Per Diem

The Expense of Spirit

In a virtual conversation about pursuing a spiritual life, and its importance, I had the chance to say the following.

I’ve always felt it to be a lamentable condition that a continually growing number of people have lost contact with their own spirit, or, to say it more conventionally, their spiritual side. But the latter expression always makes it sound like your skills riding a bike.

No, I think the general state of the world, and the so-called developed world in particular, is attributable to this uncoupling from matters not immediately apprehensible in the concrete universe of things, from distant galaxies to gadgets at the Apple Store.

My agnostic self never gags at the self-ministering of others to their spiritual needs. For one, it is surely not my business. More broadly, if I remember the few tattered shreds of studying ancient Greek, when I was a stripling, gnosis in Greek merely means knowledge. To say I’m agnostic means that, “I don’t know.” Perhaps atheists have that gag reflex.

I am certainly an apostate, as, like most people in the civilized world, I was raised to be a believer--in the tenets of Judaism in my case--not a bad proposition in its fundamentals; it’s when we Jews attain to rule-setting and determining behavior that I take the exit (as I did when I was 14). So I am not a believer, and I am certainly one to repudiate organized religion, as I believe it has caused more harm than good since long before when "my people" were still desert nomads worshiping snakes.

I don’t attend church (in the broadest sense), but I try to stay in touch at all times in a way (isn’t that what mindfulness is about?) with my inner being, as it is always apposite to my outer being and its relations with the rest of the physical universe.

I always kind of liked certain Taoist concepts, certain Buddhist ones. I don’t bother myself about the afterlife, which I assume is unknowable in this life, and will take care of itself if there is one. What I like is the sense that we are all in this together, not just we humans, but all things, and especially with that particular metaphysically curious notion, or perhaps it’s simply some corrupted Berkeleyan notion) that whatever happens would have happened differently, if at all, if I were not to exist. This seems especially true of more proximate incidents... When I was in the immediate neighborhood so to speak.

On the other hand, that popular expression, and whatever even its broadest interpretation may be, “the family that prays together... etc.” to me doesn’t mean it will stay together, but that there are certain periods when those family members aren’t talking to one another (which may, of course, be a good and salutary, if not a therapeutic, thing: we often get into as much trouble talking as we do not speaking). In short, what you (or anyone, other than me in fact) believe or do is not my business. I may be interested, and if I were to come to know you and care for you, even to fondness, that interest might transcend mere curiosity and involvement, but it’s not for us (and of us) to judge one another.

As I’ve grown older, and accumulated whatever poor notions I can however feebly define as wisdom, and especially given the lessons I learned about living from my dying wife, who was, as I understood at the time only inadequately, and more so since her death, a most amazing human being: heroic, brave, life-embracing, life-affirming, kind, generous, and forgiving, and even more so in the face of an inevitable confrontation prematurely (is the general consensus--she would have been 58 last summer) with her own mortality.

I don’t ever want to cause anyone any harm, and I try to live accordingly. I fail I’m sure, but with this particular bit of mindfulness at work, I am sure it occurs less often.

There has been no damage, I don’t think, to my essential nature and the personality that I cultivated--good or bad, the me I am is the me I got--and so I am the same person I always was, with the same neuroses, and parallax views, with the same disjointed ways of seeing the same things others look at. It’s the variety of points of view that ensue that are part of what make life interesting I think, and make each of us potentially compelling to others, one on one. As I like to say, I like people, and I’ve grown to love many of them (and there are others from whom, sadly, I’ve become estranged, perhaps irretrievably, but that too is life), and I have many many friends, some of whom take the trouble to point out to me (I guess because they think at that moment I need such bolstering; indeed we all do, probably more often than we admit to ourselves) that all of them adore me. I’ll take that on faith.

But, as I also like to say, it’s mankind I can’t stand. The history of civilization at least (which is a redundancy I suppose/one of the facets of civilization, if you think about it, is its habit, once it identifies itself as such, to record and sustain its own story) is a mixed one, though far too replete with tragedy, sadness, and cruelty. And of course, the state of diminished spirituality. A kind of Second Law of Thermodynamics as applied to the soul.

And with no discernible reason for any of it. Human nature is not an explanation, and it is certainly not an excuse, and never an exculpation.

Zeitgeist and politics

I'll give the right wing this. They're clever in their malice. The left may have earnestness, and something short of sanctimony (take a moderate-left fiscal conservative, add sanctimony: result? Joe Lieberman), but they sure don't have a sense of humor.

Just yesterday I heard this one.

You know about Obama's new proposed tax on aspirin? It's white and it works.

I love this country. It runs on fear, hate, and cheap gas. Three pollutants.

I'd say, I can always run away to France, but I'm reading in reports from a think tank I subscribe to that xenophobia is on a rampage in Europe. France is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, of the countries in Europe (and since when did the name of a continent around long enough for Don Rumsfeld to call it "old" require a change to "Euro-zone," as if it were a program of the government, like EZPass, they decided they had to brand?). And France is about the size of Texas.

So all of Europe would fit into a corner of the southwest of the U.S., until we built a wall around it, or threw them out. So I guess they feel the hot breath of all those immigrants more intimately, and they quiver with rage and anxiety in their French blue overalls. Like Poles and Rumanians and Turkish Muslims all have master-level skills in the trades.

Of course, we Americans do spew our hatred for any minority that exceeds ten per cent of our population. And our significant minorities don't even dress funny. And that's despite the stereotypes about hip-hop and homosexuals.

It would be my guess that the analysts have changed their position on anti-Semitism from a "hold" to a "buy." I would.

It's a good bet that all Semites should be on amber alert. bin Laden and Madoff: the poster boys of the new millennium. Even gentle Elie Wiesel is cursing Bernie.

And if things do go south (so to speak) completely while Obama is president, it will result in a headache no aspirin will cure. And the reaction, I suspect, will make the Black Panthers look like a Boy Scout troop run by adults of a different sexual preference.

Café Society, Aups 2009January15

Perhaps it’s the penetrating energy from the mid-morning sun on the terrace of the Grand Café du Cours. It is set, bare and unrelenting in a peerless Provençal sky, unmarred save by the tiniest wisp of a cloud that dissipates before I can capture it in camera memory.

Perhaps it’s the seven tables of rural flaneurs, taking a break, a mink coat here, a deep bronze tan there, the smoking cadres of brunette pony-tails (literally smoking—it’s permissible only out of doors).

Whatever it is, the aromatics of the coffee this morning are redolent, inducing only the best stirrings of gastric juices and saliva. The lure of it pierces even the thick crema that is the special draw of the espresso at the Grand Café, penetrating the nostrils and the gorge.

One stalwart, seated nearby, in a beret, with a massive gold signet ring and a thick moustache, chomping on a croissant extracted from the flimsy bag of the boulangerie, peers at the morning paper through his wire-framed glasses. The rest of the crowd, including me, have put on our shades. The sun’s beams are incessant, blinding.

I hear the patron, rushing in and out of the café with trays laden first with full cups and then with empties, pause to explain the uncommon warmth to the beret, as they peruse the thermometer mounted on a promotional enameled plaque courtesy of Martini & Rossi on the wall just above my head and just shaded by the awning extended only a meter or so—to maximize both the accuracy of a reading and the exposure of the clients. “Treize,” he says, “c’est treize!” and he points to the awning and the shaded gauge. Thirteen degrees (almost 56F, the floor of true warmth, especially smack in the middle of January, and with the seductive promise of true shirt-sleeve weather this afternoon). It’s only 11:30 and the sun will bake the open spaces into a hint of sultriness.

Six old-timers arrive and debate their first choice of table. One of them, the smallest and the baldest, argues, pointing to larger more exposed choices to their right, “Le soleil! Le soleil la bas!” and then he points to the tiny square table meant for four in front of them. But five of them have already seated themselves in the shade of a shrub set in a concrete combination planter and traffic barrier. The shrub stands a meter high, and so one corner of the table is, in fact, in shadow.

Save for one couple who have nursed a rosé (she) and a pastis (he) just beside me for the past half-hour, the crowd has exclusively been consuming the fragrant coffee in its many modes, mainly single espressos, the occasional double (including mine), a noisette here, an espresso “longue, très très longue” there. But the old guys are all here to drink, as I would have predicted, something a bit stronger. While they bake their bones and joke and jostle one another each savors his favorite tipple—in the tiniest of glasses. Even the beers are diminutive, perhaps a half of a “quart” (a quarter), that is, an eighth-liter or hardly more than four ounces. Another has a pastis, but, again, in a mini-portion. Another sips a sweet vermouth in a Lilliputian snifter, with an ice-cube crowding the spoonsful of alcohol. They are wetting their whistles. Mere lubricant for the fellowship that is their true purpose.

So much for the myth of mid-day French drinking.

Except for us solitary worshipers, or observers, or thinkers or diners, every table buzzes with talk. The French do talk.

But so do the Brits, and the Germans. The British are loud as their orange-y tans, the Germans sotto voce. The French adopt a uniform conversational tone, setting a universal and incomprehensible buzz, mixing with the heated currents of fresh air and the blinding rays of the relentless sun.

It is almost noon. The siren on the Town Hall will wail soon and for several minutes the shadows from that shrub adjoining the old-timers will disappear from the table top.

Open Letter to a Friend: Email is Dead

Miguel

Yesterday, to add to the dismay of reaching almost no one I cared to call I realized something about the “same difference” between my two states of geographic/cartographic being. At the risk of sounding particularly malicious or cynical, I could say I could call my friends here in France—Skype costs two cents a minute no matter the destination—but they, each of them, give the impression of having lives, as opposed to, say, agendas and itineraries.

But what is worse, there was, as has become usual, a dearth of email messages. But we’ll get to that in a minute, or several minutes, or several hundred words.

I do use Skype, a voice over IP (VoIP) service, that for a little more than two cents a minute allows one to call anyone anywhere in the world with a legitimate land line or mobile phone number, as long as you have a Internet connection of sufficient bandwidth. Being the true Scotsman you are, you are no doubt at least aware of it. However, as it's the "magic" of Internet Protocol exploitation, or trickery if you are of a Creationist bent, anyone with caller ID on their receiving phone equipment sees only a meaningless sequence of ordinal numbers (something like 0000123456).

