Journal

It’s been widely rumored that Marjorie Taylor Greene is an imbecile—a dangerous imbecile, but an imbecile, nonetheless.

I first noted that in this space last August when she was in a run-off election in Georgia with John Cowan, a Republican who ran ads during the campaign saying, “All of the conservative. None of the embarrassment.” Cowan, a neurosurgeon and businessman, seemed like an old-school, reasonable Republican whose unwillingness to embrace Trumpian politics cost him the election.

He told Politico, “She is not conservative—she’s crazy…She deserves a YouTube channel, not a seat in Congress. She’s a circus act.”

Even Mitch McConnel has described Greene as a “cancer” on the GOP, although I have suggested that he’s the cancer and Marjorie is just an embarrassing prom-night zit.

While most of her bizarre notions seem too farfetched to even consider, she might be onto something with the whole Jewish laser thing. You know, her theory that we, the Chosen People—however unlikely this may seem considering some aspects of our secular culture—somehow got our hands on some space lasers from the Topeka outlet of Pep Boys (Manny, Moe & Jack) that we launched into the upper atmosphere to zap California into flames.

Jesus, the Jewish kid whose birth coincided with much of the world stopping to count the calendar years backwards, might have been there to direct laser fire. Who really knows about these things?

Forest fires, despite what Smokey Bear might have said, don’t just happen after all. Here’s a new slogan for the National Park Service: “Only Jews can prevent laser fires.”

The thinking (?) behind Greene’s position is that a cabal of Jewish bankers, brokers, and hedge fund managers, along with a passel of unemployed Italian busboys and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) linemen for the counties, headed by a French winemaker named Baron Philippe de Rothschild, wanted to establish a high-speed rail system that could provide passenger service between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a trip that would take about 17 minutes. Naturally, the most efficient way to establish track beds for this venture is to burn everything in sight and hire illegal immigrants to start laying the rails.

The only reason to find this somewhat plausible is to discover why Elon Musk, the founder of every business that wasn’t founded by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos in this century, vacated all thirty-seven of his California mansions (they later burned to the ground), and moved to a Texas outpost on the streets of Laredo. He and Marty Robbins built an adobe mission-style house there with dirt floors and an antique Taco Bell sign. They seem to be as happy as you can be in Texas.

I happen to know Elon, or “Mr. Musk,” as only his closest friends call him.

A couple of years ago I was trying to get back into the free-lance writing business. I was also in a coma in a Denver hospital at the time, which may have added some new dimensions to my memory.

I’d heard from a saxophonist and little-known, one-hit rap artist I hadn’t seen in almost three decades. He read about my re-employment plans on Facebook and friended me. Zarf, who goes by Lil’ Zarf when rapping, told me that he was going into space on Mr. Musk’s first voyage to provide a solo sax soundtrack.

Then we talked about a bar mitzvah we had once attended near Springfield, Illinois, where about seventy-five 13-year-old boys in yarmulkes spent most of the afternoon vaulting over the buffet tables, as the 13-year-old girls sat on the sidelines contemplating their futures with such idiots.

Zarf figured I could document the voyage for The National Enquirer or Watchtower, the only news outlets Mr. Musk trusted.

I said I was very much interested, despite my fear of flying—and crashing. Especially crashing.

To help seal the deal, Zarf promised me he wouldn’t rap.

Zarf, Mr. Musk, and I met at a restaurant in Santa Maria, a California coastal town settled by Portuguese immigrants sometime during the final season of Gunsmoke and where there is absolutely nothing to eat but grilled tri-tip beef, Pinquito beans and Dixie cups full of a creamy Cole slaw with celery seeds.

There used to be macaroni-and-cheese, but that fell out of favor.

Even people who live in Santa Maria can only eat tri-tip, beans, and slaw. It’s a law. Or an ordinance. I don’t know the difference.

Mr. Musk’s plans for the maiden space launch for his company, SpaceX, whose stock shares were valued in the neighborhood of $109,033.19 each, far eclipsing the value of Tesla, whose stock was the same per share as the cost of one of the actual cars, were considerably more modest than anything put together by NASA.

Mr. Musk showed us the pictures of our space craft.

It appeared to be a four-man, pop-up blue tent sitting atop what seemed to be about 16-feet of rusted oil barrels that had been welded together. He had bought the tent at Walmart for $129.95, on sale, and had retro-fitted it with the barrels that housed an engine, fuels tanks, an accelerant, and WIFI. Once in space, he enthused, the barrels would fall away, cutting out our cell service, but allowing us to orbit once around Mars, which he thinks should be a democracy administered by Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz, before we would return to earth pinpointed somewhere between Santa Barbara and Nashville.

When I asked about how we would re-enter the earth’s atmosphere and land without power, he coolly asked, “Have you not seen The Wizard of Oz?”

“S-o-r-r-y. Geesh.”

The trip went well, if one thinks spinning around in a rip-stop nylon tent in outer space with an eccentric billionaire and a saxophonist who played like Boots Randolph (I had forgotten about his mediocre skill set) is something having gone well. After 40 days of “Yakety Sax (Don’t Talk Back)” I kept hoping the 81-year-old Lil’ Zarf would emerge to rap a few choruses of his 2013 chart-topping “Gimme Some Old, Old, Really Old Booty.”

If Mr. Musk could have figured out how to open the tent flap, then only two of us would have landed in a parking lot at a synagogue in Holyoke, Nebraska, where there are no Jews. Yet another metaphysical mystery on life’s immense journey.

As it were, the three of us enjoyed a post-orbit repast of Rocky Mountain oysters, sweet potato fries with a Miracle Whip and paprika dip, and Coors Light, which may or may not actually be beer. The jury is still out.

There was also a relish tray—something anybody under the age of 62 won’t have a clue about.

A couple of years have passed since Zarf, Mr. Musk and I orbited the earth in the tent. Did I mention it had a waterbed, a tapestry depicting the French revolution, and delicately laced throw pillows from J.C. Penney? Probably not.

Anyway, the swearing-in of Rep. Greene and the announcement of her unfounded QAnon theories led me to call my close friend Mr. Musk.

“My people are being accused of setting fires in California with lasers from outer space,” I said. “Can we go up into the stratosphere to investigate?”

Mr. Musk is a man of few words.

“No,” he explained.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Santa Maria Tri-Tip

A road trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and back, was never complete without stops at one of the many open-pit grill joints that offered tri-tip beef roast with Pinquito beans (I found some canned by S&W at my local Albertson’s) and a crisp diner-like slaw in Santa Maria. Each place—a few of which served mac & cheese as a side—had its own take on the rub. This is mine. In nicer weather than we’re currently enjoying, this cut of beef begs to be grilled over a wood fire.

Rub (enough for a 4 pound roast)
1 Tbs. Kosher salt
1 Tbs. coarse ground black pepper
1 Tbs. garlic powder
1 Tbs. onion powder
1 tsp. cayenne
1 Tbs. dried oregano
1 tsp. dried rosemary
1 tsp. ground mustard seed

Rub the tri-tip roast with the rub described. Wrap in plastic wrap and keep in refrigerator overnight, or for at least four hours. Remove one hour before cooking.
Heat a small amount of oil in an oven-safe pan and deeply sear the tri-tip, fat-side down.
Turn the roast over and place in an oven at 425°.
Roast for 10 to 15 minutes per pound.
Allow roast to rest for 10 minutes before carving across the grain.

There was a time, not all that long ago that, if I grew tired, I would simply find some place to lie down and go to sleep. This was not an expression of sleeping around. It was a simple fact that, like my father, I had no problem sleeping whenever I needed to.

My father could sleep standing up. He acquired this talent as a soldier in WWII when he was being shot at on a somewhat regular basis. Apparently, he could lock his knees much like a racehorse, lean against a wall or a tree and catch some ZZZs. Later in his life, he could sleep in a variety of sitting and prone positions, most notably during evening newscasts of the day’s events.

I, on the other hand, don’t fall asleep watching the news that comes on at 5:30. I wait until the ten o’clock news because it’s local to a place I don’t live (Billings) and reports of the current rodeo standings really don’t interest me all that much.

