Guest blog: It all started with Grilled Cheese

La Calavera notes it has been a while since a posting – but reading Franklin’s posts on dinner most nights got me thinking how much I too love to cook (and how ridiculously much I think about it, even though I am decidedly not a foodie). He thinks about it too, so I asked him to write about how he thinks about cooking. I expect more installments – thank you Franklin!

Some people love to cook, others cook out of necessity, and some want nothing to do with it.

I love to cook.

As a child, I often stayed with my grandmother in Kansas. Omi (a German nick name for grandmother) believed in breakfast. At the beginning of one summer visit, I wasn't waking up hungry and ready for breakfast. She knew I loved grilled cheese sandwiches, so she would get one started on the griddle, then go wake me up. My bedroom was close to the kitchen, so I could smell it cooking. I remember groggily sitting at the table and a plate with a grilled cheese, sliced on the diagonal, was slid in from ofme, with its toasty, buttery, cheesy, steamy vapors eliciting just about the only response capable to a six year old. I picked it up, and crunched my teeth through the crispy brown crust, bit through the corner, and chomped away on the hot, silky cheese interior.

I think it only took two days and I was waking up hungry. Eventually, she weaned me off the grilled cheese and I was eating whatever she had cooked. Pavlov had nothing on Omi, she'd had five kids and a grandson – he only had his dogs.

So, my beloved grilled cheese was the first thing I learned to cook. I don't remember exactly when, but it was around first or second grade. The secret to the perfectly toasted grilled cheese is the size of the fire. Omi showed me how to turn on the stove, and with the griddle in place, she had me adjust the flame until the blue flame was above the edge of the burner: “Just so.” And I remember this each time I tweak the fire, in the same way, bending over and adjusting the flame “just so”. I still love grilled cheeses, and they are best at breakfast. Gouda, Muenster, or Imported Cheddar which is only made under the light of a full moon and schlepped to town by a donkey drawn wagon… all will make a very nice grilled cheese, and I've eaten some very exotic combinations,  but my taste buds were corrupted on this topic in my youth (Foodies and Food Nazis jump to the next paragraph) and the two best cheese-like products are American Cheese or, horror of all culinary sins, Velveeta (which if you actually read the ingredient list, has nothing bad except the reputation).

A recent dinner: Franklin’s Braised Beef Short Rib on smashed potatoes,

cauliflower with browned butter, black pepper, and parsley. He didn't strain and make fancy sauce: “I love the carrots and garlic cloves.”

In my grade school years, my mother was ill and was often in the hospital, so I was on my own. My father's idea of cooking was buying this new product called Hamburger Helper, or we ate out. Thankfully, we ate out often, and frequently went to very good restaurants, so my palette was exposed to some excellent food. Lobster Thermidor and Duck a l'Orange were not what most kids were eating.

I also started watching Julia Child. Then, I met two United Airlines stewardesses. Terri taught me how to make Sweet and Sour Pork (and layered candles using L'eggs pantyhose containers). Marie Ann, a crazy Dutch woman, taught me how to make Beef Stroganoff,the classic way, except we had to use sour cream because she could only get crème fraiche in Europe (this was the early-mid 1970's). So, I cooked these for dinner a few times and found cooking was easy. So, armed with hints from Julia, and a bit of experience under my belt, I started reading cook books and cooking various recipes.

Perhaps later, I can tell about some of my successes and a spectacular failure that ripped the seasoning out of a wok, and why I did not become a chef.

We are hoping for future installments! Thanks Franklin!

A Shrine for a departed Chihuahua

This morning as we arrived at the office in Brooklyn (DUMBO – for the uninitiated, “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass”) we saw a shrine on the wall across the street. In this trendy but still warehouse-y area it was a colorful and unusual sight. The shrine was styled as a real, Catholic-style edition, with a little roof covered with iridescent flat marbles and many lovely things inside. We don’t know the Chihuahuas’ name, and it is not provided on the shrine that we could see. But this dog was loved, and is clearly missed by his master, who we assume is the guy holding his little living body in the shrine photo.

