Journal

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.

If ever there was a time to grow a garden, this is it.

The wisest among us have gardened for years. Their reasons are multiple: from saving money to just enjoying the pleasure of eating homegrown vegetables. Many people just like to work in the garden, enjoying the feel of dirt under their fingernails and the sweet smell of fertilizer.

Today, we are facing the most challenging of times. A worldwide pandemic that has claimed almost one million American lives and the grim threat that Vladimir Putin might expand his unprovoked war against Ukraine. Add to that a growing economy, but high inflation and rising costs of just about everything.

Last week, I spent $80 for what I thought was about $35 worth of groceries. And with the high cost of fuel, food prices are far from stabilizing.

I have wanted to be a farmer since I was a little boy. I liked playing in the dirt and in my young mind I thought that’s what farmers did. And there would be nobody to yell at them for dirtying their clothes.

My maternal great-grandfather was a sod buster in Nebraska. My paternal grandfather was as self-sufficient as anybody I’ve ever known.

In the back of [my grandparents’] brick bungalow in Cicero, Illinois, was a yard about the size of a one-car garage. There, reportedly, he grew enough cucumbers, cabbage, barley and hops to provide a year’s supply of pickles, sauerkraut and beer—each a staple of the Bohemian diet. The much-needed dill and caraway grew at the base of the damson plum tree that produced enough fruit to make enough slivovitz—a vile drink that tastes like what I can only imagine turpentine must taste like—to sicken his entire neighborhood of fellow Bohemians. Since he had yet to figure out how to grow tobacco on his backyard plantation, I can only guess that he bought the Lucky Strikes he chain-smoked. [excerpt from Deaths in the Family, Part I @ jimliska.com]

Growing up, we had a small backyard. I was given a small piece of it to garden, and I decided to grow carrots and plant marigolds in my mother’s flower boxes. My first crop was a disaster, though the marigolds flourished. I had lost interest in the carrots soon after they started sprouting. I didn’t bother to weed them very well and they became overgrown. The few carrots I harvested were short, fat and, as I remember, woody and tasteless.

Undeterred, I continued to plant vegetables and marigolds. I was never very successful. I still don’t like weeding the raised beds we now use as garden plots. But we carry on. We recognize the value of gardens over lawns and enjoy those moments of feeling empowered by our labor and rewarded by the produce grown.

With our generationally blended family, we’ve decided to be a bit more ambitious in our gardening attempt.

Planning the garden is the first step. What vegetables do we like to eat, and which ones will be worth the effort?

Weather is, of course, a major consideration to having a garden in southwest Montana. We have about a 28-day growing season, which means that every horizontal surface in the house should be surrendered to starter seeds that will not see the outdoors until after the last snowfall in June. Until then, we will dine off our laps.

Tomatoes are a given, but if not ripe by the end of August or mid-September at the latest, we’ll have brown-paper sacks full of green tomatoes. I’ve had little luck with peppers.

Root vegetables are the best bet. While everybody seems to like potatoes and onions, there is little enthusiasm for rutabagas or parsnips. Root vegetables and squash-family vegetables do well after winter sets in. Lettuces enjoy the cool weather, which means we can plant them early and late in the growing season. Cabbage can endure any kind of weather.

We all enjoy corn. That’s a tough call since growing up in the Midwest I knew that corn should be knee-high by the Fourth of July. My attempts at growing corn here have been futile.

While green beans are easy to grow, peas are not worth the effort. I think it was the great French chef, Daniel Boulud, who said peas should only be eaten in season, and then use the frozen peas.

We eat Brussels sprouts twice a year and a single stalk is more than what we would consume.

I love leeks, the national symbol of Wales. Two years ago I purchased two six-packs from the nursery for $1.29 each. A couple of days ago, I saw that leeks were $2.29 each at the market. We’re planting leeks this year.

I also love fresh herbs, so we’ll be growing parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. We’ll also have chervil, tarragon, and chives. Oregano is a no-brainer, along with basil—lots of basil.

