Friday, March 05, 2010

America the Interesting

I was in a health food store the other day, helping my favorite vegan pick up a few meatless, non-dairy, cruelty-free foods, when I realized that America is actually becoming more interesting. Health food stores used to seem exotic and wacky to a good number of us heartland types. Kansas City native Calvin Trillin couldn’t visit a health food shop without ranting about the bizarre products he swore they sold there, things like “soy waste, granola dust, and pure extract of balsa wood.” “You know very well there’s no such thing as soy waste,” his wife Alice would say, but he’d rant on about the employees at the store. “If bumblebee leavings and stump paste are so good for you,” he would say, “why can’t any of these guys grow full beards?” But on our recent visit to the health food store I couldn’t find a single jar of stump paste or even one twisty-tied baggie of granola dust. Apart from a couple of the mineral supplements, I recognized pretty much everything I saw there. In the space of only a couple of decades, we have become accustomed to a diet that is much more diverse and interesting.

And even the neighborhood food shops aren’t as parochial as they used to be. Sixteen years ago, on my first evening as a resident of Michiana, I went to the nearest grocery store to pick up something for dinner. Someone at home had an unsettled tummy, so I asked the clerk to point out a few of the less spicy foods there in the deli case. “Oh, no, sir,” she said, “we hardly ever put spices in anything we make.” But now that same store has torn out the giant Aisle 1 racks of Technicolor jello salads and installed a fifteen-foot cooler of imported cheeses. Remember Monty Python’s Cheese shop skit, where John Cleese asks for several dozen different cheeses, and one after another the shopkeeper informs him that they are out of stock? Well, we can finally purchase them all right here in Michiana.

You gather from the Monty Python skit that in 1970 an English family might be acquainted with a pretty nice variety of regional and even some foreign cheeses. But in 1970 the average American household might have had only cheddar and Swiss and what we jokingly called at our house back then, “some really good Velveeta.” Calvin Trillin, of course, is a satirist, and his 1980 essay about health food shops spoofed a quirky fringe of folks out there inventing a new food and health tradition. But he was also spoofing himself and a broad swathe of Americans who could get a little jumpy and critical around any unfamiliar bit of culture, even if it tasted good. In spite of intervening wars and Patriot Acts and acts of terror, we’re getting better at that too. No longer does a Chinese restaurant supply the most exotic food a Midwestern child is likely to eat growing up. Our kids have classmates with names I never heard of when I was in school; our stores and restaurants are more varied. It’s not unusual to be a vegetarian or to know a vegan. I still love the slightly bitter tang and crunch at the pale heart of a head of iceberg lettuce, but face it – America is a more interesting and colorful place now. I’d be happy to have a plate of Boiled and salted bright green edamame anytime.

Broadcast by Ken Smith on March 05, 2010
Arts & Entertainment • Community • Customs & Rituals • Food • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, January 29, 2010

Phone Call from the Other Side of the World

I got a new cell phone a couple of months ago, and I confess that it wasn’t the one I really wanted. I coveted an iPhone. We stood there in the mall trying to find a family plan that would make all four of us happy. The kids wanted certain sleek models offered by Sprint. The annoying little guy who wears a red cape and sits on my left shoulder said, “Just pull rank and make them choose from the company you like. You work hard, you deserve a cool phone.” The nerdy little guy in white on my other shoulder nodded at the kids, who were grooving on the display models. They sure looked happy. Oh, all right. I’ll take one of these little Blackberry things with a keyboard the size of my thumb and the clunky Internet service and the mouse control that looks and feels like a life-size, realistic white plastic model of a pimple.

Almost right away, my Blackberry started getting phone calls from overseas, or so I figured since the caller’s number was several digits longer than good old U.S. numbers. Presumably this was a friend or family member of the last person who was assigned my new number. I ignored the calls, but they kept coming, so one day I finally picked up and said hello. The person on the other end spoke a completely mysterious language. I said, “You have the wrong number,” and pretty soon he hung up. But he’d call again every couple of days and we’d go through it all once more.  I had the impression that the fellow didn’t understand any English at all, and the words he spoke didn’t sound like any of the European or East Asian languages we Americans study in school or hear in the movies. The calls continued, but there was no communication going on. None.

