinner and a lot of talk.

learning to read

learning to read

a kata for Janet B.

How does anyone learn to read English? this impossible mess of five different tongues: Anglo-Saxon, French, Danish, Gaelic, with some German thrown in for good measure. You layer these one on the other through consolidation and invasion like some linguistic pastry. Oh yes, then throw in a huge vowel shift in the middle of the 14th century CE and you get the beginning of English. Once folks start to write this madness, then we get to duke out the spelling. Kit Marlowe, Will Shakespeare and their fellow Elizabethan poets and playwrights just made words up. They spelt stuff the way words sounded when spoken. By the tine God’s Secretaries put their glorious minds to translating the Bible for James the First, agreed-upon spelling for English had calmed down a little. But grammar had not. Hell, we didn’t get a dictionary until Sam Johnson in the mid 18th century and the Oxford English Dictionary is still a work in progress,

So, considering all of this, how does anyone manage to learn to read this mad amalgam? To be very simple and rather cruel, by putting our heads down and learning by rote. There is no rule of spelling or grammar or syntax that is not changed or outright broken. There are so many diphthongs that phonics is a bad joke. (Just look at that word, diphthong. It comes from the Greek and means “two sounds or tones.” Yes, a Greek word in English. And how are we supposed to know how to spell the damn thing?) I came up in the transition between whole language to phonics. I didn’t read with any facility until I was in third grade and still read rather slowly.

But there is a key to these many locks and it is human speech. Talk to the baby, the toddler and all the other small people. When you are putting up your coat when you come home, tell them what you are doing and how your day was. When you are making supper, put an apron on them, stand them on the kitchen stool and tell them what you are doing and why. (If they are really little, put their bouncy seat on the counter.) When they are sitting in your lap, read to them, read to them, read to them. And here is the the dark secret, it really does matter what you read to them. The more different words they hear the better they will read.

Years ago I have said in this space, “Don’t ask two-year-olds which book they want.” You don’t ask them if they want a sweater because you are the parent and you know how cool it is outside, and that children would run around buck nekkid if they were left to their druthers. I repeat myself but it seems necessary. The first thing they want is the sound of your voice; and the second is content. They are bringing you the Barbie or a Thomas Golden book because that is what they know. But you know so much more than you think, read them what you want. Read up! and up must include poetry. Rhyme is the servant of memory, speak the rhyme and they will remember. It starts with the divine Sandra Boynton, “One hippo all alone, calls two hippos on the phone;” and then moves on to A. A. Milne, “George found a pen but I think it was the wrong one. And James sat down on a brick.” With Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses we get into wonderful story telling and vivid word painting: “Dark brown is the river, golden is the sand. It flows along forever, with trees on either hand.” These worthies and their co-conspirators will teach English to your child and keep your brain from rotting. (Don’t forget Jack Prelutsky’s The Dragons are Ssinging Tonight.)

But one does not learn to read on poetry alone. So what prose does the proper parent read to the perfect child? Again, don’t read down. Save your sanity. Read old stuff. Read Edward Eager, E. Nesbitt and, I’m really not kidding, read Rudyard Kipling. Yes, he has a bad name because folks my age think of Kipling only as an imperialist. I fought with my father over Kipling when I was in high school. (By the mercy of Christ I was able to tell him that I finally knew better before he died.) The Kipling to read to young children is Just So Stories. These are animal creation myths and the language is a rolling river. How did the leopard get his spots? How did the rhinoceros get his wrinkled skin? And how did the kangaroo get his back legs? “Not always, oh best beloved, was the kangaroo as we now behold him. But a different animal entirely.” This language is as rich and complex as dark chocolate and it will prepare those young minds for what is to come.

I can hear you right now: “But they don’t like that old fashioned stuff.” They don’t know what they like and cannot like what they don’t know. It breaks my heart to see a lovely 11 year old boy, smart in so many ways, who doesn’t want to read anything more demanding than Wimpy Kid and Big Nate. That boy should be reading Asimov, Heinlein, Conan Doyle and so many others. But no one read him anything real and he was never asked to read anything real. He should have read Treasure Island and Haroun and the Sea of Stories in fourth grade so he will be ready to read Shakespeare in high school. “As long as he’s reading” simply doesn't work. It doesn’t turn him into a reader; it turns him into someone who can take the damn test without knowing the glories of his mother tongue. It is bad enough that all the girls in his class read faster and more deeply than he does. 