I’m scheduled to soon become 70—an age about twice what I thought I would ever attain considering the lifestyle I chose to pursue when I was about 18. So eager was I to experience every chance, opportunity or possibility, I taught myself to sleep a mere three hours each night. Why, I reasoned, would I want to spend a third of my life sleeping when eternity awaited me? When I lived in New York, I would retire after work at 3 am and awake to watch reruns of “Rocky & Bullwinkle” at six. This was a purposeful use of one hour each morning.

It was only when we moved to Montana (I was 42) that an extra hour appeared in my sleep routine. I assumed it had something to do with the altitude.

But back to sleeping around.

I was at Gatwick Airport in London in 1977, awaiting a flight to Los Angeles, when some sort of labor dispute put a stop to air travel. I was traveling with Geri and for three days we wandered aimlessly around the terminal, sleeping on the cold tiled floor with our heads resting on carry-on bags.

I thought of it as building character, much like wearing a felt hat in the rain. Geri was more than eager to move on to Scotland by train.

Now that I’ve grown older, sleep has become a lot more involved and demanding.

The litany begins with the damage done to my ulnar nerve in my left arm. Being right handed, I assume this was caused by leaning on bars, back when there were still ashtrays. The ulnar nerve is part of the brachial plexus system and gets its name for its proximity to the ulna bone. Fascinating, huh? That nerve starts in the neck and travels through the shoulder and down into the wrist and fingers.

In my case, the ulnar nerve meets my carpal tunnel at the base of my hand, before numbing my pinkie finger and the aforementioned tunnel.

There are surgical options for both of these conditions. A surgeon I spoke to about the ulnar problem, in a moment of refreshing candor, advised against it because he said that a lot of the time it doesn’t work.

Carpal tunnel surgery has a better success rate, but I’ve been advised that I’ve yet to suffer from the syndrome badly enough so it’s really not an option. Why is this not good news?

The first steps in my bedtime routine involve taking a handful of pills to deal with my ailments as I sleep—only one of which is supposed to help me sleep. It doesn’t. Next comes the challenge of removing the knee-high compression socks that keep the veins in my legs from decompressing (?) during daylight hours. Putting them on in the morning is so arduous a task that I frequently fall awake reading for an hour or two before getting out of bed.

The nightly routine continues with the slipping on of the elbow brace—an expensive article of medical fashion that seems only to make the inside of my elbow sweat. Next comes the semi-rigid wrist brace which tightens with a boa constrictor’s grip via three tabs of Velcro. The brace was manufactured in China. A label warns against ironing it. For the life of me, I don’t know why one would.

I’m glad that I don’t have nerve or tunnel ailments in my right arm and hand. If I had to wear braces on both wrists, I’m not sure I could muscle up enough strength or finger-curl to pull up the covers.

I used to smoke cigarettes, then cigars, then cigarettes again. My lung problems—caused by a rare disease called Mycobacterium kansasii—are unrelated to my inhalations of tobacco for half of my lifetime. I’m certain they didn’t help, however. I enjoyed smoking, although I would advise that others not start. Most all of my friends are ex-smokers, but I can practically guarantee that if any one of them noticed that their “use by” date was Thursday, each would buy a carton and chain-smoke until, well, sometime on Thursday.

I have sleep apnea, a potentially serious sleep disorder in which my breathing repeatedly stops and starts. That does strike me as serious, if not downright deadly. To stave off death for as long as possible, I have taken to sleeping with a contraption called a CPAP, an acronym for what the machine provides: continuous positive airway pressure.

The machine features some tubing that wraps around my head like a halo designed by a committee. It’s connected to a humming device by a flexible hose. There’s a soft-plastic thingy that covers my mouth and nose. The whole thing is secured with straps and magnets and Velcro.

It’s like sleeping in full scuba gear, minus the flippers.

To keep me tethered to machinery, I now have oxygen which is delivered through forty feet of a sinister-looking iridescent green hose that seems to be a self-coiling trip wire. They still haven’t delivered the adapter hose to allow me to use it in conjunction with CPAP, but I’ve been assured it’s on the way.

Oh, goody.

The indoor unit is about the size of a clothes hamper with casters. When you first turn it on, it lets out a deafening shriek before settling down to the quiet rumble of a ’59 Buick. The portable tank is in a shoulder bag, designed to look like a drummer’s stick bag, except for the plastic tubing that connects the bottle inside to your nose, which announces to the world that you’re no longer adept at breathing and to not light a match anywhere close. The six bottles they delivered are still full because I’ve yet to venture out of the house since having started to inhale manufactured air.

With all the accoutrements that accompany me to bed these days, I’m afraid that I might spill a glass of water in the middle of the night and be electrocuted.

But the good news is that I was recently diagnosed with essential tremor disorder, a neurological condition that causes my hands to shake rhythmically—but only when I’m doing something active, like using a kitchen knife or eating soup. I don’t know what’s so damned essential about these tremors, but there are both medicinal and surgical remedies.

The good news part is that Scotch is also a remedy. Works like a charm.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

A Buck Two-eighty Soup

I love soup, and like most cooks, I can craft several from the odds and ends lurking in the recesses of the refrigerator and pantry. They usually take about 20-30 minutes from start to finish, and are almost always tasty and nutritious. They are also inexpensive, hence the name: my father’s stock answer to how much something cost that he didn’t think was anyone else’s business.

I always start with small amounts of chopped onion, carrot, and celery (mirepoix) as a base, sauteed for a few minutes in equal amounts of butter and oil. Sometimes I add some minced garlic. Then I start the adding the fun stuff. A small potato, peeled and cubed; a leek if I have one; a mushroom or two, chopped; a handful of torn spinach or salad greens; whatever. Don’t get carried away, however. Add only stuff you can identify.

From the freezer, I grab a few tablespoons of peas, corn and/or Lima beans and add them to the pot. Then I add 3 cups or so of water, a tablespoon of chicken or vegetable base, and maybe a 1/4 cup of uncooked rice or orzo. A can of white beans is a welcome addition. My favorite herb is thyme, so I add a couple pinches, along with a bay leaf (if I remember), salt and pepper. Top with a favorite cheese or some oyster crackers.

The first sign of trouble came early Wednesday morning when the God-less Democrats filed into the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C. The fact that they were accompanied by congressional leaders called Never Trumpers and RINOs—the two branches that remain of the embattled Republican Party—was only a clever ruse to mislead the American public. Even the whole St. Matthew thing is a bit suspect. A repentant tax collector, Matty somehow became the patron saint of civil servants, many of whom work for the IRS. Ha!

And then, on the Capitol steps where Proud Boys made their stand contesting the November election, there was a couple of hours of pomp and circumstance—a Shakespearean phrase meaning an “ostentatious display of ceremonial grandeur with oddly dressed pop singers and military bands.” Included were some prayers, songs, poems, and speeches—but very few dirty jokes. A utopian future was promised by all. Then the television cameras turned their focus onto a fleet of limousines filled with—you guessed it—liberals, most of whom live in the Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, or other hilly places in Southern California where property taxes tend to approach six figures and the swimming pools are filled with Perrier.

At the head of all this political folderol was Joe Biden, a commie-socialist pinko if ever there was one.

Sure, he looks harmless enough, hiding behind that blue tie and black topcoat, but did you happen to notice his squinty little eyes? Where were the aviator sunglasses he used to wear when he worked for the foreign-born B. Hussein O.?

After what seemed like a whole day of the ceremonial transfer of political power, Comrade Biden then signed what seemed like a ton of documents. He signed seventeen so-called “executive orders” with what appeared to be fountain pens rather than using the Sharpie left behind by T****  in the top drawer of the Resolute desk. He never held up any of the documents for the American people to see, which indicates one of two things: 1), he didn’t do well at Show & Tell in elementary school, or 2), he doesn’t want the American people to know what’s going on.

I think it’s the latter. Whatever happened to the promised transparency?

And of course you noticed that Bernie Sanders was there, sitting by himself with his back to the wall and wearing a down jacket and mittens so typical and emblematic of the proletariat class. He was clutching a manilla envelope with a suspicious-looking (as in foreign) postage stamp that was rumored to enclose a speech he wrote entitled, “Free at Last, Free at Last! Everything You’ll Want Is Free at Last!”

