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Cooking with Home Schoolers (concluded)

Even though the market tour and cooking class we recently had in Yucatan were disappointing, that day still did significantly expand my experiences. I have learned that on a trip, interchanges with fellow travelers can expand my horizons. It is natural, at least for me, to have at least a few minutes’ conversation with the Australians, Canadians, Americans, Dutch, French, and Bulgarians I meet at historic sites or restaurants. And when traveling in a group, there are many and longer interchanges with fellow travelers in the breakfast rooms or on a bus or van. While traveling I have met an Italian professor specializing in Italian-American literature who introduced me to a novelist I later read; a heart transplant surgeon whose sense of humor coincided with mine; a retired fire captain who had a repertoire of Moth-quality stories; his friend who gushed as he showed me the pictures of the classic fire engines he had restored; a woman whose son was a number-crunching baseball analyst; a small town newspaperman with interesting insights on America; and many more.

Something similar happened on this trip, not because we were traveling in a group, but because of our accommodations. We stayed in a small condo complex that had apartments and freestanding villas. We walked through an unlocked metal gate to a courtyard with a swimming pool. Villas were on the sides and apartments facing the Caribbean at the far end. We were in a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor with a view of the water from a sunken living room and an adjacent deck. The view was beautiful, although the removal of one palm tree in front of the deck would have made the view even better. The place had comfortable beds, chairs, and sofas. The kitchen was well equipped but had inadequate lighting. The showers, however, emitted a puny stream. Water pressure, we learned, was a problem in all of Yucatan, but ours was especially bad. The water comes from aquifers laden with showerhead-clogging limestone. After a few days of dancing under the drops from the showers in an almost futile attempt to rinse off soap, the spouse got the showerheads replaced. The shower was not what I would call luxurious, but it was better than before. The split AC system was efficient although we seldom ran it except in the bedroom at night. All in all, the place had the feel of Old Florida, which I found attractive.

The complex had a social center, the pool, where conversations were struck up in and out of the water. The spouse had found the place on an English-language website. Not surprisingly, it was a North American enclave. The owners and renters at the condo complex we met were from the United States or Canada. The most interesting person was a surgeon from Milwaukee. He was originally from Indiana but he spent many boyhood summers in Wisconsin, and we swapped stories about old and new Wisconsin. And later, he helped convince me that I needed to go to an emergency room, a visit that may have saved my life. (But that is another story.)

Alma’s cooking class was also a place for a social interchange. The other family we shopped, cooked, and ate with were from Topeka, Kansas. I asked why the two girls were not in school. I was told that they were. Danica and Delaney were home schooled, and the mother said that the trip was part of their education. The girls had completed reading projects on Yucatan and the Mayans before coming to the peninsula, and the trip was another step in their schooling.

The family took many trips. All were preceded by assigned readings. The family had a goal of visiting all fifty states before the girls completed their home schooling.

The mother volunteered that her daughters had been attending a “Christian school,” which had gone into remote learning at the beginning of the pandemic. That had not worked well for the girls. They quickly completed their assignments and got bored. The parents wanted the girls to be challenged more and decided that they could do that through home schooling. The parents were members of a home schooling association, and both of them were involved in the educational instruction.

The father, a financial planner, was the bread winner. His wife proudly told us that he managed a $50 million portfolio. Many of his clients were widows who had not taken part in their family finances. Desmond said that few had even bought a car and were relieved that he would participate in such a transaction. He said his clients always seemed to want to buy a Honda, and he had helped purchase more CR-Vs than he could remember. This pleased the NBP who loves Hondas.

Although the car purchases may have been in Topeka, he said that he could work from almost anywhere with an internet connection. Thus, the family could travel extensively.

I went to the cooking class to learn about food, but instead what I really learned, yet again, was to check my prejudices. I had not given it much thought, but I am sure that I had assumed that there was something off about home schoolers. I probably thought I would meet with evangelism at least for home schooling; diatribes about the loss of “values” in the schools; coerced into praying before a meal; and ill-informed political and health comments. There was none of that. Yes, the family and its members were a bit precious and self-involved. (They asked almost nothing about the three of us, even though each of us in our own way, I assure you, is fascinating. But this did not separate them out from many, many other American families.) Mostly, the four of them just seemed nice and loving.

Perhaps that is why I did not tell them what I had once heard. At one of the times when there was a scandal because a teacher was having an affair with her high school student, a man said that he thought this was not a big deal because such sex had not been harmful to him when he was a boy. He paused, looked reflective, and continued, “But, then again, I was home schooled.”

And I forgot to ask them what food they would get when they got back home to Topeka. I wonder if any would have responded, “Bierocks.”

