Journal

By the standards of the service industry, my mother would have not passed muster with many restaurant servers. She was demanding, her manner brusque and impatient. And she didn’t tip.

Well, she tipped. But sparingly, to say the least. If the bill was $20, her tip was maybe $1. The five percent tippers of the world are rarely welcomed back.

My mother was smart, well-educated and she spent much of her adult life working to help foster educational opportunities for minority women. She was an accountant and taught business in various night schools in Chicago. Her politics were progressive, and her sense of justice was easily bruised by the unfairness she saw visited upon some people. Somehow, her empathy for all mankind seemed to fall just short of including the people charged with serving her.

There were many times when I would leave something at the table just so I could return to augment my mother’s miserly tip.

Mom had never spent even an hour waiting or busing tables. She never worked behind the counter at a deli or bakery. She never made beds and cleaned guest rooms at a hotel. She never pumped gas or picked up trash on the side of a roadway. She wasn’t in the armed forces nor did she work directly in the war effort.

I spent fourteen years in the restaurant industry as a manager and then as chef-owner of a small Italian eatery. I had never worked so hard. The 16-hour days were stressful, and the job demanded intense concentration and attention to detail. It made me keenly aware of the needs of others and of my own failings. From waitstaff and back-of-house workers to the customers whose only ambition was to have a pleasant dining experience, the concerns and efforts were great.

We hated it when a customer would under tip. The servers felt cheated, and so did the cooks. It offered no validation to our efforts.

America changed dramatically with the crash of the stock market in 1929. The Great Depression brought high unemployment and financial ruin to countless thousands. The economy had failed, and the public looked to the government for financial salvation and steadfast leadership.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered the American people a New Deal that included the establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration that put workers directly on the government payroll, keeping the struggling economy afloat while also expanding and fortifying the infrastructure of the United States.

Those times saw our government grow dramatically while echoing Abraham Lincoln’s notion that we should have only the government we need, but have all the government we need.

The WPA paved roads, built bridges, and constructed Camp David and the Tennessee Valley Authority. But it went beyond these physical public works to enhance America’s human infrastructure via Federal Project Number One, which employed writers, musicians, and actors. The Federal Theatre Project, part of Federal Project Number One, funded live performances and acting classes.

Carl Reiner—the actor, writer, and director who died last week at age 98—was a recipient of the training that was offered through that program. He credited FDR for his success in comedy.

As a country, we’re at a new crossroads where there is ample opportunity to employ new approaches to dealing with the highest unemployment in our history. There were many factors behind the Great Depression, including a lack of public faith in the market, failure of the banking system, and a drought that turned much of the Midwest into a dust bowl. Our situation today has been created by a pandemic that the current administration ignored until it was well out of control.

As if to buy forgiveness from the American people, the bumbling Trump and his troupe of toadies, in its protestations of what it thinks the Democrats are doing to advance socialism, gave away a few trillion dollars in the forms of a one-time payment of $1,200 to tax-paying citizens, and “bail-out” funds to those too-big-to-fail corporations, and the mega-churches that don’t pay taxes—not even on the private jets that seem to be the preferred mode of transportation for evangelical charlatans. Maybe a Gulf Stream brings them closer to God than Delta can. (Can’t wait until the KKK finds out Trump gave the Catholic church a few shekels.)

Oddly enough, nobody has to repay the government for this “stimulus” package. And more might be on the way.

Republicans love to paint FDR as the poster boy for socialism. Just whisper “New Deal” and many will wet themselves. But please note that the WPA paid its participants to work, as did several other New Deal programs. There were no free lunches. No welfare. (If you happen to find the funding of the arts to be frivolous or non-essential, just remember what goes into creating our favorite television shows.)

Many countries on this planet have required service stints for each of its citizens, regardless of gender or position. We would do well to look to their examples and follow suit.

I’ve long thought that a two-year gap between high school and college or trade school would allow for one year of public service in the armed forces or other public services established by cities, counties, or states. Except for those opting for military duty, the second year could be spent walking in another’s shoes as servers, maids, valets, bartenders, cab drivers, sky caps, care givers, nurse’s aides, et cetera.

Many of those jobs may not necessarily be pleasant but they are essential, and by learning first-hand what’s involved in the performance of those duties will maybe provide a new appreciation. Empathy, if you will.

Currently, Congress is proposing a big idea for the next stimulus package: a bi-partisan proposal to expand national-service programs to create jobs, help contain the coronavirus pandemic, and begin to unify a greatly divided country. In what sounds like a first cousin to FDR’s WPA, it is called the Cultivating Opportunity and Response to the Pandemic through Service (CORPS) Act. It would provide $16 billion over three years to double the number of AmeriCorps positions to 150,000 in the first year, and then increase to 200,000 and then 250,000 in the second and third years.

AmeriCorps programs, coordinated through the Corporation for National and Community Service, exist in all fifty states. The newly commissioned national-service volunteers could work at anything from building houses through Habitat for Humanity to feeding hungry people through the Agriculture Department’s Anti-Hunger Corps.

The bill’s co-sponsors are Senators Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, both Mississippi Republicans, and Senator Christopher A. Coons, a Delaware Democrat. It’s up to them to get Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to heed the call of this legislation.

National service isn’t a cure-all for what ails the nation, but it would go a long way toward solving some of the challenges during this time of the pandemic and help overcome our divisions and revisit the notion of serving a common purpose.

Racial and economic injustice will not be eradicated by any single act, effort, or program. Service to and with others, however, is a start. It may help more Americans to work together for the sake of the republic. Though I would urge that such service should be mandatory, it at least should be introduced as an expectation.

There is much to be learned from the examples set by our military, first responders and front-line health-care workers. Their sacrifices are great, and we would do well as citizens to emulate their efforts.

It couldn’t hurt.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Gazpacho

Summertime is a great time for cold soups. Gazpacho originated in Andalucia in southern Spain. Some people like their gazpacho pureed, which is traditional. I prefer it chunky.

4 ripe tomatoes, peeled
2 red bell peppers
1 English cucumber
1 medium sweet onion
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 tsp. salt
1/3 cup sherry vinegar
black pepper, to taste
5 cups tomato juice
1 tsp. Tabasco, or to taste

Trim and seed the vegetables. Cut into 1/4-inch dice. Combine with vinegar and pepper. Let rest for 5 minutes. Add tomato juice, hot sauce and 8 large ice cubes. Chill for at least four hours.

Against the advice of many of those in my innermost circle (my cabal, really), I traveled this past weekend to an undisclosed, secret location in upstate New York to participate in the annual two-day ANTIFA meeting/be-in/chili cook-off. There were too many participants to actually count, but the Fire Marshal estimated that there were somewhere in the neighborhood of a half-million people, all of whom were wearing masks and singing along with Canned Heat, whose members were using walkers.

As an organization, ANTIFA has an interesting history dating back to the 1967 “Summer of Love.” At that time, there were about 100,000 people who had gathered on the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets in a seedy part of San Francisco where there was no shortage of illicit, yet quite alluring, drugs. Pretty much everybody had come to that famous corner to follow the advice of Timothy Leary: “Turn on, tune in, drop out, and remember the Alamo.” I’m actually not sure about the “Alamo” part.

As you can only imagine, the scene was, well, different. Needless to say, it was a very crowded street corner. Everybody there was in desperate need of a bath and more leather clothing. Most people had either a guitar they couldn’t play very well, a tambourine, or a pair of tabla drums—basically bongo drums, but more exotic because they came from the Indian subcontinent that was governed at the time by Ravi Shankar and George Harrison. There was a lot of dancing and singing and hugging because everyone was stoned out of their gourds, as it were. Peace, baby.

Both the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane got their starts there. The monuments built to both of those seminal bands have been removed by the Trump Administration, citing that their mere presence makes people want to ingest a couple of tabs of Owsley’s Monterey Purple and intensely watch things that aren’t there, all the while mumbling “far out, man, far out.”