As the in-coming Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Bernie, whose inaugural image has become a meme (which I don’t even think is a legitimate word) has pretty much made most of the U.S. Government and all of Wall Street, including the janitors who sweep up the ticker tape at the end of each trading day, nervous as all hell. With the mere tap of his gavel, he’ll be able to turn himself into the congressional equivalent of Robin Hood—taking back trillions from the one percent to provide free school lunches for poor children and other things that really, really rich people hate.

It is Bernie who will control the purse strings of a government practically guaranteed to quadruple in size over the next four years as the private sector diminishes to a collection of dead-end service industries with minimum-wage jobs for those under-served by an educational system rendered useless by Betsy DeVos. Pretty soon, Bernie will help devise a national budget that will provide a shovel for every citizen on which to lean as we rebuild our roads, sewers, bridges, sports arenas, and drive-in movies, now that we’re going to have to social-distance for at least eight years.

While this new approach to operating government might sound like a bunch of free handouts, the truth is that each citizen will actually have to show up at the job site to lean against a shovel for eight hours each day.

Mind you, this is no handout.

President Biden, late Wednesday night, removed the portrait of Andrew Jackson from whom his predecessor drew great inspiration. Instead of the expansionist author of the Indian Removal Act whose legacy was the Trail of Tears, a portrait of a fat guy who believed in science, enjoyed flying kites and establishing democracies now hangs in the Oval Office. (For the record, Joltin’ Joe bruised his thumb hammering the picture hanger into the wall.) From a certain angle, Benjamin Franklin, an American revolutionary who founded a retail five-and-dime store franchise and was the first to suggest that his portrait appear on the $100-bill, looks a tad like Friedrich Engels, the socialist revolutionary who partnered with Groucho to write a comedy manifesto, minus the beard.

In other interior news, Biden has selected busts of such leftist radicals as Cesar Chavez (not the Argentinian), Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt—each renowned for their championing the causes of fairness and justice—to adorn the nooks and crannies of his office.

Damn commies.

He’s also taken down the gold-weaved symbols of the T**** bourgeoisie that celebrated the ruling of the eighteenth century.

Also, there are now portraits of the anti-American Franklin D. Roosevelt (socialist), Abraham Lincoln (abolitionist), George Washington (naturalist who saved a cherry tree), Thomas Jefferson (anti-Federalist and wine enthusiast) and Alexander Hamilton (the hip-hop star of a Broadway show to which admission to a balcony seat costs about 80 of the bills on which he’s depicted).

Many of the above were also Freemasons, which suggests a really sinister government reality shrouded in secrecy with oddly bizarre handshakes, rituals involving goats, and funny hats and aprons that suggest an allegiance to Ukraine, Belarus and the south Jersey shore.

Biden is not a Mason. He is a member of the Trilateral Commission, a non-governmental, non-partisan discussion group founded by David Rockefeller in July of 1973 to foster closer cooperation between Japan, Western Europe, and North America. They meet annually at the Bohemian Club near San Francisco to walk around naked and urinate against giant redwoods.

I tried to warn you. This Joe guy is a vicious, blood-thirsty commie who wants to take prayer out of the schools and make granola and broccoli America’s national foods. He does, however, wear a Rolex watch. He’s also a scratch golfer who has yet to play a single round in his Presidency.

And guess who’s helping advance his red-tinged agenda? The Carters, the Clintons, the Obamas, and George W. Bush.

Laura wants no part of it.

Photo manipulation of two old Jews and a dog by Courtney A. Liska

A Winter’s Meal

I’ve been making this onion tart for as long as I can remember. It is like my paternal grandmother’s, but I think I might have copped it from the NYT International Cookbook. Whatever, it’s delicious. I like to serve it with a cucumber salad and some warm rye bread.

Onion tart

2 Tbs. unsalted butter
4 medium onions, cut in half and diced
A sprinkling of granulated sugar
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 large eggs
1-1/4 cups heavy cream
A pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
1/3 cup finely grated Gruyère
1 partially baked tart shell in a 10-inch porcelain quiche pan or a 10-1/2- or 11-inch metal tart pan

Heat the oil and butter in a skillet. Add the onions and sugar, season with salt and pepper, and sauté over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until lightly browned. Lower the heat and continue to cook the onions until soft and evenly browned, stirring frequently, another 30 to 40 minutes; you may need to add a little more oil. When the onions are done, transfer them to a strainer and drain.
Heat the oven to 375°F. In a bowl, whisk the eggs and cream. Season with 3/4 tsp. salt, a scant 1/2 tsp. pepper, and the nutmeg. Add the drained onions and half of the cheese and blend thoroughly. Fill the prepared tart shell with the onions and custard. Top with the remaining cheese and bake until the tip of a knife comes out clean and the top of the tart is puffed and brown, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool for at least 15 to 20 minutes before serving.

Cucumber Salad

1 shallot, minced
1/4 cup sour cream
1 Tbs. white vinegar
1/2 tsp. dried dillweed
1 garlic clove, grated
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
Fresh ground black pepper
1 large English cucumbers

Mix dressing ingredients. Add sliced cucumbers.

For a long time now I have been under the assumption that medals were awarded to those esteemed for acts of courage, heroism and valor, as well as to those Olympic athletes who can run faster than their nearest competitor from Belarus and survive the performance-enhancing-drug tests that follow.

I have a medal. Unlike my father’s Purple Hearts, mine is not to honor any act of courage, heroism, or valor. Neither is it for my athletic prowess, which would by now find me unable to outrun an inanimate object.

No, my medal is a participation medal awarded in the days before they became known as that. Today, they are as common as dirt and are awarded to anybody who regularly shows up for no particular reason. “Last place in the standings? Good job. Have a medal.” “Eliminated in the first round of the spelling bee? ‘Fig’ isn’t that hard to spell, but OK, here’s a medal.”

Unlike Trump, kids know when they lose.

Geri found my medal in a box in the garage and asked me why I had never told her of my great medal-winning accomplishment. I told her that it wasn’t much of a story. It was an Award of Excellence for having competed in the American College Theater Festival in 1971. I was a part of a writing/performing team that put together a rock ‘n’ roll adaptation of Aristophanes’ “The Birds.” It was topical, campy, colorful, musical and loads of fun, and it was chosen to be the first show of the competition. The festival itself was the first event held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts.

It was a very heady week in Washington, D.C. The band component of our show performed at Ford’s Theater, which, as the site of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, may be the most historic place I’ve ever been. During a break in an encore performance at the National Press Club, I accidently flicked a cigarette ash into the martini I was drinking while talking to Eric Sevareid, the erudite political commentator on the CBS Evening News.

We were chauffeured around for a few days in black stretch limos—I actually arrived late because two days before we were to leave Cleveland for Washington, I had to detour to Chicago to fail my draft physical. We stayed at the Hay-Adams, and one night we dined at the famed (now a parking lot) Sans Souci restaurant with a host who seemed possibly to be the majority owner of our nation’s capital.

(He also arranged for a private tour of the then-closed medical section of the Smithsonian Institution. I had expressed an interest in seeing a preserved human leg infected with elephantiasis I had read about, and he didn’t want me to be disappointed. This man could pull some strings.)

Anyway, Aristophanes’ “The Birds” failed to impress the jury as much as it did the Cleveland Playhouse audiences where we subsequently ran for a few SRO months.

Today, my bronze medal hangs framed with a green velvet background in our dining room. Several times a day I am reminded that we lost. It’s humbling.

Although Trump has managed to turn most of everything he’s touched into dangerous folly, some of his choices for the Presidential Medal of Freedom are, if nothing else, just kind of peculiar. Considering that there are no restrictions on who he selects to receive the nation’s highest civilian honor, he can stand in a schoolyard and hand them out like cheap cut-outs on Valentines’ Day should he please.

Obviously, rich donors to his campaigns and his failed businesses are rewarded first. And next, those of his staunchest supporters are rewarded, including such egregious toadies as Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan who are about as deserving as Pol Pot would be for a humanitarian commendation. Rush Limbaugh, the provocateur of the racist, hysterical right, hasn’t even managed to win a Peabody Award. And yet there he was in the U.S Congress accepting his Medal of Freedom during a State of the Union address that sadly illustrated our state of the union.