The biggest drawback to gardening is that each crop matures all at once. That gives one the chance to either start canning or eating a single vegetable until its gone and another one has ripened.

And let’s not forget about zucchini.

Zucchini was invented in 1954 by the Italian botanist and chef, Giuseppe Zucchini. The record shows that he was trying to create a cucumber that one could cook. After nearly a decade of experiments, he was finally successful. What he hadn’t counted on was that the genetically modified vegetable could grow under any circumstance and was so prolific that Italians started picking off the flower, stuffing it with sausage and frying it in olive oil.

The zucchini was introduced to American gardeners with the promise that if nothing else would grow, the zucchini would flourish. One plant, as it turns out, can provide enough daily servings for a family of eight for almost three months.

And curiously, when one sees a zucchini that seems perfect, it will double in size while you go into the shed to get the shears.

I sure hope the price of vegetables comes down soon.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Curried Zucchini Soup

In anticipation of yet another bumper crop, we’ll be eating this soup until late fall.

1 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
Kosher salt
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp. curry powder
1 1/2 pounds zucchini (about 3 medium), sliced 1-inch thick
1 baking potato, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
4 cups water
1/3 cup sliced almonds, toasted, for garnish (optional)

Saute onion in oil. Season with salt. Cook for 6-8 minutes. Add garlic and curry powder; cook 2 minutes. Add zucchini, potato, and water. Cook 20 minutes or so, until soft. Purée.

We’ve all met those people whose mental acuity seems akin to that of a ball rolling uphill. That group includes conspiracy theorists, non-believers of science, and many of those employed in the U.S. Congress—especially those Republicans whose home turf is somewhere in the Southeastern Atlantic states and whose loyalties belong to the last president.

From that latter group comes a North Carolina couple whose dog, a five-year-old mutt named Fezco, was surrendered to Stanly County Animal Protective Services after the pup “humped another male dog.” This news might have stayed private had the shelter not shared the unfortunate news on its Facebook page.

This couple, who might not even qualify for a Darwin award because they’re over-qualified for the “stupid-beyond-belief” category, determined that Fezco’s humping action clearly indicated that the dog was gay. This was something by which they could not abide.

“This is a common assumption,” thirty-three international veterinarians told me over the course of this past week, “of homophobic morons who know nothing about dogs.”

As most of us know, dogs will, without regard to sex, color or religious persuasion, hump any dog that comes along. They also express themselves in this manner on furniture and our friends’ legs. Humping is a form of play and an expression of dominance. It has nothing to do with sexual orientation. But we all know that. Well, most of us.

They will also sniff anything that might trigger the more than 3,000 scents that the homo sapiens among us can’t detect. This is the number one reason most of us really don’t like being licked by dogs. Scientifically it’s called a “fear of contact with butt sniffers.”

Like so many fears, it’s irrational. Or not.

Cats, most of whom are at least as narcissistic as the Putin-loving Donald Trump, are satisfied with their own sense of satisfaction. Unlike Trump, they “groom” themselves without calling much attention to the activity. They don’t much care to smell another animal, choosing to merely walk around any potential victim. But cats do enjoy enough private intimacy to procreate faster than any other mammals except for laboratory rats, rabbits, and rock ‘n’ roll bass players.

But back to the Carolina couple. Why, I wonder, after detecting Fezco’s predilection for gay stuff, didn’t they seek psychological help and enroll the mutt in Canine Aversion Therapy? Certainly there are such courses offered in most states. Although such therapy among humans is highly suspect, with dogs it seems to work—at least temporarily.

How it works is that when a dog begins to hump another dog, the trainer merely gives it a treat. Unfortunately, when the dog is done eating it starts roaming around looking for attractive objects to hump or sniff.

Vigilance in this therapy is necessary, though it can lead to obesity—a whole other ball of wax that needs addressing at any number of the Puppy Fat Farms that are springing up around the country.

Female dogs, just for the record, are unlikely to hump but are highly susceptible to being humped by presumably straight dogs.

