Food

I regret to say that my life is such that I don’t have nearly as much time as I used to cook everyday.  As a result I have eaten out much more than I have ever before, and this more regular restaurant attendance has led me to reflect on the best dished and restaurants that I have had over the last say 6 months.

 1)      Capellacci alla zucca  @ Il Fornaio in Palo Alto, CA.  Cappelacci are like giant tortellini, these ones were filled with fresh butternut squash cooked in a butter sage sauce sitting in a butter sage tomato cream sauce, I had never heard of such a thing before, but I would like to hear about them again soon.  *****

 2)      Zuppa con Frutti di Mare @ Lungo Mare, Genova, Italy.  There is a picture of this dish a few months back.  Amazing sea food right out of the water onto your plate.

 3)      Fetuccine quattro formaggi  @ Glorias in Provo, UT.  I don’t know how they make that stuff, but I would pay a lot to find out, best four cheeses sauce I have ever had.  I think that I had it 4 times the last month I was in Provo.

 4)      Chef’s Table – Orem, UT.  The dish I had wasn’t amazing… it was basically a glorified cordon bleu, but everyone else’s food was terrific.  The service and restaurant itself was where I have been in a while as any nice…

 5)      Penne e Porcini – Assisi, Italy.  Porcini were great, and the view over the whole Umbrian valley was even better.  

 6)      Pizza Margerita @Sette Soldi, Napoli, Italy.  This place represents all that is good about Napoli.  It is good, cheap, friendly, and loud… and the guy who made my pizza walked out into the street to show me where I could get a good haircut.

 7)      The Red Current, Menlo Park, CA.  This is an amazing little Spanish colonial bistro tucked into a little artsy village.  Terrific food, and very cool environment ... flowers and fountains in the courtyard we ate in were beautiful.

 8)      Burrito Regular – La Hacienda, Alum Rock, CA.  Best burrito and tacos I have ever had.  They put some magic red salsa on everything that is simply amazing.  I go every Wednesday before my night class.  They don’t speak English, and the place is filthy…  maybe some of that extra grease is what makes it taste so good.

Yenta, Hitch, and Today

Occasionally we all observe some event that seems to epitomize some aspect of the Human experience. This week, the middle school play ground was the backdrop for one such observation. The protagonists were Victor and Jasmine, two popular eighth graders. Victor had been sad in class all day because Jasmine broke up with him. One of his friends had told him so. In the staff room, one of the other teachers told me that Jasmine had been sad all morning because one of her friends had told one of Victor’s friends that Jasmine was breaking up with him, but she hadn’t wanted to break up, but now she didn’t know what to do because Victor had already heard. Soon after the bell rang for recess, two circles formed on the blacktop: one around Victor and one around Jasmine. Victor and Jasmine never spoke to each other, and attempted to hide from each others darting glances. Occasionally one of the groups would send a student or two to parlay with the other side.

I don’t know what ended up happening, but I had to chuckle at the way Victor and Jasmine allowed their relationship to be brokered and influenced by their friends. In fact, their relationship became a public discussion and negotiation, in which everyone and anyone was an accepted counselor and negotiator, everyone, that is, except Victor and Jasmine.

While this example of a brokered relationship is perhaps an extreme, we aren’t so far removed from the days of a paid Yenta or Hitch nor from playground negotiating circles as we might care to believe. I spoke at some length about the merits of brokered relationships with a friend who vehemently defended the practice as both valid and nearly necessary… her arguments weren’t groundless either as she has had brokered lifelong relationships for several siblings and friends. I can’t help but wonder why in this most important matter of personal relationships we hand the reins, at least partially, to others thereby allowing them to make, or to help make our decisions?

Why do we ask others to do the finding out for us – by that I mean we ask “do you think that she likes me?” “Do you think that he was just being nice to me, or was he flirting?” etc, etc, etc. Answer: because we feel unsure, insecure, afraid, and awkward to actually find out from the horse’s mouth. I even think that some people enjoy the actual discussion and the late night scheming with roommates, and friends more than they actually want to know the answer to these questions.