So read to him, read to her and read good stuff, real stuff. We have saddled these beautiful young minds with the most difficult language to learn. It doesn’t make sense, it breaks every rule it makes. But oh my dears, English is a thing of surpassing beauty and, with it’s vast vocabulary, it can describe the width and depth of the human imagination.

“Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention”

Henry V: Act 1, Prolougue.

Die Fledermaus

Dear Lord I cannot write,

What shall I write?

Cats are impossible to draw. Dürer couldn’t do it, Da Vinci couldn’t do it. These worthies were so hung up on the complexity of feline musculature that they could just couldn’t get the skin or fur right.

Long ago, at his place in the Creamery, Bodega, Wally Hedrick gave my father a spectacular compliment. “Rudolph was the best draftsman I ever knew.”  Yes, my bad Daddy could draw like God and here is an example. This is a watercolor of a neighbor cat named Chacoo and it was painted in the late 1970’s. I will stand flat footed and say, “This is the best thing of his I own.” The story of why the early intimates of Robert Parker Jenkins called him Rudolph is too long to go into now. 

There she is. It’s 2:30 am and there she is with her wet little nose and a purr that could wake the dead. Rosalinda wants attention. She wants skritches and belly rubs and she is going to get them. No aloof haughty feline is our girl. She wears a diamond necklace and sings the Czardas at the bedroom door when it is closed against her. For the first three months she lived here, we could not touch her. Hell, we couldn’t touch any of them. Usually cats in this house don’t get their war names until they have lived with us for a while. (Our precious Rocket J Baby was not with us long enough to get a war name. I was pushing for Red Sonja.) But these three got their real names right away.

It was time for kittens so last early June we went to the house built by PeopleSoft for the Humane Society, just off of Hegenberger. It’s where we got Geoffrey and Jōshū. It is where we got Ramses the Charioteer, son of Seti the Great. But now Ramses was gone and I needed a new black cat. And he came with a package of two sisters. The three of them were part of a litter of 13 and they were pretty feral. Gabriel is not all black. He is a tuxie and his black is denser than any cat I’ve seen. (Even Pirate Jenny looked brown in full sunlight.) So we bring these three crazy kittens home and I put the carrier on the counter. I open it up to check on them and Gabriel von Eisenstein comes flying out, like a bat. Well, if he is Die Fledermaus (the bat) then his sisters must be Adele and Rosalinda.

(Please find three impossible kittens. Adele is on the left in tweed and Rosalinda is in the white opera gloves. Gabriel is in the middle and butter would not melt in his mouth.) These guys were nuts. At first they hid, then they learned to romp and slowly, very slowly they decided we were kinda ok. Rosalinda has to be kept out of certain rooms because she still can make messes. She really didn’t want me to tell you that.

Dogs are loyal, brave and helpful. They will take the medicine from Anchorage to Nome. They will wait for their masters at the train station, they will spend their nights on the graves of their lost ones. They have hunted with humans since we were humans. The bond between us and them is undeniable. So what is it about cats? Yes, they control vermin, think of Dick Whittington. But cats have always been suspect. They are accused of being witches’ familiars and through them, in league with the Devil. Yes, in Egypt, Bastet, the lioness/cat goddess, has been worshiped since 2800 BCE. But they are sly and slinky and insinuating. They require very different care than dogs and will they say thank you? No they will not. In fact when they can be gotten into the carrier to take them to the vet, they will sing your funeral all the way there. But they are furry and cuddly and very purry. They tear ass around the house in the middle of the night, either alone or in pairs, for no apparent reason. They will sing the songs of their people loud enough to wake your guests. Yet no house of mine can be without a cat.

So we love them, we can’t help it. I can’t help it.They are so very hard to draw or paint. Tomorrow morning, there she will be, with her wet nose and purr that would wake the dead.