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Cooking with Home Schoolers

I try to experience local foods when traveling. Calvin Trillin wrote that, when in a new town, he would not ask for the best restaurant but instead ask a long-time resident what that person would want to eat upon returning to home after being away for a year or two. In other words, what was the local comfort food. And thus, as a result, you might have an ice cream potato in Coeur d’Alene, a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich in Kokomo, or chicken riggies in Utica.

I don’t know how to do this in a country where I don’t speak the language. Instead, I have found myself in markets pointing at possible palatable foodstuffs and indicating with gestures how much I want. This is always an adventure and sometimes a successful one.

Only recently have I done what I should have done decades ago—book a food tour at the beginning of the trip. That is what the spouse, the NBP, and I had done in Merida, Yucatan’s capital city, in pre-Covid days. In addition, there had been three others on the tour—a pair of medical doctors from the Netherlands finishing their training and–in the small world department–another Dutch doctor who had just finished up her training. She had not met the other two until that day. Apparently, Holland, while not that large, is not so small that everyone knows each other—not even the doctors. However, we all learned that there is a special connection between Yucatan and Holland. The Yucatecans love Edam cheese and use hollowed out balls of it for one of their signature dishes. According to Jose, the food tour guide, Yucatan recently sent representatives to the Netherlands to discuss Edam cheese.

Our food tour took us through the narrow, crowded passageways of the major food market of Merida where fruits and vegetables, honey and vanilla, spices and chiles are sold. (Another nearby market sold meat.) Food stalls were abundant, and Meridians crowded around them for lunch and snacks. Jose would stop and procure the specialties of an establishment generally not more than a few feet wide. We tried things we otherwise would not have and learned the difference between panuchos and salbutes, that turkey and venison are staples, what sopa de lima is, and that mole is not used. Instead, a black bean paste, sold in huge blocks in the market, is the base of many dishes. We went outside the market and had a terrific ceviche in a tiny restaurant followed by creatively flavored and delicious ice cream. This tour, coming at the beginning of the Yucatan sojourn, stood us in good stead for the rest of our stay as it encouraged us to eat items that we otherwise would not have understood on menus. As a result of the tour, we continued to eat panuchos at many places (they are similar to but different from salbutes—both are fried platforms for other foods, but panuchos have a black bean paste injected into them while hot).

From my standpoint that food tour had been satisfying, so going to a different part of the Yucatan peninsula, I looked for a similar but different local experience. I booked a rather expensive combination market excursion and cooking class in the home of a Yucatecan host.

First, we had to find that home, which was a forty-minute drive from where we were staying. One of the three of us was confident, incredibly confident, that she knew how to get to the location. We got lost. We eventually pulled up to a hotel to ask for directions but thought that it wiser to hire a cab to lead us to our destination. We were fifteen minutes late but found our host and a family across the street waiting in what until recently had been an industrial area in Playa del Carmen. After we apologized profusely, we walked a block. The host pulled aside a solid gate fronting the sidewalk, and we entered a courtyard surrounded by three or four buildings, each the home of one or more families. Through an open door in one of the buildings, and we were in the host’s kitchen and dining room, where we chatted for a few moments.

Alma, the host, talked a bit about the history and growth of the fast-growing city. After she explained what we would be preparing, we went to a market a few blocks away. I was disappointed. I was looking for a central, city market like ones I have visited in Florence, Barcelona, Istanbul, Budapest, and Merida where there are dozens and dozens of vendors selling all sorts of things I do not recognize. I wanted to see pyramids of unknown fruits and stretches of exotic vegetables with food stalls hawking unfamiliar prepared food. This, however, was only a neighborhood market equivalent to the ones where I buy fruits and vegetables several times a week in Brooklyn. We did learn a little about some new-to-me foods, but not much. After Alma bought a few things, others jaunted but I trudged (it was getting hot) back to her kitchen.

We then began to assist Alma and her aunt (or perhaps it was her sister) in the preparation of what would be our lunch. Guacamole was first. Alma had two rigid rules for this dish. First, use a mortar and pestle, never a blender. She maintained that blending altered the taste of the guac ingredients. (She did use a blender to make a marinade for chicken.) Second, no lime. This was to the chagrin of the two girls, ten and eight, who with their parents were our cooking companions. The girls loved limes and sucked any they could get their hands on. Perhaps those two were disappointed, but the guacamole was delicious.

We made our own tortillas. Alma’s twist: she colored part of the masa with beet juice producing a red tortilla or mixed with the non-colored dough for a binary effect. I, however, could discern no taste difference in the beet infused tortillas with the nonbinary ones. (In any event, I prefer wheat tortillas to corn ones.) Two presses were used to form the tortillas, a metal devicemuch like ones I have seen elsewhere and a larger, wood one, which I guess harkened back to older days. The product from each seemed to be identical.

