Saap, Randolpjh, Vermont

There are a lot of opportunities in Vermont to have excellent food, but often we have to venture further afield from our central Vermont house in order to find them. Not so with Saap, which is located in a Victorian house on a hill a few blocks from Main St. They have gotten a bit of recognition this year. The chef/co-owner Nisachon "Rung" Morgan of Saap restaurant in Randolph has been named Best Chef: Northeast by the James Beard Foundation in 2022.

The menu is extensive, with many northern Thailand dishes that I do not know or recognize and then some that I do. We opted for four small plates and we surprised ourselves and finished them all off. The flavors were complicated and interesting like the very best of Thai food, and while we opted for a 2-3 spice level, we certainly could have gone hotter and not been slurping a dairy product to cool down our tongues. You never know what the scale is geared to, and so we played it overly safe. This will definitely be on our returned to dining experiences. Only word to the wise is if the on line reservation says they are booked, try calling the restaurant or stop in, because it is not alwys correct.

Treacle Walker by Alan Gardner

I read this because it was short listed for the Booker Prize, but it is the first book that I have read by this prolific author. He is best known for his wildly successful children's books, whereas his adult books are which are more difficult and quixotic and less well known (and it seems less popular). This book combines the qualities of both, containing the magical aspect of his children’s fiction and the emotional and philosophical complexity of his adult work. Joe, our hero, is a child living a strange and circumscribed existence. He has been poorly, he says, and wears a patch to correct a lazy eye. He spends his days by watching the passing of the train through the valley below. One day a rag-and-bone man appears, named Treacle Walker, and offers Joe a cup and a stone in exchange for an old pair of pyjamas and a lamb’s shoulder bone. The cup has Joe’s name written upon it, the stone is inscribed with the picture of a horse--these are the ingredients: an obscure but resonant objects, a present that feels wedded to a mythical past, a questioning child seeking to unravel the mysteries of an off-kilter world, a landscape freighted with meaning. We are then launched into a story where Joe's eye can see what we cannot, and Treacle is part prophet and part something else altogether. My favorite part is the neologisms, but the rest is pretty great.

Penne A La Vodka

I really like this dish, but until now, I have not made a version of it that I would repeat. This is a version of Odette William's from Simple Pasta. It is a weeknight recipe that you prepare the sauce while you are cooking the penne. 1 lb. dried penne 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 1 shallot, finely diced 2 garlic cloves, grated 1 small red Thai chile, stemmed, seeded, and finely diced, or ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes 1/4 c. tomato paste ¼ cup vodka ¾ cup heavy cream ½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more for topping ⅓ cup coarsely chopped basil leaves, plus small leaves for topping 1 teaspoon kosher salt Directions: 1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. 2. In a large heavy-bottomed frying pan over medium heat warm the olive oil. Add the shallot, garlic, and chile and sauté just until translucent, about 3 minutes. 3. Add the tomato paste to the pan and cook for another couple of minutes, then pour in the vodka and cook it off for a couple minutes more. 4. Add the cream to the pan and bring to a gentle simmer for a couple of minutes. Lower the heat and keep the sauce warm. 5. Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook until al dente according to package instructions if using store-bought. Using a large spider or slotted spoon, transfer the pasta into the warm sauce, along with ¼ cup of the pasta water, and toss to coat. Stir in the Parmigiano and basil, then season with the salt. 6. Serve the pasta topped with additional Parmigiano and small basil leaves.

Glory by Noviolet Bulawayo

This book is short listed for the Booker Prize in 2022, and was inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm and is set in the animal kingdom of Jidada. I am not a fan of the original, nor am I really good at totally getting satire, so I am sure there is more to it than I grokked. The story goes that after a 40-year rule, the “Old Horse” is ousted in a coup, along with his much-despised wife, a donkey named Marvellous. At first there is great rejoicing and hope for change under a new ruling horse, Tuvius Delight Shasha (the former vice-president turned rival of Old Horse). Hope, however, quickly vanishes and into the period of post-coup despair steps a young goat named Destiny, who returns from exile to bear witness to a land where greed, corruption and false prophets are rampant. Elements of this story will sound familiar. In a note to the reader, Bulawayo explains that she attempted to write about Zimbabwe’s November 2017 coup and the fall of Robert Mugabe in nonfiction, but found a better form in political satire. There are a lot of elements of recent happenings in the United States and can also be read as a cautionary tale.

