Journal

My backyard, the final frontier. Isolation log: Day 51.

Everything on the internet is suddenly seeming to appear quite plausible, if not even factual. Now I’ve discovered that the Apocalypse is far more entertaining than I might ever have imagined.

It has a wonderful cast of characters, from the leading man, cast appropriately as the Orange Menace, down to classical Greek Choruses of his angry followers. These groups are mostly made up of white women in tight t-shirts boasting their odd patriotism, and white men with AR-15s and bandoliers of bullets. Their shared anger is directed at Democratic forces trying to keep the protesters from dying of a disease called the coronavirus. Of course, the well-armed dunderheads are convinced the disease is a hoax perpetrated by either some extra-terrestrials from the minor planet Upuranus or Richard Simmons, the enthusiastic exercise guru. They’re not sure. Not a clue, actually.

The narrative is pretty straight forward. There’s a backstory that shows a complete lack of preparedness, with the added intrigue of a racist hatred that led to the dismantling of what, had it not been dismantled, was the very thing that would have shown this Administration as being prepared. (This is the gang that refused to shoot straight.) And few would have thought otherwise. Except for the “lamestream” press that might have pointed out, correctly, that the pandemic task force was created in 2005 by George W. Bush and augmented and maintained by Barack Obama, theirs are the voices that would have been drowned out by the sound of the shuck-and-jive grandstanding from the self-praising Trump.

Even as we Americans awaken each morning to a new and ever-rising death toll, His Orangeness is shouting the huzzahs! in celebration of what? Ineptitude? Callous indifference? Cowardice?

Chatting mostly about the great job he’s doing fighting the invisible enemy reminds many of Don Quixote’s battles with windmills, a literary reference he might have missed in college. His focus is on his television ratings—as if his daily rallies, sparsely attended by a pared-down press corps, were some kind of lurid game show; an alternate reality show, as it were. It’s a blessing that the three major networks and CNN have spared us from having to bear any more than the highlights, many of which include his asinine berating of reporters.

Of course, the best of his highlight reels is when he takes on the demeanor of Marcus Welby, M.D., and waxes idiotic about injecting and/or inhaling or otherwise ingesting Lysol or Clorox. And let’s not omit his temporal brilliance in suggesting that we be given head-on shock treatments with klieg lights or use light-bearing suppositories filled with magic fairy dust.

Not that many folks need much prodding, but there seems to be a growing interest in a list of conspiracy theories that run the gamut from ridiculous to ludicrous which, of course, is a rather narrow gamut. Nothing like a pandemic to bring out the darkest suspicions of people.

Many of the so-called Left, none of whom watch Fox News and therefore have privileged access to actual information, are convinced that the hesitancy of the Administration to act is because Covid-19 had brought Chinese factories to a screeching halt a day or two after the first diagnosis. That resulted in their falling behind making the designer face masks and hospital scrubs that Ivanka was planning to market from her business suite at the White House.

Much of the Right believes the whole thing was made up by Communists to abolish all of their rights, especially their Second Amendment rights that guarantee they can wield AR-15s and don’t have to be vaccinated for anything. They also like that part of the First Amendment for its allowing them to be evangelical adherents of some ill-defined theocracy. It’s a pick-as-you-please interpretation of the Constitution.

Some of this clear-headed group of “very good people” have been holding demonstrations on the steps and inside a few state capitols, demanding that they be heard and be allowed to resume their normal, pre-virus activities which may or may not include returning to work.

While nothing says “idiot” better than wearing your Sunday-best camo, bringing along your weapon-of-choice will probably not help any conversation to even get started, let alone progress.

I find conspiracy theories and their proponents to be mostly annoying. Although usually harmless, they seem to grow naturally in any political environment, much like weeds in a garden. There is a lot of accompanying paranoia (thus the whispers), a serious mistrust of anything associated with authority, constant blame-shifting, and a sense of being victims of circumstance. And there is absolutely no arguing with them. It’s pointless, much like trying to teach a pig to sing.

While some of the theories are so preposterous as to be mind-numbing, there’s usually not much humor involved, except for the theories themselves.

A case-in-point might be to look at the end of Lenny Bruce’s career. At some point, the comic thought the paying public came to see him not for a good laugh but for endless babbling about his legal problems. Bruce thought there were mysterious forces out to get him. Maybe there were, but we still wanted to laugh.

Mort Sahl, the great political satirist and comic, briefly derailed his career by endlessly spouting all of his conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination and the subsequent Warren Commission concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald did, in fact, act alone. Had Mort not followed the sage advice, “Forget about it, already, and tell some jokes,” he might have ended up sorting mail at MGM.

Behind every decent conspiracy are some key players. The Covid-19 cast of characters includes the World Health Organization’s Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, known affectionately as Doc Teddy. WHO was, of course, founded in 1948 in Switzerland by Mao Zedong, who was returning to his native China after earning a degree in communication theory from Oxford University, to start the Cultural Revolution, which he wouldn’t get around to for another 18 years. Nonetheless, Communist China still runs WHO—at the expense of the U.S. This cannot be denied. Or not.

Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony Fauci have maintained a close friendship ever since the good doctor was doing his obstetrics rotation and delivered Lil’ Bill, as Tony still calls him, at a Seattle hospital that was subsequently torn down to make room for the Microsoft campus.

On January 20, 2020, a Monday, Bill and Tony were having dinner together in Washington, D.C. This was most unusual because it’s been a long-standing tradition for the entire Fauci family, to gather in Brooklyn on Monday evenings for a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, and a salad of iceberg lettuce, roasted red peppers, peperoncini and Wishbone Italian dressing. Vintage Chianti from the Rufino province just north of Florence is always served. After dinner, the Faucis would then gather around an old black-and-white television and watch videos of Walter Cronkite anchoring the CBS Evening News from 1975—a period of U.S. history in which not much happened and was therefore soothing.

On the night in question, Lil’ Bill got a telephone call during the soup course saying that the first case of novel coronavirus had been reported in Snohomish, a Washington county that Gates just happens to own. Gates immediately called MIT, which he also happens to own, where scientists have created a new ink that can be embedded in the skin and read with an infra-red smart phone app to see if you’ve been vaccinated and for what. It also can report whether you had breakfast. He told them to get ready.

Fauci, an epidemiologist by trade who just happens to look like an Italian elf, is in a practice that is the very cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidence-based practices by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare. He calls himself an “odds-maker.”

All that being said, he called the White House and put all 50 governors on Zoom. He proceeded to instruct them to close down the country, with shelter-in-place orders to be enforced until all of America’s guns are confiscated. Only essential businesses—H&R Block, liquor stores, dry cleaners—could remain open. Any restaurant wanting to serve take-out would be required to construct a drive-through service area, thereby leveling the playing field for McDonalds and Chez Panisse, or any of Daniel Boulud’s signature restaurants.

After toasting to the New World Order with glasses of single-malt sake, Lil’ Bill and Dr. “T” read their fortunes from the cookies served at Wuhan Harry’s Noodle Emporium & Asian Massage Parlor. Their fortunes were the same: “Wuhan Harry’s Not Make You Sick.”

Before leaving for the Ford’s Theater for a private screening of Into the Dark Side of the Woods, a documentary about a gay Nazi stuntman in Hollywood with music by Stephen Sondheim, Lil’ Bill called the White House to suggest that the virus was probably a synthetic germ that Chinese scientists had created to help Trump lose re-election.

Fauci objected. “That’s just not true.”

Gates just smiled. “But it will keep the Idiot-in-Chief occupied and maybe, just maybe, keep him out of our way as we establish world dominance. You and me, Dr. ‘T’, you and me.”

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Survival Guide for the Apocalypse

The following items should be safely stowed should that time come when we really, really need them.

Alcohol, Beef jerky, Fruit roll-ups, Alcohol, Cans of imported duck confit, Instant ramen noodles, Alcohol, Twinkies, Cheez Whiz, Saltines, Vodka & dry Vermouth, Green olives, Foie gras, Gin, Cocktail onions, Dill pickles, SPAM, and, several cases of Bandol, a fiercely structured red wine from Provence that, at $47 a bottle, is capable of being transformative.

The shelter-in-place directive that most of us are complying with is a little like being captive in a Havahart rat trap. You’re pretty much stuck, but at least your neck hasn’t been snapped and you do get the cheese.

This sense of captivity that many of us feel does have its upside. I’m not thinking of anything particularly practical like finally having the time to clean the garage or vacuum the cat or sort by size and reorganize the paper bags you’ve been collecting for the last 20 years. I’ve done those things, except for clean the garage, but only because we don’t have one.

No, I see this as an opportune moment in our lives to reflect on the past, appreciate the moment, and contemplate the future—even if the future is one of a continued sequestration that forces us to give all of our money to Jeff Bezos and never see another person except on Zoom.

I’ve never needed any prodding to think about the future (especially about the very end of the future) or worry about things over which I have no control. Guilt is just a part of me—a piece of my genetic imprint. I’ve learned to accept it, embrace it with a constant and steadfast zeal. It’s a little like the relationships Norwegians have with lutefisk, which, since the Trump family recently invested heavily in cod futures, is currently being tested as a cure for Covid-19. If lutefisk, a gelatinous mass that looks suspiciously like phlegm, is indeed proven effective as an oral medication, I’m opting to go wherever the novel coronavirus wants to take me.

Appreciating the moment is a unique challenge, so I will only briefly look back at what is rather pointless because much of what I recall only makes me blush, even if nobody else is around. If there were lessons to be learned…well, I either learned them or not.

