Journal

It was just a few days after the 100-year, or 500-year flooding of the Yellowstone that the river broke its banks and ushered in the loss of a lifetime of dreams, promises and property for many of the areas defined by that river. The dog park—where my coffee mate and I like to visit while we sip our coffees, tell stories, and discuss those worlds most familiar to us—was under water, the road leading to it rutted and impassable.

We found a space a mile or so away in the parking area behind the civic center. A large pile of rocks and gravel guarded the two giant cottonwoods that towered over us, their lowest branches swaying in the morning breeze. Intermittent rain fell in mere drops, barely marking territory on the windshield.

To our left, a hundred yards away, were the city-managed ball fields—a complex of fields where the diamonds vary by size to meet the needs of players by age. There’s a cinder-block concession stand, an equipment shed, some grandstands, and on each field above-ground dugouts.

We couldn’t begin to fathom why those fields weren’t populated by kids with skinned-up knees, sweaty T-shirts and the equipment needed to play a made-up game of ball: a bat or two, some scuffed up balls, and everybody’s own mitts. The fields were empty. Completely. Nobody was shagging fouls, practicing sliding, playing a little pepper, or just having a catch with a pal.

It’s what I’d have been doing on any summer’s day sixty years ago.

And with all the on-field action, comes the fantastical narrative that each kid imagines: the play-by-play of heroes in pinstripes.

Back, back, back he goes! And he snatches it from above the outfield fence! What a play! What a catch!

The hero trots back to the dugout and awaits his turn at bat.

Today’s kids don’t know what they’re missing. The play, the outdoors, the name-calling, the shoving matches—each a part of the sandlot life. And the kids in my little town don’t even have to find an empty lot to mark with bases made from flattened cardboard boxes. From my casual observances of the fields here, nobody plays unless it’s a scheduled game or a practice. That level of organization is something I recall from my own youth. We couldn’t wait for the Little League game to end and our parents to go home from the single field we had in the back lot of a United Van Lines depot. That was when we could pickup the game from where we had left off that morning in a lot adjacent to an alley.

My coffee mate grew up in Upstate New York, in a town with a baseball diamond in the schoolyard. So did I, but when school let out for summer, the playground was fenced off, its gates closed and locked. But we had no problem playing on vacant lots, our imaginations wedded to turn those over-grown fields into our own Wrigley Field. By the end of the day, the grass had been trampled down and we were in baseball heaven. My parents never had to ask what I’d been doing all day.

Every now and then one of our sandlot fields fell to developers. The flat space was replaced by mounds of dirt next to the hole that would become somebody’s basement. We played on the hill and in the hole until it was time to find a new empty lot.

Baseball and reading and piano practice filled my days. On Friday and Saturday nights, I played drums in a trio that played the popular tunes of the days. Although I was being paid, I felt short-changed because I couldn’t play ball on those days. I’m not sure why.

When my father’s fortunes turned a bit, we left Chicago’s West Side for greener pastures—pastures that would one day be home to a few horses, which we rode across hill and dale. There was a creek nearby, and we would catch tadpoles and dap the surface for a sunfish or crappie.

But there was still baseball with my country neighbors. It was a constant.

In town, we’d shoot hoops on unforgiving concrete courts.

I’d like to say that I’m glad I didn’t have video games and devices that could take me to new worlds of information and entertainment. But I don’t know because it wasn’t an option. I had baseball and a rusted bike—freedom to a boy is represented by wheels. I can’t, however, believe that my childhood would have been richer for having had those electronic things.

Now, I can sit on my front porch for an entire afternoon without ever seeing a kid zoom by on a bicycle. The same is basically true about skateboards, although I understand that the skate park is well used.

We didn’t have skateboards in the Fifties; we had scooters. My dad made me my first one from a short length of 2×4, a wooden orange crate, handlebars fashioned from a piece of 1×2, and a salvaged roller skate. It took no particular skill to ride the thing. And we didn’t have a scooter park to practice death-defying acts of scooter skills. For us, getting across the four lanes of Roosevelt Road took all the derring-do any of us could muster.

Courtney, my daughter and partner-in-crime, told me the other day that she and her friends relied not on devices but on entertainment of their own device. She’ll be forty soon, falling neatly into that gap between board games and electronics. She regaled me with stories of misbehavior that had escaped me in real time. Much of her activity was borderline vandalism (I’ll apologize to anyone whose mailbox might have been a target) and all of it was with the main ambition to have as little to do with “grown-ups” as was possible.

That, she told me, was how she and her friends spent their leisure time.

It reminded me of my not wanting my parents to be anywhere even close to where I played baseball.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Greek Roasted Potatoes

I love Greek food and have always been impressed by their serving both rice and potatoes at the same meal.

2# Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and quartered
½ cup water
¼ olive oil
¼ cup fresh lemon juice, strained
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 cloves garlic, minced
Salt and pepper, to taste

Heat oven to 450°.
Place potatoes in baking dish. Add remaining ingredients and stir to combine. Bake uncovered for 50-60 minutes. During baking, toss and add more water, if necessary.

Greek Rice (Spanakorizo)

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 cup long-grain rice
3 cloves of garlic, minced
8-12 oz. baby spinach, rinsed and roughly chopped
½ cup chopped fresh dill
½ tsp. ground cumin
2-1/2 cups water
Salt and pepper to taste
Juice and zest of one lemon, strained
1 Tbs. red wine vinegar

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil and sauté the onion until soft, about 2-3 minutes. Add rice, stirring over medium-high heat, 2-4 minutes. Stir in garlic. Pour in water and stir. Add spinach, dill, cumin, salt and pepper.
Over low heat, simmer, covered, until all liquid is absorbed. Add lemon juice 2-3 minutes before rice is cooked.
Transfer to a serving bowl and toss with lemon zest, 2 Tbs. olive oil and vinegar.

It occurred to me recently that it has been a long time since I last checked to see how the other Jim Liskas around the world might be faring. Actually, I’ve never checked on such a thing. Why would I? What would be the point?

Anybody with access to the internet has probably engaged in an activity known as “ego surfing.” Type in your name and see how many of you might be out there. Scroll down until you find yourself among the others and discover your ranking, number of hits, likes or, dislikes, et cetera ad infinitum. If you get to the third page of discoveries and you’ve not found yourself, give up. Pages four and beyond will only cause disappointment and heartbreak when it begins to dawn on you that you own no significant place in the computer universe.

The reason I have for checking into my namesakes is to get an essay for today; and the point being that it’s the kind of thing I do now that I have nothing better to do.

Not to brag, but I came in first in the great Jim Liska search. Actually, I placed first as A. James Liska.

Here’s a funny thing about names. My parents wanted me to have the same initials as my father, but not the same name. He was Arthur Joseph, affectionately called “Sonny Boy” by his less-than-doting mother. I got A. James.

Apparently given names beginning with the letter “A” weren’t known to my parents. While Alan, Aaron, Archibald and Archimedes jump quickly to mind, they stopped with the first letter. For people who couldn’t come with an “A” name, they certainly weren’t prescient enough to understand how difficult an initial is in normal, everyday life.

And then there’s the matter of James. I’ve known only two people who ever called me that—and they were married, to each other. Every now and then I’ll be called James by people who are really, really mad at me or are trying to sell me something over the telephone.

