tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65641349642859883102024-03-06T21:01:47.042+01:00City On A HillEd Ward's Blog Leaves Europe After 20 Years and Returns To The U.S., Another Foreign Country. Currently, This Blog Is In Transition. Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.comBlogger341125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-33729494034062048382018-06-30T22:50:00.000+02:002018-06-30T22:50:27.986+02:00This Is The Stuff, A Tale of Two RestaurantsEvery now and then, it becomes necessary to head over to Louisiana and visit my old pal Mr. LeJeune for some of his superb meat products, most notably garlic sausage and tasso. In the 40 or so years I've been making this trip, a lot has changed. There are, for instance, more and better places to stay. There's been a resurgence of pride in the local culture. And these two things have resulted in a lot more tourism. Which is a good thing (for the locals making money off of it) and a bad thing. Which we'll get to in a minute.<br />
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Now, last week it became essential for me to get out of town before I lost my mind. You know, mostly the same thing that's been oppressing all of us Americans, but also the fact that I just wanted to be somewhere else, even for a short time. I had a short visit to San Francisco in January that was pretty unsatisfactory for the most part (some day I'll realize that that place and I just don't get along, plan the trip so as to get what I wanted done, see who I wanted to see, and leave before my blood pressure gets too much of a workout), but nothing since then. With little money, but my flexible work schedule (I'd just finished the next-to-last chapter of <i>The History of Rock & Roll, Vol. 2</i>) it boiled down to a quick drive to Lafayette, overnight in a hotel, visit Mr. Le Jeune the next morning, and come back here.<br />
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It's a long trip, but my friend K said she'd like to join me, to keep me from nodding off or becoming too tired along the way. The only downside is that, as in San Francisco, my sense of taste and smell is still intermittent. I'm probably going to have to go see the only doctor who's actually treated me for it successfully, and he's in France. (American doctors, motivated by greed, want to do an operation that works briefly, then shuts off the sense for the rest of your life. I don't want that, thanks. And a flight to France would be way cheaper than the operation, as would be the price of the medications.) These days, though, it's been clearing up in the mornings most days, so that was a plus.<br />
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The drive out was hellish, mostly due to a stretch east of Houston, where we sat while three lanes folded into two somewhere around Bay City. We got in to Lafayette about 5 and checked in to a place I'd stayed at before, the Hilton, a giant high-rise and probably the tallest building in town. The last time was in the late '80s, when it was the only decent hotel in town, and I spent most of a day fighting food poisoning I'd gotten at Mulate's, which had once been a decent place to eat before they started courting the still-rare tour-bus crowd.<br />
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The hotel's now a Doubletree By Hilton with modernized decor, and it was filled with pre-teen baseball players and their parents, but that didn't matter: I passed out for a half-hour nap as soon as the bed was within striking range. I woke, refreshed, and then the next decision was where to eat. Weirdly, in the middle of a place famous for its food, there weren't many choices. I didn't want to drive too far from Lafayette, like to Breaux Bridge, and crawfish season has been over for a while, so it was a problem. Both of us were dressed fairly casually, which left out <a href="http://www.cafev.com/">Café Vermillionville,</a> which was getting kind of long in the tooth anyway. What remained wasn't very inspiring to say the least: there was a chain called <a href="http://lafayette.bluedogcafe.com/">the Blue Dog Café</a>, an annoying reminder of the late George Rodrigue, who made an empire out of a cutsey cur (he was an okay painter before the dog took over his life, but not nearly as good as <a href="https://pavy.com/">Francis Pavy</a>). The only remaining choice seemed to be something called the <a href="http://bontempsgrill.com/">Bon Temps Grill</a>, which Tripadvisor rated #1 in the city and which happened to be real near the hotel. So the Bon Temps it was.<br />
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Now, from a cursory glance at the website, I knew this wasn't going to be traditional Cajun food, but food -- described as "swamp edge cuisine" -- that took from Cajun traditions and worked with them. Fine with me. My taste buds had shut down, but that was nothing new. The place was hopping when we got there, so it was evidently popular, and the waitress was top-notch. The only warning of what was to come was a basket of cold, dry garlic bread slapped onto the table first thing. K wasn't very hungry, so she ordered the seafood stuffed mushrooms as a main and a side-salad. I saw remoulade shrimp, which is a traditional dish, albeit from New Orleans, and since I'd only made it myself years ago (and, I should add, made it well), I ordered that, along with a stuffed pork chop, something I'd discovered at the long-gone Stop & Shop supermarket in Lake Charles ages ago. The butcher there was a genius, and his boudin, beef tasso smoked on mahogany, and stuffed pork chops were sublime.<br />
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Well, the food came quickly, my shrimp and her mushrooms, followed too quickly by the salads, which caused the waitress to come apologize for that lapse. I assured her that it wasn't as if they'd get cold. My shrimp seemed to taste okay, though, although I could only barely discern the taste, but K was irate: here were these mushroom caps with, well, basically a lump of bread on them, surrounded by supposed tasso-and-pepper gravy that was indistinguishable from the stuff you get on a chicken-fried steak. I soon found out, too, that the shrimp were done like guacamole in a bad Mexican joint: piled on a mountain of shredded lettuce. Then came my pork chop. It was a pork chop. It was thick. Instead of being sliced lengthwise and filled with stuffing, there was a hole a little bigger than a quarter with a tiny plug of stuffing wedged into it. The pork chop was pretty good, but hey, I grill pork chops at home all the time. Annoyingly, they also provided a knife to cut it with that was like a cutlass.<br />
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It was while I was sawing away at the chop that K noticed something. "This music is fake," she said. "I don't recognize any of it." What she meant was that the Muzak, which was blues, wasn't the original recordings. And she was right: just then some song I did recognize played, and it was...off. The whole thing left me puzzled. We paid our bill and left, full but unsatisfied.<br />
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The next morning the idea was to get to Eunice to see LeJeune before noon and head back, but as usual that's not the way it happened. But there was another restaurant I'd seen on my last trip over that interested me and from what I could tell, it was breakfast and lunch only. The name, though, worried me a bit: T-Coon's. I remember being shocked 35 years earlier by discovering a guy named T-Neg in the Cecilia, Louisiana phone book (slightly smaller than a monthly issue of <i>Reader's Digest</i>). But then I remembered the word "coonass" referring to Cajuns. A lot of them don't like it; some claim it's derived from a regional French word, <i>conasse</i>, meaning a stupid woman, or silly bitch, according to my French dictionary. But the front of the restaurant shows a coon stirring a black pot. And anyway, a decent breakfast is the hardest thing to find in these parts, so we went. Again, the place was packed. Unlike the night before, though, my nose was playing nice, and the smell was excellent. So was the Mellow Gold coffee, a coffee/chicory blend, light on the chicory, that's the house java.<br />
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K still wasn't hungry, but she ordered a sausage-and-biscuit combo. The waitress asked her if she wanted pork sausage or a link and I urged the link: that's what we were here for. I was intrigued by the courtbouillon omelet. To me, courbouillon was always (in Cajun cooking: it's a whole different thing in French) a fish stew with a roux-based tomato sauce served over rice. The waitress said it was mixed seafood with a sauce in an omelet. Okay, I'll take it, with a biscuit and grits, which I wasn't going to eat much of. While we waited, I picked up a box of seasoning from the table. It was T-Coon's The Stuff. Okay, I'd seen and used <a href="https://www.tonychachere.com/">Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning</a> for years, and on one of my recent visits I'd stopped at the <a href="https://slapyamama.com/">Slap Ya Mama!</a> store in Ville Platte on a Cajun friend's recommendation and bought a box of their seasoning, which was a bit better.<br />