Placerville

Placerville

Labor Day Weekend 2017

A choir retreat. Christopher wanted us to do a choir retreat. Well, we had waited long enough to have him as our director, so I was ok with humoring him. But I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. Retreats are for “team building” and we were already a team. Yet the new boss said retreat and we agreed to retreat, in Placerville El Dorado County, at the end of August. This rash decision was made at the end of May.

Some of you might not know El Dorado County California. It is a beautiful place that reaches from Folsom (yes, that Folsom) up to South Lake Tahoe. It is rugged, it is steep and in August it gets really hot. But we decided to go there in May and had no idea that the Bay Area would suffer its hottest summer in decades. When it’s 102 in Oakland, 106 in Placerville seems a little extreme. Just days before we were to head up the Hill, some amongst us opined that staying in our slightly cooler home might be a good idea. Then came the voice of reason, remarkably, out of the tenor section. Joshua said, “They know how to deal with heat better than we do.” And so it was.

The house itself was large and had been added onto several times. You walk into what was a front parlor and is now a dining room. To the left was the kitchen and, down a narrow hall, one of the three ensuite bedrooms. This Vickie and Richard had held for us, the late arrivals. They had their own as did Christopher and Tonia. The single people, three of each, had dorm rooms. (This is not to suggest that Joshua is single, just that Stacie did not join us.) There were also old powerful air conditioners everywhere, noisily pumping out blessedly refrigerated air. See, Joshua knew of what he spoke.

The traffic on Friday was just wretched thus we got to the digs late. And we had dinner. The house that Christopher found was very nice with a big kitchen wherein we would make our meals. Sharon, divine alto and organizer extraordinaire had all the food responsibilities worked out. I made chicken and a big salad. (I think not enough.) So when we finally chugged into the parking in front of the house, people were really relieved. Supper had arrived. We chatted and had cocktails, we dined and chatted and then the games came out. I am very bad at games and retired early. The Iron Dragon went on till 1 am and still wasn’t done. Being a slug, I slept late and only emerged from my luxurious nest because I heard the smoke alarm in the kitchen. After donning my house dress, I went into the same kitchen and gently asked if Richard and Sharon were burning the house down. They insisted that they were only making breakfast on an unfamiliar and rather recalcitrant stove. I always believe what my friends tell me.

The primary reason for the retreat was lots of rehearsal. We had a lot of music to work on but where were we going to do it? Showing off his organizational chops, our fearless leader cut a deal with Church of Our Savior, a lovely and old (established in 1861) Episcopal church who very sweetly allowed us to rehearse there in exchange for us singing at the Sunday 10:30 service. Church of Our Savior doesn’t really have a choir so we got to sing for a very appreciative congregation. One woman went so far as to worship at 8am and then return at 10:30 to hear us. The church was a whole short block from our digs. Oh life is so hard.

We are very spoiled by the acoustics of St.Paul’s, with its brick walls and wood interior buttressing. But at Church of our Savior we had a real treat, we were able to sing together. At home, the sops & altos are behind the pulpit, basses and tenors behind the lectern and the altar is in between. Thus it is very hard to hear each other and, for those of you who don’t sing chorally, hearing each other is pretty important. In the plaster and wood of the Placerville church all of the choir are on the lectern side and Christopher stood behind it. The higher voices turned toward the lower and we could really blend. That place has such nice sound. We worked on the music for the next day, we looked at music for the upcoming season and had the Monteverdi “Vespers” dangled in front of us. Sweet Jesus I do want to sing that thing. 