I thought it odd that Tiger Woods received one, back when he made his comeback to win the Master’s. His winning wasn’t particularly brave or heroic—it wasn’t as if he had snatched a drowning child from Augusta National’s swimming pool, after all. He managed to win a four-day golf tournament that, between purses and endorsements, places him in the suspicious company of Jeff Bezos.

Last week, more golfers joined the ranks of American freedom fighters, despite two of them being foreign nationals (not that there haven’t been other foreign awardees) and one of them long dead. But considering Trump’s disdain for foreigners, it surprised me. No, it didn’t. Nothing surprises me anymore.

We’ve known all along that Trump was forgoing his love of golf to run the country. Well, that didn’t pan out so well, but I suspect that the soon-to-be ex-President wants golfers to accompany him to the awaiting bunkers, armed with sand wedges to fight insurgent caddies.

(I once placed thirty-sixth in a field of forty in a golf tournament. At the time, I wasn’t so much worried about freedom as I was of not missing a fifth putt on any given hole.)

I’m not of fan of country music or bluegrass. I have nothing against it, really (although my medical record at UCHealth in Denver does list country music as an allergy), I just like other music better. So, for me to have even heard of Ricky Skaggs and Toby Keith is a testament to their success. Good for them. I’m guessing that they are nice guys who love their children, don’t kick dogs, and have mastered the necessary nasal twangs required by their professions.

But I can’t quite imagine that their abilities to entertain line-dancing audiences with snap-buttons on their plaid cowboy shirts go much toward advancing the cause of freedom or helping create a lasting peace. Lots of fun? For many, absolutely!

Of course, I could be wrong. I frequently am, as Geri reminds me.

I’m also not much of a football fan which, along with my disdain for songs about pickup trucks and divorce, makes me somewhat un-American. I’ve nonetheless learned over the years that the bellicose Bill Belichick is nobody I would want to meet. He’s been caught and fined for cheating with his New England Patriots, all the while defending quarterback Tom Brady from charges of his own infidelity to the rules of the game.

Not that it matters, but Coach Belichick earned a little of my respect this week for refusing the freedom honor offered him by Trump in the wake of the January insurrection.

There are those who will shoot themselves in the foot to get a Purple Heart.

And there are those who won’t.

Photo Illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Pork Chops alla Bamonte’s

If you’ve ever eaten at the red-sauce Italian restaurant Bamonte’s in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and not had the joint’s pork chop with cherry peppers, you’ve missed something special. I served my take of this dish from time to time at my Montana trattoria, Adagio. The secret is in the brine.

2 (1-1/2″thick) bone-in pork chops
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3-4 Tbs. olive oil
6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
12 pickled cherry peppers, halved
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup veal or chicken stock

Brine the pork chops overnight. Add to four cups of water, 1/4 cup kosher salt, 2 Tbs. dark brown sugar, 1 tsp. black peppercorns, 1 bay leaf, and 1 sprig of fresh rosemary. Bring mixture to a boil and allow to cool completely before adding the chops.

Heat oven to 450°. Rinse and dry the chops before seasoning with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tbsp. olive oil in an oven-proof skillet over medium-high heat. Fry chops, flipping once, until browned, 4 to 6 minutes. Transfer pan to oven; roast until pork is cooked through, 14–18 minutes. Transfer chops to a plate and cover. Return pan to medium heat, add remaining oil, garlic, and peppers; cook until garlic is golden, 3–4 minutes. Raise heat to high, add wine and stock; cook until reduced by half, 3 to 4 minutes. Spoon sauce and peppers over the chops and serve.

And then suddenly, just like magic, I was $600 richer.

SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS!!! OMG!!!

Even to the least contemptuous members of Congress—each of whom is paid $174,000 per year, plus bribes and kickbacks—that figure is apparently an example of what is a lot of money for your average American. At last, I’ve been led to believe that with such an increase in my bank balance I’m suddenly a member of the elite.

With such new-found wealth at my disposal, it seemed like a good time to weigh the various ways I might spend it.

Not to ignore the obvious—food, utilities, car repairs, insurance, medical care—but I want that new-found wealth to be discretionary, to be spent willy-nilly on the luxuries enjoyed by my now-fellow one-percenters.

I might feel more comfortable with my sudden wealth if I dressed more like the other guys at Club One-Percent, now that the venerable 21 Club has closed for good. A new suit, perhaps, and a cashmere sweater for those casual days when chinos seem appropriate.

Brooks Brothers is a reputable men’s clothier and for just $998 (sale price) I can get a Madison Fit Stretch Wool Two-Button 1818 Suit. I don’t know exactly what that means, but the suit looked pretty nice on a guy thirty years my junior. Of course, I’ll need a dress shirt with French cuffs ($75), diamond cuff links ($400), a silk necktie from Passaggio Cravatte ($160), and Brando Semi-Brogue Oxford shoes from Paul Evans ($399). For casual days, those chinos will cost in the neighborhood of $150; that cashmere sweater, a mere $223.

No wonder I feel so impoverished buying a pair of jeans from Costco for $19.

My new-found wealth should allow me to take up golf again. I played Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles once and found it to be much to my liking. (Milton Berle was having lunch at the next table.) Founded in 1920 as an alternative to other clubs that didn’t allow Jewish members, the initiation fee today is a mere $185,000. My game would probably be passable there, as the average age of members is 80—each one a pedigreed alta cocker.

Obviously, there are monthly fees. But, as I’ve heard some say, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

Speaking of affordability, one advertisement I’ve being seeing recently announced that flying hither and yon on private jets is finally affordable. How affordable these luxurious flights are is difficult to ascertain. Skipping around the various websites to hundreds of references in search of pricing led me to believe that perhaps “finally affordable” might apply only to those who don’t have to ask, or at least have a black American Express card—that card with a credit line that allows for the easy purchase of islands, yachts, and helicopters.

I’m looking into making those purchases, although I would prefer a half-mile of private beach in Malibu, a reasonably short limo ride to Hillcrest.

From what I could determine, the easiest way to fly around the country in luxury would be to become a profiler in the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) of the FBI on “Criminal Minds.” My favorite part of the show was whenever the agent leading the far-flung investigations in crime-ridden suburbs of Topeka says, “wheels up in thirty.” And the end is always good, as well, when everybody is having cocktails and playing chess, while the narrator reads pithy quotes from Thoreau, Proust, or Groucho Marx.

The super-rich, of course, don’t stand in lines to deal with the pesky TSA, which is why they flit about the world in private jets. They also don’t own Barcalounger chairs with cup holders, or their own bowling balls. What they do share in common is the ownership of influence, which may come in the form of politicians and others charged with public service. It used to be that only members of the organized criminal class owned police captains, judges, and senators—the pezzonovante, as Michael Corleone would say—because nobody else really needed them.

That’s changed, hasn’t it?

Like any of the things mentioned above, I doubt $600 worth of bribes would go too far toward the purchase of unbridled and loyal influence.

I’ve been told that some of the powers-that-be have advised Americans to use their windfalls to start businesses. Short of selling beaded necklaces and trinkets from a blanket on some urban street corner during tourist season, I can’t think of any business start-up one could fund with $600.

Hell, even the Cash Cow Hot Dog Cart will set you back more than three grand, plus delivery.

And besides that, there have been countless, well-established businesses that have haven’t been able to weather the storm brought on by this pandemic. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of opportunity on the current business front.

For anyone to suggest that we take $600 and make investments in our futures is about as cynical as one can get. I would imagine that such advice comes with a full serving of condescension and a pat on the head.

My advice is to treat yourself to some small luxury that will ease some of the pain of the last ten months.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Soupe aux Choux (Cabbage Soup)

This is my variation of the classic French cabbage soup. Fresh cabbages are blanched, sliced and cooked with smoked sausages, carrots, onions, and chicken stock. The chunky pieces of cabbage and sliced sausages give this hearty soup its character. The soupe au choux, typically made with pork belly, is one of the most iconic French soup there is.

1 medium size cabbage (Savoy or white cabbage)
8 cups of homemade chicken stock or water
1 “horseshoe” of smoked sausage, sliced
1 medium carrot, cut into chunks
1 onion, halved
3 cloves
1 Tbs. butter
salt and pepper
4 slices of bread, toasted and cut into chunks

Quarter the cabbage and place into a pot of cold, salted water. Bring to a boil, then drain and rinse under cold water. When cool enough to handle, coarsely cut the cabbage into chunks. Melt the butter and add the carrot and one half of the onion, chopped. After a minute or two, add half of the cabbage. Layer the sliced sausage on top and nestle in the clove-studded half onion. Cover with the rest of the cabbage and add the chicken stock and season with pepper. Cook over low heat for an hour or so. Serve with the toasted croutons.

