It's been gorgeous in Boston the past few days... 75 on Wednesday and even a little warmer on Thursday, so much so that the women in my office were inspired to do a "girls' lunch out" in the park we frequented all summer. We sat near the water fountain and indulged some early fall nostalgia. Yesterday was gorgeous too, and I took my sister's dog out for a leisurely 4 mile jog in a local nature preserve.
Today (Sunday) is overcast, rainy and a bit gloomy. My sister made a batch of spicy red pepper soup with fresh carrots and zucchini, lima beans (I love lima beans) and whole wheat pasta. I just put away an entire bowl, and am feeling considerably perked up.
Graduate school applications are kicking my butt right now. A sample essay question from Stanford's MBA program: What is the most important thing to you, and why? I wish I felt that I didn't need a theology degree to answer this -- or enough space to write a novel-length tome -- when all you get are 1800 words, which must be shared with three other questions. I'm instant messaging with my sister who keeps calling me out on my avoidance techniques.
I'll send her a link for a lovely ruffled cardigan at J Crew, and a slideshow of Michelle Obama wardrobe pics. "Procrastination!!" she proclaims, rightly so. In fact, this blog post is probably another form of it. Dang. OK, back to work.
Posting for my friend This is the year:
Fat and Happy is a fresh, new literary journal launching in Spring 2009. We are seeking to publish new voices and established writers. If you wrote a story, we want to read it.We are currently looking for submissions for the first and second issues of Fat and Happy in the categories of literary fiction (up to 7000 words), narrative non-fiction (personal essay, 1500-2000 words), short fiction (3000 words or less) and art (must be black and white). We are not accepting regular non-fiction at this time.
Chosen entries will be published in Fat and Happy. There is no payment for publication, but authors will receive copies of the publication with their story in it.
Submissions must be original, previously unpublished works. Please email submissions to: fatandhappysubmissions@gmail.com. Our website Fatandhappy.com is currently under construction, please visit us there in the future.
They are such fantastic writers, anything they do will be great. Please consider submitting!
Here is the second Audacity of Hope quote that I liked.
My dad has this wonderful saying: the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, the way to a woman's is through housework. :) Anyway, +1 for Obama for noticing what he writes below, and for proposing family-friendly policies. He seems like a good dad.
It's hard to argue with Michelle when she insists that the burden of the modern family fall more heavily on the woman.
For three magical months the two of us fussed and fretted over our new baby; checking the crib to make sure she was breathing, coaxing smiles from her, singing her songs, and taking so many pictures that we started to wonder if we were damaging her eyes. [...]
But when fall came -- when my classes started back up, the legislature went back into session, and Michelle went back to work -- the strains in our relationship began to show. I was often gone for three days at a stretch, and even when I was back in Chicago, I might have evening meetings to attend, or papers to grade, or briefs to write. Michelle found that a part-time job had a funny way of expanding. [...]
Tired and stressed, we had little time for conversation, much less romance. When I launched my ill-fated congressional run, Michelle put up no pretense of being happy with the decision. My failure to clean up the kitchen suddenly became less endearing. Leaning down to kiss Michelle good-bye in the morning, all I would get was a peck on the cheek. By the time Sasha was born--just as beautiful, and almost as calm as her sister--my wife's anger toward me seemed barely contained.
"You only think about yourself," she would tell me. "I never thought I'd have to raise a family alone."I was stung by such accusations; I thought she was being unfair. After all, it wasn't as if I went carousing with the boys every night. I made few demands of Michelle--I didn't expect her to darn my socks or have dinner waiting for me when I got home. Whenever I could, I pitched in with the kids. All I asked for in return was a little tenderness. Instead, I found myself subjected to endless negotiations about every detail of managing the house, long lists of things that I needed to do or had forgotten to do, and a generally sour attitude. I reminded Michelle that compared to most families, we were incredibly lucky. I reminded her as well that for all my flaws, I loved her and the girls more than anything else. My love should be enough, I thought. As far as I was concerned, she had nothing to complain about.
It was only upon reflection, after the trials of those years had passed and the kids had started school, that I began to appreciate what Michelle had been going through at the time, the struggles so typical of today's working mother. For no matter how liberated I liked to see myself as -- no matter how much I told myself that Michelle and I were equal partners, and that her dreams and ambitions were as important as my own -- the fact was that when children showed up, it was Michelle and not I who was expected to make the necessary adjustments. Sure, I helped, but it was always on my terms, on my schedule. Meanwhile, she was the one who had to put her career on hold. She was the one who had to make sure that the kids were fed and bathed every night. If Malia or Sasha got sick or the babysitter failed to show up, it was she who, more often than not, had to get on the phone to cancel a meeting at work.