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The breakfast came, and I noticed a nice touch: both biscuits were wrapped in some paper: old timey! But...where was the butter? K surfaced out of hers long enough to say "It doesn't need any." I took a bite. She was right. And, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, I very lightly dusted the grits with The Stuff. Quite different from the others. But enough carbs: this omelet was sending my nose a message that my mouth needed to investigate. The courtbouillon turned out to be much thicker than I was used to, but the mixture of catfish, crawish, and shrimp, not to mention the seasoning, was exquisite.<br />
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As we were enjoying the meal, a guy with a T-Coon's shirt that said David on it came over to ask how we were doing. Then he asked where we were from and K said "Austin." "Well," said David "I'll try to keep from makin' any librul jokes." A chorus of grunts came from behind me, and a couple of ominous chuckles. (I later saw that it was a quartet of gentlemen in camo, either Army or National Guard). I told him that his coutbouillon was different than what I'd encountered before and he was off, talking with passion about how he was about to raise his prices 12 ½ percent because he refused to stint on quality. "That's a quarter pound of crawish goes into each omelet. I have those links made by a friend over in Abbeville to my own recipe. The catfish comes from over in Mississippi and it's fresh, not frozen." It was a nice little conversation.<br />
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"I'm gonna change your life," he told me. "I'ma give her a box of The Stuff, and when she starts adding it to your food, well, look out: things are gonna get a lot better for both of you." And he told the waitress to make sure she gave K a box of it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh89uF8x7erl4KYn1PotLtuwiJ10KeNPfOJkig9N90vdr-LAxPupcGcxztzf1SAHjPG_Z16qwo6lTqgJaMqIN-Qj-EXgZ9rD-heSfkQVyyTgSAPzlkzf0-6DmwTK4TjHTsyJUkaSnpQ0TDa/s1600/IMG_0789.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh89uF8x7erl4KYn1PotLtuwiJ10KeNPfOJkig9N90vdr-LAxPupcGcxztzf1SAHjPG_Z16qwo6lTqgJaMqIN-Qj-EXgZ9rD-heSfkQVyyTgSAPzlkzf0-6DmwTK4TjHTsyJUkaSnpQ0TDa/s400/IMG_0789.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There it is: The Stuff</td></tr>
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By avoiding politics and other minefields, I was rather liking David, because without mentioning tradition, he was still passionate about it. (You can see more of this passion on the front page of his website). As I waited in the car for K to finish smoking -- she only takes a few puffs, but puff she must, and she does it outside, not in the car -- I saw the list of daily lunch specials painted on the front of the restaurant: smothered rabbit, short-rib fricassée, smothered chicken and okra, and that courtbouillon on Fridays. But it was getting on, and we still had to vacate the hotel and get to Eunice.<br />
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We did, and now I have 20 lbs of sausage and tasso in the fridge waiting to be packed into freezer bags and frozen, except what I'll use to make red beans and rice (without rice) for dinner tonight. But before I press "publish" on this, I've been thinking about Cajun culture, tradition, and Americans.<br />
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My takeaway is this: As I've long realized, Americans are so alienated from their own country by this point that they usually don't know where they are. Oh, sure, they can check their phones and use Google Maps, but that's not where they are. The thousands of people who've moved to Austin since I last lived here, they don't know where they are, either. They've bought into the marketing slogan of keeping Austin weird, mouthed the slogan about the live music capital of America, but they don't know how it got that way in the first place, nor why it actually isn't either of these things any more.<br />
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And Americans who go to Cajun country don't know where they are, either. They come to Lafayette and stay there, possibly because they're attending a Ragin' Cajuns football game or doing oil business (not much of that left), or whatever. Few of them have even a superficial knowledge of where they are: the imagery in their heads are of alligators, crawfish, Blue Dogs, and swamps dripping with Spanish moss. There are accordions and fiddles involved somehow, probably to play blues, because the often-subtle distinctions between Cajun and Creole music is of no interest. They probably think Dr. John, Mac Rebbenack, is a Cajun. They don't understand the distinction between New Orleans and Lafayette, let alone New Orleans and Grand Mouton, Eunice, or Ville Platte. And ultimately, this is sad, especially if they spend more time there than we did this time. So they go to the Bon Ton and get their buttons pushed, no matter that it's a mediocre joint just a bit above a fast-casual restaurant. They hear piped-in blues, no matter that that's not the local indigenous music (hey, shaddup, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldband_Records">Eddie Shuler</a>), no matter that it's 21st century remakes by the Muzak Corporation or that ilk. They go away happy.<br />
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In no way will they want to engage with David Billeaud and T-Coon's, unless they happen in by mistake, in which case they'll be wary and a bit conservative about what they order and then be surprised that it's as good as it is. They're not going to get his cultural conservatism (not to mention <i>his </i>background music, which is mostly zydeco: I recognized two versions of "Hip et Tai-yo," both, I <i>think</i>, by Clifton Chenier), or understand why he'd rather raise his prices than compromise his quality. And if they got to talking politics, well, who knows?<br />
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Mr. LeJeune up in Eunice is just as culturally conservative as Billeaud is. He even makes ponce, a rarity which is sausage meat stuffed into a pig's stomach and smoked. I bought one last time I was there but couldn't find anyone to eat it with me. It was, unsurprisingly, excellent. I have no idea what his politics are, and after 35 years, I don't give a damn. Some things are above that, and these men have that figured out. They're members of their community, they practice their faith (which is Catholic: another ominous thing is the incursion of evangelical fundamentalism in Cajun culture, which could erase it before you know it), they interact with their neighbors, like the soldiers and the table of teachers who were finishing up when we walked in. And when I interact with them and their kind, I know where I am, know I'm a visitor who's treated with respect because I treat them with respect, as I would if they were visiting me. This is what's increasingly being lost in this country, as we tribalize and march towards one-party rule and fascism. It's an emergency, like so many other things happening at the moment, and an emergency that's so small it risks getting lost. I feel it because I don't feel at home in Austin, and haven't since returning almost five years ago, so it's a personal emergency for me.<br />
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Anyway, that's my takeaway. That and a box of The Stuff.<br />
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<br />Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-16082790808688893802017-11-08T23:28:00.000+01:002017-11-08T23:28:04.509+01:00Rye Bread and GhostsYes, I'm well aware that it's been six months since I've posted here, but it's been pretty crazy. I'm trying to get this second (and final) volume of <i>The History of Rock & Roll</i> done -- it's due in July of next year -- while negotiating Life Itself (as Austinites know, we lost a dear friend earlier this year, and I spent some time with her during her last days in San Antonio) and the trials of squeezing out the last drops of a book advance that I predicted would run out in November. And I was right.<br />
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But I had a shining light to follow: in March, at SXSW, I was asked by a friend from Finland if I'd like to do a keynote at their <a href="http://www.musiikkimedia.fi/home">Musiikki & Media</a> conference in early October. I've never been to Finland, and I was assured that Tampere, the city where the event was was "sort of Finland's Austin" (only, one presumes, without edible Mexican food), and, furthermore, that I could get a round trip from Helsinki to Berlin cheap on Air Berlin, so I could add on a cheap trip to my past to the whole experience. Which is pretty much what happened. So here's the story, with pictures.<br />
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The route the Finns sent me on started with that damn non-stop flight to Heathrow, one of the two non-stops to Europe from here (the other being to Frankfurt). Heathrow is a vision of Hell at any time, not to mention after a 9-hour flight on a plane with rather limited legroom, and of course no matter where you're going, you have to change terminals, so you have to go through security again, where the ill-tempered British security minions yell at you and hurry you along. This time I was so hassled by them that I thought I'd lost my house keys until an accident at my hotel in Tampere revealed that I'd tossed it into my computer bag along with my loose change as someone was yelling HURRY HURRY HURRY at me. Whew. </div>
