Journal

I’m intrigued by how MAGA went from a simple declaration of hope for our nation to return to greatness to being the defining principle of what’s left of the Republican Party. Make America Great Again suggests that we’ve somehow fallen from Greatness—a state of being that I would argue we have never attained.

With every moment of our national history came stories to suggest that we were far from ever being great. There is a certain nostalgia for the 1950s by people my age and older. What we witnessed wasn’t greatness; it was a decade of prosperity and economic growth among white people. Blacks, for the most part, were excluded from the advantages whites had.

At the same time as an interstate highway grid was being built to facilitate automobile travel, inner city housing developments were sprouting up in American cities to help alleviate any sense that people of color were being ignored. We weren’t ignoring them as much as we were building tenements to replace the small homes scattered about. Neighborhoods were replaced with ghettos. Those ghettos ignored the needs of its residents for education and opportunity, lack of both lead to drug addiction and crime.

Watching videos of various right wing demonstrations of protest recently, most of the participants seemed barely old enough to know that our greatness, interpreted by them, was a failure. They were racist and exclusionary—exactly defining that which the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers hoped would be our future was, in fact, our failure.

My intrigue was somehow enhanced by learning about “fifteen-minute cities,” a concept from the French academic Carlos Moreno, that provides diversity and climate concern.

“The model is based on places such as New York and Paris,” wrote Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, “where most goods, from groceries to haircuts, can indeed be found within a fifteen-minute walk of your home.”

The author amends his description by noting that in “many New York neighborhoods, it’s closer to five, and in some Paris closer to two.” (Gopnik has lived in both cities.)

While I’ve been lucky enough to spend weeks in Paris, I have pleasant memories of being well inside those fifteen-minute (or less) parameters. Staying in the Latin Quarter in the late ‘70s, I would go to the open-air markets in the early morning to buy some assorted sausages, the wine shop for the obvious, and a mom-and-pop bakery for a baguette. Decades later, we were staying at our son’s mother-in-law’s home and my accepted offer to prepare lunch involved an easy walk a block’s distance that had different shops for meat, groceries, produce, wine, and bread.

It was a happy afternoon in the kitchen that autumn day.

Without having known before about this social construct, I realize that I have spent a good deal of my life in fifteen-minute cities. Where I grew up on Chicago’s West Side, everything was available within a two-block stretch of Roosevelt Road. A small grocery store, a dry cleaner’s, a pharmacy, the True Value hardware store that my father owned. Even our family’s physician had his clinic there. It was next door to the music store where I went for lessons and to listen to the latest records by Nat King Cole and Rosemary Clooney.

There was a corner dairy where I would go for a lunch of smoked whitefish and a dill pickle. It’s also where I would go to buy my mother’s cigarettes.

After leaving the West Side, my family bounced around the western suburbs, eventually settling on a country acreage four miles from the nearest town. Any need for products or services had to be approached by car. The same was true for my stays in Cleveland and Champaign-Urbana.

Living on New York’s Lower East Side was, in retrospect, living in that five-minute city suggested by Gopnik. A grocery store was one block south on Avenue D; on the way there was a laundromat, a pharmacy, and a deli. Four blocks west from my brownstone apartment was my favorite watering hole, McSorley’s Old Ale House. Three blocks south was Phoebe’s Tavern & Grill, just across the Bowery was the Bouwerie Lane Theatre, an off-Broadway venue in which I worked for several months.

Even my occasional jaunts to Katz’s Delicatessen or my Sunday tradition of lox and bagels at Ratner’s Second Avenue, next door to Fillmore East where I saw such performers as Frank Zappa, John and Yoko, and Miles Davis, to name but a few, my New York life was compact, contained in a small area. I didn’t have a car, but I was a 10-minute walk to the closest subway entrance.

Los Angeles is the antithesis of the fifteen-minute city. For seventeen years I contributed to climate change by not only driving a car to absolutely everything, but by doing so in stop-and-go traffic which regularly included gridlock.

When we moved thirty years ago to this small town in southwestern Montana there were two traffic lights and many of my family’s needs could be satisfied within a walking distance of fifteen minutes. One can still cover the three-block downtown in fewer than fifteen minutes, but downtown now hosts mostly restaurants, curio shops, art galleries, bookstores, and bars. The drug store is long gone and we’ve got a couple more traffic lights. And our growth is marked by stores and fast-food restaurants sprouting up on the town’s outskirts that increase the need for automobiles.

Seems like we might be moving in the wrong direction.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

VEAL PICCATA

One of my all-time favorites. It’s easy to prepare, as long as all the ingredients are ready. The recipe also works well with chicken breasts.

2 boneless veal cutlets, pounded thin
4 Tbs. unsalted butter
2 Tbs. olive oil
½ cup dry white wine
1 ¼ cups chicken stock
1 lemon, thinly sliced
1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
¼ cup capers, drained
2 tbsp. chopped parsley

Season veal; dredge in flour. Heat 2 tbsp. butter and oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add veal; cook 45-60 seconds per side. Remove and keep warm.

Add wine to skillet, and cook, scraping bottom of pan until reduced by half, about 3 minutes. Add stock and lemon slices, and bring to a boil; cook until reduced by half, about 8 minutes. Add remaining butter, juice, capers, and parsley, and season with salt and pepper. Pour sauce over veal and serve immediately.

O.M.G.