It wasn't just the constant scrambling between her work and the children that made Michelle's situation so tough. It was also the fact that from her perspective she wasn't doing either job well, This was not true, of course; her employers loved her, and everyone remarked on what a good mother she was. But I came to see that in her own mind, two visions of herself were at war with each other--the desire to be the woman her mother had been, solid, dependable, making a home and always there for her kids; and the desire to excel in her profession, to make her mark on the world and realize all those plans she'd had on the very first day that we met.
[...] None of these policies need discourage families from deciding to keep a parent at home, regardless of the financial sacrifices. For some families, that may mean doing without certain material comforts. For others, it may mean home schooling or a move to a community where the cost of living is lower. For some families, it may be the father who stays at home -- although for most families it will still be the mother who serves as the primary caregiver.
Whatever the case may be, such decisions should be honored. If there's one thing that social conservatives have been right about, it's that our modern culture sometimes fails to fully appreciate the extraordinary emotional and financial contributions -- the sacrifices and just plain hard work -- of the stay at home mom. Where social conservatives have been wrong is in insisting that this traditional role is innate -- the best or the only model of motherhood. I want my daughters to have a choice as to what's best for them and their families. Whether they will have such choices will depend not just on their own efforts and attitudes. As Michelle has taught me, it will also depend on men -- and American society -- respecting and accommodating the choices they make.
Excerpted from "The Audacity of Hope," Barack Obama
It's Thanksgiving WEEK, which is my favorite holiday and a perfect time to remember what I'm grateful for this very minute (including, and this sounds sappy - happiness that my loved ones are all happy and healthy):
- Amazing lunch with my friends who were visiting from Bermuda. I teased them about how the current Boston weather was not a very good argument to leave their sunny perfect weather. I loved seeing their 2 year old and 4 year old, who had doubled in size since I saw them a year ago! I got my leftover box autographed in green crayon by an oh-so proud Isabella.
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Taking A to Trader Joe's and stocking up on party supplies. I love, love, love Trader Joe's because not only is everything cheap and affordable (thus recession-friendly), it's surprisingly gourmet and unique, so that you always leave feeling that you've discovered something new. That feeling of discovery is my favorite part of shopping! Well, plus eating afterwards.
- Trying out a new restaurant that just opened this week in Boston. Met the owner, who also owns Lala Rokh, who was really nice (and amazingly calm for someone who opened a restaurant four days earlier!)
- Long conversation with Aly about life. We haven't caught up in depth since her wedding. And it was fun to have Thai food and talk Cabinet picks and domestic policy with other law schoolers afterwards.
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Reading about my L.A. writing partner who is embarking on new adventures, like a children's book and a memoir draft. We've committed to having NoWrMo part deux in December when we'll write 25,000 words each. M, I just publicly outed us, so now we're in for real.
- Finishing all my planning for Thanksgiving.... finding all the recipes that I like. The theme is going to be WARMTH, as it is much too cold here (I want winter to be over already!) I'm going to make jalepeno corn chowder, bacon wrapped dates, mulled cider and white chocolate mousse. We're also going to have (but not necessarily cooking myself, shhh!) sweet potato bisque, lots of appetizers, cheeses and olives. I bought a case of wine from TJ, including a nice bottle of port.
- IDEATION; we are having a brainstorming meeting with my entrepreneurship group today! I'm so excited to see what comes out of this, but I already have an idea I want to work on. Kind of curious, too, how quickly I can pull it together.
I did not talk about Nanowrimo. I haven't done much this weekend. I'm 68% done, but falling a little behind today and yesterday. Back to the keys!
Isn't it nice to say that? President-elect? :)
As promised here are two of my favorite excerpts from The Audacity of Hope. People can dismiss him as a great speaker, but 1) that's a dumb critique, and 2) they're all haters anyway.... Enjoy.
When I meet people for the first time, they sometimes quote back to me a line in my speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that seemed to strike a chord: "There is not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America." For them, it seems to capture a vision of America finally freed from the last of Jim Crow and slavery, Japanese internment camps and Mexican braceros, workplace tensions and cultural conflict -- an America that fulfills Dr. King's promise that we be judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character.