Even worse is the public evaluation. Why ought we to allow a large group to have their voice heard on whether or not I should be with so and so. The public isn’t choosing whether or not to be with so and so, I am; as such, the responsibility for that decision falls on me and not on tangentially involved third parties.

I don’t honestly think that my rant will change anything, but I wonder what a world would be like in which our insecurity and awkwardness didn’t prevent us from being transparent. Sinclair Lewis’ Babbit is a marvelous exposition of the risks we run as a society when we lack transparency… perhaps I should read it with my middle schoolers, and perhaps as a society we would benefit from his 90 year old advise!

Social ills, Starfish, Systemic change

Working for a non-profit social-ills conscious organization has given me cause to wonder and talk about how one really ought to go about addressing social problems, and how I or anyone else can really help or make a meaningful impact on the world.

In the past I have felt as though there were basically two different approaches to trying to make a positive difference in the world: a one individual at a time grass roots approach that preaches first bettering yourself, then reaching out to your family, then those closest to you, then your community, etc. This approach puts us in the trenches of real lives and issues with the full complexity of individual situations and people. The parable of the starfish illustrates this method of making a difference: an onlooker pointed out to an unnamed good doer that his work of throwing beached starfish back into the ocean was completely futile because he could never hope to save any significant number of them, not to mention all of the thousands of starfish on the beach. The un-phased good doer held up a starfish and said “yes, I know, but to this one it matters”

An alternative approach to making an impact involves a perhaps more traditional top down leadership model in which an individual seeks positions of influence to inform, involve, and engage their fellow men and women. This model seeks to change the societal structure by altering policy and regulations. In our starfish example, this top down good does would spend his or her time recruiting and organizing labor crews of people to go to the beach to throw star fish back into the water. This model seems to dictate that the individual sets out to change the world, or at least to take an issue head on.

I have often wondered about the merits of these two models. Until recently I foolishly viewed them as mutually exclusive. I was surprised in one of my first Teach for America trainings that TFA believes that in order to have an impact, both models must be used… the individual in the trenches cannot see broadly enough or influence enough potential collaborators to root out entire social problems, nor can the academic or politician in an ivory tower understand issues sufficiently to grasp their full complexity without spending time in the trenches combating whatever the issue might be. At TFA the social ill we are fighting against is educational inequity, and we propose a two phased battle… first the one fought by individual teachers in classrooms, then leading to phase two that plays out in school board meetings, state and national political chambers, other wide reaching institutional avenues.

Thus to truly “make a difference” or play a role in solving most issues I feel that it is important to be involved individually at a ground level, and then just as important is the drive to influence others to collaborate and effect broad systemic change. Further lingering questions that may earn a post of their own are: In a world full of problems that range from genocide to teen pregnancy, and from illiteracy to racial, sexual, or religious discrimination what issues ought I as an individual to focus on? Is it right to focus on one or a few pet issues? How does one really find the root cause of social problems and avoid merely treating the symptoms or the consequences?

Judge a Hotel by its Pillows

I have slept in quite a few hotels and hostels this last year… 16 to be precise. I have decided that while you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can judge a hotel by its pillow(s). At the low end, I stayed in a hostel in Rome that crammed ten beds into a space smaller than my parent’s master bath. The mattresses were about four inches thick, and the blankets and tiny pillow looked frighteningly likely to contain lice. I feel somewhat guilty for calling that small wad of cloth a pillow. It wasn’t much more than 18 ‘’ long or a foot wide, I put my sweatshirt underneath it to make it a little more substantial.

I am currently writing from the Crown Plaza in Foster City, CA. If pillows really are a proxy for hotel quality, this place would rival that seven star hotel in Dubai. There are no less than 11 pillows on my bed. No it isn’t a king size, and yes the pillows do take up half of the bed space. To be able to get in bed, I have to throw half of them on the floor, which is a shame because each one is uniquely fluffy. The beds themselves here have no peers. The mattress & box spring combo looks to be about three and a half feet thick, and may be the most comfortable bed that I have ever slept in.

