Bonnie Raitt at Red Rocks

I traveled to my favorite outdoor music venue, Red Rocks, in Morrison, Colorado recently to see Bonnie Raitt perform with various band members, many of whom have been with her two decades or more.   Wow, she was fantastic.  Mesmerizing, as one of my fellow concert goers noted.  She has a fantastic voice, a great band, and she played a nice mixture of songs from her present album (one of which I liked) to her past work (which I loved).

I hadn't seen her perform since 1978, even though I like her music very much. The coffee house that I worked at and eventually managed in college, called 'Big Mother' (who knew that I would later becomes an amply proportioned mother myself), had a modest sized record collection, and my favorite of them all was Bonnie Raitt's 'Green Light'. That was my introduction to her music, and she was impressive on it. She had a great voice then as well, and she was (and still is) one of the few women who front a band who plays guitar.

Nothing has changed.  Her stage presence is impressive, and she dedicated several songs throughout the evening to various members of the audience, which made her seem like a nice person as well.  At least she is generous.  The setting was equally spectacular.  We had a long and winding journey up to the venue--plenty of time to contemplate the gorgeous vistas along the way, while my engineer-to-be son described the geology of what we were taking in.  The amphitheater is quite a hike up a hill (from a parking area we felt very fortunate to be able to find our way back to), but it is well worth the effort.  Red rocks form the sides and front of the venue, and it was a gorgeous night with an almost full moon.  Such a treat to hear wonderful music in such a spectacular setting.  Everyone should go there at least once!

Pink Grapefruit and Radicchio Salad With Dates and Pistachios

2 pink or red grapefruits
2 medjool dates, pitted and thinly sliced
1/2 medium shallot, peeled and thinly sliced
 Fine sea salt, to taste
1 small head radicchio, halved and cored
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped pistachio nuts
Freshly ground black pepper.

1. Slice the top and bottom off one of the grapefruits. Stand it up on a cut side and, using a small sharp knife, slice off the peel and pith, following the curve of the fruit. Save the peels (there should be some red fruit clinging to the pith). Repeat with the other grapefruit. Slice both grapefruits into quarter-inch-thick rounds and arrange on a platter. Evenly sprinkle the dates on top. 2. Squeeze the juice from the grapefruit peel into a small bowl. You should have about a tablespoon. If there is less, squeeze some from one of the grapefruit slices. Add the shallot and a pinch of salt; let sit for 5 minutes. 3. Meanwhile, thinly slice the radicchio and add to a bowl. Add the shallot and grapefruit juice and toss to combine. Toss in 3 tablespoons of the oil. 4. Sprinkle grapefruit slices with salt and drizzle with the remaining oil. Place a mound of the radicchio in the middle of the grapefruit, leaving a border of the fruit exposed. Sprinkle with pistachios and black pepper and serve immediately.

Barchester Towers (1982)

I have an unswerving adoration for BBC dramas, and I am working on seeing quite a few of them this year--both old and new. This one is an adaptation of an Anthony Trollope story, published in the mid nineteenth century, by the same name. The basic story is this. Barchester Towers concerns the leading citizens of the imaginary cathedral city of Barchester in England, as well as the rising tension between this High Church and Evangelicals. The story begins with a scandal involving a popular clergy, Septimus Harding. He is the target of a newspaper campaign to discredit him (and the High Church), which upsets him greatly, and so while he has done nothing wrong, he leaves his well paid post and retires to a modest church with an equally modest salary--quite happily. His daughter marries the man who started the problem, but who then worked tirelessly to right the matter. As this is a long story, lots of bad things must happen, so her happiness is short lived--he dies, but leaves her very well off.

Then the much loved bishop also dies, and all expectations are that his son, Archdeacon Grantly, also a clergyman, will gain the office in his place. Grantly is not very likable, but he is not corrupt, and provides a middle ground for the story, which pits the good against the not so good. Instead, owing to the passage of the power of patronage to a new Prime Minister, a newcomer, the far more Evangelical Bishop Proudie, gains the see. His wife, Mrs Proudie, exercises an undue influence over the new bishop, making herself unpopular with right-thinking members of the clergy and their families. She is one of the not-so-good characters, and she has groomed Obadiah Slope to be her right-hand clergy. He is even more unlikable (aptly played by Alan Rickman, who shows that he could produce a permanent sneer long before he portrayed Professor Snape).  The series borders on 7 hours, so there are many ups and downs, intrigues that go well and those that go wrong--but ultimately there is a very satisfactory ending.  No tragedy!