The week was sated with a most desperate search for mass diversion since America was divided over our respect for Dr. Anthony Fauci at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. We saw, for instance, the return of the face mask to those whose breathing was challenged by Canada’s forest fire smoke drifting into the eastern United States. A hundred million were affected, while 230 million were left undisturbed that our neighbor to the north had watched its old-growth forests turn into a tundra.

Then, of course, was the whole Trump thing with Jack Smith delivering a 37-count indictment that leveled charges of espionage, collusion, grand theft auto and shoplifting. He’s promised to surrender to authorities on Tuesday, when two-thirds of the country will hope to witness the first presidential perp walk in history. It won’t happen…the perp walk, that is.

Russia is continuing its invasion of Ukraine. Billionaires are fighting for outer-space dominance. None have yet to come close to matching Alan Shepard’s piloting his Freedom 7 Mercury capsule in a 1961 suborbital, 15-minute flight.

There were other prominent stories: Pat Robertson died, as did James G. Watt, the latter of which was a right-winger. Oh, wait, so was Robertson. The Unibomber also died. George Santos spent the week gathering information to prove his truthful self. Boris Johnson bowed out of Parliament.

And in California, the original site of car culture, Governor Gavin Newsom is begging the legislature to not cut public transportation funds.

I rode a bus once in Los Angeles. My car was in the shop somewhere in east L.A. I had a meeting in Century City. The bus was pretty convenient connecting the two places. I boarded the bus, stuck a handful of coins in the receptacle next to the driver. I looked up to find a seat and was taken aback by the sight of a busload of men wearing tuxedos. I felt under dressed in my three-piece Armani suit.

As we worked our way west on Santa Monica Boulevard, the tuxedo-clad men started disembarking. It was 10:30 in the morning and the busload of men were on their ways to their work as waiters.

But what was really important in the grand scheme of things this week was that the PGA and the Saudi Arabian pay-for-play LIV, after two years of suing each other, were merging. Maybe. No one knows for sure.

“The parties have signed an agreement that combines PIF’s golf-related commercial businesses and rights (including LIV Golf) with the commercial businesses and rights of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour into a new, collectively owned, for-profit entity to ensure that all stakeholders benefit from a model that delivers maximum excitement and competition among the game’s best players,” a statement from some golf faction reads.

Well, that certainly clears things up.

In a surprise press release Tuesday morning, the two circuits, along with the DP World Tour, announced “a landmark agreement to unify the game of golf, on a global basis.”

If anyone could do such a thing, it would come from the financing of the cash-rich Saudi Arabia. Blood money, it should be remembered, is the official currency of Saudi Arabia and only a year ago PGA head Jay Monahan suggested that players who defected to the up-start LIV were sullying the memories of those who lost their lives in the 9/11 attacks.

Monahan was named to be head of the planned merger, but will cede financial dealings to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which also deals in FIFA soccer. The Arab nation is using sports as a platform to improve its image soiled by human rights violations and murderous dismemberment allegedly ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

That’s an undertaking that seems difficult to accomplish.

This whole ruse is simply about the guarantee of millions of dollars for the golfers. It’s embarrassing to watch Monahan and those participating players contending that “this is what’s best for the game” and “this will allow our game to grow around the globe.”

To do what’s best for the game, I suggest following in the footsteps of Major League Baseball and start setting time limits on certain areas of play.

A couple of weeks ago I was watching a PGA tournament in which a golfer landed on a patch of pine straw. It was his second shot on a par-four hole. The color announcer recalled his various times spent shooting out of pine straw—with and without the presence of trees. Then the play-by-play announcer recalled a bunch of statistics. All the while, the player was trying to decide which club to use. Then they cut to a break that showed advertisements for a luxury car, a Rolex watch, and an investment fund.

After the break, viewers were treated to the golfer consulting with his caddie before finally settling on a club. After a few more minutes of taking practice swings, the golfer extricated his ball from its lie to roars from the crowd.

If baseball players are limited to how much they can take adjusting their gloves and jockstraps, golfers should be similarly restrained, not that there’s any need for a golfer to wear a jockstrap.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

PORK CHOPS ADAGIO

This was a popular item at my restaurant, Adagio. It’s simple and delicious. Serve with mashed potatoes.

2 (1″-thick) bone-in pork chops
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3 Tbs. olive oil
5 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
12 pickled cherry peppers, halved
¼ cup dry white wine
¼ cup chicken stock

Heat oven to 425°. Season chops with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tbsp. olive oil in a 12″ skillet over medium-high heat. Fry chops, flipping once, until browned, 5 to 8 minutes. Transfer pan to oven; roast until pork is cooked through, 18–20 minutes. Transfer chops to a plate. Return pan to medium heat, add remaining oil, garlic, and peppers; cook until garlic is golden, 3–4 minutes. Raise heat to high, add wine and stock; cook until reduced by half, 3 to 4 minutes. Spoon sauce over chops.

As I awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, I found myself transformed in my bed into a small dog.

I recognized myself for what I had become, mainly because I was vigorously chewing on a hairy paw, its claws like talons scratching the surface of my maxilla. I tried to speak, but nothing would emanate from my vocal cords besides a few barks ranging from guttural rumbles to shrill cries—any of which was meant to tell anyone within earshot that I was communicating an entire gamut of feelings or desires. Usually, my pleas are for food. Sometimes it just feels good.

Here I was then, a sentient being with an incurable desire to mark any territory as my own by baptizing said areas and objects with my distinctively malodorous urine. Why they say it’s a dog’s life leaves me bewildered. After only a few minutes I had determined that I would have been happier as the man I was before I opened my eyes to the morning’s light.