We broke for lunch, came back for another session and then broke for supper. Sharon made an elegant “salade nicoise” and then the games came out again. I tried to participate, I really did, but I’m just no good at games. We rose on Sunday morning, prepared, walked over to the sweet little church and did our St. Paul’s best for our gracious hosts. For those of you who are not familiar with the Episcopal Liturgy, here is how it breaks down. The choir comes behind the Cross, followed by clergy, all singing the opening hymn. Once in the stalls, there is a Collect, readings (one from the Hebrew Scriptures, one from St. Paul and, after singing the Sequence Hymn, one from a Gospel.) Then the sermon, Prayers of the People, the Confession, the passing of the Peace and announcements (this can take a while). Once the cats are herded back in their pews, the Offertory is sung by the choir. And then we celebrate the Eucharist. The Communion anthem is sung after the choir takes the same. All of this sounds rather complicated but it unites the Episcopal Communion. Different churches have their own traditions, some more high Church and some less. But the order of worship binds us to the Body of Christ and each other and that really matters.

After service we retired to the church hall, in the basement of Church of Our Savior, for coffee and chatting. We were supposed to be visiting with our hosts and some of us tried. But, we are a limited company and all ended up at the same table, planning where to go for lunch. Sharon did a whole lot of work on this trip and found a lovely little bistro on Placerville’s historic main drag. Part of this place’s real attraction is that they saved their little old downtown. The storefronts are preserved. What one does with the interiors is up to the shop owners. Thus gift, antique, book and hardware shops are right next door to restaurants. “Heyday Cafe” at 325 Main St. took very good care of us, putting multiple tables together to accommodate our large party. We had splendid service and very nice food. As usual, at least for this trip, Himself and I were late. We drove rather than walking over the freeway bridge and getting to parking took too long. My excuse is that old man Art Ritus was really kicking in but I should have walked. 

Here is an important thing about the Heyday, they will do separate checks. We are talking five or six checks at our table alone. (If anyone tells you that separate checks can’t be done at “fine dining” establishments, give them a big Bronx cheer. If the Heyday in Placerville, El Dorado Co. CA can do it, so can they.) The food was fresh and very good. They have a good beer and wine list. We had a lovely meal and then asked to settle up. That’s when it happened. We were informed by our head waiter that our lunches had been paid for. WHAT? Yes, all of our lunches, all of our drinks, all of our everything, had been paid for by an anonymous member of the Church of Our Savior. We couldn’t even say thank you.

When Philip and I first drove into town, I noticed a brew pub on the town side of the freeway. I have learned never to let a beer establishment go un-investigated. So, after our miraculous lunch, Joshua joined Philip in some beer tasting. The place is called “Jack Russell Brewery” and although it doesn’t have the charm of the old buildings the beer is good and the service is lovely. Philip and Joshua tasted and talked music, which I always love to hear. But then the subject turned to baseball and I wished I’d brought something to read.

Back at the ranch everyone was packing up. Hugs, kisses and wishes for safe travels were exchanged and we went our separate ways. Most everyone were taking the direct route, being the 50 to Sacramento and then either the 5 to Stockton or the 80 thru Vacaville. But we needed to pick up wine at Van Ruiten in Lodi and we needed to drive the Delta. I always need to drive the Delta. From Lodi we were supposed to pick up the 12 east and then a left onto the 160 and thence to the 4. That is what we asked Applemaps. I’m not really sure how we got where we did but it was a wonderful drive on a very narrow road  with water on either side. In fact the entire Delta trip was surrounded by water. There were white herons, red winged blackbirds and other marsh birds that only Alison and Liz know. All I know is that I love driving the California Delta, be it the 4, the 12 the 160 or nameless back roads . The sky is big, the land (what there is) very flat and a river runs though. 

We left out water reverie at Antioch, joined the hoards on the southern/eastern 4 heading toward the 80 and home. Some of you may have noticed that I always title a highway or freeway. This is an L A thing. To the north it stops somewhere around the Ventura Co. line, and to the south just beyond the Orange curtain. I don’t know why we speak this way, other areas have great big awful freeways, other places are ruled by their commutes. We title our great roads, the Santa Monica, the 405, the 210 (Foothill). It’s just the way we talk and others can always tell where we’re from and they laugh.

Sharon called our retreat “summer camp for grownups.” And so it was, a wonderful weekend of singing, great company and almost enough food, in a beautiful place. Christopher was right. We did need to go to Placerville in August.

The Lost Cookie

How in fact does one bake a memory? I am finding this out.