Why then, did they name me James when from day one they called me Jimmy or Jim? Where does that even come from? It makes no sense. Neither does Jack for John, Dick for Richard, Peggy for Margaret, Betsy for Elizabeth. I knew a guy whose name was Billy Ray. I asked him once if his complete name was William Raymond. Nope. Billy Ray was what his parents were going to call him, so that’s the name they gave him. He was, for the record, from the South.

When I signed up for Medicare, my name became “AJ,” as apparently the government’s computers—capable of creating any number of espionage scenarios and spying on pretty much everybody in the universe—couldn’t accept a letter as a first name.

My search for namesakes made me wonder what we all might have in common. Liska is a fairly uncommon name outside of the Czech Republic, which would make me think that each of these fellows has some sense of being Bohemian. There are several enclaves of Bohemian descendants in places like Chicago, Iowa and Texas. None of my discoveries were from any of those places.

The Jim Liska whose job title is Director, Product Operations at Globalization Partners, lives in Boston. He strikes me as one well-versed in business double-speak: Globalization Partners’ unique blend of global employment services provided through our Global Employer of Record Platform enables you to accomplish all of these goals…

But the graduate of UMass Boston was an Infantry Squad leader for almost 15 years in the New York Army National Guard. He was responsible for the welfare, fitness, morale, training and discipline of a nine-soldier Infantry Squad, and a first line leader and advisor in the matters of operations, tactics, personnel management, and junior leader development.

There’s a Jim Liska in Harbor Springs, Michigan, who is a State and Federally Licensed taxidermist. He won the MTA Best of Category (large game head) in 2011. He is also the event coordinator of the Michigan United Conservation Club, and he operates Expo Promotions.

James “Jim” Troy Liska of the Raft Creek community of Griffithville passed away at his home on Saturday morning, April 9, 2022.  James was the beloved husband of Betty (Smith) Liska for 57 years. It was an unexpected death. He was 86. During their marriage they lived in Mt. Grove, Missouri, Camden, Des Arc and Griffithville, Arkansas. He was a heavy equipment operator for Riggs Tractor Co, until his retirement. He was an avid hunter and fisherman.

Another dead Jim Liska was born on April 9, 1887, and passed away on April 6, 1968. He is buried at Sunrise Lawn Cemetery in Whittier, California.

James Liska is a graduate of the University of Arkansas Graduate Program in Blind Rehabilitation. His academic article, “Going Blind,” was published in The Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, the essential professional resource for information about visual impairment. The international peer-reviewed journal of record in the field, it delivers current research and best practice information, commentary from experts on critical topics, news, and events. The site has a paywall which I’m not about to subscribe to get through. I assume it was a great article.

There’s the politician Jim Liska in Live Oak County, Texas, who is seeking election as judge. A senior property tax consultant, he previously worked for the county’s Appraisal District. He said his dedication to helping others is what led him to run for county judge. “I have always wanted to be a public servant as my family taught me at an early age the importance of serving God, family and country,” he said.

More to my liking in the Jim Liska “Splinter” hitting a 49″ driver using the Mike Austin Method at the RMU Island Sports Center. Jim has competed in the REMAX World Long Drive Championship six times. His best finish is 5th place.

And somewhere in Arizona, a Jim Liska is petitioning the court to offer relief from his 56 years of imprisonment after a jury trial in 1982, in which he was convicted of one count of sexual exploitation of a minor and three counts of sexual conduct with a minor. So far, he’s losing. Good.

I guess every family has a black sheep.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Bread Dumplings

This is my Bohemian grandmother’s recipe for dumplings. They are a wonderful accompaniment for roast pork or chicken. Gravy and sauerkraut are a must!

1 pkg. (2-1/4 tsp.) yeast
1 tsp. sugar
½ cup milk, scalded and cooled
1 cup milk, warm
1 egg
½ tsp. salt
3 ½ cups flour
3 slices white bread, crumbled

Mix yeast & sugar in the ½ cup milk. Let stand for 10 minutes.
Mix warm milk, egg, salt, yeast mixture and flour. Add bread.
Knead on a floured board and let rise for ½ hour.
Shape into loaves (3). Cook in boiling water,

Although I’ve long been a believer in science, science itself has always eluded me. History, literature and music are well within my wheelhouse. Biology, chemistry and physics are complete enigmas.

This might explain which half of my brain dominates.

The schools are to blame for my not having excelled in science. My freshman year in high school I was required to take biology. The teacher had us watch films of little things floating around in little glass dishes, known to almost everyone as Petri dishes. We had to make a leaf collection that reflected the arboreal nature of our surroundings. What I got out of the leaf collection was $10 from an in-coming freshman. (Ten bucks in 1965 was a decent chuck of change.) We dissected frogs and watched worms grow back the parts of their bodies that we had cut off. It seemed, in retrospect, somewhat frivolous.

I then transferred to a private school for the arts where science pretty much took a backseat to, in my case, history, literature and writing, and music.

I can’t recall ever having been in a chemistry lab and the closest I got to physics was a college course called “Physics for Poets.” There were no labs involved, but we did learn about how ink flowed from a ballpoint pen, how toasters knew when to pop up the bread slice, and other such exoteric examples from everyday life. In the second semester, the professor acknowledged that while nobody understood the theory of relativity, that’s what he would be talking about for two hours, twice a week for the whole semester.

One could hear snoring.

But my lack of a scientific mind doesn’t keep be from being interested in scientific things.

For instance, just this week I found out all about repeating fast radio bursts (FRB) that have been discovered in a galaxy far, far away.

“Astronomers have detected a mysterious, repeating fast radio burst emanating from a dwarf galaxy located 3 billion light-years away,” CNN reported. “The cosmic object is distinctive when compared with other detections of radio bursts in recent years, according to new research.”

One explanation of FRBs is that these bright flashes come from magnetars — the strongest magnets in the universe and another type of supernova remnant.

“This explanation makes sense where young stars are common, but it’s trickier when it comes to M81,” some researchers said.

Just so you know, this FRB is closer to us than Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun, which measures 4.2 light years. That’s equal to about 400 round trips from San Francisco to Hoboken. And M81 is a woodland camo pattern style of shirts and pants, much like what the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys don before going on their rampages.

Since everything about science is a mystery to me, I was lost after “Astronomers have detected a mysterious…”

There is no shortage of folks weighing in on this discovery. I believe I’ve heard snippets of the Beach Boys emanating from the “cosmic object.” Of course, I frequently wake up humming some of Gene Autry’s hit tunes.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the freshman representative of Georgia’s 14th District, is best known for her operating as the leader of the MAGA Caucus, i.e., legislative bullies. But her verbal pratfalls are what distinguishes from her from most of her colleagues on Capitol Hill.

Upon hearing of the discovery of the FRBs, she gave new life to the Jewish space lasers starting forest fires conspiracy. She has denied saying what she said.

“I didn’t say Jewish space lasers were responsible, I said it was caused by focused beams of light fired from spacecraft operated by Jewish banks. See? Totally different.”

She’s singing a different song after hearing about the FBRs.

“I told you they existed. Now we know where they live.”