The call came Saturday. It was not good news, but it was what spurred me to jump into action to prove—once and for all—the efficacy of Jewish penicillin. I’ve concocted this widely recognized panacea countless times, but I didn’t know how effective it might be against the Covid-19 pandemic.

It was a call to action.

I’ve been making chicken soup for nigh onto 50 years. I don’t really have a recipe. I just recall how my grandmother used to make it and go on from there, although I doubt she used leeks.

I was prepared to take copious notes from this latest batch to forward to Tony Fauci. (I’ve dropped the honorific and adopted the familiar version of his given name ever since sending him an email wishing him a happy 80th birthday.) I placed my order for the necessary ingredients and met the young delivery woman who didn’t seem to need a coat in 22° weather. Once in my kitchen, I unpacked the bags and learned that the supermarket had, apparently, run out of chicken.

No chicken? How does something like this happen? What kind of a world do we live in?

My efforts had to be delayed and so, after finally obtaining some chicken, I set to work early Tuesday. The stock was made, and the shaped bread loaf was resting under a white towel. I had only another hour or two to finish the soup, and bake the bread. I needed to complete this latest batch to see if it worked and then forward the double-blind test results to Tony.

The cellphone dinged and I heard the news that my soup was too late to test. Our very dear friend Eve Art had succumbed to the virus Covid-19. We are beyond sad. Devastated, in fact. At times like these, people frequently claim that there are no words and then they continue to talk.

I’m one of those people.

It is sadly ironic that Eve, who, along with her husband Mike, worked tirelessly toward providing comfort and grace to the guests they welcomed at Chico Hot Springs, would fall victim to a disease that is still thought to be a hoax by the least thoughtful of people. There was nothing stuffy about their hospitality, and there was no shortage of humor. (She told me once that she continued to see Mike after their first date because “he was funny.”) They worked to provide safe harbor, good food and good times. They cared about the well-being of others.

The last time I spoke with Eve was one day last week. She was angry that some people were still ignoring the mask mandates and still not practicing safe-distancing. She was not one to suffer fools gladly. She told me she couldn’t wait for all this to return to normal so we could all go back to having fun together. And give each other hugs again.

She also was eagerly looking forward to January 20, 2021.

Eve was born to a well-to-do family in Czechoslovakia. Their wealth diminished considerably when they had to flee Prague, with only what they could carry, to Paris. Later, the family arrived in New York and Eve grew up on Long Island. She mourned the fate of her cousins who perished in the violence of the Holocaust. She attended college at Adelphi University in New York, where she met Mike. Moving to Cleveland to start their married life, she earned her master’s degree at Case-Western Reserve University. It was there that she began a career in elementary education.

Eve was multi-lingual, an avid reader, a devotee of concert music, opera, and Elton John. She was outspoken on most any subject. She could be demanding, but I believe at its root was a sense of her wanting to draw the best out of people, helping them to be the best they could be. It’s what the best teachers do.

Education was a top priority for Eve, writing to me once saying, “I think geography, spelling and legible handwriting should be mandatory, grade 5 through one’s lifetime.”

She went on to write, “When we moved to Montana, relatively smart Cleveland kids asked us if we needed passports. When we settled here, relatively smart Montana kids asked us where Ohio was.”

For many years, Eve and I would attend Bozeman Symphony Orchestra concerts on Sunday afternoons. She always came prepared, knowing the program and spending the day before listening to recordings of the music we were going to hear. After the concerts, we’d stop on the way home so she could get that day’s New York Times.

Eve savored life in many ways. We missed Passover and Hanukkah this year, hence the chicken soup, and she enjoyed many a Bohemian meal I would prepare from my memories of my grandmother’s cooking: bread dumplings (knedlíky), sauerkraut (zeli), and marinated beef (svíčková na smetaně). It reminded her of her family, she told me. One time many years ago, she and Mike had just returned from France where they had dined in a roadside country inn. They said they had been served the best roast chicken they had ever had. Eve proceeded to tell me the story of the AOC-designated poulet bresse gauloise, describing the chicken’s strict pasture diet of bugs and seeds, and the finishing with buttermilk-soaked grain.

I had never heard of this bird, nor thought about any chicken’s diet, let alone its pedigree, and I felt remiss in not going at once to La Bresse to have one for myself. Someday, perhaps, I will, and I’ll raise my glass to Mike and Eve’s memory.

She was enthusiastic about most of life’s enjoyments. She loved the mountains of Montana and the beaches of the Bahamas and Mexico. She found as much satisfaction from a loaf of good bread with some salty olives and a glass of wine as she might from an elegant four-course dinner. She understood perfectly, the value of conversation at the kitchen table. She liked to share good times with those she loved. She enjoyed intelligent discourse, disdaining small talk and idle gossip. She loved all dogs.

Eve pretended to not understand the computer when, if fact, she just preferred hand-written notes and greeting cards. She was thrifty, and yet, generous to a fault. She and Mike raised two wonderful daughters, Andy and Jackie, both of whom treat us like part of a very loving family that indulges as often as possible in raucous laughter.

Geri, Courtney, and I will miss Eve greatly, but we’ll always have the cherished memories of a much-loved friend.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Chicken Stock (reprinted from my essay https://jimliska.com/tattooed/, a Holocaust story from March 15)

Known as Jewish penicillin, chicken soup soothes the soul. It may even be effective in our current crisis. I’m hoping that none of you will be charged to test its efficacy. This recipe is the basis for many soups and sauces. Stay well. Wash your hands. Make soup.

2 pounds chicken backs and necks
2 leeks, white and pale green parts, coarsely chopped
2 carrots, coarsely chopped
1 medium onion, peeled, studded with 2 whole cloves
2 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, unpeeled
8-10 whole peppercorns

Bouquet garni
4-5 sprigs of parsley
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
celery leaves

Wash the chicken under running water. Blanch the pieces in boiling water, 3-4 minutes. Rinse under cold water and reserve.
Place the chicken pieces in a stockpot and cover with four quarts of cold water.
Bring to a boil. Add the other ingredients, bring to a boil and then simmer, partially covered, for about two hours. Be sure to skim the fat and foam.
Strain through a fine sieve and let cool. Remove all of the fat (schmaltz) that rises to the surface.

The end of any year holds the hope and promise for an even better year to come, while urging us at the same time to reflect on what has transpired. At the dawn of 2021, I can’t think that I know anybody who would like 2020 to stick around for even a minute more than is required.

It’s been one for the books, as the sports guys say.

The hardships and pains of this year have taken their tolls on each of us. I have countless friends who are musicians, many of whom I’ve known over the span of five decades. Most of them haven’t worked since March or April. While their bank accounts are hurting, so are their spirits. Musicians are musicians to create music for those who can’t. It is a calling. And going without music—for both player and audience alike—wreaks havoc upon the human soul.

The same can be said for actors, directors, and the crews whose stages went to black at the beginning of the pandemic. Few cries of “action” have been broadcast over the sound stages that dot our landscape. Television shows have been put on hiatus, while the late-night satirists are working from what appears to be the corners of their own living rooms.

Some of the activities we take for granted have been curtailed or altered to states being unrecognizable.

Personally, I’ve been to one restaurant since March 13. It was an uncomfortable lunch with a dear friend. As another friend noted early on in this adventure, “I’m a New Yorker. I go to restaurants.”

Baseball, with its cardboard cut-out audience, was unbearable. Even the song says, “take me out to the crowd.”

I’ve tried to turn a deaf ear to those who deny the existence of a virus that has killed more than 330,000 Americans, and who refuse to be just decent enough to do whatever one can to help defuse the time-bomb that could kill their friends and families. But I can’t. I’m angry at those represented by Proud Boys who believe their knowledge of infectious diseases somehow usurps that of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

There were empty seats at our Thanksgiving tables, and even more at Christmas. Hanukkah seemed hollow, lacking the laughter that so perfectly accompanies the latkes I learned to make from my grandmother. I can only imagine that Kwanzaa, which began its celebration just last night, might be missing something as well.