Many dogs of both sexes are, however, prone to gender identity qualms. Very few veterinarians provide sex-change procedures because they’re very expensive and nobody knows for sure if the dog really wants the operation.

The sex-change thing also presents a whole new set of issues.

For instance, if a male dog becomes a female dog, should it be allowed to participate in all-bitch competitive Frisbee contests? And what about dog racing? Or any number of canine activities that involves sticks or tennis balls? And what about bird hunting?

And if a female dog becomes a male dog, will it develop a desire to hump everything? And will it be allowed to use fire hydrants and the base of trees for what it will now have to stand three-legged to achieve.

The couple that gave up their pup were pretty bad dog owners to begin with. The poor mutt had heartworms and had yet to be neutered, let alone its not being accepted for what he was.

A gay couple from Charlotte heard about the dog and arranged to adopt it. They renamed him Oscar Wilde and introduced him to Harry, a rescue dog that was a groomsman in the couples’ wedding ceremony.

But there are other gender-type things to thing about. It’s difficult to fully address, but there are clearly pets identifying as non-binary or genderqueer. There are lesbian dogs, intersex dogs, bisexual dogs, asexual and agender dogs. Actually, there aren’t.

These are trying and turbulent times we live in. Some people seem to go out of their ways to make them more so.

I’ll remind them to let sleeping dogs lie and humping dogs hump.

Photo illustration by Courtney. A. Liska

Pasta Fazool

A timeless Italian-American soup of pasta and beans. I like to add sausage.

2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 lb. spicy or sweet Italian sausage
1 large yellow onion, chopped
3 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup dry white wine
3 (15-oz.) cans Great Northern Beans
2 (15-oz.) can diced tomatoes
6 c. chicken stock
1 Tbs. Italian seasoning
16 oz. ditalini pasta (or other small shape)
Freshly grated Parmesan, for garnish
Freshly chopped parsley, for garnish

In a large, deep pot over medium heat, heat oil. Add sausage and cook, breaking up with a wooden spoon, until cooked through, about 5 minutes. Stir in onion, carrots, and celery and cook until slightly softened, about 5 minutes.
Add garlic and cook until fragrant, 1 minute more. Season with salt and pepper.
Deglaze the pot with the wine and bring to a simmer, scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. Next, add in beans (with their liquid), diced tomatoes, chicken broth, and Italian seasoning. Bring to a boil, then stir in ditalini.
Reduce heat to medium and cook until pasta is al dente, about 8 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Serve in bowls garnished with Parmesan and parsley.

He and Jamie would come into the restaurant from time to time. There might have been private reasons that went beyond the cheesecake they would order, but they kept them private. A celebration of some kind, a memory from some small corner of their lives. There might have been a problem that a richly decadent confection could help them solve.

In time, the cost of a babysitter would add to the cost of their dessert.

I first met Craig Clouatre when he was driving a truck for a Bozeman-based beverage distributor. He would bring in his delivery and place the beer and wines as close to the refrigerators and racks as he could, thereby saving me the trouble of schlepping the cases from the delivery door. He’d check the dates on the two domestic beers I offered, removing those bottles that had expired.

Craig was as cheerful a man as I have ever known. His smile was a constant feature on his young face. If he had bad moods, few would have known from his sunny demeanor.

We’d chat for a few moments on delivery days. This young man from Massachusetts spoke of the great outdoors with affection, noting the beauty of a peak he’d have scaled or the woods he’d have hiked through on a search for the peace and tranquility many find hidden in those places.

To my detriment, I have always been more of a passive observer of nature than an active participant, but I enjoyed and appreciated the brief accounts of his adventures. Living vicariously can be a boon to the spirit.

By happenstance, I ran into his boss one summer’s day. I regaled him with my admiration for his young driver—what a fantastic job I thought he was doing and how pleasant he was to deal with in the course of his work. “You need to give him a raise,” I implored. “You need to keep this guy on your team.”