Plum Torte

This is amazing, and when plums are in season, it would be worth making a few and freezing them for future use. My spouse made this for a family dinner, and it disappeared immediately, and we would have made a serious dent in another one had it been available. It calls for a springform pan, but he made it in a parchment lined layer cake pan and it came out easily. 1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 pinch salt 3/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature 2 large eggs 10 to 12 Italian prune plums, pitted and halved lengthwise 1 pinch Turbinado sugar and ground cinnamon for sprinkling Heat the oven to 350° F. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside. In the bowl of a standing mixer or handheld beaters, cream the sugar and butter until very light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Add the dry ingredients and the eggs all at once, and beat until combined, scraping down the bowl once or twice. Spread the batter into an 8 or 9-inch spring form pan. Arrange the plum halves, skin side up, on top of the batter in concentric circles. Sprinkle the batter and fruit lightly with turbinado sugar and cinnamon (I use about 2 teaspoons of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, but adjust these to your taste). Bake the torte for 40 to 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Cool the cake in its pan on a rack for 10 minutes, and then release the spring and let it finish cooling just on the base. Once it's cool, serve as soon as possible. Or, you can double-wrap the torte in foil, put it in a sealed plastic zip lock bag and freeze (for up to one year!).

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

This book opens with the crash of a sold-out flight from New York to Los Angeles. A conspiracy of freak weather conditions and pilot error sends the Airbus A321 rocketing into the ground somewhere in Colorado. Amid the wreckage of that downed jet, one passenger is found alive: a 12-year-old boy named Edward. This is a novel about the challenges of surviving a public disaster in the modern age. Cable news and social media magnify misery and exposure as never before. Edward awakens in the hospital as the world’s most famous orphan. Broken and terrified, he must immediately shoulder a weird blend of trauma and adulation. Having lost his loving parents and a brother he idolized, he does not feel lucky. Despite the notoriety, he wields no magic, but millions of Web pages claim otherwise. Mourning relatives, conspiracy theorists and morbid gawkers grab at him as though he’s in a zombie apocalypse of grief. This does have rose colored glasses in that Edward lands in an exceptionally good situation and no one is angling for his money, but the emotional struggle is well depicted.

Alkimia, Barcelona, Spain

Our first fancy dining experience on our 2022 trip to Barcelona!

This is a gorgeous dining room, mostly contemporary with lots of texture in the design, and each portion of the dining room has a slightly different feel. We had this wonderful view into the kitchen--I love when you can see your food being prepared. The chef is Jordi Vilà and the focus is on a fusion of traditional Catalan food with a contemporary twist.

We decided that while the non-seafod parts of the meal were very good, that they really did not hold up when compared to the amazing things that came out of the ocean and underwent preparation in this kitchen. I would recommend this as the third best dining experience we had, and it was here that we learned about the place that was the runaway winner. TRhe wiat staff were exceptional here, equal to the food and a plus to the experience.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

I got this recommendation from The Week, and the topic was "summer beach reads" and this definitely fits that bill. I had just been on vacation, a kind of 1-2 books a day vacation, so I was ready for something a little lighter than the Booker Prize shortlist, and this fit that bill. It is very much on task in the formula romance novel arena, but better written than most and with both sides of the romance being in the publishing business, so a bookish focused plot. The story goes like this. Nora and Charlie are highly successful people professionally who have damaged pasts that interfere with their social functioning. Nora, describes herself as the type of woman that decidedly does not get the guy in romantic comedies — a steely-eyed, bleached blonde, workaholic literary agent who’s referred to as a “Shark” by others in the industry. Thanks to her younger sister Libby, she gets talked into taking a month-long trip to the small town of Sunshine Falls, North Carolina. There, she repeatedly has run-ins with Charlie, a book editor she knows from New York, who is also in town. As their chemistry starts to grow, so does their anxiety about whether they can make an actual relationship work. As this is labeled "Romance" you know where this is going, but it is a pleasant ride to get there.

Picasso Does Velázquez

During the summer of 1957, Picassoworked on a large series of fifty-eight canvases in near isolation, allowing few visitors to see his work. Forty-four of these canvases were directly inspired by Diego Velázquez’s masterpiece Las meninas (ca. 1656), which he had first seen as an adolescent at the Prado and used as a model for copying his jesters and dwarfs.