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But first I was headed to Helsinki, where by a fortuitious error I'd booked two days in a hotel to recover before heading to Tampere. Paid for them, too. And I'd accidentally picked a very nice hotel: Radisson Blu Plaza, which is in part the former corporate headquarters of an old company whose product I couldn't quite figure out, but featured stained glass windows and heroic decorations. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK6nlL8K4eUrts4ag_J33UDE-NaTU7GQVqmSJsTz7iPZXEn1Stz1nVWgrEudMWWSQHPvhovUgLUHCezjyauhedcxrXxpCq8Ig5FHyQ7oAalyLpmh3d_p1_XmLrmD-abNbzRCaEs7mnM-ss/s1600/DSC_0011.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK6nlL8K4eUrts4ag_J33UDE-NaTU7GQVqmSJsTz7iPZXEn1Stz1nVWgrEudMWWSQHPvhovUgLUHCezjyauhedcxrXxpCq8Ig5FHyQ7oAalyLpmh3d_p1_XmLrmD-abNbzRCaEs7mnM-ss/s400/DSC_0011.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Workers, the lifeblood of any company</td></tr>
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Another error -- not nearly as fortuitous -- was not knowing that Finland is two whole time zones away from Central European Time, which is what I'm used to in Spain or Germany. To say I was particularly gazorbled when I pulled into the hotel at 6pm is no understatement. I also had a problem: I'd no-refund paid for those two days, but the conference wanted me in Tampere the next day. Fortunately, my train wasn't until later, so this gave me time to be a little more liberal with my checkout time -- and meet Pekka Lainen, something of a superstar on Finnish public radio, who'd be interviewing me for the keynote. We hashed over what we'd be talking about over lunch (I passed on the chile con carne tacos and ordered fish -- Arctic char, to be exact) and as he said good-bye, the rain stopped for the first time since I'd arrived and I grabbed my camera and walked to a square Pekka had mentioned over by the University. It's overlooked by a huge white church, which, since the sun was out, gleamed beautifully. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSvjrVTk6tJgpEWvoXz6YXYM3tL68KviMlipGs71bWQP_NQ4DdYydLA6vLC5f6_wbRRkT9QiJ_kAgUlPdEr3BhSJdZTWO8k5ruszRglV6hIC1STtok-CtRhLMk4thQSCGQp7qRHCK3tUZ7/s1600/DSC_0004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSvjrVTk6tJgpEWvoXz6YXYM3tL68KviMlipGs71bWQP_NQ4DdYydLA6vLC5f6_wbRRkT9QiJ_kAgUlPdEr3BhSJdZTWO8k5ruszRglV6hIC1STtok-CtRhLMk4thQSCGQp7qRHCK3tUZ7/s400/DSC_0004.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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This is Constitution Square, and since I had a train to catch, I didn't explore much, but I did notice across the street the oldest building in Helsinki. </div>
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As you may be able to see if you click the picture, it dates from 1785. That's right: the entire nation of Finland is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. It used to be Russia. And thereby hangs a tale, which we'll get to in a minute. </div>
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I got back to the hotel, packed, and caught my train. It takes about 90 minutes to get to Tampere from Helsinki, and it rained intermittently the whole way. Before it got too dark, I looked at the countryside and the occasional town. The architecture is quite different from western Europe, and one feature I thought rather silly: metal ladders on the roofs which led to the ground. It occurred to me that these were fire escapes, and they'd get hot if the house was on fire. Really dumb, until I had a flash: they weren't fire escapes. They were snow escapes. Yes, they get a bit of snow in Finland in the winter, as you may have heard. </div>
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The hotel where the conference was held was also the hotel where I was put up, a huge tower, the largest or second-largest structure in Tampere (it was hard to tell; the explanatory text was in Finnish, a language with no cognates in English, but fortunately every public bathroom I used had a little man or woman cutout, because if it had just been the word I'd have been out of luck). Naturally I went the wrong way, and, being still very gazorbled, took a cab when I walked across town to the <i>other</i> hotel the chain maintains in Tampere. There was a mandatory welcome party, I grabbed a meal in the hotel restaurant and eventually crashed.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tampere from the 13th Floor (Yes, there were Elevators)</td></tr>
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Jet-lag got me up early, so I checked my mail and Facebook and...uh-oh: Pekka was planning on catching a train in Helsinki at the time our interview was scheduled to start! Fortunately that got straightened out and he arrived on time. It was a great interview, and went way over our time limit. The discussions continued in the hotel restaurant, and by the time it was all over, it was mid-afternoon. This was a good thing: my return to Helsinki wasn't for another day. I had 24 hours to see what was in Tampere. I mentioned this on Facebook, and a Finnish woman I know suggested the Lenin Museum. The <i>Lenin</i> Museum?<br />
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But there it was on the map, so off I went. A relic of the Russians was nearby.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2FpbhHDKhGtwna0yFMCasYZqgX-6q7e4c86u12MfZ5H1i3_qgYXcXfNocxKSMtCUbDZFNJA2IoV19oDJXYFpJlSpUPqZXA60zlK2CqFydw2clXnKJrqFSehUWe2Fg8CjoFcl1TXxLpwV3/s1600/DSC_0013.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2FpbhHDKhGtwna0yFMCasYZqgX-6q7e4c86u12MfZ5H1i3_qgYXcXfNocxKSMtCUbDZFNJA2IoV19oDJXYFpJlSpUPqZXA60zlK2CqFydw2clXnKJrqFSehUWe2Fg8CjoFcl1TXxLpwV3/s400/DSC_0013.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Now, if I remembered the map right...<br />
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I didn't. I took a wrong turn and kept walking. There was a park. I remembered a park from the map, so I kept walking. There were mushrooms. Big mushrooms.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg08mntCIDc6q77O24SI4JbmlNhOWiHQPYRW1KIEKCzXHPQyMsuB6BMeu5GFwCTh2sJ3ImCl5TdPkrTgJE0pX8uc2OYyxCCgW6ysIzMdNh5v-WgIFWSdtjQ5X4HhMrb7oUi5XmINCLY002R/s1600/DSC_0015.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg08mntCIDc6q77O24SI4JbmlNhOWiHQPYRW1KIEKCzXHPQyMsuB6BMeu5GFwCTh2sJ3ImCl5TdPkrTgJE0pX8uc2OYyxCCgW6ysIzMdNh5v-WgIFWSdtjQ5X4HhMrb7oUi5XmINCLY002R/s400/DSC_0015.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can't tell from the photo, but this guy was close to two feet tall.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHSROcrqK2xzWV85kO2wvMg_sAOmTRWxIcWWkF2IAvtxafYorQVLBD-HI8oGVp0Q0KRDofSA3eK2gZdqbz7IiGj6wZH-bSNEJbrlC4w2Pb8Q-xlCJ7JoWq3LPk5VyrgmsvIrqWGwSe_eId/s1600/DSC_0016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHSROcrqK2xzWV85kO2wvMg_sAOmTRWxIcWWkF2IAvtxafYorQVLBD-HI8oGVp0Q0KRDofSA3eK2gZdqbz7IiGj6wZH-bSNEJbrlC4w2Pb8Q-xlCJ7JoWq3LPk5VyrgmsvIrqWGwSe_eId/s400/DSC_0016.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Each lobe was the size of my hand.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfxZGKkEYvxyrI7rq_qiKDgOFKvi_vj9mj_cu7R-jSZgi3waQDN0cRGRicgPO3hkgF4FJPc-AECB5gIp1zbtEocWMG5_YerdHzGbDcPGH5CuXsHev53oL-q-I_TCmd7gc_yGMN7TL6hjYl/s1600/DSC_0018.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfxZGKkEYvxyrI7rq_qiKDgOFKvi_vj9mj_cu7R-jSZgi3waQDN0cRGRicgPO3hkgF4FJPc-AECB5gIp1zbtEocWMG5_YerdHzGbDcPGH5CuXsHev53oL-q-I_TCmd7gc_yGMN7TL6hjYl/s400/DSC_0018.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And these were like mini-pizzas</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<span id="goog_1314581483"></span><span id="goog_1314581484"></span>Eventually, I came upon a sewage treatment plant, which was way wrong. Had a nice view, though.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTczxf0f9IlGyx__DmNp8RLh3s0_HlHfpg13u-D8fu0NeXSvWWjIg6Z74J9_D8uVL0-CjGThmiZqx-8nUJExJs1s-hKISfgdNsC9EbgNiSPFWqRTypFZh7VvG5QxApICJ0wN74Of32ZrD1/s1600/DSC_0014.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTczxf0f9IlGyx__DmNp8RLh3s0_HlHfpg13u-D8fu0NeXSvWWjIg6Z74J9_D8uVL0-CjGThmiZqx-8nUJExJs1s-hKISfgdNsC9EbgNiSPFWqRTypFZh7VvG5QxApICJ0wN74Of32ZrD1/s400/DSC_0014.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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But none of this was supposed to be there. I turned around, and for the first time I remembered that my phone was in my pocket, so I dialled up Google Maps. I had a 37-minute walk ahead of me. The day was overcast, wet from the previous day's rains. I was still jet-lagged. I walked and walked and after about 20 minutes of slogging through industrial wasteland and alongside a freeway, I arrived just down the hill from the Russian church at a place where I should have turned right instead of left. The phone said I still had 18 minutes to go. I don't know if it was a combination of jet-lag and diabetes or what, but I was exhausted and starving. I lurched onto a traffic island and felt myself losing my balance as oncoming traffic sped inches away from me. I threw out an arm and embraced a traffic sign. When the light changed, I trudged in the right direction and sure enough: there was a park. I had to sit down, but soon enough felt good enough to soldier on. An arm of the park I'd sat in divided a street on the right, and I walked where the phone told me to. And there was the Lenin Museum, confusingly enough in the administrative building of the state theater. And, a quick look at the map told me, the market hall was just a few minutes away, so, knowing that I needed to eat, I headed in that direction, and found it. Right inside there was a lunch counter, and the woman behind it spoke simple English. I ordered what she said was chicken in a cheese sauce with mashed potatoes. It wasn't like any chicken in cheese sauce I'd imagined, but it was very good, and not just because I was hungry. The rest of the food hall, I discovered, was mostly lunch counters, but then, I doubt there were many crops in early October.<br />
