ARCHAEOLOGY IN ACCO

The Jezzar Pasha Mosque at Acco.  This mosque was built by the Ottoman governor of Acco in the late 18th century, Ahmed al-Jezzar (“The Butcher”) Pasha, equally famous for his cruelty, his impressive public works, and for having defeated Napoleon in 1799 (Wikipedia). 

One of the many places we visited during our recent visit to Israel was the coastal city of Acco, also known as Acre, which lies at the northern end of Haifa Bay.  It’s not too much farther north before you hit Rosh HaNikra, which sits right on the border with Lebanon.

Acco is of historical interest owing not only to its being one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the country - it was also the capital of the Crusader state that ruled over parts of the Holy Land at various intervals between 1104 and 1291, when the Egyptian Mameluks finally booted the Crusaders out.

There are all sorts of excavations going on as the ancient Crusader fortress and its surroundings continue to yield their dusty secrets.  Enormous subterranean vaults and rooms are being dug out inch by inch, with areas completely inaccessible even as little as a decade ago now exposed to the light of the sun.  (Not everything that goes on in the ancient Citadel is strictly archaeological, as evidenced by the presence of a crew filming “Israeli Idol” while we were there.)


A recently excavated subterranean vault beneath the Crusader Citadel.

Some think of the Crusaders as heroic warriors - at least, so do many of the Christians among us.  We Jews have less pleasant institutional memories, given the bloody ravages that the Crusaders conducted against the Jews of Europe as they worked their way southward to the Holy Land.  But that is history, and all that is left are memories, bones, and stones.  And artifacts that evidence a fairly normal quotidian existence.  Lookee:



Here’s a room which at first blush gives little obvious evidence of its intended purpose.  A storage closet?  A kitchen? An abattoir?

No... it’s a toilet!

I recognized it in an instant - well before our guide explained its purpose.  For to my eyes it was altogether reminiscent of the basement-level restrooms in Cuyler Hall at Princeton, where I spent my freshman year.  But there was another clue as well...

HUMMUS A FEW BARS, AND I CAN FAKE IT

She Who Must Be Obeyed claims that beets taste like dirt, which is why she won’t eat ’em.

Hummus, on the other hand, sounds like dirt.  Hummus, humus, what’s the difference?

Last night, SWMBO was entertaining several Friends of Long Standing - the girls from the Old ’Hood.  On the menu were burgers - both salmon and beef - along with roasted sweet potato sticks, peppers, and a fine romaine salad.  We needed an appetizer, though.  What to serve?

Ah! we both thought simultaneously.  Hummus!  We always keep a supply on hand for just such situations.


A bowl of hummus, decorated with a sprinkling of roasted pine nuts and za’atar.

Hummus is the quintessential Middle Eastern dip, consisting of mashed chickpeas with sesame, lemon, and garlic.  There are alternative versions - a particularly popular one is hummus foul, made with fava beans - spelled variously as foul or ful.  (It’s pronounced “fool,” in case you were curious.)  But most of the hummus we see here is the good old chickpea version.

Hummus, a traditional Arab dish, is popular in Israel as well - hardly a surprise, since Mediterranean food traditions tend to cross cultural lines.  Since it may be eaten either with meat or dairy meals, it is popular among observant Jews who follow the traditional dietary laws.  Not only that, it’s nutritious - plenty of vitamins, plus a good balance of protein to carbohydrates - and it tastes good.  What’s not to like?

I doctored our hummus up with a squirt of olive oil, a handful of toasted pine nuts, and a generous sprinkling of za’atar (a Middle Eastern herb blend containing varying proportions of hyssop, sesame seeds, and sumac).  It tasted great - not like dirt at all.

Unlike beets.

WELL VENTILATED

Elisson sports a natty colander at the Carmel Shuk (Market) in Tel Aviv.  (Photo courtesy of my friend Gary.)

The weather can be a bit on the warm side in Israel, especially if you choose, as we did, to visit in July.

As such, it’s a good idea to come prepared with a goodly supply of perforated headgear.  Whether you cover your noggin for religious reasons or you’re simply trying to keep your shiny dome from suffering the ravages of a third-degree sunburn, you will never go wrong with a well ventilated metallic chapeau.

(You didn’t think I would go two entire weeks in an exotic foreign location without sticking a colander on my cruller, didja?)

CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?

Three great monotheistic faiths live adjacent to one another - cheek by jowl, as it were - in the Holy Land... and, as we know, there are occasional times when relationships amongst these children of Abraham are not ideal.

We saw precious little evidence of any actual friction during our visit.  Nevertheless, when we visited the Galilee we discovered a singular illustration of the profound differences between two religious communities.

In Zefat, a venerable seat of Jewish mysticism and the home of Kabbalah, this peculiar sign caught our attention:


One stop shopping!

The next morning, we visited K’far Nahum, AKA Capernaum, the home of both Jesus and of Simon Peter.  Capernaum was the little fishing village adjacent to the Sea of Galilee where Jesus conducted his ministry after departing Nazareth; it is of interest to Jews because it is the site of two ancient synagogues - including the one where Jesus is said to have taught.

Capernaum, being a site primarily sacred to Christians, is administered by Christian authorities... and it is evident that they do not see eye to eye with the Hebrew sages of Zefat:


Dang! So much for those weapons and puppies I just bought up the road.

C’mon, guys - can’t we agree on just a couple of things?  Never mind whether Jesus was the Son of God or not... why must I leave my Taurus 9mm and my pit bull in the car when I visit Capernaum?

IN WHICH ELISSON IS ASTONISHED

Every once in a rare while, Hollywood surprises me.

That the movie business is still capable of astonishing me is in itself astonishing.  I have seen too many stupid-ass sequels and prequels, too many brain-dead book adaptations, too many films that constitute a complete waste of my time... and at my age, time is becoming an increasingly precious resource.  Just as life is too short to drink bad wine, so is it too short to watch crappy movies.

Disappointment seems to go hand-in-hand with movies, at least when it comes to the ones I love - or would like to see made.  Remakes of two of my favorite SF flicks, The Time Machine and The Day the Earth Stood Still, were both, sadly, botched.  Messing with classics is always risky: Only the fact that my expectations were low in both cases kept me from being miserable about both of these films. (The same goes for King Kong.)

I have waited an eternity for certain of my favorite novels to be adapted to the big screen.  Childhood’s End, one of Arthur C. Clarke’s classics, would have made a great film. But (to paraphrase another great SF author) I am beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime.

Likewise, I had been all excited about the planned Coen Brothers version of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, a novel that I anticipated eagerly and enjoyed thoroughly.  The Coen Brothers, with their unique darkly humorous sensibility, would have been perfect to helm a film about Meyer Landsman and his Tlingit sidekick Berko Shemets, trying to solve a murder mystery in an alternative-history Jewish homeland - in Alaska.  Alas, that film seems to have been dropped into a black hole.

After many years of waiting on my part, the film version of Orson Scott Card’s celebrated Ender’s Game appears to be scheduled for a November 2013 release.  The film will star Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley in two of the key adult roles, and will be based on both Ender’s Game and its sister novel Ender’s Shadow, which tells the same story from the perspective of a different main character.  I sure hope they don’t fuck this one up.

Having said all this, when I discovered that the movie adaptation of this book is set to come out on October 26 of this year, I almost passed a blood clot from the shock:



OMFG!  They’ve gone and made a film out of Cloud Atlas!

For those who are not familiar with David Mitchell’s astounding matruschka doll of a novel, you can read more of my comments here.  The fact that the Wachowskis wrote and directed it - them as wrote The Matrix - may bode well for the film’s quality.  Certainly, it has attracted a passel of Big Box Office Peepul for to act in it: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent, to name a few.

Damn, I am burning with excitement.  Or is that the fear of being burned yet again?  I sure hope they don’t fuck this one up.

THE GLORY DAYS

A westward view of the Temple in Jerusalem in the glory days of King Herod... the destruction of which is one of the many calamities Jews mourn on this day. [Click on the image for a full panoramic view of this scale model, which is located at the Israel Museum in a rebuilt Jerusalem.]