I revisited the site which has some pretty bizarre audio and what did I hear? Not the Beach Boys after all! It’s klezmer music—that Ashkenazi Jewish-gypsy sound with violin, accordion, cimbalom, clarinet and tuba. It was the music Jews heard during the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe, all of which were overseen by the Gazpacho Police, Hitler’s private army of Mexican cooks.

Serendipity is my favorite explanation of things that can’t be explained. For instance, what else could explain the discovery of a new FRB, the onset of the Atlantic hurricane season, and the end of morel mushroom season all happening at the same time? Serendipity!

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Climate Prediction Center (NOAA) released the hurricane season outlook for this year. They’re predicting an above-average season for the seventh-consecutive year, with 14 to 21 named storms. They predict that six to ten of those will become hurricanes, and that there should be between three to six major hurricanes with winds 111 mph (179 kph) or higher.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) generates and maintains the list of hurricane names. This year the names are: Alex, Bonnie, Colin, Danielle, Earl, Fiona, Gaston, Hermine, Ian, Julia, Karl, Lisa, Martin, Nicole, Owen, Paula, Richard, Shary, Tobias, Virginie and Walter.

Fascinating, huh?

As for morels, I used to have unbathed foragers come to the kitchen door at my restaurant in their aged Subarus with freshly harvested morel mushrooms—which are only bested in flavor by chanterelles, which sounds like the name of a doo wop group.

Alas, the season has ended, and I’ve not had one morel. It saddens me.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Morels with Angel Hair

The nutty flavor and gentle texture of morel mushrooms can enhance most anything: crostini, a garnish for beef, pork or chicken, the base for a delicate pasta or a hearty risotto.

Carefully wash the morels and pat dry. Slice them into bite-size pieces and saute in olive oil and butter until slightly browned. Remove from pan. Add a clove of garlic and a splash or two of golden cream sherry. When the sherry has reduced, return mushrooms to pan. Add a splash of heavy cream and some Parmesan cheese. Serve with angel hair pasta.

From what I’ve been able to gather, Johnny Depp is an American film actor who has made several movies, including a series of prequels and sequels based on the lives of pirates depicted in a Disneyland amusement park ride. He’s been married a couple of times, his latest to an actress named Amber Heard.

Like many a Hollywood romance, theirs ended in divorce, preceded by scandal and followed by vicious rumors started by their Beverly Hills divorce attorneys. Ms. Heard alleges that Depp was abusive to her and wrote about it in an opinion piece for The Washington Post. The piece, for which she was paid a reported $35 for first reprint rights, doesn’t call Depp by name but refers to its author as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” To be completely accurate, she should have referred to herself as the “victim.” But we all know how stars like to fight for top billing.

Depp was not pleased with how he was portrayed by Ms. Heard and sought $50 million in a defamation suit brought against her in the Commonwealth of Virginia. (Since he wasn’t named, doesn’t it seem a bit strange that he recognized himself in the article?) Anyway, Ms. Heard counter-sued for $100 million also, I assume, in Virginia.

According to some internet services that keep track of such things, Ms. Heard is worth somewhere between $2.5 and $8 million, far short of the dollar figure that would make the swashbuckling Depp disappear from the public spotlight. Depp is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 million, according to some of those same sources. He claims his career, in the aftermath of all this drama, is kaput; hers, it should be noted, never got to the point where it even could be called kaput.

Simple math indicates that Depp is trying to extract blood from a turnip. Ms. Heard, on the other hand, is seeking just enough to leave Depp $50 million—the exact amount he sought in his lawsuit.

I’m no lawyer, but it would seem that by using the wisdom of Solomon both parties could part company by dividing the total dollars in question, thus allowing each of them to walk away with $75 million. Those figures do not include court costs and attorney’s fees which, when all told, leaves each of the parties with somewhere in the neighborhood of half-a-million. That figure would provide most Americans more than enough to live a life of relative comfort, provided that such a life didn’t involve yachts, the south of France or a few grams of cocaine per day.

Virginia is about as far from the celebrity spotlight as can be. But that hasn’t stopped such pillars of journalism as Court TV and Entertainment Tonight from providing their own spotlights. Gavel-to-gavel coverage has gripped many Americans irreparably. Inside Edition refers to the trial as being what everybody might find to be about as important as the high cost of milk.

Meanwhile, Depp was seen in London during jury deliberations playing rhythm guitar in a garage band at Royal Albert Hall. An ex-girlfriend, Kate Moss, was seen throwing articles of her clothing at him from the front row.

After six weeks of exhaustive—and exhausting—trial shenanigans, the seven-person jury basically reached a verdict of mutual churlishness on the parts of everybody involved, with the possible exceptions of the bailiff and the court’s stenographer.

When the verdict (which speaks less of the #MeToo movement than it does of plain and simple greed) was handed down this past Wednesday, Inside Edition led with more coverage of the Uvalde tragedy. ABC World News Tonight led with the Depp travesty. And in Thursday’s editions, The New York Times called the trial an event that “transfixed the nation.”

I, for one, wasn’t transfixed. At best, the whole shebang was but a blip on the who cares? radar of these challenging, yet sadly pathetic, times.

Turning to the world of sports, has anybody paid any attention to the controversy that is taking place in the world of professional golf? I didn’t think so.

It seems that a consortium of Arab nations is trying to launch its own series of golf tournaments. Played on vast, arid sand courses where there are actual grass traps, this new tour is threatening to undermine the PGA Tour’s dominance of the multi-millionaire boys club in which, if you make the weekend cut and finish dead last, your paycheck is still about what it would cost to buy a small town in Tennessee. Or Mississippi. You pick.

So how is this Arab entity threatening the PGA? How else but by giving the top names in golf more money to show up than if they had each won seventeen tournaments in a single season. That’s right, the top players go to Dubai or some such place, leaving the PGA to host tournaments where the top competitors are overweight duffers in ill-fitting plaid pants with, at best, a 23-handicap in a contest determined by a closest-to-the-pin final hole.

And speaking of sports, let’s see what’s new with the Royal Family…theirs, as in Sussex and Worcestershire and the Queen; not like ours, as in Kardashian and whatever Reagans might still be lingering about.

While it’s unlikely that many veterans of the Revolutionary War are still alive, one would have thought we’d at least have remembered what the point of the whole little skirmish was all about. Lemme guess now. Oh, that’s right, throwing the damn lot of the British off the land we were busy stealing from the Natives.

And lo these many centuries later, if one of the members of England’s biggest family of welfare recipients should so much as sneeze, there are Americans willing to take note and send off a bouquet of pollen-free flowers and a Hallmark card.

Today marks the last day of what will no doubt have been an excruciating, four-day celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s 70-year reign of inconsequential rule. (I snicker every time I hear David Muir refer to it as “70 years on the throne.”) There will be no shortage of matching horses ridden by matching men in furry hats. Many not-so-lucky men in furry hats will follow the horses which, it seems, was pretty bad planning. The Queen’s ball will feature line-dancing to rockabilly hits to drown out the bagpipes. The event will end with Her Majesty reading some of Winston Churchill’s most memorable quotes about alcohol.

But how does Lizzie’s brood of inbred royalty really differ from that of Americans on welfare? Glad you asked.

