Mom's Recipes

My mother was a great person -- but not a great cook. Given the choice, she would always rather be outside than in the kitchen; visiting than cooking. Her recipes were imprecise; "use a pat of butter the size of an egg;" a pinch of salt; season to taste. If she didn't have the right ingredients, she would substitute freely; sometimes with good results, sometimes not.

So, it was with some surprise that I read the email from my sister, Seester, suggesting that for our family get-together this Christmas, we make recipes from my mother. There were groans all around. As it turns out, almost nothing anyone is making for our family feasting is one of Mom's recipes, except that Seester made Mom's oatmeal cookies, and they are really good (of course, Seester has the advantage of not having burned them because she got distracted by the cow getting into the garden.) So, in case anyone is interested in really good, old fashioned Amish oatmeal cookies, here's the recipe:

4 cups oatmeal
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup melted lard (really. Seester tried other shortenings and came back to lard.)
2 eggs
1 cup coconut
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch salt

(No instructions on degrees of heat or time. In all likelihood, when this recipe was put together, the cooks were using wood stoves without precise oven temperature control.)

Seester has Mom's recipe book, complete with stains, mis-spellings and odd recipes for things like "salting beef steak," making cheese, "to fix pickles," "swell cure for lung fever," and these pediatric concoctions.

Children's Medicine

2 oz. glycerine
20 drops aconite
2 oz. rain water

Receipt for Making Drops for Children

1 quart old rye whiskey
1 oz. ground cinnamon
1 oz. cloves
1 oz. opeum
12 cents wroth safron

Put together in bottle and shake once a day for 6 days and then it is ready for use. Give a child at night when going to bed. 1 drop for every week of age. Give more than once a day if necessary. To older persons 50 to 60 drops may be given.

Christmas Pictures

An Absolutely Delightful Holiday

I am writing this from the mountains of western Maryland where 32 family members and friends are staying at an 8-bedroom house called Absolute Delight (some of us are sleeping at a Comfort Inn down the street.) The scenery is beautiful and the fellowship is fun. The house is ample. Everyone is here except for one brother in Vienna; Son Number One and Daughter-in-Law Number One, who have to work and are saving vacation time for a trip to Korea, and Son Number Two and his Significant Other, who will be arriving tomorrow afternoon. I just went back upstairs to hear my brother the Humble Carpenter/Farmer/Philosopher explaining the basic ground rules on arguments to some of the hangers-on, i.e. that it's unfair to actually know something about what you are arguing.

The Wife and I started out at 6:30 a.m. yesterday and drove all day through sleet and rain, but we all made it safely. I made my famous French toast, my brother, The Trucker made eggs over hamburger, and my sister, The Sensible One, made a mixed fruit Gellate, for 30 people for brunch. Pictures to come.

More Accolades for Jack Quartet

Here's another music critic, this one in Philadelphia, who saw 200 musical performances in 2008 and is rating a Jack Quartet performance in Philadelphia (a different program than the one that wowed the New York Times) as among the top shows he heard during the year.

And people are bragging now that they "knew Jack before they were famous."

I have to tell this story on myself. I was up, as usual, very early Saturday morning, around 6:00 a.m., checking the internet for mail and news when I found the New York Times article I mentioned below. Naturally, I was excited, but The Wife was sleeping late as usual, so there was no one with whom to share my excitement. Finally, about 8:00, I could stand it no longer, went into the bedroom and said to The Wife, "If you will wake up, I will show you something exciting."

"What is it?" she mumbled sleepily from under the blankets. "Are you standing there without your clothes on?" It has been a long time since I have laughed as long and as hard.