As a result, even Steve, who has become so sensitized as to the need to make wise use of his discretionary time (time when he is not actively engaged in either his current "thing," which is playing music (a good thing, may I hasten to add), or the same mindless, heedless temporizing he's been doing his entire life, when not actually earning a living, which he no longer is required to do even in these parlous times, and I am not picking on him, he’s only first among equals, a body of souls, as the 19th century Russian novelists would say, with remarkably similar lives -- creating a new statistical category for taxonomic purposes, those of us sufficiently well off, even after abandoning careers of varying degrees of success for whatever compelling reasons: ennui, angst, sudden loss of interest in life’s calling, or, perhaps, caregiving to loved ones with terminal conditions, and still comfortable, i.e., not reading the help wanted pages, or networking by whatever means, even after the rampages and ravages of the Bushite last fiscal hurrah; I suggest the rubric, the "Non-Retired," similar to the undead, without the inconvenience as yet of having passed through the actual throes of giving up the ghost)—anyway, he does not answer such calls, especially as his chief and only mode of telephonic connection to the rest of the world is a cell phone.

This means, of course, that he must pay, except for certain hours of the day, even for incoming calls. There is a limit, given the level of service he is paying for, to the number of minutes allotted on a monthly basis before his calls are thrown into a much higher category of toll charges. And, given that his home is in a nearly, but not quite, "dead zone," (notice a thematic trend here?), which, as you might know, if you watched tv, from some ill-considered grisly television commercials paid for by Verizon, are areas where cell phone reception is absent, or intermittent, but certainly wholly unreliable, he is disposed, prudently, to consider which calls to take and which not.

However, I was trying to write about email, and not to perseverate on my frustration over not being able to contact anyone I know on the short list of people I care to speak by phone to in the United States of America—even in my sequestration in the most rural of precincts of anyone I know (and this includes a number of acquaintances, mainly female as it happens, who for reasons still unfathomable to me choose to spend their waning years, still mentally in full possession, and so forth, and still more than moderately attractive, in such locations as Kabul, Afghanistan, which, though definitely a form of sequestration, especially if you are white and female and have a passport from a so-called first-world country, are definitely not rural, but, in fact, other than certain strategic, if remote, mountain passes in the same country, but which have the definite disadvantage of being among the most deadly, literally, in the entire world, are among the most deadly living areas on the face of the planet). But, as usual, I digress.

The only deaths, according to the newspapers locally, that seem to prevail here in La France Profonde, are the result of suicide (a police captain, with a personal weapon, as opposed to his service weapon, as if the fucking gun would be dishonored with such a dishonorable usage, while sitting in his car, on injured reserve, or whatever the police call it, and not due to return to service until March; they are being unusually mum about the possible reasons; I suspect terminal boredom), or suicide pact, or suicide abduction or suicide seduction (a mother and daughter who elected, there being an absence of subway—to throw themselves in the path of a TGV train; TGV is the acronym for "train à grande vitesse," which means very high speed train, that being in the area of 180 miles an hour at maximum -- a sure fire way to off yourself, and give the coroner some very interesting studies in pathology), or homicide (a young farmer beat his young wife insensate, and then set his farmhouse, with her and their sleeping children within, on fire), there was also a celebrity incident involving his stabbing some bloke with a "poignard" (so much more romantic sounding even than "dagger," which is what it is), but they are both, alleged perpetrator and his victim, merely under observation and not in danger.

I am not aware if either of them is in possession of a cell phone, or as they prefer to call it here, a "mobile." It is pronounced with an accent on the first syllable, with a long "o" and the second syllable is pronounced like the excreta of the liver, and not like the city in Alabama. As in "Mo' bile" similar to (in ghetto English) "mo' betta' blues."

But the subject is email.

Yesterday, I received eleven pieces of email. Indulge me as I enumerate them.

One was actually an acknowledgment of an email that I caused to be sent to another friend, Bill, with a link to Frank Rich's column in yesterday's New York Sunday Times's "News of the Week in Review," the sending of which the newspaper allows you to copy to yourself. Although no harm, of course, is done thereby, this kind of reflexive electronic mailing is at least analogous to talking to oneself, something I am proud, or always have been so, to say I never do, though there are those who claim that my style of writing is akin to being a kind of perpetual monologue—the only real monologue, or I should say, "true" monologue, there being no audience that I, at least, can attest to. I assume there is an audience. I will even confess to hoping there is an audience, but as Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller is famous for having written, "one never knows, do one?"—and at worst, it is a kind of slow suicide, intellectual suicide, if you will. So I don't think that bit of email counts. On the other hand, Bill did acknowledge receipt, and then, in fact, commented on the content of the Rich essay. That was two emails for my one bit of do-goodism.

So that was a good investment on my part. It left me mindful of the golden years of email, back in the 90s, when, in addition to getting actual work done—a full day's work, for which I was often handsomely rewarded; work that included the use of email for productive discourse concerning the substance of the work for which I was being remunerated—I would conduct sometimes lengthy correspondence with various correspondents, for no other purpose than the joy and pleasure of human contact. The content of those exchanges of messages may have been substantive as well, pithy, or philosophical, as these are natural dispositions, or at least ambitions of mine (and remain so, I might add), or entirely frivolous, if not mindless temporizing (see above). Often enough, certain of my regular correspondents would forward bits of humor they had received in the form of jokes (mainly), or cartoons, or the more technologically adept would forward files of music and the first primitive videos to appear on computers. This was long before the days of iTunes (and Napster... and now the myriad other means of downloading near-commercial quality recordings) or YouTube and its many brethren. Many emails largely consisted of a sentence or two, on the order of, "Check this out!" or "This is cool," along with a URL to some clever Web site or bit of Web content.

On the average day, not even including actual business-related emails, I would receive for certain, guaranteed, dozens and dozens of emails—not spam or junk or spurious content of any other form; back then, it appeared only at a minimum, as it took at least a couple of years for the production of electronic instant garbage to become a global industry, and an international felony—and often enough, "Oh happy day," they (email messages) would arrive in the hundreds.

And whereas others, including Linda (who had the onus of managers, and then their managers, and yet more levels of managers above them to the very executive level of the CEO, bearing down upon her to be productive and to cause her many minions to be productive, even whilst they all exchanged hundreds of emails that were, in the main, of that dreary variety of post called memoranda and cover-your-ass notes, all related to the business of IBM, and most of them, in fact, having nothing to do with her specific mandate) lamented the utter lack of headroom because of the volume of email daily, which had to be processed, and yet which arrived in such numbers, from so many levels of hierarchy, that the mere management of which messages to answer, which messages to answer in depth, which merely to store (lest it be sought, however unlikely the future possibility, in some forthcoming query, inquiry, or inquest—of course, now, we learn on the blessed evening of his departure therefrom, the Bush White House has utterly destroyed, lost track of, or simply can refuse to acknowledge ever existed, literally millions of email messages, and there is not a peep or a stir, except the usual ineffectual murmur of protest on the editorial page of The New York Times (another emerging theme here, but related actually, as the NYT is a newspaper, appropriately designated the nation's "newspaper of record," that is accurately positioned universally as a dead letter itself, dead news walking, or, at the very least, without over-dramatizing this, a moribund form of news transmittal)), and which messages, finally, to ignore completely, all of which meant that each day was fraught.

The processing of her email usually left Linda with about 20 minutes out of her nominal eight-hour workday, including a yogurt and piece of fruit lunch consumed at her desk, one hand holding a napkin, and the other (hand), no doubt, on either the mouse or the keyboard, in order to get all of her other work done, which means her de facto workday was usually ten to 12 hours. While I blithely would work at least as long, but only because I spent so much time getting all of my work done as well as conducting, if not more than holding up more than my share of, these lively email interchanges I so fondly recall.

But as I say, those were the golden years. And I, social creature that I am, despite my saturnine, if not curmudgeonly reputation, relished the contact, and encouraged it, and promoted it. I sent far more messages than I ever received. I know because I was my own Nielsen rating system, periodically telling my correspondents that, in toto, for each message I received, I had sent something like five or six.

If nothing else, it gave me an incredibly fast touch-typing speed, and, being younger, a much lower percentage of typos and the kinds of solecisms that are now only embarrassing, especially because no one says anything when I send a message that has at least two or three instances of English sentence structure that would be impossible to parse even by a linguist, because I typed a word that passed through my brain minutes before, while projecting ahead to the sentence to come. What the hell? My age is coming in line with the level of expectancy of such mistakes, so in addition to being a crank, I have an excuse for being incomprehensible as well.

However, the point is: in the past, hundreds of messages—I was in epistolary heaven. Today (or yesterday), eleven emails (and I haven’t lost track of the fact that I haven’t actually enumerated each of them as to provenance, subject or purpose).

Two emails were from sources sponsoring services to which I subscribed long since. Not for the pathetic reason of at least being able to expect the occasional quotidian contact, even if only from another machine—and yet, and yet... No, one was from the City of Cambridge, which offers a newsletter telling citizens of that estimable municipality just what’s happening in City Hall, and elsewhere in the confines of the People’s Republik, at least insofar as the official governors of our lives have any say in the matter. It does tell you when there are snow emergency days, and where the Department of Public Works is blocking traffic, and which departments are offering seasonally and temporally relevant services, etc. The other is from one of two sources that provide me with a listing of currency exchange rates for the world’s many great currencies, against the dollar. As I have to pay bills in France in euros, including a mortgage, and mortgage insurance, phone bills, Internet bills, electric bills, water and sewer, home insurance, and the taxes imposed by the government of the great Republic of France because I am a homeowner, and an inhabitant of French real estate, it’s helpful at least to know what the real basis should be of that portion of my daily allowance of anxiety about matters beyond my actual control should be.

I got an email, as I do with infrequent regularity from a diminishing list of friends who pass along what passes for humor, which inevitably has been forwarded to them from their dwindling sources. What is curious, aside from the innate lack of humor in any of the materials thereby forwarded to me, is the quality of a kind of mass or global perseveration. The jokes, or videos, or cartoons, or “astounding images,” or bits of audio, are materials recycled, as I would swear in court, repeatedly over the space of at least the last 15 years—the amount of time it is reasonable to expect is the maximum an ordinary citizen like myself could have possibly spent on the World Wide Web, as it used to be called.

In the old days (see notes on “golden age of email,” above) I could expect a regular flow of material, much of it quite humorous and usually coming from my stock broker (this being entirely reasonable, as brokerages were among the first businesses to comprehend the power and value of the Internet as a communications medium, and therefore were the first to expend the enormous amounts necessary to “wire” a network nationally for their employees, which thereby provided them with connectivity with all their peers in all the other brokerages and financial service companies). Because they were the only ones wired to one another coast-to-coast, brokers and their co-workers, managers, etc. were always the first to “break” new material, irrespective of the source, usually one coast or the other. That much of it was, in fact, not work related, but simply jokes and other kinds of humor, made of it, at worst, a benefit. I am sure bosses turned a blind eye. Stock brokering is a nasty business, as we all know, and anything that improves morale...