The regrets I’ve had are beyond counting, including the one about wanting to live a life with no regrets. This was an ambition expressed many young people who have vague recollections of the ‘60s as they looked to the next phase of life—like a real job, for instance.

My parents had a small reception for me when I graduated from college. They invited all of their friends and none of mine. Come to think of it, maybe it wasn’t a party for me. Maybe I just walked in on something that had been planned for some other reason. After all, there were no gifts, not even a card.

At one point, I experienced a Graduate moment when I was cornered by two men who took turns jabbing their fingers into my chest as they insisted on hearing my career plans. That was the moment I first said something about wanting to avoid a career in either insurance or real estate that I knew I would one day regret. How was I supposed to know Ted was a State Farm agent and Jack was a realtor?

At least I hadn’t said, “I just want to be happy!”

My parents’ next-door-neighbor then offered to set me up as a manufacturer’s rep selling tools. He walked me over to his house and opened the trunk of his Impala to show me an array of hardware like I’d never seen. The job entailed driving from town to town in an assigned area trying to sell hammers to hardware stores. The big attraction was that you got to stay in rundown motels four nights a week and eat in diners. There was no reimbursement for expenses. And I would need to get a haircut.

I returned to my folks’ backyard and opened my fifth beer. The only reason I know this is because my mother told me it was my fifth beer.

“What?” I asked. “Are you keeping track?”

“Of course I am,” she answered, as if it was her duty to keep track of such things.

The next day I went to a real graduation party. They had a cake, and platters of cold cuts, a grill loaded with bratwurst, a pot of sauerkraut, and washtubs full of Old Style—a Chicago beer that is on par with the worst beer anyone can ever recall tasting, like Old Milwaukee or Schaefer or Coors Light. My mother wasn’t there to keep tabs of my intake. The party showed promise.

The party was for a young woman who I knew professionally during college. She was a talented singer; I had been her drummer for three years. At some point, her father pulled me aside to ask about my plans. As it turns out, I was leaving the next day for Cleveland to pursue a publishing venture. Neil, the red-haired father who looked like he had spent his entire life consuming only bratwurst and Old Style, put his fat-fingered hand on my shoulder and squeezed—hard.

“I’s want youse da stay in Chicago and keep playin’ da drums for Cheryl,” he said, in perfect Chicago dialect.

I twisted out of his grip and told him that I really wanted to move on, and I didn’t want the financial uncertainty that goes with being a musician.

He then told me that he had that all worked out. He offered me a job as an electrical inspector for the City of Chicago. I then told him everything I knew about electricity: “It scares me.”

Neil thought that was pretty funny. He then told me the job was just a title and I’d be paid a handsome salary to act as a Democratic ward boss for a few weeks before City elections. That way I’d have financial security and remain a musician.

It was tempting to join a corrupt political system and usher drunks from Polish bars on the Near North Side to polling places, promising each a boilermaker or two for their votes. And it was a career path to power followed by many an Alderman—a title given to elected criminals who are best compared to raccoons, in that they commit most of their thefts under the cover of darkness.

I went ahead with my move back to Cleveland, known affectionately as the Mistake-by-the-Lake and frequently likened to “Detroit without the glitter.” The publishing venture never really materialized, but I got a story assignment to write a magazine story about EMTs. I spent ten days (nights, actually) riding with an ambulance crew and learning first-hand that some really drunk people show a very real propensity for violence at closing time. From that experience it occurred to me that one really hasn’t led a full life until witnessing a 6’2”, 240-pound African-American female EMT perform a tracheotomy with the neck of a broken beer bottle.

Arriving hat-in-hand back in Chicago, I learned that Cheryl was sleeping with her new drummer, the City had its new electrical inspector, and that my parents had sold the very home I had intended to crash in for the foreseeable future. (They had done this before.)

And that’s when and why I moved to California. Really. It was that serendipitous.

It was the summer of 1976 and my sister was getting married in Colorado to Gary, a Ph.D. professor of communications, an ordained Free Methodist minister, and perhaps the most intelligent person I’d ever met. He had long before abandoned his ministry and soon thereafter his faith, turning instead to a constant use of marijuana.

Anyway, I was to be their only attendant—best man, maid of honor, flower girl, ring bearer, witness, et alii.

At the time, I had a Cairn Terrier named Sappho, a pale-blue Ford pinto station wagon without a name, and maybe thirty dollars. Maybe. And now that my parents were moving to some undisclosed location, I was, basically, homeless.

My father gave me a credit card and told me he’d see me in Estes Park, Colorado, the site of the wedding. After the wedding, which was very nice in an outdoorsy, hippie sort of way, he told me to keep the credit card and follow the advice of Horace Greeley.

A couple of days later I was about as far west as a young man could go in these United States. I found myself camping out on a couch at my sister’s house in Winters, California, a one-horse town near Davis on Pudah Creek, where the fishing was pretty good, and the food and wine at the Pudah Creek Café was impressive. Considering that I was eating on my father’s dime, it was damned affordable, too.

And then one day, after cutting the credit card in half per my father’s request, I drove down to Los Angeles to begin my journey into newspapers and magazines, barely a moment of which I regret.

But I do every now and then I wonder if I had stayed in Chicago, practicing and mastering the fine arts of voter fraud and extortion, would I have risen through the ranks and become a Chicago City Alderman.

Or maybe I’d just be keeping time for a girl singer.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Sauerkraut

Every October my grandmother made enough sauerkraut to provide almost-daily servings for three families for a year. It took her a week or so to accomplish as she went up and down the basement stairs to deliver the sliced cabbage, heavily salted, to the ceramic crocks. The kysané zelí, as we knew it, was great. And it was always prepared for the table with some minced onion and garlic, lightly fried, and seasoned with caraway seed. The bagged sauerkraut found at most grocery stores is quite fine when treated with the onion, garlic and caraway.

And then one day our world changed, and we don’t know what lies ahead.

How we emerge from our isolation is key to our survival. Some have imagined that a magic day will be designated, a giant switch will be flipped, and the world will pick up where it left off. It is folly to entertain such thinking.

We are social beings, in frequent contact with friends and family. Now we show our love and respect for each other by staying away. We’re helpless as we watch small businesses close, wondering if they’ll reopen, and which of our neighbors will face financial ruin.

Since most of us rely on the efforts of others to offer relief from the daily grind, we continue to miss sports and entertainment as much as anything. When will it be safe for 40,000 people to gather for a ball game? Television and the movies have shut down their productions. Broadway is dark and theaters are shuttered. We don’t know when we’ll be able to go to concerts again or when dance clubs will turn the lights back on.

Restaurants and taverns are closed, and even going to our friends’ homes for dinner seems an unwise prospect.

Lots of folks indulge their interest in sports by joining “fantasy” leagues. I don’t see the attraction. And to be successful at it requires more statistical homework than I’m interested in, or capable of doing.

I do, however, indulge in fantasy entertaining.

Geri and I have been enjoying this little game since we were first married. Who, the question is, would you like to have over for dinner? The rules of play are that your guests can be living or dead, or a combination. How many guests you want at one party is a consideration, as is the menu and who is to do the cooking. That’s it.

The dinner party I’m working on is for four guests. Three of them are dead, so they won’t be bringing spouses. One will. Including Geri and myself, that will bring the total number to seven. To even things out, I’ll be inviting one friend who I won’t name, but will say that it’s one of you.

While each of the four will be a special guest, the guest of honor is the living one. Here are their brief profiles.

I’ve always had great admiration for Yo-Yo Ma and would enjoy breaking bread with him. As a cellist, he is without peer. He is also a dedicated educator and his humanity has been displayed throughout the world.

Ma was born in Paris to Chinese parents. Educated at Juilliard and Harvard, the classically trained cellist has played bluegrass, traditional Chinese music, Argentinian and Brazilian music. He formed his Silk Road Ensemble to explore music traditional to the cultures found along the Silk Road, an ancient trade route from Europe through Asia to China. He has also performed with Bobby McFerrin, Carlos Santana and James Taylor.

He has been honored as the United Nations Messenger of Peace by Kofi Annan and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

Joining Mr. Ma and his wife will be Shirley Chisholm, Miloš Forman and Richard Feynman.

As a physicist, Dr. Feynman was involved in studies that few could begin to understand. Yet he explained his work in a series of books, lectures and theses that helped popularize an interest in the discipline. His academic resume includes degrees from MIT and Princeton, and teaching positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell and Caltech, where he remained until his death in 1988.

Albert Einstein attended Feynman’s first academic seminar. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb as a participant in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico. For his work with quantum electrodynamics, he won a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. During the 1980s he would become known as a member of the Rogers Commission, the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Feynman also became known through his semi-autobiographical books Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?. He was a formidable bongo player.

Named to the National Women’s Hall of Fame, Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress as the Democratic representative from New York’s 12th congressional district. She served seven terms from 1969 to 1983. I voted for her in 1972, my first opportunity to cast a ballot.

Born in New York to immigrant parents from the Caribbean—her father was a laborer, her mother a domestic worker—she and her two sisters were sent to live with their maternal grandmother in Barbados, where they received their early education.

A champion of civil rights and women’s rights, Ms. Chisholm, who had earned a M.A. in elementary education from Teachers College at Columbia University in 1952, she served three terms in the New York State Assembly before running for the U.S. House. Her focus on the inner city, poverty and education led to bi-partisan legislation that expanded the food stamp program and created the WIC nutrition program. Chisholm also served on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and was named to the Education and Labor Committee.

Chisholm joined the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971 as one of its founding members, later that the same year becoming a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus. She employed only women on her staff, saying that bias against women was greater than any racial discrimination that she had faced.