Today is Tisha b’Av, the bleakest, blackest day of the Jewish calendar.

Everything rotten that ever happened to us Red Sea Pedestrians happened on (or close to) Tisha b’Av - the ninth day of the month of Av. And even if it took place some other time of the year, this is the day on which we mourn.

The destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem - the house that Solomon built? Tisha b’Av. The destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 C.E.? Tisha b’Av. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492? Tisha b’Av.

Think about that last one for a minute. “Unless you decide to get baptized as a Roman Catholic, you have three months to sell everything you own and get out of the country. And, no, you can’t take any precious metals or jewelry with you. Just leave that stuff here - we’ll find something to do with it.” Nice, huh?

Having just returned from Jerusalem, I now have a far better appreciation of the magnitude of the devastation that the Romans inflicted upon it nearly two thousand years ago when they brought the Glory Days of that great city to a bitter end. What was once unimaginable has now been placed in its physical context, and it is all the more tragic to me.

And yet...

As I have stated before on this very Tabula Electronica, the black cloud of the Roman sack of Jerusalem and the concomitant destruction of the Beit HaMikdash - the Temple that was the focus of the paleojudaic sacrificial cult - had a silver lining. Without a Temple, Judaism no longer had a geographic center: There was no longer any place to which pilgrims could bring their sacrifices thrice yearly. The religion was forced by dire necessity to evolve, and evolve it did, developing a new emphasis on spoken prayer and scholarship. The birth of the religion we know as Judaism today had its genesis 1,942 years ago in the dark events of Tisha b’Av.

In my own way, I will mourn. I will take the leather shoes from off my feet and avoid consortium (don’t ask me about fasting). I will sit on the floor and read the Book of Lamentations by candlelight. I will shed a tear as we chant the haunting elegiac poem “Eli Tzion.”

But I won’t be completely miserable, not after having walked the streets of Yerushalayim ha-b’nuya, today’s rebuilt Jerusalem, the real glory days of which (Hashem willing) still lie ahead. And, being me, I may even crack a joke or two.

DRINKING IN THE HOLY LAND

With reference to this post’s title, I am not using the term “drinking in the Holy Land” in the metaphorical sense, as in “we spent two weeks drinking in the sights and sounds of Israel,” despite its appropriateness when deployed in that manner.

Nope.

I’m talking about the Ingestion of Fluids, both of the alcohol-bearing sort and, well, the other kind.  For if you’re planning to spend time in the Middle East in July, you’d best be prepared to do some serious hydration.  It gets hotter than a brass monkey’s nutsack in many of the places we traveled to - hell, all of the places we traveled to - in the height of summer.  Liquid refreshment is your friend.

Our tour bus driver thoughtfully provided a chilled compartment stuffed with bottles of water.  At a buck a throw, it was a nice side business for him, and a way for those of us who had neglected to top up our supplies to keep up with our moisture requirements without having to wait for mealtimes or rest stops.  We drank water by the pint - by the quart, by the gallon - every chance we got, and would immediately sweat it right out.  Thank Gawd for modern wicking fabrics, which prevented us from devolving into a stinking, dank mob.

I have spoken before about how breakfast is an Art Form in Israel, but it is by far not the only prosaic edible or potable to be so elevated.  Take, for instance, the humble glass of lemonade.  Here in the States, it’s the province of prepubescent entrepreneurs, but in Israel it’s a thing of beauty - mainly because it’s jacked up with mint.  Presenting... limonana!


Limonana - lemonade and mint - may very well be the Israeli national beverage.

“Limon” is pretty self-explanatory: Lemons are plentiful in Israel (unlike limes, which, strangely, were nowhere to be seen during our visit).  “Nana” is Hebrew for mint.  Take a generous wad of mint leaves, steep them in your lemonade, run the whole mess through a blender (if desired), and you’ve got limonana.  Depending on where you find it, the balance of mint to lemon can vary, from almost straight lemonade to something that some might say tastes like the bastard child of a lemon and a bottle of Scope.  I actually preferred the mintier versions, such as the one in the photograph above.

Soft drinks were plentiful, of course.  It was easy enough to find Coke Zero (and its local evil twin, Pepsi Max), although Cheerwine and IBC Root Beer were thin on the ground.


JoAnn and SWMBO say, “Have al-Coqaida and a smile. And a bowl of hummus and some felafel.”

Coffee is popular in Israel, too.  On hot days (i.e., pretty much every frickin’ day), you could get a “cold coffee,” which was coffee and milk over ice.  Or you could get an “ice coffee,” which had been run through a freezing gizmo to convert the coffee-milk mixture into something resembling a slushy.  For us hardcore caffeine hounds, espresso was plentiful, along with the ubiquitous Turkish coffee.  This latter is finely pulverized coffee that is boiled once or (preferably) twice, sweetened to diabetic coma levels, and served in tiny cups.  A properly made Turkish coffee contains a roughly 50:50 proportion of muddy grounds to liquid and is screamingly caffeinated.  The Arab version, infused with cardamom, is my personal favorite.

And then there were the Adult Beverages.

During our stopover in New York enroute to Tel Aviv, we took the precaution of purchasing a couple of bottles of strong Brown Goods.  The selection at the duty-free shop was not the best (unless you had a jones for über-pricey items like Johnnie Walker Blue), but there was a fine Glenmorangie LaSanta with my name on it, and likewise a Bowmore 12-year-old Islay malt that called out to my friend Barry.  And the prices were reasonable, especially considering the fact that you were getting a full liter instead of the usual 750 ml load.  Thus it was that we were well provisioned when our group’s impromptu cocktail parties would convene at seven every evening.

Israel produces a handful of excellent beers and an ever-increasing number of fine wines, the latter competitive with the best of France and California.  The Hard Stuff is another story, however. Israeli spirits run mainly to a few brandies, along with arak (an anise-flavored cousin to Greek ouzo).  While I generally like to rely on local products, arak is not exactly the ideal base for mixed drinks - for those, you’d have to go to the Imported Booze well. The hotel bars could be trusted to make simple cocktails, but anything complicated (like, say, an extra dry gin Martini) would, like as not, require special instructions and hand-holding.  So I was glad for those bottles of duty-free Scotch whisky, which lasted the better part of two ten days.

 Hmmm.  I wonder what limonana would taste like with a handsome tot of gin in it?

THE ISRAELI BREAKFAST

A small part of my nutritious daily breakfast in Israel: tomatoes with za’atar (hyssop), olives, and cheese. Not pictured: gaboons of smoked fish and multiple cups of espresso.

In Israel, breakfast is not simply a meal. It is a challenge that has been elevated to an art form.

I'm speaking of the buffet breakfasts served at the better hotels, where a veritabobble cornucopia of comestibles stares you in the face and dares you to make a selection.  You cannot possibly eat everything that is laid out before you - hell, you can’t even sample everything.  There’s simply too much.

Most of us have trouble making these sorts of decisions even as we are still wiping the sleepy sand from our eyes. What to eat?  What to eat?

There’s typically a huge assortment of fresh vegetables and Mediterranean-style salads.  Gorgeous tomatoes... cucumbers... peppers... onions.  There’s a mind-boggling variety of cheeses and yogurts, including less-familiar (to Americans, anyway) items like Bulgarian feta and labneh.  You like fish?  There’s fish a-plenty, ranging from gravlax to poached salmon, pickled herring, matjes herring, smoked mackerel.


Now, this is a Cheese Aisle: some of the daily breakfast selections.  Especially popular in the Galilee are the world-famous cheeses of Nazareth.

With all that cheese, you’ll want some dried fruit - prunes and/or apricots - to keep from getting, ahhh, backed up.  Take your pick.

If you’re a carb hound, not to worry.  There are breadstuffs galore: bagels (sometimes), fresh-baked loaves of whole-grain bread, croissants, sweet pastries, crackers, and crispy toast slices.  Cereal, too.

Waffles?  Check.  Pancakes?  Check.  Omelettes made to order?  Check. You can even get a blintz... or ten.