But that wasn’t to be. And how long before I would return—if ever—to that being was the unknown. Along with that uncertainty came what I can only figure to be canine angst about whatever it was I was to do in my new incarnation.

At first, I supposed, was to leave the warm comfort of my bed and explore familiar surroundings from nine inches above the floor.

I knew I had to tend to my toilette and beg for food with one of my new sounds. But first, fewer than ten minutes as my new self, I felt the need for a nap. As time would pass by, I seemed to need frequent naps in numerous places.

My human—the former me—knows little about me. He knows that I was put up for adoption after my first human died. There were two of us dogs in our little family, but the survivors chose to keep my brother and sentenced me to a cage in a shelter for abandoned dogs. That situation left me with severe separation anxiety.

I met my second human because he thought I would make a good companion for a blind dog that lived in his house. His wife thought he needed a dog of his own because the blind dog chose only to bark incessantly at him.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to nap.

Okay, then. I like the little blind dog because I get to torture him by hiding his toys and leading him on mad dashes that make him run into walls and the chair legs in the dining room. He gets salmon and lima beans to eat; I get turkey and sweet potatoes. They both come in kibble form and we get the same thing three times a day. (Boring…) I just finished breakfast, so it’s clearly time for a nap.

There are two other dogs besides me and the blind guy. I don’t particularly care for either of them. They are both large and, for their size, rather meek. One of them is part dingo and I suspect the other part is hyena. She screams like a banshee. The other one holds his head sideways as if he’d suffered a neck injury. They both have funny names.

Nap time.

All of us are fixed, though it’s possible that none of us were ever broken. At birth I identified as male. Now I identify as a eunuch. For the one year I could—fifteen for me, about the same age as my namesake—I never had a chance to demonstrate my maleness. Oh well. All of this talking is making me sleepy.

There is a large cat living here too. I hate him.

Normally, I don’t get too excited about things although I don’t like it when people come onto the porch. I love to dance and I’m good at it, my nails making tapping sounds on the linoleum much like Gregory Hines. My human seems to enjoy my dancing—at mealtimes, or when we go for a walk or a drive in the car. I’ve recently added a snort to go with the dancing. The snorting makes him laugh.

Guess what? I need a nap. This time it will be under the table my human sits at for most of the day while he reads and surfs the internet.

There is a television in our room that is on to some channel where people talk about politics and gun deaths. It makes me sad that children have to die. I pay little attention to the television, unless I hear barking, in which case I’ll bark along. I also pay little attention to politics, though I imagine I would be considered a leftist.

I saw myself in a mirror once. It confused me because I didn’t know who it was that seemed to do everything I did. After all, I had no idea what I looked like until then. My human always says that I’m a pretty boy. Several times a day he asks, “Who’s a good boy?” That’s my cue to roll over onto my back so he can rub my belly. Then I fall asleep.

I wonder if I’m wasting my life by sleeping so much. Then I wonder what I would do if I stayed awake for a long time.

I can’t think of anything productive that I could do.

After all, I’m just a dog living a dog’s life. It’s time to sleep.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Clams Oreganati

Yet another delicious way to enjoy linguine with clams.

A dozen fresh clams
1 Tbs. shallots
1 Tbs. garlic
red pepper flakes
extra virgin olive oil
splash of white wine
fresh basil
1 tsp. oregano, dried
zest of one lemon
lemon juice
parsley for garnish
6 oz. cooked linguine

Sweat shallots and garlic in oil. Add clams and white wine. After the clams have opened, add basil, oregano, zest and lemon juice. Toss. Spoon over linguine and garnish with parsley & lemon wedges. Enjoy!

It must be something in Florida’s drinking water that has given rise to the likes of Marco Rubio, Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis, the latter of whom has declared war on the LGBTQ+ community, libraries and Disney’s fairy princesses.

Swimming around in Florida’s swampy politics is Daily Salinas, the Miami Lakes mother who petitioned her children’s school to ban students’ access to “The Hill We Climb,” a poem written by Amanda Gorman. The poet, a 25-year-old Black woman, read her poem at President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Salinas challenged the Gorman poem—which she says she hasn’t read in its entirety—on the grounds that it contains “indirect hate messages.” The review committee said it “erred on the side of caution” in deciding to limit students’ access.

Salinas also petitioned the school to restrict children’s books about the Black poet Langston Hughes and about Black and Cuban history. After a committee reviewed her challenges, the Miami-Dade County school district opted to restrict all but one book about Cuba from grades K-5, while leaving them available to middle school students.

The Miami Herald identified Salinas as the petitioner. After the story about her was published, a left-wing group, Miami Against Fascism, called attention to a Facebook account it identified as hers. The account, which the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reviewed, features a flood of political posts reflecting right-wing ideologies—and the antisemitic The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times.

Salinas’ post about the Protocols included a list of steps depicting how “Jewish Zionists” would achieve world domination.

Salinas apologized to JTA for the post, but not for appearing with the ultra-right Proud Boys at a rally for Moms For Liberty, a “parents’ rights” group active in pushing for book removals across the country.

The fact that Salinas had yet to read Ms. Gorman’s poem before asking for its being restricted, spells out that Salinas’s objection is to the fact that the poet is a Black woman. Period.

But don’t take my word for it. Please read the poem (which follows in its entirety). I’ve read it four times in the past few days and find only hope and inspiration in its beautiful expression. And it seems only appropriate for this weekend when we take a few moments to honor those who gave their lives for our freedom.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

The Hill We Climb

When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

The loss we carry. A sea we must wade.