There was a subtle political movement afoot—a subtext, perhaps—that showed serious disdain for the Vietnam War, fascism, and the Dave Clark Five. At the end of the summer, about one-third of the original gathering disappeared in what was called the Great Hippie Diaspora. Life magazine covered it, with illustrations by R. Crumb. Many moved north to Humboldt County to become millionaire pot farmers. Still others started garage bands in Seattle or opened vegan food trucks in Portland. And a smaller group, inspired by the orange-clad Hare Krishnas and accompanied by the novelist Norman Mailer, went to Virginia to perform an exorcism on the Pentagon, and at the same time levitate the building 300 feet in the air.

These were extraordinary times.

The political faction, wanting to shun the hippie image, bought collared shirts and khakis, enrolled in college, and formed Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Known for being almost as organized as the Democratic Party, SDS members wrote manifestos demanding an end to the War and calling for justice for everybody. Many wandered through suburban neighborhoods with petitions to ban iceberg lettuce. They also participated in a variety of efforts to close colleges just before finals.

And then, the Democratic Party held its convention in Chicago in the summer of 1968 and most of hell broke loose.

The Pentagon raisers, led by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, called themselves Yippies, which translated to Hippies with a ‘Y’. The Yippies deplored fascism, but they were party animals and a lot of focus was lost as they turned politics into farcical theater.

The SDS, meanwhile, was forced to go somewhere to seek shelter from the threatening political storm building on the Republican horizon. Well, some of them, at least. Those who did became known as the Weather Underground, which, oddly enough, had nothing to do with meteorology and everything to do with Bob Dylan who, at the time, was dating Joan Baez whose son Javy (Ha-vee) would become a star shortstop for the Chicago Cubs and ultimately learn how to ink his own skin.

But I digress.

And then, on a rainy day in August of 1969, the original core of ANTIFA, plus all of those from the Great Hippie Diaspora, recent high school grads, and disenchanted Wall Street lawyers, gathered in upstate New York to drop acid and sit in Max Yasgur’s muddy cow pasture for three, rather tedious days that celebrated rock ‘n’ roll music that about nine-tenths of the audience couldn’t hear.

It was an odd experience in trying times, but survivable as long as you stayed away from the brown acid. There were few fights, nobody died; there were many pregnancies. What was attained was a rather uncomfortable utopia to which fascists clearly weren’t welcome. Famously, there were three nuns there.

See how this ANTIFA thing works?

The Vietnam War raged on after Woodstock, but the anti-fascists continued their struggle against everything that could be considered mainstream, including John Denver, who claimed to have seen it “rain fire in the sky.” I’m guessing he had found some of the elusive Monterey Purple.

A utopian society projects the absolute ideal as a reality. It might have been achieved that weekend had IHOP not run out of pancake batter. A new diaspora ensued, with hungry people going back to wherever they had come from. Along with the return home though, many brought with them their anti-fascist resolve to keep America aware of and away from the doctrines of Hitler and Mussolini, the two guys who the hippies’ parents (the first ANTIFA) had fought during WWII.

The second-generation ANTIFA continued to grow, with advocates starting local chapters in almost every burg. Like the Kiwanis, they held secret meetings. Unlike the Kiwanis, who are dedicated to improving the lives of children, ANTIFA has no dues structure because George Soros pays for everything. Anyway, this ragtag troupe plotted how to peaceably destroy the evils lurking under sheets and bandoliers, and hiding behind the Confederate flag. In a sense, the Kiwanis and ANTIFA do have something in common.

Claiming success in helping defeat Richard Nixon, the ANTIFA moonbats laid fairly low from the Reagan Era through the Obama Era, arising only to protest American involvement in a series of senseless wars in which the goal was to police the Middle East on behalf of American oil companies. In return, the oil companies got tremendous tax breaks and subsidies. ANTIFA was also quick to point out that the “trickle down” theory of economics doesn’t work—not since Hoover, the first president to employ this woefully flawed theory on behalf of the rich, for whom it wasn’t flawed. They also noted that it was inherently racist.

ANTIFA also protested injustice and discrimination, and voiced concern for the environment, education, clean energy, healthcare, hunger, poverty, endangered species, civil rights, human rights, voting rights…the list goes on and on.

It is difficult to even imagine an organization more sinister.

ANTIFA roared back to life in 2016, the year the Cubs—with the help of Joan’s kid—won the World Series after a 108-year drought. (Remember: Anybody can have a bad century.) Come November, it was clear that the President-elect would pose a serious threat to everything ANTIFA had stood for since its inception.

As an organization, ANTIFA started to align with other radical groups: BLM, ACTblue, Greenpeace, the ACLU.  Labor unions, book clubs, community activists, Little League coaches, choirs from every denomination, Native Americans, soccer moms, NASCAR dads, the PTA, the NEA, the CDC, WHO, NPR, PBS, educators, Pope Francis, most of Hollywood… At every level, they’re all part of the plot to keep America fascist-free.

So when somebody like the Orange Menace says he doesn’t like ANTIFA and refers to our vast membership as thugs “looking for trouble,” what he is really saying is that he likes fascists. In fact, he thinks some of them are “very fine people.”

They’re not.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Vegetarian Chili

What’s the point? you might ask. There really isn’t one, but this is really quite tasty.

1 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. ground cumin
2 Tbs. dried oregano
1 Tbs. salt
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 green or red bell peppers, chopped
2 jalapeno peppers, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 (4 oz.) cans chopped green chile peppers, drained
2 (28 oz.) cans whole peeled tomatoes, crushed
1/4 cup chili powder
1 Tbs. ground black pepper
1 (15 oz.) can kidney beans, drained
1 (15 oz.) can garbanzo beans, drained
1 (15 oz.) can black beans
1 (15 oz.) can whole kernel corn

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in the onion, and season with bay leaves, cumin, oregano, and salt. Cook and stir until onion is tender, then mix in the celery, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, garlic, and green chile peppers. Reduce heat to low, cover pot, and simmer 5 minutes.
Mix the tomatoes into the pot. Season chili with chili powder and pepper. Stir in the kidney beans, garbanzo beans, and black beans. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer 45 minutes. Stir in the corn, and continue cooking 5 minutes before serving. Serve with rice and cornbread.

I’m fortunate to be the father of two magnificent kids (Courtney and Daniel) who make me proud everyday. Being a part of their lives on so many levels is all I could ever have dreamed of or asked for. This is a story about one of them.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said a softly feminine voice, tinged with a quiver of emotion. “We have a very special passenger aboard this evening. Her name is Courtney. She’s seven-and-a-half months old and the flight attendants on this flight have all become very attached to her. She’s a sweet and beautiful baby.”

Geri and I looked at each other, surprised to hear those words float so casually from the overhead speakers. The plane grew eerily still, its passengers attentive. The silence finally jarred by the mechanical sounds of the landing gear dropping into place.

It is this father’s prerogative to agree that Courtney was sweet and beautiful. Her radiant blue eyes sparkled beneath a smooth brow; her head was topped by long wisps of fine strawberry-blonde hair. She had a milky white complexion. Her smile seemed incessant.

Dressed in a new, frilly pink dress, Courtney sat cradled in the infant seat between us. That seat—yellowed, its padding worn and misshapen—had been her confines since she was born. She napped and slept in it, sitting up, its adjustable wire stand fixed to its most upright position. It looked odd when set up in the white, lace-covered wickerwork bassinet; the contrast between modernity and a more gracious past was startling.

We hated that worn seat. In some inexplicable way, it had been complicit in Courtney’s illness. She was not allowed to lie prone. We never got to tuck her in, other than to crudely manipulate blankets in and around the plastic straps that held her in a contraption that seemed medieval.

Outside, the twinkling lights of Boston grew closer, brighter. Its still-distant skyline was vague and undistinguished in cast shadows. Courtney was kicking her legs, her arms waving like a symphony conductor’s during a quiet passage. Her eyes darted about in that familiar yellowed glow, that semi-darkness of a night flight.

Boston, then as now, was a city rife with renowned medical facilities and a reputation as a place where miracles were served up as just so much routine. It offered promise, and we had come to collect.

Nearly eight months of extraordinary memories flooded my mind. Constant panic from sleepless nights and endless hospital corridors, emergency actions, and daily trips to nearly twenty specialists searching for what was wrong with Courtney. Nearly eight months of medical terror and uncertainty filled our lives.