This shrine is located on Jay Street between

York and Water Streets in DUBMO, Brooklyn.

This was a sincere little
dog, a real individual
(as all dogs are) with
a sweet and
sympathetic face.







This dog had many little toys and representations of toys provided, a little like the sorts of things packed away in the Egyptian Pharaoh’s tombs (but for doggy taste). Jewel-studded rubber duckies, plain rubber duckies, sparkly stones, a yellow feather, a woolen finger puppet, shiny objects, even a little Oriental carpet. One feels that Chihuahua had a nice life filled with love, fun, and playfulness.

Goodbye little Chihuahua! I’m thinking of you now too.

Pigeon Condominium in Colombia!

Today as I was walking near the conference center in Cartagena, Colombia (where I am today), I noticed some pigeons on the grass. I walked closer, and saw to my amazement some REAL pigeon condominiums! What a remarkable coincidence! I had to take a photograph to share with you.

There were two pretty little three-story houses side by side (with a servant’s quarters on the top floor!), set on a plinth about 6 feet up from the ground. The pigeons were happily standing on their balcony and hanging out in their condos. Truly a wonderful coincidence.

And then, though I had lamented not seeing much wildlife here, within only a few minutes I saw this gorgeous, large iguana. He didn’t let me get too close, and it was both surprising and amusing to see him run away. He could really move fast!

Pigeon Condominium

Pigeons (or vermin as I call them) are a fact of life in the New York metropolitan area. Somehow they manage to survive harsh winters and scary food, and do it with a sort of dogged detachment that might under other circumstances be inspirational. Mark loves the pigeons and thinks of them tenderly as New York ducks. His heart aches to see one suffering or in trouble (but I think he’d kill me if I brought a sick one home to nurse!)

At Tower West, we live in a condominium, but we also have a Pigeon Condominium on the side of the building. I suppose some might find this disgusting as the pigeon residents don’t have housekeeping staff to keep their place nice. However, there is something inspirational about it to us.

Here they are, on the north side of the building under the patio that surrounds the building. I learned recently that this interesting bunch of hutches was not created for the birds, but rather is a leftover artifact from a heater and cooling system that was replaced. So they just closed these holes from the inside, and the pigeons moved in! It’s just delightful.

This close-up of one of the condos with two residents shows the long drizzle of dung (not to mention the big pile that’s nearly crowding these two guys out of house and home!) But they don’t seem to mind; they are placid and happy in their safe little house.

And another sweet photo of some others in their houses.

The resident on the lower right seems to have brought in some bedding for a nest – perhaps now we will find out for real where pigeons come from.

We had a sighting of a dead pigeon in one of the condos, but the body seems to have gone away now. It’s just like the rest of the building – the human inhabitants. We come and we go. One of life’s hard but real lessons that we’ve learned up close here in Tower West.

Mom’s birthday

Today is my mother’s 78th birthday, which she was not able to actually enjoy on the outside of the planet. I’ve thought about her all day. Thinking about my mother is not necessarily a completely happy situation; she was a staggeringly complicated person. Some of that is no doubt attributable to the complexity of her family life as a child. Her mother and father divorced when she was still a very little girl, in the 1930s when this was not a popular thing to do. Her father was subsequently killed in World War II, in 1944 when she was 11 years old.




A piece of my mother's gravestone, which my
stepfather Clark gave to each of us.

 

After we published her obituary (and it was put online by the newspaper) it was a curious discovery for us to find that we were contacted by a young (and incredibly generous and kind) French man who was researching the soldiers who died in France near the end of the war. We learned a tremendous amount of information about her father, including finding a photo of him which we never had before. It was really pretty fantastic.



John Newton Apperson, my mother's father, in the uniform of the
Richmond Light Infantry Blues. He was awarded a Purple Heart,
and buried in the US Military Cemetery Rhone, Draguignan, France.