The Royal Family doesn’t have to explain its having cellphones and tattoos to the others in the grocery check-out lines who had to work for their food. Not only that, Liz and the kids don’t even have to cook it.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Mincemeat Pie

A shining star of the United Kingdom’s questionable culinary tradition, mincemeat pie is a sweet mixture of dried fruit and spices such as cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. Typical of most British dinner fare, it needed the promise of something else—in this case, meat—to get the masses to even consider eating it. Sometimes called “Christmas pie,” it was the main reason Scrooge found the holiday so unbearable.

There is no formal recipe for this gooey concoction. To re-create traditions that predate Charles Dickens by five centuries, merely buy a frozen pie shell and fill it with such delectable things as apricots, raisins and pineapple—dried, of course. Season the whole thing with the aforementioned cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. Add some sugar. Bake for an hour or two at a blistering 475° F. If it doesn’t combust, remove the molten mess from the oven, let cool, and then toss into an empty trash receptacle.

Next week: Yorkshire pudding, which isn’t a pudding at all. Not even close. What is up with the Brits and their misleading food labels?

It was my turn to pick up the weekly coffee tab. Forgetting to add a tip to my debit card payment, we scrambled for a buck to put in the tip jar.

“Sorry, man,” I said, “No cash, except for a two-dollar bill.” I would have gladly offered a two-dollar tip, but not with this particular bill.

“Oh, I have one of those,” my partner in crime admitted, turning to stuff a dollar bill in the jar.

“My dad gave me this countless years ago and told me to always carry it,” I explained.

“So, you’re superstitious,” he said.

“I don’t think so, I just carry the bill because my dad told me to,” I said.

“Any other superstitions?”

“Nope,” I answered. “But I have never even once stepped on a chalked baseline.”

“Well, of course not,” he said. “That’s not a superstition, it’s just something you don’t do.”

My coffee mate is a baseball devotee as am I, and he knows well the order of things that start in the locker room, move to the dugout and onto the field. Next to the Irish, baseball players are the most superstitious of all people. And they keep adding new entries to the litany of established, time-worn superstitions that address every topic—from shoelaces to the charcoal smears beneath their eyes.

My wife, Geri, is Irish and had baseball allowed women to join their ranks she could have made stepping on a baseline look like mere folly.

Geri has thrown, cumulatively, at least two, one-pound boxes of salt over her shoulder in the forty-five years I’ve known her. This is a superstition that has its roots in Roman times when the highly prized condiment was used as payment for one’s work. Salt is called sal in Latin. It just happens to be the root of the word salary.

I’m confident that she didn’t know the history of salt, just that if you spill some the devil is behind you and you’d damn well better throw some salt his way so he’ll leave you the hell alone.

Apparently, it is similar to dousing the supplicant at an exorcism with holy water. Added to that is the “schiss” sound I once replicated after inadvertently being sprinkled by the local priest. It was also the last time Geri made me go to Christmas Eve services at St. Mary’s.

Not to belabor the subject, but Mark Kurlansky’s book, Salt: A World History, is fascinating throughout its 484 pages. Really.

Stevie Wonder added his two cents to the subject of superstitions with his song, “Superstitions.” The chorus pretty much says it all: “When you believe in things / That you don’t understand / Then you suffer / Superstition ain’t the way.”

Superstition was a driving force among the pagans, heathens, infidels and others who seemingly knew how to have a good time. The religious types didn’t much care for this, so they started adding to their litany stories and bizarre rituals that would appeal to the great unwashed. Slowly, the superstitions established by the Church were adopted to the point of finally adding deep fears to those buying into the system.

One such superstition, still in fashion today as a leftover from medieval times, is walking under a ladder. The triangle, with its three sides, came to be regarded as sacred, and a ladder, of course, forms a triangle, so, naturally, to walk under that ladder would be to destroy the sanctity of the Trinity and thus incur punishment. Ladders also symbolized the gallows where evildoers were hanged.

Personally, I don’t walk under ladders because it’s just plain stupid to do so. Somebody occupying the top of the ladder might well drop a paint can or a roofing hammer. No thanks, I’ll go around.

And then there’s the whole black cat thing. Really? What are we supposed to do to avoid meeting the devil or be met with some other misfortune? Turn around and proceed on a different course? Black cats are associated with witchcraft, which brings to mind other such folly. Better to have saved the witches of Salem and burned their oppressors.

Certain numbers strike fear into the very soul of many a person. Thirteen has such quarter. Few high rises have a 13th floor. Well, they do of course, there’s just no button on the elevator for it. Friday the 13th is a day of dread, as is Friday the 17th in Italy. I’ve never been in an Italian high rise, so I can’t say for sure if the buttons skip the number.

Many commonly fear 666, the “devil’s number” or “number of the beast.” I think there’s a connection to Ronald Reagan here, but it’s getting late.

In China, the number four is feared because its pronunciation sounds like the Chinese word for “death.”

Knocking on wood is one of the most prevalent superstitions people talk about. Even atheists and other skeptics have the tendency to think that coincidences are meaningful, or that certain events were meant to happen. What knocking on wood has to do with that is anybody’s guess. And now it’s even later.

In 1933, Syria banned Yo-Yos over fears that they would cause a drought. It’s difficult to even imagine the correlation there, but I do find it amusing.

My favorite example of superstition involves Shannon Airport in County Clare, in the Republic of Ireland. Although the story is difficult to verify, there are enough coincidences to make it plausible. (Knock on wood.) Or, in the words of many a writer, never let facts get in the way of a good story.

Construction of the airport began in 1936. The boggy soil needed grading and topping with soil that would lend stability to the runways. The graders started leveling the surfaces and stopped when they first came upon a small thicket of mulberry bushes. They refused to grade over them because it was where the “Little People” lived.

According to legend, the engineers rerouted that first runway, and soon the grading began again, only to stop when another thicket was met.

How many times this happened is unclear—if it happened at all. But it’s such a lovely story that captures both the deep-seated Catholicism and the superstitious spirit of the Irish.

Ostensibly, some heavy equipment operators who didn’t give a damn about the wee folks came to work and the airfield was finally completed almost three years later. Geri grew up knowing that Shannon was cursed.

A few years back, the airport use on the Emerald Island was reconfigured and Shannon fell in stature to a landing field that was no longer the largest.

“See?” Geri noted. “It’s the Little People. I knew this would happen.”

Photo composition by Courtney A, Liska

Colcannon

This dish is typically made with leftover potatoes from last night’s dinner. But why wait? Make the dish from scratch. Improvise the seasonings. Feel free to add some garlic.

3 medium russet potatoes (about 2 lb.), scrubbed clean
2 Tbs. plus 1 tsp. salt, plus additional to taste
6 Tbsp. butter, plus additional for serving
4 cups. chopped green cabbage, shredded
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
1 bunch green onions, chopped and divided
1 c. half-and-half

Peel the potatoes and cut them into 2-inch pieces. Add them to a Dutch oven and cover with 1 inch of water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and add 2 Tbs. of salt. Boil, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are very tender, about 15 minutes. Drain the potatoes in a colander and set aside.

In the same Dutch oven, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the cabbage, the remaining 1 tsp. of salt, and the pepper. Cook, stirring often, until the cabbage mixture; is softened, about 5 minutes.