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Okay, time for Lenin. The building was fairly opulent, and I eventually learned that it had been the union hall for all the industrial unions in Tampere, where Finland's heavy industries created factory equipment and locomotives. I'd even passed an ancient locomotive in the industrial section I'd wandered through. In the early 20th century, Tampere's workers were unionized and were very interested in the communism/socialism brewing elsewhere in Russia, so when a couple of Bolshevik thugs knocked over a bank in Estonia (another Russian province), they realized they were too hot for Petersburg, where most of the rest of the Bolsheviks were and fled to the small provincial city of Tampere, where the union guy welcomed them at the opulent union hall, all polished wood and marble. One of the thugs was a Georgian named Josep Dzhugashvili, who seemed hot to get the revolution going, so the Finns sent word to Germany, where Lenin was hanging out, and he got on the famous sealed train to Tampere. The unionists introduced him to the bank robbers and he soon decided it was time to go back to Petersburg and get this Party started. When he arrived, he was greeted in an office at the union hall, which is now the Lenin Museum. There's actually not much in it, the major artifact being Lenin's cane (although it's not even his cane, but an exact replica traded to Tampere's mayor, who brought the original to Moscow on a friendship tour some years ago), and there's this corny bit:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2JeCzTgrtwCnZ3JIUrqqJdB8ZGleAZwkgpNyiw1sdqNrvlI_1BXip_FrrgwHJ5LXzcPUgOGGBJ3nc9y5Su12t7xWkW9AYotXE0DWl8rtzryLr6lwUadDC-8Lg1CisAunm8j3zjxySIEDF/s1600/DSC_0019.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2JeCzTgrtwCnZ3JIUrqqJdB8ZGleAZwkgpNyiw1sdqNrvlI_1BXip_FrrgwHJ5LXzcPUgOGGBJ3nc9y5Su12t7xWkW9AYotXE0DWl8rtzryLr6lwUadDC-8Lg1CisAunm8j3zjxySIEDF/s400/DSC_0019.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Red marks the spot!</td></tr>
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I'm pretty sure you can't read what's on the red spot on the floor, but it says that this is the exact spot where Lenin and Stalin first met. The corny bit of Lenin in the sidecar ("Have your picture taken on the motorcycle!") and the life-size Stalin figure (my friend JJ Gordon, during his acting career, performed a one-man play called <i>I Am Joseph Stalin</i>, about one of the doubles Stalin used, and I have to say that I never met Stalin -- thank heavens -- but this thing's the spitting image of JJ) give you something of the flavor of the place. Cool gift-shop, though, if you don't have enough Commie crap.<br />
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The reason this is Finland's 100th birthday is because once the Bolsheviks took over the Russian government, they thanked Finland by giving it its independence. Of course, they also changed their mind, which resulted in yet another 1917 revolution, and that's given as the reason Finnish, inscrutable as it is, is the national language. (Actually, Swedish is the second official language, which means German-speakers can sort of make out some signs).<br />
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The next day, I returned to Helsinki, and spent the night, flying off to Berlin for a short visit, my first to the place I'd lived for 15 years for eight years. I understood it had changed. Uh, yeah.<br />
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* * *</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9bkApYdKllye459tX-puIyM1m3jCDKd6gwVuSkjVOArIoLgVqEi1sHItewqJ8rbwzrSGkfe0zHePgmuAddjjjtCH12QxASq2akRT3YgnFg1aZV7uNtDG0n0ivbdCrtI1aF3MVHI9SATMh/s1600/DSC_0024.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9bkApYdKllye459tX-puIyM1m3jCDKd6gwVuSkjVOArIoLgVqEi1sHItewqJ8rbwzrSGkfe0zHePgmuAddjjjtCH12QxASq2akRT3YgnFg1aZV7uNtDG0n0ivbdCrtI1aF3MVHI9SATMh/s400/DSC_0024.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dude, where's my apartment?<br /></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
It's really hard to take a picture of what's not there, but since Berlin has always been a city of vanished places, I got kind of good at it there. This one takes some explanation, though, because it's not a very <i>good</i> picture of something that's not there. Okay, my old apartment was impossible to find unless you knew the secret. The yellowish building in the center of the picture was Borsigstr. 2. Next door on the right was 1, and next door on the left was 4. I was in 3, which, for reasons known only to the city of Berlin, referred to the building behind 2. Somehow, my landlord sold off the driveway you'd walk down to get to it, the tiny vacant lot on the side of the driveway, and part of the parking lot behind the building to developers, who put up the grey building, which is now allegedly a four-star hotel. I need not remind anyone who visited me at this place that my apartment was barely even a one-star one. The note on the grey door, which was never open during the 11 years I lived here, says that access to 3 was through the hotel garage. </div>
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That was only the first shock. Although I could probably have found cheaper and better accommodation, for nostalgia's sake I chose the hotel on the corner (to the left and all the way up the block), <a href="http://www.honigmond.de/">Honigmond</a>. Honigmond started as a bar during Communist days, the Borsigeck. It was the favored watering hole for the students at the theological seminary in the church two doors up from my place, and back then, the church and divinity students were secret centers of dissidence, as was the theater. Borsigeck was also a favorite of another bunch of malcontents, actors. The code word for meetings was "playing chess at Borsigeck." After the regime change, a bunch of Borsigeck folks bought the bar and renovated it in turn-of-the-century elegance, and made the kitchen into one that produced excellent German food, with a weekly menu that also had Italian touches. I first ate there with my editor at the English-language magazine whose offices were not too far away, <i>Checkpoint</i>. It had just reopened, and we thought that, as far off the track as it was, it was doomed. Hardly. It was a neighborhood joint, our secret. Once they acquired the whole building and turned it into a hotel, I wondered what the breakfast was like, but I never found out. Eventually, they bought two more buildings to add to the hotel. It made me happy; I ate and drank there a lot, and when I started my communication company, Berlin Information Group, we'd commandeer the back room on Tuesday nights, which were very slow, and have our meetings there until someone talked a developer into giving us free office space a couple of blocks away. So you see why I picked the hotel. </div>
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But Honigmond the restaurant died earlier this year. The space has far fewer tables, and it is now <a href="https://www.neumond-restaurant.de/">Neumond</a>. And on Neumond's dinner menu, amidst all the gussied up dishes, is that signifier of Euro-hipsterdom gone bad: a fancy cheeseburger. I had breakfast there my first day (very generic) and went elsewhere from then on. (Yes, I'll get to food in a minute here). </div>
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But beyond all this there was an onslaught of change to absorb. My friend Nikki picked me up at the airport and after I checked in, we went for a walk just to check it out. Torstr., on whose corner I almost lived (it's a major street, so it was good to have a couple of buildings muffling the noise), had been a collection of this and that, a couple of bakeries, kebab stands, a television repair place...that sort of miscellanea. There were a couple of restaurants, especially late in the game, with an excellent if terminally trendy Chinese place, the super-snotty Bandol (I was denied entrance once because I was wearing jeans, which was so out of place in that neighborhood that I just laughed at them), and an excellent Italian place. Now, it's wall-to-wall restaurants, of which the only one I recognized was Bandol. Some of them, I was told, were quite good. Many appeared to be hipster-yupster in appeal: a great number of people with money from elsewhere in Germany have arrived, and it's unlikely I could even manage to aford an apartment on a side-street. By the time we made the grand circle, I was dizzy. Nikki drove off and I went uptairs to think. </div>