In 1972, Chisholm became the first woman and the first African-American to run for President of the United States on the Democrat ticket. That same year, she convinced George Wallace to wrangle the needed southern Democrats to pass legislation guaranteeing minimum wage for domestic workers.

A vocal opponent of the draft and the Vietnam war, she supported spending increases for education, health care and other social services, and reductions in military spending.

In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1932 to Jewish parents, film director Miloš Forman endured the effects of the Nazi occupation. His father, Rudolf Forman, was arrested for distributing banned books, and died a prisoner in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in 1944. Forman’s mother had died in Auschwitz the previous year.

Forman was an important figure in the Czechoslovak New Wave of cinema in the 1960s. His 1967 film, The Fireman’s Ball, was seen as a satire of Eastern European Communism and was banned. That following year, during the Prague Spring, he moved to the United States, settling in New York, where he would become a professor of film at Columbia University in 1978.

His first film in the United States was Taking Off, which won the Grand Prix at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, but received bad reviews and fared poorly at the box office. His next film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was a critical and commercial success. The film won Oscars in the five most important categories (Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay), and firmly established Forman’s reputation.

His film adaptation of the Broadway musical Hair was met with favorable reviews but was a box-office flop. His next effort, Amadeus, was a retelling of the story of Mozart and Antonio Salieri. The film was internationally acclaimed and won eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Because I don’t want to miss even a minute of the conversation that I imagine will focus on the roles of science, politics and the arts in the time of pandemic, I’ve decided to have my paternal grandmother cook a Bohemian meal.

It will include chopped liver, dill cucumbers in sour cream, roast duck with plum gravy, parslied potatoes, sauerkraut and bread dumplings. I’ll be pouring a 2015 Joseph Drouhin “Cotes de Beaune.” For dessert, apricot kolacky and slivovitz.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Pečená kachna (Bohemian Roast Duck)

1 (5-6#) duck
2 Tbs. kosher salt (more or less)
2 cloves, chopped
2 Tbs. caraway seeds, toasted
1 apple
6-8 ripe plums

Wash and pat dry inside and outside of duck.
Cut wing tips off, as well as any excess fatty skin around the neck and from the cavity.
Pierce the duck fat all over with a fork, but do not pierce the meat.
Liberally salt exterior and interior of duck.
Let rest 24 hours on a rack unwrapped in your refrigerator.
Take the duck out of the fridge and let come to room temperature.
Rub with garlic and sprinkle with caraway, inside and out.
Slice the apple and place inside the cavity.
Place duck breast-side down in a roasting pan with a lid and cover.
Heat oven to 350 F.
Pour a cup water in the bottom of the roasting pan.
Roast duck for one hour, skimming off excess fat.
Turn duck breast-side up and place the plums around the duck.
Continue to roast uncovered for another hour, basting often, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thigh registers 150 F and the skin is golden.
Remove from oven and allow it to rest 10 minutes before carving.
Use the pan drippings and the plums to make gravy. Strain before serving.

We have been burying the dead since the dawn of civilization.

It is a ritual that offers closure, pays respect to families, celebrates life in countless ways and, to some, completes the circle of life by returning bodies to the soil. There is a great history of these final acts, with varied traditions defined by a host of cultures. In older times, for instance, the dead frequently were buried with a favorite tool or perhaps a prized possession that would offer future generations a glimpse into a long-ago past.

For now, because of the Covid-19 that is rampaging across our country, leaving thousands in its wake, burials are on hold, mostly due to prohibitions against gatherings.

Earlier this week, Geri’s father’s girlfriend of some thirty years died in Queens, New York, the center of the epicenter of this virus. Tommy and Pauline never married because his Roman Catholic beliefs kept him from acknowledging the divorce Geri’s mother achieved without his consent.

Pauline was an Italian woman from a large family. She had a large family of her own, created with a husband known for his abuse. Tommy was quiet, supportive and loving in his way. He protected her.

New York is on lock-down and there will be no funeral, no gathering of family and friends and neighbors. No Chianti wine will be poured into plastic cups. Tray-after-tray of lasagna, garlic bread, antipasti, or even Pauline’s famous—and delicious—baked ziti will not be set on a crowded table. Her priest won’t be there and there will be nobody standing around in a cramped living room filled with memories and the lingering aromas of a million meals. For now, the stories that need telling won’t be told. Any expression of love or respect for a life well lived will be silent. There will be no laughter to cut through the tears, no prayers to offer solace to the faithful.

There should have been a service of celebration, an interment and a reception. There should have been ricotta cheesecake and cannoli and melt-in-your mouth brutti ma buoni, those ugly-but-good cookies.

As it is, considering the strains placed on almost every needed service in New York, it’s not even known for sure what will become of her remains, or if there even will be a casket to hold them. On a normal New York City day, one hundred or so die. These past few weeks have seen that number times six or seven or eight. Maybe more.

Refrigerated trucks and cargo containers are lined up outside New York City hospitals to house the dead. They’ve run out of truck space and are creating mass burial sites in city parks. Burial, some believe, contains and kills whatever might have caused a death. There might be a sense of urgency to this task.

My wife is distraught over not just Pauline’s death but that now she has no family left to call. Thus is the nature of growing older. A sibling’s death, a parent’s or friend’s, is a cruel reminder of our own mortality. Geri’s remaining sibling died several weeks ago. She seeks closure on at least two fronts.

Closer to home, a longtime friend of ours passed away Wednesday morning.

Peter Bowen was a brilliant writer the New York Times once called “Thoreau in Big-Sky Country.” He wrote it off as so much nonsense, but he was nevertheless pleased by a wider recognition of his craft and artistry. Or so I suspect. He’d grumble when he walked into the Owl and a small chorus would announce, “Thoreau!”

The Owl—once a hole-in-the-wall tavern with torn bar stools and nicotine stained walls—was where we first met in 1993. He was one of the horde of writers who saw the place as a second home, even during arduous bouts with sobriety. We’d gather there late on weekday afternoons and exchange stories and lies and idle chatter for an hour or two.

Bowen was adopted by a couple who would migrate through Indiana and Colorado to Bozeman, Montana, arriving there in the mid-’50s. Peter would have been ten-years-old, or so. It was there that his father taught at Montana State College and it was there that Peter devised a life for himself that seemed at times unfathomable. To hear his stories over coffee or cocktails was to be transported to a world of excitement and adventure that few could ever imagine.

His manner was brusque; his appearance, generally unkempt—a long scraggly beard, uncombed hair, a ruddy complexion. He presented a picture of another time. He fit perfectly the picture of somebody who had guided fishermen and hunters, bar-tended, wrangled, ranched and irrigated, worked in construction, flipped burgers, and gigged frogs in his youth to supply Bozeman’s biology classes with specimens for dissection.

As a boy, his adventures ended when the sun set. Perhaps. At some point then, he’d stare down at a blank sheet of paper in the platen of a portable typewriter and proceed to create a world that would one day fascinate—no, mesmerize—the reader. It was the first step in a career focused on stringing words together to reveal the nature of man.

We all have stories; Peter listened like a conservatory student and then told the stories with precision and a concertized flair—an improvised cadenza that soared to a coda of promised finality. Some might of considered it a gift.

He thought it a craft, not unlike the cabinetry he built.

He toiled, for the most part, in the mystery genre. It suited him well. He was plot-driven, but was equally interested in character. His protagonists were much like Peter, complex and colorful. He was honest to a fault, knowing full well that mere facts don’t necessarily reveal truth. His stories were truthful.

Peter came across as gruff. He tried to reconcile an Old West with the New, and personified the imagery in both his persona and his work. For all his gruffness though, he had a big heart and was kind and thoughtful, loving and considerate. His attitude toward children was not unlike W.C. Fields, but he doted on ours. He was an exceptional judge of character, once noting that a dog of ours he once tended was awaiting a limousine ride for an appearance on “Beavis and Butthead.”

His laugh was a raspy, staccato exhalation.

Peter was a masterful, prolific storyteller. He was not a patient man and he could interrupt another’s story with an ending that was more to his liking, or perhaps just to move it along. He was insistently laid back in demeanor, and always seemed in a hurry to walk away slowly.

I used to see him almost every day as he’d step out of the door of Sax & Fryer. He’d stop, light one of his hand-rolled cigarettes, push his sunglasses on, and look up and down Callender Street before deciding which direction to go. He’d amble away then, lost in the thoughts that guided a life both on and off the page.

My father-in-law met Peter at the Owl one long-ago day. Tommy had grown up in Ireland reading fanciful novels about the American west. Peter seemed to embody that spirit and to that Tommy seemed happy to raise his screwdriver to Peter’s club soda.

The irascible storyteller seemed pleased.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Pauline’s Baked Ziti

As is typical with great Italian home cooks, recipes are something locked in memory. Pauline’s suggest that you cook the ziti following the package directions, probably 8-10 minutes. One then should mix the cooked pasta with a rich marinara sauce. One then adds ricotta and mozzarella cheese to the mix. Finally, one adds sliced Italian sausage—spicy or sweet, your call—and meatballs. This masterpiece of an Italian casserole is then baked, covered, for 40 minutes at 350°. Uncover and return to oven for another five minutes to crisp the top.

Meatballs

1# ground beef
2 eggs
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1-1/2 Tbs. pecorino-romano cheese
1/4 cup chicken broth
1 slice of stale bread, crumbled

Mix ingredients. Form into balls or ovals. Fry in vegetable oil.