Courtney, her two pediatricians announced along the way, was failing to thrive. At nearly eight months, she had gained less than three pounds since birth. It had been less than a month since her two pediatric cardiologists had discovered that she had multiple VSDs (ventricular septal defects).

“Courtney is coming to Boston from Los Angeles for open-heart surgery on Wednesday morning,” the plaintive voice continued. “And we thought that since there about 250 of us aboard the craft this evening—if we all sent out our good thoughts and prayers for her, we can pull her through this together.”

Geri and I never cried at the same time. It was a rule. One could cry; the other, offer comfort. It worked. But at that moment, we broke our rule, averting our eyes from each other to not see the tears. I remember staring numbly at the five tanks of oxygen under our row of five seats—grim reminders that at any moment, our baby could suddenly stop breathing. It had happened before.

A small part of our lives flashed before our eyes. We had met a lot of people during our journey—strangers with nothing more in common than sick children of their own with whom we bonded. Our friends and family offered hope and support. There were lit candles and prayer chains in churches and temples we had never visited. We knew people whose faith had been awakened by our pain, and others who, out of frustration and uncertainty, had abandoned theirs. Still others had opened their hearts and rolled up their sleeves to host a star-studded benefit at the Hollywood Palladium to help defray our medical expenses.

Dizzy Gillespie gave us the use of his suite at the old Copley Square Hotel. A local bookie familiar to the jazz world chauffeured us around in his ’67 Impala.

The doctors had been writing Courtney’s baffling medical history and we were fearful and anxious about the next chapter, which was to be written by one of only two pediatric cardiac surgeons in the U.S. who had any experience with the procedure. The odds were not good. Charlie, our bookie-chauffeur, would not have taken the bet.

We wondered if we might be returning to a home left cold and empty by the absence of a young life we were so eager to nurture. All the kindness and concern offered couldn’t balance with my thoughts of our daughter being stripped of a chance at life—running on the beach or eating too many hot dogs at the ballpark; flying kites or cuddling with a puppy; the scraped knees and hurt feelings, the cries of “higher” as I pushed her on the playground swing. Those are the slow-building memories that develop an adult perspective and provide for the enjoyment of success and the toleration of failure and disappointment. We wanted desperately for a chance of her growing up.

We were dazed, lost in our thoughts. But we could feel the warmth of a planeload of strangers that built faith not in something unknown and mysterious, but in the empathy of others, the humanity.

There was no rush to disembark American flight #11 that cold November evening.

Passengers who, ordinarily, would have hurried to meet awaiting family and friends, circled back from their seats to come meet Courtney and extend their good wishes.

Later, at the airport’s luggage carousel, a woman, perhaps too fragile or afraid to meet Courtney offered Geri the rosary beads she had received from Pope John Paul II during a papal audience she had had the previous summer.

On Wednesday, the switchboard at Boston’s Children’s Hospital was flooded with telephone calls from people wondering how “Courtney, from flight #11” was doing. Willing to put their very faith on an uncertain line, they wanted to know that their prayers and good thoughts had worked.

They had.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Boston Baked Scrod

Scrod is young cod, so this can be made with codfish. Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston is where I first had this dish and I loved it. The next night I had it at Antoine’s.  My take is to use crumbled fried onions rather than bread crumbs.

2 Tbs. butter or margarine
1 clove garlic
1 small can of Durkee’s crispy fried onions, ground
4, 4-6 ounce pieces of scrod or cod fillet
2 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. chopped fresh parsley
Lemon wedges

Heat oven to 450°. In a skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add garlic; cook until golden. Add ground onions and cook, stirring frequently, until lightly toasted. Remove skillet from heat.

In a buttered baking dish, arrange fillets in a single layer; sprinkle with lemon juice and salt. Press ground onions onto the fillets. Bake until fish is just opaque throughout, 10 to 15 minutes.

Sprinkle fish with parsley and serve with lemon wedges. Boiled potatoes with butter and fresh parsley are an excellent accompaniment, as is a rice pilaf.

This is Day 93 of my self-imposed quarantine. Like many people who are giving the coronavirus pandemic serious attention, I’ve been washing my hands every twenty minutes, just like the CDC and the unfunded-by-us WHO told us to do, since March 13. (Before that, I washed my hands whenever it seemed prudent or necessary.) I’m generally awake 18 hours each day, which means that I currently wash my hands 54 times a day, give or take.

Over the course of this time period, my hands have been worked into a lather for somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,022 times which took a combined total of 27.9 hours or so.

More significant is that I have now sung “Happy Birthday” 5,022 times. Actually, it’s been 10,044 times because I sing it twice through to make sure I get my full twenty seconds worth of disinfecting soap.

I hate “Happy Birthday.” The song, not the sentiment.

It’s a really dumb song, penned sometime around 1893 by a pair of spinster sisters who taught school in Louisville, Kentucky, and since they couldn’t just turn on Sesame Street for the little tykes they mentored, they sang “Good Morning to You” as a class every morning, which contributed to the somewhat alarming 36 percent dropout rate of Kentucky kindergarteners at the end of the 19th Century. The happy birthday lyrics (if you can call them that) appeared in print in 1912, as sung to the original melody of “Good Morning to You.”

Nobody knows for sure about who wrote what, mainly because any idiot could have written either of them.

And as if we didn’t have more important things to worry about, there is even some controversy that the schoolmarms even wrote the song. Had they given it much thought, they would have copyrighted it and collected royalties. Some forward-looking thief at the Summy Company did exactly that and obtained a copyright in 1935, which was subsequently bought by an entertainment conglomerate that charged $700 for each public performance they could track down.

The copyright was due to run out in 2030, but it ran out in 2016 when the ever-probing Supreme Court asked the all-important legal question: “You actually charge real money for that?”

I don’t know anybody who likes the song. Most of us are embarrassed each time it’s sung because it’s always sung by group of people who can’t sing, and then amended by bratty children with some dumb reference to Channel Four that just delays cutting the cake.

Few songs can be sung in total in 20 seconds, let alone twice. As a public service to those with better things to do than I can currently claim, I’ve selected excerpts of some memorable songs that take about 20 seconds to sing. Each is a far cry better than the aforementioned “Happy Birthday.”

My first selection, perhaps fitting for these times, was a hit for Nat King Cole in 1961:

There may be trouble ahead
But while there’s music and moonlight and love and romance
Let’s face the music and dance —Irving Berlin

This next tune was a big hit for Frank Sinatra and it is the only song I know all the words to. My kids used to beg me not to sing the “skin song.”

I’ve got you under my skin.
I’ve got you deep in the heart of me.
So deep in my heart that you’re really a part of me.
I’ve got you under my skin. —Cole Porter

Try as one might, how could anybody who’s seen South Pacific, forget this little ditty?

I’m gonna wash that man right outa my hair,
I’m gonna wash that man right outa my hair,
I’m gonna wash that man right outa my hair,
And send him on his way.

I’m gonna wave that man right outa my arms,
I’m gonna wave that man right outa my arms,
I’m gonna wave that man right outa my arms,
And send him on his way. —Rodgers & Hammerstein

And of all the songs from West Side Story, this is the one that is best enjoyed looking in a mirror while washing your hands.

I feel pretty,
Oh, so pretty,
I feel pretty and witty and bright!
And I pity
Any girl who isn’t me tonight.
I feel charming,
Oh, so charming
It’s alarming how charming I feel!
And so pretty
That I hardly can believe I’m real.
—Music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Unless you really do feel pretty, your next selection could be this song from the 1962 musical Stop the World—I Want to Get Off. Sammy Davis Jr., had a huge hit with this tune.

What kind of fool am I
Who never fell in love
It seems that I’m the only one
That I have been thinking of
What kind of man is this
An empty shell
A lonely cell in which
An empty heart must dwell
What kind of fool am I —Anthony Newley & Leslie Bricusse

And what’s life without a little Elton John thrown into the mix?

You know I’m still standing better than I ever did
Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid
I’m still standing after all this time
Picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind
I’m still standing yeah yeah yeah
I’m still standing yeah yeah yeah —Elton John & Bernie Taupin

And what repertoire doesn’t need an old-fashioned torch song? Julie London first recorded this one in 1955.

Now you say you’re lonely
You cry the long night through
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I cried a river over you —Arthur Hamilton

Diana Ross & the Supremes, anyone?