We braved the belly of the beast.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.

Somehow we do it.

Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.

We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.

And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.

We are striving to forge our union with purpose.

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.

And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.

We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.

We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.

We seek harm to none and harmony for all.

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.

That even as we grieved, we grew.

That even as we hurt, we hoped.

That even as we tired, we tried.

That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.

Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.

If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.

That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.

It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.

It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it.

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.

This is the era of just redemption.

We feared at its inception.

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.

But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.

We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.

Our blunders become their burdens.

But one thing is certain.

If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.

Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.

We will rise from the golden hills of the West.

We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.

We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.

We will rise from the sun-baked South.

We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.

And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.

When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid.

The new dawn blooms as we free it.

For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.

If only we’re brave enough to be it.

It was the 1950s and everything was perfect.

We had emerged victorious in what would become known as the last good war, yet another war to end all wars. The boys were home and there were good jobs and opportunities to go to college on the GI Bill. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had managed the war in the European Theater of Operations, was at America’s helm. Social change was on the agenda and the infrastructure of a still-young country was being masterminded. The landscape was being re-shaped by a system of roads that would make the country more mobile and sate our wanderlust.

And schoolchildren were reassured that a desk would protect them from any nuclear attack and its attendant fallout.

Everyone had a new car and a cracker-box house in the suburbs. Service clubs thrived.

At least that’s how it was for white people. I’d advise that those interested in Black history, sign up for a class in Critical Race Theory.

To help sustain this new order of the “Leave-It-to-Beaver” era of social enlightenment, Norman Vincent Peale, a clergyman from Ohio, published his 1952 best seller, The Power of Positive Thinking. Dr. Benjamin Spock taught the parents of the baby boomers how to be, well… parents. His Baby and Child Care, advised several generations of new parents to be more flexible and affectionate with their children and to treat them as individuals.

And men, most of whom would never say anything publicly more than a toast at a wedding, flocked to Toastmasters International to develop skills at communication, public speaking, and leadership. I was taken to a Holiday Inn conference room twice a week to partake in Evelyn Wood’s Reading Dynamics—a speed-reading program endorsed by those in congress who had to read the Congressional Record every day.

Keeping things positive was the chore laid before what Tom Brokaw called the “greatest generation.” It was a dire direction and required them to deny some simple realities.

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.’ It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult,” wrote M. Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled. “Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

I would argue with Mr. Peck that a difficult life is a difficult life. Period. And it matters a lot. We need not gush about a good life in that the difficult life is more easily adapted to cynicism—a natural reaction to the inane.

The struggle for positivity today is best witnessed on social media. For instance, it’s where I found the Peck quote, and it’s where thousands of people spread the gospel of high hopes. Those messages are typically written in script with a floral-pattern backgrounds. Frequently there are birds or fluffy puppies. A growing number of people will be unable to read these advisories since they were never taught cursive penmanship. Lucky them.

When I’m not cringing at the Goody Two-Shoes missives on Facebook, I’m blushing at their sentimentality. I want to believe, for instance, that “better days are on their way.” While offering a positive note about the future, what does it say about today? Positivity is in the offing; negativity is the reality.

“Be yourself and people will like you,” noted some Pollyanna. I can think of hundreds of exceptions.

Buddha, in his role as a wise man who weighed in on most matters facing each of us in daily life, offered the cautionary “what we think, we become.” The message here, of course, is to entertain only positive thoughts lest one becomes one’s own avatar.

The Dalai Lama, recently embroiled in a tongue controversy, advises us to “choose to be optimistic, it feels better.” This is a variation of the half-empty, half-full question that embodies the choice we have to be either hopeful or dire as we trundle through our lives. A lot of this depends on our cultural, ethnic or religious experiences.

A variation of the above might be that “sometimes, when things are falling apart, they may actually be falling into place.” Whatever.

“Do good and good will come to you,” while innocent-sounding on one level, is actually a denial of doing good for no reason other than to do good. A promise of a reward for one’s actions on that arcane level is to deny reality.

“Surround yourself with positive people.” The definition of positive is essential to find any meaning in the quote. In my book, positive people are those who wake up smiling and want to engage in conversation before noon.

I’ll pass.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Grilled romaine salad

Now that grilling season has finally arrived it’s time to prepare this delicious salad.

Dressing
1 Tbs. minced shallots
1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
5 tsp. Champagne vinegar
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
salt

Combine ingredients in a lidded jar and shake well to mix.

Salad
3 heads romaine lettuce
1 bunch small radishes
2 hard-cooked eggs
1/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs
olive oil
salt

Trim romaine and halve each head lengthwise, leaving enough base to hold the halved head intact. Slice the radishes as thinly as possible. Finely chop the eggs.

Combine the breadcrumbs in a small saucepan with the olive oil. Stir to coat well, season with salt and place over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until the crumbs have darkened and toasted, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

Grill the romaine on over high heat, cooking just long enough to sear, 1 to 2 minutes to a side. The heat must be intense so as to char the lettuce but not allow it to wilt too much.

Arrange lettuce on a platter, season lightly with salt and spoon a generous tablespoon or so of dressing over the top. Repeat until all the romaine has been cooked and added to the platter.

Distribute the thinly sliced radishes over the top. Scatter the chopped eggs. Spoon over more of the salad dressing, scatter the toasted breadcrumbs and serve.

It must have been that part of me as a journalist that made me eager to see for myself Justus Township, that area called a sovereignty by the Montana Freemen just outside of Jordan, a small town in eastern Montana that at one time was known as the vaudeville center of the West and had a bustling bar scene with drag-queen shows.

