This Week: Healthy Eats and the New York Jets

The return of the crock pot (apparently also known as "slow cooker") signals winter for me, with warm comfort food that's easy to prepare and healthy to eat. .. as long as I watch the sodium. On the menu for this week: chicken soup, turkey London broil with quinoa and steamed veggies, and lentil soup. Fortunately, I do not have any other mouths to feed, so taste is not an issue, and I'll make enough for the week. Not a particularly substantive post, but a basic one nevertheless.

In other news... I am a big Jets fan. I am thrilled they won. But Holy Mother of God, the sight of Antonio Cromartie blessing himself before a kick off was a bit more than I could take. We (Catholics, that is) get enough bad press; we certainly don't need any more.

1-1-11

Nunc Coepi.. now we begin... again.  I think I finally understand that my perennial desire to "get back on track," at this point, is hardwired into my DNA, period.  And I guess as long as the track is solid and headed in a positive direction, it's all good.  It would be nice to actually stay on the track, without falling off or taking a wayward turn. Such a feat, however, would likely be my last stop; so I'd better just get used to the detours.

Gray Matters

Things currently wondering through (no longer occupying) spaces in my brain...Cornell note-taking, documentaries about America's great stories and people... my responsibilities at work... reading articles about teaching writing, about teaching reading, about the latest iteration of ongoing education reform... the best way to approach my upcoming course ... my off and on spirituality, the ebb and flow of my daily life ... Advent... Little Liam and the current generation of Hannons... wishing I could do something for Audrey.... thankful for my objectively-speaking easy life... what to do about Ja'Nelle.... thinking about my finances as I begin a ten-year countdown to retirement... knowing I need to live in the present, being "present" to others... my right posterior tibial tendon and its rehabilitation... my boot camp book club... fixing the summer reading Infinite Campus fiasco... how I have managed to forget almost everything I ever read or studied.... gleeful guilt that Norma did my laundry and put out my Christmas decorations.... shopping... a sublimely ridiculous Saturday afternoon on blogspot...

The Social Network and Me These Days

I can lose an hour easily on Facebook. Check in on the Profile page,  go to Home, post something, check out new posts, pictures, write on someone's wall, you name it.  Thank God this site is not accessible from my place of work, otherwise I would have some serious problems with efficiency, not to mention employment. But it feeds my ADD nicely.

In the past few days, I have experienced the phenomenon many have discussed about Facebook: connecting with people from the past. And while I feel no desire to strike up adult friendships with third-grade classmates, I am enjoying memories I have not accessed for decades. There are many facets to this interest, the most obvious one being the social network that facilitates the communication. Another is that I grew up in a city and because of changing demographics (See "white flight") no one from my childhood has lived in the old neighborhood for years. It's not like we go back to the family home for the holidays and drive passed the old school, the park, the candy store, or the town hall ---- an experience oft depicted in stories from America's heartland--- to which I cannot relate. Now, we can return virtually, and the Incarnation Class of 1973 has begun to trickle homeward.

I amazed myself earlier today when I was able to "tag" without hesitation at least 25 out of the 50 kids in my third grade class-- overwhelmingly boys, not girls, but that's for another post. I retrieved from long-term storage first and last names of people I have not seen or thought about in 40 years. Of course, I still cannot remember where I put my glasses 20 minutes ago. Yes, the joys of 50.

The Movie Was Not All Right

Sitting through The Kids Are All Right this evening, I realized that I have indeed become people I knew long ago and at times thought so old and fogey: my parents. They, however, would have walked out of the movie. That did not even occur to me. The story of a lesbian couple whose son and daughter decide to meet their moms' sperm donor,  The Kids Are All Right was a mediocre film. There were a couple of good, well-acted scenes and some of the characters were interesting, if not compelling. The premise, definitely interesting; the fling between one of the moms and the donor, also interesting. Choosing nuance over near-porn would have been better. 

The "father," played by Mark Rufallo was a quirky, endearing crunchy granola type. Annette Benning and Julianne Moore played fairly one-dimensional characters I found difficult to care too much about. Much of the movie was comprised of gay and straight sex scenes, predictable plot events, and sentimental psychobabble. As my sister-in-law and I discussed it over dinner, we mentioned that it had received fairly positive reviews, so we must be out of the loop. Or, maybe it's just bad form not to like a film with such a hip alternative family, whose members apologize for "not being (their) highest (selves) lately." But, we both agreed that we didn't need to sit through gratuitous sex scenes and bad acting and that not loving the movie didn't make us intolerant. So there. 

Across the Brooklyn Bridge At Last

It took me a few decades, but I finally took a leisurely stroll across the world's most famous suspension bridge. And what a beautiful morning for it. Pictures to come but for now, a little Hart Crane.
          To Brooklyn Bridge
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest

The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,--
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

A Wonderful Debut Novel Of Many Things, Including the Japanese Internment

As a student in elementary and high school during the Vietnam War years, I have no memory of ever learning about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. As a matter of fact, not too much mention was made in school about Vietnam either. But, in college and much more so later in life,  I filled in the gaps by reading widely and viewing many films, including documentaries. Most recently, I read a wonderfully moving novel set in Seattle's Nihonmachi also referred to as "Japantown" which bordered Seattle's Chinatown and other ethnic and racial enclaves during the war.

Written by Jamie Ford, a third generation Chinese American, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet recounts the story of Henry Lee, a Chinese American boy of 12 and his Japanese American best friend Keiko Okabe, who is sent with her family to the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho. The action shifts from the present (1986) life of 56 year-old, recently-widowed Henry to the past (1942) as 12 year-old Henry struggles in school with jingoistic bullies and at home with a fiercely traditional Chinese father who hates all things Japanese. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, his father gives Henry a button to wear on his coat which reads, "I am Chinese." For Henry it might as well read "Beat Me Up Daily."

The symbolic setting and title character is the Panama Hotel, the center of Japanese American culture pre WWII, which became a secret storage space for family heirlooms and precious possessions that citizens could not take with them as they boarded trains for the camps. The hotel looms large in the past and the present of this beautifully crafted story as the reader journeys back and forth in time with Henry Lee - a character worth getting to know and a time in our history worth knowing about.