Anyway, the same, or very similar, materials are still being cycled and recycled.

The only other material of this type I see are videos of commercials, usually advertising products in foreign markets, and usually with overtones of sexuality that are, in the main, verboten on American television. Further, while I’m on the subject, and not that I object, except for the fundamental sophomoric, if not jejune, quality, and ultimate sameness, at least some of these occasional “pass-along” messages (usually with the admonition in the subject heading, either to turn down the volume, or to view the screen in private) include photographs or videos that feature, prominently, the naked and almost fictive breasts of young women of uncommon beauty and usually of the age segment known as nubile. Needless to say, being on the far reaches of the segment known as “middle-aged” myself, these images are usually sent by middle-aged men of my circle who really, in my opinion, should be spending more time thinking of ways to make their mates, if they are so happily provided, aware of how much they appreciate them—with flowers, say, or terms of endearment, or kisses involving the tongue, or caresses. There’s no need to belabor this.

One email from yesterday, much treasured, is from a female acquaintance—I would like to say a friend, but it is not for me to say—whom I recently met, and who was responding to an email sent by me to her, and upon whom, I should add, I would readily bestow instances of the foregoing suggested attentions I have outlined above. I was lamenting the inadequacy, or lack of reliability, of electronic media. This as a pertinent subject, as she has just returned to the United States from foreign travel, and I remain here, in this state of compromised sequestration, and all we have are phones and computers with which to communicate. And, as if to emphasize the point I am carrying on at such lengths to elaborate here, in fact, as so many people still do, or once again do so, she prefers the phone to email. So I cannot hope for much solace in that form—the electronic epistolary form—from that quarter.

The last of the emails I have not accounted for comes from an old dear friend, a man I have known for 35 years, well, 36 now, with the new year. He makes his living as a consultant and adviser to senior management, and he is very good at it. He is kind and courteous enough to include me on his mailing list of clients to whom he regularly sends, gratis, tips, very brief, and, actually, substantive and useful, as a way of reminding them that he stands ready to serve in any number of possible roles to the betterment of their business.

Obviously, I cannot avail myself of his services, and, though I’d prefer a personal note, even of equal brevity, he has to make a living. I understand this perfectly, but the value of the email he sends me is thereby reduced. Indeed, it’s a form of rubbing salt in the wound of my own incapacity, or indifference, or mere lack of initiative, in pursuing, by the same means, some kind of interest on the part of my potential audience by regularly making the same sort of contact with the objective of periodically extracting money from them in exchange for matters of value produced by me.

One could say that this essay, as it has turned out to be, is my own form of maintaining contact with those whose relationship to me I treasure. But, I am now pushing 3300 words, and counting, with this particular utterance. And I know, long since, because my friends, and other members of the audience I do have—usually as silently as they maintain themselves—that long-winded disquisitions, excrescences, call them what you will are non-starters. The age of the epistolary exchange, even over distances far shorter than that between my living room in the deepest heart of La France Profonde, and the living rooms of Cambridge, Boston, New York, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, and many other great cities, north, and south and east of these destinations, which are the dwelling places of my dear friends, has long since died—I’d say in about 1876, when Alex Bell first uttered that immortal summons to Mr. Watson.

And it was the progeny of Bell’s great invention that sealed not the fate, but the tomb of that latter day epistolary form. As Bush, and all other politicians, and millions of businesspeople, will tell you, email simply is trouble.

Further, of course, no one writes any more. They text. Words are dying. Memes are rampant. Why should I write to you, when I cn txt u?

So I’ll finish by saying simply this, my friend. l8r

The No-doubt soon to be famous recipe for Osso Turko

Osso Turko (turkey thighs cooked in the manner of osso bucco)

serves four

Braising dish or deep paella pan with a domed lid, preferably about 13” in diameter

2 Large turkey thighs (to really do it right, have the butcher use a meat saw to cut the thighs in two, transversely, that is, so there's half the thigh bone in each half; you would end up with four halves this way), at least 1-1/4 lbs each, preferably a bit more [make sure they use a saw; poultry bones splinter... your guests will be crunching on tiny slivers of turkey bone thinking they’ve broken a tooth or a crown]

1 28-oz can of San Marzano whole tomatoes, grown and packed in Italy (use others, like from the U.S., but most of them are bland, unappetizing, and will make this dish taste a little less swell; they are increasingly cultivated in other countries; San Marzano is a variety of plum tomato, originating in the commune of San Marzano in the Campania region of Italy; the best of this variety comes from this region)

1 cup, more or less, robust red wine (I use an Australian Shiraz, though any syrah will do; or a Mourvedre, a Sangiovese, a chianti, a pinot noir, a Cahors Malbec)

1 - 1-1/2 cups beef stock [stock, not broth]

1/4 cup Marsala (dry) wine (or any fortified “dry” wine, even tawny porto)

1/2 large fresh fennel bulb, finely chopped

2 large stalks celery, finely chopped

1 medium to large yellow onion, finely chopped

3-4 whole cloves of garlic (or even more if you like garlic) skinned, with the green shoot removed from within the cloves, finely chopped

Sea salt

Whole black pepper in a good grinder

1 Tablespoon of very good cocoa powder (not processed, not cocoa “mix,” but pure cocoa)

Fish sauce (Vietnamese, Thai, or your favorite)

3-4 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (I shouldn't have to say this, but use French or Italian olive oil; they're better), plus a little extra

12 ounces dried pappardelle pasta (preferably imported from Italy; god luck finding pappardelle made in this country, unless it’s fresh made)

kosher salt

Rub the turkey thighs with olive oil so each one (or each half of one) is completely coated. Try not to disturb the skin on the turkey. Grind some black pepper coarsely on both surfaces of each thigh, and sprinkle both surfaces with a little sea salt.

In the braising dish with a domed lid or the equivalent, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over a medium-high flame.

When the oil is hot, and not smoking, place the turkey pieces skin-side down in the hot oil. Allow to brown well (kind of a deep mahogany) and turn to brown the other side equally. Set aside the turkey when done.

While the turkey is browning (it should take at least four minutes to a side, if the flame is adjusted properly, and you haven't burned it by that point), drain the can of tomatoes into a bowl, preserving the tomato juice/puree, discard the remnants of basil leaves in which they are traditionally packed, and getting the tomatoes themselves as free of liquid as you can.

Add another tablespoon or so of olive oil to the hot pan, after removing the turkey pieces to a plate or platter.

When the added oil is heated, add all the chopped aromatics (garlic, onion, fennel, celery) and mix well, coating every bit, in the pan. It should all be sizzling in about a minute or two. Turn down the heat to medium-low or low, and cover the pan.

Let the aromatics sweat until limp and translucent.

While sweating the aromatics, chop the tomatoes coarsely (not anywhere as fine as the aromatics).

Remove the cover and stir the aromatics, and then add all the chopped tomatoes. Mix everything to disperse the tomatoes, and recover over the same heat. Allow the tomatoes to sweat for maybe three to five minutes.

Remove the cover, and there should be a fair amount of water, released from the tomatoes and other aromatics. Turn up the heat to medium-high or even high, if you're prepared to be vigilant, and stir the aromatics occasionally (every half-minute or so) until the water is almost all boiled off, and the aromatics have formed a thick jelly.

Turn down the heat to medium-low, and add each turkey piece, skin-side up to the pan, trying to avoid having the pieces touch (they shouldn't in a 13" pan). Spoon the aromatics that are not under the turkey on top of each piece of turkey, distributing it evenly, and coating each piece completely with the aromatics.

Pour the tomato juice you drained into the pan.

Add the Marsala (or other fortified) wine.

Turn up the heat to medium-high.

Add the wine, trying to distribute it evenly without pouring it directly on the turkey.

Sprinkle the cocoa evenly over the liquid, but not the turkey. Stir carefully into the liquid.

Sprinkle a shot or two of fish sauce in -- no more than a 1/4 teaspoon or so. This stuff is killer salty, in addition to being a ready source of umame, which is why I say put it in.

Now add as much stock as is needed to bring the level of the liquid in the pan about half-way up the height of the turkey pieces. Stir the liquid so it's well blended, stirring carefully so as not to disturb the turkey or the aromatics coating the pieces.

When the liquid has begun to boil, turn down heat to a simmer, or slightly less. Re-cover the pan.

Check in two or three minutes to make sure the liquid is barely simmering.

Periodically (no longer than every 15-20 minutes) uncover the pan and spoon the pan juices over each piece of turkey carefully, not disturbing the aromatics covering each piece).

Halfway into the cooking, at least an hour or so (this is more by way of “feel” or intuition; braising is inexact, and you will be a way from being able to tell if the meat is tenderizing sufficiently), turn over each piece of turkey with tongs, and recover with aromatics piled on each piece.

Cook for at least two or two and-a-half hours, the longer the better. Test for doneness, but sticking the tine of a carving fork or a metal barbecue skewer into the turkey. It should enter the flesh and be withdrawn with not very much effort (in short, it should be very very tender). Have tongs at the ready to hold the meat down while you extract the fork (if needed; and if so, the meat isn’t tender enough)

Start a large stockpot of water for the pasta on a high flame to reach boiling.

Scrape the coatings off each piece of turkey, and remove the turkey with tongs to a heated platter. Set aside.

Turn the heat to high.

Reduce the liquid and aromatics in the pan, stirring regularly, scraping the sides and bottom of the pan, until they are a very thick sauce, the liquid should be the consistency of heavy cream or maple syrup draining off the spoon.

[You may also add the extra step of setting the turkey aside on a heated platter and covering loosely with a “tent” of aluminum foil. Strain the sauce filled with aromatics through a very fine sieve. Use a wooden spoon gently to force all the liquid out of the solids. Don’t try to crush the solids to get out every drop of liquid. You can press on the pulp. You’ll get it with practice. This extra step produces a more unctuous, almost soigné version of this still very meaty robust sauce.]

Place the turkey back in the pan with the sauce, turn down the heat, and spoon the sauce over the turkey. Re-cover and set the flame to the lowest setting possible, or simply turn off the flame.

When the pasta water is boiling, add a palm-full of kosher salt to the pot (sea salt is OK also, but it's more expensive). Add the pappardelle noodles to the pot and stir and cook to direction. Imported dried pasta should cook to al dente firmness in about four minutes.