It was in the fall of 1996 that I headed there to hunt antelope, the fleet-footed ruminant that populates the high plains in great numbers. The 81-day-long armed standoff between the anti-government militant “Christian patriot” group and U.S. federal officers was over, the leaders sitting in jail cells awaiting trial.

Rain stopped me from camping that first night and I checked into what I believe was the only motel in a town whose population was under 400 people. I read a small placard on the inside of the door informing me that Sam Donaldson, the legendary ABC television journalist, had slept there.

Another hand-written sign warned occupants against skinning animals in the room. Who would do such a thing, I wondered. Then I thought of those people who pronounce “government” in two syllables.

A cursory glance at the telephone directory seemed to suggest something about a town with only four listed surnames, perhaps that the dating pool offered only first cousins as prospects.

I had a burger and a beer at a keep-your-back-to-the-wall bar on Jordan’s main drag. The other customers’ reactions to a stranger in their midst prompted me to think that the feds had not rounded up all of the Freemen. That same thought came to me when, the next morning, I encountered locked gates blocking access to public lands.

I failed to get an antelope.

The feds and the media seemed to be the only ones who cared much about the Freemen. The ragtag group of armed militants looked, in retrospect, to be the models for the Proud Boys and other 1/6 insurrectionists. I read the stories and watched the television reports with enough interest to tell my out-of-state friends that the Freemen were something of an anomaly in the Last Best Place. We, after all, tend to be individualists with a “live and let live” attitude toward all that surrounds us.

That attitude, I fear, is changing. Montana’s political scene saw us turn a deep red from its longtime standing as purple. This is a state that gave Congress Jeannette Rankin, who in 1917 became the first woman to hold federal office. Almost three decades later, Mike Mansfield, a progressive Democrat, began his Congressional tour that lasted thirty-four years.

A few legislative sessions ago, a Libertarian lawmaker introduced a piece of legislation that would make it illegal for women to wear leggings. Talk about overreach.

Now we have a right-wing roster of elected officials who have pledged their allegiance to Donald Trump: Sen. Steve Daines, Rep. Ryan Zinke, Rep. Matt Rosendale, and Gov. Greg Gianforte, each of whom seems irrationally obsessed with the southern border. Our legislature features a Republican super majority that is trying its level best to strip Montana men of our right to cross dress. They also want separate bathrooms for every known kind of Montanan—men, women, girl singers, trans, etc. It’s almost as if none of them have ever used an airplane toilet.

All of this seems frivolous during a time with serious issues facing us.

The Repubs have targeted the LGBTQ+ community for its right to live normal lives and went so far as to censure Zooey Zephyr, a transgender representative from Missoula.

But it’s their opposition to drag queens that bothers me most. As disgusting as it might sound, men dressing as women dates back to the beginning of time. Nero’s costume of the day looked decidedly feminine. Shakespeare’s theatre troupe was all male but there were plenty of women in his plays. Milton Berle and Bob Hope frequently appeared in drag. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis cross-dressed in the Billy Wilder’s 1959 film “Some Like It Hot.” (For the record, the classic movie was banned in Kansas.) Robin Williams played “Mrs. Doubtfire,” as well as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.

Deplorables every one.

The Republican super majority wants to ban drag queens from putting on shows and reading to children, the latter of which I didn’t even know was a thing. (My friend, Lisa D. Snow, is hosting the Livingston Pride Coalition’s “Drag Story Hour” at Wheatgrass Books on Saturday, May 20 at 11 am. Geared for children, all are welcome.)

Considering our history of cross-dressing—there are stories of women dressing as Union soldiers during the Civil War—the Repubs should not throw stones at the glass house. J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the FBI from its beginning until he could no longer feed himself, frequently dressed in drag. Mamie Eisenhower found him to be repulsive.

And look at Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina. If ever there was a drag queen, he is the one to put on the sequined gown, the ruby red lipstick and smoke using a bejeweled cigarette holder. I see it in his eyes. There are other closeted drag queens in Congress. Matt Gaetz, Mitch McConnell, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kyrsten Sinema, and the 89-year-old senator Chuck Grassley top the list. We’re still on the fence about Kevin McCarthy, and God-only-knows what’s up with Joe Manchin.

Or any one of them could be. And who cares?

I don’t know about you, but I could not care less than I do about men dressing as women to put on a show or read to children. I also don’t object to any department store Santa Claus.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska 

Mussels Appetizer

This was one of the most requested appetizer at my restaurant, Adagio, for most of the 12 years I was open.

(8-10 mussels per serving)

Sauté medium chopped shallot in 1-2 Tbs. butter over low heat for 5-7 minutes. Add 1 tsp. cracked black pepper and add mussels. After a minute or two, add ½ cup of white wine and cover pan until mussels have opened.

Arrange mussels in a circle atop a handful of fresh spinach.

To finish sauce, add a tsp. or so of deli mustard, capers, fresh basil and cream to the cooking liquor. Pour over mussels and serve.

There is great wisdom expressed by the novelist Kurt Vonnegut about The Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: “There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life… but that’s not enough anymore.”

In search of what might be missing, I followed his advice and read Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. While that book might in fact be the book that best demonstrates the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government, a lot has changed since its publication in 1831, thirty-eight years before professional baseball became America’s sports obsession.