All of the figures from the old master’s canvas are present, playing the same roles and occupying similar positions. Investigating the complex spatial organization and figure grouping of Velázquez’s famous canvas, Picasso employs an effectual and fragmented black, gray, and white palette in order to provide structure to the space and its figures. Velázquez himself looms larger in Picasso’s version than in his own, an homage to the old master as creator, and holds two palettes rather than one, though neither canvas reveals what the artist is painting.

The entire series is on view in the Museu Picasso and it is a marvel to behold. By painting so many variations, he sought to understand the key elements of a work he so admired while also giving his Meninas a life of their own.

Cleanness by Garth Greenwell

This collection of stories that revolve around a teacher’s experience in Bulgaria before the Soviet Union imploded upon itself. It is a country the author knows from his own stint as a teacher at the American College of Sofia, and the intimacy in each story feels like something that is more memoir than it is fiction--there is little to no character development and more of a disgorging of memories and experiences that are intensely recalled and easily relived. The stories are loosely linked to each other through both settings and themes and they are incredibly well written, a kind of poetry almost that circles the themes of lust, longing, and regret. While the writing is exquisite--it is also evocative with emotions that are both raw and real, and at times it is almost too intense for me. I felt like I was in a room that I didn't want to be in, but that I couldn't quite tear myself away from. The sex is very explicit and if that is appealing, then this is the best of the best, but if not, it sucks all the rest of the air out of the book.

Hisop, Barcelona, Spain

The restaurant is named after an aromatic Mediterranean plant, is one of the least expensive Michelin starred restaurants I have eaten at--the tasting menu, which we enjoyed as a late lunch, is a joy to experience from start to finish. In the contemporary, minimalist-style dining room, chef Oriol Ivern serves fresh, creative dishes that offer a different take on Catalan culinary tradition, and are always based around locally sourced seasonal ingredients and impressive combinations. In keeping with the chef’s personality, the aim of his cuisine is to offer truly unique dishes that are both playful and full of surprising detail. This first dish is a great example--cod tripe--which is aptly named but we did not inquire too much further--was amazing in both flavor and texture, and we are not likely to have anything like it anywhere else.

Half of our party, myself included, and Hisop is well known for doing fish well--this is their famous mullet, and it was exceptional.

The wine and the cheese are just as wonderful as the rest of the menu. An extensive wine list featuring some 250 references of Spanish D.O. and other wine regions, with an emphasis on Catalan wines, has been carefully created to play an important role in the overall experience.

Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer

This is a fairly painful novel to read, and I say that not as a cancer survivor, but as a reader, and one who does not routinely shy away from painful subjects. It is the author's debut novel, and it was long listed for the Booker prize, so that in itself is an accomplishment. The story follows the last few months of Lia’s life. She is an illustrator in her forties married to university professor, Harry, and mother to precocious tweenage daughter, Iris. Lia is dying of breast cancer. She had it once before, years ago as a very young woman, and now it’s come back. During the course of the book, the cancer spreads from organ to organ and eventually it breaches her brain. Despite this, there is very little about treatment in the book. Lia doesn't go on countless trips to the hospital or overhear tough, too real, conversations about hospice care. There are only glimpses of those typical cancer scenes: the short sharp sting of a cold cap, the red violence of the intravenous chemo drug, doxorubicin. Even the news that the cancer has recurred is told minimally, sparingly, as if it were an unimportant detail, anything but central to the arc. The grappling with her past and her present is what drives the story line, and it is unique and inventive in that way.

Picasso Museum, Barcelona, Spain

This museum is largely populated with early works by Picasso, and is rich in the history of his development as an artist. It is a must see, and if I were back in Barcelona, I would go back, as I am sure there are many things that I missed that have the potential to move me. Picasso was born in the town of Málaga but his family moved to Barcelona when he was a young boy. The origins of the museum lie in the desire of Picasso’s life-long friend Jaume Sabartés — to whom Picasso had given many of his paintings, sculptures and other artworks — to open a public museum for all to enjoy Picasso’s oeuvre. The building is 14th century Gothic.

This series of paintings of pigeons is quite striking, all displayed in one room. They were painted in the amid to late 1950's. Many of Picasso's works produced during the later 1950s show views through a window or out over a balcony. Some of these may have been inspired by the actual layout of the studio at La Californie. However, these balcony views also recalled the work of Henri Matisse, who died in 1954 and had been both a friend and a rival to Picasso for over half a century.