I fully expected Craig’s smile to be even bigger at his next delivery. It wasn’t. And on the following date, it still wasn’t. I then asked if his boss had said anything about what I had told him. “No,” was his response. I filled him in on the story, suggesting that if his boss hadn’t passed on my compliments he was clearly not appreciated as the valuable employee I knew him to be. Through his smile, I sensed disappointment.

In mere weeks, I had helped secure Craig an interview with a commercial food distributor, Sysco, and had written a letter of recommendation. Craig got the job and soon he and his smile came to the back door with new products.

Our visits resumed after a brief break. We never talked about religion or politics. Such things didn’t matter. I assumed his politics had something to do with kindness, his religion with the natural world.

He and Jamie soon had a family—four beautiful kids—a handsome and loving family. Craig continued to drive truck, only not so long ago, I understand, he became a sales rep for a different food-service company. After I closed the restaurant, I would only see Craig behind the wheel of his truck, maneuvering the rig through the town’s streets and alleys. I missed our visits.

His family was torn asunder this past week when, while hunting shed in the Absaroka outback, he fell victim to a grizzly bear attack. He was just forty years old.

My heart breaks for his family.

I see a parallel between what the Clouatre family is being forced to endure with that of Ukrainian families. Their lives have simply come undone, their routines upset by helplessness, their wondering if everything will ever be normal again. Just two years ago Craig and his family lost their home to a fire.

Ukrainian families board the trains and buses to places unknown, their tearful goodbyes through windows that offer no view of a future. The young husbands and fathers stay behind, willing to sacrifice in ways different than those sacrifices parents routinely make for their children. Women stay back to fight, leaving parents and grandparents behind.

Craig devoted his life to his family. He worked to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. He played in the wilderness, scaled mountain peaks, and hiked in the toughest terrain.

I’m sure that his smile was as wide as it ever was when he said goodbye to his family that morning before his day’s adventure that would turn out to be his last.

Photography by Clayton Oberquell

Donations of cash or checks can be made to Craig Clouatre Family at American Bank. 120 N 2nd St, Livingston, MT. All monies with no fees taken will be given directly to Jamie. Compassionate Neighbors is facilitating this process.

The Adagio Cheesecake

1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs
¼ cup sugar
¼ lb. butter, melted
1 tsp. cinnamon

Combine ingredients and pour into spring-form pan.

1# cream cheese
3 eggs
½ cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
¼ cup lemon

Mix ingredients until smooth. Pour into crust and bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees.

16 oz. sour cream
3 Tbs sugar

Pour over baked cake, smooth & chill

I am not one given to prayer. I do, however, talk to myself upon awakening each morning. It’s something of a mantra that I repeat that involves my expression of gratitude for not yet needing algebra in my adult life. I also thank the variety of Gods I imagine floating around in Cloud Cuckoo Land that I don’t live in Florida.

As states go, Florida has some good points. The weather is pretty nice, there are some great golf courses, and the fishing can be rewarding. For eight years I used to play my New Year’s Eve gig and fly to Miami in the early hours. I’d meet up with my parents and we’d go to the Orange Bowl, usually cheering for Nebraska back when they were a football powerhouse. At the end of the game, I’d drive a rental car to Tavernier, a sleepy little community at the western end of Key Largo. That’s where my Aunt Helen and Uncle Ray had a clapboard cottage on a shady lot.

They also had a great fishing boat and for a week or so each January Uncle Ray and I would fish for red snapper and grouper. In the evenings, we’d dine on our day’s catch that Aunt Helen would cook to perfection, and finish our meal with a slice or two of Key lime pie.

The last time I fished the Florida Keys, Ron DeSantis had yet to be born and Florida had yet to elect as its governor the crazed lunatic we’ve come to know and despise. His thirst for power is driven by naked ambition. He has pursued reckless policies that divide Floridians and may even put them at risk. He is out-Trumping Trump as he strives to gain prominence as America’s most divisive politician.

His actions show him to be a racist, anti-intellectual who sees America in danger of falling to an imagined agenda created by the liberal left. He also believes that the word “gay” should never be spoken.