Clearly, more written guidelines are needed to help steer the course of one’s life. For me, the next literary breakthrough came from Neil Postman’s 1985 Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Long before the internet or Trump, Postman saw television’s entertainment value as a present-day “soma,” the fictitious pleasure drug in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, by means of which the citizens’ rights are exchanged for consumers’ entertainment.

Last week, I was given a copy of Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, the surgeon-author whose resume makes everybody else seem like slackers. The 2014 book begins with an acknowledgement of what we all know is an inevitability—death—and then explores the multitude of ways we are given to approach it. While we might be accepting of death, how we die is the question most fraught with fear.

“I don’t mind dying,” an old friend used to quip, “I just don’t want any pain.”

Gawande spends a good part of the book examining those places where most of us will spend at least part of our final year. Hospitals, retirement homes, nursing facilities, and assisted living communities are among the choices. Hospice, of course, can take place in a dedicated facility or at home. Given the choice, most of us would probably opt for home, surrounded by family.

Both of my sets of grandparents and my parents skirted the out-of-hospital experiences. My grandfathers died before there was such a thing a dedicated care and housing for the elderly. One died at work, the other at home after a short battle with colon cancer. By today’s standards, they were young.

My maternal grandmother, Ruth, died at 95 in the hospital in her western Nebraska town. She was active in her community, active to the point of pretty much running things. If she happened to miss a city council meeting and learned about an ordinance that she didn’t like had passed, she talked to however it was to facilitate its reversal.

When the DMV wouldn’t renew her driving license, she bought a golf cart. She spent at least three afternoons a week reading to “the old folks” at the town’s nursing home. She was decidedly older than many of the residents.

My paternal grandmother never drove a car. She spent her entire adult life in Cicero, an early settlement of Bohemian and Czech immigrants on the western edge of Chicago. Her last apartment was a two-story walk-up above a bakery on Cermack Road that she shared with a parakeet. Though she couldn’t read English, she subscribed to The Sun-Times for the obvious reasons.

Gawande wrote a single chapter about a young doctor who was hired to be medical director of a nursing home. Many of his ideas were to break rules that he systematically gained exceptions for to advance his views on how to best live one’s final weeks, months or years. A two-story building, he had one dog and two cats per floor. He also had 100 birds—birds that were caged in every residence. He wanted the facility to be as homelike as possible.

My father had a similar view about helping the elderly better enjoy old age. It was coming up on his mother’s birthday, a day in November when the entire family would gather to honor her. Dad went to a pet shop and bought a very expensive parakeet that was even banded to show its pedigree. Later, the bird somehow got out of the cage and flew into the picture window in our front room.

The bird died.

It was time to leave for babička’s party and the pet shop was closed for the day. Dad went to E.J. Corvette, kind of a poor man’s Walmart, and bought a parakeet for pennies on the dollar. He removed the band from the dead bird’s leg and put in on the cheap replacement. Who would know? Who would care?

My babi accepted the caged birth with nothing short of disdain. As the weeks went by, I’d go to visit babi. I noticed the bird squawked a lot. Turns out she had taught it to swear in Bohemian. The bird outlived my grandmother.

I spent nine weeks in a skilled nursing facility in Denver. After sixteen days in a coma and several weeks in ICU, I had lost the ability to walk, dress or feed myself. While the stay wasn’t altogether unpleasant, I missed my family, and I was deeply depressed about being there. I shunned all of the little concerts and activities (bingo, crafts, etc.) that were offered. Like my maternal grandmother, I thought those things were for old people.

The highlight of each week was when volunteers would bring their dogs to visit the patients. Each was a big dog, full of friendly tail wags and wet kisses. In a place that reeked of death, the canine visits were little reminders of home, which, of course, was the point. Most of us will want to face being mortal as comfortably as possible. And there is no place more comfortable than our own homes.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

On Monday, it seemed like Spring had finally arrived in Southwest Montana. The temperatures were in the ‘60s—jacket weather—and the clouds overhead threatened rain. But only a light mist hit the windshield of the Pony, my daughter’s Chevy Avalanche that she steered toward Helena. With Courtney at the wheel, I got lost in some memories that were at least fifty years old.

The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago came to mind. Demonstrating for peace, the crowd of thousands of activists became unruly, ultimately growing violent. It was my first protest march. There were several demonstrations in Cleveland for the same cause. Maced and clubbed by cops, we dispersed as it was the authorities who incited violence. There was Washington, D.C., where hundreds of us rounded up by Capitol Police were placed in an open-air enclosure before being released after three or four hours had passed.

My college had gone on strike and small groups of us traveled to Kent State and the University of Michigan to express our thoughts about Vietnam. “Hey, hey LBJ…” rolled off our lips without regard for President Johnson’s progressive social agenda.

Courtney and I were going to Helena to participate in a rally for Zooey Zephyr, who represents Missoula in the 100th district in the Montana House of Representatives. She is a transgender legislator who was being silenced by the Republican super-majority House. She had said to her colleagues that she hoped they would recognize the blood on their hands as their own if a piece of legislation that would bar gender-affirming care for minors were to pass.

It passed and Zephyr, cited for her lack of “decorum,” was censured and removed from the floor of the House for the remainder of the legislative session. She now sits on a public bench in the hallway of the state capitol from which she can vote on legislation she’s likely to not have had a voice.

This is the work of the so-called “freedom” caucus, a group of Republicans so fearful of the truth that they want to put limits on freedoms to protect freedom. It’s easy to note that they are more than merely confused.