Lastly, the ceramics on display, which are mostly from the 1960's, show anothe side of Picasso as an artist. Some are (to me) unattractive, but many have the playfulness of this piece, and are also potentially functional.

Planet of Clay by Samar Yazbek

This book was very hard to read. It takes place in the midst of a war zone, which is true of a number of award nominated and winning documentaries, but somehow this story is more graphic, more real, and just as brutal. Rima, a young neurodivergent girl from Damascus, longs to walk, to be free to follow the will of her feet, but instead is perpetually constrained. She finds refuge in a fantasy world full of colored crayons, secret planets, and The Little Prince, reciting passages of the Qur’an like a mantra as everything and everyone around her is blown to bits. Since Rima hardly ever speaks, people do not know quite what to make of her, but she is just doing her best—the madness in the battered city around her would change us all for the worse. One day while taking a bus through Damascus, a soldier opens fire and her mother is killed. Rima, wounded, is taken to a military hospital before her brother leads her to the besieged area of Ghouta—where, between bombings, she writes her story. This book, nominated for a National Book Award, offers a surreal depiction of the horrors taking place in Syria, in vivid and poetic language and with a sharp eye for detail and beauty.

Béarnaise Sauce

My spouse made this to go with an end of summer vegetables meal built around beef tenderloin. It was absolutely delicious, and we put it in a thermos to serve it, and while it wasn't piping hot, that also worked pretty well. 1/2 cup dry white wine 1/4 cup white wine vinegar 3 sprigs chervil, leaves finely minced, stems reserved separately (optional; if not using add an extra sprig of tarragon) 3 sprigs tarragon, leaves finely minced, stems reserved separately 1 small shallot, thinly sliced 1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns 2 large egg yolks Kosher salt 1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter Combine wine, vinegar, herb stems, shallots, and black peppercorns in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat and lower heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Cook until reduced to about 1 1/2 tablespoons of liquid, about 15 minutes. Carefully strain liquid through a fine mesh strainer into a small bowl, pressing on the solids with the back of a spoon to extract as much liquid as possible. Combine wine reduction, egg yolk, and a pinch of salt in the bottom of a cup that barely fits the head of an immersion blender. Melt butter in a small saucepan over high heat, swirling constantly, until foaming subsides. Transfer butter to a 1-cup liquid measuring cup. Place head of immersion blender into the bottom of the cup with the wine reduction and turn it on. With the blender constantly running, slowly pour hot butter into cup. It should emulsify with the egg yolk and wine reduction. Continue pouring until all butter is added. Sauce should be thick and creamy (see note). Season to taste with salt. Whisk in chopped tarragon and chervil, if using. Serve immediately, or transfer to a small lidded pot and keep in a warm place for up to 1 hour before serving. Béarnaise cannot be cooled and reheated.

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

In an effort to make this novel not about John Wilkes Booth, the assassin who killed Abraham Lincoln, the author goes a bit overboard--in my opinion--and writes a complex rendition of the whole Booth clan, and ends up with a book that is longer than is strictly necessary. This was longlisted for the 2022 Booker prize, but did not make the short list. John Wilkes Booth is born in 1838, the son of one of the era’s most famous stage actors, Junius Brutus Booth, and the ninth of 10 children. The Booths are a stage family, one in which--so says the author--the whole farm speaks in iambic pentameter when someone’s trying to learn lines. One son or another is always accompanying their father around the theaters of the East Coast, attempting to keep him sober enough to perform. On those rare occasions when Junius is home at the family’s farm outside Baltimore, his personality dominates the family. His declarations that the theater ought to be no place for his children, for whom he harbors middle-class dreams, are much less persuasive than the glamour he casts with every word, every gesture. He attempts to mold each of them, and he fails at every turn. As the children grow older, they launch careers and families of their own; many of those sons will become actors themselves, of various levels of success. One, Edwin, became a star; famous for his Hamlet, and he performed into the 1890's. They are not a close family, and they were not pro-slavery either, so in some ways, for me, the book raised more questions than it answered.

Moco Museum, Barcelona, Spain

This is an independent museum, meaning that it is a for profit museum that we happened upon because we were between finishing up one thing and having a while to wait for our lunch reservation. It had air conditioning and an inviting street appeal, and it wasn't crazy expensive either.