Stop in the name of love
Before you break my heart
Stop in the name of love
Before you break my heart
Think it over
Think it over —Lamont Dozier

From the 1966 Broadway hit, Sweet Charity, comes this show-stopper. It was sung on the stage by Gwen Verdon; in the 1969 movie adaptation, it was sung by Shirley MacLaine.

If they could see me now
That little gang of mine
I’m eating fancy chow
And drinking fancy wine
I’d like those stumblebums
To see for a fact
The kind of top-drawer, first-rate chums
I attract
If my friends could see me now —Dorothy Fields & Cy Coleman

And then there’s this bubble-gum hit from Simon & Garfunkle with “The 59th Street Bridge Song.”

Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobblestones
Looking for fun and feeling groovy
Ba da-da da-da da-da, feeling groovy —Paul Simon

Although Joni Mitchell had a hit with “Twisted,” the original was from the jazz vocal trio, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, the latter of whom wrote the lyrics.

My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head
The way he described it
He said I’d be better dead than live
I didn’t listen to his jive
I knew all along
That he was all wrong
And I knew that he thought
I was crazy but I’m not
Oh no —Annie Ross & Wardell Gray

From the world of commercials, circa 1958, comes this memorable jingle from Procter & Gamble:

Mr. Clean gets rid of
Dirt and grime
And grease in just a minute
Mr. Clean will clean
Your whole house
And everything that’s in it
Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean

And saving the high-brow for last…from Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot comes “Nessun dorma.”

Dilegua, oh notte
Tramontate, stelle
Tramontate, stelle
All’alba vincerò
Vincerà
Vincerò

Photo montage by Courtney A. Liska

Summer Chicken

This is something of a non-recipe for a dish we’ve enjoyed a few times over the last few weeks. It’s easy to throw together, and will provide for some splendid flavors.

Roast a small (3-1/2—4 lbs.), trussed chicken in a 425° oven after seasoning the bird with salt and pepper. Cook the chicken on its side in a cast iron skillet for 20 minutes; turn and cook on its other side for 20 minutes. Finally, turn it breast side up and cook other 20 minutes, or until its juices run clear. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes.

Alternately, buy a rotisserie chicken from the market and use that.

The carved chicken should then be placed on a bed of Romaine lettuce, and garnished with tomatoes, hard-cooked eggs, roasted red peppers, asparagus, green beans, olives or whatever else is to your liking. I then add some boiled potatoes and carrots, still warm, to the mix. Top with garlicky croutons.

The dressing is made from mayonnaise, a good dollop or two of Dijon mustard, a dash of fresh lemon juice or red wine vinegar, some finely minced garlic and whatever herbs that might be fresh from the garden—parsley, chervil, tarragon, thyme, chives, etc.

Serve with a crusty baguette and a brightly flavored Pinot Grigio from Italy, or a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.

In its request that Donald J. Trump resign his office, the editorial board of the Portland Press Herald, Maine’s largest daily newspaper, found him to be lacking “the character, maturity and judgment to lead the country in a perilous time.”

While I find myself agreeing that the Trump presidency has been disastrous by almost any standard on virtually every level, it is indeed his reckless conduct that has ushered in this “perilous time.” His seeming disregard for even a modicum of decency, let alone the truth, has inflamed and sustained it.

Not counting the threat of nuclear war, various natural disasters and my near-miss with the Draft Board in 1970, in the almost sixty-nine years I’ve been around, any real peril I might have faced was probably of my own doing.

I’ve had an interesting career that has allowed me to see behind the curtains and up into the fly system of the mise en scène that is this country’s theater. I’ve witnessed my fair share of both human tragedy and unfettered joy, having been given wide berth as a reporter, writer, and critic spanning five decades. Curiosity has failed to kill this cat.

I’ve attended the aftermath of violent crime and watched too many people draw their last breath. I suppose I became inured to such things, but I was careful to try to not lose my sense of empathy, my humanity. Last week, along with millions of people all around the world, I witnessed the murder of George Floyd on a street corner in Minneapolis.

I cannot think of another time in my life that I felt such horror and outrage. Like most of us, I hope, I was numbed by the gross disregard for a human life, disgusted by this heinous police action, sickened by the smug look on the face of his accused murderer, Derek Chauvin, as he knelt on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, crushing the life out of a prone man in handcuffs. I screamed at the television screen, pleading for somebody to do something.

I wept.

And in my mind, I heard the imagined voices of those who would celebrate that moment as a victory, and take some unwarranted pleasure in the errant thinking that because George Floyd was Black, he was probably doing something wrong in a place he didn’t belong.

Such is the nature of the systemic racism that grips much of this country, ravaging its very soul and using as its tools fear, ignorance and injustice.

Ours is a nation struggling under a pandemic made worse by the willful ineptitude of a president who values property over people, who lies about a pandemic being a political hoax, and who worries more about his retention of power than the welfare of the people he vowed to protect with his hand placed on a book he’s not read. More than 110,000 Americans have lost their lives to the novel coronavirus. Forty million have lost their livelihoods and are facing financial ruin. Others have lost their businesses; still others, their homes. Our recovery may not be complete should another wave of COVID-19 occur. And yet, Trump’s rampant vanity allows for him to self-evaluate his own performance as a “10.”

This disease has placed in the spotlight the Black and brown communities that are suffering the highest per capita rates of infection and mortality. Scientists asked, “Why?”

The answer won’t be found in a test tube or on the workbench of a laboratory. Rather, it will be detailed in the analyses of data that address the economic, educational and employment issues facing people of color—people who have suffered under the tyrannical rule of racism for generations. The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation might have granted freedom to the enslaved, but it did not assure equal opportunity to the freed.

We have an administration that scorns scientific discovery and has empowered racists, encouraged their disobedience (if not their outright lawlessness), and led by example to making meaner the spirit of some part of the American people.

Trump finds fascism to exist as an attitude and practice held by some “very good people,” and through gesture and speech has made light of any sense that love and compassion for our fellow man might lead to a celebration of a higher order, to a greater understanding of our neighbors, to a better appreciation of our own lives and the myriad contributions of others toward making our society better for all of us.

We are bearing witness to what the NAACP has found to be “civil unrest that is a direct consequence of the racism, bigotry, violence, and subjugation against Black people that has festered in this country for too long.”

For nearly forty years I had the great pleasure of writing about jazz music—America’s only original art form—for two Los Angeles newspapers, Playboy, and the industry’s bible, Downbeat.

Historically, jazz is a Black art form evolved in part from the call-and-response field hollers of slaves. Its evolution from rural to urban embodied the blues—that woeful expression of hard times that nonetheless evoked an enduring sense of optimism—and the rhythms of Africa and the island nations of the Caribbean. People once feared jazz, thinking it a licentious music that encouraged discontent, crime, promiscuity, and drug abuse.

I practiced what is called “advocacy” journalism, proudly and passionately embracing and advocating the music and its players, and urging my readers to do the same. “Great music isn’t as bad as it sounds,” I would joke in my efforts to draw people to the sounds of jazz.

But I was serious from the soap box on which I stood. I abhorred those who cheapened its artistry and its legacy with attempts to make the music “popular” without regard to its integrity and its history, and I let them know it in print. My labors were gratifying, and I have yet to pass up an opportunity to preach the gospel of jazz to anyone who might listen.

During those years, I got to know countless numbers of jazz musicians—Black, brown and white, a proud and vibrant rainbow of talented men and women working together to create music. Most were more than willing to share their stories—stories told with humility and humor. Many of those stories were centered around the issue of race, with most shrugging off some experiences because “that was then.”

But up until the end of the last century and twenty years into this one, “that was then” is, in reality, “this is still.” In the days following the death of Mr. Floyd, it is quite obvious that we’ve not as a nation done much to stem the tide of racism.

Benny Carter was one of the most innovative men in all of jazz. Few know his name. He was an alto saxophonist and composer who wrote big band arrangements beginning in the ‘30s, and led his own bands and combos in concerts around the world. He wrote movie and television scores for which he received no screen credit because of the color of his skin.