You want some local flavor?  There are bourekas, a Mediterranean staple consisting of phyllo or puff pastry dough crammed with various fillings: potato, spinach, eggplant, mushrooms, et alia.  Or try shakshouka, eggs poached in a piquant tomato- and chile pepper-based sauce - Israel’s answer to huevos rancheros.

To stay hydrated, have some fruit juice, mineral water, tea, or coffee.  Have a cappuccino or espresso made to order.  Have several!

The one thing you won’t find at most places offering the classic Israeli breakfast is meat of any kind.  Breakfast is a dairy meal, which means no meat of any kind, consistent with Jewish dietary laws.  (If you want meat, come back for supper... or lunch on Saturday afternoon.)

You can eat yourself silly at one of these affairs.  The Missus and I each had to adopt a food selection strategy that would enable us to survive two weeks of monster breakfast buffets.  In my case, I chose to focus on a few simple items: vegetables (the tomatoes were to die for, packed with the kind of real tomato flavor that is but a distant memory for most Americans), a little dried fruit, a few pieces of cheese, and a pile of smoked fish.  It’s the kind of breakfast that was the perfect jump-start to our frantic days of running from pillar to post in the broiling heat, despite its potential for generating deadly fishy ’n’ cheesy halitosis.  Thank Gawd for choon gum, eh?

EXPECTATIONS

The sun sets over the hills of northwestern Jerusalem, as seen from Kever Shmuel HaNavi - the tomb of Samuel the Prophet.

“When the Lord restored our exiles to Zion, it was like a dream.” - Psalm 126

Now that we’re back from our two-week dreamlike sojourn in the Promised Land, people have been asking us, “Was Israel what you expected?”

Yes and no.

I, for one was not sure what to expect. But my answer, invariably, is that Israel defies expectations. It was everything I expected, yet nothing like what I expected. And it was more, far more, than I expected.

It is a land of contradictions.  It is thoroughly modern, yet it is the ancient seat of the three great Abrahamic religions.  There are stones that serve as evidence of cities that were built over seven thousand (!) years ago, yet as recently as 1900, the land where Tel Aviv now stands was a desiccated wilderness of sand dunes.

It is home to both a vibrant secular society and to people who hew to Judaism as it was practiced in Eastern Europe three hundred fifty years ago.

It is green and fertile... yet it has huge expanses of stark desert that shimmer in the summer heat.

We felt safer in Israel than we do at home.  It has been said that America is a country with secure (albeit somewhat porous) borders, but with not a whole lot of domestic security.  Israel, conversely, has borders that are constantly under threat... but you can wander about Tel Aviv or Jerusalem - both big cities - at any hour, without fear.

Israel is tiny, about the size of New Jersey.  We were able to cover a lot of ground in the two weeks of our trip, starting in Tel Aviv and ending in Jerusalem, with stops in Haifa and Tiberias.  We visited the extreme northwestern and northeastern corners of the country, as well as traveling the Jordan River from its sources in the north, through the Sea of Galilee, to its terminus in the Dead Sea.  (Alas, no time to visit the Negev Desert or the hot-weather resort of Eilat at the country’s southern tip.)  Yet despite its minuscule size, it is an economic and technological powerhouse.  Much of the chips and software that power the Internet and social media originated in Israel - something to remember the next time some douchebag on Facebook calls for a boycott of Israeli products.

All my life, I’ve heard how Israel has made the desert bloom - David Ben-Gurion’s famous directive.  Now I have seen it... and it is real.

I expected to be moved, to be touched emotionally by the experience of being in this country that is simultaneously both so old and so new. I did not, however, expect tears to spring to my eyes unbidden at random moments.  When we sat at Shabbat dinner in Tel Aviv watching the sun set over the Mediterranean Sea.  When we said farewell to Shabbat in a Havdalah service at the beach.  When I saw the Kotel ha-Ma’aravi - the Western Wall - for the first time, my prayer book falling open to a hymn I used to sing to my grandfather as a child.  And when, standing at the Wall, I chanted the Eil Malei Rachamim prayer for SWMBO’s sister, the sister I never knew.

Whatever my expectations were, they were blown away.

HOME AGAIN, FOREVER CHANGED

A hawk soars above the valley floor below Masada.

The Missus and I have just returned from our two-week sojourn in Israel.  I’m too worn out to write right now, but there will be plenty of photos and stories... beyond those we’ve been slapping up on Facebook whenever WiFi was available.

A trip to this corner of the world  - particularly for us Red Sea Pedestrians - can be a life-changing experience.  It certainly has been that, and more, for us.

More later.  Now, rest.

DISCOVERY: A 100-WORD STORY

Physicists were agog when Rolf Heuer, the director of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), announced the discovery of new evidence of the existence of the elusive Higgs boson, AKA the “God Particle.” The particle is considered to be a major key to understanding the mysteries of the universe’s origin.


Higgs boson: artist’s representation.

"We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics," Heuer told scientists.

Exciting as this news was, it was almost immediately overshadowed by an even more significant discovery: that of the Higgs Bozo, which may explain the ability of vast numbers of clowns to cram into a Volkswagen.


Higgs Bozo.

SHEHECHEYANU

Barukh Atah, Hashem, Elokeinu melech ha-olam
Shehecheyanu, v’kiy’manu, v’higiyanu laz’man ha-zeh.

Blessèd are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, for having granted us life, for having sustained us, and for enabling us to reach this day.
***
This is the prayer Jews recite when reaching a milestone in life... on any kind of Special Occasion, no matter whether trivial or earthshaking.  Are you wearing a new suit of clothes for the first time?  Is it your wedding anniversary?  Are you celebrating a holiday or family event?  You say a Shehecheyanu.  Seeing an old friend for the first time in 50 years?  Shehecheyanu.


Today I turn 59¾ - my 60th birthday is exactly three months away.  But that’s not why the Missus and I are saying a Shehecheyanu today.

FROM THE ELISSON ARCHIVE: AN ELEGY ON THE PASSING OF A BELOVED CHILDREN’S ENTERTAINER

O Captain! My Captain! The television’s on;
Yet legions of our saddened youth lament that you have gone.
No more the show with Mr. Moose, and no more Bunny Rabbit;
No more the entertainer who became a steady habit.
O boo hoo hoo,
O Captain Kangaroo,
I heard the news today, oh boy
That now your life is through.

O Captain! My Captain! With you and Rogers gone,
The kiddies of America will have to soldier on
Without the seltzer-bottle clown, without good Clarabell;
And now without our Captain? What dreadful news to tell!
Can this be true?
My Captain Kangaroo
Has shuffled off this mortal coil
And left me feeling blue.

My Captain does not say much; his flesh is cold and sere.
Perhaps he’s fallen sound asleep - he cannot see or hear.
O Mr. Green Jeans! Wake him up! Arouse him, please, I pray!
It strikes our deepest fears when childhood icons pass away.
O mourn, my friends! A legend ends!
Our Captain Kangaroo
Is entertaining angels now,
Now that his life is through.

[Apologies to Walt Whitman.]

Not that this has anything to do with current events, but Bob Keeshan’s passing in January 2004 inspired me to write this poem at the time.

I was feeling a bit nostalgic this morning for the television shows of my misspent youth.  The Three Stooges, Bugs Bunny, Captain Kangaroo, Miss Frances and Ding Dong School (that one’s ripe for snarky commentary), and, of course, Romper Room.  What crap did you like to watch when you were a young Snot-Nose?

GREEN BANANAS

As I was in the Pet Supplies Emporium purchasing the giant Economy Size sack of cat food for Hakuna, it occurred to me that buying that humongous sack for a seventeen-year-old cat is a little like a centenarian buying green bananas: It implies a certain (possibly unjustified) confidence in the future.

Sometimes the smaller bag is the way to go. It does not carry so much of the stink of hubris.

THIRTY ON THIRTY

The Mistress of Sarcasm and her lovely Momma at the falls (where else?) in Falls Village, Connecticut.

It’s one of those “Sunrise, Sunset” moments when a child hits a major Age-Milestone. And that’s what we are having right now, for our baby girl - the Mistress of Sarcasm - celebrates her thirtieth birthday today.

Thirty!