Clark sent me much of the “archive” such as it was of my mother’s early life, which I have cataloged, scanned, and provided to the family. It tells much of the missing information from her early life. She never wanted to talk about any of these things, which we didn’t understand. At least now we know a bit more about them all, and their complex lives, and the deep love of some of them for each other which had been previously unknown to us.

On another day I will publish the material I wrote for her 75th birthday, which is her “real” eulogy.

A 9/11 Shrine – Again

Yesterday morning after the announcement that Osama bin Laden was killed, our neighbor who lost his son in the World Trade Center attacks put his shrine downstairs in the lobby. I took a picture of it for the blog because it touched me, and it so exemplifies the shrines that I talk about all the time.

Michael’s death in that horrible event had a bad effect on his mother, who was never the same after that and died a few years ago.

His father was so proud of him, as you can see by the details he provided about his life here. Reading Michael’s accomplishments, it reminds me of my own thoughts about the deep tragedy of the loss of knowledge and experience that such an untimely death causes – besides the deep heartache and never-ending sorrow from the loss of the loved one.

We wrote a card and added it to the shrine. I think of the Colberts every time I think about that awful day. The elimination of Osama bin Laden does not take away the sadness or create “closure” – that over-used, false word that is so often used in place of “revenge.” Nothing closes wounds like these.

Knut gets love

Our housekeeper Mona has a sense of humor, and occasionally leaves the bed decorated with some of the stuffed animals we have in the bedroom. Yesterday’s was especially cute, featuring the cuddly embrace of two bears that have been given to us – a Steiff Knut from my friend Andrea and a hand-made fluffy brown teddy that Mark’s sister Vickie made and gave to us. Everyone knows we like bears!


Bear love



Andrea, who lives in Germany, knew that we were Knut fans and sent us this beautiful little Knut. Like the rest of the world we were enraptured by the poor rejected polar bear that the Berlin Zoo hand-fed and nursed into adulthood. Who couldn’t love a baby polar bear? The trouble was, Knut grew into a brownish scraggly and not-so-pretty adolescent and young adult, who seemed isolated and depressed. People still came, but that lovely bloom of fresh white youth and huggable-ness was long gone.

But then, to the shock and sadness of the whole world, Knut died last month of some sort of strange changes in his brain, and convulsions which caused him to fall into his pool and drown. He was only four years old, which is very young for a polar bear. Thinking back, his mother rejected him when he was so young that he would have died without human intervention. Because we anthropomorphize, we fed him (though many wildlife experts thought this was wrong and said so). But what if his mamma was right? What if she perceived that he had a problem that would not let him live long, and she chose the solution that nature would have provided. . .

We will never know – but it’s something to think about. Knut had some good years of life, he was by the account of his keeper a happy if shy bear, and was learning how to be social with other bears when the tragedy occurred. By human standards, we did the right thing for Knut. And I suppose that Knut gave the humanity a renewed focus on the polar bear kind, which the bears badly need in this complex world today.

In a gesture not usually provided to human kind (except perhaps Evita Peron), the Berlin Zoo decided to stuff Knut’s body and place him in the Berlin Museum of Natural History – so visitors can still see at least the outsidy parts of Knut for generations to come.

Something good happens

When I come back to the apartment building each week, I always ask the doorman, “Did anything good happen this week – that I would care about?” They always laugh at me and if something good did happen they tell me! Sometimes good things do happen.

There is a place on television where I can always go and reliably find something good happening: HGTV. For the uninitiated, this is Home & Garden Television, a cable station that runs 24 hours a day, largely do-it-yourself (DIY) programming. On the face of it, this doesn’t seem like it would be that interesting. However, the great genius of the programming is simple and straightforward. At the beginning of every half hour:

1. There is a problem

2. The experts come in to help, and spend only $2,000 (the magic number)

3. At the end of the program, the problem is solved and the homeowner is happy – often deliriously happy.

4. I am vicariously happy too!

They seem to me to be mostly decorating shows, though they do gardens also, and “find my rental” / “find me a new house” with the same formulaic regularity (three options, renter/homeowner has the suspenseful decision to make of which to pick!) Nothing bad ever happens. It always works out in the end.