Gold by Chris Cleave

The front story in this book is about the lives of elite competitors who train for the Olympics as if it were the most important thing. And for them it largely is. The reasons behind that are far ranging, from the need for attention, love of the sport, the thrill of competition, to just plain broken people who can't for the life of them interact with others and the loneliness of the long distance trainer suits them because it fills up that emptiness. This story layers a few complications onto the pile--there is the competition between two closely matched cyclists, Kate and Zoe. Zoe is the stone cold athlete, while Kate has softer edges and while she might not win quite as much, she is happier and more likable. There is a love triangle between Zoe, Kate, and another cyclist, Jack. That remains complicated throughout the book, because while the romance might have gotten sorted out long ago, the connections remain. Then there is Sophie, a daughter who was born around the Athens Olympics, was diagnosed with leukemia at the Beijing Olympics, and relapses before the London Olympics. Such timing this child has. The survivor issues of childhood cancer don't get consideration in this story, the emotional complications that children and families undergo when childhood cancer strikes is right on target.   I have a personal connection with childhood cancer, in the form of my youngest son, so I enjoyed seeing it inserted into a novel, and very much enjoyed this story.

Szechuan House, Iowa City

I live in a college town--70,000 residents, 30,000 students. Those of us who teach and live here do outnumber those who study here, but not by a landslide. One of the great advantages to such a population is that it allows for lots of inexpensive dining options. Some of that is pizza and sandwich places, but the third bonanza is in ethnic food. My university town has a substantial Asian student population and the uninformed might think that we would have ample restaurant options for Chinese and Southeast Asian food. The later is more or less true, but the former is wrong. We have one restaurant that is too authentic for me--I have no idea what to order and what comes is outside of what is accessible to my palate. The rest of the Chinese restaurants are just okay. That is, up until now. The Szechuan House is a cut above the rest. There are clunkers on the extensive menu, but there are real gems, food that is flavorful and spicy and like nothing I have ever made at home. The Spicy and Crispy Shrimp arrives under an impressive pile of red chilies and is sprinkled throughout with Szechuan peppercorns--two kind of spicy. But wait, there's more--there are scallions and sliced garlic as well. It is a delicious and balanced dish. Another favorite was the shredded pork with pickled peppers (also hot). The dish has three kinds of peppers, and the spicy flavors were again layered, aromatic and delicious. The green bean and the eggplant dishes are also fantastic. More importantly, when I am there people are ordering things that I have never seen before and they look delicious--the Gan Guo (dry braised in hot pot), black curded bean, and Gan Zai (braised in hot pot) are intriguing, and so much more. I want to walk around and ask people what that dish is (and there are many tables filled with people eating communally with a lazy susan in the middle to facilitate sharing. Such a great addition to the local dining scene!

All the Children Became Adults

After 24 years of parenting children, we find ourselves without any actual children. Our youngest turned 18, and while we afford all four of our offspring some form of financial support, they are no longer legally children. So what does that mean? If we are still laying out cash, has our role really changed all that much. We are still their parents. Well, I think it does mean something. The process of transitioninig to an adult relationship between parent and child is complex, and no less prone to pitfalls than any of the other stages that the relationship goes through. I have seen a lot of things that I don't want to do, and not enough examples of what I would like to see happen. Mostly I am just caught off guard. I could easily have anticipated this. But I didn't translate my youngest turning 18 to 'we no longer have children'. Adult offspring sounds so much older than I feel--but as they say, if the shoe fits, wearing it seems most appropriate. This week has made me think of something someone said to me when my children were still in grammar school. I ran into her at a party, and I asked the ever polite question about how things had been going. She sighed, and said they had spent a week with her family, followed immediately by a week with her husband's family. She noted on the one hand that it was good to see them, and that there had been no major dramas, but that on the other hand it really hadn't been much of a vacation. More of an obligation and less about relaxation. And then came the kicker. She asked me how we could avoid having our children feel this way about us. Oh no. I have no idea. Maybe it is inevitable, that the nature of the relationship doesn't lend itself to that experience. But it is good to keep this in mind. How to make our relationship about enjoyment of each other. That is the challenge. A good reminder that even though parents have been raising children since the beginning of time, there are no manuals about how to do it right.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