I first met Benny in 1969 and we maintained our friendship until his death in 2003, at the age of ninety-five. He was a proud, dignified man who exuded eloquence in both his demeanor and his music. He did not suffer fools gladly. He, like so many of his generation, endured the indignities of being made to enter through the back doors of establishments to perform for all-white audiences. And at the end of the night make their ways to hotels where Blacks were allowed.

Once, while playing a solo with his big band at a Hollywood nightclub, a woman in the front row beckoned to him and asked if the piano player was Black. Benny said that he didn’t know because it had never occurred to him to be so rude as to ask.

As a nation we have an opportunity to change the course of history. No, we have an obligation to change the course of history. As Americans we have to ask ourselves what kind of people we want to be, what kind of society we want to be part of. And we have to ask what kind of future we want to create for our children and our grandchildren and their children. It’s not enough to hope for a better future. Aspirations carry no quarter without the hard work, heart and determination needed to see them come to fruition.

We can no longer afford for our dreams to be deferred.

In 1984, New York Governor Mario Cuomo addressed the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. It was a stirring speech that I found to capture the spirit and hopes that all Americans might one day share.

“We believe in civil rights, and we believe in human rights,” the Governor said.

“We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes…what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another’s pain, sharing one another’s blessings—reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race, or sex, or geography, or political affiliation.

“We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure.”

If one of us can’t breathe, then none of us can.

Signage by Courtney A. Liska

If the pandemic has taught us anything it is perhaps that most of us have way too much time on our hands.

Suddenly, we’ve taken to paying close attention to things we barely knew existed just three or four months ago. Some people have developed acute cases of OCD, which compels them to clean everything in sight and compose lengthy lists of things-to-do and things-to-buy. The lists seem to focus on cleaning and purchasing things with which to clean.

Others have developed an urge for homemade bread and now spend countless hours nurturing little bowls of sourdough starter, naming each after Gold Rush towns in California. Others have taken to making skillet flat breads because in their haste to horde toilet paper and hand sanitizer they forgot to buy yeast, thereby helping create a black market that is now demanding up to twenty-six dollars for one of those little packets.

Even Amazon, which has the corner on every commodity known to man including ones we don’t even know about yet, has run out of yeast.

I’ve been spending some of my time on-line, feigning interest in odd products and then timing how long it takes for the first volley of advertisements about those products to reach me on Facebook. It’s usually under 15 seconds.

And to think, just a few short years ago we thought an algorithm had something to do with music.

One ad that came out of the blue said I was eligible for disability payments. Foolishly, I asked how much. It’s been almost a month now that I’ve been getting three, sometimes, four emails a day from somebody named Christy Collins. Because I didn’t fill out the disability form, Christy has been offering to get me into college, refer me to a dating service for the elderly, or provide me the names of local yacht cleaning services.

I’m beginning to suspect that Christy Collins might not be a real person.

In the meantime, I discovered a menu option on my email thingy that says “More.” I clicked on it and it responded, “Less.” This went on for a few minutes—more, less; more, less; back-and-forth, back-and-forth—until I conceded that Bill Gates does have a sense of humor.

And then one day, I joined an internet “community” that is international in scope and focuses, albeit not too clearly, on food. It’s a free site hosted by a big newspaper on the East Coast that won’t let you access its food section without an expensive subscription that does not even include the crossword puzzle.

One day last week I watched a video of a baby sitting in a large bowl of spaghetti, gnawing on a baguette. He/she/it was wearing a toque. Seriously.

Yet another reminder that you get what you pay for.

Pictures and videos of kids doing odd, yet somehow compelling, things with food is far more interesting than watching anything that any cat might do. Although there was a pretty funny video of a stoned cat miscalculating a jump to the couch that I saw recently.

The site asks that people be nurturing, civil, and not mention politics or religion, which makes it unlike any other community in all of history. That might be its appeal. People are genuinely interested—in one way or several others—in food. Some to the extent of ruining dinner by placing an infant in bowl of spaghetti. It does, after all, take a village to make dinner. Or something like that. Whatever.

Participants in this cooking community pose questions that are responded to by others in the community who know more than the person asking the question, which is usually how that whole Q&A thing operates.

For instance, one day somebody asked what she should do with two large packages of dried tofu. I was just trying to be helpful when I suggested using them as door stops. I learned that some people are really sensitive when it comes to tofu. And some people are that way about fruitcakes, too, which have been used as door stops long before anybody had ever heard of tofu.

Lots of people post pictures of whatever it is they’ve concocted in their kitchens. Just yesterday somebody put up a picture of a poached egg. It was breath-taking! An egg! Poached! Its yolk was broken, cascading over a crust of toast like yellow lava.

Taking pictures of food is a relatively new thing. Many restaurants in Chicago in the 1950s had photographers with cameras like the one Sonny Corleone smashed to pieces at his sister’s wedding. These photographers would take pictures of the dining parties and then try to squeeze them for ten bucks for a copy of the shot. It never occurred to anybody to ask the guy to take a picture of the food.

Of course, nobody would have wanted a black-and-white picture of their Steak Diane or Bananas Foster, both of which were very popular restaurant dishes in those days—probably because people liked to watch their food go up in flames right there in the dining room. (Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise; the 1950s were exciting times. The cars had fins, there were four television channels, and everybody looked like total dorks, especially if they wore glasses.)

The other day somebody asked what was the most dangerous piece of equipment in a kitchen? I wanted to answer, “Any cookbook by Rachel Ray or Sandra Lee,” but I refrained and answered, “A dull knife.” Anybody who has spent time in a kitchen knows this is the correct answer unless you happen to have a commercial deep-fryer. The reaction to my response was seventeen little laughing emoticons. I’ll never understand why that was funny.

And then, somebody wanted to know how to sharpen a knife. Apparently that person has yet to hear about YouTube, which currently offers somewhere in the neighborhood of seven thousand knife-sharpening videos, including several that demonstrate how to sharpen a knife using a rock. I then told the community that I have my knives sharpened annually by a professional who comes to town every summer in a broken-down camper with Ron Paul bumper stickers. Three people wanted to know where I live.

An unscientific poll of favorite ingredients was started the other day. It has a plus or minus accuracy variant of six percent. Why this would be of interest is anybody’s guess, but I did find it curious that a guy with a seriously Italian name said his go-to ingredient was star anise, which in all likelihood is nobody’s go-to ingredient. It barely qualifies as a spice. Garlic and onion were pretty much neck-and-neck in the poll.

Unlike a lot of what one sees in general on Facebook, this cooking community is happily missing a vegan neighborhood whose inhabitants want everybody to suffer as they do. Of course, that only makes sense. People who are serious about food are generally uninterested in eating hamburgers made from a chemically enhanced mixture of Cream of Wheat and grass clippings.

But my favorite experience in this utopian society of eaters is about the woman who was seeking advice about what she should eat to remedy a broken heart over her boyfriend’s dumping her. Several people suggested that the boyfriend was a worthless ne’er-do-well (or worse) and that she’s better off without him. How those respondents knew that is a mystery. Most of them suggested chocolate and alcohol.

There was no mention of tofu.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Steak Diane

I don’t know why this dish has all but disappeared from restaurant menus. It’s really quite wonderful. It’s easy to make and delicious.

2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tbs. unsalted butter, divided
4 (3 oz.) filet mignon steaks, pounded to about 3/4”
1 1⁄2 cup beef or veal stock
1 clove garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
4 oz. mushrooms of any kind, torn into small pieces
1⁄4 cup cognac or brandy
1⁄4 cup heavy cream
1 Tbs. Dijon mustard
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
Dash or two of Tabasco
1 Tbs. minced parsley
1 Tbs. minced chives
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Season steaks with salt and pepper, add to skillet; cook, turning once, until browned on both sides and cooked to desired doneness, about 3 to 4 minutes for medium-rare. Transfer steaks to a plate and tent with foil.
Return skillet to high heat, and add stock; cook until reduced to 1⁄2 cup, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and set aside. Return skillet to heat, and add butter; add garlic and shallots, and cook, stirring, until soft, about 2 minutes. Add mushrooms, stirring until they release any liquid and it evaporates, about 2 minutes. Add cognac, and light with a match to flambé; cook until flame dies. Stir in reserved stock, cream, Dijon, Worcestershire, and hot sauce, and then return steaks to skillet; cook, turning until warmed through and sauce is thickened, about 4 minutes. Place the medallions on two serving plates. Pour sauce over the steaks and garnish with parsley and chives.