When channel surfing (a guilty pleasure of La Calavera when in attention-deficit mode), it’s possible to watch TLC’s shows with similar attributes at the same time as HGTV’s shows, and kind of get a two (or three) for one. This is possible with the one hour program “What Not To Wear” for example, which actually is less simpatico than HGTV’s offering, but in which you can see all the highlights of the hapless subject of WNTW’s journey (clothes thrown out, shopping trips, hair and makeup, and the reveal) and still catch the problem statement, major work effort, and final result on not one but two HGTV episodes. Couch potato heaven.

The net effect of watching several hours of HGTV programming is an odd but vacuous high, in which everyone is happy endlessly, generally chirping away with Canadian accents (oot for out, hoose for house, and so forth) while hopelessly ugly houses are dolled up for the sale by pretty/handsome designers, or home project disasters are fixed by self-righteous, crusading handymen who know more than the city inspector about electricity and plumbing. In the beginning of watching this programming I got some good ideas for painting and decorating, but these days it’s more spectator sport to criticize the approach – Mr. Bear can be tempted into this mind-candy in weak moments, and takes great pleasure in eloquently talking about what crap the solutions are, often all the way through the commercials and into the next section, when he must be shushed. It’s so much fun!

Attractive and well-meaning hosts of HGTV.

I have never seen even a single dark moment in one of these shows until yesterday, and if you weren’t watching closely, it could have been missed. A teenage girl had called a back yard fix-it show to come in and fix her dad’s shed, which was such an eyesore that a neighbor had reported them to the town who had inspected and condemned it. When the crew arrives, the back yard looks like it accidentally came from the “Hoarding: Buried Alive” show – clearly the habitation of a hoarder. Without skipping a beat, the crew sized up the situation and decided they could build a better (and compliant) shed, but that at the same time they would tidy the back yard.

It seemed pretty clear when Dad, a musician and martial arts instructor, came home, that this was his first introduction to this project. A look of blind panic came across his face, but the pressure was on and he had to agree to the program. Just like in “Buried Alive,” there were a few shots of the helpful team showing him the garbage piece by piece, before putting it into the dumpster, and poor Dad saying, “Well, I was thinking I could use it for this and that” while the crew poo-pooed it and he agreed to throw it away.

In the requisite 28 minutes (commercials included) the back yard was tidied, a new path was laid, it was made safe for little brother to play there, and a pretty, new shed was built. Smiles all around! But at the very end, the host remarks to Dad, “Now that you have this great shed, maybe you can have this same kind of activity inside the house and clear it up the way we have the back yard” – to which Dad wanly smiles and nods. Oy vey.

Fortunately, the very next half hour was back to happy and complacent problem solving, with relatively normal people.

As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing.”

The Firehouse

In the months after September 11, 2001, all anyone in New York could talk or think about was the attack on the World Trade Centers. I wrote the message below for friends on that occasion, and as it references shines I thought it would be of interest – this is how I was first exposed to shrines.

+ + + +

Here in New York, in the days after the event, shrines sprang up spontaneously all over the city. Initially people were putting up xeroxed signs with photos and physical descriptions of their lost loved ones (including details like "butterfly tattoo on back of right shoulder" - rather sad and distressing). Of course flags came out everywhere. All along Madison Avenue, the stores removed their entire commercial displays and put silver frames in the windows with carefully composed messages of sadness. I found I never got tired of reading them, whether they were full page ads in the paper, these store messages, or xeroxed statements that spontaneously appeared everywhere you looked.