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The next day I kept walking, this time below Torstr. in the so-called Scheunenviertel, which had been filled with emigrants between the wars and featured the Neue Synagogue, a prominent Reform congregation that was accidentally bombed by the British in World War II. When I lived there, it was where the edgy galleries were, a couple of odd bars, and our magazine offices, and, later, the studios of JazzRadio, where I did three shows a week for about 8 years. I took a lot of shitty photographs. But not all of them were bad. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS2AnmLBEk2CztY2BapJOGKOXkkTXAhVOtkKcHM2N8Wf1N7IK7g5F3QENLNYAMFFMq9cokYXXbDD50UkYXi169osLNrXq9DwOTY85lRnPjmHopS70kt5OtNHC1irByYdZxdD4lXnPr1b4t/s1600/DSC_0026.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS2AnmLBEk2CztY2BapJOGKOXkkTXAhVOtkKcHM2N8Wf1N7IK7g5F3QENLNYAMFFMq9cokYXXbDD50UkYXi169osLNrXq9DwOTY85lRnPjmHopS70kt5OtNHC1irByYdZxdD4lXnPr1b4t/s400/DSC_0026.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Empty Apartment</i></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
For some reason, I'd never gotten a good shot of this memorial to the deportation of the neighborhood Jews. Or maybe this is better than the ones I took because the greenery's had eight more years to grow in. I could have framed it better, though. </div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
I think the reason the photos were so bad, though, was because I wasn't looking at what was there, which is, well, kind of important. I was looking at what I remembered, and that made accurate documentation imposible. Okay, and the early-morning light was off; I never got up this early when I lived there. But it's also that there were ghosts. Things I expected to see that weren't there. The hotel was quite close to the apartment of my short-lived ex-girlfriend, Lady Drunkula. She may still be there if she isn't dead, which she might well be; it'd only be a question of whether someone murdered her, she had an accident while drunk, or she drank herself to death. I'd walk past places and memories came back to me despite myself. I found I didn't much enjoy this. </div>
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To be honest, though, I returned without much of a plan, many of the people I wanted to see were out of town or busy, and I realized that the next visit would have to be planned a bit differently. And there should be one, but maybe not too soon. </div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
One thing that went off brilliantly was that the same day I went below Torstr. I also went to the Bode Museum to look at their room of Tilman Riemenschneider sculptures. The Nordrhenisch school of wood-carvers appeal to me greatly, and I've seen plenty of their work over the years, but Riemenschneider is a cut above. The Bode doesn't even have a lot of them, I discovered. I'd remembered a lot more when I was rushing through the Bode for the first (and until now only) time I'd gone there, writing it up for one of the many guidebooks I'd worked for, and since everything in Berlin is always under construction, there was a room with at least one of his pieces that was blocked off. But the room that had ones was fascinating. I'm not even a sculpture guy, but these knocked me out. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3WwR3ZCjfJkWTL-lPDbcXPC1e-3usYJSnGEbJBgY03sdaHrQ6JFNRZvAm0qoj99ol8ynL05IvG-VwFabZEbYZBPojCHdLxRd1wDH2Rz-KnUzcERuFGxON93YqT_gofMcO-CRR4dDzN9AB/s1600/IMG_0706.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3WwR3ZCjfJkWTL-lPDbcXPC1e-3usYJSnGEbJBgY03sdaHrQ6JFNRZvAm0qoj99ol8ynL05IvG-VwFabZEbYZBPojCHdLxRd1wDH2Rz-KnUzcERuFGxON93YqT_gofMcO-CRR4dDzN9AB/s400/IMG_0706.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Venetian dude</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRJ0w2bp2E0RPKJhR1ve8uEju8xpVujQE7hTwNI4BLgzWkzeF2BJJnY9_qmFNFmO4mlG93Ht5dtKvqB3rYEPRAuxN66IHrbaJ7G_1Nn7WdAUpvktudV_VyNMJfIfGjdnToAlP_-1DGfv-6/s1600/IMG_0707.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRJ0w2bp2E0RPKJhR1ve8uEju8xpVujQE7hTwNI4BLgzWkzeF2BJJnY9_qmFNFmO4mlG93Ht5dtKvqB3rYEPRAuxN66IHrbaJ7G_1Nn7WdAUpvktudV_VyNMJfIfGjdnToAlP_-1DGfv-6/s400/IMG_0707.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another Venetian dude</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAq8hR0cfr2xHHJV3t7ZQYw2SbJctlx-mLqpJosS02MgVqMN-8LqNyg2qHlmyE1SzxhL-J6TZ6QAiePENTnVXQtMKXVoECFzG2prrZ9nMPgtwOLMlaV-fw29Ba9KQ7aIsAC3Dr8DaBzX-U/s1600/IMG_0721.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAq8hR0cfr2xHHJV3t7ZQYw2SbJctlx-mLqpJosS02MgVqMN-8LqNyg2qHlmyE1SzxhL-J6TZ6QAiePENTnVXQtMKXVoECFzG2prrZ9nMPgtwOLMlaV-fw29Ba9KQ7aIsAC3Dr8DaBzX-U/s400/IMG_0721.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No idea dude</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And then there was Riemenschneider. The masterpiece was the four Evangelists. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIgTqhplgQnRBUP6Cx5tN2r3VD-sb4YV3XKPhODnaAI2SLvMTCz-lNy6X7pVB71Arbqbnj7LEv9EWytiy9KAjvRf3VhahaQdzAgNKHDh0qVPP1NPwvAk81xlkr7YOAduYDPDf-NHY33HyU/s1600/IMG_0711.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIgTqhplgQnRBUP6Cx5tN2r3VD-sb4YV3XKPhODnaAI2SLvMTCz-lNy6X7pVB71Arbqbnj7LEv9EWytiy9KAjvRf3VhahaQdzAgNKHDh0qVPP1NPwvAk81xlkr7YOAduYDPDf-NHY33HyU/s400/IMG_0711.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">All together</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiexkjzmh4p5B5scotRlXpgK4XC2bcY4CwzgUnh1hLq6bigHCcBGwFkqlEfUJD__DtpQd6p3k-3sd6PLyvOWP0XmjTPNsByGqgxEzszxEElAZQ-ekVVXGcc8o2QTXLi6nvQUKqHMll1RV2D/s1600/IMG_0712.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiexkjzmh4p5B5scotRlXpgK4XC2bcY4CwzgUnh1hLq6bigHCcBGwFkqlEfUJD__DtpQd6p3k-3sd6PLyvOWP0XmjTPNsByGqgxEzszxEElAZQ-ekVVXGcc8o2QTXLi6nvQUKqHMll1RV2D/s400/IMG_0712.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1jkH-2HGfRtxfzBkmlGNvejrqK5hK28lq4m0NVaxnaWW0VnzD9lZKe4KbS2dhbieQ1IVe32LIZg4weH9gtO7XlcLCoOy4Xb8SG-1OFCQwudP6BjyNVNNF4mFaKwFBAPkFJxLdBJrUjBOg/s1600/IMG_0713.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1jkH-2HGfRtxfzBkmlGNvejrqK5hK28lq4m0NVaxnaWW0VnzD9lZKe4KbS2dhbieQ1IVe32LIZg4weH9gtO7XlcLCoOy4Xb8SG-1OFCQwudP6BjyNVNNF4mFaKwFBAPkFJxLdBJrUjBOg/s400/IMG_0713.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7x3Y0gwDxzDPbr7VLlBitzva1icmC-uHj1wLOGoHFr7y1m_fTRkw3abSQWBF_OkEBs0ciBn6vzpbAZUg4q-Qd7ru_GygZF05b_3AuVbVFwkqRwZfuRm6N7zU9FA_3UKo1etFDt2YJQqUl/s1600/IMG_0715.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7x3Y0gwDxzDPbr7VLlBitzva1icmC-uHj1wLOGoHFr7y1m_fTRkw3abSQWBF_OkEBs0ciBn6vzpbAZUg4q-Qd7ru_GygZF05b_3AuVbVFwkqRwZfuRm6N7zU9FA_3UKo1etFDt2YJQqUl/s400/IMG_0715.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxeeJbbPXQWB4R8nNm-MqdkJ5lECYQtcU1g24qk3DwOWfIVTE5gVQu0uGEWio7cbSzEh3Tcpmnoi2uGZAuWyXeXPNwZLLmV9bsZdfzKFkIcOm2gx7wbjhquAZFWUs3h48xPe-nELzRzzLc/s1600/IMG_0717.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxeeJbbPXQWB4R8nNm-MqdkJ5lECYQtcU1g24qk3DwOWfIVTE5gVQu0uGEWio7cbSzEh3Tcpmnoi2uGZAuWyXeXPNwZLLmV9bsZdfzKFkIcOm2gx7wbjhquAZFWUs3h48xPe-nELzRzzLc/s400/IMG_0717.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
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And, of course, the band of angels.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS8aUSyixq0FLsmZhyphenhyphenuHeo33QL30oKNkD05h-JdmmvK_Il8FR1-QeU3bzO4z8GHcvskbHZ-A5KNhaJewNqccBHVuQcK7eCSTe1qufaAEw57OO5c2KfwwHFeg1Znmzlhpi9Wzq4ZClMI_Cz/s1600/IMG_0739.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS8aUSyixq0FLsmZhyphenhyphenuHeo33QL30oKNkD05h-JdmmvK_Il8FR1-QeU3bzO4z8GHcvskbHZ-A5KNhaJewNqccBHVuQcK7eCSTe1qufaAEw57OO5c2KfwwHFeg1Znmzlhpi9Wzq4ZClMI_Cz/s400/IMG_0739.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Most of the rest of the museum is later stuff that doesn't appeal to me, much of which isn't first-rate (that'd be off by Potsdamer Platz in the Gemäldegalerie), and I went and overdosed myself by buying a ticket good for all the museums so I could see what they'd done to the Neues Museum, which had a hole you could (and some did) drive a truck through due to wartime bombing. It's now been patched up, rebuilt, and houses Greek and Egyptian things, including that bust of Tutankhamen's wife (and sister) Nefertiti. Bet you thought that was in the Metropolitan, eh? In the basement was a nice show about the beginnings of civilization in China and Egypt, their similarities and differences as demonstrated by objects. As is the custom in Germany, though, the museum was grossly overheated, I was getting tired, and so I went back to the hotel after an increasingly more cursory glance at this exhibit. </div>
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My proposed last-night mass meetup wound up being Nikki, two of her boys, Uwe, her ex, who is also the father of one of the kids, and my friends John and Aimee, at a bar Uwe was running (and has since left) called Kegelbahn. It was pretty low-key, especially since John and Aimee had to leave early, but at one point we were all at the table nursing our beers and I said "You know, this place has ruined me. I just can't get used to the States." And...well, I can't. It's not just our grotesque, evil President, or the utter alienation of the new, bloated Austin. It's a way of living that overlays the entire country I've seen since I've been back. I just don't like it. If it were mere culture-shock, it would have worn off. And it hasn't. I'm not sure what I'll do, exactly, but I can't budge for another couple of years, while I write this next book and promote it when it comes out. I didn't really have any choice in returning: there were things here I needed to use for the book. But once I don't have that choice...</div>
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A FEW CULINARY NOTES:</div>