Without getting all maudlin about all that Passage of Time business, I can honestly say that it’s a little hard to believe. Not because the Mistress hasn’t grown into a wonderful, (mostly) fully realized, talented young woman, because she has done that and more... but because it means that I am nearly sixty years old myself. And that’s passing strange!

Years - nay, decades ago, I wrote the following in the Mistress’s baby book: “I can’t predict the future - who can? But I have a pretty good idea of what you’ll grow to be like. You’re assertive, bright, exuberant, winsome, obstinate, and affectionate... and you’ve got a daddy who has loved you from the very first second of your life.” The first part has come true, and the second is still true.

Alas, we won’t be with her to celebrate the day, but we had a chance to do that two weeks ago. A sort of Birthday Preview, if you will. Nevertheless, her big sister, our Elder Daughter, is there in our place, along with a multitudinous multiplicity of friends new and old.  There will be celebration a-plenty, an all-day event featuring a talent show, movies, a bonfire, camping, and - who knows? - perhaps a walk-on appearance by one of the neighborhood bears.

Enjoy this special day, my love - and may the coming years bring you ever more health and happiness, without limit to any good thing!

SIMMER DOWN, NOW

 A perfectly appropriate sentiment, given that blogging appears to be dead meat.

PERIPATETIC ME

The famous Sharon Twin Oaks, Sharon, Connecticut... this time, in full leaf.

Not pathetic.  Peripatetic.

Summertime, when She Who Must Be Obeyed is enjoying her annual respite from Teachy Business, is when we put on our Traveling Shoes.  And so far, we have logged a few miles.

A few weeks back, while I was busy hacking up the golf courses in coastal South Carolina, SWMBO used the opportunity to visit her clan in Texas.  Then, mid-month, we jumped in the car for an extensive road trip up the East Coast, with stops in New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, and Washington, D.C.  When your offspring - and other members of the extended family - are scattered all over the country, that’s what you gotta do if you want to see ’em all.

There are several routes that will get you from Atlanta to the Northeast.  Interstate 85 will carry you all the way to Petersburg, Virginia, where you pick up I-95.  That gets you as far as New York, and then it’s just a question of what route you want to take into Connecticut.  It's not an especially scenic drive, you have to deal with the traffic crapfest that is Washington, D.C., and there’s an assload of tolls beginning around Baltimore.  So we took the inland route, heading up through Tennessee to grab lunch with Eric at the Straight White Compound, then proceeding through Knoxville and Bristol, thence up through the Shenandoah Valley on I-81.


SWMBO and my irrepressible Auntie Zelda.

On the way, we stopped off for a visit with my Aunt Zelda - yes, Zelda - in the wilds of central New Jersey.  Zel met us at the door wearing a Cyndi Lauper T-shirt, which tells you something about her personality.  She’s the human embodiment of Champagne - effervescent, sparkly, and intoxicating.

From there, it was a straight shot up the legendary Garden State Parkway into New York, then across the Hudson on the Tappan Zee Bridge, finally crossing into the hyperbucolic northwest corner of Connecticut that is the home of the Mistress of Sarcasm.

It’s a beautiful corner of the world, serving as a weekend getaway destination for wealthy New Yorkers as well as a magnet for people who are into the Arts Scene.  There are little boutiques that sell little $450 jackets stitched together from raggedy Indian schmattas, fancy riding stables to accommodate the Horsey Set, expensive prep schools, and fine restaurants... all in an unprepossessing rural setting with its thin native population of Connecticut Yankees.  The Mistress, in roughly nine months of residence, has already established a wonderful circle of friends there and feels very much at home.

We stayed there four nights, one of which was spent at a fine B&B in what passes for downtown in Falls Village, the second-smallest community in the state.  The other three were at a three-bedroom house rented for the occasion - the kind of place where we would have been perfectly happy to stay the entire summer.  That, alas, was not in the cards, but we were there long enough to through a nice pre-birthday birthday party for the Mistress and some of her local buddies... a sort of warm-up for the Big Event at the end of the month.


A panoramic view of our digs in Salisbury.


The Mistress’s roomie Heather and parents Kent and Gail host a delightful alfresco dinner.

Bidding a reluctant good-bye to Connecticut mid-day Tuesday, we headed south to New York, there to spend a few days bunking in with my brother (The Other Elisson) and visiting  Eli (hizzownself) and Toni.  He’s eighty-seven now, Eli is, but he still retains his encyclopedic knowledge of filthy limericks.  Am I my father’s son?  You tell me.


The Throgs Neck Bridge, gateway to Lawn Guyland.

Thursday, we departed Long Island and made our way southward to Washington, D.C. where we hung out with Elder Daughter.  This also gave us a chance to spend some quality time with Wendy, a daughter of Friends of Long Standing, and her fiancé Brian, with whom we had a delightful evening listening to jazz at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, followed by a serious sushi-eating and alcohol-drinking session at the Kushi Izakaya.  The rest of our time was divided between downtown D.C. and the pedestrian-friendly streets of Georgetown.


Me, the Missus, and Elder Daughter.

Sunday came all too soon, and with it the need to turn southward once again, pounding down the highway for the eleven-hour return trip home.  That night, Hakuna was either happy or pissed-off to see us, we couldn’t tell which: All we knew is that she spent the next 36 hours yowling, as if to say, “Where the fuck have you been all this time?”  (It’s not as though we left her alone for twelve days.  We had a house-sitter keeping an eye on her and performing food bowl and litter box maintenance.)

Can’t wait to see how noisy she is after our next trip.  ’Cause there is one.  We’re peripatetic, ya know!

(More pics below the fold.)

JUNE GUILD EVENT

This year’s Sommelier Guild Banquet - the much-anticipated June event - will be held this evening at the Chops Lobster Bar in Buckhead.

Alas, Denny, the Curmudgeonly Superannuated Paraplegic, will not be in attendance. Nor will his political Opposite Number, Houston Steve. Their combined absence will make for less scintillating political repartee, but that’s a price I’d normally be willing to pay... except I won’t be there either, being that the Missus and I will be just returned from a lengthy road trip. Exhaustion plus wine equals numbnitude.

The annual Guild Banquet is where the best wines of the year are trotted out to be paired with the finest food.  I’m already salivating from having taken a peek at the menu - look upon it, Esteemed Readers, and despair along with me!

Speaker’s Wine:
NV Ferrari Brut Trento, Italy

First Flight:
2001 Domaine de Chevalier Blanc Grand Cru Pessac-Léognan - Bordeaux, France
2004 Dirler Riesling Grand Cru “Kessler” (Cuvée Cécile) - Alsace, France 
2007 Kistler Chardonnay Carneros “Hudson” - California

Oyster Rockefeller: Chesapeake Bay Oysters, Pernod, Spinach, Hollandaise Maine Lobster Bisque 

Second Flight:
2001 Il Macchione Vino Nobile di Montepulciano - Tuscany, Italy
2000 Alessandro e Gian Natale Fantino Barolo “Vigna Dei Dardi” - Piedmont, Italy
2000 Eraldo Viberti Barolo Riserva - Piedmont, Italy

Dino’s Pan Roasted Chicken Vesuvio: Thin Green Beans, Whipped Potatoes, Sweet Onions and Jus  

Third Flight:
2005 Château Cos Labory Grand Cru Classé St. Estèphe-  Bordeaux, France
2005 Clark-Claudon Cabernet Sauvignon - Napa Valley, California
2005 Karl Lawrence Cabernet Sauvignon “Herb Lamb”- Napa Valley, California

Filet Pepper Steak: Cracked Pepper Crust, Brandy Peppercorn Sauce, Broccoli, Mushrooms, Port 
Braised Shallot

Dessert:
1997 Taylor Fladgate Vintage Porto Portugal

Chocolate Toffee Crunch Pie: Morrelli’s Handmade Coffee Ice Cream

My usual practice would be to report back after the event with my jaded, bilious commentary. Instead, silence - and envy - will reign.

COCKTAIL DU JOUR

The Vieux Carré... a pre-Prohibition classic.