NPR subtitled this book 'Love in the Time of Cancer', which really does sum it up. John Green writes books for young adults, but he is not one to gloss over the more difficult aspects of growing up, and this book is no exception to that rule. here's the story. Hazel Grace Lancaster is a 16 year old who has had a well below average junior high to high school life. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 13, and she left school, never to return. When we meet her she is battling metastases that have rendered her breathless. She is in a kind of limbo, where she knows her condition is terminal, but the experimental chemotherapy is keeping the tumors in her lungs more or less under control, but the damage is done, she is on oxygen, and we know where this is heading. She doesn't seem particularly depressed to me, but her doctors send her to a support group and there she meets Augustus Waters. He was a wildly popular boy who had an osteosarcoma and lost his leg. But that is not why he is there. He is there to support his friend Isaac, who presumably has retinoblastoma, and is about to lose his second eye. You get the idea. All the kids have cancer. So they are all facing very significant illnesses and disabilities, which are usually reserved for adults. But the truth is that kids do face these things. Hazel and Augustus fall in love and support each other through the travails of their illnesses--unlike your usual high school love affair, they share Augustus' Make-A-Wish trip, for example. But the emotions that they experience are what you would expect for their age. It is just that the situations they grapple with are usually reserved for those of us who are closer to our twilight years. I have a childhood cancer survivor, and all my children have friends who have either had cancer or have siblings. They know children who have died. So this book resonated for me. Life threatening illness in a child is hard for parents and children to grapple with, and the author did a good job of demonstrating how parents might allow their terminally ill children to do things that you wouldn't allow your average 16 year old to do. It was heart wrenching at times--I read it on a plane, and at points I had tears rolling down my cheeks. I was reassured when I read reviews written by people who do not have a childhood cancer connection have the same response--but it is a good kind of sad. the kind that makes you thing, and approach your life with a kinder vision. This is not an uplifting book. There are no miracles here. But it is a book true to it's subject.

Wanderlust (2012)

Let me start by stating that this is not a great movie--it is more of a fun movie. The reason it spoke to me was that we have a family friend who just this month moved to an intentional community, and he built the abode he will be dwelling in at our house. So we are thinking about that subject and how the rules might work. This is a Judd Apatow movie--so consider the source--the comedy is going to be a little bit juvenile, and a little bit off color. There is the territory we are coluntarily venturing into. Paul Rudd add Jennifer Aniston play George and Linda Gergenblatt. Shortly after plopping down cash they don't have for a Greenwich Village studio apartment, George loses his job, and they flee the city (the movie does not deal with the very real contemporary issues of how they even got financing for this apartment in the first place, nor how they walked away from it). Their plan is to have George work for his intolerably obnoxious brother in Atlanta while they get back on their feet. En route to the aforementioned brother's house, they get waylaid in Elysium, an intentional community in rural Georgia, where clothing and privacy are optional, they grow thier own food and wine, and maintaining fidelty to one person is considered very old school. After about 45 minutes with George's brother and his wife, this approach to life seems inordinantly appealing to George and Linda and they hightail it out of Atlanta and back to the commune. The movie has the occasional laugh and the very real message about what sustaining long term relationships over the rough patches requires (and a stay at a commune would not be one of the necessary ingredients). It also brings us back to what might motivate people in the 21st century to live communally--and it really doesn't appear to have changed all that much. Some people are living there for all the right reasons, but there are those who are wolves in sheep's clothing. There is no excaping that sort, even when you take your clothes off, grow your own food, and live off the grid.