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Finland is probably not high on your list of countries for destination dining, but should you have to do there, you shouldn't regret it. One thing I noticed immediately was that the bread there is extraordinary. This is because it's mostly rye; wheat doesn't grow too well, so it's not as much used in the national cuisine. At breakfast in the hotel, I got that immediately, including a crispbread covered with seeds that I brought back with me. The cheeses were good, too. </div>
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I had dinner at some fine places. My friend Karen in Berlin suggested <a href="http://seahorse.fi/">Seahorse</a>, in Helsinki, whose business card advertises "Finnish food and culture since 1934," which would be better for someone who, unlike me, does not have a deep, visceral distaste for beets, root vegetables being another of the mainstays of local agriculture. I had some herring, some of which had a camphor flavor (not bad, but weird), and then a "Scandinavian hash" of ham and potatoes that wasn't too memorable. Cheap and friendly joint, though. Another place I enjoyed quite a bit was <a href="https://www.ravintolakuu.fi/en/frontpage">Kuu</a>, which means "month" in Finnish (it's the suffix of the names of all the months, the waitress explained). The salmon cured in aqavit with a crayfish sauce was super, and the reindeer stew (had to have it once!) was very well done, letting the distinctive flavor of the meat play off the berry-studded wine reduction brilliantly. A mixture of locals and Japanese tourists, superb service, highly recommended. My third dinner was at <a href="http://bryggeri.fi/en/">Bryggeri</a>, which, as you can tell from its (Swedish) name is a brewpub, but one with extraordinary food, matched with the in-house beers. I had a bit of a cold so I remember I started with their cheese and charcuterie plate, but my taste buds faded before the main course so I don't remember what I had. And the receipt is in Finnish. Recommended, though. Bryggeri is also near the harbor, which is where you'll find the market hall, which has far more food than restaurants (including a pancake place with the motto, in English, "A pancake a day keeps the sadness away," which tells you everything you need to know about Seasonal Affect Disorder in Finland), where I got a nice snack of a slice of superb smoked salmon which I munched as I walked around. </div>
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In Tampere, I ate twice at the hotel restaurant (not particularly recommended, although there was nothing wrong with it) and once at <a href="http://www.tiiliholvi.fi/?languageSelected=1">Tiiliholvi,</a> a place which also seems to have a branch in Helsinki. This was very nice, although I was the only person in the place when I went. A soup of root vegetables was a fine Finnish start, and the "duck two ways" turned out to be breast meat and liver, each with its own sauce. They brag that they have the best wine cellar in town, and if the glass of Les Douves Latour Carnet (I was intimidated by the "Latour" part, but it was affordable) was anything to go by, they're right. It was not only a perfect accompaniment, but a profound wine -- and, as I discovered on my return, a $20 bottle if you can find it. </div>
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In Berlin, after the Honigmond disappointment, I went down the street to a place that had opened when I was living there. I hadn't liked it, thinking it pretentious but not cooking to meet its pretentions, so I never went back. But this time, it appeared that the spirit of the old Honigmond had just picked up and walked a block. True, <a href="http://alpenstueck.com/">Alpenstück</a> has white tablecloths, but the Radeberger beer is just as good, and the bread, well, that's different. The reason is that they've expanded across the street, clearing out a hairdresser and a bar (Smily :-) der Friseur and Cheer's -- a copy-editor's nightmare in 3-D) to put in a bakery-cafe, whose first-rate breads and pastries would have been a real boon to the 'hood back when I was living there. </div>
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Quite the adventure, and now I'm back in the USA, where hamburgers (and cheeseburgers) sizzle on an open grill night and day. But I know I'll be back to Berlin. And who knows, maybe Finland. </div>
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Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-950422530894610242017-05-18T20:40:00.001+02:002017-05-18T20:40:20.495+02:00Thanks, Henry!Monday morning, I got up, ate breakfast, and started the coffee, after which I headed into my office to see what disasters had befallen the world since last night. I also checked the e-mail and, as usual, one of the mails was my daily news digest from the New York <i>Times</i>. And there, in the obits, was the headline:<br />
<h1 class="headline" id="headline" itemprop="headline" style="font-family: nyt-cheltenham, georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 2.125rem; font-style: italic; line-height: 2.375rem; margin: 0px 0px 10px; visibility: visible;">
Henry Chung, Who Helped Bring Hunan’s Flavors to America, Dies at 98</h1>
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I looked at the coffee cup I'd grabbed. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMMfMOrijXtLQMw5gO-HBNon53Kru5QLMU_YJvjsLJa3VpMQwiA4qEKbi5ii63sNYKSt0VeHola9YvoxFXbR_zcG1WnJ3_HkLYrPePO56TVcnUrhVri3Vh8FJzt1dO258JYUS3qMwpEH2g/s1600/IMG_0685.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMMfMOrijXtLQMw5gO-HBNon53Kru5QLMU_YJvjsLJa3VpMQwiA4qEKbi5ii63sNYKSt0VeHola9YvoxFXbR_zcG1WnJ3_HkLYrPePO56TVcnUrhVri3Vh8FJzt1dO258JYUS3qMwpEH2g/s400/IMG_0685.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One side</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbvvooh5vXOotIAaIf_RFMtVvofT6kLTMVY5MW0SX3_w3eldnNRTcNHIaC8-gostqXlA6QyHW5WclVE94VLvaetmpL_i8P7TFVNiWMTz7GWs-pKi6_ccofcOYyd0hlpMzmrrTphs7LumyF/s1600/IMG_0686.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbvvooh5vXOotIAaIf_RFMtVvofT6kLTMVY5MW0SX3_w3eldnNRTcNHIaC8-gostqXlA6QyHW5WclVE94VLvaetmpL_i8P7TFVNiWMTz7GWs-pKi6_ccofcOYyd0hlpMzmrrTphs7LumyF/s400/IMG_0686.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The other side</td></tr>
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After I got over the shock of the coincidence, I had one of those "I had no idea he was still alive" moments, but I knew the Hunan Restaurant still existed because I'd attempted to go there with a couple of friends a year or so back. It being Easter weekend, it was closed. My friends were a bit skeptical: they'd heard it wasn't as good as it had been. But that just made me want to go more: in the novelty-obsessed world of San Francisco (and elsewhere) foodie-ism, there's always a rush to find the newest, the latest, and the most authentic. The Hunan fulfilled only one of those slots in the 21st century. </div>
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I read <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/us/henry-chung-hunan-dead.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fobituaries&action=click&contentCollection=obituaries&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0">the obit</a> with interest. I'd known Henry, but not known a lot about him. Of course, it was impossible to go to the restaurant without knowing Henry: he was as friendly and garrulous a man as ever walked the earth, and it was clear that the restaurant was a mission. I know, because I was an early convert. </div>
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When the Hunan first opened, I was working at <i>City</i>, a magazine where a bunch of ex-<i>Rolling Stone</i>rs were working, which was, I surmise from looking at the map, on Pacific just off of Columbus in the bit of San Francisco where Chinatown blends into North Beach. Of course, Broadway is the official boundary, but even back then it was getting blurrier, and the stretch of Kearny between Portsmouth Square and where Columbus crossed it was a bunch of nondescript businesses, as well as a couple of bars and restaurants nobody in their right mind would enter at any time of day. In other words, rent was cheap, just the thing for an ambitious Chinese restaurant startup. I think the only reason Michael Goodwin stopped in there was because it was a new place, not as obviously trashy as its neighbors. Michael was from New York, and he was Jewish, so the soul-food element may have figured in. Or maybe he was just on his way to a deli and passed the exhaust fan. </div>
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In any event, he came into the office, raving. "Hey, check this out!" He had one of those classic cardboard takeout containers with the wire handle. And, when he opened it, an amazing odor came from within. "What is it?" "Smoked ham and vegetables from this new Chinese place." "Wow, where is it?" "That's the best part; it's just around the corner!" And so it was. </div>
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I don't want to pretend that <i>City</i>'s patronage at lunch established the Hunan as a hip place to eat, but I do think that the money we spent there was part of what made Henry able to make the rent at first. But only at first: Within a year, it became the first restaurant I'd ever seen that had a line in the street. It didn't hold many people: there were a number of tables ingeniously squidged into the irregular space and a much coveted counter where you could watch Henry and his family prepare the dishes. What you couldn't do was find out what some of the stuff he was using was. Michael innocently asked him one time what kind of wood he used to smoke his ham (and duck) and Henry threw back his head and laughed. "I'm not gonna tell you that!" he said. (Probably this was because he was doing it himself, illegally, if the tale he tells in his cookbook -- that he steamed American bacon or used Canadian bacon -- is to be credited: I know what those things taste like, and, well, no. And, of course, there was the duck.)</div>