Eventually I realized that I could look up the caller’s country code. His first digits were 233; in a moment Google told me that the calls were coming from Ghana. I checked out a map of Africa. There was Ghana, south of the Sahara on the continent’s big curving west coast, facing the Atlantic Ocean and looking south. And still the calls came, and when I said, “Do you speak English?” there would be more of that unfamiliar tongue. I looked it up – more than a dozen languages are commonly spoken in Ghana, with names I’d never heard before and didn’t know how to pronounce, like Asante, Ewe, Fante, and Dagarte.

So somebody in Ghana was missing somebody here in area code 574. Maybe some son or daughter had come to study at one of our area colleges? During the Christmas season, more calls – there had been no holiday trip back home to Africa. Somebody was lost here or didn’t want to be found.

I read a little about Ghana. Drug traffic, but too poor an economy for the international drug cartels to launder as much money as they might like. Average education, ninth grade. Lifespan 59 years for men and 60 for women. Home of Lake Volta, the largest man-made body of water in the world. Risk of malaria, rabies, typhoid, and some other diseases I’d never heard of before. I saw pictures of villages and countryside, I heard collections of beautiful rhythm-driven music.

An image of the country started to form in my mind, and I realized that the next time a call came from overseas on my cramped little phone, I could say, “Hello, Ghana.” But what good would that do? Someone was lost here, and half the world away a friend, a father, perhaps a husband, was calling and calling and never getting through.

Broadcast by Ken Smith on January 29, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Community • Family & Friends • Travel • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, January 22, 2010

Heading Toward the Finish Line

As we near the time to waddle out of the major eating season of the year, I breathe a sigh of both thanks for the opportunity and relief that once again, it didn’t kill me. Starting with Thanksgiving and extending to Valentine’s Day, treats are the order of the day.

My creative assistant, Larry, has offered the helpful suggestion that, like any major competition, we need to train for the season. Note now, you need to prepare. You can’t just go into this cold turkey. Beginning in late October or early November, we should begin to overeat just a bit each day in order to stretch our stomachs, so that they can accommodate the coming onslaught. He has named this regimen “The Stomach Pack.” Not such a bad plan, since there almost certainly will be quite a feast coming soon to a table near you. As Oscar Wilde said in The Importance of Being Earnest, “I hate people who are not serious about their meals.” This is crucial business.

The marathon begins with the fourth Thursday of November. Face it, Thanksgiving is huge! Even those who don’t eat much of anything except sandwiches as a regular habit—and in some circles, that includes breakfast—are faced with fowl, meat, vegetables, assorted bread products and other grain-based starches, plus potatoes, relishes and desserts: most served separately, not stacked, and all at one meal. It’s quite a stretch. Even through the tryptophan-induced haze, those who haven’t trained risk facing severe pain.

From there we move, admittedly now a bit more slowly, into the Christmas party season. Starting early in December, we gather at festive tables that are laden with tempting hors d’oeuvres and desserts, sometimes even with full dinners. Then, there are the incidental feedings: gifts of candies, cookies, cakes and breads and tastings of things that we ourselves are preparing. It’s a season that would try the eating stamina of a Hobbit. The December heats culminate with the main event: Christmas dinner. This often is only a slight variation on the Thanksgiving competition. There are many of the same dishes as were served at Thanksgiving, but with a bonus round.  More desserts appear:  now it’s not just pies, but also cakes, cookies, custards and plum and figgy puddings topped with the not-to-missed hard sauce.  Not just the imagination is stretched under the weight of this groaning board. Another example of why it would have been good to train starting months ago.