There was a wide range of inspiring modern, contemporary, and street art – MOCO is the amalgamation of Modern and Contemporary. Th Moco exhibits Jean-Michel Basquiat, Banksy (photo below), KAWS, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst (the photo to the left, Yayoi Kusama, Hayden Kays, David LaChapelle, Guillermo Lorca, Takashi Murakami (photo above), Nick Thomm, Andy Warhol, Studio Irma, and some others on an ad hoc basis. These are artists who are not as widely admired and collected as other artists on exhibit in Barcelona, but very thought provoking.

The other thing that struck me later was that there was art by black artists, and that is an under represented minority of artists on display in many museums. One example: in his short life, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a pop icon, cultural figure, graffiti artist, musician, and neo-expressionist painter. He was also an influential African-American artist who rose to success during the 1980s. Basquiat’s paintings are largely responsible for elevating graffiti artists out of the streets and into galleries, and so nice to see some on his work here.

The Trees by Percival Everett

This book is shortlisted for the Booker prize, and it is a complex and emotional story. It is a harsh satire, a fast-paced comedy with elements of crime and horro, and it directly addresses racism in a boldly shocking manner. The setting is a small town called Money, Mississippi, “named in that persistent Southern tradition of irony”. We meet a dysfunctional white family unit with its morose matriarch Granny C, her son Wheat Bryant, and her nephew, Junior Junior. This time it’s the white folks’ turn to be rendered in grotesque caricature, and the actions of this feckless clan are played as broad knockabout, almost like a reverse minstrel show. Wheat is found dead and brutally disfigured, with the mutilated corpse of a young Black man next to him, which subsequently goes missing. The same thing happens to Junior Junior, with the same disappearing cadaver, and all at once we’re in a horror story. As with the films of Jordan Peele, the paranormal is used to depict the African American experience in extremis, and here supernatural horror and historical reality collide in dreadful revelation. We are presented with a ghostly yet corporeal presence that haunts America’s consciousness. Money, Mississippi is a real place. It was where the 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, after being accused by a white woman of making suggestive remarks. We learn that Granny C is that woman, and the corpse is Emmett, returned to take his revenge on her descendants. The story careens along to a satisfying conclusion. Do not miss this one.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

Nicholas Cage is an actor who has a fan base that is very attached to him, and the connections fans have with him are not strictly related to the quality of either his acting or his films. From this emotional symbiosis between fan and actor, the movie crafts a metanarrative that also explores the relationship between the actor and his on screen persona through the lens of contemporary Hollywood filmmaking. Middle aged Nic Cage plays middle aged Nic Cage who has trouble both finding work and paying his bills, as he grapples with who he was, who he is, how to be a competent parent to a teenager, and exactly how to make ends meet. That is how he ends up accepting a job to attend the birthday party for a lot of money. The affable Pedro Pascal (now forever in my mind cast as the Mandolorian) plays up his own ultra-likeable persona as billionaire super fan Javi Gutierrez, olive-exporting magnate who may also be an international gun runner who shells out big bucks to have his hero at his house. Pascal's grin never seems to fade around Cage, he’s just that happy to be around the man behind the myth, and to some extent, it is very relatable. Cage gets roped into trying to untangle who exactly is the bad guy here but the CIA, and while this may sound both juvenile and tedious, it really is a very fun romp that I unexpectedly enjoyed from start to finish.

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

I didn't love this book but it made me think, it made me uncomfortable, and I think that is in fact a mark of books that matter. The novel, which is in two parts that are interconnected, is a contemplation on being female and living in the 21st century. Natsuko asks if a body’s ability to become pregnant and nurse a child – that is, the possession of breasts and eggs – determine the fate of that body? This is not a discussion of sexual freedom or slavery, as pregnancy has come to represent in the United States, but rather what it in fact means to be a woman and have choices that are uniquely female. Options include breast implants, menstruation, artificial insemination and what is the meaning of parenthood. Natsuko has two acquaintances whose biological fathers were anonymous sperm donors. Aizawa was raised by a father he loved; Yuriko was raised by a pedophile whose horrific abuse has robbed her of all well-being. Every decision to bring a child into this ugly existence, Yuriko argues, is an act of violence. There is a lot on offer here, and in an unusual voice.

Bar Celta Pulperia, Barcelona, Spain

We mostly did a straight ahead high end one meal a day approach to our recent trip to Barcelona--it is a great city to do that in, and in the 5 days that we were there, we did not exhaust the supply of that sort of place. This is an exception to that rule, and I would argue that with the quality of the seafood that comes out of the Mediterranean and into the numerous neighborhood markets in town, you can eat very well at the more affordable end and eat very well indeed.