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My friends and I were frequent enough visitors that he stopped warning us "That's hot" or "Lotta garlic in that one." We'd just say "GOOD" and he'd chuckle and get to work. I can't even remember all of the stuff I enjoyed there over the years. Scallion pancakes, for one. Wow, they were a revelation, although they're common enough these days. Dungeness crab, in season, treated far less politely than the garlic-butter-and-parsley treatment it got at Fisherman's Wharf, and spectacular for what Henry'd done to it. We had a protocol for dining there: if the line hadn't reached Washington by the time we arrived, we'd stand. Two people around the corner and it was too late. Four years after he opened, he'd acquired another property on Sansome, a cavernous place where there was never a problem getting a seat, which is not to say it was often very empty. Same good food, just a long line of woks to prepare it in. </div>
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Shortly after opening the new joint, Henry, with the help of Tony Hiss, a journalist who specialized in China, put out a cookbook. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpyd4i27MmJXSdHQazu4voiYbbHIEHa1MiLjzo3H92-VvAnwjJxIUYQIZxrWafXbOpWhG28SKLemlQOOptbMokigCqgNpmZPY6Cs5ZuvhyphenhyphenvO23x9Da8ybXgQLgZ_-97hr_Rtdqo2msPgiu/s1600/IMG_0687.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpyd4i27MmJXSdHQazu4voiYbbHIEHa1MiLjzo3H92-VvAnwjJxIUYQIZxrWafXbOpWhG28SKLemlQOOptbMokigCqgNpmZPY6Cs5ZuvhyphenhyphenvO23x9Da8ybXgQLgZ_-97hr_Rtdqo2msPgiu/s400/IMG_0687.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My copy</td></tr>
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I went down there right away and bought one. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiMzVd6SeTYAoM4OAgD997ucsOLsnGtfHIs8Ej_VMo76-rIA9IX9Rbq6fZtouZ1BctUg_T9eCytjPYh4DRIg-LoDexYZ4g-AHGPhkXKApvJO0wPmqDXwOkotOMVDjxO05VrHOw4l0JKffP/s1600/IMG_0688.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiMzVd6SeTYAoM4OAgD997ucsOLsnGtfHIs8Ej_VMo76-rIA9IX9Rbq6fZtouZ1BctUg_T9eCytjPYh4DRIg-LoDexYZ4g-AHGPhkXKApvJO0wPmqDXwOkotOMVDjxO05VrHOw4l0JKffP/s400/IMG_0688.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">He got the tall part right</td></tr>
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But, with California at my feet and Chinese markets just across the bridge from where I lived, I never made anything out of it. Why should I? Henry and his team did it better than I ever could. In fact, I never attempted any Chinese cooking when I lived in California. Again, why should I?</div>
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The reason came to me about a year later, when I packed up everything I owned (including Henry's cookbook) and moved to Austin, a true Chinese food desert. (It pretty much still is.) I may have tried my hand at Chinese, but I never really got it. I did, however, return to San Francisco in 1980 on a visit and I must've eaten at the Hunan, because I got the coffee cup. Somewhere in its peregrinations, it got chipped, as you can see, but the damage wasn't enough to toss it. Anyway, it brought back good memories. </div>
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Another thing I may have picked up on that trip -- or a subsequent one -- was a jar of Henry's Hunanese chile paste. I still wasn't cooking Chinese food because Austin had only one store, on Airport Boulevard, that stocked the necessities and because none of the Chinese cookbooks I had seemed do-able. But I brought it back as a memory aid or something. At any rate, it was in my possession when the Austin <i>Chronicle</i>, to which I was contributing a food column as Petaluma Pete, ran an issue on picnics. I was asked to come up with a couple of recipes and wound up making one of the most inspired mistakes of my career when I made a potato salad out of <i>The Vegetarian Epicure </i>book and accidentally started one recipe and finished it with the recipe on the facing page, all made better by my using green New Mexican chiles. Boy, that was good! And, inspired, I then invented Chinese cole slaw, by taking Henry's "rich salad dressing" recipe and dumping it into the slaw mixture. Wow. </div>
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I finally learned Chinese cooking in Berlin, driven by necessity and using a five-euro Ikea wok. They're not bad learners, although you burn through them soon enough. Eventually I acquired a spun-steel wok like you're supposed to use and got good with the help of cookbooks by Fuchsia Dunlop and the folks at the Big Bowl, a chain I've never even seen, but whose book wound up in my hands. Poor Henry, relegated to the never-used category. </div>
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Nowadays, I almost never eat Chinese food at home: my diabetes flares up with rice and rice products in a way it doesn't with wheat, although I don't eat much of that, either. Most East and Southeast Asian cuisines also use a lot of sugar. I tend to save my breaking of the diet with Chinese food for the incredible Cuisine Szechuan in Montreal. But Henry's passing sent me to the bookshelf for his book, and I see that a lot of the recipes in it don't call for sugar at all. Hmmm...</div>
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And I realize now that Henry Chung is one of my heroes. He was almost 60 that day he signed my cookbook, and he lived to be 98, making people happy and building a little empire of Henry's Hunans with his sons. Hell, he was in his late 50s before he even got started! If that's not something to aspire to I don't know what is. So I raise a glass (but, forgive me, not of one of those awful Chinese spirits) to Henry, and thank him for his life. And for you, I'll tell you how to make Chinese cole slaw:</div>
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Henry's Rich Hot & Sour Dressing </div>
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2 Tablespoons sesame seed paste (or crunchy peanut butter)</div>
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2 Tablespoons soy sauce</div>
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4 Tablespoons vinegar (I'd use rice vinegar here)</div>
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1 Tablespoon hot red pepper oil</div>
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1 teaspoon hot red pepper powder (you could also use Hunanese chile paste if you can find it to substitute for these two ingredients)</div>
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½ teaspoon black pepper</div>
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1 teaspoon sugar (optional)</div>
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1 Tablespoon sesame oil</div>
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2 Tablespoons vegetable oil</div>
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1 Tablespoon finely minced fresh ginger</div>
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1 Tablespoon finely minced garlic</div>
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1 Tablespoon finely minced scallions</div>
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1 Tablespoon white wine (the book was written before Shao Shing became widely available, and I'd suggest that instead)</div>
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1 teaspoon hot mustard (optional)</div>
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½ teaspoon salt</div>
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1-2 cups chicken broth</div>
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Combine. Dump over slaw vegetables and let it sit a couple of hours, then mix before serving. </div>
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Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-66341121541364308742017-05-14T19:38:00.000+02:002017-05-14T19:38:01.400+02:00When I'm 68 1/2<i>I don't get asked to do this sort of thing much anymore, which is fine with me, since for the most part I'd rather write about other things or work on my book, but someone was kind enough to send me the 50th anniversary edition of </i>Sgt Pepper <i>last week, and I decided to play it last night. Herewith, some thoughts. </i><br />
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The weird thing is not that <i>Sgt Pepper</i> is fifty years old, it occurred to me this morning as I lay abed looking for a good reason to get up at the ungodly hour of 7:30. It's that I was only 18 ½ when it came out, and that I found it inevitable when it happened. I'd already gone to San Francisco, where the good folks at 1836 Pine, the people who'd started the Family Dog, took me in for a few days while I roamed around the fragile, doomed attempt at Utopia they were building. One night they'd left a tab of acid on the dining room table for me, because they trusted I could handle it, but I didn't take it. Not yet, I thought. That had been February, and I was supposed to bring back a report for <i><a href="http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen4/index.html">Aspen</a>, </i>the magazine in a box. I'd dutifully interviewed Alan Cohen, one of the proprietors of Haight Street's Psychedelic Shop and one of the editors of the <i>Oracle</i> newspaper, who was articulate enough, while at the same time (although this bit didn't make it into <a href="http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen4/tvGeneration.html#cohen">the excerpt they ran</a>) gently suggesting that the thing to do wasn't, as Scott McKenzie suggested in his about-to-become-a-hit "San Francisco (Flowers In Your Hair)", to come there, but to make it happen in your own home town. That advice certainly resonated with me, and when, a month or so later, I returned to college, I found, unsurprisingly, that a lot of my friends there were of the same mind. <i>That's </i>when I took the acid. </div>