As time has passed, the initial overwhelming expression of distress has died back somewhat - after all, Rudy Giuliani has asked us to calm down and spend money, something New Yorkers are very able to do. So we are trying to do what we are told. A few weeks ago I was planning to buy some flowers on my way home from work, so I decided to walk over to 8th Avenue and down to 42nd Street where I catch the bus, hoping to have a few cheaper flower choices over there. Rockefeller Center is not known for flower bargains! I walked briskly down 48th Street (our office is at 48th and 6th) and as I reached 8th Avenue, I saw dozens of papers and banners on the wall to my left. Then I saw large 5-gallon white plastic tubs filled to overflowing with flowers. The pages were signed by hundreds of people, sending their good wishes to the City of New York and the Firefighters. I had reached a fire station.

It is hard to explain the feeling that came over me as I turned the corner. I live here, but somehow I had missed any news coverage of what had happened to the fire stations. It was an amazing shrine. This particular fire station had lost 15 men in the World Trade Center collapses. They had placed large photographs of the lost men into a giant frame and hung it on the pillar between the doors where the fire trucks come out. At least 25 white buckets were lining the sidewalk against the fire station, each one with dozens of bouquets stuffed in as tight as they would fit. There were hundreds of small candles in red glass holders, like they have in Catholic churches, all lit and making a big glowing fire carpet below the large frame with the photos. They had a table with a book on it one could sign, and a line of people were patiently waiting to sign it.
 

 

The 9/11 WTC Fallen Heroes American Flag, Photograph by Rob Hans – I bought this image as a result of searching for a flag image; it touched me deeply.

This shrine must have been there for a month, and I'd missed it because I never took that route to the bus. I was stopped in my tracks. So were dozens of other people. Everyone just stood there in tears. The fire guys were standing around, being nice and helpful. They had been enduring this for a month! The constant outpouring of grief and sorrow that the average person couldn't help but express upon seeing them must have been difficult to bear. I signed the book, and read the tributes. Many photos of the lost men with their families, their dogs, and their fire buddies were taped to the building. Flags were everywhere. The entire face of the building was completely covered by people's offerings of love and condolence, and expressions of patriotism.

When I could go on, I walked down 8th Avenue and the banners and letters continued halfway down the block, nailed to the blue construction wall that surrounded the building next door. There were things from Santa Barbara, Japan, Denver, from school children, from anyone and everyone you could think of. It was unbelievable.

The other day I took Mark to see it, wondering if it would still be as intense. Fortunately it had receded  somewhat, most notably in that the fire guys had closed the big doors to the trucks, and were no longer standing out front - though the flowers were still as numerous and fresh. I remember reading how similar messages of hope and sadness had been coming by the mail sacks full to schools in New York City, and that they eventually stopped showing them to the children because it was all too much. Someone had remarked, "they need to do these things and send them, but we don't need to read them any more." I think I didn't realize what that meant until I saw the fire station.

The smaller shrines are fading now, with the newer concerns with anthrax and the need to get on with things. I am very aware every day that we now live in a war zone, and have taken to listening to Bach on my headphones while I walk up from 42nd Street every day, wary and watching but trying to maintain balance. We've heard that in Afghanistan they are still going to the market, going to school, making products and selling them, getting married, listening to the radio; as I didn't experience WWII or any other war, I guess I never realized that you still have to make dinner and go to work, even if a war is on. I dearly hope that we don't have any more incidents here, but we are all very aware that it is only a matter of time.  November 2001

The Forcynthia is in bloom

Forsythia: Happy harbingers of spring for East coast denizens, with a silly and very short story. When I worked for Agfa in Boston many years ago, I used to set my alarm clock to the radio. It was less harsh than an alarm bell for me.

So, one morning, I was lying there asleep, and the radio went on with the loud announcement that “The For Cynthia is in bloom!”

This go La Calavera’s drowsy attention – she sat bold upright in bed and stared with perplexity at the alarm clock! But of course, it was all the stuff of dreams; they really said “Forsythia”. This took years to sink in.