As we walked up the sloped sidewalk to the first set of stairs leading to the capitol, I had some hesitations about being there. I have a live-and-let-live attitude toward pretty much everyone. My experience in the LGBTQ+ communities is nil. I have several gay and lesbian friends and I am about as disinterested in their private lives as I am in those of my straight friends.

But the LGBTQ+ community deserves to be respected and represented in every aspect of the American experience.

Presumably, that is why Courtney and I ventured to Helena.

Standing around the capitol steps, the crowd grew. I spoke with several people. Those of my age half-heartedly reminding each other that here it is 50 years later and we’re still carrying the same placards, still fighting racism, still supporting voters’ rights. We are, by definition, secular humanists who believe in a separation of church and state. We support human rights, public education, and freedom from tyranny. We believe in choice. We crave arguments and civil discourse.

We don’t ban books; we read them.

After standing around for a while, reading the placards and chatting with others, it occurred to me that this rally wasn’t really about the LGBTQ+ community and the disrespect afforded it by the Republican-lead Legislature. This rally was about First Amendment rights. It was about free speech. It was about watching the majority rule based on so-called Christian values. While we were allowed to assemble peaceably on the Capitol steps, I imagined flak-jacketed, armed opponents trying to stop or disrupt the assembly.

That didn’t happen. There was no further sense of danger.

After brief speeches by three or four of her supporters, Zephyr took to the lectern as the crowd of maybe 200 people chanted “Let Her Speak.” It was invigorating and soulful—an enthusiastic call to action.

And I’ll be forever grateful that I got to go to a political rally with my daughter. I believe her mother and I raised her to be proactive in her duty as an American citizen to always do the right thing. We were right.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Picadillo

I once had a Cuban friend whose family escaped to Florida in the late ‘60s. His mother invited us to her home for a dinner of picadillo—Cuban comfort food. Sweet and savory, it is simple to make and will become a regular in your menu rotation.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 ½ pounds lean ground beef
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 small red bell pepper, finely diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
⅓ cup dry white wine
2 tsp. dried oregano
½ tsp. paprika
½ tsp. cumin
1 (14oz) can crushed tomatoes
1 Tbs. tomato paste
¼ cup Worcestershire sauce
⅓ cup dried raisins
½ cup green pitted olives
⅓ cup chopped parsley

Heat a bit of olive oil and brown the ground beef, breaking it apart with a wooden spoon. If the beef ends up releasing a lot of grease, drain before proceeding.
Season with salt and pepper.
Add the chopped onion and bell pepper and cook until softened.
Stir in the garlic and cook until fragrant.
Deglaze the pan with white wine.
Stir in the tomato sauce, tomato paste, spices, oregano, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
Add the olives and raisins. Continue simmering – this time uncovered – for another 15 minutes for the sauce to thicken and cling to the beef.
Stir in the chopped parsley and serve with rice.

Damn.

In anticipation of six weeks of lawyers bickering about defamation issues, I got a new easy chair, ordered a whole lot of popcorn and a broad range of adult beverages to facilitate day-drinking of the highest order. And then, fewer than two minutes before opening statements by lawyers from Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News, the latter entity being sued for defaming Dominion, a settlement was reached with Fox having to fork over $787.5 million. Not a bad haul for a $30 million company.

I wanted a trial. I wanted to watch Rupert Murdoch and his circus clowns squirm as the Dominion lawyers forced them to admit under oath that their whole operation was built on lies and deceptions. I also wanted Fox News to apologize to those Americans who were so mislead by an organization they apparently trusted. (Any apology from Fox, however, would be as disingenuous as if Pol Pot apologized for the Khmer Rouge.)

I wanted my own little schadenfreude festival. A celebration of shame and dishonor at the expense of the Fox broadcast team. I wanted to see Hannity, Carlson and the rest of them sweat until their stage makeup ran down their cheeks as they admitted to being frauds and liars—purposely misleading their viewers about the 2020 election.

“We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” said a grammatically clumsy statement from Fox upon announcing the settlement.

Even in a press release, Fox can’t stop from lying: “This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

It was a statement so ludicrous that CNN’s Jake Tapper could barely keep from laughing as he read it.

Fox continues its statement somewhat pompously: “We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

I have little doubt that the country wouldn’t move forward no matter what might have been on Fox’s agenda.

The impact that broadcast, cable and the internet have on news content is undeniable. Google a news story and the print sites typically come after every electronic version. More often than not, we listen to the news; we don’t read it.

And speaking of CNN…What’s up with their new format? For as many years as I can remember, CNN has paraded out a team of news anchors who sat behind stylized desks to deliver the day’s headline stories and interview any number of experts in any number of fields. If a single story is deemed to be extremely important—like a lawyer nobody’s ever heard of who nonetheless kills his wife and son—that’s the only story viewers can witness for three or four days. This, despite the plethora of current events occurring currently.

Last week, CNN took away the desks and gave a new roster of news talent a paper script (how retro) that is to be read standing in front of multi-screen displays of the images of newsworthy places and people. The co-anchors present the stories as they wander around the multi-colored set. It comes across like the blocking rehearsal of a high school play.

The new format is called something like News Central, which makes it sound a bit like a railroad or subway station.

Television news anchors, to my way of thinking, belong sitting behind a desk in front of a busy newsroom—typewriters clicking and wire service bells ringing.

Walter Cronkite comes to mind. The veteran print journalist, who began his career with the United Press International (UPI) covering World War II and became part of the CBS Television news program at the behest of the legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, was anchor of the CBS Evening News for 19 years. His closing line, “And that’s the way it is,” was a no-nonsense expression of the journalistic truth we expected.