Reserve 1/4 cup of the green onions for garnish and add the remaining green onion and 3 cloves of minced garlic (optional) into the cabbage mixture. Cook, stirring often, until the garlic is lightly browned, about 2 minutes.

Reduce the heat to medium-low. Add the half-and-half and cook 2 to 3 minutes until warm. Add the potatoes, then mash and stir until the mixture is well combined. Season with salt and pepper.

Transfer the Colcannon to a serving dish and top with more melted butter. Sprinkle with the reserved 1/4 cup green onions.

(Only parts of the following are true. You decide.)

My first attempt at college was at a small liberal arts school near Cleveland. As I recall, I studied music, English literature, medieval philosophy and comparative religion. The latter two classes took place under the same roof of Marting Hall. We called it the department of faith and reason.

The ordained Methodist minister who taught the religion course had a tough row to hoe. Although the college was a private Methodist institution, most of the students in this class were Jews who could best be described as “humanists.” Humanistic Judaism is a movement that offers a nontheistic alternative to contemporary branches of Judaism. It defines Judaism as the cultural and historical experience of the Jewish people rather than a religion, and encourages Jews who are humanistic and secular to celebrate their identity by participating in relevant holidays and rites of passage.

Few among us had studied Hebrew or endured the rite of passage known as a bar mitzvah, but we had a proud history that usurped Christianity’s by millennia.

As I think back on that time, I remember little of the approach the professor used. It seemed limited in scope and only marginally acknowledged those religions that are at least amusing. The professor reluctantly allowed that all religions are made up. Conversations with God are manifestations of imaginations. Faith is something that can’t be proved. That sentence is the perfect rejoinder to anybody selling their belief system door-to-door on Saturday mornings. (If you accept the handout magazine, you’ve been duped.)

Judaism is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal traditions and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age with dietary restrictions that are just weird.

It was the first religion to be monotheistic, no doubt inspired by the Sumerians who had more gods than really seemed necessary. By the time the humanistic movement came around, we were down to no gods.

Sumerian religion was practiced by the people of Sumer, the first literate civilization of ancient Mesopotamia and the first to turn bread mold into beer. It was also known as the Borscht Belt of the Middle East, where Jewish stand-up comics tried to satirize the four Sumerian Gods who were responsible for all matters pertaining to the natural and social orders. In time there would be several more Gods in charge of lesser matters.

Manny, one of the Middle East’s best comics, thought that the idea of one God would not be so confusing and that He was all we needed to place blame for all that is wrong with the world. At the time, it seemed to be no big deal because nobody knew there was anything beyond their community’s walls.

One of Manny’s writers, Samuel, decided to look beyond those walls and traveled to several locations in a drab desert. He saw Moses floating down a river and next noticed that God was giving him what would become known as the Ten Commandments on a mountaintop that would give its name to countless hospitals. It would later become a movie directed by Cecil DeMille with an all-star cast including Charlton Heston as Moses, Yul Brynner as Rameses, Anne Baxter as Nefretiri and Edward G. Robinson as Dathan.

Next, Samuel saw pairs of animals being herded by the 600-year-old Noah onto an ark that would one day become an amusement park in eastern Montana, as well as an over-used name for veterinary practices.

Only then did Samuel begin questioning the pills he’d been given by Dr. Stein.

Fast forward a few centuries and we can plainly see that Christianity had been splintered into any number of sects with some fairly bizarre behavior and practices.

The Ludite-inspired Mennonites and Amish are deeply religious folks (at least I think that’s their excuse) who dress Goth and refuse to use modern machinery to harvest the fruit they grow to make jams for tourists.

The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, are a millenarian restorationist Christian sect—whatever that means—founded in 1747 in England and then organized in the United States in the 1780s. They were initially known as “Shaking Quakers” because of their ecstatic behavior during worship services. Espousing egalitarian ideals, women took on spiritual leadership roles alongside men, unless the spirit awakened in them the sudden urge to do the Wha-Watusi.

Not blessed with much forward thinking, the Shakers practiced celibacy, which pretty much doomed their future. They did, however, create some great furniture.

The utopian Oneida Community was established in Oneida, New York, in 1848. It was founded by a small group of Christian Perfectionists who nobody has ever heard of. After more than thirty years of operating as a commune, the sect incorporated and started making flatware. Today, it is the largest manufacturer of flatware in America.

In the modern era, sects have thrived for short periods of time. There was the Peoples Temple, a then-new religious movement founded by Jim Jones, an American cult leader, political activist, preacher, and faith healer who led the mass murder-suicide of his inner circle in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978.

He will be forever known as the inspiration for one’s “drinking the Kool-Aid.”

Along the way came the CUT (Church Universal Triumphant) and the Branch Davidians, which sounds like something you’d order in a bar, and countless other sects teetering on the remote edges of evangelicalism.

But I’ve got to hand it to L. Ron Hubbard, the third-rate sci-fi novelist who started Scientology on a bet. I spent the better part of Friday morning inventing a new religion, and let me tell you, it’s hard work. All I’ve come up with so far is the eleventh commandment (Thou shall not eat from another’s plate), and a processional accompanied by Gershwin’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”

Graphic by Courtney A. Liska

Scungilli ala Medico Giuseppe

The word scungilli is the Neapolitan dialect word for conch, which is sconsiglio. Scungilli has a pleasant briny flavor and a dense, meaty texture. We always had canned conch and served it with these simple instructions.

Drain and rinse the scungilli. Take individual filets of the conch and briefly soak them in a very good olive oil and fresh lemon juice. Thinly slice some lemon and sweet onion (Vidalia or Walla Walla). Take a filet and place it atop a piece of matzoh cracker. Top with sliced onion and lemon. Buon appetito!

There were a few rules at my mother’s table. Napkin in your lap. No elbows on the table. Fork down between bites. No talking while chewing. No politics.

We were a family heavily invested in politics. Both of my parents grew up in the Depression and were New Deal Democrats. Their progressive beliefs were instilled in both my sister and me. While there was no shortage of politics to discuss and while we pretty much all held the same beliefs, my mother would take no chances at the table. She wanted to make sure that our digestion of dinner was not hindered by even the possibility of unpleasant discourse.

My mother, who was a bit lacking in the nurturing and cooking departments, was an independent woman who devoted much of her adult life as an advocate for women. Through her involvement in the AAUW (American Association of University Women), she helped pave the way for women to attain educational goals that had not that long before had been denied to women. Her work in AAUW resulted in a pair of endowed scholarships that annually provides advanced degree opportunities to two minority women in perpetuity.

The only child of a woman who had once taught in a one-room school, the endowment was her proudest achievement.

I couldn’t quite grasp the women’s liberation movement as it unfolded before my adolescent eyes. My mother was already everything that Gloria Steinem preached. As the names of Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, and Myrlie Evers-Williams were liberally floated, my own political awareness grew to more greatly encompass the struggle of women post-suffrage.

The landmark legislation in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented minorities to exercise rights put forth in the 15th Amendment. At that same time, women were generally prohibited from having a bank account in their own names. And it wasn’t until 1974 that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) prohibited credit card companies and other lenders from discriminating based on gender, religion, race or national origin.

By 1974, the Ukrainian-born Golda Meir had completed her five years as Israel’s fourth prime minister. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm was elected as the first black member of the U.S. Congress. And in 1973, the Supreme Court found in favor of protecting women’s reproductive rights in its landmark decision in Roe v. Wade.