A few weeks ago, we discovered yet another Tasty Beverage.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were dining at Seed, one of the new places that has enriched the local dining scene since opening several months ago.  In addition to a well-executed menu featuring local ingredients - I avoid the use of the term “artisanal” because it’s so fucking trendy - the bartender there is a master of the craft.  His Carte des Boozes features a goodly number of vintage - i.e., pre-Prohibition - cocktails made with high-quality alcohols, and every so often I will indulge myself.

His Sazerac cocktail certainly qualifies as a classic, given that it is claimed by some to be the oldest American cocktail - but I didn’t order one of those.  Instead, I opted for the Vieux Carré, which is of considerably more recent vintage but with a name that recalls its origins in that selfsame French Quarter in N’Awlins whence comes the Sazerac.

Ahhh, the Vieux Carré.  Here’s how you can make your own:

1 ounce rye whiskey (mine used High West Double Rye - yum)
1 ounce Cognac
1 ounce sweet vermouth (mine was made with Punt e Mes)
½ teaspoon Bénédictine
2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir all ingredients with ice, then strain into an ice-filled Old Fashioned glass or a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon or orange.

At Seed, my drink came in a glass with a single, huge, round ball of ice and a substantial orange twist.  It was superb.  Even the Missus tasted it and pronounced it excellent - surprising, since she is not normally a fan of the Brown Goods.

Happily, I have all of the necessary ingredients right here at home in my Lacquer Liquor Locker.  Perhaps a little further experimentation is in order...  

FIREFLIES

It’s time to make love, douse the glim;
The fireflies twinkle and dim;
The stars lean together
Like birds of a feather,
And the loin lies down with the limb.
                                                            - Conrad Aiken

The first thing you notice is that there’s so little to notice.

At night, there is absolutely no sound.  Wait.  Wait.  Wait for your city-scarred eardrums to settle down, and you’ll hear the faint, whispery sound of flowing river water, an almost silent susurrance.

On these moonless nights, the dark is almost absolute, except for the star-spangled sky with its faint, glowing galactic band of nebulitic mist.  And except for the fireflies.  They flash and blink in stuttering staccato, a mysterious visual Morse code.

Nights here in Northwestern Connecticut have a magic all their own.  We can see why the Mistress of Sarcasm loves it so, living in this far-stretched neck of the woods.

It’s not without its hazards, of course.  Bears roam these parts; the Mistress has spotted at least one in her back yard.  And, of course, wherever you find bears, you will inevitably find bedraggled, shit-stained rabbits, mumbling quiet imprecations against the bears.

DOO DAH DAY

My ever-loving, ever-patient Missus: She Who Must Be Obeyed, my helpmate of thirty-five years.

She walks in beauty, like the night 
Doo dah, doo dah 
She walks in beauty, like the night 
Oh, doo dah day

As the above ditty - it’s been running through my head the past couple of days - would seem to say, my innermost self is an admixture of the sublime and the ridiculous, proportioned out in a manner at once carefully measured yet completely unpredictable.  And yet, it has a few constants - the stars by which I make my dead reckoning as I navigate the Waters of Life.

The most constant of those constants, of course, is She Who Must Be Obeyed, who, as of today, has also been The Missus for thirty-five years.  She has, somehow, managed to put up with me for all of that time, not to mention the not-quite-eighteen months immediately preceding our nuptials.

She is a woman of infinite patience, clearly.  How else to explain it?


Elisson and SWMBO, thirty-five years ago today - getting ready to start the honeymoon.

Look at her, the wide-eyed innocent in the photo above, taken just before we departed the Wedding Premises.  Innocent... and yet there is a mischievous sparkle in her smile.  Meanwhile, the Man-Clod next to her wears the same dopey, shit-eating grin with which he has plastered his face for the entire duration of the wedding.  It’s the Elisson Wedding-Face.  Hell, I can’t blame myself even unto this day - you’d’ve been grinning too, were you in my position.

Thirty-five years later, I’m still grinning.  Still very like a teenager in love.

And we can still get into those nutty T-shirts.

ONE GOLFY WEEKEND

The Magnificent Seven - this year’s gang of Golfy Boyz hits the links on the southern end of South Carolina’s Golden Strand.  From left to right: Marty, Bartimus Magnificus, Job Johnny, Elisson, Lee “Mister Hole-in-One” Bee, Gary, and Rocky Rhodes.

Late Spring brings with it our annual Golfy Boyz Weekend, wherein a squad of eight of my Golf-Buddies and I head off for a four-day weekend to do nothing but play golf and drink ourselves silly.   (I exaggerate somewhat with respect to the drinking. We’re already quite silly enough without additional assistance.)

This year our group was somewhat diminished in numbers, Houston Steve having other duties and responsibilities... namely, helping his Loving Helpmeet celebrate her birthday. I cannot argue with his priorities, but it meant that only seven of us made the trek to the South Carolina coast.

In previous years, we had had numerous outings on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail in Alabama.  Plenty of fine courses, most of them within a few hours drive... but last year we decided to check out the options in Myrtle Beach, and we were far from disappointed.  It’s a longer trek to get there, sure, but once you’re there, a myriad of courses await, all within a few minutes drive of one another.  Owing to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean, temperatures also tend to be a bit more moderate near the Grand Strand.

We stayed (and mostly played) in Pawleys Island, a place notable for both golf and woven rope hammocks (yes, hammocks!)  The last time I had trod this particular slice of the South Carolina coastline had been fifty-one years ago, when we stopped over at the Litchfield Inn on our way back home from Miami - my first lengthy Road Trip.  Needless to say, both Pawleys Island and I have changed in the intervening half-century.

This year’s course selections were all superb - challenging without being ridiculous, beautifully maintained, and easy on the eye.  The course we played Saturday - the Caledonia Golf and Fish Club - was easily the most scenic course I’ve played outside of Arizona: eighteen holes of low-country loveliness with an approach road to rival Magnolia Lane, o’erarched with Spanish moss-draped oaks.  I even managed to log one semi-respectable scorecard during the outing.

As is our custom, we mostly dined out in the evenings, with Job Johnny, Bartimus Magnificus and I preparing a home-cooked steak dinner at our condo Friday evening.  Inch-thick ribeyes... Campari tomatoes... baked sweet potatoes... a nice red Cabernet... a few drams of Laphroaig... mmmmm, good.

From a golf standpoint, the highlight of the trip had to be our friend Lee Bee’s hole-in-one on Caledonia’s sixth hole, a tee shot that landed on the green and proceeded to roll, taking a gently curving left-to-right path, right into the cup.  We celebrated with the obligatory round of drinks in the clubhouse, and since it was World Gin Day, I ordered an extra dry Martini.  (Gin and tonic came later, over a leisurely dinner.)

After our return to Atlanta Sunday, Gary and I agreed that this might have been our best golf weekend ever... despite our missing buddy Houston Steve.   Absentibus amicis.

More pics below the fold.

WAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR

“Something wicked this way comes.” Could it be... the Unexpected Visitor?
Ray Bradbury, SF writer extraordinaire, passed away June 5.

Years ago - my age was still in the single digits - I read a novel about humans traveling to Mars.

It was a peculiar book, not so much a proper novel as a collection of episodic stories, each complete in itself, that combined to create a narrative structure of sorts.  Later I found out that that was indeed the case: it had been constructed of short stories that had been published over the span of several years and subsequently woven together with interstitial segments.  Its author would later describe it as “a book of stories pretending to be a novel.”

It was poetic, packed with imagery.  It was nostalgic.  It was elegiac.  It was marvelous.

It was The Martian Chronicles, and it was my first introduction to the magic pen of Ray Bradbury.

Bradbury, alas, has passed on.  He died yesterday evening at the age of 91, having lived well into the future that he had so eloquently written about.  Of course, it was nothing like he had imagined... at least as set forth in The Martian Chronicles.

Never content to be classified as merely a science fiction writer, Bradbury’s cultural footprint covered books (Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, Something Wicked This Way Comes, etc., etc.), comics (Al Feldstein adapted many of his stories for EC Comics in their pre-Mad Magazine days), movies (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was one of my favorites back in my Snot-Nose Days... and I later found that Bradbury wrote the screenplay for the 1956 version of Moby-Dick), and television (including Twilight Zone, for which he adapted his short story “I Sing the Body Electric”).

