Berkshur Culchur, Fershur

Summer in the Berkshires has a lot to recommend it. Winter too, I suppose, if you happen to ski (I don’t). So, for that matter, does the fall. As does the spring, to the degree the area sees a proper spring anymore. Lately it seems that the traditional season known in song and story as “spring” has given way to an extended interlude of rain, chill, and mud, broken up by occasional clear days and a slow renewal of green things, giving way all to soon to the heat and humidity. Not like the springs when I was a kid, I tells ya. Oh, we had seasons back then…

Summer is a terrific time to avail yourself of the many cultural attractions in the region. Over the course of a recent vacation, my family enjoyed two of the Berkshires’ most storied cultural landmarks: The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Tanglewood in Lenox, MA.

The main attraction at the Clark was the opportunity to see their new building, the Stone Hill Center. The building, which opened earlier this summer, houses the museum’s art conservation facility. It also includes a small gallery.

The building itself is impressive, sited up on Stone Hill a gentle and pleasant stroll through the woods from the main museum buildings. It’s got a terrific open patio that looks out over the natural beauty of its surroundings.

The current gallery content on the other hand is a serious misfire. At present, the gallery features Homer and Sargent from the Clark: twelve of the Clark’s most important paintings by American artists Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent. These are wonderful works of art, popular mainstays of the Clark’s permanent collection that will be familiar to regular visitors to the museum. Therein lies the first problem with the exhibition: these paintings are too familiar to be presented in a new context and in a new location. The paintings themselves seem out of place. Then, too, the need to create an appropriate environment for these classic, delicate, and expensive works means that the museum must draw the shades on the large windows in the gallery, thereby shutting out the landscape with which the gallery, and the entire building, was designed to integrate. It’s not a disaster, by any means, but it is certainly makes for a lackluster launch of the facility.

Tanglewood, on the other hand, is all about the harmonious interplay of place and presentation. The recent unfortunate lightning incident aside, it is a place where nature and music combine to create an almost spiritual experience. A blanket and a few chairs, a nice basket of food, a generous supply of bug spray, and the stars slowly coming out overhead create at atmosphere conducive to the enjoyment of great music presented by world-class performers. Tanglewood accomplishes what the Clark Art Institute’s new facility so far fails to master.

Of course, in both cases, my experiences represent a point in time rather than an absolute. Even talented performers can misfire, and it’s possible for the Boston Symphony Orchestra to present a dud of a program at Tanglewood. Other factors can also influence the outcome of your Tanglewood sojourn. The weather may fail to cooperate. Dinner may not come together. It may be too warm or too cold. You may end up seated next to certain of your fellow patrons who don’t know when to shut up and listen. Similarly, the next exhibition installed in the Clark’s Stone Hill Center may indeed be a tour de force, one that challenges patrons to experience both art and architecture in new and transformative ways.

Anything is possible, and that’s the point. To approach culture expecting to be amazed every time sets an impossible expectation. Transcendence is a possible outcome, but it need not be a goal in itself. It can be enough just to take in what these cultural venues (and any of the myriad others in the region) have to offer. It’s one of the best reasons to live in or visit the Berkshires in the summertime.

Food on the fly

Tentative plans for a family evening out last night gave way to some later than anticipated work time, a forecast for inclement weather (that ultimately proved unwarranted), and general sluggishness. This left a hungry family at a loss for a planned meal as the dinner hour slipped away.

A quick rummage through the fridge, freezer, and pantry resulted in the rapid assembly of the following improvisation:

Poor Planning Penne

3T olive oil
4 cloves chopped garlic
2 cloves garlic, smashed with the flat of a kitchen knife
2/3 cup milk
1/3 cup half and half
3 oil-packed sun dried tomatoes, chopped
1 leftover grilled chicken thigh, meat stripped off the bone and cut into large dice
1 slice grilled pork tenderloin, diced
1 crown broccoli, separated into small florets
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 pound penne (preferably whole wheat)

Heat the oil in a large saute pan. Add the garlic, and cook over medium heat 2-3 minutes until soft.

Cook the pasta according to package directions; drain and set aside until ready to add to the sauce.

Warm the milk, cream, and smashed garlic in a small saucepan. Allow the garlic to steep in the milk mixture until needed.

Add the tomatoes, to the garlic in the saute pan, and cook another 1-2 minutes. Increase the heat to medium-high, add the chicken and pork and cook until warmed through. Add the broccoli, and cook until just tender (2-3 minutes). Add the frozen peas.

Remove the smashed garlic from the milk mixture. Add the milk to the saute pan. Stir to combine.

Add the pasta and the cheese. Stir to combine and coat.

Serve.

My brain hates me.