There seems to be an untoward urgency to get through what we, as a nation, are enduring. Patience, it’s been noted, is a virtue, but virtue seems in short supply. Social media is full of complaints of boredom and loneliness, perhaps spurred by the President’s own impatience with a flagging economy—a concern he seems more troubled by than any concern for the thousands of Americans suffering and dying of COVID-19.

There is probably nobody alive who has any recollection of the Spanish Flu of 1918 that so devastated the world’s population. The stories told about that pandemic seem more focused on the numbers of its quick spread and the casualties left in its wake than the pain and suffering of those who survived it.

But a lot has transpired in the intervening 102 years. We’ve become a smaller world with a larger population. We’re in constant touch with people we don’t know. We spend more time on Facebook than we do visiting across the fence with our neighbors. Our businesses operate on a world stage to such an extent that cultural practices and traditions have been altered to serve commerce. World travel is a given for many people. We’re as likely to make a restaurant recommendation in some small burg in France as we are in our own hometowns.

We spend more time watching television than we do reading. News from around the world arrives at a record pace—with many of its consumers not seeming to care about its origin or veracity. Information is gobbled up without much thought or reflection and is then passed on to audiences of similar political views. Or it is manipulated to be used to inflame the anger of those we oppose. There was a time when a rolled-up paper arrived on your doorstep and families shared pages devoted to world, national and local news; sports; home and garden; crossword puzzles; opinion and letters.

There is at least one generation that has no idea what the “funny papers” are.

I believe that COVID-19 will change the world immeasurably, definitively on many levels. In reality, it already has.

Each of us is likely soon to know a victim of the virus, which personalizes it to a painful level. The tears we shed for strangers on the evening news will, in time, be shed for family members, neighbors and distant friends. Perhaps because of our government’s failure to respond in a timely manner, it can be assumed that we are far from the virus’s peak. Dr. Anthony Fauci has talked in the range of hundreds of thousands falling to this disease. Some predictions run into the millions.

As a nation, we are understaffed, under-equipped and underfunded to deal with anything of this catastrophic nature.

Trump balked at $1 billion for ventilators, yet has stated that he will ignore Congressional restrictions of his personal use of the monies, and is promising the airline industry $70 billion. There are many who believe politics should be left out of any pandemic discussions. It’s not going to happen. It can’t happen. Important, relevant decisions are needed from our governing agencies, our elected officials. Yet given that charge, appropriations that seem downright frivolous or self-serving have been written into a package that sorta-maybe will give American adults a taxable $1,200. The Dems and the Repubs seem to agree only that each member of their cabal deserves a raise. Really?

Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s secretary of the treasury, is a former hedge fund manager who believes that the stipend is enough to provide financial security for a family for four months. Again. Really? His contempt for Americans is astonishing, especially since he probably spends that on a business lunch that—Oh, shock!—he likely bills back to the Treasury for reimbursement. (I humbly suggest he relinquish his table at Bistro Français and sit on a curb with a paltry sandwich and talk to the homeless veterans who have no voice.)

Mnuchin’s actions are the standard operating procedure for the boys in that club and, to paraphrase George Carlin, you and me, we ain’t members of that club. We weren’t invited.

The fact that Trump doesn’t seem to have an ounce of sympathy or compassion for the American people whose suffering could have been lessened had his Administration been paying closer attention, doesn’t stop him from being a cheerleader for economic recovery—key to his re-election, which is foremost in his feeble mind. The President’s behavior is so abhorrent in the face of such tragedy as to be almost unbelievable. He plays to his base, urging its evangelical clergy to defy common sense and conduct church services. At heart he has nothing more than a country club mentality whose affluence dictates an I-got-mine attitude. Screw the rest of us.

In dealing with what is the most horrific event since 9/11, he routinely attacked the press and claimed the pandemic to be a hoax foisted onto the world by the Democratic party. Then he, in all his worldly wisdom, said that this blip on the medical radar would miraculously disappear after the 15th person contracted the disease. In the meantime, he and his minions tried to blame the Democrats for Trump’s impeachment that kept him distracted from the rigors of his gilded office. Apparently he was not distracted enough to keep him from hosting his insipid “aren’t-I-great” rallies, fund-raising parties, and his taxpayer-funded golf trips.

Despite his not anticipating the Coronavirus nor initially being even responsive to it, he had already dismantled an agency his predecessor had in place that was prepared to both detect and respond. Trump’s pathetic hatred for President Obama reveals not only his racism, but his pathological denial of anything approaching truth, let alone justice, and may result in thousands of unnecessary deaths.

After insisting that he knew COVID-19 was a pandemic from the get-go, Trump seemed eager to add insult to injury by naming his son-in-law to lead the troops into battle against the plague. Jared Kushner, whose arrogance is only surpassed by his ignorance, isn’t fit to carry Anthony Fauci’s stethoscope. We can only hope his incompetence doesn’t lead to the same failing result as his so-called Middle East peace. J. William Fulbright would have had a field day analyzing this mess, this disturbing marriage of arrogance to power.

Geri and I have different approaches to many things and the current crisis is no exception. I get angry, perhaps to mask my own fear of contracting the disease, and I seem always to remain skeptical, if not downright pessimistic. Geri weeps for the stricken and in her grieving maintains a bright optimism as she tries to find a plausible reason for the suffering. Rather than look to some supernatural force in this instance, she is suggesting that this virus is earth’s immune system at work.

She points to the fact that carbon emissions have been remarkably reduced—the sky and the air we breathe benefiting the most. While that bodes well for the momentary delay of the increase of global temperatures, Geri is most pleased that there are dolphins in the waterways of Venice, Italy. They are there after only a few weeks of the cessation of polluting factors in those famed canals. I think that is terrific.

Unfortunately for us, the powers-that-be don’t give a Tinker’s damn about dolphins or blue skies. In fact, they even deny the very science that is proving us to be our own worst enemy.

Iain M. Banks, a Scottish author and essayist, made this observation in his 1993 novel, Complicity: “The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what we are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others.”

A certain disconnect that seems pertinent was explored by Albert Camus in his 1947 novel, The Plague. In it, the rich and the poor are severely separated by circumstance. Both share a desire to survive, but the privileged have the wherewithal to do so.

I feel fortunate to live in a town that’s small enough to have a real sense of community. Differences in this dot on the map melt in the presence of need. We have barely noticeable class divisions. We depend on each other for goods and services, friendships and goodwill. We drink together in our bars and sit next to each other for the plays produced by a talented cast of local actors at our two theaters. It seems that not a day goes by that somebody isn’t asking for help for somebody else. We tend to oblige as we can, opening our wallets to pull out a five or a twenty. A website, Livingston Fights the Coronavirus, was created within days of the initial outbreak to help deal with the vagaries of the pandemic. It offers advice, resources, alerts, solace and even a Zoom class in baking focaccia.

But we are hurting as a nation, as a people. Some have lost their jobs, their livelihoods, their sense of a secure future. Hopes are being put on the back burner as we struggle just to survive. There are businesses in each of our towns that may never again open their doors, neighborhood restaurants that lack the resources to continue in their quests to offer alternatives to the cash-rich chains. I fear we may become accustomed to our isolation and not emerge to even shop as we once did. We may be allowing ourselves to become prisoners of Amazon.

Tapping into my wife’s optimism, I hope to see our humanity triumph over adversity. Our social distancing will lead—someday soon, I hope—to more ardent nearness. Maybe this imposed lack of human interaction will lead to a deeper understanding of each other, our communities and our nation.

We might even discover that our helping each other in this time of crisis might translate into a universal practice that does not play second fiddle to greed and is not motivated by crisis.

Illustration by Michelangelo and Courtney A. Liska

A Recipe for the Sequestered

Stay home. Read. Surf the internet. Bake cookies and/or bread. Do crossword puzzles. Write a poem. Watch your favorite movie over and over. Call an old friend. Make mac ‘n cheese or your mother’s meatloaf. Clean under the kitchen sink. Tell your children stories about your grandparents. Wash your hands frequently. Design the garden you need to plant in the coming weeks. Organize a junk drawer. Find something to laugh about. Apologize for something you wish you hadn’t said. Tell somebody you love them.

I learned at a very young age to never say aloud, “I’m bored.”

“I’ll give you ‘I’m bored’,” my father would say, his syntax always a challenge. He’d then assign me additional chores to help pass the time.

While I’m sure there are experts on the subject of boredom who, given an audience, could demonstrate exactly what boredom is, I’m content with my own notion that boredom is less about having nothing to do than just being weary of doing the same thing. Boredom is an active state, accompanied by feelings of lethargy and dissatisfaction. Ennui is its five-letter synonym frequently found in crossword puzzles. It is French and sounds quite dramatic if spoken in an exhalation and with a casual brushing back of one’s hair from the brow. Try it. It’s fun.

To stave off boredom for fear that Dad will come back from the dead and make me clean the garage, I’ve kept a journal of our self-quarantine.

Day 1: Didn’t leave the house. Didn’t know this is how shelter-in-place works, but Geri said it was. I know better than to argue. The day seemed normal enough. Read, did a couple of crossword puzzles, monitored the situation in Washington—resisting the urge to throw things at the screen images of Trump. Toilet paper inventory good at five spare rolls of 2-ply.

Made some garlicky sausages with mashed potatoes. Watched missed episodes of My Mother, the Car. To bed by 1:30 a.m.

Day 2: After being particularly sedentary yesterday, today I walked around the deck for about 10 minutes. Felt great, until I “hit the wall” at minute “8.” After a brief break, I finished the last two minutes. Plopped onto the couch to continue my reading of Plato’s Republic, which I read in college. In Greek, it’s much easier to detect the nuances of his dialogue and to see just how much is lost in translation. Watched Zorba the Greek.