Men like Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov were the giants of SF, and now they belong to the ages.   Others have come and taken their place on the shelves, in the anthologies, in the list of screen credits, and that is as it should be.   But I will never forget the piercing sadness - the utter loneliness - of the final chapters of The Martian Chronicles... and neither will I forget Bradbury, who showed me how a book could elicit such powerful emotions, instilling in me a love of imaginative fiction that continues unto this day.

Ave atque vale, Ray!  Perhaps now that you are Way in the Middle of the Air, you can see what Mars is really like.

THE LAZY MAN’S SORBET

Kesar mango sorbet with lime and dark rum.

My friend Gary and I have got sorbet-making down to a science.

Gary’s been at it for a while and his repertoire continues to grow by leaps and bounds just as the people who eat his sorbet grow by leaps and pounds.  Bittersweet chocolate, tangerine-chocolate, cherry, raspberry, pear, pineapple - he’s done ’em all.  And they’re all ridiculously good.

It’s not complicated, really.  You take fruit, cook it down, purée it, strain it, and add simple sugar syrup and any optional flavorings.  Then you chill the mixture - preferably overnight - and freeze it in an ice cream freezer.  Bingo: sorbet.

But now I’ve found one that’s even easier to make.  I call it the Lazy Man’s Sorbet, because no cooking, puréeing, or straining is involved.  I speak, of course, of mango sorbet.

Peeling and extracting the flesh from mangoes would be a royal pain in the arse, even if no cooking were necessary.  But that’s the beauty of this sorbet - none of that worky-work is required.  All you do is score a can of mango pulp at the local Indian or Middle Eastern grocery and you’re good to go.  Not only is it puréed and strained, it’s also already sweetened; you don’t even need to waste time making simple syrup.

I used a 30-ounce can of kesar mango pulp, which has a wonderful orange-yellow hue and sweet ripe mango flavor.  (Other varietals such as alphonso mango are also available as well.)  To prepare it for the freezer, all I did was add the juice of half a lime and a couple of tablespoons of dark rum before chilling the purée.  That’s it!  And it freezes beautifully.

Betcha this stuff would be great blended with a little yogurt to make an ice-cold mango lassi.

Got an ice cream freezer?  Feeling lazy?  Go on - you know what to do.

LOOK! IT’S A VENUS!

Venus, our planetary buddy and frequent evening and/or morning “star,” is in the news these days.


Venus de Milo. Photo: Wikipedia.

No, wait.  This ain’t it.


False color radar image of the surface of the planet Venus. Photo: JPL/NASA.

Getting warmer.


There’s a little black spot on the Sun today. - The Police, “King of Pain” (1983)
Transit of Venus as seen from New Delhi, 2004. Photo: Postnoon.

Ahhh, here we are. The Transit of Venus, one of the rarest predictable astronomical phenomena.

It’s a twice-in-a-lifetime event at best, when the planet Venus is seen to march across the blazing disc of the Sun.  The last one was in June 2004... but the one before that was back in December 1882, back when Chester Alan Arthur was in the White House.

The next one will be in December 2117, and it’s a pretty safe bet that nobody I know will be around to see it.  Meanwhile, I’m hoping that the clouds around our little corner of the world will cooperate and allow us to get a glimpse.  Now, where did I put that #14 welder’s glass?

Update: No welder’s glass, but by using binoculars to project an image of the Sun onto a white background, I was able to catch a fleeting glimpse of Venus in transit before thickening clouds closed in and obscured the solar disc.

COCKTAIL DU JOUR

The Last Word - one serious Adult Beverage.

Today’s cocktail is The Last Word, courtesy of Speakeasy: The Employees Only Guide to Classic Cocktails Reimagined, by Jason Kosmas and Dushan Zaric. (If you are an aficionado of the mixed Adult Beverage, this book is an indispensable guide to all sorts of tony tipples.)

It’s easy enough to make.  In a cocktail shaker, combine one ounce each of gin (I used Hendrick’s), Luxardo maraschino liqueur, green Chartreuse, and freshly squeezed lime juice, add ice and shake vigorously.  Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a lime wheel.  Presto: The Last Word.

It is powerful, this Word.  Powerful and complicated.  Drink at your own risk.  I had one late Saturday evening - one! - and spent the entire night wrestling with bizarre, almost hallucinogenic dreams.  A second round could very well send you completely over the edge.

Of course, that might be just the thing you’re looking for.

EL BRUJO

There is a wrinkled sorcerer
In deepest Pilpulpan,
His face all lined with creases
And skin a deep dark tan. 
Now if you wish to charm someone,
Just ask this magic man
To chant a few enchantments,
And if by chance you can
Drop off some loose dinero
Into his waiting hand,
He’ll work his witchy wonders
Within an hour’s span.

But should someone ever ask you
If somehow you might know
Of this wrinkly crinkly warlock
From mysterious Mexico,
Pretend that you are ignorant
Or at best a little slow -
Don’t be a rat and tip your hat,
Don’t let your knowledge show.
You must keep his powers secret
Or you’ll feel his anger flow -
By all means don’t provoke the wrath
Of Bruce, the rugose brujo.

HILLS: A 100-WORD FANTASY

The climber carefully inched his way toward the summit, a task made especially difficult by the smooth, almost glassy surface of the rounded hills, their slopes far more treacherous than they had appeared from a distance.

There was, he noted thankfully, no snow or ice to impede his progress. But snow, at least, would have been cold, refreshing. This stuff was hot to the touch, almost as though it had just emerged from a gigantic oven. Sweat poured from his forehead; he paused briefly to wipe it off.

Littered with blue-black boulders, the path ahead beckoned to Sir Edmund Challary.

FRIDAY RANDOM TEN

The old-school iPod d’Elisson. Amusing, innit, to use the term “old-school” when referring to a piece of 21st century technology?

Good Gawd - is it June already? Why, so it is. Five twelfths of the year Twenty-Twelve have found their way down the Great Celestial Toidy-Tube... and we’re still here.

We can celebrate by drinking ourselves silly, but why not play a few pleasant tunes while we do so? Let’s see what the iPod d’Elisson is spewing forth today...

1. Stairway to Heaven - Dave Matthews Band
   
   
2. Dying Sun - Moonraker
   
   
3. Mountains o’ Mourne - Don McLean
   
   
4. Shrimp (Dubplate) - Mr. Scruff
   
   
5. Eve - Boukman Eksperyans
   
   
6. It Ain’t You - Squirrel Nut Zippers
   
   
7. Stereotype - The Specials
   
   
8. Changes - David Bowie
   
   
9. Advance Romance - Frank Zappa
   
   
10. So What - Miles Davis

It’s Friday. What are you listening to?

MAY GUILD EVENT

I’m looking forward to this evening’s Guild event not only because of the wines - New Zealand will be the focus of the evening - but because I’ve managed to miss the last two occasions. Sometimes the calendar can be a cruel mistress, alas.

We’ll be assembling at 10 Degrees South, conveniently located on Roswell Road in the general vicinity of Chastain Park.  It’s a South African place, which will leave us none the (boere) wors for wear.  (groannn.)  The food ought to be tasty enough, although I would love to see a plate of chicken livers in peri-peri sauce or maybe some biltong.  As for the carte des vins, there’s not a Cupcake to be found.  Here’s the menu:

Speaker’s Wine:
NV Lindauer Brut “Special Select”

First Flight:
2011 Tora Bay Sauvignon Blanc**
2011 Spy Valley Sauvignon Blanc**
2011 Whitehaven Sauvignon Blanc

Calamari: grilled and tossed in lemon caper butter sauce

Second Flight:
2008 Te Kairanga Pinot Noir
2008 Nautilus Pinot Noir
2008 Villa Maria “Cellar Selection” Pinot Noir

Boerewors: Home made sliced lean beef sausage served with a side of tomato and onion sauce

Third Flight:
2009 Jules Taylor Pinot Noir**
2010 Spy Valley Pinot Noir
2010 Craggy Range TeKahu Gimblett Gravels Red Blend**

Lollipop Lamb Chops: Two marinated New Zealand lamb chops served over mashed potatoes

Dessert:
2010 The Ned “The Noble” Botrytis Sauvignon Blanc**

Di’s Delight: Warm, moist fruit sponge cake served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream

I would love nothing more than for Denny to show up, but I suspect that Houston Steve and I will just have to soldier on without him.  We will raise our glasses - absentibus amicis!