Bananas Foster

There’s a long and boring story about the origins of this dessert at Brennan’s, a touristy eatery in New Orleans. In the ‘50s, this dessert, prepared table-side, ruled at fine restaurants all over America. This is Brennan’s original recipe.

1/4 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 cup banana liqueur
4 bananas, cut in half lengthwise, then halved
1/4 cup dark rum
4 scoops vanilla ice cream

Combine the butter, sugar, and cinnamon in a skillet.
Place the pan over low heat and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves.
Stir in the banana liqueur, then place the bananas in the pan.
When the banana sections soften and begin to brown, add the rum.
Continue to cook the sauce until the rum is hot and then ignite the rum.
When the flames subside, lift the bananas out of the pan and divide over each portion of ice cream.
Generously spoon warm sauce over the top of the ice cream and serve immediately.

The kitchen, a safe haven. Isolation log: Day 72.

When I first considered how I would spend my time during this shelter-in-place mandate, I decided that I would add to my cooking repertoire by watching instructional videos. Then, I would prepare the dishes that I had learned.

The idea, of course, was to kill two birds with the proverbial one stone. Since I prepare most of the meals anyway, I would be learning new skills and still get dinner on the table each night. I knew I would enjoy both the learning and the eating.

I like French cuisine and have enjoyed many memorable meals in France, but I have limited cooking experience in that field. I have what I consider to be a good skill set in Italian food, a culinary tradition that is product-driven and whose recipe for any dish varies from region-to-region, village-to-village, and cook-to-cook.

A mother sauce in Italy is a sauce made by somebody’s mother.

I have three go-to cookbooks for those times when I wanted to make something in the French tradition: Andrè Soltner’s The Lutèce Cookbook, Lulu’s Provençal Table by Richard Olney, and, of course, Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But I was looking for something beyond replicating recipes; I wanted some visuals to enhance the cooking experience, hand’s-on demonstrations of the mysterious techniques of the much-celebrated cuisine française. I wanted to learn how to become a French chef.

I began searching the internet for sites and settled upon the French Cooking Academy. It’s a one-man show with an enthusiastic young host named Stephane, whose brief bio says he is a self-taught cook who just might keep a copy of Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire on his nightstand. Although there is an actual course of study available on this site, I chose to be cheap about it and just audit the site, mining it for recipes and video demonstrations on my own timeline.

I’m augmenting my course of study with old television programs hosted by Jacques Pépin. Unlike many, if not most of the cooking shows on the Food Network that seem to have less interest in teaching than in promoting, Pépin is soft-spoken and speaks of the love and joy that should be inherent in any cook’s approach to cuisine. I’ve yet to hear him yell, “Bam!”

I’ve had an enjoyable time in my studies. I have made and re-made the five mother sauces (béchamel, velouté, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomate) and used them to build on for saucing various foods, both proteins and produce.

I’ve made some profound discoveries: There are at least as many kinds of mustard in France as there are cheese. If you make pad thai, you can make it French by adding mustard, cream, and butter. And any piece of animal protein, by the way, is just a medium for some kind of sauce.

Over the last few weeks we’ve enjoyed the blanquette de veau, coq au vin, magrets de canard à la sauce au poivre vert, and poulet au vinaigre, among a few other dishes demanding italics. But there’s something missing in the equation. Each meal, while delicious, seemed like a formal dining experience that missed the point of seeking comfort from food in the time of the pandemic. It felt like we should have been at an over-priced, white-tablecloth kind of place with more silverware than anybody really needs.

I sense that many of the dishes I cooked might have qualified as comfort food for the French, but not necessarily for us.

While many don’t believe America has a food culture, it does. It’s not as defined as in France or, for that matter, in many other cultures. Because of our insistence to view the United States as a melting pot, our many backgrounds have led to a food culture that is diverse. That part of our food culture that seems dominant, though not particularly appreciated by self-described foodies—a sub-culture reeking of elitism—is the drive-thru restaurant. It has become as American as apple pie, TV dinners and Campbell Soup-based sauces.

In 1972, James Beard published American Cookery, an 839-page collection of recipes that runs the gamut from cocktail food to candy. Taking cues from regional cooking expressed in church cookbooks to Ladies Auxiliary collections and university publications, it is a study of a food heritage that he said is “barely beginning to sift down into a cuisine of our own.”

That same year, Jean Hewitt published a volume of near-equal heft, The New York Times Heritage Cookbook. Hewitt organized the recipes by region and then by state. It too describes an emerging food culture created by a melding of other culinary traditions.

For those looking for comfort from the meals they’re making during these times, turning to childhood favorites is where many will find comfort in dishes that remind us of a much simpler time and recall memories of home and family.

Comfort food seems to begin with starch and pretty much stays there. Noodles, potatoes and rice are the bedrock of the Comfort Cuisine that has at its root poverty. One has only to leaf through Ernest Matthew Mickler’s White Trash Cooking to get a glimpse of the diet of the dirt-poor of Appalachia, a diet of highly processed foods and unbridled fat.

On the other side of the poverty coin is the cucina povera, the Italian cooking of the rural poor. Consisting almost exclusively of local ingredients, it has in recent years been elevated to a status dining, typically involving entrails.

While everybody has their own versions of the Comfort Cuisine, I humbly offer a trio of mine.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Chipped Beef on Toast
Known colloquially as Shit-On-A-Shingle, it’s filling, cheap, easy-to-make and tastes a helluva lot better than its familiar sobriquet might suggest.

3 Tbs. butter
3 Tbs. all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
Pinch of ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. onion powder
1/2 tsp. black pepper
3 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp. dried mustard
1 2.5 oz jar chipped beef
Chopped parsley for garnish
8 slices white bread

Chop the chipped beef roughly and set it aside.
Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook for a minute. Whisk in the milk gradually and season with ground nutmeg, ground onion powder, ground garlic powder, a few drops of Worcestershire sauce, and mustard. Cook until thick and season the white sauce with black pepper. Add the chipped beef and set the heat to low.
Toast the bread and top with the beef mixture. Garnish with parsley.

Chicken Cacciatore
The “hunter’s style” chicken with onions and peppers is both warming and delicious.

8 chicken thighs
salt
freshly ground black pepper
all-purpose flour, for dredging
olive oil
1 large red bell pepper, chopped
1 large green bell pepper, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2-3 stalks of celery, cut into bite-size pieces
3-4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 cup dry white wine
1, 28-oz. can diced tomatoes with juice
1 cup chicken stock
1 1/2 tsp. dried oregano leaves
1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh basil leaves

Generously season the chicken with salt and pepper.
Dredge the chicken pieces in the flour to coat lightly.
In a large heavy sauté pan, heat the oil over a medium-high flame. Add the chicken pieces, skin side down, to the pan and sauté just until brown, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer the chicken to a plate and set aside.
Add the peppers, onion and celery to the same pan and sauté over medium heat until the onion is softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another minute or two. Season with salt and pepper. Add the wine and simmer until reduced by half, about 3 minutes.
Add the tomatoes with their juice, broth, and oregano. Return the chicken pieces to the pan and turn them to coat in the sauce. Bring the sauce to a simmer. Cover and continue simmering over medium-low heat until the chicken is just cooked through, about 30 minutes.
Transfer the chicken to a platter. If necessary, boil the sauce until it thickens slightly, about 3 minutes. Spoon the sauce over the chicken, then sprinkle with the basil and serve.

Macaroni and Cheese
Everybody has their favorite Mac ‘n Cheese. This is mine.

2 cups dry, small elbow macaroni
1 Tbs. salt
½ tsp. ground black pepper
¼ tsp. white pepper
¼ tsp. cayenne
½ tsp. dried mustard
2 cups whole milk
4 Tbs. butter
4 Tbs. flour
1# shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided
6 oz. shredded colby jack cheese
1/3 cup sour cream
2 eggs

Cook the macaroni noodles following package instructions. Drain and rinse the noodles and set aside.
In a skillet, melt the butter then add the flour to make a roux. Slowly stir in the milk. When thickened, add eggs, sour cream and seasonings in a mixing bowl and whisk.
Add cooked macaroni to a casserole dish. Stir in the milk mixture and mix thoroughly. Add sharp cheddar and colby jack cheeses. Mix well. Add to the cooked noodles. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes at 375° until cheese is melted and light brown. Place under broiler for 5 minutes. Let stand 15 minutes before servings.