This is a bustling place that we had reservations for (so you can go that route), but then walked in much earlier than planned and were seated--the tables are close together and there is a long bar with seating as well, so not exactly COVID safe dining, but very much the style of places we have eaten throughout Spain and love. Bar Celta is know for it's octopus, so we had it two different preparation styles--pulpa a la plancha and pulpa a feira--I liked the former best, but they were both very good.

They were out of clams, so was unable to have my favorite dish, which is clams cooked in olive oil and garlic, but my second favorite is gambas cooked the same way. The sweetness of the seafood married with the garlic and olive oil is something so memorable it is imprinted on my senses, I can almost taste it looking at this photo weeks later. We will just have to go back.

Velvet Was The Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

I really enjoyed this book, which is both on Obama's reading list as well as being a New York Times Notable book from 2021. This is an adrenalized, darkly romantic noir novel set during Mexico’s Dirty War. The novel opens with the Corpus Christi Massacre or El Halconazo — “The Hawk Strike” — of June 10, 1971. On that day, thousands of student demonstrators took to the streets in Mexico City for a peaceful march, only to be attacked by los Halcones — the Hawks — a paramilitary group organized and trained by the CIA as part of the U.S. effort to suppress leftists and communists in Central America. Almost 120 demonstrators were killed. Against this back drop, the story unfolds from various different people's perspectives, all the while giving a flavor of an unsettling time in Mexico's recent history. There are unusual alliances and strange bedfellows. I liked it so much I got another book out by the author and started reading it.

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

The title kind of sums it up. The movie starts off in the most mundane of ways and then it takes a hard right into something completely different. It is Wu Shu meets Inception. Evelyn Wang is a weary owner of a laundromat that is under IRS audit. We first meet her enjoying a happy moment with her husband Waymond and their daughter Joy (who is not aptly named). We see their smiling faces reflected in a mirror on their living room wall. As the camera literally zooms through the mirror, Evelyn’s smile fades, and she is now seated at a table awash with business receipts. She’s preparing for a meeting with an auditor while simultaneously trying to cook food for a Chinese New Year party that will live up to the high standards of her visiting father. Just as Evelyn begins to feel overwhelmed by everything happening in her life she’s visited by another version of Waymond from what he calls the Alpha verse. Here humans have learned to “verse jump” and are threatened by an omniverse agent of chaos known as Jobu Tupaki. Soon, Evelyn is thrust into a universe-hopping adventure that has her questioning everything she thought she knew about her life, her failures, and her love for her family. It is hard to make sense of, buyt that is the point. It is an emotional, philosophical, and deeply weird trip through the looking glass into the multiverse and discovers metaphysical wisdom along the way. I loved it and was puzzled by it, and it is defintiely worht seeing and experiencing.

Yerba Buena by Nina Lacour

I got this from a list of "beach reads" featured in The Week, and uncharacteristically three of the four featured actually sounded good to me. Light, but good. This one definitely started out on the slow side, but grew on me and as the story wound down I was sorry to see it end. The narrative follows two women — Sara Foster and Emilie DuBois — from their teens to late twenties as they navigate major life transitions, choices, and changes. Sara is from a grittier background and has to scramble to make ends meet, whereas Emilie meanders. The novel’s themes of drug and sexual abuse, death, abandonment, and purposelessness have a role in the pair’s eventual romance, and these are explored in a way that felt good and different from other books that grapple with similar plot lines. The women find meaning outside of educational accomplishments--which is a message for today as well. leaves plenty of room for hope amidst a variety of otherwise bleak circumstances. Sara establishes herself as a well-respected figure in the field that brings her true joy: bartending and Emilie finds that she has a gift for flipping houses. And together, the women’s relationship becomes a source of comfort and purpose.

Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain

The Fundació Antoni Tàpies is a cultural center and museum, located in Carrer d'Aragó, in Barcelona, Catalonia. It is dedicated mainly to the life and works of the painter Antoni Tàpies. The Fundació was created in 1984 by the artist Antoni Tàpies to promote the study and knowledge of modern and contemporary art. To that end, the Fundació opened its doors in June 1990 in the building of the former Editorial Montaner i Simon publishing house, the work of the Modernist architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, restored and refurbished by the architects Roser Amadó and Lluís Domènech Girbau. Constructed between 1880 and 1881, at an early stage of the evolution of Catalan Modernism, the building was the first in the Eixample district to integrate industrial typology and technology, combining exposed brick and iron, into the fabric of the city center.