(Taken in the garden in front of our apartment today)

The good news is that the radio has not since spoken directly to La Calavera. And for today, that the forsythia is in bloom!

Harald is on the way

The Bear’s sister Vickie has had a serious operation, and is still in hospital recovering. He will be seeing her this week in England, and he will be bringing along a very special new friend – a lovely blonde Steiff bear we met recently. He was just irresistible with his beautiful mohair plush, growler, and sweet, friendly face – and he is big enough to hug which is best of all. The evening we found him we realized his name is Harald. The two Bears are on the plane now, to see Vickie, and to join her amazing collection of hundreds of bears both large and small.

Here is the note that Harald prepared for Vickie to introduce himself. He took a picture of his sincere sweet face for the cover of his letter.

                                                                                       April 9, 2011

Hello Vickie,

My name is Harald, and as of course you can see I am a light brown Bear (rather naked just at the moment, but perhaps you have a nice sweater I could borrow!) I’ve been on a long journey to see you, with my starting place in Germany where I was born, and an involved set of circumstances that got me to America (which I can hardly remember it is so complicated). Finally one day I was sitting in a store with some of my friends (a very large Lion on wheels who was a friendly fellow, and another quite large brown Bear named Aloysius who enjoyed rather too many beers for my taste) and some others I knew less well.

But then your brother the Bear and La Calavera came by, and called out to me that you were in need of a lovely Bear for company, and I decided that I should come along with them to see you.

And so, here I am, having now come back from America to Europe, to England. I am quite prepared to sit here with you as long as you like. I don’t need a lot of conversation, but I do have a growl as you will determine if you rock me forwards and backwards. I’m a soft touch—just give me a bit of love and friendliness and I’ll just growl for fun.

I come bringing love from your dear brother and sister-in-law who think of you all the time,

Your new, but faithful friend,

Harald (the Bear)

+ + + + +

Get well soon Vickie! We love you.

Living it

Something I am very conscious of is that it is so easy to postulate about how one might feel, or one might behave, when confronted with desperate adversity. I have no doubt that there is value to prepare – like a personal disaster plan, to brace one’s mind and self for the advent of the inevitable should help when the time arrives.

On the CNN website today was a story Facing death, CNN sports legend embraces life which was both heartbreaking and encouraging. Nick Charles, who was not known to me (La Calavera is not a sports fan) had a late life marriage to a younger woman, and they had a child when he was 60. Now, at 65, he is at the end of a battle with cancer. His desire to be present for his daughter in her life after he is gone has provided a lot of energy to him to find good things in his process toward death, which is chronicled in this story. I was taken by a comment he made in the video that is up with the story, “Never give up on life,” and by his tender kisses and love toward his little daughter.

Like Churchill said in 1941 during the early days of the Second World War, “never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

And like my father in his last days, who would awake and see us sitting by his bed and say, “I love you” – all he could manage to say in his awful and sad state.

Never give up. Never give in. I love you. Beautiful words that give life and hope.

Happiness

A while back I heard a story on National Public Radio about a website where you could go and take a survey which would give back a reading on your personal happiness, sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center. I love these kinds of things; the one that the Bear and I have spent the most time to understand is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which has brought us both insight and delight over many years now. (For those in the know, both the Bear and La Calavera are ENTJ, a type described by Keirsey as the “Field Marshal”; two field marshals in one house can occasionally be interesting!)

In any case, I had the website address for the Authentic Happiness Inventory for some time, and then I found another reason to be interested in the survey instrument (I had to do one for work and was seeking ideas for how to ask the questions). So I went for a visit to take the test.