In a sense, I have no choice but to believe in this vision of America. As the child of a black man and a white woman, [...] so that family get-togethers over Christmast take on the appearance of a UN General Assembly meeting, I've never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.
Moreover, I believe that part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores. In this we've been aided by a Constitution that -- despite being marred by the original sin of slavery-- has at its very core the idea of equal citizenship under the law; and an economic system that, more than any other, has offered opportunity to all comers, regardless of title or rank. Of course, racism and nativist sentiments have repeatedly undermined these ideals; the powerful and the privileged have often exploited or stirred prejudice to further their own ends. But in the hands of reformers, from Tubman to Douglass to Chavez to King, these ideals of equality have gradually shaped how we understand ourselves and allowed us to form a multicultural nation the likes of which exists nowhere else on earth.
Finally, those lines in my speech describe the demographic realities of America's future. Already, Texas, California, New Mexico, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia are majority minority. Twelve other states have populations that are more than a third Latino, black, and/or Asian. [...] Shortly after 2050, experts project, America will no longer be a majority white country -- with consequences for our economics, our politics, and our culture that we cannot fully anticipate.
Still, when I hear commentators interpreting my speech to mean that we have arrived at a "post-racial politics" or that we already live in a color-blind society, I have to offer a word of caution. To say that we are one people is not to suggest that race no longer matters -- that the fight for equality has been won, or that the problems that minorities face in this country today are largely self-inflicted. We know the statistics: On almost every single socioeconomic indicator, from infant mortality to life expectancy to employment to home ownership, black and Latino Americans in particular continue to lag far behind their white counterparts. In corporate boardrooms across America, minorities are grossly underrepresented; in the United States Senate there are only three Latinos and two Asian members (both from Hawaii), and as I write today I am the chamber's sole African American. To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in these disparities is to turn a blind eye to both our history and our experience-- and to relieve ourselves of the responsibility to make things right.
I have been blogging more than usual; somehow writing a quick post is a helpful way to decompress from all the other writing I've been doing. I'm past the 50% mark... it's all downhill from here!
I need some way to celebrate being halfway done, but there are so many other things going on this month that I honestly don't have time :) I was invited to go to the open museum night at the Gardner, one of my favorite places in Boston.... but it may need to be postponed until next month.
New York (and other) friends -- I'm sorry I have been neglecting you. I will be back to normal on December 11th.
Books from the last month or two.
I did find Dreams from my Father revelatory though. He is a brilliant writer and verbalizes aspects of the American immigrant experience better than any other commentator I have read. He is a clear, concise, and literary author... I recently read an article by Toni Morrison describing how impressed -- and glad -- she is to have our first literary President in a long time. Me too :)
Audacity of Hope was also excellent, but less personal... except for the beautifully written family chapter at the end. However it does contain most of Barack's policy prescriptions, and reveals him as a thoughtful, liberal/practical mix that is very appealing in a leader. He believes in a lot of the Clinton projects, but with different execution. I read one of my friends' twitter feeds describing him as "President 2.0", and perhaps it is an apt description. He is able to complete the liberal projects of opportunity, a social net and inclusiveness because he is just as skilled a diplomat, speaker and politician as Clinton, but he doesn't have his moral failings. I think a lot of liberals resent Bill Clinton, because his moral failures (as a husband) set him up to be a huge target for the largely Christian conservatives in this country. Barack could have easily have been a target too, because of his race and his relative inexperience -- and he was -- but he also learned the lessons of the Clinton presidency, and enough about what kind of game the right will play to dodge their bullets. Many of the positions Obama took during this race really helped position him to be above cheap shots, and it comes across with a huge measure of authenticity. (And honestly, even if he isn't perfectly authentic, he is so many worlds superior to the alternative... and just the fact that he takes the risk to be an idealist makes him someone that I -- and many Americans -- are willing to follow.)
On top of his political astuteness, Obama is a breath of fresh air and reason. And when we look back on this election, I believe we will be able to see that Barack's most lasting purely political accomplishment has been to successfully break up the right's monopoly on moral virtue. The strict Christian conservative values that have been aligned with the Republican party are not the only valid value system. It is an interesting argument, one that is occuring in many other parts of the world right now too. But Bill Clinton as a symbol polarized political debate in this country so that liberalism became equated with moral laxness, immorality, a lack of straight lines, and conservatism became equated with moral and spiritual purity. That is not something that many people, who would consider themselves liberal, including myself, ascribe to. I don't think that the majority of people in this country are *as* conservative as someone like John Ashcroft. But I do think that they want straight lines to follow, and moral relativism is tiring and confusing.