La Belle Vie, Minneapolis

When I was in Minneapolis recently, I had two excellent dinners. The one we ate here was the more elegant of the two--but the truth be told, this is also the place that I would be less likely to return to. The food was phenomenal--we had the smaller of the two tasting menus, which meant 5 courses instead of eight (one less entree, no palate cleanser, and no cheese plate). The thing about this meal was that the portions were very small, so you could do 8 courses without too much difficulty, but we left full at the end of our meal. Here is what we had:
The meal opens with an amuse bouche or two, which were delcious, as well as bread 9which is okay--not up to the quality of the other food)

#1 Sautéed Soft-Shelled Crab with Roasted Garlic Emulsion, Charmoula and Radish
I took a pass on this and was served the Sautéed Rabbit Loin with Boudin Blanc and Porcini-Taleggio Tortelli--which was delicious.  The pasta was one of the best things I ate all night.

#2 Oven-Steamed Yukon Salmon with Heirloom Tomato, Horseradish and Dill Pan-Roasted
The salmon was cooked perfectly, and the horseradish foam was the best foam I have had--flavorful and nicely highlighting the flavor of the salmon

#3  Poussin with Sweet Corn, Chanterelle Mushrooms and Pancetta
This was the weakest link in the meal--the corn flavor wasn't strong enough to overcome the pancetta flavor, and kind of got lost.

#4  Grilled Dry Aged Beef Ribeye with Ratatouille, Black Olive and Basil
I really enjoyed this coure, even though there were no options on doneness of the meat, and I am not a huge fan of beef (someone who loves rare beef would undoubtedly been happier still)

Blueberry Crémeux with Lemon Verbena-Apricot Ice Cream and Sesame Cake
This was the biggest surprise--really loved the blueberry crémeux, which had a vibrant berry flavor and a wonderful texture.  The lemon verbena ice cream did not have an overpowering flavor, which was a good thing, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this.

I noticed on my way out the door that you could also eat in the bar, which has a slightly less elegant atmosphere and is rumored to be priced less as a result.  It was really lovely, and would make for a romantic alternative.  Minneapolis has it going on, no doubt about it.

Assault on Women

Todd Akin is the straw that broke the back of what I can tolerate.  On Sunday he said, and I quote,
"From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," Akin said of pregnancy caused by rape. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist."  Forget that at least 5% of rapes result in pregnancy, which is not what I would call rare (in fact, conception after rape may be higher than with consensual sex), which translates to 32,000 pregnancies a year.  Forget that we aren't talking about the legal consequences of sexual violence for men, we are talkiing about the recourse of women who have been victimized.  Forget that women legally have choices.  Forget that the man clearly has no grasp of even the most basic elements of biology and he is running for the U.S.Senate.  What angers me most about this statement is the clear implication that women are stating that they are raped when they are actually having consensual sex.  Is he questioning the existence of sexual violence?  It is flat out insulting.  Would he go on to say that women often say no when they mean yes?  That women ask for it?  What about women who have been drugged?  It is terrifying that he is where he is.

Equally scary is just how quickly social progress can be thrown back half a century.  This, combined with the GOP's attack on women's health care issues this spring and their blockage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, demonstrates a consistent lack of vision in the Republican Party when it comes to women in the 21st century. 

I get it, I do.  Men feel under attack.  More women go to college than men, and their applications, based on merit, are stronger.  They get better grades than their male counterparts, and if gender were not valued, women would take up 70% of spots at top tier schools.  Women are getting better jobs than men, and despite the lack of pay equality,  they are increasingly bringing home the bigger paycheck.  But the answer is not to put women down, it is to figure out how to make men more educated and more successful.  And the answer is defintiely not to saddle women with unwanted pregnancies and poor health care.  Been there, done that.  On the plus side, we  know that nations that educate women have economic prospertity and it is much more successful than any other intervention.  It is a proven pathway to success, let's not muck that up.  Sadly, the party that adamently avows themselves to be pro-America is the one that espouses policies that will keep us behind the rest of the world.

So in the end, it just goes to show that you cannot take social justice for granted.  The progress of the last 50 years can be wiped out in the blink of an eye.  I find the 'Hey Girl' campaign to be a little bit too much about passive aggression and not enough about what to do about these trends, but I really identify with the poster of Paul Ryan that says "Hey girl--Vote for me--It will be the last choice you are allowed to make".  It is darkly prescient of what the stakes are for women this November.