Wow: Heady Company for Jack Quartet

Yesterday's New York Times does a typical end of the year roundup of the "most memorable classical music performances of 2008." Four of the five performances are not surprising -- a lot has been written about them not only in the Times, but in other national publications. They are the performance at the Park Avenue Armory of Die Soldaten, a German opera, where the audience is seated on tracks and moves around during different parts of the performance; the New York Philharmonic's concert in North Korea; the Mass project at Carnegie Hall in honor of Leonard Bernstein; the performance at Carnegie in honor of Elliott Carter's 100th birthday, with the old man in attendance, and the Jack Quartet performance in October at (le) poisson rouge. Holy cow. Those kids are on to something.

John Stewart's Take on Illinois's Governor Problem

As usual, John Stewart has the best analysis out there about Illinois's embarrassing governor. It's funny, but oh, so true.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

(D-IL) Weed

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Obama Report: Should Hillary Be Secretary of State?

Not all of my advice to Barack Obama has been bad. Back in 2004, I thought he should run for president this year, and thought that if he could get the nomination (a big "if" with a formidable opponent like Hillary Clinton with all the seeming name, money and organizational advantages) he would win the general election. I didn't think it would be a good idea to have Hillary Clinton as the vice presidential nominee. On the other hand, I didn't think it a good idea to have Joe Biden as the vice presidential nominee and that has worked out okay -- I guess. (Kind of. Well,at least Biden didn't cost him the election with his foot-in-mouth disease.)

Now, all the pundits are saying the idea of having Clinton as Secretary of State is a wonderful idea, inspired by the ancient saying attributed to the Chinese military sage,Sun Tzu, "Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer." The Sunday morning bloviators are citing Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, Team of Rivals, about Abraham Lincoln's first cabinet, which included his competitors for the Republican nomination for presidency as precedent for Obama selecting Clinton. Even Henry Kissinger thinks it would be a wonderful idea.

I'm not so sure it's a good idea to select Hillary as Secretary of State. As I see it, there are two main requirements for the job. You want someone who is an innovative thinker, who has the ability to think outside the box in coming up with solutions to almost insoluble problems between nations, and you want someone who can manage a large bureaucracy of around 40,000 employees

Hillary Clinton has a certain kind of intelligence, she is not a dummy, along the lines of George W. Bush or Sarah Palin by any means. But neither is she a Henry Kissinger, although an evil genius in many ways, nevertheless a genius. Is there anyone besides Nixon and Kissinger who would have had the nerve to make the opening to China 35 years ago, and does anyone doubt that the world is a much better, safer place because they did take that step? Hillary is the good student, the one who studies hard and gets A's because she can regurgitate what the teacher told her. But she has never demonstrated the ability to innovate -- not as First Lady, not as Senator and certainly not as a presidential candidate. I will forgive her the vote to invade Iraq, other smart people besides her were misled by the Bush Administration's hyperbole about weapons of mass destruction. But she could never find it in herself to admit her mistake and to tell us what she learned from it.

Hillary's attempt to paint Obama's call for negotiations with our enemies as being dangerously naive is an example of her conventional thinking that shows her limited imagination. In fact, the idea that we dare not talk to our enemies is dangerous in my opinion. It shows weakness, not strength, to think that somehow we will become contaminated if we talk with those with whom we have disagreements and conflicts.

Nor has she shown any ability to manage a bureaucracy. After starting out 20 points ahead in the polls, with all the resources of Clinton loyalists from her husband's time as president, with a substantial war chest of money, how could she lose the nomination to a little-known first termer? She was out worked and out organized. Clinton's presidential campaign was a constant stream of turn-overs, with leaks and back biting. She was unable or unwilling to put an end to the fighting and get everybody working together to run her campaign. Things won't get any easier in the Department of State, with its byzantine rivalries.

So, should Hillary have no role in the Obama Administration? I have an excellent job for her, one for which she is well suited -- Supreme Court justice. There will certainly be several Supreme Court vacancies, probably early in the Obama administration. Hillary can do much more to influence the public policy direction of the country with a life time appointment to the Supreme Court than she could with four, or even eight years as Secretary of State. Writing Supreme Court opinions is the kind of wonkish detail at which she would excel. As a Senator, she would have an easy time getting confirmed by the Senate.