Even those who lack a spiritual or religious grounding, I would hope find value to the one idea that is shared by all religions: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. How basic can it get? How base can we be to deny kindness?

There are shops and salons and bars that will never see my business again because they chose their “freedom” and their “rights” to deny me mine. This is not what we used to be. We were a proud “can-do” nation in which some have morphed into belligerent and peevish “won’t-do” citizens.

That can-do spirit is clearly held by the first responders, as well as the medical staffs who are putting their own health and safety at risk during a health crisis none have ever experienced. Many have yet to share a meal with their families since early in the pandemic, let alone celebrate the holidays meant to foster peace, love and charity.

Their own mental health is at great risk as well. They fight depression, frustrations beyond the norm, and debilitating sadness over those who have suffered or died. They hold the hands of dying strangers whose families await word in hospital parking lots.

I’ve had a host of health issues over the past eight years and have seen first-hand medical professionals at work in careers that I hope are deeply satisfying and meaningful for each of them. How could they not be? Four hospitals and a care facility were my homes for a total of about ten months. I got a life-flight to Denver without knowing I was aboard an airplane. I was intubated and put on a ventilator. For 16 days, I was in an induced coma and on life support. I spent another 30 or so in ICU at UCHealth. I remember little about it.

My memory has been cobbled together from memories belonging to others.

When I was transferred to the skilled nursing home facility that we called Shady Pines, I couldn’t stand without assistance, let alone walk. The body’s muscles atrophy quickly in ICU. I wasn’t strong enough to endure the surgery I needed—the last (knock wood) of six. I had a feeding tube because I didn’t have the energy or strength I needed to eat. For nine weeks, twice every day, I was pushed and prodded and pushed some more in both physical and occupational therapy programs.

The young woman doing all of the pushing was named Stephanie. I called her Sarge.

She never let me quit and never let my hopes fade. She was a cheerleader for the good-health world she wanted me to rejoin. I re-learned how to eat, stand, walk, and use the bathroom.

I’ve thought of Sarge often during this unnecessary pandemic. She was a Jewish woman, engaged to an Asian man, and they were building their first home in a Denver suburb. I loved hearing the progress reports of their future.

Stephanie works taking care of the sick and the elderly, a group that is most susceptible to the Covid-19. And, as we all should know, nursing homes have been hardest hit.

While I was in Denver, I had a couple of bouts with nosebleeds, one of which landed me back at UCHealth for four days. There, stuck with a Rhino Rocket deep into my sinus cavity, I was being monitored in-room. One of the nurses, whose name, I’m sorry to say, I can’t remember, asked me to order my breakfast for the next morning. I said that I didn’t really care. Then I carped a bit about the cafeteria not having espresso. Off-shift, that nurse returned to my bedside with a triple espresso.

An act of kindness (mitzvah) is something to be cherished, as well as something to which to aspire.

Sarge visited me at the hospital while I was awaiting the surgery for which she had helped me prepare. She brought me two gelati. She squeezed my hand as she said goodbye.

I am so grateful for the nurses, doctors, lab technicians, therapists, and housekeepers who are in charge of our care. They work hard and they deserve our unflagging support and respect. They seem to have an inner strength and desire that the rest of us don’t. They do the jobs that most of us flinch away from in disgust.

Hospital patients are usually treated and cared for by health-care professionals who seem to rotate on and off shift in no particular order. Also, because patients are ill and taking any number of medications, the memory is perhaps not open to easy recall. That’s my excuse. While I may not remember their names, I remember their care and kindness, their compassion and patience.

I know they’re all wearing whatever protective gear they need—and then some. I just wish they could get that mask message across to their prospective patients.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Cuban Black Bean Soup

Close to the top of my bucket list is to visit Cuba, a trip which will be expertly guided by my friend Michael Sanders. Until then, I will stay warm on wintry nights with this soup.

1 pound dried black beans
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 ham bone or smoked ham hock
1/2 c. olive oil
2 tsp. salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/3 c. distilled white or apple cider vinegar

Rinse beans, then place in a large (4 quarts or larger) Dutch oven or soup pot with a lid and cover with enough cold water so that it comes to one inch over the top of the beans. Soak overnight.

Drain the beans, then return the beans to the pot. Add enough cold water so that it covers the beans by an inch. Add the onion, pepper, garlic, ham bone or hock, olive oil, salt, and a generous quantity of black pepper. Stir to combine

Bring to a boil over high heat. Skim off any foam, then reduce the heat to low and cover. Simmer until the beans are soft, and the soup is creamy, not watery, 4 to 5 hours. Check after 2 hours. If the beans seem dry add another cup of water. The final consistency should be velvety and thick, and the soup should coat the back of a spoon.

When the soup is nearly finished, stir in the vinegar and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes more. Pull the ham bone out of the pot, coarsely chop the meat, and return to the pot.

Serve over rice if desired, garnished with chopped raw onions, red bell peppers, and/or sour cream.

So is it the Corona-19 virus that has led so many to the brink of insanity over the idiocy about how Jill Biden chooses to be addressed? Or, is this just the weaponization of resentment toward educated people that we will have to endure for the foreseeable future left over from the dregs of Trumpdom?

From what I understand, Dr. Jill Biden or, Dr. J, familiarly, earned her Doctorate in Education from the University of Delaware in January of 2007. Her dissertation focused on maximizing student retention in community colleges—which I’m guessing has something to do with keeping students awake while in class. Or not. One just never can be sure about these kinds of things.

Nonetheless, she earned a doctorate from an accredited university that acknowledged the research and scholarship she expressed in a dissertation which no doubt was at least as boring as watching people nap. I assume it added to the knowledge base in her field, a typical requisite of academic achievement. She earned the degree, and if she so chooses, can place Dr. in front of her name, or Ed.D. after it. She could even use both, but that might seem a bit like overkill, especially when you add First Lady to the mix.

Tucker Carlson, the arch conservative, misogynistic in-house idiot at Fox News (one of many), has claimed to have read Dr. J’s 137-page dissertation. He labeled it “illiterate,” a word the meaning of which he clearly doesn’t grasp. Rather than assuming the mantle of “Public Disgrace” for himself, which is wholly merited based on his unfounded claims of voter and vaccine fraud, he’s decided that a college research paper has become the face of shame, while QAnon becomes the face of scholarship.

Every time he opens his mouth, he descends into new depths of stupidity.

I can hardly wait until he discovers that Julius “Dr. J” Erving, the superstar hoopster with the Sixers, wasn’t a doctor of anything.

Ph.D. folks can be a pain in the ass. I know this because I had a sister, named Jo, who had not one, but two Ph.Ds. We called her Doctor Doctor Jo Jo. She believed for reasons I thankfully can’t recall that medical doctors weren’t as worthy of the doctor title as she and her ilk were.

I nonetheless presented her with a stethoscope when she earned her first one.

Jo wrote her second dissertation about some arcane aspect of primate communication. She sent it to me during my winter break at the University of Illinois one year. I had nothing to do for that three-week stretch but to play drums for two hours each weekday evening for businessmen wishing to get just drunk enough to face the familial duties that awaited them at their suburban ranch houses. Our little stage was round, and it rotated inside the bar while we, a trio of piano, bass, and drums, plus a girl singer, played songs like Misty and Send in the Clowns, developing a musical sub-genre we called Businessman’s Bounce. We were well paid, got free drinks and salty appetizers, and were much happier than our modest fan base, even though we had to wear tuxedos.

Anyway, I spent a couple of days reading my sister’s rather lengthy diatribe about elephants and monkeys doing whatever she had observed them doing in various parts of Africa where she lived in tents and paid her servants with Playboy T-shirts for doing their jobs of keeping the snakes, scorpions and spiders from the floors of said tents. Her dissertation never addressed the hideous conditions from which she conducted her research, and except for the frequent use of the words “elephant” and “monkey,” I had not a clue about whatever it was she had written.

Even the title, “Semiogenesis as a continuous, not a discrete, phenomenon,” or something like that, made no sense. It certainly wouldn’t attract readers looking for something to take along on an airplane trip, possibly because most of the title was in lower-case letters which may or may not be the proper way to title dissertations. Pithy titles such as ‘A’ as in Assassin, sell like hotcakes.