When the pasta is ready, turn the flame on under the turkey (if you have turned it off) to lowest setting, just to regain any heat lost, and keep the cover covered.

Drain the pasta and distribute to four plates.

Serve the turkey on top of the pasta, and spoon an ample amount of sauce over the turkey and pasta on each plate. If you have not had your butcher cut the thighs in two as suggested, the meat should be so tender that you can serve it out of the pan, cutting each thigh in two using the edge of a large cooking spoon. Two of the lucky diners will get the piece with the bone to gnaw on.

Bon appétit.

[Note: you can enrich this recipe and the flavor even further, by adding dried porcini mushrooms that have been revived in hot beef stock and a little wine for about a half hour; do this when you start the recipe; add the mushrooms and their liquid (about 1 to 1-1/2 ounces of dried mushrooms in about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of stock and a little wine) at the same time you add the wine and the beef stock to the pan as braising liquid; you should still maintain the "no higher than half way up the sides of the turkey pieces" rule, so just add less beef stock.]

©2008, Howard Dinin. All rights reserved.

2008November07 3:45 PM The Annals of Dating: Lying

I have been struck (I probably deserve to be struck many times for current, and certainly for past, transgressions), by two things among many observations I have had to make in the last four or five weeks. It is in that time that I effected a major alteration in my routine, at least temporarily, by subscribing (paying actual cash money, or the equivalent) to not one, but two on-line dating services. Should it become germane or salient to what I have to say at any time I will name one or the other of them. In the meantime, I assume at this point that my experiences are typical, irrespective of the specific virtual venue. Individual details may cause them to differ, but largely as a result of the actual narrowness of target marketing of the service.

There may also be certain self-selecting differences as a result, insofar as one site vs. another might show an apparent variable demonstration of one aspect of behavior linked to the specific affinity or sense of identity associated with that site. My hypothesis: one site may call for people to join who feel a particularly strong affinity (ethnic, behavioral, cultural or intellectual propensities, hobbies etc.) and that affinity may carry with it certain expected behaviors. In practical terms, my experience has been that female participants on one site are much more likely to initiate a correspondence than on the other.

On the other hand, this latter less assertive-minded service would appear to have a very large and compendious membership and therefore a larger database of possible stated fantasies (wishes, hopes, desires, ideals, dreams, etc.) the member would declare as a desirable trait in a potential mate, and, also, of course, a larger number in any one demographic segment, women or men of a specific age range, than rival, more targeted services. They operate in a larger tent.

There are arguments for joining either type of group, and so, of course, I joined both. This was a major mistake, but the nature of that mistake is a subject for another time. The positive aspect of this error in judgment is that I briefly intensified, or amplified, the overall experience, and I was also exposed to (in almost all polite senses) a very much larger number of candidates for my attention than I might have with either one alone. My conclusions about the most striking phenomenon I observed are the subject of what I have to say here.

By no accident, the preponderance of the women I “met” (which I put in quotation marks, because I met, face-to-face, a very small fraction of the women I contacted, either on my own initiative, or because I elected to respond to their overture to me), were more or less local and more or less within five years of my age. And the ones I met in person, were but a very much smaller fraction still of the overall number of women brought to my attention one way or another, and these covered a range of ages. A very wide ranges of ages.

At the highest level of “screening,” these services allow a user at any time to know and to view not only the basic identifiers, like age, geographic location, and photo, if there is one, but the entire profile, of any individual member who has elected one way or another to linger over a view of the entire profile of that user. In short, if they looked at you and decided to take a closer look, you know it, and you can look at them. The ultimate in reciprocal voluntary vetting (using tainted data, as every narrator is suspect; these services all make clear in disclaimers that you cannot avoid seeing that they do not do “background checks” on anyone, so it’s caveat lector).

In this case, the entirety of the membership, paid or unpaid, may view my profile, including photos, carefully selected, as well as written personal characteristics and thoughts or feelings about myself, carefully crafted, plus the usual lists of “traits” drawn mainly from a list of choices, otherwise inalterable, that appear in drop-down menus for “multiple-choice” factual facets of one’s being. There are as well “short answer essays,” for example, last books read, or music preferred, or favorite places. Some sites make it simply a laundry list of various aspects of what is presumed to be personality. “I am considered by others to be...,” or “I consider myself to be....” Adventure is a major theme and "life as an adventure" a major taxonomic category for a great many members, at least among the women. At first I began to think they were all Lara Croft in their minds.

One factor that becomes paramount among members of a “certain age” (yes, this is that famous age, or age spread, if you don’t mind my use of this possible pejorative; we rarely want to speak of anything that is “spread,” or “spreading” -- it only seems as if aging is spreading, the fact is we tend to clump ourselves by age), that is, adults in the ages between 50s and 60s, plus-or-minus, with a larger than 3% margin of invention, er, error, is precisely and honestly how old you are. As opposed to say, how old you are in your head, how old you appear, how old you’re taken for, how old society determines is superannuated, or over the hill, how old you are when you really must take a position on this whole life after death thing.

I am 62 years old, for about three more months. In what is very rapidly becoming six months, I will have been made a widower by the death of my wife. I have no reason to lie about these facts of my life, though I needn’t broadcast the specific temporal details, and certainly not my state-of-mind, emotional state, etc. I do not see this as a lie by omission. Marital status is one of the very few items that everyone sees if they are shown, or seek, or accidentally scroll past your basic listing: photo (if you’ve posted one), age, marital status, gender of user and gender sought. I have never, in fact, lied about my age. I have been accused of it, usually by someone I always suspect of being ingratiating (or perhaps of an overly pitying disposition) who declares their amazement and the certainty that I am lying in the upward direction. Of course I am, dude. Society places such reverence in old age (anyone over 45). It’s an ironic situation to be in, in all events, as it was my, the boomer, generation, which made popular and universal the notion that no one over 30 is to be trusted. We were off by almost 30 years.

I have also, I hasten to add, never lied about my marital status or whether I have children. These seem, as a matter of course, things people don’t lie about in general. So it’s not a particular mark of self-esteem. Finally, if asked, I have never lied about how recently (in relative terms) my late wife breathed her last. Not that that isn’t top of mind to some. A number of women whom I’ve spoken to in real time, either on the phone or in person, have asked about how recently Linda died, and other salient questions concerning her death, my involvement, etc. soon after the conversation began. I think they were either trying to make some assessment, using whatever skills they have, of my actual emotional “availability,” or merely were making some measure against what they understood somehow or other as some behavioral or emotional yardstick (straight out of the school of prescriptive thinking: if it’s the third month, you must be angry). Everyone a social worker (actually there's a remarkably high incidence of people in the behavioral health professions... so one must always be prepared to be under scrutiny, even if you seem not to be).

However, age falls into another category altogether, especially for us boomers, who are neither the “greatest generation,” nor the most obtuse, or the most post-modern, but we are the generation that will never say die, or, presumably, ever go gentle into that good night.

After five weeks on these dating services, having observed hundreds of photos (most of them inept snapshot quality, though a very few are clearly of professional quality or the equivalent, these surprisingly being of women who obviously want to show themselves, but honestly, to their best advantage, and not, as one might suspect, or anticipate, in order to use the significant technological advances in photo editing software to mask their stage of maturity) I can make certain general observations. The most blatant treatments or methods in obscuring the appearance (which is not the putative objective in terms of participant expectation -- we’re supposed to attract one another; not keep each other at arm’s length for as long as possible while somehow conniving to move on to the next step: actually of meeting) are the Vaseline-on-the-lens gauzy, luminescent, “ready for my close-up C.B.” method, which obscures all detail or makes you think you’ve forgotten your reading glasses, and in the process, eradicated wrinkles, crepe-like skin, flaccidity, and the “what are those? Oh, you know what they’re called, there under your chin, where your neck used to be, etc.?” or there’s the “here I am from a distance” method, which mainly reveals that you are most likely to be recognized as female even by victims of myopia, and that you have hair -- this is always a much better focused photograph usually showing a great deal of detail of the surrounding landscape -- though we are by no means in the realm of the environmental portrait. The more creative individuals actually place themselves in surroundings that are, in themselves, interesting to observe (and associate in one’s mind with the individual under scrutiny), and I’m not talking about beaches or blatantly tropical venues -- these are sui generis: I’m almost tempted to say that every woman out there loves the beach (especially walks thereon, either at sunrise or sunset), anything having to do with water, including merely gazing out upon vast expanses, and they also not only love dogs, but have at least one. Many “portraits” include a pet.

The less blatant strategy is simply to use out-of-date snaps from a time that you could be shown to much better advantage -- many women (I may appear to be singling out women; I simply cannot account for what men do, as I haven’t seen any profiles of any males; I have no reason to think they don’t act in the same self-deluded way, if not worse) hedge here, by including some disclaimer in their grand essay, “About Me,” that the photos shown are current. This can be a very elastic adjective: “current” seems to mean anywhere from, “within the past year” to “taken no earlier than the last decade of the previous century.” I think it’s safe to say that anyone who has had a nominally ordinary existence within the confines of society, as opposed, say, within the confines of an eight-by-eleven foot one-room shack in the foothills of the Allegheny mountains since the age of six, sequestered from anyone over the age of 25, and who has normal brain function and studied basic arithmetic, will discover a sense of cognitive dissonance when observing photos of an adult female, claiming to be, let’s say, 59 years of age, and yet who looks remarkably and refreshingly as if she were still in her 40s, if not her 30s. One woman alternated, cleverly, contemporaneous full color photos of herself with sepia photos of what must have been herself at a very young age, in the first full flush of womanhood, late teens or early 20s, the embodiment of that great adjective (which men invariably believe is somehow salacious in meaning), “nubile.”

I can understand the desire for appearing to be much younger than one actually is. Some people, men and women, are endowed with the genetic makeup that brings this about. Linda, my late wife, was regularly taken for a much younger woman, even after suffering the ravages of several years of cancer and its treatment. Indeed, her appearance, especially when we first met and courted, and then co-habited, caused me no end of chagrin. No doubt as I have a tendency to appear far more decrepit than I actually am, despite what I said above; some people, I suppose are simply cruel, in order to be kind -- these days I am regularly taken for 63, sometimes even 64 -- and she was regularly taken for 28, even when she was 42, as she was when she moved in with me (a mere 46 myself), I was accused of the most scurrilous motives regularly (and, strangely, more by men than women; so I think jealousy was a major factor). However these are the rare and fortunate exceptions. It’s also possible, looking backward, that until they found out the truth about Linda’s chronological age in fact, these women, pleasant and smiling and friendly as always, were in reality seething.