So I’m trying to eat well. I’m trying to exercise regularly. I’m starting to see some progress from these efforts. So what does my stupid subconscious decide? That what I really need to do is request a whole mess of cooking and food books through the (kickass) interlibrary loan system.

Self-sabotage anyone?

A few recent literary bites include:

Fork It Over, by Alan Richman: Smart writing in both its pure and -alecky, -assed, and -mouthed forms. Too joyful to be a curmudgeon, and too bluntly critical to be an apologist, Mr. Richman writes about food from a perspective that remains informed by his earlier career as a sportswriter, which is intended as a compliment.

The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions from Public Radio’s Award-Winning Food Show, by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift: While there have been plenty of cookbooks I’ve liked less than this, most of those at least provoked a strong negative response on my part. It’s rare I read a cookbook that leaves me almost entirely indifferent. I don’t know; perhaps if I were familiar with The Splendid Table radio program I would have been more receptive to this book’s charms. Without that grounding, I didn’t find much in this book to care about.

The United States of Arugula, by David Kamp: A culinary history of gourmet eating in the United States. From the mid-twentieth century ascendance of James Beard, Julia Child, and Craig Claiborne, through the genesis of Chez Panisse and its ripple effects across the gastronomic landscape, through a succession of foodstuffs and food trends (vegetarian, macrobiotic, free-range, sun-dried, extra virgin, nouvelle, California, sushi) to the diverse, unique, sometimes commodified, often celebrity-driven, frequently dissonant contemporary food environment, Mr. Kamp’s book is an adept survey of culinary cultural history.

In the queue I have not one, but two books about Guinness (did I mention that part of my eating and exercise reqimen includes cutting out alcohol), a book about bananas, a culinary memoir, and a collection of essays by famous chefs.

So, yeah. My brain? Trying to destroy me.

B. Mod’s iPod: Geography shuffle II

Foxboro Hottubs, “Broadway”
Harry Belafonte, “Jamaica Farewell”
Beck, “High 5 (Rock the Catskills)”
Joe Jackson, “Memphis”
Neal Hefti, “Gotham City Municipal Swing Band”
Ani DiFranco, “Hello Birmingham”
Tom Waits, “I Wish I Was in New Orleans”
Pogues, “Fairytale of New York”
Pogues, “Dark Streets of London”
Cry Cry Cry, “Cold Missouri Waters”
Counting Crows, “Omaha”

B. Mod’s iPod: Geography shuffle

Beastie Boys, “An Open Letter to NYC”
John Lee Hooker, “Tupelo”
Phish, “Montana”
Nerf Herder, “New Jersey Girl”
Moxy Fruvous, “King of Spain”
Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London”
Jim’s Big Ego, “Los Angeles”
Desi Arnaz and Amanda Lane, “Cuban Pete”
John Gorka, “I’m From New Jersey”
Bee Gees, “Massachusetts”

The hills are alive, with the sound of wheezing…

So it was the @#$%ing Congo Bars that had me hiking halfway up a goddamned mountain*.

I made a batch of them for my nephew’s high school graduation party last month. I used Emeril Lagasse’s recipe** from Emeril’s TV Dinners, which means that they were guaranteed to be both pretty darned tasty and quite apocalyptically bad for you.

During the party, I manged to bring to bear enough willpower to avoid eating any of them. Problem was, the recipe makde enough bars that we wound up with about half the batch left at home. I brought a few to work, and stored the rest in my parents’ freezer (the Yucca Mountain of food we can’t be trusted to leave in the house) against the day we needed a dessert on the fly.

That day came this Fourth of July at my parents’ big family cookout and funtime-palooza. In addition to all the other great food, the @#$%ing Congo Bars made their encore appearance.

I don’t know. Maybe it was the good company. Maybe it was the inevitable consequence of attempting to maintain rigid self control. Maybe it was the fact that I’ve permitted myself a few exceptions, all of them centering on the confluence of good company and homemade sweets. Maybe it was just a moment of weakness. Regardless, I knew it was a bad idea. Like the idiot in the horror film who doesn’t know enough not to go upstairs, I should have known better. Yet like that idiot, I fumbled my way straight to my doom.

What I’m trying to say is, I slipped. I had a @#$%ing Congo Bar. It was a small @#$%ing Congo Bar, but it started weighing on my mind the second I savored that first decadent bite. I’m not sure why I took that @#$%ing Congo Bar so seriously, or why I was so worried that savoring dessert that one time would cause a dietary relapse. All I know is that I’m better able to meet my commitment to exercising and eating well when I do — or more properly, when I avoid — certain things, most especially alcohol, caffeine, and sugar.

Now I know; I’m the guy who’s all “a commitment to exercising and eating well shouldn’t be about sin and expiation.” But in this case I really felt a need for a little penance, if only to get the @#$%ing Congo Bar off my mind once and for all.