It has been noted that nobody gets to pick their neighbors.

When we moved to Montana twenty-seven years ago, we barely knew anybody in this old rail-and-ranch town. In fact, we even bought the house sight-unseen. We met our neighbors on both sides and from across the street. It was a great, inviting block with friendly people from all walks of life who kept their homes tidy on a not-so-busy street. From the get-go we felt safe and welcomed. There was a sense that our neighbors looked out for each other.

Geri and I were keeping an eye on things for our neighbors to the south when they went on vacation. I happened to be in the backyard when I noticed a man on the roof, opening a second-story window. I chuckled at the thought of this little town having a “second-story” man—that urban burglar who enters through upstairs bedroom windows. But we were concerned enough for Geri to call the police.

The cops arrived and I watched them as they interviewed the house’s new owner.

We hadn’t heard that the home was even listed, let alone sold.

There was a good amount of chuckling as the story unfolded. And then the man who would soon be our neighbor thanked us for calling the police on him. He said it made him feel good about the neighborhood—a neighborhood in which few ever bothered to lock our doors.

Jack Heckles and his wife, Wendy, have been our neighbors for what must be about twenty-five years. We could not have asked for better ones. They watched our children grow up. We count our blessings for our neighbors to the north, Tondi and Gunnar, whose children we’re watching grow up—the youngest of which is a friend of our granddaughter; the oldest who just last week chose to register to vote on her eighteenth birthday. Amy and Jon are a warm and caring couple across the street who have a weird fence and who keep an old pickup truck for anyone to use. They rallied when our grandson died. Our block has changed some, but not the quality of its citizenry. Everybody seems to have each other’s back.

It’s difficult to approach the next paragraph.

Jack died on Thursday after falling from a cliff, just northeast of town off Convict Grade Road. He was pursuing his passion for the outdoors, taking pictures of eagles as he’d done for more than twenty years. And no doubt he was just marveling at the natural beauty of where some of us are fortunate enough to call home.

A Marine veteran and holder of a degree in literature, Jack worked in construction. He was a skilled finish carpenter whose work expressed both his fine craftsmanship and his keen eye for precision and detail. He was soft-spoken and well-read, a progressive liberal with an unflappable ethic and an appetite for history. He played the fiddle. The last time we spoke, on the day before he died, he was on that same roof where I had discovered him all those many years ago. He was high atop a ladder, caulking the eaves, preparing to paint the house this summer. We joked about our advancing years (“No sense buying large jars of mayonnaise!”) and how we wanted to survive long enough to see Trump thrown out of office.

He asked about the new electric lawnmower we had just received. I told him it was light and that I thought it would make mowing the lawn a lot easier for me. I got about a third of the backyard mowed before a spring storm rolled through that day.

Jack and I worked a house demolition job in Clyde Park together. It was his gig and we used my pickup truck to haul the demo-ed materials off site. I’m sure that having that truck gave me about a month’s worth of employment. Jack was methodical in his work and he had only one speed; he never rushed and he never slowed. He had the alarm on his wristwatch set for 10, 12 and 3. When the ten o’clock alarm sounded, he’d drop his hammer in mid-swing because it was time for some tea or coffee and a pastry. The three o’clock break was for a piece of fruit.

And the noon alarm was a simple reminder for him to eat his lunch.

There’s an old adage that says good fences make good neighbors. We were in the midst of enclosing our backyard with a six-foot wooden fence that we hoped would contain our escape-artist dog. (It didn’t.) Jack told me that I should have creosoted the posts. “They’ll last forty years,” he enthused. Since they were already in the ground, I told him that I wasn’t about to dig them up. “In forty years,” I said, “at best, I’ll be in a rocking chair, drooling on myself.”

Then he helped me build a gate so we could access each other’s backyards. It was a gate that was never locked, and  one I wish we had used more frequently.

Later, when I was turning our carriage house (too narrow to be called a garage) into my office, Jack, knowing of my fear of heights and just being his neighborly self, joined a couple of other friends and installed the skylights and roofed the structure while I schlepped the shingles up a few rungs of the ladder. Beer, something Jack was very picky about, was the only reward. I splurged and bought the best.

After I built our deck (Jack had come over several times to inspect my work), I asked him if he would help me hang a glass door leading from the kitchen to our new deck. I had framed the opening and as Jack was truing the doorjamb, he said that this little job was making him happy. He liked the way you could now see through the length of the house from the front door, and he liked that its twelve panes brought some of the outside in.

We went hunting together a couple of times, the most memorable being when we spent half-a-day futilely chasing a herd of antelope over hill and dale on a vast expanse of high prairie. It was freezing cold and the wind burnt our faces. Jack was an avid fly-fisherman, a habit he had nurtured in his home state of Pennsylvania and took to a higher level on the rivers and streams of Montana. We once went on a fishing/camping trip with my son, Daniel, that took us to the Missouri River and continued at the Musselshell in Two Dot, a town we found deserving of visits from all of us. Well, at least the Two Dot Bar. We fished the Shields on the way back to town.

And then we got sick, pretty much at the same time.

I was in hospital for a treatment of a lung that had spontaneously collapsed. A morning or two later, Geri told me that Jack had suffered a brain aneurysm and was life-flighted to Billings where he underwent emergency surgery. Not too many years later, we were both patients in Billings—he for a quadruple heart by-pass; me for follow-up procedures following a lobectomy. We were there at the same time on different floors.

He was a man of great resolve and he recovered with remarkable swiftness. He, along with my friend and neighbor, Gunnar, resumed shoveling the snow that would cover our sidewalks. Jack would mow the lawn when I was too weak during my own recovery to push the old gas-powered mower for more than four or five minutes.

We joked about our mortality across the fence I had built. We talked politics in the front yard or on his front porch while sipping cocktails. We agreed vigorously. He would frequently deliver a still-warm loaf of sourdough bread wrapped neatly in a tea towel that Wendy had baked.

Geri and I want so badly to offer our warmest, most sincere condolences to Wendy, but there’s no hugging from six feet away in these days of the pandemic. And I’m guessing there will be no services any time soon to offer a chance for their many friends to gather, tell some stories, lift a glass or two, eat from the covered-dish casseroles we bring to such occasions in our small town. And that means we’ll have to wait for closure.

The idea of a virtual service would be appalling to Jack. There was nothing virtual about him; he was the real deal. As Daniel said when I called him Friday, “Jack was awesome.”

On Thursday afternoon, I drove out to the hospital to pick Geri up from work. When we pulled up to the house, she looked at the front yard and asked, “Who mowed the lawn?”

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Italian Cottage Pie

For my money, this is comfort food of the highest order. It’s cheap, it’s easy to make and it tastes just how comfort food should.

2# floury potatoes, like Russets
1# Italian pork sausage, crumbled
1 small onion, finely diced
2 Tbs. finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 oz. butter
½ pint lukewarm milk
Freshly grated nutmeg
2 oz. grated Parmesan cheese
2 egg yolks, well beaten
S&P

Cook unpeeled potatoes in salted boiling water until soft.
Meanwhile, fry crumbled sausage and onion. Drain.
When potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel and mash or rice them with the parsley and butter.
Add milk, a grating of nutmeg, the cheese, egg yolks and sausage mixture. Mix well.
Pour into buttered baking dish and bake, covered, for 20-30 minutes at 350°.
Remove cover sprinkle liberally with more Parmesan. Return to oven for a few minutes until the cheese has melted on top.

To some, fifty-four years might seem a long time to hold a grudge. Of course, if your last name happens to be Hatfield or McCoy, fifty-four years is nothing. Hell, it barely spans four generations of those gawd-fearin’, snake-handlin’ ridge-runners.

My grudge is about an egregious moment in time when my parents wronged me by not allowing me to take a class in automotive mechanics. This single event has led me to spend countless thousands of dollars in car repairs that could have been avoided if, for example, I had ever been taught whatever it is that an alternator does.