We soon sat down to lunch eating guacamole and tortillas stuffed with the meat flavored with the marinade Alma had made. It was pleasant but also disappointing. I had not had the culinary discoveries I had been hoping for. The market was not what I had envisioned. I own a mortar and pestle, and although I seldom do, I know how to use it. I had not made a tortilla before, but I already knew the basics. The food was tasty, but nothing made me say, Oh, wow. Alma emailed us the recipes we had cooked as well as other ones. Even though I am a regular recipe-reader, I have not even looked at what she sent.

(concluded May 4)

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Snippets

The NRA recently had its convention. It is held only once a year. Mass shootings occur, however, more than once a week. And other gun crimes and gun suicides occur multiple times each day.

Guns were not allowed in the NRA convention hall when Trump addressed the assemblage. I did not hear any protests that this restriction violated Second Amendment rights.

Some people see gun possession as a God-given right, and a greater percentage of white evangelicals own guns than other demographic groups.

Sometimes people ask what type(s) of firearm(s) Jesus will possess when He comes back to save us. However, I don’t see how he will pass a background check; He was convicted of a felony.

I was taught it was demeaning and wrong to refer to a person as “it.” If so, I am confused how to refer to some people. The Supreme Court has told me that corporations are people with free speech and religious rights. What is the proper pronoun when I am referring to a corporation? Interestingly, the Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision referred to the corporation as an “it.” (I have previously written about pronouns in my post “People the Barricades! We Need a Pronoun Revolution,” June 28 and July 1, 2019.)

A physicist has posited that dark matter was not created in the initial Big Bang, but in another Big Bang a few weeks later. I am sure that there could be lots of questions about this hypothesis, but I wonder how time such as “weeks” was measured during the universe’s infancy.

Shouldn’t Dan Feyer be more well known, which means shouldn’t I have heard of him before this week? Recently he won the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament championship for the ninth time.

At a car rental place in Cancun, a clerk mistook me for a famous “announcer.” I had no idea who she had in mind, but I did not disabuse of her mistake. Perhaps, I thought, it will get me better service. That was my mistake.

If we are to make the rest of America like Florida, we will increase the nation’s infant mortality. Florida ranks in the bottom half of the states when it comes to baby deaths.

Watching a beer ad, I wondered, Why, if you have a good tasting beer, would you put a lime in it?

Phantom of the Opera, Broadway’s longest-running show, recently closed. I live in New York City and go to the theater frequently, but I never saw Phantom. I never saw Cats either. I have not seen Wicked. I have not seen Hamilton on the stage. However, I have seen Topdog/Underdog and Shucked.

New York has forty-one venues classified as Broadway theaters. Only six of them were built after 1927 although many of them have been refurbished over the last century. The peak of Broadway was from 1923-29 with more than two hundred new shows opening every year during that span. Forty-one new shows opened on Broadway from May 2022 through April 2023.

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First Sentences

“Cooking starts with your hands, the most important and basic of all implements.” James Beard’s Theory and Practice of Good Cooking.

“Back in 1961, when women wore shirtwaist dresses and joined garden clubs and drove legions of children around in seatbeltless cars without giving it a second thought; back before anyone knew there’d even be a sixties movement, much less one that its participants would spend the next sixty years chronicling; back when the big wars were over and the secret wars had just begun and people were starting to think fresh and believe everything was possible, the thirty-year-old Madeline Zott rose before dawn every morning and felt certain of just one thing: her life was over.” Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry.

“The man called the ‘Emperor of New York’ was also known as Shields Green.” Imani Perry, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation.

“In October there were yellow trees.” Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These.

“My earliest memory of Leon dates back to the 1960s, when he was living in Paris with his wife, Rita, my grandmother.” Philippe Sands, East West Street.

“Bill Rankin sat motionless before his typewriter, grimly seeking a lead for the interview he was about to write.” Earl Derr Biggers, Behind That Curtain.

“I have been told by many people that I have an unusual way of looking at the world.” Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

“The telltale sign that you are at the wedding of a rich person is the napkins.” Xochitl Gonzalez, Olga Dies Dreaming.

“As his chauffeur nosed the sleek black Rolls Royce through the dawn streets of Paris, Wilfred ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale had little inkling that his actions over the coming months would have such immense historic significance, or that he would end up serving as a role model for the world’s most famous (fictional) secret agent, ‘007’ – James Bond.” Damien Lewis, Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy.

“On a bright, unseasonably warm afternoon in early December, Brandon Trescott walked out of the spa at the Chatham Bars Inn on Cape Cod and got into a taxi.” Dennis Lehane, Moonlight Mile.

“On March 15, 1889, hurricane winds struck Samoa’s Apia Harbor in the South Pacific, catching two anchored American warships by surprise.” Mark Clague, O Say Can You Hear? A Cultural Biography of The Star-Spangled Banner.

“There is a glorious part of England known as the Donheads.” Jane Gardam, The Man in the Wooden Hat.