In or about 1960 CE, my grandmother Julia Regusic Davidovitz would come to visit with us in our flat on Hayes, between Cole & Clayton, usually at Easter. It was right across the street from my first grammar school. We were in the upper flat, a classic San Francisco apartment with two bedrooms on each side of the hall, the toilet separate from the bathroom, and a sunroom at the back. The place was really quite salubrious especially on a junior high school teacher’s salary.

When she came to visit Grandma Julia would take over my mother’s small yellow kitchen and cook. You might think that I am a force of nature but that’s only because you never met my Grandma Julia. She went out to the back garden and planted zinnias, she and then come back into that little kitchen to make sarma (stuffed cabbage) and other Yugoslav delicacies. And she made sweets. Among others she made very particular orange-flavored crescent cookies. 

Like so many memories made of taste, these cookies are essential to my early life. I know how the dough should smell, I know how the cookies should feel in the mouth and what sort of sweet they should be. And, because they are so connected with her, I never tried to make them. Neither have any of her daughters. Not Mary, her eldest daughter and one of the greatest hostesses I’ve ever known. And not to my mother Katherine who taught me everything I know about making salad and pie.

 

 Please find the aforementioned Katherine

The recipe and its methodology went with my grandmother into the arms of Jesus when she was only 69 years old. (They eat really well in Heaven.) For decades I either ignored or was too afraid of the orange crescents to ever attempt them. But now, at 62 years of age, I find myself wanting to make these orange crescent cookies. Yes, but how?

‘To the internet, and beyond! I began by just looking up recipes, first for sour cream dough; I quickly knew that that wasn’t what I wanted. Cream cheese was the answer. It was Alice Medrichs (an important chocolatier, writer and all around smart foodie) whose cream cheese dough I found. If she says that a particular recipe is the very one, who am I to question? And so I began, with very basic instructions for one of the elemental cookie/savory doughs in all of Central Europe, the search of the lost cookie.

3 1/2 cups of flour, equal parts (12 oz) butter and cream cheese, a little salt and not enough sugar (more about that later). It sounds so simple. When I started to blend the elements a certain if very gentle smell came to me, rich and slightly sour. And once the orange zest was added, there was what I was looking for, there was the smell I remember. Having worked with doughs that need to be kept cold, I knew what to do, and that was to put all parts into the kitichenaid, blend it up, roll it up into a tube and put it in the fridge overnight.

As said, there was not enough sugar in this, the first iteration, but there was cream cheese and orange zest. When I opened the dough tube I smelled that combination and knew I was on the way. (But, dammit Alice, there isn’t enough sugar in your recipe. Not for cookie use. Rather than three tablespoons I need at least a third of a cup.) So I made three different bakes of this terrifying cookie. 

The first bake was undercooked and nowhere near flavorful enough (not enough marmalade). The second bake was better but still not enough marmalade. The third actually worked except the sugar (read: marmalade) baked onto the cookie sheet and made the cookies very difficult to scrape loose. The folks at work wolfed them down even as I bleated that these weren’t right yet. The dough needs to be rolled out thinner. It’s naturally dense (you know, cream cheese and butter) but it needs to flake up more. And I’m a pie and biscuit maker, this I can do.

There is another element to this story. I look like Grandma Julia. When I was young, she lived in Las Vegas with Uncle Danny and Aunt Charlene. Yet many people in Sierra Madre remembered her and they would tell me how much I looked like Julia. But she was Grandma and my 10 year old mind did not want to look like Grandma. And then the pictures showed up. An image of her just before she came to the US, at about 16. And in her wedding picture, wherein my Grandfather Rudolph looks almost pleasant, there is my face. There is the rectangular forehead, the broad cheeks and the stubborn chin. My mother says she had a lovely soprano but I cannot remember her singing. I did become quite proud that I look like her. The eyes were always wrong though, I have my father’s eyes. 

So here is the key. I am her age and so proud to be one of her grandchildren. And of all of them I am the most interested in home cooking. I make sarma, I throw a mean Easter and now I am willing to pick up the gauntlet of the orange cookies. I pick it up with gratitude and all love. Thank you so, Grandma Julia.