At some point, and this might as well be it, I might as well make the usual observations about the more narcissistic traits of my generation, the baby boomer generation, and its cult of youth. I doubt we are, or have been, any worse than any previous generation in regard to the apparently very human trait of somehow mentally fixing our sensibilities for life somewhere around the age of majority. My mother, at the age of 87, admitted to being a perpetual 19 in her head (and hence being startled often when looking into a mirror at the ancient creature staring back at her), and this is, I admit, about the age I am probably fixed at myself.

However this may or may not be true of human nature, it is certainly true of boomer nature that we have institutionalized a kind of mass denial. For the longest time, this allowed us to imagine that we were capable of not only great things, but of almost anything, including the impossible -- ours was the generation of great potentiality. I have only two words to say in the face of that: George Bush. And hasn’t the most repeated thing you’ve heard lately about the man who is still our President, and will be for another 72 days or so, been along the lines of how these eight years have “aged” the poor man?

Ours is not a generation that takes kindly to aging, or to admitting it. Which is the other thing that is true of boomers, and that is, somehow, that we will age, but we will never get old. For in age, old age in particular, is not only the inevitability of death -- and at least five or six per cent of us will concede that we are, in fact, mortal; goddam-it -- but the inevitability that age will overtake us, and the skin will wrinkle and sag, and the hair will turn grey and then white, assuming we keep any significant percentage of it, and our muscles will lose their tone, and our limbs will lose their, well, limber.

The great anodyne is doing it all together. And intimacy of the sort we still manage to nurture and preserve among ourselves as couples and close friends brings with it a kind of softness of vision (not of the correctable sort) that transcends reality, or perhaps magically allows us to see the individual for who they may appear to be to all others at this very moment in real time, while also seeing them as we have always seen them in our mind’s eye (never needing vision correction, as memory is always 20-20, even when it is wrong or inventing things), from the moment we met them, and certainly from the moment we fell in love.

However the combination of age and strangeness is a cruel formulation.

And being alone, or, that is, without a mate, at just about any age beyond 50, I’d say, makes everyone suffering this condition strange. There is no escaping it. It doesn’t matter how well tuned in you are to your own condition of mind. It doesn’t matter how “well-adjusted” you are. When you have no mutual (or reciprocal) love interest you are lonely, and loneliness makes you strange.

It makes you do things you otherwise do not approve of, in others especially. It certainly makes a great many women who put themselves out there simply lie.

They lie about their ages. They lie about the evidence of their ages. They lie about the contradictions inherent in anything greater than the most perfunctory analysis of the facts they present for appraisal. They lie in the face of physical evidence. They lie in the face of adherence to truth as one of the values they espouse in life. They lie to men who say they hate lying (or, to put it positively, who say they prize truth and honesty above almost all other virtues as the foundation for what is essential in a long term relationship -- LTR for short -- and that is, trust).

Two excuses are given, if the subject even comes up as the basis for further discussion once you are past that very brief, sometimes off-handed moment -- and, in my experience, with no indication that the perpetrator, that is, the liar, has any sense of the conversational diversity and richness to be effected by a little syncopation, for example, by slipping into a discussion about politicians that they are not really 58 (or 52), but 61 (or 62), and seeing if they can get a rise, or hoping they won't and they will have already so charmed their would-be suitor that he simply no longer cares -- when they admit to their profoundly minor transgression.

It has been always, in my experience, handled en passant. My instincts have told me that the best way to behave, that is, for me to behave, is entirely passively, that is, as a listener, or if you prefer, a receptacle. There is no point in having an entire encounter hinge on my reaction to being informed that the human sitting opposite me has lied to me, about anything, before learning anything of any consequence regarding our suitability to one another, that is, what used to be called our compatibility. Therefore, I have been mum, certainly with the women who have admitted to the prevarication, not to mention any others who may have misrepresented this inalienable, very specific and incontrovertible fact about themselves. In two very specific instances, by some exquisitely similar timing, the admission as to age, off-the-cuff, off-handed in one instance, and in an appropriate conversational context on the other, came well into the same point of our first meeting, which involved sitting down to dine. Ensemble.

I’m not so preoccupied with the specific matter, though I am with truth-telling in all regards, that I distract myself with my feelings on the matter, as soon as it is apparent that there is an issue. It’s always an issue for me. I simply prefer the truth. And the fact is, despite the requirement that we state an age preference for our sought-after dates or matches, call these couplings, or what you will, I really don’t care about someone’s age. I will either be attracted to them or not.

In addition to whatever attraction (which I guarantee will be more likely the more comely the object of my desire; and facing facts, as it’s as true of men as of women, there is more comeliness of a certain species-perpetuating variety among the younger members of our society -- there’s a reason for this, but this is no place for a discussion about biology or genetics, especially as I’m discussing ethics). Whatever my attitude, or that of any other man, or at least putting this aspect of the argument aside for just a moment, it is clear that women of a certain age must face the question of age with far more gravity than the world is willing to admit openly.

A very good friend, a long long time veteran of having to seek connections, or matches, or whatever it is we are to call the liaisons that we manage to make: proto-friendships (but these women aren’t interested in making friends; they want a mate), contacts, possibles... I can’t conjecture actually and the language has not revealed itself as yet, in any event this long time friend makes no bones about lying about her age, insofar as she posts it on-line along with photos she swears are not only recent, but in all but one case, shot within the past year, which I know not to be the case. She says among the first things she brings up is the small adjustment in reporting her age that is required in the face of the truth.

The actual age is not important in this or any other case. The adjustment is only slight, say three or four years. Yet it must be made, according to my friend, because of, well now this is interesting. It’s because of the men. Because of us, the other, because, when you get right down to it, because of me!

Men want younger women, and put down age ranges that, if the system as it’s explained by the vendors offering these on-line services is accurately and faithfully adhered to, would exclude women outside that age range from their attention.

I put down, at first, for reasons that I had very calculatedly worked out, ages based purely on marketing principles I would have applied were I my own client and I had been asked to consult on the matter. There’s nothing wrong with stating a preference surely. When I first joined the larger of the dating services, I put down a range of 39 to 58 years of age. The only assumption I made is that I would rarely, so much so I figured the rareness would be never, discover any genuine interest expressed by a woman who was 39 or anywhere close to that age. Not in me, a 62 year-old widower, with silver gray hair (quite an abundance of it, and accompanied by an appearance of “cuteness,” as in youthful -- for a 62 year-old widower -- and insofar as I understood the cuteness factors, I made sure they were emphasized by the photos that were all shot by myself, except one, the main one, which was shot by someone else as I gazed lovingly at her, directly at the lens; I will say no more, other than, given that I am not obese, or even remotely fat, I made sure the photos indicated this. I only described myself in words, from a list that included “athletic and toned, or fit,” and “slender,” as “about average.”

I have since changed that desired female age range to something I think significantly realistic, in terms of reasonable expectations on my part, especially at the margins, of from 46 to 62 years. I’m 62, I should be willing at least to consider women my age, or why should I expect anyone to consider me. In all honesty I should simply make it from the earliest age they permit you (probably 18) to the eldest, like 80. The fact is, aside from what I stated above, that I really am not hung up on the specific age, I believe whatever I say will be ignored not only by the women in the database themselves, but by the computer as well. And I have been proven correct empirically by my experiences over the past five weeks. In that time almost 1200 women have looked at the photos of me along with my profile; I can’t tell if they perused these, or simply glanced quickly at them. I have been solicited for my interest in starting a conversation, or correspondence, call it what you will, by maybe 150 women, and in turn I have expressed my interest in about three dozen women. I have had matches suggested to me by both services, and the suggestions continue to come in on a regular basis. In no case did I feel that some woman was excluded from my attention or consideration because of her age, not excluded by herself, not excluded by the service.

I have had overtures, one way or another, from women from 22 to over 70 years of age.

How can I possibly take the matter of age seriously as a barrier to entry?

Therefore I assume the presumptive reasoning by women who say they’re 58 when they’re really 61, or 47, when they are patently significantly north of that age (I don’t find out, if I’m not told, because I don’t ask; I in fact think it’s rude and ungentlemanly, though I wouldn’t mind at all being asked anything about my stated age) is that they are stating a wish or expressing a denial. In either case, my sense of this is only reinforced if the reason volunteered is that it’s me, that is, it’s the men, who want someone young and gorgeous hanging on their arm, and by formally stating their fantasies or wish-fulfillment conditions. There is no denying that some men, certainly with enough money, status, or power to attract them, are not denied them. But I also doubt these men actually enroll on an on-line dating service, at least not of this ilk.

My question of my friend, described above, and of one woman I met who admitted to being older than she has stated in her profile -- she informed me as if I had at my finger tips all of the facts from her dossier; I was confused when she announced her age, as I had no reason to think otherwise, or that this was a declaration, presumably redundant, that her statement of age was not redundant of previously published information, but an adjustment -- was, “Why would you want to go out with a man who would not consider even meeting you, never mind going out with you, with the possibility, however strong or weak, that it might be the start of something big, simply because he didn’t like how old you, in fact, are, and cannot be other than?”

No answer.

I understand lies are perpetrated all the time, all around the earth, every second. They are perpetrated for reasons of expedience, necessity, self-protection, the protection of innocent parties, to spare feelings the evocation of which might be worse as a matter of ethics than having committed an ethical breach by virtue of lying.

We’d all like to follow the guideline that if you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said. I try to live that way, and mostly I succeed. I also have trouble with copying music from whatever source and giving away copies, even if I have paid for the original, and I always pay. I have trouble pirating software, or not paying for shareware. I have trouble being confronted about that which I might have gone out of my way to avoid entering the ken of my confronter. But I always speak the truth, and figure I’ll deal with the consequences.

I’m not a confessional sort, and it’s probably difficult extracting certain information from me because, for one, the desire to do no one any harm supersedes this strange antipathy for being lied to, and preference for truth.

(the song of King Gama in "Princess Ida," Gilbert & Sullivan)

I’m sure I’m no ascetic; I’m as pleasant as can be;
You’ll always find me ready with a crushing repartee,
I’ve an irritating chuckle, I’ve a celebrated sneer,
I’ve an entertaining snigger, I’ve a fascinating leer.
To everybody’s prejudice I know a thing or two;
I can tell a woman’s age in half a minute – and I do.
But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can,
Yet everybody says I’m such a disagreeable man!
And I can’t think why!

2008November01 8:30 PM The Annals of Dating: Where Are the Casseroles?