Antoni Tàpies’ first artistic attempts began during a long convalescence following a serious illness, after which his increasing dedication to painting and drawing led him to abandon his university education. By the 1940s, he was already exhibiting work that distinguished him among the artistic scene of the moment. Co-founder of the magazine Dau al Setin 1948, and influenced by Miró and Klee, he became increasingly interested in iconographic and magical subjects. He gradually began to incorporate geometrical elements and colour studies leading to an interest in matter through the use of heavily textured canvases of great expressive and communicative possibilities.

So the building is beautiful and the art is evocative. One of my friends made the comment that perhaps the reason that the artist was so deeply affected by atrocities that happened at the end of the 20th century was that Catalunya has a very troubled past, most recently under Franco, and therefore they understand better than most how a culture and a people can be violently repressed.

Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology) by Deirdre Cooper Owens

This whole book can be summed up by saying it is way worse than you think. This medical historiography grapples with troubling histories of medical exploitation, cultural memory, and meaning-making in very different but equally generative ways. The women in the cases presented are known only by their first names, Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy (plus up to nine anonymous others) were rotated in and out of un-anesthetized vaginal surgeries by Sims. Using non-voluntary, uninformed subjects, Sims invented the duckbill speculum, perfected protocols for the successful suturing of vesico-vaginal fistulas, and then published the results in both US and international medical journals. There is not only scant archival traces of these women in history but also in their cultural legacies as depicted in 21st-century art, health activism, and cultural representation. This is an examination of the widespread medical exploitation black enslaved women and (in comparison) Irish immigrant women experienced, within the development of modern US gynecology. The book provides important socio-cultural context for readers, in addition to important framing of the women beyond their roles as patients or medical subjects alone. In so doing, the author illustrates their significance as enslaved women who have no choice in their impregnation, as well as being a research subject. Importantly, a number of these women were also skilled nurses who—being trained by Sims after other white male doctors abandoned him—were some of the most knowledgeable individuals in the world on modern gynecology, within its earliest stages of development. It is pretty well known that 19th-century white male surgeons—lionized as pioneers of the field—performed extensive gynecological experimentation on these groups of women. The list of acclaimed doctors includes Sims, along with John Peter Mettauer and Nathan Bozeman. The procedures these doctors perfected on black and Irish women’s bodies include ovariectomies, cesarean sections, and obstetric fistula repair.

Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story (2022)

This documentary is an infectiously exuberant overview of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Big Easy’s unique and enormous celebration of its music, cuisine and multiculturalism, by combining their own footage of performances and interviews at the 50th iteration of the star-studded annual event — the last before COVID-19 forced cancelation of the 2020 and 2021 editions — and archival footage dating back to the festival’s earliest days. It is a love letter, a testimonial, a history lesson, and a musical revue. The one thing that I learned, through an interview with Jazz Fexst co-founder George Wein during an interview conducted before his 2021 passing, is that if he had accepted a 1962 invitation by locals to establish the New Orleans equivalent of his Newport Jazz Festival. But he just couldn’t see how a Jazz Festival could be conducted in New Orleans during a period of Jim Crow laws, segregation, and racial discrimination. It took nearly a decade before Wein was ready to partner with Allan Jaffe of the Crescent City’s Preservation Hall and get the party started. After chronicling the bad old days, almost everything that follows is footage that emphasizes at every opportunity the inclusiveness of New Orleans in general and the festival in particular. Aptly described by one interviewee as “the world’s greatest backyard barbecue” where just about everyone is invited, the event evolved by 2019 into a sprawling social gathering at the city’s Fair Grounds with 7,000 musicians performing on 14 stages over eight days. Peak attendance: an estimated 100,000 people on a single day, a number that would make it the sixth largest city in Louisiana. If you haven't experienced it, this will give you a taste of whether or not it is for you.