Felt inspired in the kitchen: σπανακόπιτα, καρολίνα, and, of course, πλακοῦς. Opa!

Day 3: This isolation thing has me inspecting the house more than usual. It made me ponder the notion of dust and all of its many properties and how it has a remarkable ability to spread evenly across horizontal surfaces. I wonder if a little dust isn’t perhaps good for the soul. It is, after all, what we’re supposed to return to, after a quick stop at being ashes. I think that’s the order. Listened to Mozart’s Requiem in D minor until Geri got home. She was uninterested in hearing any of my musings about dust and said I was blocking her view of Inside Edition. Listened to Mahler’s Symphony No.2, Resurrection. It cheered me up.

Made an interesting “survivalist” dinner from one can each of beets, tuna fish, and pickled asparagus. Geri opted for a bag of Cheetos from her private stash.

Day 4: Addressed the dust situation again. Geri suggested I address the “situation” (her quotes) with a moist rag. Or maybe it was a damp rag? Is there a difference? I started on the highest shelf in the living room and found a book that I’d forgotten we had: “100,000 Names for Your Baby.” That’s a lot of names to ponder, even if you exclude the chapter on Texas towns that have become popular names for boys. I told Geri how I’d spent the day and asked her if she thought the names we had chosen for our two babies were good enough. You know? In retrospect. She took the book away from me.

There was plenty of leftover beets, tuna fish and pickled asparagus. Geri had a PB&J and chose to eat it in a different room, while I listened to Thelonious Monk’s Straight, No Chaser.

Day 5: Discovered three more books of baby names. Quit dusting. I tightened the handles on four saucepans. I might be obsessing. Not sure. Our TP supply seems adequate. I noticed that Geri’s hair seems to be getting whiter. Must be the light.

Day 6: Ate half-a-cantaloupe and played 13 games of computer solitaire. I had a friend tell me that he didn’t like computer solitaire because you can’t cheat. I made an espresso while I wondered what the point of cheating is in a game one plays alone. Are you going to be somehow rewarded? And if your cheating is discovered are you stripped of some imaginary title and humiliated like Lance Armstrong? Huh, what then? And then I tried to remember when I learned to play solitaire and who taught me. I have no such recollections. Maybe we’re born with solitaire as a genetic imprint.

Made chicken stock and watched five back-to-back episodes of “Chicago P.D.”

Day 7: The days seem to just rush by. Watched CNN while I untangled the 37 device chargers I found in a kitchen drawer. I tried to recall 37 devices we might have owned over the years but couldn’t get further than the four I’ve had. Because they were abandoned in a drawer, I thought they had outlived their usefulness, but why take chances? I neatly rolled each cord and secured each with rubber bands and put them back in the drawer.

Made matzoh balls for the soup I made on Day 6. They were delicious. I told Geri about my day with the tangled chargers. She looked at me blankly and said, “Who cares?”

Day 8: Bach’s Goldberg Variations (all thirty of them) accompanied my researching Israeli newspapers to discover if the crossword puzzles are in Hebrew, meaning that the “across” clues would read right to left. I once bought a food magazine in Paris, intending to read it on the long flight home. It was in French and I don’t read French, which only made the flight seem longer, especially when I tried to do the crossword puzzle.

Finally finished off the beets, tuna fish and pickled asparagus. You might wonder why I say “tuna fish” and not just “tuna.” I wonder that, too. It might be a cultural thing. Anyway, Geri had nachos.

Day 9: My daughter, who seems happy enough with the name we gave her, has been doing our grocery shopping for us—as well as for others—during this merciless incarceration. This is a particularly kind and wonderful thing for her to do. She dresses in very funny costumes as she performs her new-found duties. I laugh at her impersonations, but last week’s portrayal of the Grim Reaper was perhaps a bit much. Far be it from me to complain, but she forgot the kosher dill pickles. For much of my life, pickles and sauerkraut were my tribe’s staffs of life. We like pickles so much that we even wrap them in thinly pounded round steak and serve them with gravy, sauerkraut and bread dumplings (knedlíky a zelí) on Passover.

Finished the matzoh-ball soup. A pickle would have been nice.

Day 10: It’s Monday. I haven’t juggled in a long time, so I found three tennis balls and discovered that I’ve still got it. I cross juggle. Circular juggling is not for the faint-of-heart. Practiced my origami skills then, but I still can’t seem to get past the paper airplane stage. At least they fly. Practiced some charade moves in the bathroom mirror. Noticed the mirror needs cleaning. Have no idea where the Windex might be. An e-mail suggested that Tuesday coffee with Stephen is postponed until, possibly, October. Tried to cheer myself up with Rilke’s Book of Hours. Backfired.

Roasted a chicken for dinner while my Monday with Mel took place via telephone. Carrots with cumin and orange are a simple pleasure. So is a phone call that picks right up from it ended two months ago.

Day 11: Sent an e-mail to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick thanking him for his “Do the Right Thing by Your Grandchildren and Just Die Already” economic relief program. I assured him that I would volunteer to do the right thing as soon as he does. Spent almost an hour wondering why anybody could possibly care what Britney Spears thinks about wealth redistribution. TP inventory still good.

Hamburgers tonight, with lots of thyme and a brandy-mustard-cream sauce. Oven-baked bistro fries. Geri likes almost anything with gravy.

Day 12: Forwarded a copy of yesterday’s e-mail to Brit Hume, he of Fox News, who wants most of my age group to die to save Wall Street. Made him the same offer as Dan’s, adding a common suggestion that begins with “Go” and ends with “Yourself.” The line’s getting longer.

Made corn chowder. Used frozen corn-on-the-cob and saved the cobs. These are uncertain times.

Day 13: Called a friend in New York who I haven’t seen or talked to in almost 50 years. He said, “What’s new?” I hung up. Who’s got time for that? Thought about it all day. Exhausted. Baseball should have started today. Bummer. Watched Fear Strikes Out. Didn’t help. Might have made things worse.

Hot dogs for dinner—Chicago style, of course.

Day 14: Couldn’t find my lace-up work boots. Geri asked, “Why do you need them? You don’t work.” Went back to Plato. Listened to music from the Byzantine era.

Made Sicilian meat sauce for pasta. Always use imported pasta that has been extruded through bronze dies. Coarser texture holds more sauce.

Day 15: Watched Outbreak, the 1995 medical thriller starring Dustin Hoffman. Edge-of-your-seat entertainment that I certainly didn’t need to watch in the time of Covid-19. Think I’ll pass on Contagion and Flatliners. Maybe something funny. “Blazing Saddles.”

Beans for dinner, then. TP inventory still good.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Rouladen

8 thin slices of top round of beef, each measuring 4 x 6 inches
1 ½ Tbs. Colman’s mustard
4 kosher dill pickle spears
2 tsps. dried marjoram
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1 Tbs. oil
½ cup finely chopped onion
½ cup finely chopped carrots
⅔ cup finely chopped celery
1 Tbs. flour
⅓ cup dry white wine
1 ¼ cups beef broth
¼ tsp. dried thyme
1 bay leaf

Pound slices of meat to ¼-inch thickness.
Brush top of each slice with mustard. Cut each pickle spear crosswise in half. Place spear in center of each slice. Sprinkle with marjoram. Fold over ends of each slice toward center. Fold other ends over to enclose pickles. Tie each roll with string. Sprinkle with black pepper.
Heat butter in casserole or Dutch oven and add beef rolls. Cook, turning as necessary, until nicely browned all over, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove beef rolls.
To the casserole add onion, carrots and celery. Cook, stirring, until wilted.
Sprinkle with flour and stir with wire whisk to blend. Add wine, stirring rapidly with whisk. Stir in broth. Add thyme and bay leaf. Return meat rolls to casserole. Cover and let simmer 1 hour.
Serve with sauce spooned over.

As pestilence devours the earth, the ashen-orange Antichrist rides his pale horse in the apocalypse—accompanied by the Manny, Moe and Jack of his administration—where he discovers that many Americans hoard toilet paper as if the latest plague to beset mankind is an acute diarrhea that may last a fortnight or two.

Unfortunately, that is about all he knows about a crisis he believed was a hoax perpetrated by a leftist media just three weeks ago. What he also understands is that many of his friends are losing their shirts in the stock market. For them, their bankers, the airlines and Fox News, he is empathetic and willing to offer expensive cash bailouts or, in the case of Fox, continued bribery payments.

Why, I wonder, if the Fed has dropped interest rates to near-zero levels, don’t the big boys put up some collateral and borrow what they need to get back on their industrial feet? Oh…is it because one doesn’t have to pay back bailouts? Free money? Socialism for the rich.

For those who actually work for a living—waiting tables, digging ditches, running small businesses, tending bar, playing music, cleaning hotel rooms, picking up trash—his attitude initially was summed up in the oft-used expression, “Go piss up a rope.”

His advisers then told him that he could buy re-election by giving every adult citizen $1,000—or perhaps a tad more—of their own money. (Too bad Bloomberg hadn’t thought of this.) Trump’s base, which seems to wallow in its collective lack of education, has characterized Bernie Sanders as a communist nut yet sees this cash bailout as being the very foundation of capitalism. When Andrew Wang, who I believe should be named Secretary of the Future, suggested a monthly stipend, the super-rich went ape while the Orange Menace’s base tried to figure out how much cheap beer $1,000 would buy every month. It also now views the racist Twit-in-Chief as a fair-minded humanitarian whose spiteful attitudes towards non-whites have been magically erased by a hands-on transformation from Billy Graham’s moronic son.