“Night had fallen in the rugged oil-boom city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, when the squad of detectives appeared on a downtown street.” Adam Hochschild, American Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.

“Certainties for architecture students are few.” Matthew Frederick, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School.

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Snippets

“I wouldn’t mind paying taxes, if I knew they were going to a friendly country.” Dick Gregory.

President Biden is a disappointment. He has visited scenes of natural disasters and not once flicked out rolls of paper towels.

How old do you have to be to understand why I was taught to squeeze the toothpaste tube only from the bottom?

I am wondering when Florida or some other state will ban reruns of “Star Trek.” Tony Horwitz in Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998) reports that some white supremacists protested the show because to them, Mr. Spock—half human, half-Vulcan—was a coded promoter of miscegenation.

A story in a Jimmy Carter biography that I hope is true: Carter had said that he followed what his parents taught him, and he would never tell a lie. A reporter interviewed Jimmy’s mother and asked whether it was true that the Carters told no lies. Miss Lillian replied, “Maybe a little white one.” Asked for an example, Miss Lillian continued, “Remember how when you walked in here, I told you how sweet and pretty you were?”

Some people have tact and others tell the truth.

We had made it to the open sky after ascending the steep, slippery, worn, damp stairs. We were wet from the plunge in the cave’s pool, a cenote. At the picnic table next to us, two women were also toweling off. One then began putting on suntan lotion. I said that if she were planning to go into another cenote a few hundred meters away, that was mistake since she would just have to wash it off. To keep the waters in cenotes uncontaminated, swimmers must shower off lotions, perfumes, deodorants, and the like before going into the water. Even though you might think of Yucatan as a warm place, the cenote showers are colder than any mixed drinks I had there. I learned that the women were from the Netherlands. I asked to see their thumbs. They looked puzzled. I said that I heard that the Dutch all had large thumbs to plug holes in the dikes. This is a witticism I invariably drop when meeting someone from Holland because it invariably amuses me and no one else. One was a nurse and the other a social worker. They worked together in a drug addiction clinic for 18–24-year-olds. Even in the civilized Netherlands addiction destroys lives. It was sad that they said that fentanyl was becoming an increasing problem.

A boss a while back was being interviewed on television. He said that, of course, no one actually made the median salary. Yet another reason, I thought, to get out of the job I was in.

An elderly woman at the pharmacy was deciding which of her drugs she should take home because she could not afford them all. I felt very sadly American as the scene unfolded.

A few years back an observer said, “Our forefathers objected to taxation without representation. Now we would be glad to get taxation without misrepresentation.”

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Boston Marathon: Terror Times Two

The Boston Marathon has noted what happened a decade ago. On April 15, 2013, two pressure cooker bombs exploded near the finish line of the race. Three people were killed and about 260 injured. Three days later, authorities publicly identified two brothers as suspects. Shortly thereafter the brothers killed a college policeman and wounded several other officers, one of whom died from his wounds a year later. One of the brothers was killed as the police tried to apprehend them, while the other was captured, put on trial two years later, convicted, and sentenced to death.

The bombing, the capture, the trial, and sentencing all were big news stories.  After all, this was terrorism striking at an iconic American event on Patriot’s Day, which memorializes another iconic event, the day often regarded as the opening of the fight for American independence. And it was Islamic terrorism.

Books have been written and movies made about these events. This is as it should be. Lives were lost, limbs amputated, and nightmares endured. These are stories worth telling and remembering.

A few days after that Boston Marathon bombing another, almost unknown, tragedy occurred at the West Fertilizer Company storage facility in West, Texas. Emergency service personnel were responding to a fire there when a horrific explosion occurred.  Fifteen died with up to 200 injured.  A fifty-unit apartment building was destroyed along with as many as 80 houses with many more damaged. A crater 92 feet wide and 12 feet deep was created.

Two American tragedies occurring almost at the same time. We know a lot about one, but few know or remember the other where there was a greater loss of life and the destruction of the equivalent of a small town. There are reasons for the different memories.  A bombing at the Boston Marathon makes us all feel vulnerable. We might not be spectators at that event, but we might attend other sports contests. We might sense that such a tragedy might happen outside a church or a concert or a rally. It might happen at a mall or a commuter terminal. It could easily happen at some place where we have been. On the other hand, few of us relate in the same way to an ammonium nitrate storage facility, or even to deaths at a work site, even though workplace deaths average nearly 5,000 a year in this country—much higher, of course, than deaths by terrorism in this country.

And, of course, Boston’s was Islamic terrorism, and that strikes chords that an industrial explosion does not.

There have been responses to the Boston bombing. Security has increased for events that bear any similarity to the Boston Marathon. I know of no cost estimates for the increased manpower and searches and barricades, but it must be immense. On the other hand, response to the West tragedy seems minimal. This is especially striking because an investigative report a year later stated that the explosive material was not safely stored, and that federal, state, and local regulations regarding such substances were inadequate. The explosion was labeled “preventable.” In contrast, was the Boston Marathon bombing “preventable”?