Update:  No Houston Steve... but the Missus has graciously agreed to join me! A rare treat!

Update, Too: No especially memorable wines this time, although the ones we had were very well suited to the food. The sole exception was the dessert wine Pat (the Guild’s immediate past president) had brought by way of lagniappe, a geographically appropriate (for the restaurant, not so much the New Zealand theme) 1978 Nederburg Edelkeur late harvest botrytis chenin blanc.  Dark, caramelly, and complex.

MEMORIAL DAY: ANOTHER VIEW

Today was not only Memorial Day here in the United States, it was also the second day of Shavuot, AKA Pentecost, AKA the Feast of the First-Fruits, the Rodney Dangerfield of Jewish holidays.  This meant that it was one of the four days a year when our religious services include the special Yizkor memorial service.

We Jews are very good at remembering the dead.  Perhaps it’s because so many of us are.

Our rabbi made an interesting observation during one of his sermons. Both Israel and the United States observe Memorial Days on which people honor the memory of those who lost their lives in service to their respective countries.  But there are a few crucial differences.

In the United States, Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer.  Southerners break out their seersucker suits; Northerners their white shoes.  It’s a day of solemn remembrance, of ceremonies at military cemetaries... but mostly it’s a day of backyard cookouts, picnics, watching the Indy 500, and of sales of every description.  Wanna buy a mattress?  Memorial Day’s a great time to do it.  Everyone who isn’t home grilling a few hot dogs and burgers in their backyard is stampeding to the mall.

In Israel, Memorial Day - Yom ha-Zikaron - is the solemn day that immediately precedes the festivities of Independence Day.  Shops and other businesses are closed.  Twice a day, sirens sound and the nation comes to a standstill... literally.  It’s a day of introspection, a day to think upon those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that the nation’s very existence - to be celebrated the very next day! - could be realized and preserved.

We Red Sea Pedestrians may overdo the solemn stuff at times.  Our New Year, rather than a time of drunken revelry, is similarly a time of introspection. (We save our drunken revelry for Simchat Torah and Purim.)  Maybe that’s why we don’t spend much time proselytizing.  What’s the point of trying to recruit converts when your sales pitch includes Not Getting Drunk on New Year’s Eve, Circumcision (ouch!), and Bacon-Avoidance?

But I do believe our priorities are exactly right when it comes to Memorial Day.  The mall can wait... but our honored ones have waited long enough.  Remember them.

BEER, BEER, AND MORE BEER

I enjoy a good mug of suds every so often, but my love of beer pale-ales in comparison to this young man’s.

The son of friends of long standing, Chris is freshly returned from two years of teaching English in Japan   His current mission is to travel the length and breadth of our great nation, visiting Beer Gardens every step of the way, in order to absorb atmosphere, information, and (not incidentally) brewskis a-plenty.  The eventual goal is to open his own Beer Garden.

This is precisely the sort of thing I should have done when I was young and (relatively) unencumbered.  But, alas, I did not, an omission for which my waistline and liver both thank me.

Go pay the young man’s site a visit... and, better yet, travel along with him and enjoy his Beery Adventures vicariously.  And be sure to tell him Elisson sent ya!

GREETINGS

Eli (then a strapping thirty-year-old) and Elisson, 1955.

Happy eighty-seventh birthday, Pop!

ANNIVERSARIES

May is a big month for anniversaries around here.

Not that it has any especial relevance to our daily lives, but Kevin Kim reminded me that two days ago - May 25 - marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of the release of Star Wars.  (These days, they call it Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, but that’s bullshit.)  When She Who Must Be Obeyed and I first saw it thirty-five years ago, it was within a few weeks of its release... and, coincidentally, within a few weeks of when she would become the Missus. (That’s an anniversary for a separate post.)

Back then, there was nothing quite like Star Wars, an action-packed Space Opera that both paid homage to and simultaneously reinvented the familiar tropes from the old Flash Gordon movies and their like.  It was as though those late 1930’s serials had been imagined anew in full color and with the newest special effects... and there was a scenery-chewing Compleat Villain for the Ages in Darth Vader.  In 1977, George Lucas had not yet thought to bury a Good Guy somewhere in Vader’s ascending colon, which - to me, at least - made him far more interesting.  Sympathy-grabbing backstories belong in Marvel Comics.

Thirty-five years, Esteemed Readers.  Think on it.  Thirty-five years before Star Wars came out it was 1942, when the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials were just a few years old... and yet, unlike those Moldy Oldies in 1977, Star Wars remains relatively fresh today despite its (now superannuated) special effects.

More anniversarial fun: Today, May 27, is my parents’ sixty-second wedding anniversary.  Alas that Mom is not around to enjoy it, having made her one-way trip to the World to Come twenty-four years ago.  I still enjoy looking at the video of their wedding every so often (captured with a now-obsolete technology called “8mm movies” that, in turn, utilized a medium called “photographic film”) and marveling at the sight of my Daddy-to-be, Eli hizzownself, in top hat and tails.  The wedding gown my mother wore that day is embalmed in a nitrogen-filled box in our basement, to be cracked open if and when one of our daughters has the occasion (and desire) to use it.

The food was pretty impressive, too.  Fountains squirting wine... rotating displays of hors d’oeuvres and canapés... unbelievable.  And the jazzy band with the smoking-hot Latin singer, too.  It was a big production, that wedding.

Alas, when I look at that video now, I feel like Bruce Gold, the protagonist of Joseph Heller’s Good as Gold, watching old movies on late-night TV and pointing out all the actors who have since died.  “That one’s toyt!”  “Look at him - geshtorben!”

Eli, though - Eli is still with us, a fact for which we are grateful.  And tomorrow is yet another anniversary: his eighty-seventh birthday. 

A COCKTAIL CLASSIC

The Classic Martinez, a real old-school cocktail.

Once in a while I like to try something new in the Drinky Department.

Go to a bar or restaurant these days and what do you see?  Fifty thousand variously flavored Margaritas, or a mess of soi-disant Martinis that, aside from being served in a cocktail glass, bear little or no resemblance to a real Martini Cocktail.  Feh, sez I.

I like cocktails with character.  A well-made gin Martini or Gibson is a good starting point.  A Provençal, with its notes of lavender and herbes de Provence. Or something with a more unconventional flavor profile - a Negroni, f’rinstance.

Even the perfect Rob Roy - a favorite of the Momma d’Elisson - has way more character than what passes for a drink these days in most places.

When I found a recipe for the Classic Martinez,  I knew I would have to give it a try.  Despite the similar-sounding name, it really has little in common with today’s Martini aside from the use of gin and vermouth as ingredients.  It’s slightly sweet, but not overly so... and it packs a wallop, both flavor- and alcohol-wise, one befitting an Old-School Classic. Here’s my (slighly modified) version:

Take a short 2 ounces of Hendrick’s gin, 2 ounces of Dolin sweet (red) vermouth, and a quarter-ounce of Luxardo maraschino liqueur. Add to a cocktail shaker with a few large cubes of ice and a dash or two of Fee Brothers orange bitters.  Stir well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Garnish with a lemon twist.

Now, drink.  S l o w l y.  Tasty, huh?

If you still prefer your pineapple-prune Margarita Slushy,  that’s OK.  De gustibus non est disputandum, as they say.  And it’s not your fault that all of your taste is in your tuchus.

WE ALL SCREAM FOR... SORBET?

Apricot sorbet with maraschino; bittersweet chocolate sorbet with Cointreau.

Yesterday evening, a group of us repaired to Chez Elisson for a spot of after-dinner Desserty Goodness.  I had cranked out a couple of batches of sorbet over the past several days and I wanted to see whether they passed muster... and besides, I like the coffee at my house way better than the stuff most local restaurants serve.  And so coffee and sorbet it was.