So, please, Barack. Listen to me this time. Don't appoint Hillary as the next Secretary of State. Get her to wait for the Supreme Court appointment.

Obama Report: More Questionable Connections

Forget about Bill Ayers, the ex-Weatherman-turned-education-professor, the Republicans would have really had a field day with Barack Obama's questionable connections if they had known about his association with Arcola's infamous Lawn Rangers.

The Lawn Rangers were the inspiration of Pat Monahan (whom Dave Barry once called the second-funniest man in America) way back in the early 1980s. Clayton Moore, the actor who played the Lone Ranger, was making an appearance at Arcola's Broomcorn Festival, a festival nominally dedicated to honoring Arcola's heritage as the "Broomcorn capital of the world." (I say "nominally" because like most small town festivals, it is more of an excuse for vendors to hawk greasy foods and drunks to hang out in a beer tent.) The whole idea of having Clayton Moore appear in Arcola wearing wrap-around sun glasses because of trade mark and copyright issues with the famous mask is pretty funny in itself. Monahan invented the Lawn Rangers to march in the parade that year as a precision lawn mower drill team, spoofing Clayton Moore and the Shriners who typically drive little cars and motorcycles in parades.

Dave Barry, the syndicated columnist and humorist, got interested in Arcola and the silliness of the Lawn Rangers and started coming to the Broom Corn Festival and carousing with the Lawn Rangers many years ago. He wrote about his first appearance in 1991 here. He has another column about the appearance of the moon at Ranger rookie camps here.

The picture above comes from Barry's blog, where he states that Obama appeared as a Lawn Ranger in 2003 when he was a little known state senator and the Rangers were in Chicago to march in the St. Patrick's Day parade.

You can watch a six-minute documentary about the Lawn Rangers featuring the infamous Pat Monahan by clicking below.

Bush Report: Go Home Now

When I saw the television images last night of people gathered outside the White House, I wished I could have joined them. I would have liked to chant, "Go home now!" Why do we have to put up with Bush/Cheney and what is left of their cohorts until January 20th? Who knows what mischief they will cook up between now and then. (I know I should be more gracious, but this has been a long eight years. The repudiation, with even Virginia, the capital of the confederacy flipping to blue couldn't be sweeter.)

Yes We Can!

It is hard to believe that Barack Obama actually did it, and he won big. The first president in a long time to get a majority of the votes cast, and the largest electoral vote margin in many years. I found myself getting angry listening to Obama's victory speech in Grant Park. Angry that we have had to put with eight years of a president who was a stumblebum; unable to form a logical thought or to articulate a rationale for what he was trying to do.

I thought Obama seemed a little subdued at his Grant Park victory party, maybe realizing that this is no longer a game; he is now responsible for leading a country that is in as dire shape. If we are to get out of the hole that neocon policies have put us, Obama is the person to do it, but it isn't going to be easy. I think he can do it. With our help. Yes, we can!

Election Watch: My Prediction for Tuesday

Here it is, November 2nd, the view of the front and back of our house, respectively, is beautiful, the temperature is in the low 70s, and I went to church today. Why? Well, November 4th is only two days away, and I don't want to risk making God decide to punish me by giving me four more years of McSame/Barracuda.

Would God really make the whole country suffer with four more years of Republican rule just because I skipped church? I don't really think so, but why take a chance? So, I went, even though the more worshipful experience would probably have been to sit in the sunshine in the back yard.

So, what is my prediction? I hope Obama will win big. I am satisfied if he wins narrowly. I fear he will lose. The only thing I am confident about is that McCain will not win big. My biggest worry is that all the pundits are predicting an Obama win, and the pundits have nearly always been wrong this election cycle.