And then I heard one of the condescending henchmen say how Americans need the $1,000 to get by for the next two or three months. Really? What world does he live in?

It’s been more than a week since I’ve ventured out of the house. That’s not exactly true. I’ve been to the doctor; and the liquor store where my friend brings my Scotch to my car. It’s been about 10 days since I last went to the grocery store. Because I typically go to the market every day, I miss it as an activity that provides mild entertainment, minimal exercise, and a chance to visit with some of my friends who work there and the neighbors I run into.

It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make because I don’t want to get sick, nor do I wish to make others sick by spreading specific forms of germs that I may or may not have. While I have been tested (negative for the virus I learned just last night), many others can’t because of a shortage of test materials the pandemic task force failed to order. Oh, that can’t be right. That tiny branch of the government was dismantled by his Orangeness so the funds could be given to Walmart’s poverty-stricken owners. Must be somebody else’s fault.

Anyway, my not spreading disease just seems like the right and kind thing to do. Social distancing is what I’ll practice unless Astrud Gilberto wants to give me bossa nova dance lessons.

Stockpiling of food stores to last a week or two, although that time frame could stretch much longer, seems like the prudent thing to do. Although we’re always prepared at our house for a couple of weeks of really odd meals should the need arise—mostly due to weather—I wish I had picked up a few extra items for the larder. Oh, well…

I’ve admitted in this space before that I like to look into the shopping carts of others to see what they are buying. It amuses me, sometimes, and frequently challenges me to imagine what kind of meals they might be making. It’s also fun to notice body types and see how they reflect their grocery orders.

But back to toilet paper. While the purchase of mass numbers of rolls seems to have ebbed, many are now turning to arming themselves. I’ve seen several pictures of lines of people awaiting entry to gun shops in various parts of the country.

I’m not sure why, although I’m pretty sure it has something to do with an “I-got-mine” mentality that some folks have adopted since Ronald Reagan decided government should favor the rich while hoodwinking the poor.

But maybe they are just imbecilic gun nuts with some vague understanding of the Second Amendment who are using this crisis as an excuse to buy more weapons. Or are they seeking to protect the caches of toilet paper they’ve rightfully hoarded? Are they actually willing to shoot somebody who wants a clean bottom? Or maybe they just want to retaliate in a meaningful way should somebody not sneeze into a tissue or elbow.

And then I read somebody’s expression of this as “a response to the coming of martial law, because Montanans will shoot back.” I can assure you that I will not. Ironically, those most likely to oppose martial law with violence are those most likely to have supported the man who most likely would impose it.

Go figure.

One of the things I noticed at the grocery store 10 days ago—other than the run on toilet paper—was that people were shopping without lists. They were filling their carts and baskets willy-nilly with items whose main virtue was that they weren’t perishable.

At checkout, a gentleman in front of me had full cases of canned peas, corn, green beans, carrots and one pound of ground pork. I can’t even begin to imagine what he was planning to make.

I inspected the dried or powdered milk option. Has anybody ever used such a thing? And why? The first box I picked up had a “best used by” date from 1967, which even pre-dates the concept of low fat. Instant potatoes seem to be a thing, also, for no reason I can imagine.

Judging by many of the carts I peered into, Jell-O and Oreos seem to be the preferred dessert for Armageddon—that “great day of God, the Almighty, in which He pours out their just and holy wrath against those unrepentant sinners led by Satan.” I have absolutely no idea what in the hell that means, but it sounded sufficiently ominous for me to throw caution to the wind and place two packages of instant pudding into my basket.

I saw one lady put eight loaves of plain-wrap generic white bread in her cart. At $3.29 a loaf, each loaded with no fewer than 13 ingredients nobody can pronounce without a degree in chemistry, she would save a small fortune by buying some flour and yeast and making her own bread. I know it’s a lot of work blah, blah, blah…but if nobody is allowed to leave their homes unless they’re bleeding from their eyes, what the hell else is there to do?

Unlike store-bought bread, which stays soft and rubbery with no signs of mold for up to a decade, milk turns sour pretty quickly. One shopper I noticed had 12 gallons of 2% milk, each with an expiration date marked for three days later. Unless she’s running an orphanage, there’s going to be a lot of crying over spoiled milk.

Of course, she might be teaming up with the lady who had a cart load of cereal that are purposely displayed at eye-level of a kid stuck in that fold-down part of the shopping cart. If the kids are sequestered at home, exactly how much sugar do you want to give them before you’ve had your second cup of coffee?

And what’s up with buying cases of bottled water? In all of my reading about Covid-19, I’ve not noticed anything about our water supply being threatened. Besides that, based on the amount of toilet paper being hoarded, everybody seems to be confident the toilets will flush. When we lived in earthquake-prone Los Angeles, we kept a case or two of bottled water because it made sense. We never knew which room we should keep it in, however. The unpredictable nature of earthquakes made it virtually impossible to know which part of the house might collapse, possibly burying our water supply.

One person I know observed that a lot of folks are buying up toilet paper and bottled water but are forgetting to buy food. He has invested a small fortune in canned beans—cannellini, black, kidney, navy, great northern—as well as six cans of every variety of Bush’s baked beans. He’s on a high-protein diet, but his real motivation is to be able to trade beans for toilet paper, should the need arise.

I think his investment will out-perform the Dow.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Mashed Potatoes

This is a time for comfort food if ever there was one, and nothing says comfort better than mashed potatoes. This is my favorite recipe and it goes perfectly with baked ham or garlicky sausages.

2 pounds Yukon Gold or Russet potatoes, peeled and diced
Kosher salt
4 Tbs. unsalted butter
4 oz. crème fraîche
1/2 C. whole milk
2 tsp. Dijon mustard
2 tsp. whole-grain or coarse mustard
1 tsp. dry mustard
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Fresh parsley, for garnish

Put the potatoes in a large saucepan with 1 tablespoon of salt and enough water to cover. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes, until the potatoes are very tender. Drain the potatoes in a colander and return them to the saucepan. Add the butter, crème fraîche, milk, Dijon mustard, whole-grain mustard, dry mustard, 1 tablespoon salt, and the pepper and beat the potatoes until very smooth and creamy.
Sprinkle with fresh chopped parsley and serve.

At 2:00 a.m. in a part of Baltimore I no longer recall, the rock band I was working with loaded into a Yellow Cab—an old Checker Marathon with fold-down jump seats—and asked the driver where the after-hours action was. Sizing us up as a quintet of hippies in the early ’70s, he told us about a place where the girls “do amazing things.”

It sounded promising to four of us.

We ended up at the Point, Fells Point at water’s edge to be exact, and were let out in front of one of the scores of bars in that waterfront neighborhood that had its origin in the late-1700s; its gentrification would occur in the ‘80s.

There was a barker touting the adult entertainment inside what was a strip club. “No cover! No minimum! You won’t believe what Miss Sheila…”

Baltimore’s waterfront in those days was an odd mix of Colonial brick row houses and abandoned warehouses. Belgian blocks paved the narrow streets and the businesses that lined them sold sea-faring memorabilia, used goods, working-men’s clothing and boots. There were fortune tellers, head shops and tattoo parlors. It was as strange an urban mix as could be imagined.

And it was a seriously dangerous place to be—rife with drug addicts and dealers, small-time criminals, hookers and drunken sailors looking to brawl. It stood as the American equivalent of the storied Marseilles.

Shortly before dawn, and after being quite amazed at Miss Sheila’s rather remarkable talents, we ended up at one of the tattoo parlors. We drew straws, this band who’d had way too much fun. I was to be the last to go, and by the time it was my turn, the sun was up and I was sober.

I passed on the tat.

Jews are not supposed to get tattoos. Maybe. It’s not particularly clear from reading the Torah. Leviticus 19:28 literally translates, “And a cutting for the dead you will not make in your flesh; and writing marks you will not make on you; I am the Lord.” Because that passage is wide open to vast interpretation, I think Jews opted to say, “Schmuck, don’t put ink under your skin.” The idea of tattooed Jews not being allowed burial in a Jewish cemetery is unfounded, although Lenny Bruce’s joke about his tattooed arm is priceless: “Don’t worry–they’ll cut off this arm and bury it in a Catholic cemetery.”

I had an uncle who was a bit of an embarrassment to the family. He had a tattoo. Like him, it was crude and monochromatic. It commemorated his crossing the International Dateline during the Second World War. My father wrote it off because he was Navy; my dad was Army.

Though fascinated by the tattooed men and women who displayed their body art in circus sideshows when I was a kid, I never had any desire to be host to any tattoo. That early morning in Baltimore I remember numbly staring at generic tattoo options displayed on flash sheets that adorned the walls of the parlor’s waiting room. There were hearts, roses, anchors, barbed wire, and cartoon characters.

Today there are some pretty fantastic examples of tattoo artistry. I see them on the arms and legs of people I don’t really know but with whom I have daily interactions. I see them on my daughter, my partner in this blog adventure. She has eleven of them, I overheard her say recently.

Tattoos have become a part of our culture by design, and I am doing my best to buy into an acceptance of something that seems very foreign.

What must have seemed terribly foreign was the act of tattooing that Nazi Germany forced on the prisoners of Auschwitz, the death camp that promised that work would set them free. By tattooing numbers on the prisoners’ forearms, the Nazis attempted to dehumanize people in order to systematically and mechanically exterminate them in a guilt-free manner. Individuals—Jews, Romany, Poles, Czechs, Russians, homosexuals, the physically and mentally infirm—defiled with numbers and devoid of names or personalities. They were not to be related to as members of the human race Hitler aspired to create—the “master” race of blue-eyed blonds.