“Sorbet,” of course, is a fancy-pants Frenchified way of saying “sherbet.”  It also implies that there is no dairy at all in the frozen concoction: sherbet contains a small amount, usually enough to bring the butterfat content up to 1-2%.

I make frozen desserts every so often, but most of my efforts to date have been in the ice cream vein.  My buddy Gary, however, has shown himself to be a champion sorbet maker over the past few months, and it is from him that I have developed an appreciation for the intense flavors possible in a frozen dessert absent the muting effects of dairy.  His pear sorbet is a knockout and his raspberry is incomparable... but in my not-so-humble opinion, neither of ’em hold a candle to his chocolate sorbet.  Bittersweet, powerfully chocolatey, powerfully addictive, it is a confection best appreciated by the adult palate.  Flavor-wise, it beats your typical chocolate ice cream like a red-headed stepchild.

After having tasted Gary’s version, making my own chocolate sorbet was potentially a fool’s errand.  But I was curious to see what adding a touch of Cointreau, with its bitter orange flavor notes, would do to it.  As it happens, it creates a tasty alternative.  Which one’s better?  Flip a coin, willya?

I also had bought a metric assload of apricots at Costco last week, Gawd only knows why.  The problem with apricots, of course, is that their window of perfect ripeness is extremely narrow: One day they’re hard as little orange golf balls, the next they’re vile mush.  The trick is to catch them during that six-hour period when they are at the peak of ripeness - but eating two pounds of apricots in six hours is a bit much, even for a veteran trencherman like me.

And so, apricot sorbet to the rescue.  You cook the suckers down, and suddenly all that wonderful apricot flavor and aroma is released.  Cracking a few of the pits and throwing in the kernels adds an amaretto-like note, and a teaspoon of lemon juice brightens and intensifies the flavor.  A tablespoon of Luxardo maraschino liqueur and a dash of kirschwasser round out the picture.

Both the bittersweet chocolate and the apricot sorbets came out fine.  No, better than fine: excellent.  Even Gary liked ’em... and that’s a high compliment, seeing as how he is the Sorbet Master.

Lately, my taste buds don’t scream for ice cream; they’re jonesing for sorbet.  Hell, I may just give up on ice cream entirely.  (Naaaah.)

COFFEE, CREAM, AND KITTY

Hakuna, a perfect storm of Coffee, Cream, and Kitty.

Once upon a time, it was practically obligatory for bloggers to post photographs of cats on Friday. Now that blogging has become a Moribund Platform, seemingly eclipsed by Facebook and Twitter, Friday catblogging inches ever closer to extinction.

But Hakuna, she does not give a crap about any of that. She’s still here, occupying her own plane of existence far above the petty concerns of the Bifurcated Gods.

Aloof.  Beautiful.  Coffee, cream, chocolate... and Cat.

A FISHY SNACK, or KELP YOURSELF

Smoked Salmon with Shichimi Togarashi.

Sometimes when I’m in the mood for a quick snack, I will warm up a slice of whole-grain pumpernickel bread - not the Jewish deli stuff, but the German version that comes in thin slices with the density of white dwarf star matter.  What She Who Must Be Obeyed calls “nastybread.”

Then I’ll decorate it with a few carefully positioned slices of smoked salmon.

Next step is to use a honking big chef’s knife to hack up the resulting open-face sandwich into sixteen equal-sized morsels and to place said morsels on my plate.

The finishing touch?  Any number of Japanese condiments.  Today I settled upon a liberal sprinkling of shichimi togarashi, a delectable combination of red chili pepper, orange peel, sesame seeds, Japanese pepper, ginger, and kelp.  Yes, kelp.

Weird?  Maybe.  Yummy?  Absolutely.

BARBECUE IN BIRMINGHAM, YET AGAIN

The award-winning Moshe Ribeinu kosher BBQ team. From L to R: Elisson, Bartimus Magnificus, Job Johnny. 

For the third year in a row, I joined a small army of my Men’s Club buddies to compete in the “When Pigs Fly” Kosher BBQ Cook-Off in Birmingham.

“When Pigs Fly” is a clever enough title for the event, that being approximately when pigs will be considered kosher.  It’s also a sly hat-tip to the event’s sponsor, Piggly Wiggly, the well-known Southern supermarket chain.


You can’t expect to make decent barbecue without a supply of well-soaked hickory chunks.

I’ve written about this event before, so there’s no need to go into overmuch detail.  Suffice it to say that we were disappointed to have returned empty-handed, having managed to avoid winning, placing, or showing in a single category.  No new swag for the trophy case this year, alas.

And yet, from the standpoint of Quality of Food, I would have to say that this year we produced the best barbecue we’ve ever made at this event.  Yes, I know I’m not a disinterested party, but I know what good is... and our stuff was good.  No: It was superb.

Our beans had great flavor, with a touch of Tennessee whiskey and a hint of habañero to provide a pleasant, punchy piquancy.  The ribs had the right balance of smoke and spice.  And the brisket... ohhhh, the brisket.  A monster eleven-pounder, it came out of the smoker jacketed with a gorgeous layer of smoke and bark.  It was amazingly moist and tender, yet not overcooked and falling apart.  If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t change a single thing.


The beans were kicked up with a judicious dose of Jack Daniels, garlic, onion, and both jalapeño and habañero peppers.

 
The bark is part of the bite: A gorgeous beef brisket. Too bad you can’t smell it over the Internet.

My teammates - Job Johnny and the inimitable Bartimus Magnificus - will back me up.  My thanks to both of them for helping make this a memorable weekend... even without the trophical trinkets.


(What we look like when Bartimus is not standing on tiptoes and Johnny and I aren’t crouching.)

A SHORT FOOD-RELATED POEM

Duck.
Lamb.
Fuck.
Damn.

MAMMA-DRAMA IN THE SKY

Unusual mammatus clouds in the eastern sky over Marietta, Georgia, a harbinger of nasty weather. 

Last night as our Thursday evening Minyan Gang was polishing off the remains of our supper at the local diner, we noticed an ominous darkness gathering toward the east... an inky greyish-black sky that could not be explained solely by the fact that the sun was setting.

A quick check of the Weather Channel radar maps (ain’t smartphones smart?) established that Nasty Business was indeed brewing.  Unlike most springtime nastiness, however, the storms that were building were coming in from the east rather that the west.  Bizarre.

We stepped outside and were greeted by a rare sight: mammatus clouds.

Also known as mammatocumulus clouds, these clouds get their name from their resemblance to udders or breasts... which is why I refer to them as Sky-Tits on those uncommon occasions when I see them.  They are sometimes associated with very severe thunderstorms, so I was more than just a little nervous as we piled into the car to head home.

Surprisingly, we encountered no bad weather of any kind as we worked our way eastward.  A few drops of rain was the most we had to deal with, although the distant eastern sky was lit intermittently by huge crackling flashes of lightning.  But as we approached our neighborhood, we saw evidence that the drama we had seen in the sky had been matched by drama on the ground.

The area was completely covered in leafy detritus, the sort of thing you would see in the aftermath of a hailstorm.  But the sheer amount of shredded leaves was astonishing; we had never seen anything remotely like it.  Later we found that a violent hailstorm had passed through, with hailstones up to one inch (!) in diameter piling up on the ground in sufficient quantity to mimic a snowstorm.  But by the time we got there it had all melted, leaving only shredded shrubbery as evidence.


The driveway at Chez Elisson, carpeted in shredded shrubbery after the storm.

I’ve seen hail like that only once, at Stapleton Airport in Denver back in March of 1992.  It fell thick and fast, enough to pile up in drifts.  And then, in the warm spring air, it melted away in minutes as though it had never been there.  This storm must have been like that.

In fact, it was exactly like that - as evidenced by this photograph taken by one Dean Sever, who lives just over the county line from us in Roswell, a distance of about two or three miles:



It would have made for an extra bit of excitement had we been there to see it.  But it’s just as well we missed it.  Who the hell needs a car with a pebble finish?