Well before I had even a vague idea of what an abortion was, my mother let me know in no uncertain terms that being pro-choice was the right call.

Breaking her own table rules, my mother was indignant about the government’s interference in a woman’s private life. She thought it shouldn’t be a part of the political conversation.

“It’s nobody’s God damned business,” she said, rarely invoking that blasphemous oath.

It took us all by surprise as we placed our forks on our plates and stopped chewing. Clearly, there was no discussion to be had and we resumed eating, feeling as if we had been admonished for something nobody had ever questioned.

As a country that once found women to be the property of men, and their property to be held by their husbands, men have demonstrated a fierce reluctance to allowing women to participate in any aspect of the American experiment in democracy.

But laws have passed, and court decisions handed down that met with less and less male resistance as time went on. It’s been nearly fifty years since Roe v. Wade was decided. And late last month it became apparent that the decision will be overturned, returning any right to reproductive rights to individual states. Currently, twenty-six states are poised to make abortion a criminal offense for both providers and receivers.

The so-called pro-life forces don’t give a damn about life. Their movement, populated by the so-called Christian right, opposes universal health care, paid parental leave, free pre-school, childcare and any measure of gun control. They do, however, support private prisons and the death penalty. And they call pro-choice advocates “baby killers.”

But none of that matters as much as it does to understand that the anti-choice crowd has as its primary focus, the control of women.

The on-going arguments about the start of life have no bearing on the issue. The anti-choice folks use it as a smokescreen. If they’d read the bibles they are so willing to thump while shouting “murderer” at women entering a Planned Parenthood building, there are plenty of indications about when life begins—mostly suggesting on when a breath is first drawn.

Job 33:4 informs us that “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”

But again, that means nothing to the forces who would have women under their thumbs.

The majority (2 to 1) of Americans are in favor of keeping Roe v. Wade. Using that understanding, it is clear that Congress does not adhere to the notion of majority rule. If it did, Congress would accurately reflect its constituents and codify the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling to assure that federal law would finally establish a woman’s reproductive rights.

A sane ruling would not favor the too-loud minority which, again, is only interested in gaining power over women.

The worst that could come of what is expected to transpire is that those anti-choice states are willing to sacrifice a woman’s well-being to backroom, illegal abortions. Overturning Roe v. Wade will not stop abortions, it will stop safe abortions.

As my mother, who made the choice to become a mother, once said back in a time when she couldn’t have a checking account in her name: “It’s nobody’s God damned business.”

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Chicken Piccata

This classic dish was a favorite of mine as a kid when we would eat at Jimmy’s Spaghetti House in Melrose Park, an Italian enclave just west of Chicago. I used to love going there and looking in the front window at the statue of a fat Italian chef holding a bowl of spaghetti as he slurped down a single strand from high overhead.

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 chicken breasts, cut horizontally and pounded thin
1-1/2 Tbs. vegetable oil
5 Tbs. butter
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 garlic clove, minced
1 lemon, juiced, or more to taste
2 Tbs. capers, drained
1 Tbs. chopped fresh parsley

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. On a plate combine the flour, 1-1/2 teaspoons of the salt and pepper. Quickly dredge the chicken scallops in the seasoned flour mixture, shaking to remove any excess flour. When the oil is hot, add 1-1/2 tablespoons of the butter and cook the chicken until golden brown on both sides, about 1-2 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate and keep warm.

Deglaze the pan with wine and bring to a boil, scraping to the bottom of the pan. Reduce wine by half, add the stock, garlic, lemon juice and capers and cook for 5 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened slightly. Whisk in the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt, butter and chopped parsley.

When the butter has melted, return the chicken scallops to the pan and cook until heated through and the sauce has thickened, about 1 minute. Plate, garnish with parsley sprigs and serve immediately.

Known for his bluster and bombast and his hyper-vigilance in supporting all things to which a conspiracy theory might apply, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson has turned his attention—and those of others—to testicles.

His and ours are the focus of a study that Carlson says is proof of the “total collapse of testosterone levels in American men.” The result is that American men are failing to sufficiently demonstrate their masculinity. The political right is gleefully embracing the notion that men have been drained of the testosterone they need to restore and retain the masculine traits that we once had.

They want to shine a light on the problem, so to speak.

Obviously, at the core of their political thought is that men should demonstrate more masculine traits so we can better exert our control over women. With no basis in reality, let alone scientific method, Carlson has said that declining levels have been noted at 10 percent per decade.

Carlson’s so-called “documentary” doesn’t offer a scintilla of scientific evidence, but it suggests that under-performing testicles can be saved and/or boosted with infrared light from a device made by a company called Joovv. It also might help with the deterioration of our national sperm count, which, apparently, is dangerously on the decline.

The contraption that Joovv and Fox News are hawking looks like a waist-high, under-counter dormitory refrigerator that shines an infrared light on the affected area—namely, the testicles. It doesn’t say for how long or if sunscreen should be applied in adjacent areas not needing repair.

Carlson, whose facial expressions frequently suggest that he’s trying to figure out who in the room just passed gas, will be shown dressed in desert camo to show that this unfortunate turn of events has spared him. His testicles, apparently, work just fine; his testosterone flying high over the standards established by the Fox News department of neo-science and modern myth.

He is, after all, as buff as a television host needs to be.

A better measure of American masculinity is to note that last year, for the first time in automotive history, trucks outsold cars. That fact actually supports Carlson’s thesis. Trucks, with their over-sized everything and outfitted with dual exhaust stacks to demonstrate that we’re fatally dependent on oil, provide for the owner something in the way compensation for…well, I don’t have to spell it out.

Size matters when talking trucks. The biggest ones have four doors, seat five passengers and have full-sized cargo beds. When parked outside the local sporting goods store, they need two spaces. They are impossible to parallel park. And they cost about the same as a three-bedroom, two-bath house in 1998.

Very few of those who buy trucks need one—at least in the sense of what trucks were made for. Apparently need takes a backseat to style. Style, for most of the trucks actually being used as trucks, won’t attract much attention when they’re outfitted with construction or ranch equipment. A soft patina of rust shows age.

Angie Schmitt, writing in Bloomberg, noted that “these vehicles have transformed from no-frills workhorses into angry giants.”

Pickup truck front ends have warped into scowling brick walls, billboards for outwardly directed hostility. “The goal of modern truck grilles,” wrote Jalopnik’s Jason Torchinsky in 2018, “seems to be… about creating a massive, brutal face of rage and intimidation.”

What these angry vehicles with their paramilitary aesthetic represent is far more significant than that of personal vehicles to get from Point A to Point B and back again. They have become refuges, fortresses, and private enclaves—instrumental to the very definition of class and gender identity. The bigger and the badder the better is at least part of the appeal to the owners of these brutish behemoths. This may represent a crisis of masculinity (just ask Tucker) or a simple fear of being emasculated by being seen driving a minivan.

Cara Daggett, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech coined the term “petro-masculinity” to describe flamboyant expressions of fossil fuel use by men (and some women as well, but mostly men) as a reaction against social progress. To these drivers, “the affront of global warming or environmental regulations appear as insurgents on par with the dangers posed by feminists and queer movements seeking to leech energy and power from the state/traditional family,” she wrote.