Although there were variances in the opening of Cronkite’s program, I remember it basically as scrolling the reporters’ names and their locations. From there, the stories played out. If Eric Sevareid was on the evening’s broadcast, he was introduced as one with an opinion. That, along with Charles Kuralt’s “On the Road” segments, was about as far as bias became a part of the evening news.

Cronkite liked to characterize his broadcasts not as an end-all to an event but an index that would guide the viewer to finding the more complete story in a newspaper. He, along with the rest of the CBS news team, knew that the few seconds devoted to most any story could only scratch the surface.

While Fox creates its news content like articles of fiction, CNN, despite its own left-leaning slant, will ignore 35 stories in favor of beating to death a single story.

I can’t think that Walter Cronkite would have found much value in either of those enterprises. “And that’s the way it is” devolves from journalist truth to an apology.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

GRILLED HALIBUT A LA MALIBU

This is the only fish that Geri will eat. That’s because it doesn’t taste like fish. But it is delicious.

4, 6-oz. halibut fillets
1 cup mayonnaise
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbs. teriyaki sauce

Mix until smooth the mayonnaise with the soy, Worcestershire and teriyaki sauces. Slather the fish fillets on both sides with the mixture and allow to sit.

Light a charcoal or gas grill. Grill over medium-high heat to desired doneness.

Serve with wild rice and a Caesar Salad.

It never ceases to amaze me how, during the course of wasting the better part of day looking at the oddities the internet has to offer, I discover something that not only astonishes me, but that I feel I have been lax in not knowing this tidbit prior to now.

For instance, this past week I learned that Cass Elliot had a daughter. Why would I care to know such a thing? I really don’t, but for unknown reasons I quickly scrolled through a website that promised to reveal Owen Vanessa’s biological father. Did I say “quickly”? I spent nearly an hour learning the entire history of The Mamas and the Papas, a folk-rock vocal quartet that performed between 1965 and 1968. I don’t recall much of what I read that morning besides that John Phillips initially objected to Cass being in the group because of her size. (The term “fat-shaming” had yet to be coined.) I also learned that Cass did not die from choking on either a chicken wing or a ham sandwich, but from a massive heart attack. Oddly enough, drugs were not involved.

Before I could learn about Owen Vanessa’s parentage, I hit a pay wall and could surf no further through a site rife with pop-up ads.

I know that I could solve this mystery in any number of ways but, as I noted above, I don’t really care who her daddy was. At best, mine was a fleeting indulgence perhaps inspired by her rather unusual first name.

During my years growing up in the 1950s, I don’t recall any of my classmates or neighborhood friends who didn’t know who their fathers were. Single-parent households were unheard of in my neighborhood, a square mile or so of ethnic diversity. We all knew who we were, and we knew about our ethnic backgrounds. Living mostly in peace were Irish, Germans, Italians—most of them Roman Catholics. I identified with being Bohemian, although I knew I was half Scottish. Nobody cared that I remember. The Black people in the neighborhood were just part of our fabric.

Knowing my ethnic background was perfectly satisfying to me. I had no concerns regarding the subject, and I scoffed at the plethora of ancestral identity programs that began popping up a few years ago. And then, my kids surprised me by gifting me entry to one of those programs.

I played along and offered a sample of my spit from which my DNA would be extracted and would be analyzed in a search for my true identity.

After a few weeks of anxious waiting (actually, I pretty much forgot about it after offering up a vial of my spittle) an email arrived with the results. It turns out that both sets of my grandparents lied about their heritages. I am, according to this DNA search, 59.2% Northwestern European. Under that heading it shows my being 45.9% British and Irish, but no Scottish.

I remember hearing from my maternal grandparents about their ancestors—boasting such surnames as Snodgrass, Prendergast and Naylor—sailing from Scotland and settling in Appalachia. From West Virginia, those relatives who chose not to stick around and become hillbillies moved west, settling mostly in Nebraska.

I would have thought that the Scots might have been lumped in with the British, but no. There are several possible Scottish locations mentioned but none apply to my spit sample.

The other part of my ethnic identity is unevenly distributed in Poland, France, Germany and Greece, according to this study. This, in spite of my having seen both of my paternal grandparents’ birth certificates which show them having been born in what is now the Czech Republic—my grandmother in Prague and my grandfather in Pilsen.

This leads me to the subject of parental sex.

It is a universal fact that none of us wish to even think about our parents having sex, let alone visualize it. Yuck. And for me, what’s even yuckier is to imagine my mother having sex with somebody who passed along a genetic structure based in Poland. There used to be an explanation for children who didn’t resemble their fathers: the milkman.

There are other factors to consider. The whole British thing seems possible because I can think of no sound that bothers me more than that made by bagpipes. If I were truly half Scottish, one would think I would like not only bagpipes but haggis as well. Such is not the case.

On the other hand, Scotch is my preferred adult beverage. And if I were actually Czech (Bohemian), wouldn’t I prefer slivovitz, a brandy made from prunes that is the very definition of vile? I do, on the other hand, love sauerkraut and dumplings.

But now that I know who I’m not, it’s time to get back to my studying the ethnic heritage of Mama Cass’s only daughter.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Bohemian Sauerkraut (zele)

My grandmother made batch after batch of sauerkraut every fall. After opening a jar of it, she would drain and rinse it. She would fry a tablespoon or two of finely minced onion just to soften it. Then she would add the sauerkraut and cover with water. She would add a tablespoon of caraway seed and let the kraut simmer for 20-30 minutes.