In my gut, I think Obama will win. Even if the polls are even, and most of them show a significant Obama lead, particularly in the battleground states, I think Obama's community-organizing background has served him well in organizing a ground game that has never been equaled, certainly not by the McSame/Barracuda campaign. Plus, the polls don't measure cell phone users. One of Obama's strengths is young people, and many young people have only a cell phone, so I think the polls are undermeasuring Obama support.

But, on the other hand, I thought all of this also before the New Hampshire primary, and although the polls showed a 10 percent Obama lead the weekend before the election, he lost to Hilary. As Obama said in a speech last week, to those who are overly-confident that he will win, he has two words: New Hampshire. No one knows what effect the last minute attack ads by McCain will have. Campaigns use attack ads for one reason: they work.

Still, I think this is a different year, and Obama will win. I hope.

JACK Report: They Made The New York Times

The JACK concert Wednesday night at (le) Poisson Rouge (the old Village Gate) in Greenwich Village in New York City was apparently a success, judging from the New York Times's classical music reviewer, Anthony Tomamsini, in today's paper. (I better credit them, as well, for the picture to the right, featuring Son Number Two with the light from heaven streaming down upon him.)

Son Number Two, not yet quite at the quarter century mark, age-wise, was about as excited and happy as he ever gets when he called us tonight. The concert was packed, with people standing along the walls. He just came off a nine-day gig with The Knights, a classical music orchestra that did a live video recording of pieces ranging from Shostakovich to Jimi Hendrix at(le) Poisson Rouge for Sony Classical records. He doesn't know when the video will come out.

Saturday, JACK leaves for Germany for a week and a half to make a sound recording of the Xenakis quartets and a Lachenmann piece. There are no live concerts planned this time over there, but they go back to England, Germany and Italy for a month starting next March.

I'm sorry I'm bragging. Son Number Two does not like me to do that. But I can't help myself; I'm so happy to see all those years of lessons and practicing paying off at such a young age.

Jack Report: A Review of Last Night

Here's one review of Jack Quartet's performance last night at (le) Poisson Rouge. The reviewer thought they performed "quite brilliantly and authoritatively" but he didn't like the informality of the venue. I guess you're supposed to suffer a little if you're going to listen to new music.

Obamania: He's In Therapy!

Oh, what the Republicans won't do with this one. Barack Obama admitted to John Stewart last night on The Daily Show that he's in therapy -- to make sure his white half won't keep him for voting for himself on November 4th. (If you're humor-impaired, don't worry, it's a joke. But no more outlandish than the other ridiculous things the McCain camp has been trying to use against him.) Here's the clip. Notice the gray in his hair. It seems to me to be graying by the day. Has the campaign been that tough? Has he stopped using Grecian formula? Is he going to be completely white-haired by the end of his first term? Inquiring minds want to know.

JACK Report: They're In The New Yorker (But Only A Listing)

One of the benchmarks by which I, a proud parent, have been judging how Son Number Two's musical career with the JACK Quartet is doing is 1) Play at Carnegie (they did that a year and a half ago) and 2) Get mentioned in The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine. They have a concert coming up October 29th at (le) Poisson Rouge, the old Village Gate in Greenwich Village and I've been hoping that would at least warrant mention in the Times and the New Yorker. It did. This is in the November 3rd issue of The New Yorker:

MUSIC AT (LE) POISSON ROUGE

The eclecticism of the new-music club will be stretched to the limit in one impressive evening. Oct. 29 at 7: The Jack Quartet, an up-and-coming group of adept composer-performers who are already veterans of the Venice Biennale, offers the complete string quartets of the modernist legend Iannis Xenakis, in all their dazzling and rugged glory.

The Times also had a listing in its October 23rd (and probably since then) issue. It said:

★ JACK QUARTET (Wednesday) This New York quartet specializing in new music plays the four intensely virtuosic string quartets by Iannis Xenakis, the idiosyncratic Greek-born French composer and architect. At 7:30 p.m., Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 505-3474, lprnyc.com; $15. (Kozinn)

Now, I am keeping my fingers crossed that one of them will do a full fledged review of the concert.