Indeed. After-market equipment can be purchased to provide drivers with the capability to pollute via a practice known as “rolling coal.” While illegal, the driver uses this equipment on modified diesel trucks to blow black smoke at targets of their disapproval. My guess is that joggers, bicyclists, and electric vehicles are frequent targets.

While descriptions of the front ends of trucks are mostly subjective, the realities of what has become of the pickup truck just are as frightening.

Since 1990, U.S. pickup trucks have added almost 1,300 pounds on average. Some of the biggest vehicles on the market now weigh almost 7,000 pounds. And among increasingly popular heavy-duty models, the height of the truck’s front end may reach to the shoulders or neck of a grown man

In addition to notable “blind spots” on these vehicles, the drivers have limited visibility over the hoods. While driver and passengers enjoy great safety and comfort in these pickup trucks, other road users aren’t so lucky. The trucks are notably more lethal to other road users.

Pedestrians are the most vulnerable. If hit by a sedan or other less threatening vehicles, victims have mostly sustained injuries to the lower part of their bodies. The “angry giants” deliver their greatest damage to the far-more fragile upper chest and head.

Any attempt to regulate these vehicles by size or weight would likely be met with protests from their owners that their “rights” were being violated. Joining ranks with the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, these individuals—given the chance—will make the case that personal rights outweigh the collective good.

The good news is that if Tucker’s red lights just happen to work, we won’t need the angry giants.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Stracotto alla Fiorentina

There is pot roast and there is (maybe) your mother’s pot roast. And then there is Stracotto alla Fiorentina. Its name means “overcooked” (in the best possible way) and it is lush, tender and beyond delicious.

1 cup red onions, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1 cup carrots, chopped
1/2 cup parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
Extra-virgin olive oil
3-4# chuck roast
1/4 cup porcini mushrooms soaked in water
2 cups small cremini mushrooms
1 bottle Chianti
4 cups tomatoes
2 cups chicken or beef stock

In a Dutch oven, sauté vegetables & garlic in the oil for 6-7 minutes. Remove. Season the meat with salt & pepper and brown very well. Put vegetables back in the pan and add some of the wine, scraping the pan. Add porcini, reserving the water, and cook for a few minutes. Add wine & tomatoes and simmer. Add mushrooms, stock and porcini liquid. Pour over the meat and cook at a slow simmer for 2-3 hours, until fork tender.

It might be because my life’s ledge is growing closer that has led me to consider the topic of death and all of its implications these past several weeks.

There is no shortage of viewpoints on the subject, including Mark Twain’s handwritten observation from his deathbed: “The Impartial Friend: Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all—the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.”

Woody Allen has also weighed in on the topic countless times. My personal favorite is an overview: “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering—and it’s all over much too soon.”

Like Allen, “I am not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

My questions about the end of life have little to do with the simple fact of the inevitable. I tend to focus, however frivolously, about what might await me when the lights finally go out. Laughter is, after all, the best medicine.

Strictly speaking, Jews don’t believe in an afterlife. We believe that heaven is on earth, and that our proper and good behavior is its own reward. If you treat your neighbor with kindness and respect, they will not have to respond in kind. Your act is reward enough. It offers an interesting perspective on the notion of altruism.

All of that doesn’t stop any of us from thinking about the afterlife and wondering aloud if there’s Chinese take-out and free parking. With trepidation, we ponder the possibilities.

As a friend once told me, if you ask two Jews about the afterlife, you’ll get three answers.

The absolute definition of death states that it is “the irreversible cessation of all vital functions especially as indicated by permanent stoppage of the heart, respiration, and brain activity.” At least that’s how most of us understand it. The Hindi, not so much. They go on: Those who worship Hinduism believe that death does not necessarily mean the end. They follow the idea of reincarnation which means that the soul is indestructible and repeatedly takes on a physical body until moksha—a term in Hinduism which refers to the various forms of liberation or release which occurs when the cycle of dying and rebirth ends.

Yada yada yada.

Let’s not forget that Hindis also believe that cows are sacred, which is why India’s rodeos are seriously awful. No steer roping, no bull riding, no steer wrestling. As sacred as they are, brahma cows, who weigh in the neighborhood of 1,500 pounds, are regularly milked for their production of ghee, a butter-like substance the French like to consume by the spoonful.

Hinduism embraces the notion of reincarnation—essentially another chance at life. Good intentions and actions lead to a good future while bad intentions and actions create the opposite outcome. This plays an important role in how one is reincarnated.

While there is no belief in heaven or hell in the Hindu faith, the promise of a dreary reincarnation keeps the Indian people well-behaved. There are also some rather draconian punishments for those who aren’t.

Without question, traditional Christianity focuses big time on the whole heaven/hell concept. The idea of good vs. evil is primarily the reward-punishment factor of a religion in which fear is a dominant force. In most cases, Christians are exhorted to follow the rules to gain access to heaven and escape the fires of hell.

Evangelicals go a tad further. They are taught that access to God can be bought with huge donations to the church, along with the promise of supporting Donald Trump in any of his endeavors.

The whole idea of accessing the stairway to heaven that Led Zeppelin waxed eloquent about (“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow/Don’t be alarmed now/It’s just a spring clean for the May queen”) is either an earth-bound ambition or a simple act of extortion by none other than God himself.

Back in the good old days, Catholics used to have purgatory—a kind of waiting room. This was where the soul would be “in limbo” until that time when the dead’s relatives coughed up enough cash to release said soul and usher it into heaven. Or not.

Whoever thought of this kind of fund-raising was something of a genius. And it worked for centuries, until some kill-joy Pope came along and discontinued the practice. It might have been the same Pope who decided that mass would no longer be conducted in Latin; one didn’t have to eat fish on Fridays; and when St. Christopher had been demoted from patron saint of travel to garden gnome.

We clearly need better concepts of the afterlife than those based on the models of good/evil, cash/credit. While good should be rewarded, the evil in man’s soul needs a bit of a rewrite. Other than the most pious, a river of fire that is engulfing all of history’s sinners seems a bit far-fetched.

It seems to me that whatever activity one might be plying at the moment when one leaves the mortal coil, is the activity that one will spend eternity doing.

This idea should suffice to keep all of humanity engaged in only those activities that somehow meet the criteria of “good.” And since one will ever know when it’s time to give up the ghost, the highest standards of behavior must be maintained.

I hope I’m reading when I leave the mortal coil.

Or better yet, sleeping.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Beef and Guinness Stew

A delicious stew for what we can hope will be the last days of winter.

2 Tbs. olive oil
2.5 lb. beef chuck
3/4 tsp. salt
Black pepper
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 onions, chopped
6 oz. bacon, diced
3 Tbs. plain flour
1 14.9oz can Guinness Beer
4 Tbs. tomato paste
3 cups chicken or beef stock
3 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2″ thick pieces
2 large celery stalks, cut into 1″ pieces
2 bay leaves
3 sprigs thyme (or 1 tsp. dried thyme leaves)

Cut the beef into 2″ chunks. Pat dry and season with salt and pepper.
Heat oil in a heavy based pot over high heat. Add beef in batches and brown well all over. Remove onto plate. Repeat with remaining beef.
Remove pot from heat to cool slightly and lower heat to medium. If the pot is looking dry, add oil.
Return pot to heat, add garlic and onion. Cook for 3 minutes until softening, then add bacon.
Cook until bacon is browned then add flour. Stir flour into the mixture.
Add Guinness. Mix well, add remaining ingredients, and return beef into the pot (including any juices).
Add enough stock until the beef & veggies are almost fully covered.
Cover, bring to simmer then lower heat so it is bubbling gently. Cook for 2 hours—the beef should be pretty tender by now. Remove lid, then simmer for a further 30-45 minutes or until the beef falls apart at a touch and the sauce has reduced and thickened slightly.
Skim off fat on surface. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. Remove bay leaves and thyme.

