The Alchemy of Cooking

The transformation of the raw ingredients of our food into edible treats and savories really and truly is truly alchemy. I have no doubt that the first chefs transformed into the very first alchemists.

Thanks to a new course of drugs to keep me alive and keep the symptoms of Addison’s disease at bay I am wide awake night after night at 4 am. Not just AT 4 am but often until or still awake at…

Tonight I have a new symptom and it was the urge to keep moving. I quickly ran out of walking space in my living room. I then turned to the kitchen and grabbed a heavy pot, some cream, sugar and butter and stood for some time stirring these raw ingredients. Once the heat hits them they become dense and thick and after the boiling point they turn into caramel. Real caramel. My arm is almost sore from stirring. But I am finally able to settle down, if not to sleep but to write.

Here is the heavy sugary fudge that my grandmother made me as a child. It is Scottish in origin so beware its sweetness, as there is no sweet tooth in the world that can match that of the Scots.  

Scottish Table:

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usrecipes/scottishtablet/index.html

I love sleep.

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?
Ernest Hemingway

Mr. Hemingway speaks the truth as usual in this quote. I love sleep. I love sleep in a way I never have before in my life. Sure the children are grown and I am allowed to sleep longer and lazier than ever. But the real essence of my sleep is not the rest, the respite, the dreaming but the fact that the sleep I sleep now is the sleep of a chronic illness. Sometimes I power sleep. For days. I have been known to sleep eighteen hours in a day.

I have a rare condition called Addison’s Disease, which means that a tiny gland called the adrenal gland doesn’t work. A small thing barely the size of a walnut, so say the medical journals. But this small thing impacts every part of my daily life, from sleep, ability to eat, and my general sense of well - being. How to explain to a doctor that I just don’t feel “right”. They look at me side ways. I tell them some days I cannot get out of bed and they say why? At first I thought I had chronic fatigue. But after I had an Addison’s Crisis and my kidneys failed, and then my heart decided to have cardiac arrest under the strain of nothing else working, I was then diagnosed with Addison’s Disease.

This small gland that exists in all of our bodies doesn’t work in mine, and thus on some days I sleep and sleep and sleep. Especially I if I had a day prior that forced some exertion. Sleep now is different than before, it is vivid and wrought with dreams, often violent and frightening dreams. Perhaps dreams that are trying to warn me to get up and take my medication.

I will write more about my illness no doubt, but right now I am going back to sleep.

Do we ever think about prisons?

Do we ever think about prisons? I mean other than when we watch Law and Order. As of 2006 almost ten percent of the entire global population is in prison. An astonishing number, and one can only wonder what this number does to the global economy. How many people die in prison? How many people who go to prison for minor offences hone their skills while inside and get involved more deeply in criminal activities? Unless you know someone who has been in prison it is not a place, not a topic that we think about in any meaningful fashion.

Does our economic system influence the length of prison sentences? I recently got to know someone who was in prison for a long period of time. A long time ago he was responsible for a property crime. Not violent. No one was hurt. But it involved a large amount of money. In our economic capitalist world this is probably the worst crime from a societal perspective. Sure there is murder, rape and other violent crimes but property crimes are verboten. The interesting thing is about this story is the length of time he served. He served more time than the average murder sentence, which is in some places ten years. The average time served for rape in some jurisdictions, is six years, but time served is often half that. (http://ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/ncvrw/1996/m-rape.htm).

Of course a lot of people believe that criminals get off too easy. However consider the following, according to a report by the National Criminal Justice Commission in 1992, federal US Prisons held about 1,800 people convicted of murder for an average time served of 4 ½ years. That same year they saw 12,727 nonviolent first time drug offenders served and average time of 6 ½ years. The logic here defies me unless you factor in the fact that in legal jurisprudence there is a bias towards harsher punishments for “crimes against property”.

It is not fashionable to talk about alternatives to prison today. But the fact is that prisons globally represent a massive industrial complex. The United States is undergoing a massive correctional build up and privatization of the prisons system. Are we as a society really okay with imprisoning young men (primarily men) and women over minor infractions; smoking weed, property offences due to drugs and so on? In 1996 the National Criminal Justice Commission released a report stating that the prisons system “wastes public resources, converts nonviolent offenders into violent criminals, and disproportionately punishes some racial groups”.