Just a week later, we come to New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. There’s that long party while waiting for the midnight hour. What to do to pass the time? I know! Let’s belly up to the buffet! Surviving that, we move to the eating requirements of January 1st. My mother always said that you had to eat some cabbage for good luck. A quick look at the internet to see other food traditions for the day yielded: grapes, greens, fish, pork, legumes, and cakes—quite a lot of necessities there to avoid the bogeyman of bad luck. The one bit of good news for New Year’s is that there is an amusing list of foods not to consume. Best to avoid: lobster, for instance, because they move backwards and could lead to setbacks. Chicken also is discouraged because the bird scratches backwards, which could cause regret or dwelling on the past. Another theory warns against eating any winged fowl because good luck could fly away.  Finally, a bit of restraint is encouraged.

Those of us with January birthdays or anniversaries face yet another lap in the marathon. Unless exceedingly well-trained, best to avoid venues that offer excellent service. Recently, at the LaSalle Grill, I glanced at the menu and noted the absence of the asparagus side dish. Hearing my lament, José checked and came back to let me know that there was one order of it in the kitchen and that it could be mine. To refuse his thoughtful offer would have been churlish.

Heading toward the last lap, Valentine’s Day, I am grateful for the bounty, but embrace the thought of pushing back from the training table and greeting the arrival of abstemious Lent. Bon appetite! For Michiana Chronicles this is . . . 

Broadcast by Jeanette Saddler Taylor on January 22, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Community • Customs & Rituals • Family & Friends • Food • Health • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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A random pick from more than 400 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:

April Lidinsky -- Scrapping with Scrapbooks / Thinking About Roughing It / Learning to Shut Up / A Toddler Abroad / Pajama Parties, Not Political Parties / Grace on the Journey / Calculating Gender / Becoming Foreign / Mind Games / Painting on Windows / Facing Facebook / More essays by April

Jeff Nixa -- Vision Quest / A Green Witch / A Kid and a Rock / A Hospital Epiphany / Action Heroes / Walking with Jameson / Making Up on the South Shore / Gettysburg / A Postcard from the Inner City / Dancing with Trains / Bike to Work Week / More essays by Jeff

Ken Smith -- Doing Algebra / What Is Poetry Good For? / Letters from the War / Pirates and Piercings / Fossil Park / Downtown Tourist Blues / Far Away Family / A Season Pass to the Beach / Phone Call from the Other Side of the World / Santa’s Helicopter / The Year in Review / More essays by Ken

Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- Order in the Court / Heading Toward the Finish Line / Getting Together / One Thing A Day / Feelin’ Cranky, But Trying to Remain Civil / Pollyanna Grows Despondent / Location, Location, Location / Boomers Going Bust / Dishes / Grubbing in the Dirt / The St. John’s Bible / More essays by Jeanette

Heather Curlee Novak -- Running Music / Humbled Handless / Celebration / Feeding Willard / More essays by Heather

David James -- Christmas Eve, 1971 / The Family Dogs / More essays by David

Elizabeth Van Jacob -- Driving On / More essays by Elizabeth

Joe Chaney -- Virginia Tech / Trends in the Baby Names Market / Voices in Your Head / I’m the Anti-Grade Inflation Czar (or, Words of Comfort for Teachers in their Time of Trial) / A Midwestern Spring / Hearing Our Spirit Voice / The Most Important Job / Sneezes and Oopses / Babies! / Wake up the Echoes / Greetings, Earthlings / More essays by Joe

Louise Collins -- Counting Down to Christmas / Labor Day Weekend / Where Are You From? / Minerals and Memory / Spring Makeovers / A Trip to the Chocolate Factory / Learning to Cook / On Safari / A Weekend of Norwegian Folk Fiddle / The Sensations of Winter / A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Enthusiast / More essays by Louise

Jonathan Nashel -- It’s a Long, Long, Road from May to December / Why Morphine is Overrated / John Lennon Comes to Grape Road / Taking Stock / Loretta Lynn, Richard Nixon, and the Wonders of American Culture / Women’s Football Comes to Michiana / Riding a Big Rig / The World Trade Center and the Meaning of Patriotism / Baseball and Me / God Bless Indiana / What I’d Like to Ask George W. Bush / More essays by Jonathan