So halfway up the goddamned mountain I went. Specifically, up the Birch Brook Trail at Hopkins Memorial Forest. Now, you might think that the description of this hike on the trail map — “The trail climbs the steep, east-facing slope of the Taconic Range” — might have alerted me to the fact that this was basically, you know, uphill most of the way. You would think the words “steep climb” would have raised some red flags. You would be wrong.

Indeed, I found myself huffing and puffing and sweating my flabby, wheezing, out of shape way up a mile and a half of steep verticals with few level spots to mitigate the effect of climbing a big ol’ hill. Indeed, a few times I questioned the wisdom of continuing, and considered the possibility of turning around. I was hiking on my own. There was no one to whom I needed to prove myself. There was no one to judge me. There was no one to know I had turned back. Hell, on the most basic level, there was no reason aside from sheer bloody-mindedness and that @#$%ing Congo Bar to believe that setting my feet on this particular trail in the first place required me to follow it to the end. It would have been easy to turn around.

Now I’m not the most spiritual person in the world. Frankly, I’m too arrogant and stubborn to want to rely on any outside person or agency to help me. While I admire them in others, grace, humility, and patience are pretty low down on my personal roster of salutary characteristics.

But as I stood somewhere between the bottom of that trail and the top taking a pull from my water bottle, I experienced a moment of that I can only (reluctantly) call insight. Steep as the trail had been, and steep as it looked ahead of me, I was fairly certain there was more of it behind than there was left to climb. I was almost there, but did I want to get there?

As I put the cap back on the bottle and tried to decide which way I would go next, a clear thought popped into my head: the person I have been would turn back. The person I want to be would get to the top. Put that way, it was a pretty simple choice. Put that way, getting to the top of the trail had nothing to do with the @#$%ing Congo Bar, and everything to do with how I want to be in the world.

I don’t know; maybe I’m just using a not terribly nuanced thought to ennoble bloody-mindedness. Maybe struggling this much over a decidedly arbitrary and meaningless goal is a waste of time. Maybe I need to settle the heck down about the whole @#$%ing Congo Bar thing. I’m really not sure.

What I do know is I made it to the top of the trail, and a little farther on beyond that to boot. Arbitrary and stubborn it may have been, but I’m confident it also felt a hell of a lot better to push through the difficulty than it would have to give up and turn around.

Oh, yeah, and Hopkins Forest is a beatiful place to hike, even if you aren’t feeling especially penitent. The Birch Brook Trail climbs through some really nice — if really @#$%in’ steep — terrain on its way to hooking up with the Taconic Crest Trail. The Lower and Upper Loop trails comprise a nice figure eight of rolling pathways with a few nice inclines to keep the whole thing interesting.

*”up a goddamned mountain” copyright Warren Ellis and DC Comics.

**Mr. Lagasse refers to them simply as “bar cookies.” The recipe is fairly simple, and presented here in a way that hopefully conveys the basics of an extremely basic recipe without violating Mr. Lagasse’s copyright.

So what you do is you make yourself enough of a graham cracker crust to cover the bottom and sides of a large-ish baking sheet.

Then you dump whatever from the baking aisle suits your fancy over the crust; I’m talking here about a package each of your favorite chips (chocolate, peanut butter, butterscotch, etc. — two packages in all), a package of whatever nuts you happen to like, and a mess of shredded coconut (if that appeals to you; if not, then, regrettably, you’re just not my kind of people; I mean, I’m sure you’re good people, and I wouldn’t necessarily shun you or anything, but, yeah, I don’t know, man. I’m sure there are things about me that elicit the same reponse. I abhor mayonnaise [and, really, the whole pantheon of emulsified -aise sauces, including Bernaise and Hollandaise] for example.), and then drown the whole schmear in a couple cans of sweetended condensed milk. Then bake for a while until the ingredients get browned and crusty and bubble and delicious. Cool and cut into whatever dimensions seem prudent.