Although there are those so clumsily ill-informed as to deny that the Holocaust ever happened, there is irrefutable proof of the atrocities committed by criminal Nazis. The unspeakable acts of brutality and barbarism are well documented and photographed. And as hard as it may be to even fathom, it can happen again.

I’ve told this story before but I believe it bears repeating:

“AS HE REACHED FOR THE SALT across the table in a quiet dining room at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the sleeve of his white, French-cuffed linen shirt rose up his arm, revealing the tattoo that had once reduced his name and identity to a number.

“Samuel Pisar recited his haftorah for his bar mitzvah in the winter of 1941 inside an apartment in the Nazi-established Jewish ghetto of Bialystock, Poland, his birthplace. A few months later his father was executed on the street outside their home, and the thirteen-year-old Samuel was transported in a cattle car to Majdanek, the first of six concentration camps he would call home until his escape from a death march headed to Dachau four years later.

“His mother and younger sister were transported elsewhere for extermination.

“His life, detailed in his 1980 book, Of Blood and Hope, was a saga of the nearly unspeakable, of survival and self-recovery. Pisar became an international attorney and diplomat. With earned doctorates from Harvard and the Sorbonne, he served as an adviser to President John F. Kennedy and French president Valery Giscard d’ Estaing, and counted among his friends and clients Artur Rubenstein, Marc Chagall and Elizabeth Tayor.

“He dined at fine restaurants and remembered the ‘gray’ bread they ate for sustenance in the camps.

“He told me over the course of our 1980 lunch that ‘the gnawing starvation that sucks the will out of two-thirds of mankind and subjects whole continents to political and social convulsions is no abstraction to one like me.’

“In measured language he expressed concern that ‘well-meaning but desperate majorities [could be tempted] to surrender political power to totalitarian leaders.’

“Effective leadership is what is desired by the electorate, he said, noting that ‘effective’ is not necessarily a shared value.

“’That’s something that is not understood about Hitler. He was not just a wild man who took over. He was man who offered solutions to the people and was elected to office.’”

It is unlikely that any survivors of the Holocaust will be alive in just ten years. There are countless polls and studies that show denial and gross misinformation about and misunderstanding of the events preceding and during World War II. As the survivors disappear, many of their stories will disappear with them, and without a collective memory the likelihood of a repetition of this most sordid crime increases.

The story must survive. The Shoah (Hebrew for “catastrophe”) must inform our behavior as we move forward as a society.

We are duty-bound to never forget.

Balancing the courage to listen to people tell their stories with characterizations that might trivialize the inherent evil of Nazism is approached with a certain trepidation. While there is no shortage of films and documentaries, books and articles, conversation will continue to best personalize the stories that need telling.

Sadly, 6 million Jewish stories were taken from us. But some have survived.

Mr. Pisar’s story is one I’ve both read and heard from him. I think his is a story worth repeating and worth remembering.

I’ve chosen to honor his memory (he died in 2015, aged 86) by having the number assigned to him at Auschwitz tattooed on the inside of my left forearm, where his was. I’m hoping it will spark conversations and open doors to an understanding of how capable some are to disregard human dignity and life itself.

The tattooist noted that most people want their first tattoo to be of great significance and import. He was right on both accounts.

It’s a small effort being made from the heart. Never forget.

Photo montage by Courtney A. Liska; Tattoo by Noah Riley

Two reliable sources for Holocaust study online are Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum at http://www.auschwitz.org/en/ and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at https://www.ushmm.org/. I also found JewishGen to be a great source for genealogy research of Holocaust victims and survivors at https://www.jewishgen.org/new/.

Chicken Stock

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

Wash the chicken bones under running water. Blanch the bones 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 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 most embarrassing moment of my life came when, as Nation Chief of the YMCA’s Indian Guides, I appeared in a full Indian-like headdress in a parade honoring the pioneers of the Conejo Valley.

From my limited knowledge of where I once lived, the first pioneers of this vast valley straddling the Ventura and Los Angeles County line, arrived shortly after World War II and immediately built three- and four-bedroom tract homes on lots the size of postage stamps. A decade or two later, a new set of pioneering developers tore down the original homesteads and replaced them with bigger tract houses on the same tiny lots.

The only thing that remained of those halcyon pre-pioneer days were rattlesnakes and cat-eating coyotes, both of which the encroaching crowds deserved.

The Indian Guides program was started in 1926 as a way for fathers and their children to build relationships while teaching respect, reverence and strong family values. The original intent was to honor Native Americans by borrowing from their traditions and lore.

Rather than actually studying Native lore, however, the program quickly devolved to borrowing from Hollywood’s racist stereotypes. There was the “talking stick” one had to hold if one wanted to say something; there were faux rituals, regalia and tom-toms; there was a significant use of “ugh” and plenty of “woo-woos” and “hoo-hoos.” Requests were usually begun by saying, “me want-um…”

I cringe even thinking about it. (Thankfully, the program’s name was changed to Adventure Guides in 2003.)

On occasional weekends the Tribes of a Nation would have a pow-wow in some 1930s-era dilapidated camp in some faraway woods or mountains. There would be a lot of parent-child activities until the kids fell asleep and then the fathers would drink heavily and/or pass the peace pipe, if you catch my drift.

It was at one of the winter soirees in Big Bear, California, that I had my first revelation about American gluttony.

I had asked one of the fathers who had been to this particular camp in years past how the food was.

“It’s awful,” he said, grimacing. He then cheerfully added, “but they give you a lot of it.”

Call me an ungrateful snob, but large portions of bad food are nothing I have ever desired.

I have been documenting stories of bad food experiences ever since.

Long before I was participating in desecrating Native culture (although we really didn’t know it at the time) Geri and I were taken to the newest, hippest restaurant in all of Southern California, Michael’s. The place was notable for nouvelle cuisine and high prices. In the days before ATMs, this place was only missing an on-site loan officer to offer assistance paying your tab.

This is when I was introduced to tiny portions of food presented on plates that could easily hold a whole turkey. The food might have tasted great had there been more than one bite per course. I’ll never know. After paying what seemed equal to down payment for a house in the aforementioned Conejo Valley, we bid our hosts goodbye and did a drive-thru at a McDonald’s a few blocks away.

Our hosts went to Taco Bell.

Food has been something of an obsession of mine for what seems an eternity. My road trips are planned around where to eat—a favorite Mexican restaurant in Idaho, a great pizza joint in Utah, the best Thai place in Las Vegas, a Greek café in Baker, California. It’s the Tasting Tour to Los Angeles.

When flying domestically one can only wonder about the hundreds of great restaurants 33,000 feet below while you’re eating stale crackers and processed cheese.

One time I was having to fly somewhere and when I boarded, there at the end of the ramp was a folding card table loaded with brown-paper lunch bags. I thought maybe the airlines was having a bake sale. It turned out that the bags contained our in-flight meal which, if I recall correctly, was two cookies and a 7-ounce can of 7-Up. I looked into trading, but everybody had the exact same thing.

Well, I huffed to myself, I’ll never fly this airline again.

Who am I kidding? I’m not going to boycott an airline because they once insulted my palate with a couple of pecan sandies. Also, if I happen to want to go to Terre Haute—and who doesn’t?—and that’s the only airline… Nobody is so principled that they’re going to walk.

I have great empathy for people on restricted diets, except maybe vegans. Why should I care about somebody whose idea of manna is kale. I also don’t understand completely why if one wants a plant-based diet there is such a clamoring for fake eggs, fake cheese and Impossible meat? I can’t even pronounce the chemicals it takes to turn a zucchini into something that resembles a strip of bacon. I like both zucchini and bacon in their somewhat natural state.

Of course, there are great philosophical, moral and ethical questions regarding the slaughter of livestock for human consumption. Cruelty is always at the crux of the argument. Is it cruel to kill a cow so we can eat steak? Well, killing isn’t usually a pleasant thing.

When I was in the fourth grade, our class field trip was to Chicago’s Union Stockyards to see how cows became food. It’s only in retrospect that I realize that I went to a very tough school. Most kids got to go to the Brookfield Zoo to look at animals that were still breathing. Nine years old might be a little young to witness cattle being hoisted in the air by their back legs only to have their throats slit while hanging upside down. Though not a deal breaker, it is a vision that tends not to fade.

When Sinclair Lewis wrote The Jungle (1906), his intention was to promote socialism in a society that cared little for the working poor. The reading public tended to focus on the deplorable sanitary conditions of the Chicago Stockyards. Generations have sworn off eating meat after reading the novel.

“I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach,” Lewis said.

Under any circumstance the stomach is a bad place to be hit, especially if you’re sick enough to end up in a hospital. Like airplane food (except in Europe), hospital food (except in Europe) is notoriously bad. This is something that has confused me for many years.

First of all, let’s assume that most of the people eating in hospitals are either sick or are employees who forgot their lunch at home. Let’s further assume that all of those sick people are at the hospital to get better. I was raised to believe that nutrition is an important part of maintaining one’s health and therefore any food you consume in that process should be good for you.

The hospital argument is that the food the staff prepares is good for you. My argument is that if it tastes like crap you’re not going to eat it and you will therefore not benefit from its consumption. It’s a vicious cycle.

Over the past seven years, I’ve been unfortunate enough to have gained significant experience in the world of institutional eating in five different places. My first experience was so bad that Geri brought salmon from our restaurant for the hospital’s kitchen to cook for me. I’m not alone in my assessment. When Jim Harrison was in that same hospital, I would bring him bowls of Italian meatballs. For Mike Art, it was grilled quail and veal saltimbocca.