If Islamic terrorism had leveled a small American village resulting in fifteen deaths, there would be an outraged and rapid response, but we don’t seem to bother ourselves if it is merely an explosion in a corporate facility. But then a twist. Several years after the Texas tragedy, law enforcement said that arson was the cause of the fire that led to the explosion. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives posted a reward for information leading to the arrest of those who set the fire, but so far the offer only dangles.  Perhaps if the ATF had labeled the event as terrorism, there would be action.

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Cup or Cone

The spouse and I have been together for so long because we are in sync on many important issues. For example, we agree that in an ice cream shop you should always buy a ice cream in a cone and not a cup. (We also agree that you should not even go in if the place says it is a shoppe.)

When I ruminate on an ice cream cone, my thoughts naturally turn to the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904. Some may know the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904 from the movie Meet Me in St. Louis. That classical musical gave us some standards including “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis,” “The Boy Next Door,” and the melancholy, somewhat disturbing holiday song, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The movie is set–don’t be surprised if you haven’t seen it–in St. Louis mostly in the 1903 Christmas season. The planning for next summer’s World’s Fair is underway.

Of course, all musicals are fantasies on some level, but Meet Me even more so. The family at the core of the movie learns that the father may have to relocate them all to New York City. I can grasp that the family is upset that it might miss the fair, especially as everyone is abuzz with excitement about it. However, it is hard for me to suspend my disbelief so much to accept that the family would rather stay in St. Louis permanently than move to New York, but that is the plot. Of course, they stay along the Mississippi. The movie’s last scene is in the summer of 1904 with the family at the brightly lit World’s Fair. However, that scene is incomplete since no one, as far as I can remember, is holding an ice cream cone.

(Meet Me in St. Louis not only gave us some treasured musical standards, it also in essence gave us Liza. During the filming, the director, Vincente Minnelli, met the movie’s star, Judy Garland. The two would later produce Liza Minnelli, treasured by some, perhaps even many. I won’t digress to the time I saw — along with Jackie Kennedy Onassis — Liza Minelli in concert.)

Perhaps when you think of the St. Louis World’s Fair, in addition to ice cream cones you think of Thomas Jefferson and early American history. That Fair was officially the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. It commemorated the centennial of President Jefferson’s purchase from France of what is now the heartland of the United States. Of course, since the Louisiana Purchase occurred in 1803, the centennial celebration should have been before 1904. However, while St. Louis, the Gateway to the West, may have had many go-getters, apparently not all participating in the fair could get going in time for the one-hundred-year mark and the Exposition started a year late. St. Louis might not often acknowledge taking inspiration from its rival city, but it did seem to be following Chicago’s calendar. The World’s Columbian Exposition also known as the Chicago World’s Fair commemorated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the new world. However, it was held in 1893, a year late, as all of us who remember our grade school poetry know.

With the Louisiana Purchase, the size of the United States instantly doubled. That territory encompasses all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and North Dakota and portions of nine other states. Many of these places form our conservative heartland, and I wonder, as I am sure you do, too, if the people there reflect on the Louisiana Purchase, to which they are indebted.

France inhabited or held by occupation little of the land it sold. Governing control of the area was not turned over to the U.S. because France did not in fact govern it. Instead, as a matter of international law — which really meant European law — the Purchase gave America the right to try and inhabit and control the land and to exclude foreign — meaning European — countries from it. Of course, indigenous Americans were there, but they did not participate in the deal, and their rights were disregarded. Perhaps the Purchase should be seen as a green light (ok, that is anachronistic, so give me something better) for American imperialism.

The Louisiana Purchase provoked one of the country’s first constitutional conflicts. Indeed, Jefferson himself doubted its constitutionality. Nothing in the Constitution authorized the kind of transaction Jefferson made. Those who truly believe that our Constitution sets out a government limited to enumerated powers, as Jefferson supposedly did, have to doubt the Purchase’s legality. But as with many Constitutional disputes in our history, hypocrisy abounded. Those around Jefferson who supposedly believed in a limited government supported the deal while the Federalists, who were the big government folk, opposed it. Apparently, Jefferson was convinced that since nothing in the Constitution prohibited the purchase, it could go forward. That’s a long way from maintaining that the government only could exercise powers enumerated in the document.

Something else should be noted. The Purchase occurred only fifteen years after the Constitution was ratified, and the meaning of the document was already unclear even to many who had been active in drafting and adopting it. When they went looking for the original meaning of the Constitution, they could not agree on what it was. Yet today, more than eleven score years later, some with wondrous certitude and amazing hubris will tell us what was originally meant by the document.