It was interesting to learn from Audacity that one of Barack's strongest political influences, the President under whom he came of age was Ronald Reagan, whose political genius was absolutely in translating complex things into simple straight lines which resonated emotionally with a broad swath of Americans. (Which model George W also tried to emulate, but with less attention to detail. W was a nihilist in a sense because he didn't really believe in government, at a fundamental level. Maybe it didn't matter to him if government functioned badly -- because it only went to prove his essential thesis that we shouldn't have anything but minimal policing and military functions anyway.) My lesson from these three Presidents is that politics is in learning and mastering the art of the politically possible... and I like where Obama is going with this, much better than his several predecessors.
The other aspect of Barack's genius that I just want to mention, is not just in that he is a good writer and speaker, but in that he also knew enough to know (and maybe precisely because of his mixed race heritage), he somehow instinctually knew that the biggest thing that white America could have feared was the unknown in himself. That is the direct or indirect project of these two books. I wonder if any political candidate in any country has been as transparent as Barack has been. He has documented every aspect of his personal and political history in these books, literally made himself an open book -- and in what I suspect is a common rhetorical ploy, protected himself from any possible attack because he has already positioned everything in his personal history on his own terms. He has made no bones about describing all his influences and positions, and in laying himself wide open -- and making himself entirely vulnerable -- simultaneously entirely capturing the political and rhetorical high ground.
I only want to cheer him on for his brilliance. I'm so glad -- and proud -- to be an American right now.
In the next few days, I will post some excerpts of Obama's book which I found the most meaningful. Oh, and that last book was an interesting introduction to game theory, which I've had no previous exposure to.
Indian tea, or chai, is now readily available at your local Starbucks, Connecticut Muffin, or cafe of choice. Chai is simply the Hindi word for tea, and the exotic sounding "chai latte" is simply what Indians drink regularly, two -- or four -- times per day.
My grandmother has her first cup of chai with spicy ginger in it very early in the morning, before she does anything else. When I'm visiting her, around five-thirty or six am, I'll wander into the kitchen and pour myself a cup. Usually, this isn't even necessary. She'll have a cup waiting for me on a tray in the living room, a thick white china teacup, with a small plate on top to keep it a bit warm. Morning tea is spicy and gingery, so it not only wakes you up but warms you through to your bones.
So far, this sounds like nearly everyone's breakfast routine, whether in Italy, America, or Japan, hot daily caffeination, only varying because of the source. Tea is apparently the second most popular beverage in the world, after water (interesting fact I just learned.)
Here is a very simple recipe for chai, the way my family makes it. I've just gotten three email requests for recipes in the past two weeks, and this is what I'm sending out. I've also included four variations. All that is different are the spices you add, and the drink becomes very different. My close friends know I frequently send them away with a fresh hot cup if they drop by or come to dinner. On my own, I don't drink it that often, but it is a most serious comfort food and with autumn nearly over and winter around the corner, I wanted to keep all of you warm too. :)
A hot cup of chai reminds me of my childhood; of waking up in India on a chilly morning quickly pulling on a shawl and nestling up with a cup while I listen to the conversations of more talkative morning people around me; or chatting with my mother on a fall afternoon over a bowl of spicy Indian crunchy snacks.
Oh, one very question: what kind of tea leaves do you need? My mother uses a cannister of loose black tea, but I grew up on grocery store (Tetley and Lipton are fine and familiar). I also love to sometimes use stronger, more exotic tea, like lapsang souchong, which has a whole other taste, and needs to be tempered with condensed milk, brown sugar and no other spices. I am a more temperamental than practical cook, so I like to cook either when necessary because I'm famished, in bulk for loads of friends, or when I am absolutely craving something I can't live another moment without. Those probably occur in the reverse order, as with time crunches I'm more likely to order in sushi than to try to whip up something... anyway, again I digress. This tea is something I sometimes crave in a fierce way. So enjoy.
Boil 2-4 cups of water in a saucepan. Add two pinches of loose black
tea or one tea bag per cup. After the tea starts boiling, add milk, in
about a 1:4 proportion. I go by the color, more than anything... you
want a medium brown, and really this is done to taste. The tea is
nearly done after it starts to boil again, so turn the heat down and
let it simmer for a few minutes, then take off the stove and serve.