I was told very early on in the process of grieving the death of my wife that were I fortunate (this is not the word that was used; indeed, it was presented to me as neutral fact) to live in, say, Newton, Massachusetts, there would already be a pile of casserole dishes piled on my front door step.

And sure enough, while browsing through a relatively new cookbook I had gotten last spring (it was the source of one of the last new dishes I made for Linda, to add to a quite vast repertoire of dining favorites we had accumulated, because it was a great hit), called Bake Until Bubbly, was a certain recipe. That is, it’s a cookbook only of casseroles, a later accompaniment, as a volume, to the vastly more interesting (to me) book of Real Stews, by the same author, Clifford Wright. Mr. Wright is otherwise a quite scholarly food historian and has written several other books, some of mammoth proportions, commensurate with the subject, and full, alongside the voluminous scholarly notes, of recipes that allow the modern cook to replicate dishes whose provenance goes back centuries.

The recipe in question, Widower’s Casserole, goes back only to the retirement community that is home to the 87-year-old mother of the author, whose friend supplied the recipe that Mr. Wright adopted. It seems, says Trudy, that the widows supply this casserole, vying for who will be first. The recipe is an extravaganza of saturated fats, consisting mainly of four chicken breasts, 3/4 of a pound of mushrooms, pureed to become a suave thickener for the cup of cream and the cup of sour cream that round out the recipe. He notes it is full of meat, as it is meat that these Depression-Era widowers crave. Not to mention the extent to which a demise from coronary artery disease can be hastened with such a diet. But I bet it’s nice and rich.

In any event, it’s probably now four or five months after this observation was made to me. So far, not one casserole. I have even been on two (count ‘em) online dating services for well over a month now.

No casseroles.

I have not cooked anything for any new friends or acquaintances, even though my reputation comes before me as a cook of some great skill. I should know, because I’ve been pushing it in front of me for the last five weeks. However I have not done so sufficiently convincingly to have engineered a dinner at my own house, prepared by these hands.

I suspect that such a move would have a certain connotation, a semiotic value, in some protocol. I am positive there’s a protocol, but I’m damned if I know, beyond certain basic guidelines I’ve mapped out for myself, and seem to derive from what I’d like to call common sense, but to be honest, I’d have to call truthfully only my instincts as to what is right, based on my experience to this point in my life.

Be honest at all times.

Offer no gratuitous information. When your opinion is desired, it will be requested.

Have a point of view. This is not in contradistinction to the point above. The point above is derived from etiquette. This point is derived from the several facts: we speak in order to exchange either information or express our feelings on various matters: from something as innocuous as politics (couples have made it or broken up over political differences; why? is what I want to know), to something as important as what you did today. To have no point of view is to say, you are oblivious. At our age, you have a choice. You choose just how much silence you want to withstand.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

If you think you have nothing to say, see if there’s anything on your mind that wouldn’t be inappropriate to relate. If there is, and it wouldn’t, say it.

Make no promises you can’t keep.

Be on time.

Smile.

Look at her while she speaks, and actually, well, this is hard to explain, but, listen.

Don’t talk yourself out of any internal conclusions you reach in the presence of this woman, and remember them for later.

Don’t allow too much time to pass before making contact again. If what feels like too much time has elapsed, insofar as common manners allow, apologize sincerely, unless you don't, in which case, why are you bothering?

Try to avoid merely ignoring people

If you do provide an answer, let your instincts be your guide. If a brief, succinct, thanks but no thanks will be sufficient, do that. Otherwise, provide a long, detailed answer to every question, matter, issue, or problem you can, without getting emotional or personal, and assume that will be sufficient. If it isn't, and you hear further, you're not the problem (repeat that to yourself, "you're not the problem.")

Make clear the pace at which you feel you must allow things to progress, or try to have a hand in allowing, and if there’s a reason, give it.

So this is the protocol I have followed for five weeks.

Still, no casseroles.

2008January28 2:34 PM President McCain

It was January 11, at 5:41pm, CET, which would have made it 11:41 in the morning on a Friday in the United States, that I wrote an email message to the professional chefs forum I belong to, and with whom I exchange, likely, the greatest number of messages online. I've long since accepted that my friends have forsaken email for other less taxing (on time, on time) forms of communication. This is a very roundabout way of saying, my friends don't exactly stay in close touch, except one or two, whom I love like life itself.

Anyway in the course of the message, which was extremely brief, brevity being unusual for me, and in a mock tone of some derisory pose: irony, sarcasm, insincerity in one of its more sophisticated forms, I added at the very end, "Women rule./That's why John McCain will be our next President."

I make no claim on prescience. More importantly, and this is an immodest source of pride, I don't spend great amounts of time thinking about political matters. I read nowhere nearly enough I'm sure, but sufficient to have a sense of where people stand and what they represent. I spend no time at all, if I can help it, watching debates. I've heard it all before, if not from the same lips, then from other lips, and I don't accept that it's all so subtle that I am depriving myself of opportunities to see either displays of above-average wit or the gaffe that will sink a campaign. Indeed, the debates long since have proven, to me at least, that they are contests of avoiding the brink while appearing to come closest to it. Hence nothing of substance gets said, and I could care less how people come across on television. And I don't care what the true weight of the factor of other Americans perceptions because of a television appearance (I am forbearing the urge to say "performance"). The United States electorate has had ample opportunity to prove during the 41 years, soon to be 42, that I have been eligible to vote, that they are not particularly intelligent, nor particularly stupid.

Just significant fractions of them go one way or the other.

I was in France when I wrote that off-handed remark, which seemed not only obvious, if spontaneous on my part, but more importantly was a good laugh line on which to exit. Though I didn't mean it as a joke. Except of the rueful variety. We make little enough of the continued power of rue and ruth (as in ruthless... there is certainly a dearth of ruth among certain groups of individuals in the world) in our emotional lives. I suspect it is because it is, in fact, all too painful to deliberately remain conscious of the political state of the world, and the behavior of what we are told incessantly are the world's leaders. Some are OK, I suppose, but this is the world we're talking about. Big enough that, even though we're hurling through space at a speed of 40,000 miles per hour along some vector, and twirling with an angular velocity of over 1000 miles per hour, we're completely insensate of the motion. Big enough that we're not extremely anxious that the planet now finds six billion souls inhabiting its surface. Is this the best we can do?

A Response to "Dr. Chong"

On January 3, 2008 a friend forwarded a bit of Internet fodder, with the Subject header line supplication, "Please Read." I did. It was a bit of correspondence/essay attributed to a Dr. Vernon Chong, a USAF Major General (Retired). It turns out it has been kicking around since 2004. It is not uncommon for these things to spring up from time to time, sometimes redundantly, if not repeatedly, among the small motley circle of my friends who exchange items of interest. Or at least they are of ostensible interest. We are motley for our wide spectrum of political views, which range from Libertarian to Liberal (if not quasi-anarchistic) to those of one of us—an eternal trickster, if not provocateur, who gets a clearly perverse, if benign, delight in offering up bits of casuistry such as Dr. Chong's. This last is simply to stir up the pot, and see what happens, especially if one of us makes the mistake of taking seriously the intent of the sender (or his credulity). This last go round for the maundering of the alleged Dr. Chong was passed along by one among us, who espouses a strange mix of middling liberality and staunch chauvinism (he is one of the few, if not the only one, among us, who served in the armed forces, albeit in the Medical Corps—during the late unfortunate hostilities known by our enemy at the time as The American War.

I won't dignify or substantiate Dr. Chong's remarks either by repeating them here (never mind the absorption of bandwidth) or even by providing a URL of the various sites on which they might be found on the World Wide Web. If you must waste your time by first reading them, I'd suggest entering some combination of Dr. Vernon Chong (or even include his rank) in Google, or your favorite search engine.

I do think it's remarkably telling that, in the midst of what has become a surprising, if not exciting start out of the gate of the 2008 Presidential Nomination Follies, with newspaper headlines trumpeting the decreasing lack of importance of the war in Iraq that this should appear among a group of us comfortable, late middle-aged (some of us are, in fact, still working actively for a living) bourgeois Northeasterners of various political stripes. For some, indeed, the continuing bellicosity of various Muslim factions in Iraq, and the continued presence of well over 100,000 American troopers in that nation is not only an issue, front and center, but even if it settles somewhere into the middle or rearward  reaches of our consciousness, we are well aware that the more pertinent, or seemingly more salient issues—and in particular the economy, which worsens by the moment—are intimately tied to the effects (and costs) of the five years and counting that our military forces continue to be deployed in the former biblical kingdom of Assyria.

What follows is my response to this innocent attempt to evoke some interesting intellectual discourse among our stalwart little group of citizens, bound more by affection and friendship if truth be told than by any real desire to debate (which seems only to get us into trouble, especially as we each of us seem to lapse into emotional conflict rather than the desired dispassionate reasoned debate). I've cleaned up and edited a bit the spontaneous effusion I sent immediately back to the entire list of recipients.
Whether or not you read Dr. Chong's "essay" is not important. Its argument, if it can be elevated so precipitously as to be called that, is contingent on one quasi patriotic, hyper-emotional assertion, about which the author goes on at such length as to permit saying that it is attenuated to the point of etiolation, if not beyond.

There is only one fault with this argument. However, it is a fault that is fundamental, if not elemental, and hence makes the rest of this argument, which I'm loathe to call it, as it is so badly articulated, built as it is on a false premise, not only dubious, but time ill spent in the reading. Perhaps this rhetoric is deliberate, blatantly bent on appearing persuasive, as opposed to expressing a truth, any truth.

The fault is the unsubstantiated assertion that we are at war.

We are, I would assert, not at war, not at the moment. And no more so than we were at the time of this essay of Dr. Chong's, that is, some time in 2004.

However, we are at this time (January 2008) policing an insurgency among a people who only half want us to be there for any purpose whatsoever.

In precipately, and pre-emptively, engaging in war with a sovereign nation, however disreputable and odious its government and leaders, and irrespective of the relevancy, applicabicability, or the verifiable condition of the stated causes we had for engaging this enemy at the time, we did unleash all the pernicious forces disposed throughout the unfortunate country known as Iraq.We removed the government and nominally disarmed, and certainly disbanded, the military forces of that nation, along with the entire organizational structure of those armed forces and all bodies of police and other keepers of the peace. As a consequence of our ill-considered (if they were thought about at all) policies as victors, the forces we unleashed have been free to wage terrorist acts upon one another, enter into internecine deadly conflict with one another, not to mention the repeated assaults on the U.S. troops we stubbornly keep in place on the proviso that were we to withdraw, just as precipately (and we now hope rapidly, so as to minimize further losses to our own forces), we would leave the countervailing factions to enter what is likely to be catastrophically bloody and chaotic civil war amongst themselves.