I did for her what I thought was a big favor and re-wrote her dissertation, reducing its page count from somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 to somewhere in the neighborhood of 12. I even added a few humorous interludes.

I sent it to her. I included a little note suggesting that my efforts, conducted with the use of several dictionaries and encyclopediæ, would result in drawing a wider audience to her research because now it could be easily understood by almost any idiot.

I got a note back telling me that her dissertation was not meant for the idiot public, but was specifically for the 90 or so academics who shared in her specialty of non-verbal communication among elephants and monkeys. Worldwide.

Her note was really angry, and so I called her, not to apologize for my misunderstanding the mysterious workings of white-tower academia, but to suggest a truce. During the course of that effort, I made the mistake of asking about how giraffes might communicate. She hung up on me and we didn’t speak to each other for three years. That led to my writing a parody of non-verbal communications among humans, most of which were expressed by hand gestures as seen through car windows in rush-hour traffic.

I sent it to her as a peace offering. It bought me another year of non-verbal communication.

Many years later, my beloved sister left academia to develop education programs and services for the Bloomington, Indiana, Animal Rescue Shelter, Adoption Center and Place That Smells More Like a Sewage Treatment Plant Than an Actual Sewage Treatment Plant, or something like that. Her work was with dogs, each of whom she found to be much easier to teach than the humans she had lectured to for so many years.

Today, I would appreciate her help with our dogs, but since she’s dead that might be asking for too much.

(Have your ever read such a smooth segue?)

We got Beau, a mixed breed rescue dog, just about two months ago. He doesn’t much like me, and he basically won’t leave Geri’s side. He is as blind as the proverbial bat, although he’s adapted well to both our yard and house—as long as we don’t move anything. Despite his diminutive size, he’s strong as an ox, which we assume is some kind of compensation for being blind.

My sister could probably have written a dissertation about handicapped dogs, though it’s doubtful anybody would ever have made any sense of it without my editorial help. Missed that boat.

We decided Beau would benefit from having a canine companion—a seeing-eye dog, so to speak—and Courtney found us Romeo, an adorably cute mixed-breed rescue mutt. He’s quite playful and cuddly. He’s also a bit of a prankster. Once he realized that his new best friend couldn’t see, he started hiding Beau’s toys and sneaking up from behind to scare him. When he runs away, he takes new paths that lead Beau headlong into chair legs, walls, and other obstacles.

It’s disturbingly amusing, and yet somehow remindful of semiogenesis.

Photo of Romeo, the Merry Prankster, by Courtney A. Liska

Fegato di pollo ragu (Chicken liver sauce)

I love this sauce because I like chicken livers and this is a rich sauce perfect for wintry nights.

1# chicken livers
4 Tbs. minced shallot
2 Tbs. canola oil
4 Tbs. butter
½ tsp. minced garlic
6 Tbs. diced pancetta
8 whole sage leaves
½ # ground beef
S&P
2 tsp. tomato paste
½ cup white vermouth

Clean chicken livers, rinse in cold water, cut each into 3-4 pieces; dry well.

Sauté shallots in the oil & butter over medium heat. Add garlic; cook briefly. Add pancetta & sage, cooking for a minute or so. Add ground beef, S&P, and cook until the beef loses its raw, red color.
Turn up heat to med-high and add the livers; cook until they’ve lost their raw, red color.
Mix the tomato paste and vermouth and add to the pan. Cook 5-8 minutes. Serve over pasta, risotto, or polenta.

Preaching to the Choir

While we all might agree that change is inevitable, there is no consensus about how we might welcome it, measure it, or adapt to it.

We age while watching the kids grow up and our neighborhoods evolve; we witness new technologies that can alter our universe, and recognize the scientific discoveries that lead us to give lie to those truths we once held. We’re challenged by accepting the norms and beliefs of others. We are favored to learn the cultures of peoples we barely know—if at all. Our politics are tested by the behavior and the acts of those we elected or opposed.

The changes of the last four years, low-lighted by the past ten months of dealing (or not) with a pandemic this country has led in the wrong direction, have created changes never before seen in what I consider a decent country populated mostly by people who are neighborly and helpful, caring and compassionate, considerate and empathetic to the plights of others.

While perfection can only be attempted—never achieved—it remains an honorable endeavor. There are those who would deny such efforts.

That ambition to strive for our mutual good seems to have faded. We seem to have fewer of those admirable qualities that once defined us. There are those among us who seem less friendly, less caring, less willing to sacrifice for the common good. Everyone suffers hardships in their own ways, but today, we are a country so deeply divided in spirit that recovery seems but a dim light at the end of a long, long tunnel. And we’re not sure if that light is an opening to a brighter tomorrow, or a light bearing down upon us without mercy.

Simple acts of kindness seem not just disregarded, but vehemently disobeyed. Relationships have been damaged to such extents that there seems little room for reconciliation. We’ve stopped going to stores that our friends own because they’ve decided to defy the orders of the state because they believe wearing masks is an infringement on their constitutional rights without regard to ours. Rather than holding the door open for someone, many are angrily slamming it shut and reserving passage for only themselves.

This is not the America in which I was raised. My father served proudly in the U.S. Army, fighting in what the literary critic and co-founder of the Partisan Review, Philip Rahv, believed was the “last good war.” My parents built a life for themselves and their children that respected law and allowed dissidence. Though progressive in their political and social views, they viewed conservatives as mere opponents with values not-so-different from their own. Their opponents were not their enemies.

They would be deeply disturbed by how America, a standard-bearer of a flawed democracy that was nonetheless vigilant in its efforts to improve the lives of its citizens, as well as those of others, has lost its standing on the world stage. Racism rages and the religious right busies itself deifying a man who postures with a bible.

While Joe Biden and Kamala Harris grace the cover of Time magazine with their promise of a better tomorrow, Mr. Trump appears on the cover of Der Spiegel as “Loser of the Year.”

This is quickly becoming an America that doesn’t even believe that the rule of law should be applied without prejudice or favor. We have watched peaceful protests be violently disrupted by counter-protesters waving confederate and Nazi flags, as well as by disguised saboteurs. We’ve watched acts of police brutality, including witnessing the very last breath George Floyd would ever take as a police officer knelt on the restrained man’s neck.

Few have witnessed an actual murder, let alone an ipso facto execution.

Including President Trump, many have found the right-wing extremists to include “some very good people.” I can’t recall that he ever weighed in on Mr. Floyd, but there are those who believe that the Black man deserved his fate because he had a criminal past—a past that might not have even been admissible in a court procedure. How many times is a citizen expected to pay for a mistake?

Most of my generation had parents who served in the Armed Services during the Second World War. If they didn’t serve, they contributed to the war effort through personal sacrifice here at home. I should think that any one of them could tell Mr. Trump that there are no “good people” in America’s neo-Nazi ranks. They are poorly educated domestic terrorists with gun fetishes, empowered by racism, and enabled by the current Administration.

And as if we needed further proof, just yesterday, Mr. Trump extended a White House invitation to Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.

A second term would have bought this President immunity from criminal prosecution (perhaps), and Mr. Trump on Saturday tweeted that the Supreme Court’s tossing out the Texas AG’s suit was a “disgraceful miscarriage of justice” and wrote “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!” He and 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives are vowing to not slow a post-campaign effort to give the President a second term, despite having lost every significant court case, not to mention the certified tallies of each of the 50 states showing that he lost the nationwide popular vote. Each of the 126 should be removed from office as called for by the 14th amendment of the Constitution.

Their effort should be called what it is: sedition.

It is curious to note that the alleged vote tampering by Democrats only took place in the states in which he lost.

Perhaps even more curious is how Mr. Trump has maintained his base. Had Mr. Biden not won by more than seven million votes, the President would have garnered the most votes in American history.

Seventy million voters apparently approve of the job he has done in the last four years. That, in spite of the constant blizzard of lies and the golf outings he said he would be too busy to take, the dirty dealings of his immediate family, the broken promise to spur a healthcare program, the tripling of our national debt, his efforts to deregulate environmental protections, a crushed economy and record unemployment, his policies against our humanitarian history of offering refuge and aid to the world’s disaffected, his disavowal of science and medicine, and his dismantling of a detailed program to deal with a pandemic that will have left more than 300,000 Americans dead by the time he leaves office on January 20, 2021.