There are several tests, as it turns out, but I took the one that was entitled “Authentic Happiness Inventory” which asks questions like this:

A. I feel like a failure.

B. I do not feel like a winner.

C. I feel like I have succeeded more than most people.

D. As I look back on my life, all I see are victories.

E. I feel I am extraordinarily successful.

and

A. My life is a bad one.

B. My life is an OK one.

C. My life is a good one.

D. My life is a very good one.

E. My life is a wonderful one.

Well, you all know how La Calavera thinks about her life! I graded myself hard; there seemed a risk of sounding dementedly delighted (which might indicate other problems all by itself!) but I was honest. It’s obviously a scale of 1-5, with 1 being not very happy and 5 being exuberantly happy. My score was 3.92, which when compared to other respondents matching my demographics, placed me overall in the 90%+ percentile of happiness. That about matches my perception of it, so that is pretty good all around!

This does, however, cause one to think a bit about the nature of the happiness, and whether it’s something that is of this moment (or year, or decade) of one’s life, or if it is a permanent state. As I spent time thinking about my own “happiness” I realize that of course it had to do as much with circumstances as with my innate being; I have a good and happy marriage, I have a good job where I believe I am valued and where I do good and meaningful work, I have enough money that I don’t worry about it, my health is good and so is the Bear’s, I have family and friends that I love, and as I am always busy finding the universe in my grain of sand, I find my life interesting all the time. And, of paramount importance, I feel that all of these good conditions extend out into the future as far as I can see.

I wonder, however, what happens when a piece of that gets taken away. Or, more to the point, what will happen to me? This current state of happiness has not always existed; there have been dark days and even years in the past for various different reasons. One of the great and profound insights that getting older has brought to me is that many things that I used to think mattered a lot, actually don’t. I don’t need for everyone to like me (in fact, any more, I really don’t care at all – and this was a great source of unhappiness in the past). As a friend of mine said recently, her husband’s favorite leveling remark is “Did anybody die?” and of course when nobody did, then all else is in perspective. So many things can seem to loom so large, and the looming takes away happiness – more even than the thing itself.

I find myself repeating Serenity Prayer a lot these days, especially in my work life as I try to help people figure out very complex business social relationships: “ . . . grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” It’s a variant on understanding what is truly important. There are not very many truly important elements, whether in private life or in business. But you have to know what they are, and go after them, and put the other things out of your mind.

I hope that everyone is happy, and that if the bad things happen to you that I can help, and if they happen to me, that you will help me; so that we can grow in wisdom, and become happier all the time.

Shrines

The Bear and I have our Saturday circuit – usually involving the flea market at 6^th Avenue at 25^th  in the city, in a two-story garage (known in our jargon as “The Flea”). Another day La Calavera will talk about global flea markets, but the reason to mention it today is that on Saturday the vendors had their memorial table up, which is not there every week but is a regular feature.

We don’t know exactly who does it, but this is a very touching shrine to the members of the vendor community who are no more. We have gotten to know some of them because we have our things we like to look at (books, industrial design, things that incorporate letters, beads, glass and ceramics). But we don’t know everyone, and I can’t say that we know any of the people featured on the shrine table shown here.

There are always flowers on this table, and photos of the lost friends, with framed obituaries and mementos. The close-up below shows the little card they put on the table stating “In loving memory of our friends” in nice type, but there is also the amusing tent card for the insensitive passers-by who might have missed the larger message in the display of religious statuettes, medals and frames – “Don’t Touch not for sale.”

As someone who grew up in a non-Catholic faith, shrines of this type entered my consciousness only relatively recently. I’ve always seen those shrines at the side of the road where people leave flowers and signs for loved ones killed there, but didn’t associate that to this kind of display. My appreciation of shrines was completely changed after the September 11^th attacks, and one day soon I will publish my account of a fire department’s shrine in the aftermath which was pretty overwhelming.