When we memorialized my Uncle Joe under the canopy of a public gazebo overlooking the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla, California, on a July afternoon in 1982, we laughed about his last meal, taken in a hospital bed the night before the heart surgery that would be his undoing.

The irony of this gourmet dining on a Big Mac and fries was inescapable.

The physician-son of Sicilian immigrants, Uncle Joe was, to use the vernacular, a “foodie.” Though he’d never heard that word, I suspect he’d have hated it as much as I do.

Uncle Joe’s food mantra was simple, direct and challenging: the weirder something is to put in one’s mouth, the more exciting the experience might be.

Thus was his motivation for sticking a piece of what I assume was raw octopus into my nine-year-old mouth (we’re talking 1960 here) and instructing me to chew. His son, John, thinks that the octopus was probably grilled. Raw or grilled, it delivered to my young palate a ten on the scale of weirdness, a zero in excitement. After many minutes of labored exertion, I asked if this gelatinous, tasteless glob that seemed to actually increase in size as I chewed it, should be swallowed or be stuck under my chair like a piece of contraband gum at school.

In anticipation of her meeting him for the very first time, I warned Geri about Uncle Joe on the drive to Huntington Beach, California. She’d heard countless stories about him over the years, but I thought she might have needed more extensive briefings.

“He’ll probably stick some weird food in your mouth. It’s what he does.”

Geri is pretty no-nonsense about a lot of things, food being one of them. Her likes and dislikes are well-established to those who know her. So is her sense of decorum.

“Please,” I begged her once as she was leaving for a girl’s retreat to Key West, “just lie and tell them you’re allergic to fish. If you say you don’t like fish, they’ll take it as a challenge.”

Uncle Joe, divorced from Aunt Grace after who-knows-how-many-years and seven children, had settled with his new bride, Rosemary, in this Orange County suburb.

Having given up his medical practice for any number of stated reasons, Uncle Joe continued his quest as a restaurateur. It had long been his interest, having opened a Mexican drive-in in Westchester, Illinois, in 1962 (the same year Taco Bell opened in Southern California) and, later, an Italian joint called Tony’s Ats-a-Nice. He also dabbled in some pizza joints, marketing a stuffed pizza that he thought would fill every frozen-food aisle in America.

It didn’t.

Despite his scientific mind and successful medical practice, Uncle Joe was a dreamer. He was a showman, with a great sense of theater, but no time for drama. I learned from him that the quality of a restaurant diner’s experience was more important than profit.

In retrospect, it is a lesson I wish I hadn’t learned. Oh, well…

Uncle Joe’s newest venture at the very end of the seventies was Lombardo’s, a large Italian place whose focus seemed to be fine-dining pizza.

Joe answered the door that Saturday afternoon, welcoming Geri with open arms and Italian-style kisses (both cheeks). He was wearing grass-stained checkered chef’s pants and a T-shirt that had seen much better days.

“Jesus Christ!” came a scream from the kitchen. “Can’t you even dress up for company?”

“Meet the Bickersons,” I whispered to Geri.

Joe dutifully departed down a hallway and Rosemary greeted us warmly, leading us to a large kitchen table. We sat. Rosemary returned to the stove and Joe reappeared, resplendent in his grass-stained checkered chef’s pants, an un-tucked, ruffled white shirt and black-satin bow-tie.

Joe delivered four plastic tumblers and a jug of Chianti to the table with all the aplomb of a diner waitress. I filled the glasses and within a moment, her no-nonsense sensibilities taken seriously aback, Geri had a pork neck bone protruding from the corner of her mouth.

“Told ya.”

I’M CONVINCED THAT “foodies” are a bit too fussy. Unlike great masses of people in various parts of our world, they are greatly concerned about what they’re going to eat; others wonder if they’re going to eat at all.

They concern themselves with all matters of food, which, in and of itself, isn’t terrible. But so many of their concerns seem silly: an exhibited penchant for trend-spotting, the openings, closings, and menu changes of restaurants in towns and cities far from their homes. They yammer on about sustainability, locavores, farm-to-table, wood-burning ovens, organic, grass-fed whatever, classes, cookbooks, ethnic cuisines, tourism, health and nutrition.

Let’s face it: those are concerns by people who can afford to have such concerns. They are luxury concerns that, for the most part, exclude the dedicated parent wanting to place a nice plate of nutritious food on the table.

Each of those are topics worthy of some kind of discussion and perhaps I’ll add my two-cents-worth on each topic at some point. But at this moment I feel compelled to comment on the sustainable, locavore farm-to-table thing.

Alice Waters, bless her entrepreneurial soul, built something of a food empire based on the way most of us born before 1957 grew up eating. I grew up in Chicago and the only produce I can recall eating that didn’t have a season was bananas. I vaguely remember oranges and grapefruits as well—exotic imports from Florida. I never ate a tomato or an ear of corn in February. Those were foods available in July, August and September. From early summer to late fall, we ate lots of fresh vegetables. The rest of the year we ate dried beans, onions, potatoes and cabbage, and the green beans, applesauce, and sauerkraut my grandmother canned.

What Ms. Waters has accomplished, in my estimation, is to remind people of a certain age that the way we once ate had been lost and she wanted to refocus our attentions to that sort of attitude toward food.

From her very pricey Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, Ms. Waters contradicts much of her philosophy with her wine list of mostly French wines, and produce that is grown exclusively for her establishment.

Nobody is without faults, and I applaud Ms. Waters for her culinary efforts.

For the record, I also prefer French wines.

Food styling and photography by Courtney A. Liska

Fettuccine ala Toscana

A delightful pasta dish. Add any vegetables you might like and bacon, a cheaper alternative to prosciutto, works just fine.

1 lb. fettuccine
2 oz. prosciutto, thinly sliced and diced
15 oz. ricotta, whole milk, drained
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup heavy cream
3 Tbs. olive oil
¼ cup onion, finely chopped
fresh nutmeg
1 lb. fresh asparagus – trimmed, thinly sliced diagonally
fresh basil, torn
salt and black pepper

Cook pasta according to package instructions and drain. Do not rinse. Reserve a cup of cooking liquid.
In a large bowl, whisk together the ricotta, cream, 2 tbsp. Parmesan, salt, pepper, and a few scrapings of fresh nutmeg. Set aside.
In a large skillet, over medium heat, heat oil. Add the asparagus, onions, and prosciutto.
Cook while stirring often for about 5 minutes or until the asparagus are tender-crisp.
Add the hot pasta and the Parmesan cheese to the pot. Toss well and top with ricotta sauce and sprinkle with torn basil.