But the other problem is what about afterwards? What about after serving a lengthy sentence? What is the cost of stripping a person of their livelihood and social status? What then is the cost of societal reintegration, from replacing driver’s licenses, finding work, housing, mending broken familial bonds, re-training and so on? Or are we now too deeply entrenched in the institutionalization of every facet of our public lives to consider viable alternatives?

Prison as we know it today exists in a form first conceived by British social reformer and utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham. First conceived in the 17th century it’s not too late to re-imagine other ways of punishing those who commit crimes.

Oh, any by the way, even though the prison industry how grown exponentially in the last decade, has crime decreased? Do you feel safer?

The Holocaust Industry

Has any one else noticed that there exists a virtual cottage industry of Holocaust books and movies that pop up at this time of year?  The movies are here no doubt in time for Academy Award consideration, because, well frankly, there is nothing like a little genocide to inspire award giving. This proliferation of Holocaust "entertainment" seems to be replacing what was once a cottage industry of Hitler biographies.  In the 1990's we saw a virtual market glut of Hitler biographies that followed in the heels of Third Reich books in the 1980's.  Of course let's not forget that iconic representation of concentration camp suffering, Hogan's Heroes.  Death camp as sitcom.  Who knew?

I find this latest round of Holocaust movies extremely troubling.  In fact I find almost all Holocaust movies problematic, even that one movie that for many represents the pinnacle of dramatic representation of the Holocaust; Schindler's List.    Claude Lanzmann once said that the evil of the Holocaust cannot be explained thus it cannot be represented on film, as entertainment.  Besides, when exactly did the suffering of others become entertainment?  Oh, wait...yeah I forgot...kiddie porn, genocide movies, slasher porn, etc etc ad infinitum. 

Lanzmann, who created the iconic and brilliant nine and a half hour film Shoah (1985) utilized not one millimeter of death camp archival footage. Lanzmann once stated that evil cannot be represented or understood.  I would add to that, should the suffering of others be represented in a narrative form that is meant to amuse? To entertain?  The latest spate of Holocaust entertainment are extremely troubling in that they provide to the viewing audience a narrative of redemption that is not only not historically accurate but which misleads the viewing public into a false understanding not only of Jewish suffering but German guilt.

Currently  playing at your local cineplex are The Reader, starring Kate Winslet and Defiance starring Daniel Craig.  Two beautiful contemporary stars who play Nazi's in their respective movie.  While I have not seen either movie, I am familiar with the novel, The Reader and the television commercial of Defiance is  enough to send me back to watching all nine and a half hours of Shoa (to the despair of my children) for relief from this current narrative of redemption.  The image of the Nazi commandant on his white horse riding through the forest saving people....is this image, this single of Nazi resistance a true representation of the genocidal suffering of Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others?  And let us not forget German culpability.  Superficial narratives such as these that turn genocide into entertainment and meant to be consumed with popcorn are not innocent.  They are not, as some might say harmless.  As we all know, over time the representation of these acts of Nazi or German redemption become in themselves a form of truth.  The truth and the enormity of the machinery of genocide eventually becomes lost over time if these superficial narratives become consumed into popular culture.  As a teacher I often heard students refer to Schindler's List as their sole and only source of information on the Holocaust.  Movie watched. Information received.  No more thinking required.

For an interesting taxonomy of Holocaust movies check out Slate at 

http://www.slate.com/id/2207553/pagenum/all/#p2

How long pray will you abuse my patience

How long pray will you abuse my patience, a quote from the Roman orator and lawyer Cicero's first oration against Cataline. The actual quote translates more or less as How long pray will you take advantage of my patience? A quote that is in many ways not unlike that famous Roundtable writer of the 1930's, Mrs. Dorothy Parker's famous, "What fresh Hell is this"? A quip she is said to have uttered when her doorbell rang. Probably during cocktail hour, and if history is accurate the writers of the Algonquin Roundtable are said to have made cocktail hour last all day. And night. "What Fresh Hell is This" is a feeling that arises for me whenever my boyfriend's mother rings us on the telephone. For dramatic effect she prefers to do this at 8 am. A time when I sleep soundly.  Mrs Parker, I know how ya feel I say as I reach for a dirty martini (in my imagination) because hey, 8 am is too early for that particular cocktail, but not too early for a Bloody Mary perhaps? Does the rate of alcoholism rise when we are in relationships? I must search the Internet today for that particular factoid. For relationship advice however we must not turn to our Roman orator Cicero, because of him, we do know that he married and divorced Publilia all in the same year, 46 BC.