The level of denial is beyond belief. The complicity is apparent.

He has made a shambles of the Republican party, turning it into a cult whose members only believe what their fears dictate. They are people of profound prejudice who, to cite Lyndon B. Johnson, if you have the “lowest white man [thinking] he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket.”

What the American “right” believes the American “left” will do to our Republic is beyond the pale. Mr. Biden is a working political insider, a centrist deal maker who will make his predecessor look like an amateur. He is long on empathy, short on intolerance. His “radical leftist position” would place him considerably to the right of Republican Nelson Rockefeller. He is as far as one could be from indulging a Marxist dialectic in any political discussion, let alone policy.

Tomorrow, the Electoral College will vote to confirm Mr. Biden becoming the 46th President of the United States. He brings to the office not so much an ideology as an agenda to mend the broken parts of our nation and its Constitution. He will also return a sense of decency to the Office.

As has been noted by President Barack Obama, ideology tends to take a back seat to the practical issues of governance—a flurry of paperwork that flows across the Resolute Desk, a desk that once hosted a promise to visitors to the Oval Office: “The Buck Stops Here.”

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Kitchen Improv

It was time to clean out the refrigerator, looking for the odds and ends that might be thrown together to make a passable meal. I had a box of farfalle, the bow-tie shaped pasta, of which I would use just half for the two of us. From the fridge I found three of four mushrooms—the white button ones—a single stalk of celery, a couple wilting green onions, and less than half a head of Boston or Bibb lettuce. I had maybe a quarter-cup of heavy cream. We had some frozen peas and there were two shallots in the hanging basket.

While cooking the pasta per package instructions (10-11 minutes, I believe), I sliced and then sauteed the mushrooms in a tablespoon or two of unsalted butter and an equal amount of olive oil. The celery and shallots, both thinly diced, were tossed in next. After a few minutes, I deglazed the pan with some white wine. After reducing the wine, I added one cup of chicken stock along with the frozen peas. Next, I added the torn lettuce leaves, stirring until well-coated. The cream came next and the by-now cooked pasta. Voila! Dinner was served, along with some fresh grated Parmesan cheese and chopped green onions on top. If I say so myself, it was more than passable; it was delicious.

We were young, mad for each other, and traipsing our way around Europe on a seriously limited budget. With our Eurail passes in hand, we traveled on overnight trains to save lodging expenses. We first set foot in France in Calais, the town that was the destination for the ferry from Dover, England.

It was late afternoon, and we had a train to catch in a matter of a few hours that would deliver us to Zurich, the last place, we would discover, for anybody on a budget should visit. The banks and American Express offices in Calais had closed, and we had no francs. We were hungry and found a small brasserie and discovered that they were more than happy to take U.S. currency at a rather inflated exchange rate.

We ordered a carafe of vin rouge and two orders of steak-frites. What arrived at our table were two plates piled high with fries and two thin clumps of gray meat covered in what I can only assume was some variation of a Béarnaise sauce. Only two things that I was aware of could turn a steak gray—it had either rotted or been boiled. After one bite I knew it wasn’t rotten, but Geri was not convinced.

I surrendered my fries for her steak. Forty years later, I would again surrender my fries because she didn’t want to eat the blanchaille, which, if you’ll remember from last week, roughly translated means “shiny guppies with bulging eyes.”

Our meager funds forced us to eat our somewhat larger meal at the noon hour. In the evenings at a hotel or on trains, we’d dine on salami, cheese, baguettes and Pouilly-Fuisse, a dry white wine that could be had at around the one-dollar mark. In Los Angeles at the time, that precious little wine cost in the neighborhood of $18.

In Paris, we stayed on the Left Bank in the decidedly bohemian Latin Quarter on the fifth-floor of a five-story walk-up. The room had four different wallpaper patterns, a brass bed, and a private bath and bidet. The toilet was down the hall. The view from the narrow window was of back alleys and rooftops.  The room cost about $7 a night—about half the cost of a White Russian cocktail in Zurich—and included a breakfast of coffee and croissants with jam.

It was romantic in the way only young people in love could find it.

We made our daily rounds to the museums and galleries, monuments and cathedrals, stopping for our typical lunch of croque madame and croque monsieur or omelets—always with fries and a carafe of red wine. Geri found it odd that I sat for two hours on a curb across the street from 27 rue de Fleurus, the home of the American writer Gertrude Stein and her lover Alice B. Toklas from 1903 to 1938.

My father had known them, although I didn’t know that at the time.

We kept on the lookout for a nice restaurant where we would celebrate our last night in Paris with a fine and proper meal. We found one in the 4th arrondissement with a stunning view of Notre-Dame de Paris. The tables were set with glossy white linens and the menu, posted near the entrance, was not cheap but fairly affordable. We figured we deserved such an extravagance. The following morning we would be returning to England, not knowing if we’d always have Paris.

We took our places at a table for two and the waiter, dressed in a crisp white shirt, black vest and pants, started rattling off a string of words in French, a language in which I’m capable of little more than asking for directions to the bathroom (où est la salle de bain), ordering either vin blanc or vin rouge, and asking for the check (L’addition, s’il vous plait). This, after several of months during my freshman year in high school falling to sleep listening to French language lessons on a record player.

But, I can identify many things I like to eat that have French names—canard, porc, poisson.

After listening to the waiter, Geri, who speaks more than a little French, ordered the special the guy had been prattling on about. It had something to do with chicken (poulet). I ordered the blanquette de veau, a veal stew, basically, but a time-honored classic in the repertoire of French cuisine.

As we enjoyed the wine and the view, the waiter delivered to my side of the table enough silverware for five or six people. Geri got a single spoon that seemed large enough to serve the mashed potatoes at a large Thanksgiving gathering. My meal came with an appetizer of a country pate and crusty bread, followed by a sorrel soup that I enjoyed while Geri looked around the dining room. I shared the bread with her.

The main course arrived. My veal was a thing of lustrous beauty, the thick cream sauce blanketing the tender pieces of veal, carrots, mushroom caps, and celery.

Geri’s dinner came in a rather large, shallow bowl. There was a pale broth, a dozen or so pieces of diced carrot and celery floating about, and a chicken leg that seemed more likely to have once belonged to a 30-pound turkey or perhaps an emu. She didn’t have a clue about how to employ a serving spoon to attack this food that seemed oddly menacing. I had several forks and a couple knives in my arsenal of silverware that I offered her. Her piercing the leg of whatever kind of bird was in her bowl only served to turn the pale broth a deep, bloody red.

To this day, Geri has yet to develop a taste for raw poultry.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Croque Monsieur /Croque Madame

5 Tbs. unsalted butter
3 Tbs. all-purpose flour
2 cups whole milk
salt
black pepper
freshly grated nutmeg
3 1/2 oz. coarsely grated Gruyère, Emmantal or Comté cheese (1 1/3 cups)
8 slices rustic white sandwich bread
Dijon mustard
1/2 pound thinly sliced cooked ham
4 large eggs

For the Béchamel sauce:
Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a heavy saucepan over medium low heat, then whisk in flour to make a roux, whisking, 3-4 minutes. Slowly whisk in milk and bring to a boil, whisking constantly. Reduce heat and simmer, whisking occasionally, 5 minutes. Whisk in salt, pepper, nutmeg, and 1/3 cup cheese until cheese is melted. Remove from heat and cover surface directly with a sheet of wax paper to prevent forming a film.

For the sandwiches:
Spread 1 1/2 Tbs. sauce over each of 4 slices of bread, then sprinkle evenly with remaining cheese. Spread mustard evenly on remaining 4 bread slices and top with ham, dividing it evenly, then invert onto cheese-topped bread to form sandwiches.
Lightly grease a baking sheet. Bake the sandwiches for 6-8 minutes, flipping once. Remove from oven and turn on the broiler.
Top each sandwich with 1/3 cup sauce, spreading evenly. Broil sandwiches 4 to 5 inches from heat until sauce is bubbling and golden in spots, 2 to 3 minutes. Keep sandwiches warm.
To make sandwiches Croque Madame, add a fried or poached egg atop the sandwich.