“That’s what we’re doing in Florida, standing up for people’s freedoms,” DeSantis told Fox News. “We’re opposing wokeness. We’re opposing all these things.”

It’s not abundantly clear what “all these things” are, but rest assured that high on the list are LGBTQ, Critical Race Theory and the New York Times 1619 Project. Like masks and social distancing, both CRT and 1619 have been widely banned in Florida’s public schools.

DeSantis displays his lack of knowledge by not recognizing that CRT is not offered as a curriculum choice until one suffers high school successfully and gets into a college whose professors don’t own KKK robes. Think of CRT as kind of an advanced study in the history of race relations in America. The 1619 Project is considerably more insidious as it teaches history—warts and all—to younger students.

To suggest that DeSantis is worried that such information might pass into the minds of unsuspecting children is to suggest that the wart in question just might be the governor of the Sunshine State. In the course of my school education about Florida, there was never a mention about the removal of its Native Peoples or its being a slave state. I do remember learning about Ponce de Leon and his search for the Fountain of Youth which, as it turns out, was pure myth.

I’m not a big fan of the word “woke.” Before somebody coined the term to describe those who are enlightened, we had the word “enlightened.” It is far beyond my ability to understand how somebody can be opposed to enlightenment.

Hell, history shows that there was even an actual Age of Enlightenment, an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects. Wikipedia notes that “the Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.”

Evidently, only monarchs and the Catholic Church opposed such pursuits at the time. The Church tended to lean on superstition and fear, the monarchs on inheritance. I can only imagine that DeSantis would have opposed any conversation on the steps of the Pantheon.

A variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism, communism, and neoclassicism, trace their intellectual heritage to the Enlightenment, three more reasons for the guv to hate enlightenment.

Before the Age of Enlightenment came the Renaissance, an era of notable achievements in art, architecture, politics, science and literature. It was an age of humanism that found man to be the “measure of all things.” Leonardo DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa and illustrated his ideas for an airplane and the aerial screw, a helicopter. It was also then that somebody invented the flush toilet. I’m guessing his name was Loo.

And the predecessor to that time was the Dark Ages, a centuries-long era in which superstition and misbelief defined a time of no notable progress in the arts, sciences and letters. The Church did very well back then, what with uneducated pagans in loin cloths wandering around afraid of their own shadows.

It seems that Governor DeSantis would be most at home in the Dark Ages.

He has his eyes on the Oval Office and is working to feed the fears of his constituency—that same bloc of evangelical Republicans that is best known for giving voice to QAnon and other insipid ideas of conspiracy. DeSantis is masterful at manipulation and can easily get his political base worked up into a flag-waving frenzy—a la Trump. All he has to do is remind his audience that Antifa is a dues-collecting club of anti-Americans.

DeSantis authored a legislative proposal called Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (Stop W.O.K.E.) Act, that will give businesses, employees, children and families tools to fight back against woke indoctrination. The Stop W.O.K.E. Act would be the strongest legislation of its kind in the nation and would take on both corporate wokeness and Critical Race Theory.

The governor routinely succumbs to right-wing pressure groups because he has no particular policy positions or core beliefs, unless you count being anti-enlightenment a core belief.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Grilled Grouper with Lime Butter

Grouper is not unlike sea bass or halibut. It has a mild taste and can be breaded and deep-fried for a most delicious sandwich. Below is how I remember Aunt Helen cooking it. A rice pilaf is a nice side.

1 1/2 pounds grouper fillets
2 Tbs. unsalted butter (softened)
3 Tbs. lime juice
zest of 1 lime
freshly ground black pepper
salt

Heat a gas or charcoal grill to medium- to medium-high heat.
Stir the zest and juice of one lime into the softened butter.
Brush lime butter on each grouper fillet and season with salt & pepper.
Place fillets on the grill and cook 5-6 minutes per side, until the fish will become opaque and flaky.
Once the fillets are cooked through, place on serving dish and brush with any remaining butter.
Serve with additional lime wedges or pico de gallo.