B. Mod’s iPod: Morning Walk Shuffle

Moxy Früvous, “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors”
Pogues, “A Rainy Night in Soho”
Warren Zevon, “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” (live version)
Frank Sinatra, “The Tea Break” (spoken)
Ani DiFranco, “Superhero”
Jody Watley, “After You Who”
Tom Waits, “Big in Japan”
Paul Williams, (Muppet Movie Soundtrack), “Animal…Come Back Animal”
Booker T. and the MGs, “Green Onions”
Bee Gees, “Night Fever”
Aquabats, “Cat With 2 Heads”
Great Big Sea, “Fast as I Can”
Clem Snide, “The Ballad of David Icke”
The Simpsons, “Happy Birthday Lisa”
Weird Al Yankovic, “Dare to Be Stupid”
k.d. lang, “So in Love”
Jim’s Big Ego, “Boston Band”
Weird Al Yankovic, “I Want a New Duck”
Weird Al Yankovic, “Eat It”
Grateful Dead, “Friend of the Devil”
Elvis Costello, “Beyond Belief”
Rufus Thomas, “The Dog”
Robert Johnson, “Milkcow’s Calf Blues”
Iggy Pop, “Repo Man”
Elvis Presly, “Jailhouse Rock”
Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet, “Damnation’s Cellar”
Barenaked Ladies, “Am I the Only One?”
They Might Be Giants, “She’s Actual Size” (live version)
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, “Can’t We Be Friends”
They Might Be Giants, “Out of Jail”
Tom Waits, “Home I’ll Never Be”
Jim’s Big Ego, “She Turns Me On”
Lyle Lovett, “Church”
Bee Gees, “Alone”
The Mad Lads, “Don’t Have to Shop Around”
Warren Zevon, “The Envoy”
Katia Ricciarelli (Puccini, La Boheme), “Chi E La?”
Weird Al Yankovic, “Good Enough for Now”
Weird Al Yankovic, “The Alternative Polka”
Thomas Dolby, “Hyperactive!”
Angela Gheorghiu (Puccini, La Boheme), “Si, Mi Chiamano Mimi”
Weird Al Yankovic, “My Bologna”
Talking Heads, “Popsicle”
Indigo Girls, “Joking”

Don’t get me wrong; I love Weird Al, but he came up on the shuffle a few too many times this morning.

And another thing… (WALL•E redux)

I’m really impressed that when the makers of WALL•E selected a Louis Armstrong song for the film’s soundtrack, they looked past the obligatory and overused (but thematically appropriate) “What a Wonderful World” and went with “La Vie en Rose.” It’s a little thing, but it’s the difference between the easy decision and the decision that requires thought and effort. I appreciate that extra little bit of attention to detail.

WALL•E (2008)

WALL•E is…

A Charlie Chaplin/Little Tramp movie, but, with, you know, robots;

A not terribly subtle social commentary that nevertheless gets its point across without heavy-handedness;*

kind of reminiscent of Silent Running, if Silent Running hadn’t been so relentlessy pessimistic;

proof that Fred Willard is the cinematic equivalent of nutmeg: too much can be overbearing, but just the right amount can really brighten things up;

a great love story, with, you know, robots.

*However, since part of the commentary revolves around the fact that the human race had to leave Earth after filling up the planet with all their consumer stuff, I kind of question the practice at the theater where I saw the film of giving a WALL•E watch to the kids who attended the screening.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

For something so basic and necessary, it is easy to take food for granted. Doing so enables many of us to ignore the chain of social, economic, petrochemical, pharmacological and loose regulatory causality that goes into putting a meal on our plate. For example, the meat most of us eat is the end product of an industrial food chain driven not so much by our collective hunger for burgers and chicken as it is by the mountainous — and ever growing — surplus of corn. Similarly, while the term “organic” conjures up comforting thoughts of healthful food grown in pastoral settings, the reality of the industrial organic business model in place today benefits from regulations that define organic food in the broadest possible terms while charging a premium for them in the marketplace.

In The Ominvore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan tracks his way through four food chains to see where our food comes from, and to identify the true costs and tradeoffs that come of eating in different ways. He explores the complicated, corn- and petroleum-based food economy, culminating in a McDonald’s meal. He investigates the organic food movement, and discovers that the process by which organic chicken and baby greens get to boutique markets require similar economies of scale and comparable tradeoffs to the industrial food mainstream. He spends time working on a farm that produces its food in as close a harmony with natural systems as something as interventionist as agriculture allows. Finally, he learns to hunt and forage, and cooks a meal gathered entirely by the effort of his own hands.

Ultimately, few of us are in a position to feed ourselves and our families as pure hunter-gatherers. Even if we were, the reality is that there is not enough forage out there to feed a nation of scavengers. While the book presents the facts and implications of each of the different food systems Mr. Pollan explores, the lesson of The Ominvore’s Dilemma has more to do with mindfulness — of knowing what you are eating, where it came from, and the benefits, costs, and tradeoffs inherent in that food system — than with changing readers’ ways of thinking or acting.

I’m not sure I wouldn’t be happier not thinking about where my chicken came from, or the evolutionary tinkering that goes into feeding ruminant cattle a corn-intensive diet in order to fatten them up in order to yield more burgers per animal, or even about the reality that undelies the pastoral image on the box of my supposedly organic cereal. I suspect that from this point on, I will have a much more difficult time being casually ignorant; ignoring these realities will now require an act of will.