Our habit (between the Bear and me) is to make shrines in the form of little books – so the Bear’s father was made a lovely book for his funeral, with everyone’s remarks and little stories in it. I wrote my mother’s obituary while she was actually still alive, for her 75^th birthday party, and that too I will publish at some point here; I think we all knew at that time that she was not going to live a whole lot longer and it seemed the right thing to do. Though, now that I think of it, I also made a shrine for her at the funeral itself, using photos from her life and little mementos. It was actually someone else’s “shrine” contribution that made me the most sad – someone put a little wooden toy on her ashes box, which she would have loved. Her husband gave us all a piece of the granite from her gravestone which I’ve put on the front table in our foyer, and will one day put a small plaque on it so that future generations will know what it is.

I know cemeteries perform this function too, and actually we have enjoyed many of them over time, but that’s only possible when someone you love dearly is not recently added to the inhabitants. When my father died Joan made him an enormous monument and, I’m quite sure, looks after it to this day.

There are shrines of happiness too, I have noticed – like the display of the Berlin Wall in New York City that I ran across a few years ago. It had special resonance for me as I was there for that occasion. One day I will write about that.

A segment of Berlin wall in New York on 53rd Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues(1)

I guess I don’t think of things like public monuments in this same way, because they seem institutional. I like the shrines that people make spontaneously, locally. They are truly from the heart.

La Calavera would love to share other shrines. Get in touch!

(1) Taken 19 January 2008 by Gaurav1146 who can be found on Wikipedia – thanks Gaurav for putting this image out there!

Finding the universe in my grain of sand

One of the things I have enjoyed the most about my life is that I have found all of the things that I have done deeply interesting. This has caused perplexity in onlookers; having started out by going to art school, it’s hard for some to picture that I might enjoy business operations consulting today. One of the things that people often say is, “That doesn’t seem very creative to me.” That is not how I see it: creativity is not limited to the making of artworks, and indeed, thinking creatively about one’s daily life makes every minute and hour intellectually interesting.

Long after I’d recognized my way of thinking – that everything is interesting – I was exposed to William Blake’s poem Auguries of Innocence which is (in my opinion) dreadfully and ponderously long. However, the first stanza is what everyone thinks of with this poem and it’s wonderful; it really aligns to my point of view:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

To me it goes along with Rudyard Kipling’s poem If which I have always loved and aspired to – especially in the penultimate lines

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run. . .

Alas, Kipling determines in the very last lines that having all those wonderful virtues makes one a “Man” which does rather stick in La Calavera’s craw. But never mind that – it repays a read on a regular basis regardless of your gender persuasion. It opens your heart.

The things I’ve been given to think about by diverse circumstances so far in my life – drawing, and letterforms, and type technology, and marketing (actually the least interesting), and market research, information systems, outsourcing, and publishing books, do seem on the surface to be dissimilar. But they all fit into a logical continuum to me!

Earlier in my life I thought that type and type technology was the very best job I ever had – I could work with so many very talented artists and technical people, solving problems that touched the whole world through the printers we were supplying that went into every office environment on the planet. I’ve tended since then to see the problems placed in my way in a greater and greater perspective (doubtless annoying those around me considerably and they have let me know this!)

However, in a very complex world where everything touches everything, and where change in every form at every level of human endeavor and interaction seems to happen faster and faster, it is in some ways inevitable that everything would be present even in work problems which seem contained and localized.

And so, now that I spend considerable effort to think about outsourcing management and publishing books, they too have become fascinating universes in their grains of sand. With a few words you can see it too. For example, never before in history have so many companies performed the work of other companies – and people are not prepared psychologically or from an historical management training perspective to deal with this new world, so they struggle greatly with this paradigm. And books (especially what we are calling White Endpaper Books) are in the early days of disappearing as paper entities, following the complex digital trail that we already lived through with open format type, with music, and with movies. So how do we ensure that the books we care about, books with intrinsic visual and production value, survive this devastating upheaval? These two types of change have ripples throughout global society. And so they are quite deep problems that take the great intellectual effort of many people to navigate. It is so interesting to be part of the thinkers in these fields.

You can see it: the universe is in my grains of sand. It keeps things very interesting! And I keep filling my minutes with all these interesting thoughts – because I don’t know when there won’t be minutes any more.