The food at our new hospital is actually quite good. I’ve even gone there specifically to have lunch a few times. But something happens to the food between the kitchen and the patient rooms. Magically the flavor disappears—maybe into the elevator shaft.

When I was in Denver, I had a choice of several facilities that offered the physical rehabilitation I needed to face surgery. I chose the one that actually mentioned food in its brochure. As bad as the food was at that version of Shady Pines, I was glad that I hadn’t opted for any of the others.

Two of the things that contribute to great food are salt and fat, especially fat. Sadly, they are items that apparently aren’t allowed in hospital kitchens.

I found it oddly ironic that the best tuna fish salad sandwich I’ve ever had was at National Jewish Health in Denver. Another staple of the Jewish palate, chicken salad, was also quite good. I would have liked to have tried the matzoh ball soup, but it wasn’t on the menu.

And why isn’t wine served in hospitals? It is in Italy, which is the next place I want to get sick.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Saltimbocca

This simple, elegant meal can be found in trattorie throughout Rome. The name “saltimbocca” means to “jump in the mouth.”

veal scallopini*
salt
freshly ground pepper
4 slices imported Italian prosciutto, cut in half crosswise
16 large fresh sage leaves
all-purpose flour
3 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil, or as needed
6 Tbs. unsalted butter
1/4 cup marsala
1 cup chicken or veal stock
sautéed spinach, for serving

Prepare the spinach by cooking in oil, flavored with garlic. Remove it from the heat and cover the pan to keep it warm.

Season the scallopini lightly with salt and pepper. Cover each scallopini with a half slice of the prosciutto. Place two sage leaves over the prosciutto and fasten each in place with a toothpick, weaving the toothpick in and out.

Dredge the scallopini in the flour to lightly coat both sides. Tap off excess flour. Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large, heavy skillet over medium heat until the butter is foaming. Slip as many of the scallopini, prosciutto side down, into the pan as will fit without touching. Cook just until the prosciutto is light golden, about 2 minutes. Turn and cook until the second side is browned, about 2 minutes. Remove and drain on paper towels. Repeat with remaining scallopini, adding more oil if necessary.

Remove all the scallopini from the skillet and pour off the oil. Return the pan to the heat and deglaze the pan with the marsala. Add the remaining 4 tablespoons butter and cook until the wine is reduced by about half, about 3 minutes. Pour in the chicken stock and bring to a vigorous boil. Tuck the scallopini into the sauce. Simmer until the sauce is reduced and lightly thickened, about 3 to 4 minutes. Taste and season with salt and pepper, if necessary.

To serve, spoon the spinach in a mound in the center of each plate. Arrange the saltimbocca over the spinach. Spoon some of the pan sauce over the scallopini and serve immediately.

(*) For four servings, have your butcher cut eight, two-ounce portions of veal top round pounded to about 1/8th of an inch thick.

Lurking behind every convoluted story about mankind in the throes of madness lies an even more convoluted story about mankind in the throes of madness. It is a notion best described as layered—a heaped by-product of the ruling idiocracy that awaits to surprise us every morning.

This is one of those stories.

It gets a little tricky in both its genesis and development, and it might not work out at all. But at this point, though lost and confused after just two paragraphs, I’m confident I can tell a credible tale about my latest obsession—a motor home—and the off-off-Broadway production of Paradise Now!, a semi-improvisational play involving audience participation that was notorious for a scene in which actors recited a list of social taboos that included nudity. While speaking of nudity the cast disrobed, which led to multiple arrests for indecent exposure. This was in the 1960s when nudity below 14th Street was generally frowned upon but was perfectly fine in Times Square.

Julian Beck and his wife, Judith Malina, were the geniuses behind the Living Theatre, an ad hoc troupe of actors that moved from one East Village space to the next to avoid New York City fines for illegal occupancy, i.e., criminal trespassing. Basically, they were intellectual squatters with makeup and stage lights. There were also tax evasion charges, problems in Europe, and imprisonment and deportation from Brazil on obscenity charges. The troupe, characterized by none other than Keith Richards as “insane, hard-core,” also insisted that theater be spelled like the Brits prefer to spell it.

I studied, albeit briefly, with Beck. He said stuff like “that madman who inspires us all, Artaud, does have some advice.”

At that point in my life, I had yet to hear of Artaud and so I wasn’t much inspired by him or his advice. Then Beck insisted that the students in my “Theater Ain’t for Sissies” class remove our clothing. Actually, the class was titled something else that I don’t remember unless I’m in the company of my therapist. As they say, there is no real cure for trauma, only expensive treatment.

Beck continued: “I think he [Artaud] is the philosopher, for those of us who work in theatre, whom we can reach toward most quickly, of whom we can say, yes, here is [the] one man since Rousseau who does uphold the idea of the non-civilized man.”

He added: “Our work had always striven to stress the sacredness of life.”

Besides the use of the word “striven,” this was some weird stuff to hear from a guy dressed head-to-toe in black that conjured images of Broadway choreographers. Did I mention that the six-foot Beck weighed about 98 pounds with a mostly bald head that Edvard Munch might have painted?

Artaud was a French intellectual who spent his afternoons at the belle epoque brasserie L’ Ami Louis in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where garlicky escargot was prepared à la Bourguignonne. As he sipped his Absinthe and sucked the snails from their shells, the idea of the Theatre of the Cruel came to fruition.   

Then he wrote, “words say little to the mind, compared to space thundering with images and crammed with sounds.”

And that, as you can plainly see, is why I want a motor home.

I don’t care about its condition. I also don’t care if it might never move from my driveway. In fact, I want only the shell of a motor home because I want to spend what’s left of the winter outfitting it to go nowhere this summer.

There are two theatrical codes at work in what a psychologist might describe as a fantastical dream. The first follows Artaud’s model in that such a laborious effort is a cruel exercise to no avail, especially when administered by one’s self. The second, owing to such figures as Bertolt Brecht and Jean Cocteau, is a model based on the absurd. Why, one might ask, create something for which there is not a need?

Exactly! I a way, I am waiting for Winnebago.

Without even considering any sense of theatricality, my wife thinks my current behavior is merely the product of a not-so-latent idiocy that will have found its final expression in my will. That, of course, is an absurd notion because I have not written a will and, anyway, soon after my demise my belongings will best be described as trash, which is cruel. If I expire on a Monday, there’s ample time to meet the Wednesday collection. More cruelty.

This is not the first time she has met an idea of mine with skepticism and scorn. I’ve never let that stop me.

I recently found a motor home online that was abandoned by the Rainbow Family of Living Light that I’d like to buy. It reportedly smells like the Grateful Dead’s first tour bus—a sublime mixture of weed, sweat and mustard gas. It’s about 45 feet long, which would be the equivalent of three master suites were it not for the fact that it is only 8 feet wide.

It apparently runs—which I consider a major drawback, except for the fact that it does need to get to my driveway from a wrecking yard in Oregon. Driving a motor home is not in my retirement plans.

I know a handful of reasonable people who worked hard, saved their money, and invested in what amounts to a bus without stanchions or hanging straps. As punishment, they have to emulate a transit worker and drive the thing, stopping a couple times a day to prepare meals. After a short day’s drive that costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 in gas, they can pull into a Walmart parking lot, spend a couple of hours unfolding everything that is found folded in a motor home—which is just about everything—and settle in for a night’s sleep on a bed that only two hours earlier had been a table.

I want this motor home because I can tinker with it, customize it to my very specific standards. All the while, I’ll be planning for a trip that won’t take place. I’ll focus on creating a mobile workspace—replete with an abbreviated library of research materials and fiction. I have grand ideas for a grand kitchen in which I might bake snails and broil oysters. I’ll use my modest building skills to construct cabinetry that is road-worthy for no reason. I’ll install a small television and put a satellite dish on the roof. It will also have a fine music system. And WiFi.

The toilet facilities will a require a sewer hook-up so that I don’t have to drive the motor home to an RV dumping place, the thought of which sounds particularly abhorrent.

Rainbow Family people have been occasional visitors to this little Montana town I call home. They seem harmless, though they do appear to be in need of a good scrubbing. I imagine they are mostly homeless. They sit around on the downtown sidewalks singing songs I don’t know and praying for world peace. They don’t really bother anybody, and they seem to be somewhat law-abiding citizens of no particular place.

Though largely anarchistic in their structure, one of the co-founders of the Family, which started sometime in 1970, is Garrett Beck. His parents once lead a theatre troupe with similar utopian desires.

I believe I’ll name my motor home-to-nowhere “Paradise.”

It’s what we all seek.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Escargots à la Bourguignonne

1 small garlic clove
1/2 tsp. table salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1-1/2 tsp. finely minced shallot
1 Tbs. finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1 Tbs. dry white wine
12 to 16 snails (from a 7- to 8-oz can)

About 2 cups kosher salt (for stabilizing shells)
12 to 16 sterilized escargot shells

Place oven rack in middle position and heat oven to 450°.
Mince and mash garlic to a paste with 1/8 teaspoon table salt.
Beat together butter, shallot, garlic paste, parsley, remaining table salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Beat in wine until combined well.
Divide half of garlic butter among snail shells. Stuff 1 snail into each shell and top snails with remaining butter. Spread kosher salt in a shallow baking dish and nestle shells, butter sides up, in salt.
Bake snails until butter is melted and sizzling, 4 to 6 minutes. Serve immediately.