The Supreme Court these days will resolve constitutional issues much as Jefferson did in 1803. Jefferson accepted the interpretation that allowed him to do what he wanted to do, and the conservative members of the Supreme Court will “reason” to a result that fits their philosophy and politics. The desired result drove Jefferson’s reasoning, as it will for a majority of the Supreme Court today.

There is also an irony in the fact that America did not have the money to pay France for the Louisiana Purchase. The United States borrowed the funds from Great Britain, which exacted a hefty 6% interest fee. In other words, the Louisiana Purchase, of suspect constitutionality, depended on deficit financing. Even so, many in Congress from the states whose lands were obtained in the Purchase have supported a balanced budget amendment. I wonder if they ever pause to reflect on the fact that if such a provision had originally been in the Constitution, they might have had to do their grandstanding, even if it were allowed in whatever country Iowa and Nebraska would now be in, in French or some other language than English.

So. While some might think of the movie Meet Me in St. Louis when they think of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Others might reflect on the Louisiana Purchase, which the Fair commemorated. However, the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904 should be most honored for it its role in ice cream history.

There may have been something like ice cream cones before 1904, but the Fair made them an American icon. Different versions circulate about which vendor started using cones for ice cream at the Fair. (Origin stories are often disputed except by conservative Supreme Court judges who know with precision the original meanings of constitutional provisions.) But thousands upon thousands of ice cream cones were sold in St. Louis that summer. Soon they were appearing everywhere in the United States and new, ingenious machines were made and perfected in the United States for the fabrication of cones. Within a few years of 1904, the ice cream cone became an America icon. We may say something is as American as apple pie, but saying something is as American as an ice cream cone would be even better. And that stems from that St. Louis World’s Fair

In spite of what Heywood Broun said (“I doubt whether the world holds for any one a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice-cream.”), I don’t remember my first taste of ice cream. I do know that I have enjoyed it in many ways. It has given me pleasure on top of a brownie or a slice of cherry pie or chocolate cake or peach cobbler. (The spouse makes a great peach cobbler.) I have loved ice cream in the eponymous ice cream sandwich. I have enjoyed it covered with chocolate or salty caramel sauce. It has been great with strawberries in season and in a banana split. Even though it is stupid, I have had admiration for it in a Baked Alaska. I have enjoyed it straight out of the carton with the light from an open freezer door. (A sage person has said, Never ask a woman who is eating ice cream from a carton how her day was.) I have enjoyed it in many flavors and in soft-serve and hard versions.

And, yes, I have enjoyed ice cream simply spooned out of a bowl. But if you want that, use a real bowl and a real spoon. Ice cream from a disposable cup with a little plastic spoon or worse, one of those wooden paddles, is not the same thing. (Yes, I have had many Dixie Cup ice creams, but they came from convenience stores where an ice cream cone was not an option.) And at home, the bowl and spoon can be washed and used again unlike disposable cups from an ice cream shop. A cone does not contribute to landfill problems. If you want to spoon ice cream into your mouth, buy some, go home, and enjoy it out of a real bowl.

You should buy an ice cream cone when you can not only because it is the American way (Do Russians stand around the Kremlin with a cone?), but also for the sensory experience. Licking ice cream from a cone is a different sensual pleasure from the other ways to enjoy it, and when a cone is available, take the opportunity. The ice cream cone, not that prissy cardboard cup and plastic spoon, is not only the American way, it affords pleasure in a way other servings of ice cream do not.

I can already imagine the rejoinder. I don’t buy an ice cream cone for my kid because I don’t want my Mackenzie or Madison to experience that feeling when a scoop falls off and splats on the pavement. A kid who has not experienced a skinned knee has not truly experienced childhood. A child who has not suffered the tragedy of melting ice cream on the sidewalk is not ready for adulthood. Your snowflake will suffer worse than an ice cream cone mishap in life. They may have already by drawing overprotective parents.

Buy yourself an ice cream cone. Buy your kids ice cream cones. Be an American. Enjoy all that life offers.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

That other woman . . . no, not that other woman . . . no, no, not that other woman . . . no, no, no, not that other woman. I am referring to that other woman known as Stormy Daniels. She is sometimes described as an adult film actress. That has made me think about the term “adult film.” It is used for movies with graphic depictions of sex, but, of course, we know that teens and pre-teens are so interested in that subject that they spend much time finding pornography on the internet. And, of course, the adults fascinated by adult films all seem to have an arrested development. On the other hand, there are many films, with or without sex, where the young and immature do not have the experience, knowledge, or empathy to be drawn into the movie. They are just bored if they go. These are films for adults, which, of course, are quite different from adult films.

I never feel more American than when I cannot speak a foreign language.