Depending on my guests, you can add sweetener while it is simmering, or
after serving (if they are likely to have their own preferences for how
sweet.)
Variations:
Ginger tea: This is morning tea. It is the best kind, the classic.
You can drink this any time of morning or day. Ginger has a slow warm
burn, and sits in your belly like a
little ember of fire that warms you right up. People say the same
thing about alcohol, but this is actually good for you, as far as I
know.
Dessert or afternoon tea: Take green cardamom pods, and mash them a little so the black seeds come out. Stir in about 6-8 seeds per cup. This gives it a sweet and delicate flavor. Good with brown or white sugar.
Late afternoon or spicy pick-you-up tea: If you are feeling sleepy, in addition to ginger, you can add some whole black pepper and some whole cloves (3-4 of each). This tea will be *spicy.* It's good with honey. When I'm sick with a cold, my mother would make this even stronger (read, almost undrinkable) with lots of black pepper or honey, from the school of thought that you can theoretically burn a cold right out of you.
Medicinal or rejuvenation tea: My uncle's wife puts lemongrass stalk in her tea, instead of ginger or spices. This is sort of a family secret. She is the one with a way with herbs, who will know where to lay her hands on my forehead if I have a migraine, or whether to use tiger balm if I have sun sickness. I think of this tea, and I think of her. She lives in a mountain valley, what they call a "hill station" and their daughter my cousin is a twenty year old physicist and painter, and I treasure them. This is my "warm the soul" tea, rare and unique.
You can really use any combination of the above spices, to suit your own taste, or those of your guests. In case I forgot to mention it, you strain out the spices before you drink it. Enjoy :)
Background music:
So, November is incredibly busy (and right now I'm procrastinating by not working on my 2000 word quota for the evening.) But I'm doing well, have kept my head above water so far, and 40% done already! Leaving me feeling mildly justified at composing an aimless post.
As my muffin profile sneakily revealed to the world, I can be shy, and more often post about a song, a poem, a speech, or book, than daily minutiae. Daily minutiae slices are serious, deadly funny, more light weight than air -- and surprisingly revealing, which for a private person is a signal to run the other way. Maybe I'm afraid of giving away too much about my tendency to browse too long on the internet, weakness for adding too many exclamation points and smileys at the end of my comments, and a mild social media and celebrity obsession.
Anyway, I digress.
What I really love about my morning is the quiet drive to the train station.
For a decade-long, impatient, car-abhorring, unwillingly transplanted city dweller, convinced that urban living was baked into me permanently, it's amusing to discover that I love the quiet you bump into when you're in between places, on your way from somewhere to somewhere different... when you are required to drive and you can sit still for a few moments cocooned in your sun-warmed (or heated leather, whichever applies) car seat, listening to 80s softies on the radio and doing absolutely nothing useful.
Perhaps you may observe the weather or increasingly bare trees, or notice that there are several wild turkeys which have colonized my town, amazingly ill-tempered according to beleaguered walking and jogging exercisers, which keep magically reappearing to stop traffic, near the graveyard, near the windy road near my house that I'd prefer to take at high speed, and on the morning drive to the train station.
Wild turkeys are like the opposite of exotic, perhaps exotic only in being the peacock's antagonist, all drab grey blue plumage and red bearded chin feathers. I can't quite see why Benjamin Franklin wanted to name them the national bird, but "poor Richard's" taste definitely strayed towards the humble and ordinary. These wild turkeys are splendidly insolent, and the one thing I do understand about them is how their plump decadence make them very appealing for feast food. The deer and the turkeys in my hometown keep making me think of Sarah Palin, as in, "Wow, if Sarah Palin was here, she'd go hunting!"
But enough about the cultural lessons of the election. What I love about my morning is the drive, the heated seat, waiting at the train platform at 7:07 am and the morning quality of the sunlight, burning some imaginary mist off the platform and the tracks veering away into the distance. The silent horde of people waiting, orderly, overcoated and weighed down with lunch, laptops and the WSJ. Waiting, waiting, waiting, because nearly anything can happen today.
I'm very grateful that I feel that spark of possibility again, because I had been feeling low, and I can't remember the last time before this when the clouds cleared this way.
On my iTunes playlist today: Ella and Mack the Knife.
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