Whatever actual war we began and fought ended very soon after we started it, certainly within a month or two, or perhaps three.

Since then all acts of violence perpetrated on our troops, as well as on the opposing elements of the internecine forces that have always been resident in Iraq, plus those elements that have entered the fray from third party nations—with or without the sanction and support of those nations—since we neutralized the legitimate military and police organizations of Iraq immediately after defeating them in war, I would suggest are not acts of war. They are acts of violence that, in any other "civilized" nation, operating under any reasonable body of laws, whatever their basis: British Common Law, Napoleonic Code, or even laws formulated and legitimized by political bodies in governments adhering to certain religious codes, like the Koran), would be considered criminal acts. The perpetrators of these acts, these criminals, would be sought, neutralized, imprisoned, indicted and tried under those laws.

I would submit further that the litany of acts proffered as acts of war by this alleged Maj. General Chong (retired) against the United States since 1979 are, in the main criminal acts. Furthermore, one may go back, to earlier dates than these, if one must, as I would include other acts of terrorism -- some political, some strictly criminal -- performed mainly against military U.S. forces deployed in foreign countries, or U.S. citizens both at home or abroad.

Even acts, like the attack on the U.S. Panay, readily put at the feet of the military forces then under the government of the Emperor of Japan, that were meant to provoke our country, if not precipate engagement, were not sufficient to escalate our diplomatic or military posture such that we would, as a matter of policy, engage in war with an enemy that had a recognizable and coherent body of government formulating and implementing military engagement as an intentional act of war. Otherwise, the preponderance, if not the entirety, of these acts remain as they so patently and clearly are, as I said, criminal acts. All of which should have been, if they were not, prosecuted as such.

Every sovereign nation, whatever the prevailing religious beliefs of its citizenry, embraces a code of conduct and a body of laws that is meant to deal with criminal behavior. The maintaining of the social fabric demands of humans that they formulate codes for such a purpose. Crimes against individuals, or against a people, against institutions or corporations, are disruptive and potentially threaten the stability of any political entity, even a whole nation.

I submit that were all nations, in the interests of peace, and the maintenance of domestic tranquility (as I believe the phrase goes) were to concentrate on containing such acts of criminality, and indeed were to cooperate on whatever necessary basis to act in concert and to share intelligence, mainly of a forensic or probative nature, all such acts of criminality, widespread, and with the great frequency we have experienced them over whatever arbitrary span of time Maj. General Chong (or whomever) cares to define, would ultimately be contained to the point of manageability.

Terrorist acts are criminal acts pure and simple, and they should be dealt with as such, even if the dealing requires extensive applications of force and the resources to apply them. Widespread rioting, looting, and hooliganism in the modern history of all countries, including our own, have sometimes required to mobilization of national defense forces. These circumstances have never defined a state of war, even internally. And arguments prevail for calling our great Civil War as being, in actuality, a War Between the States.

We should be loathe to find wars where they do not exist. Even to a rhetorical abhorrence for application of the soubriquet of war (so enamored by our government, with various "wars" on poverty, drugs, even crime itself). War may be, Clausewitz cleverly defined it, a continuation of diplomacy (or politics) "by other means," but it is tantamount to mass murder, and the surest unequivocal sign of the failure of civilization, per se. It is, in short, not some manifestation of civilization, but its denial.

I don't swallow a word this semi-literate, manipulative individual has offered up for purposes that can only be called inflammatory and ill-considered, never mind poorly reasoned and poorly argued.

Incidentally, Chong is, indeed, a real person, though he did not, apparently, write this letter, but passed it along to an email correspondent. The original letter, with a different original opening set of paragraphs, was allegedly written by an attorney and sent to his sons.

When, Oh!, when will we stop sending this crap to one another? It's not worthy of lengthy discourse, never mind intelligent debate, if such were to be what it inspired.

Possibly the World's Greatest Culinary Value

Down on the plain of our village, right at the crossroads, with a road north to Manosque on the verge of the Alps, the road east to Aups and beyond to the Gorges de Verdon, and the road south to Barjols and Tavernes, stand several small buildings. At the very crux of these is the home and the establishment of Jean and Chantal, owners of Chez Jean. It's a small bar-tabac, which shares the building with their living quarters, plus a tiny alimentation, or grocery store, more accurately a bodega I suppose. Or perhaps, it's an épicerie, but smaller. This is Chez Jo, run by the sister-in-law (of which of the couple I cannot say) where you can pick up very fresh chèvre or local farm eggs, butter, milk, various canned goods, a tiny selection of wines, the local paper, and a limited selection of produce that, depending on the time of day, looks often like it is on the point of expiration, whether a pear or a peach, a squash or an eggplant. But sometimes, you run out of something, and it's good to know Chez Jo is there.

Across the way is the post office, which was almost closed by the authorities for lack of justification. We share a postal code with at least four other towns, and as our town has a permanent population of no more than 380 people on the rolls, the powers that be figured we could do without the convenience of having a local branch, which was only open at whimsical hours anyway. The whimsy being that of the local postmistress (a woman spoken of with awe, wonder, and not a small touch of fear, if not horror).

The mayor, who exerts himself mightily on behalf of the village in many ways, apparently lobbied strenuously to keep this branch of La Poste open. Not the least of the reasons being that there is apparently some familial connection between the mayor and the post mistress, or somehow, in some convoluted way between members of each of their respective families. I say "apparently," because it is one of those stories explained to me in rapid French, and I can never be sure of what I have construed properly, and what I have filled in with my own subconscious prejudices and assumptions.

On the other side of the crossroads, facing the post office, is the hulking shell of the former local wine cooperative. When we first began coming here, in the late 80s, the cooperative was active and in operation, pressing grapes, and doing what vintners do to make the juice of pressed grapes into wine. You could buy the local plonk (which is unfair, it was better than that, perhaps of vin de table grade—though to be fair, linguistically and strictly speaking, "plonk" is merely "cheap wine") at the co-op at appointed hours for very reasonable prices. Certainly it was certifiably a decent, cheap vin ordinaire and it served the local folk, farmers, gentry, bourgeoisie, and tourists well, especially at about $1.50 a bottle (this back in the days when the local currency was still the franc).

In the interim, the cooperative has devolved. First the pressed juices were merely shipped by common carrier to a local repository (pumped through thick pipes from the bowels of the co-op into waiting tanker trucks) to be collected with the must of of several other small towns, to be sent from that collection point to an actual domain, which produced the wine all under one label, bottled, or in casks, to be tapped into a customer's own containers, once transported back to the contributory cooperatives. This transformation of the basic business has ceased altogether, and the cooperative does not even open any longer for brief hours on a Saturday morning—the last regular mercantile trade associated directly with the products of the local grape farmers. Some of the vineyards hereabouts apparently qualify for the A.O.C. designation of Côteaux Varois or Côtes-de-Provence, and some do not. The remnants that fall short, which seem to cluster very near the center of town, have been allowed to go fallow, and instead of vines of various stages of robustness, depending on the diligence of the farmer, there are now weeds and vast fields of disheveled useless flora.

Behind the cooperative, which is the size of a large barn, is an open area, whose expanse is blocked from view of the road by the vast building. This space is used for outings, weddings, and other sorts of colloquies involving large aggregations of the village residents and their guests and relatives, that is, when it is not raining (which is seldom in any event). The open area is surrounded by official buildings, belonging to the village: the small primary school, the library, a salle polyvalent (a utility hall, where gatherings take place, dances are danced, movies are shown, and so forth), and, of course, the mairie, or mayor's offices, where all official business is conducted, and where the mayor's council meets on a regular basis, and issues policy, dicta, rules, etc. These all are posted in regular locations, within well-known bulletin boards, maintained by the village, and covered in framed glass protective enclosures.

Having set the immediate scene, I shall return your attention and my own to the focus of culinary matters in the village. I am sorry to say, as I may have suggested in the past, that it is not the Inn just opposite our little house in the medieval village perched on top of the hill overlooking the scene just described about 100 meters below us and away at a distance of about 3/4 to a full kilometer (but easily visible from several vantages, including the Inn). The Inn has a menu which is good enough with a bill of fare, and a number of choices, of some varied dishes featuring more or less the local cuisine, and including the usual suspects, such as steak, because so much of the Inn's business derives from tourists, who expect meat, but the locals, who are always glad to know there is a local venue for this perennial favorite, if not a number of others. However, it is not plain fare, but aspires to a status somewhat more soigné. Certainly it is fare that must justify a menu price of 32 euros for a three course meal. The food is good, very good at times, and I am not doing our friends, the innkeepers, a disservice, by saying this, and not very much more. The ingredients are always fresh, well-cooked, and in abundance on the plate.

Rather the focus of gastronomic attention belongs down below, at le carrefour, the crossroads, in that humble establishment called Chez Jean. The road signs leading to the village, directing travelers to the café, say "casse-croûte," which is  French for "snack." But the literal meaning of the word is, of course, "break crust" or as we say in English, "break bread."

The "casse-croûte" is an unintentional misdirection. It's true they have snacks, including home made sandwiches of the usual suspects in France: boiled ham, with and without cheese, and charcuterie, and perhaps even a pan bagnat, more or less a salade niçoise squeezed between halves of a baguette, but I am not sure of that. There are also the usual ice cream novelties, featured in a colorful poster provided by the manufacturer of cones pre-packed and covered with lurid-colored glop, and ice cream rockets and bars, and the like.

Also, this is, strictly speaking, a bar-tabac, as the ancient rusting wrought iron lettering on the facade tells you, barely visible against the ochre stucco of the walls, partially covered by vines of some sort. The most regular trade, though hardly the most lucrative, comes from regulars (and peregrinating stragglers) who come from practically dawn until close, which is more or less at sunset, for, ahem, liquid refreshment.

The farmers of the region, stop here early of a morning on their way to the remaining vineyards, the greater amount of acreage in wheat, the declining acreage in sunflowers, plus a range of other crops, including olives, and a variety of produce that you can buy on market day in various towns as Patrick, the most enterprising and amiable of the local producers, makes his rounds with his sons and helpers of the circuit of five or six towns that occupy his week. He also has a store-front in Aups—the market town we have always preferred—that he keeps open on weekday mornings, and is always a sure bet for the freshest produce, especially in summer when it is all local... starting with the very local tomatoes, artichokes, zucchini, lettuce of various varieties, plus some stone fruits, like peaches and nectarines, which sell on market day at least until the end of September, and sometimes into October. After these dates the venues for sourcing produce spread in ever widening circles to all of Provence, moving southward with the sun, as the season wanes and even the weather goes south, so to speak.