I like going into food stores in a foreign country. I wonder what the many products are that I don’t recognize and whether I would like them. Even the familiar products often come in packaging different from what I know, and it often seems amusing. I did notice warning statements on familiar and unfamiliar packages on a recent trip to Mexico that I had not seen elsewhere proclaiming Exceso Calorías, Exceso Azúcar, or Exceso Sal. One or more of those phrases seemed to be on an inordinate percentage of my purchases.

I enjoyed watching John Wick 2. The most obvious question is how can I enjoy a movie with a body count higher than a World War I film? Of course, the violence is choreographed and does not attempt verisimilitude. It’s a kung fu movie and reminds me of professional wrestling except that the wrestling scripts provide for more character development. Or how can I enjoy a movie with Keanu Reeves? I concede that he is a good action figure and luckily the movie does not require much dialog from him. But whenever he does deliver a line, I feel as if I am watching a high school play. How can I enjoy a movie with so many implausibilities? But I did, except I was left with one other question. Part of the movie is set in New York City, and like any city resident I enjoy the New York scenes and try to figure out where they are. In John Wick there were impossibilities. So, for example, you can’t walk out of a door in lower Manhattan and immediately overlook St. Patrick’s cathedral. That should have bothered me, but I gave the moviemakers license to show as many photogenic pictures as possible. I felt something similar when John Wick and one of the many people who is trying to kill him are in a subway station. That station was so clean and new, I thought it could not be a real New York City scene. The characters get on the train announced as a C train. The C is a real train. I know it well because it is the closest subway to my home and one that I have ridden thousands of time. The announcement says that the C train is going to Broad Street and that Rector Street is the next stop. The C train, however, does not go to Broad and does not stop at Rector. I saw no reason why if they were going to say it was a C train, they did not announce its real itinerary. On the other hand, I can’t say why of all the things in the movie that could have bothered me and did not, this did.

A Texas legislator has introduced a bill that would require the posting in all school classrooms of copies of the Ten Commandments in a version mandated by the legislator. I am wondering if he will also mandate how teachers should inform second graders about the meaning of adultery. Or what it means not to covet your neighbor’s ass.

Posted on by rjonakait

“Tope,” She Exclaimed

I don’t like speed bumps. For most of my car-driving life this was not much of an issue because I encountered few. However, a decade ago, Brooklyn, my home, started putting in speed bumps on some streets I regularly drive. Mostly they signal a school that I am approaching. I understand the concern, but I was not aware that speeding cars had been wiping out schoolchildren in my neighborhood before the bumps were built. They did not seem necessary. However, now, on my way home, I have to slow to eight miles per hour or less and then go back to twenty-five and then back to eight three or four times on the last few blocks of my trip. I realize that this is a minor aggravation except when I am concentrating on a stroller or a bicyclist or the behind of a pedestrian, and don’t see the bump coming. I hit it too fast and fear my head is going to hit the car roof. However, I am restrained by the bruise-leaving, always-worn seat belt as I say various non-Christian oaths. On the other hand, I am grateful that many other blocks I drive do not have speed bumps, and on occasion I get home on a route that would otherwise be less convenient except for the absence of speed bumps.

I have become resigned to the Brooklyn bumps. I felt much yuckier about the Yucatan ones we encountered on a recent trip.

We had flown to Cancun, rented a car, and drove ninety minutes on a good road. We turned off the main highway onto a narrow, meandering street to get to the apartment we had rented on Akumal Bay. Our place was a little over a mile from the turn off, but it seemed much further because of speed bumps. There were many of them. I tried to count them but invariably lost track because of their number—more than two dozen but perhaps thirty or more. The bumps were not all the same. Some were nicely rounded and could be driven over at, say, five miles per hour without any danger of losing fillings. Some were plateaus with an incline, a flat space of several yards, and then an off ramp. Some, however, were not really bumps, but triangles with sharp tops that required extra care and speeds that matched a baby’s crawl.

Before some of the bumps, but not all, a sign was posted on the side of the road—TOPE—which we took to mean “speed bump” in Mexican. We figured that this was a two-syllable word, but the spouse like to pronounce it as if it were that brownish-gray color, that, to me, should have a hint of purple. Her exclamation of “Tope” was sort of cute the first time and even the second and perhaps the third, but we drove this road multiple times each day. Her shouting taupe the thirty-fifth time had lost all cuteness.

The road had a posted speed limit of twelve kilometers per hour, but if that speed was ever reached, the brakes had to be immediately pushed hard for the next speed bump. You could drive the road faster than walking, but only by a bit, and the usual trip the length of our little road took up to fifteen minutes.

This road was not an outlier. Every town where we drove in Yucatan had speed bumps. Even main roads were mined with them. We decided to visit the Mayan ruins at Coba, which we had not seen before. Google maps correctly indicated that it was about a ninety-minute drive, but the mileage (or should it be kilometerage or kilometreage) did not seem that far. Google maps apparently knew of the many, many, did I say many speed bumps we would have to traverse even though almost all of the drive was on main roads.