And, as long we’re on the subject, where exactly does engine oil go after we’ve filled the reservoir?

A week or two before my first day of public high school my parents and I went to see what was then called a Guidance Counselor. I don’t remember his name, but I do remember that his face was rather interesting in that it appeared to be one-dimensional—like a child’s drawing, perhaps. After cursory introductions and a welcome that seemed foreboding, we got down to the serious business of planning my academic future. Why I’m including myself in that gathering is something of a mystery. I was never asked about any of my preferences as my mother, mostly, did the talking, along with Mr. Flatface. My father sat quietly and nodded, knowing full well that there would be serious consequences if he didn’t.

It was agreed that I would be on a college track which made certain assumptions about those courses I would be required to take. English composition, literature, four years of math, biology, chemistry, physics, social studies and history, physical education and Latin were neatly penciled in on a graph. My only elective would be band. Although I would have chosen a language that was spoken anywhere other than inside a Catholic church, my mother argued that Latin would improve my English studies which, actually, I didn’t know needed improvement. Since English is a Germanic language, her argument made no sense.

Be all that as it may, I finally was allowed to speak after clearing my throat a few times. I spoke of a mild interest in auto mechanics and asked if I could take such a course. From their reaction, I thought I had attained a new level of comic achievement. Proceeded by three audible gasps, their laughter could barely be contained, with Mr. Flatface recovering just enough to remind me that I was on a “college track” and that auto mechanics, shop and drafting were not available to me. Nor was home economics, a class that my sister had to take in spite of her being on a college track that led to five degrees.

I wasn’t given to do much sulking in those days, but I let my parents know, in no uncertain terms, that I was not happy about their course selections for me. I would have been happy taking English composition, literature of both the American and European varieties, history, French, and auto mechanics. I expressed my concern that while I would be suffering through Chaucer and reading Cicero’s reflections on the Republic, my friends would have admirably dirty hands from tinkering with cars for 50 minutes every day.

I only attended public high school for two years. My last two were spent at Interlochen Arts Academy, where there was little interest in things like math and science. There I pursued literature, writing, music and broadcasting. I took a class in ecology, the highlight of which came when we drove to a nearby river to watch in horror people literally beating the water with clubs and bats to kill coho salmon that were being distressed by a lesser fish known as the alewife. Later in the term we watched the instructor dissect a swan he had found somewhere.

My early instincts about my education were correct, although I will always greatly value a liberal arts curriculum. It’s been fifty-two years since I last tried to solve an algebraic equation. The only other science class I took was biology, in which we dissected a frog or two and made a leaf collection whose only value came when I sold it to an in-coming freshman for $15 the next year. We also watched an animated film strip of a guy getting an erection which provoked the appropriate reactions. I’ll never have a conversation in Latin because I learned it as a written language, not as a spoken one. I don’t know any of the pronunciations.

I read and write every day of the week, and I listen to music with an educated ear. For five years I had a radio show in Los Angeles. I am deeply concerned about the planet’s ecology.

But I don’t know how to work on a car and I wish that I did because every car I’ve ever owned (especially the 1938 Cadillac hearse I owned for about three months) has needed lots of work that I’ve had to pay lots of money to have done.

My first car was a 1962 Chevrolet Bel Air—boxy and four-doored in a faded gunmetal gray. It was a chick magnet in the way a gourmand might be attracted to a box of Saltines. I bought it from my grandmother in Nebraska and drove it back to Chicago, leaving a cloud of carbon that might still linger over much of Iowa. At the time, I thought there was some kind of mysterious fire that didn’t produce flames.

Once, something happened to it and a friend told me I needed to rebuild the carburetor. He said it was easy. I went to an auto parts store where I had never before felt so out-of-place. I was the only guy there wearing a collared-shirt. I bought the kit and took it home, where I rebuilt the carburetor on my kitchen table over the course of five or six days. When done, I only had five little pieces of stuff left over, but I reinstalled it anyway. The car worked just fine. Until it didn’t.

Geri knows enough about cars and their inner workings that at once upon a time would not have even been considered proper. I learned this about her on our first date, when she told me about her car: “It’s a ’71 Mustang convertible with a 351 Cleveland engine—a racing Pantera—with a factory-installed Hurst tranny.”

She actually said “tranny.” I was too proud to ask what a “tranny” might be.

Despite that, I have been in charge of all of our cars’ maintenance, which is as unapt as Geri, the Irish lass, being put in charge of dinner. My idea of maintenance usually involves my opening the hood, looking down at all that metallic stuff that blocks the view to the surface below, and somberly announcing, “I think it needs to go the shop.”

My diagnoses are always met with, “Just check the fluids, dipstick.”

Many years ago we were driving a Dodge Caravan through Utah when the car stalled and died on the side of a country road. It magically started an hour later, and we drove another hour until it stalled and died again. Again, it magically started, and we drove on for another hour. This annoying pattern repeated itself until we arrived in Nephi. It was a Sunday and it was 104 degrees.

I wandered around the truck stop looking for somebody with admirably dirty hands. The guy I found responded to my tale of woe by shouting at me: “Fuel filter! Replace it!”

I could more easily perform an appendectomy, I remember thinking.

A car parts store guy with admirably dirty hands delivered a new fuel filter, but didn’t offer to spend the rest of the afternoon changing it for me. And so I began: I crawled under the car, located the old one, took it off, discovered the wonder of having a gallon or so of gasoline pour directly onto my face, and then gave my young children their first exposure to some really nasty words in a loud, clear voice.

I was afraid to light a cigarette for three days, lest the gas fumes lingering about my face ignite.

We got as far as Provo, following our new driving protocol—an hour on, an hour off.

I had a friend in Los Angeles, who I’ll call Dale, which seems only fitting since that was his name. He might have been the real-life role model for the original MacGyver, a mid-’80s television program that co-starred a roll of duct tape. Dale was as serious a car guy as one could be, even going so far as banning his family from the house each Memorial Day so he could drink Scotch and watch the Indy 500 in peace. I called him and explained our situation.

“Vapor lock,” he said with such conviction that I could picture him in his STP cap. “Got any wooden clothespins?”

“Of course,” I lied, although I could see from the telephone booth a store that would sell them.

“Clip one every four inches along the fuel line. It’ll take the heat out of the line and you won’t vapor lock.”

The next morning we made it to Layton, about an hour away. We waited the perfunctory hour and drove to a dealership.

“Fuel pump,” a young mechanic announced. As the van went up on the lift, he noticed the fifty-four clothespins grasping the fuel line. He called over the other mechanics in the shop and they all started pointing and laughing at the sight, offering no sympathy even after listening to my sad story.

I had to do something to restore whatever shred of dignity I might have had left.

I started asking them which was their favorite tale from Chaucer, and what they thought of Cicero’s politics and statesmanship. I wanted to say something in Latin, so I crowed, “Veni, vidi, vici” with all of the vocal authority of Pavarotti singing Puccini’s Nessun dorma.

The young mechanic with the admirably dirty hands whispered, “In Latin, the ‘v’ is pronounced like a ‘w’.”

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Irish Hamburgers

Contrary to popular belief, Irish cuisine can be very exciting and satisfying, provided it’s not cooked by an actual Irish person. This has been a family favorite for what seems like forever. It might offer some comfort in these trying times.

1-1/2 # ground beef
½ c. dry bread crumbs
3 Tbs. finely chopped onions
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 egg
Salt & pepper
2 Tbs. butter
1 medium onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 Tbs. flour
1 cup cream
1 can of cream of celery soup
2 Tbs. chopped parsley

Combine the beef, bread crumbs, onion, Worcestershire and egg in a mixing bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Form into six or eight patties, or even seven if you just want to be weird.
Fry the patties in butter until well browned (but not cooked through) and remove to a baking dish.
Add chopped vegetables to pan drippings and sauté until tender. Add flour and stir until well-blended.
Combine cream and celery soup and add to the vegetables.
Pour sauce over the patties, cover with foil and bake at 350° for one hour.

If you’d prefer not to use the soup because you’re fussy, substitute with one cup of bechamel. Frankly, the soup works just fine.