When they stop at Chez Jean, the farmers imbibe perhaps a ballon de rouge, a fat round brandy snifter of a glass of red wine, or a beer, or perhaps a truly fortifying marc de Provence. Marc (the "c" at the end, properly, is not a hard "k" sound, but the sound of the French "r" disappearing completely down your throat, without a stop, not even a glottal stop, to signify the consonantal presence of this last letter) is an eau de vie, fiery and instantly warming, invigorating—perhaps even a natural energy drink in a tiny amount, which is what they are served—and certainly fortifying. It's what I would drink if about to haul my ass onto a tractor for several hours of hard work in the fields.

There is a regular flow of bar customers, many of whom stop to kibitz for extended periods with Jean, the patron and chief barkeeper. He is a man of the slightly diminutive stature of Frenchmen of a certain generation, bespectacled and what remains of his hair, of a significant if diminished quantity, straight long hair, still quite dark in color, is slicked back from his hairline still well forward on his brow, to the back of his head. One's first impression, as a stranger, is that he is perhaps a tad grumpy and uncooperative, but he is a mild fellow, friendly, slightly harassed, I think, by the unceasing flow of business throughout the day, which finds its apogee or apex in the middle of the day, when the only full meal is served.

I have finally brought this narrative to the most important business at hand. Lunch at Chez Jean, in the tiny, almost imperceptible village of Fox-Amphoux, at the crossroads of the roads from nowhere to somewhere or other. So popular has this meal become, and so widespread the reputation of this homely repast, a masterpiece of country cooking—let the magazines speak of food of the terroir; this is all mainly editorial bullshit, foisted on them by the flacks of major league chefs, with international reputations, indeed, who are brands, and who have "rediscovered their roots" and opened restaurants somewhere or other among the hilly landscape that is the Haut Var. This part of France is more appropriately the domain of the people who work this land, and the animals that still populate it. You are reminded of this at least once or twice of every two- or three-week sojourn, when you must stop on the country road on your way to market, to allow a local herd of sheep, with a mystical leading squadron of beautifully horned goats, and hectored by a small band of beautifully trained, earnest, honest scruffy dogs, to proceed across a road from their pasturage to their overnight accommodations in a bergerie well up in the hills above the plain.

We are intruders, and we are privileged to sit indeed to break bread, but only if we have made a reservation. In the summer, which is high season, reservations are often not to be had at all. This is, I mean, high season for hordes of tourists and high season for the likelihood of the canicule, the dog days, when temperatures rise in to the 100s, and the natives disappear entirely behind their shutters. And all you see are mad dogs and Englishmen, and occasionally us as well, on our perpetual quest for decent brocante (used furniture and stuff). We don't do this often enough for some members of the household, dog days or no, but a man can stand only so much tooling around to misbegotten little towns that happen to be having an expo de brocante or, worse, an expo des antiquités, which means the merchandise are genuine, authentically old, no more attractive and significantly more expensive.

This, our modest little bar-tabac, with its stalwart patron, his doughty wife and boon companion Chantal, who helps run the place and is chief cook of the miracles of country dishes that come out of her kitchen, offers one meal a day for as many people as are lucky to have made a reservation before Jean and Chantal have computed there is not enough food to serve.

The menu is a menu fixe, four set courses, with few, if any, variant choices in any single course. The first of the miracles wrought in this unassuming establishment is that the menu is served at a very unassuming price. Currently, it is 12 euros 50 cents. At the current confiscatory American bank rates, this is about 18 bucks. However for proper perspective you should think of those euros as dollars, as the buying power is probably about the same for the locals as it is for us, if not worse... The Bush dollar may be in the toilet, but in the U.S. there's pretty well loads to go around for the gentry and even for the middle class. In short, you can't judge the cost of a meal here in France by the value according to an inflated exchange rate.

For $12.50 in the states you can get a "gourmet sandwich," an individual portion of artisanal chips, and bottled spring water. For 18 bucks, you can get an 8-ounce Black Angus Burger and fries, a non-alcoholic beverage, and the tax thrown in, but not the tip.

For 12 euros, fifty cents, here, in Chez Jean, in Godot-ville, where there is a very pleasant, luxe, calme, et tranquille wait for the mythical fellow, you get a four-course meal, a carafe of clear cold local water, all the bread you want (fresh French baguettes, of indisputable authenticity), the attentive service of your host or hostess, who serve you themselves, with a dose of bonhomie and cheeriness thrown in among the bustle, with tax (which is a 19+% value added tax) and service included... Beverages are extra. A pastis or kir, as an aperitif, are 1.50 euros apiece. A beer is 2.50, and a carafe of wine (25 centiliters -- or about 3.5 ounces) enough for the meal, or refilling your glass a couple of times—small glasses—is a mere 2.50 euros as well.

We had lunch there the other day, came to 33 euros for the two of us (plus a small pourboire, a few pieces of change—my current rule of thumb is about 3%). Here's what we had.

Things started off with a choice of appetizer of the omnipresent plate of charcuterie—an ample serving of slices of local cured hams, and various kinds of saucisson (the literal translation of which is "sausage," but which is, at best, a hard sausage, and really much closer to what we and the Italians call salami). The local saucisson is invariably pure pork, with various flavorings, starting with garlic, and including such varieties of flavoring as the local herbs (thyme, sage, etc.), wine, perhaps a bit of cheese, tidbits of what are called variety meats—that is, your garden-variety organ meats. However, the saucisson may also include or predominantly consist of other animal flesh: cow or steer meats, lapin (rabbit), venison, sanglier (wild boar) and, despite the rumors, rarely these days the traditional horse. The famous and fabled saucisson of Arles, commonly understood to be manufactured of the flesh of the lowly, if still noble, little âne (ass or donkey, particularly well suited for making one's way in the hills of Provence, and Provence is hilly if nothing), is in fact fabricated in a ratio of about 6:1 of beef and pork, plus various seasonings, spices, herbs, etc. Maybe they used to make it of donkey meat, but no longer. Rather the designation d'Arles refers to a specific flavor of saucisson.

In all events, we skipped the charcuterie (which I have had in the past, and I can vouch for as meeting any expectation for flavor and is especially recommended on those days when you simply have a jones for eating a lot of savory, fatty, highly salinated food that is bad for your heart). Instead we both opted for the tarte aux ratatouille. Speaking of savory. This turned out to be two generous wedges of home-made tarte, on a crust of pâte brisée, it consisted of a ratatouille spread in a thin layer of mainly eggplant and courgettes, with just enough tomato and tomato paste to impart a ruddy, almost terra cotta hue (something like the color of the native soil in this terroir). It was lovely, bursting with flavor in just the right portion, with a nice unctuous texture, broken by the still substantive bits of vegetable in this characteristic Provençal ragout (see my attempt at the canonical recipe for the ratatouille itself: http://perdiem.bertha.com/2006/08/2006august02_th.html —you will note please the date of my recipe, well in advance of the ridiculously successful Disney/Pixar full-length cartoon eponymously titled after this now world-famous dish; I haven't seen the movie, despite the urging of many... I am a little afraid lest I see some pilferage of my ideas; I know no check from Disney or Pixar has appeared as yet in my mailbox).

The main dish was a veal roast, served in thick slices on a platter, with its own mushroom sauce. That is, the sauce, of pan juices, fortified with wine and, I'd guess, the fluid version of crême fraîche that is the alternative to the thicker version with which we are all familiar in the 'States. The thinner version is a preferred substitute for heavy cream, which is, in fact, hard to come by. Though it does seem to be appearing slowly and surely in the supermarkets (the heavy cream that is; crême fraîche is always available in a variety of weights, measures, and from at least a half-dozen different sources).

This is a boneless roast I speak of, likely a rump roast, though it may have been what we call eye of round. Bits of the twine that had bound up the roast after boning were on the serving platter. I'm of the school that sees this as a good thing, and we are certainly too far into the country to imagine that the strings were added, cynically, to add some sort of air of authenticity. Jean had made too much of a fuss when I showed up at 11:40 that morning in person to make the reservation. He fussed a bit, and looked at what was, indeed, a long list of parties already with reservations. The two hangers-on at the bar good-naturedly gave him a raft of shit, both before and after he disappeared into the kitchen. No doubt he was simply checking to see if there would be enough food. He finally appeared and asked if I wanted to sit inside or out. And I told him, oh in the shade outside, for sure. So he dragged out a paper tablecloth to clip to one of the tables out there, presumably to be our table. He asked what time we wanted to eat, and I said 12:30, and he said "and not a minute later..." Somehow I knew he was kidding. Just wanted the last word.

Anyway, the veal roast was ample, and heavenly. I ate my portion, and Linda hers, sopping up the sauce with bread, and then she had no room for the last slice, but I did. It was served with what they called "sautée de pommes de terre" cuboids of potato, done to a turn, that looked, and tasted more like they had been somehow both pan roasted and fried. The French verb, rissoler [meaning to brown, as in a poêle, or frying pan] is a favorite way to cook potatoes here, and usually in the shape they were brought to the table. It's only a technical point, as they were delicious, and nice counterpoint to the lamb so tender it didn't need a knife. But if it was pommes de terre rissolées, why didn't they just call them that. You ask Jean. I didn't and I won't.

Then, the cheese course. A medium-sized plate of four significant portions of cheese: a local chèvre, two cow cheeses, one of them possibly a cousin to reblochon, and cheese with mold, all delicious, even in the delicate samples we allowed ourselves. The platter was more than generous and clearly intended not to be consumed by us (way too much cheese), though I've seen some Americans do exactly that in other restaurants, with similar sized portions. And we wonder how the French stay slim.

Dessert was a choice of flan (which we've had in the past, and we know is home-made), a tarte à poire, and ice cream. No contest. We both had the tarte. Again, homemade, though it sat in the fridge a bit too long, I fear, and was very very slightly desiccated, especially the custard (or the crême n'importe quoi [whatever] holding the fruit in place, and the crust had gotten a little too biscuity (crumbly, rather than flaky, and a little on the harder vs. softer side), but a good finish to the meal. If the dessert had been perfect, we would just have to cancel our return tickets and stay here. It would a lot cheaper eating one meal a day down at Chez Jean, than to return home and go back to that boring three squares a day routine.