I wondered if some sort of bizarre corruption was at work. Had some well-connected speed bump construction company “convinced” local officials that this annoyance was necessary? I concluded that if all the speed bumps we encountered on the drive to Coba had been stacked on top of each other, it would make an edifice higher than Coba’s pyramid, a structure that we were told was even higher than the one at Chichen Itza.* If the speed bumps survive, I wonder what future anthropologists will make of them.

On the other hand, I don’t remember seeing any evidence of traffic accidents in our drives.

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*

We toured Coba in a pedicab. The spouse and I sat up front in the vehicle in what was a spacious area for the young but a little tight for us. Rodrigo, who lived in the nearby town of 3,000 also named Coba, narrated as he peddled.

We learned some natural history. Rodrigo pointed out two trees growing together. He said that the bark or sap of one was poisonous and caused a rash, but the bark or the sap on the other one contained the antidote. The two trees always grew side by side. At another tree, Rodrigo pointed out a barely discernible hole with a swarm of small, flying insects. He said the creatures were a native, nonstinging bee. Its honey is harvested by boring into the tree and is a delicacy of the area. 

As can be expected, we heard many different languages and accents at Coba. French predominated, but at the pyramid we met a couple from Bulgaria, who seemed thrilled that we had been to their country, even though it had been for a matter of hours on a trip down the Danube. They took our picture with the pyramid in the background. I fell in love with her, but she has not called me, and my ardor has waned.

Of course, we were primarily there to see Mayan ruins. While Coba’s pyramid may be higher than Chichen Itza’s, it does not now seem as grand because it is in greater disrepair than the more famous site. The stairs have crumbled to pieces. However, I only remember one ball court at Chichen Itza while Coba has two smaller ones that seemed almost intimate.

The Coba feature we had not seen elsewhere was a portion of a raised road. Rodrigo told us that this road originally extended fifty or more miles through the jungle to other Mayan cities. I realize that I was only seeing a small portion of the road, but in spite of my close inspection I saw no speed bumps. On the other hand, the Mayans did not used wheeled vehicles.

However, on the more modern Coba paths used by our pedicab, Rodrigo did have to maneuver over…yep, speed bumps.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

One car horn sounded, and then another and another. I wished that the horns had been tuned to make harmonies instead of cacophonies.

The program told me that musical piece had its “world premiere” in Oxford, England, last September. Is there a difference between the premiere and the world premiere?

The street preacher told me, “Thank God for Jesus!” He did not look then as if he wanted to discuss the finer points of theology, but I wondered what his views on the Trinity were. Did he think Jesus was part of the Godhead? Was he saying, “Thank Jesus for Jesus”?

I expect to tip when paying a restaurant bill in the United States. (In some countries, a percentage is added onto the bill and an additional tip is not necessary.) I have my standards for what I should tip at a restaurant. I infrequently have food delivered to my home, but when I do, I expect to tip the delivery person. I am never sure how, however. I think it should be less than in a restaurant where the server not only brings me the food but also clears the table during and after the meal. And, of course, people are washing the dishes and utensils I have used. I have, therefore, concluded that the delivery person should get a lesser percentage than the tip in a restaurant, but I am still not sure what it should be. Now I have another tipping dilemma. When I am making the kind of purchase for which in the not-too-distant past I did not leave any tip, the credit card machine asks me if I want to leave a tip and lists percentages. For example, I went into a store and filled up some canisters with coffee without the help of a store employee. When I went to pay, below the price of the coffee, I was asked if I wanted to leave a tip. Should I? Is this a new tipping convention? Tipping conventions do change (I am unlikely to leave a ten percent tip at a restaurant as was once common) and vary by locations. On a recent trip to Yucatan, we found that people other than those ringing up the purchases bagged our groceries in the supermarket. We learned that we should tip these baggers although the expected amount was only a couple of pesos or so, which amounted to a dime. I don’t like bagging groceries, and this seemed just fine to me. At a gas station, someone pumped the gas, which I don’t mind doing, and we were told to tip them some pesos also. That was no big deal, but a bigger deal was that the gas stations did not take credit cards, and we had to make sure to have sufficient cash to get enough gas. I am still wondering, however, whether I should leave a tip when I buy coffee from the specialty shop.

As I went to the first tee to start another bad round of golf (for I am a bad golfer), I asked the starter, “Got any tips?” “Yes,” he said. “Never bet on the Phillies.”

The spouse and I have talked about leaving Brooklyn for some place where old folks like us might live an easier life. A place we considered was Asheville, North Carolina. But then I learned that the closest Costco to Asheville was more than a ninety-minute drive. This might be a deal-breaker.

I was walking a block lined with many Indian restaurants. One distinguished itself by the clipping in its window of a glowing review by a famous food critic. I was not sure, however, if it told me anything about the quality of its food. It was from 1997.