If I ever open a hotel, which I won’t, I will be sure to find out where Crown Plaza gets theirs!

Alter Ipse Amicus - A Friend is Another Self

My apologies for neglecting this blog over the last couple of weeks, my Teach for America training has kept me busy, and so has blogging about TFA on my other blog. For what feels like the nth time in my life, I recently left a group of friends and a home to go make new friends and a new home. This has led me to think about friends.

As our lives move us around, we have lots of different kinds of friends. For today’s purposes I am going to split them into two groups. Friends of choice, and friends of circumstance. I am often struck as I meet up with old friends or extended family members how much easier it is to distinguish between these two groups. At some happy times when I meet up with an old friend or family member, it is as if the time and distance that has separated us physically hasn’t put any distance in our friendship. We are friends not only because of shared experiences, beliefs, interests, but also a general enjoyment of each other’s company and a feeling of mutual understanding. Even if we haven’t seen each other or talked to each other for some time, we are able to catch up quickly on each other and quickly enjoy our previous friendship. Meeting up with my close friend from Paris days here in L.A. has been precisely such a meeting.

Other times, meeting an old friend turns very awkward when I feel that I have nothing to talk to them about, and sometimes I wonder why we were friends in the first place. I call these friends of circumstance. We were friends because we shared some experience, were members of a common group, or shared an interest. Once those commonalities are no longer shared, our friendship can easily dissolve. Once we stop communicating, our friendship dies. Our understanding one for the other does not stretch beyond simple circumstances.

I think that friends of choice are the friends that we would choose, and indeed do choose among alternatives. Sometimes in any given social group, I have a hard time distinguishing who are merely my friends due to circumstance, and who are my friends because we have literally chosen each other. Because we don’t have the time in this life to stay closely connected to everyone we meet and would like to befriend, I think that time can reveal some of the character of a friendship.

Pleasant Beggars

Beggars across the world have a lot in common I think; In every country and continent they seem to me to have an air of beaten down quiet desperation coupled with a persistence born of necessity sometimes mixed with a tinge of madness. As I’m writing this, I realize that most people don’t talk to a lot of beggars… I usually don’t carry on conversations with them, but as a missionary in Italy, I felt a mandate to talk to everyone, superstars, cardinals, and beggars a like. Given that there are a lot more beggars than there are cardinals I seemed to talk to a lot of them.

Today I walked out of a pharmacy and a beggar at the exit greeted me with the usual desperate beaten down tone “good morning” could you spare any change? I had run from my dorm, and had only brought my credit card, and so I told him that I didn’t have any. His response surprised me. “Oh that’s ok man, don’t worry about it man, you have a good day man, and God bless man.” I smiled and started the walk back up the hill. Walking out of the grocery store I was greeted by another beggar: “Hey could you spare any change?” I gave the same response, and the beggar responded in the same warm tone as his colleague that I had encountered earlier “Well you go and have a good day then”

These beggars treated me better than the people cashiers in the stores whose wages I was helping to pay! I wonder what makes L.A. beggars so cheery?

"Classic Case of Deviant Behavior"

I have always been very amused by my sporadic encounters with The Onion. The article pasted below cuts pretty close to home though…

GREENWOOD, IN—Sitting in a quiet downtown diner, local hospital administrator Philip Meyer looks as normal and well-adjusted as can be. Yet, there's more to this 27-year-old than first meets the eye: Meyer has recently finished reading a book. Yes, the whole thing.

"It was great," said the peculiar Indiana native, who, despite owning a television set and having an active social life, read every single page of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. "Especially the way things came together for Scout in the end. Very good."

According to behavioral psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Schulz, Meyer's reading of entire books is abnormal and may be indicative of a more serious obsession with reading."Instead of just zoning out during a bus ride or spending hour after hour watching YouTube videos at night, Mr. Meyer, unlike most healthy males, looks to books for gratification," Schulz said. "Really, it's a classic case of deviant behavior."