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

This book follows four young women navigating life in the brutally competitive, consumerist city of Seoul. I did not know this, but South Korea is believed to have the highest plastic surgery rates in the world, with a third of women thought to have gone under the knife by 30. Eyelid surgery and jaw slimming are among the most popular procedures, and improving physical appearance isn’t just vanity – it’s an openly recognized way to get ahead in a cut-throat job market. So it is a deeply patriarchal society that makes for tough living if you are female. The four women, who live near each other, are likely chosen to reflect this unsavory situation. Kyuri is a room salon girl: a kind of geisha that is a seemingly well-paid opportunity that is only open to the “prettiest 10%”. In reality, she is tied in by debt, and feels her primped body breaking down thanks to the heavy nightly drinking required of her role. She shares an apartment with Miho, an artist who, after winning a scholarship to the US, became embroiled with a hyper-wealthy crowd; it’s no shock that such grotesque riches don’t result in kind behavior. Across the hallway is Ara, a mute hairdresser who tries to escape her daily grind – along with the trauma of an assault– by obsessing over a K-pop star and living more in a world of her own than in the present. Downstairs, pregnant Wonna, who chose her husband almost entirely based on his mother being dead, panics about losing her baby and her job. It is a high wire life for each of them, and one without much in the way of pleasure or support. This a very well written, but not very happy, story.

Alapar, Barcelona, Spain

One of the very best meals that I have had in an adulthood that could be characterized by having above average food on a regular basis, was at a restaurant called Pakta in Barcelona in 2013. I was so disappointed when I learned, through a search for places to eat on my recent return trip, that is had closed during COVID. Then, at a meal we had at another restaurant, our sommelier recommended this, and noted it is in the same place as Pakta and with the same chef. Instead of Peruvian-Japanese fusion food it is Mediteranean-Japanese fusion food. Let me just say it was spectacular.

Maybe we were influenced by a week of eating tasting menus and making almost no choices, but we elected to allow the chef to choose our meal entirely. We put in the caveat that while we were not pescatarians and we would definitely eat dishes that had meat in them that we wanted to avoid dishes that were solely meat based. The courses that we had, about 9 in all, were uniformly delicious, beautifully plated, and the seafood was fresh and delicious.

I am not a fan of raw fish in general and this meal is the exception to that tendancy of mine. We had not one but two dishes that were raw mackeral, so not just uncooked but also a fish that I am generally not fond of--not to worry, they were both amazing, and so enjoyable that it would change what I would risk eating in the future. If you can only eat one place in Barcelona this should be the place.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Rebecca Dunbar Ortiz

This book, which is a reworking of the book by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, is part of the ReVisioning History for Young People series, which offers fresh perspectives on familiar narratives told from the viewpoint of marginalized communities with middle-grade and young adults in mind. Consisting of accessibly written history books written by notable scholars and adapted by education experts, the series reconstructs and reinterprets America’s past from pre–1492 to the present for a new generation of readers. This is exactly the history that the 1619 project is advocating that we add to the educational curriculum of K-12 and what white supremacists are fighting so hard to exclude. Spanning more than 400 years, this classic bottom-up history examines the legacy of Indigenous peoples’ resistance, resilience, and steadfast fight against imperialism. It challenges the narrative that America is a country that was “discovered” but rather one that was already inhabited and was invaded by Europeans. The Indigenous human rights advocate Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz reveals the roles that settler colonialism and policies of American Indian genocide played in forming our national identity. The original academic text has been fully adapted for middle-grade and young adult readers to include discussion topics, archival images, original maps, recommendations for further reading, and other materials to encourage students, teachers, and general readers to think critically about their own place in history.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Oh my gosh, so much testosterone! It has been over 30 years since the original Top Gun, but Tom Cruise is still able to deliver a believable best fighter pilot still flying role. This is witty adrenaline booster that allows its leading producer, Cruise himself, to be a star—while upping the emotional and dramatic stakes of its predecessor with a healthy (but not overdone) dose of nostalgia. After a title card that explains what “Top Gun” is—the identical one that introduced us to the world of crème-de-la-crème Navy pilots in 1986—we find Maverick in a role on the fringes of the US Navy, working as an undaunted test pilot. No one is surprised that soon enough, he gets called on a one-last-job type of mission as a teacher to a group of recent Top Gun graduates. Their assignment is just as obscure as it was in the first movie. There is an unnamed enemy—let’s called it Russia because it’s probably Russia—some targets that need to be destroyed, a flight plan that sounds nuts, and a scheme that will require all successful Top Gun recruits to fly at dangerously low altitudes. In comparison to the original, there is some gender integration (one in 12 as opposed to none what-so-ever) and racial and cultural diversity—but it is extremely limited.