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I'd caught as much music as I could in my few days in California, most notably the "Second Annual Tribal Stomp" on either February 17th or 18th, headlined by Big Brother and the Holding Company, which I recorded on a remarkable new tape format called the cassette, a recording that was in high enough fidelity that it awaits a friend's attention and, presumably, the permission of the Joplin estate, to be publicly issued. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I wuz dere!</td></tr>
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I also got to see Country Joe & The Fish at the Old Cheese Factory (aka Finnish Hall) in Berkeley, another show at the Avalon with Lee Michaels and (visiting from L.A.) the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, and, just around the corner from the Pine Street house, the Light Sound Dimension and the Orkestra, a psychedelic "multi-media" event (ie, a light show and some horrible music courtesy of future Manson murderer Bobby Beausoleil) that I remember walking out on. </div>
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This kind of thing appealed to me more than the Beatles, although they'd caught my attention with <i>Rubber Soul</i> and even more with <i>Revolver</i>, but, in a way I didn't yet understand, things were different in England, no matter that George Harrison visited Haight Street a little after I did, after soaking up the Monterey Pop Festival. I liked music that jumped off a cliff, hoping for the best, because I knew it could be very good indeed when it took flight. Like most Americans, I didn't get pop music, which, as they were about to make perfectly clear, was the milieu the Beatles (and not the Rolling Stones, whom I preferred, of course) inhabited.</div>
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Still, there was no denying the power of this thing when it appeared a couple of months after I returned to school in March. Everybody bought a copy, myself included, and it just as it was reported happened throughout the Haight-Ashbury, it poured out of dorm windows, open to the newly-hatched spring. Everybody was listening to it, all the time. I was. I don't even remember where I got my copy, but it was presumably in the campus bookstore like everyone else. (Not necessarily: I was also known to catch rides to Dayton, where a sort of hip record division of one of the big department stores stocked things like Kinks singles, which I couldn't live without). </div>
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Of course, due to its ubiquity, <i>Sgt Pepper</i> became one of the first models of a problem all pop potentially has: being enjoyed to death. I'd kind of like to look at my copy of the thing again (it's nearby, buried in the bowels of the Barker Texas History Center in an archive where I donated all my vinyl many years ago) to see just how worn it was. I listened to it a lot, perhaps expecting more revelation than was actually in the grooves, which was a product not only of the times, but of my being a teenager. I know that there soon came a point when I no longer listened to it, and in fact, until the release of the complete Beatles catalog on CD a few years ago, I hadn't paid it any attention at all until I was obligated to for <a href="http://www.wbur.org/npr/112962584/remastering-and-re-appreciating-the-beatles">a Fresh Air piece</a>. </div>
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And so to last night, when I lugged the 5 lb. 14 oz. box (I just weighed it) onto the couch and opened up the facimile album cover with its six discs and figured I'd listen to the work-in-progress stuff as much as I could, and then onward to what was supposed to be Giles Martin's astounding new mix of the original. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY1P5ioFmWGnXhp7NesaVysUnqJz_K7s4ZoyMG5YNpAR_SRfiavUiyQPBrygEQggOFA7d_vOKhFn2mV__T4pwTSntt-MZqVW29jE1BwY3GsHakJXNrYsy7XozRpbKDS6dhppjpe94jV-Xi/s1600/rs-the-beatles-v2-a6acf9ca-9bd7-462d-816e-709b31e8adcf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY1P5ioFmWGnXhp7NesaVysUnqJz_K7s4ZoyMG5YNpAR_SRfiavUiyQPBrygEQggOFA7d_vOKhFn2mV__T4pwTSntt-MZqVW29jE1BwY3GsHakJXNrYsy7XozRpbKDS6dhppjpe94jV-Xi/s400/rs-the-beatles-v2-a6acf9ca-9bd7-462d-816e-709b31e8adcf.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image stolen from <i>Rolling Stone</i></td></tr>
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I was actually surprised. I got through three of the CDs: the two of studio snippets (including work on both "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields") and the stereo mix of the final product. The studio stuff was fun, and, in the case of George Harrison leading the Indian and Western string players through the instrumental track of "Within You, Without You," quite engaging, since I'd never realized that he actually had much knowledge of Indian musical vocabulary. (There's nothing particularly challenging about the track, but what he does is make sure the Indians adhere to his sense of time, which is different from the one in which they're used to operating). </div>
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In a number of cases, the unfinished tracks have details that are in the finished product, but ones of which I'd been unaware and which the new mix -- every bit as spectacularly detailed as I'd read it was -- makes audible. The harp and string bits for "She's Leaving Home" are presented naked, which is fine with me: I remember hearing this and thinking "Jeez, 'Eleanor Rigby' but more mawkish!" And the sharp new sound re-emphasizes the Beatles' instrumental acumen even when the final product ("Good Morning," "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite") is less than interesing. Oh, and speaking of instrumental acumen, nobody who hears this will ever again accuse Ringo Starr of being a plodding dimwit. He and George can battle it out for the title of Most Virtuosic Beatle. </div>
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The best part of not having listened to this record in at least eight years (that Fresh Air program is dated 2009, and I doubt I listened too hard then) is that I was able to take it in without nostalgia, as an event happening in May, 2017. I guess at some point I'll look at the little film on the making of the record, and for sure I'll read most of the hardback book that gives the package most of its heft, because it's not by the Usual Suspects, but people like Joe Boyd, whose take on the times (if his superb book <i>White Bicycles</i> is any indication) should be fresh and un-cliched. </div>
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As for the fifty years that have passed since I first slipped this on to my record player, it's been full of surprises, some delightful, some not. When I was 64, there was no one to feed me (I can do that myself quite well), no kids (let alone grandkids), and (thank heaven) no holidays on the Isle of Wight -- and it's still that way. But I get by with a little help from my friends, and, as someone once said, tomorrow never knows. </div>
Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-56554256122876757502017-05-04T22:29:00.001+02:002017-05-04T22:29:10.374+02:00Changes, Part 1What, no posts since <i>Christmas Eve</i>? But that's what it says here, so it must be true.<br />
<br />
The why is a combination of things. I was homeless -- technically -- for a couple more months after that last post, and having to move yourself back into a house that's not quite what it had been is, in some ways, worse than moving in for the first time. I'm still repairing damage the contractors did, and my landlord has kindly consented to repair other damage, like putting curtains back up and getting lights to work. It was several weeks after I moved back that the place was even slightly functional, and it still isn't: there's more shelving to buy and stuff to put onto the shelving. As a matter of fact, there's an uncompleted shelf here in the office that's just waiting for another pair of hands to get it started. Then, perhaps, I can put the books that are sitting in the middle of the floor up onto the unit and be able to walk across the room.<br />
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None of this made me want to write about it, though. I mean, you spend a day hauling boxes out of the garage, tossing books that have tufts of mold growing on them (the result of the idiot contractors not dealing with them correctly -- hundreds of dollars of books and CD box sets in the garbage), dealing with the mold's effects on your respiratory system, and you're just plain too tired to write, not to mention wondering who'd want to read it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbjJyoD0nkD_1SAL2g8dkz3W-6XI8VDeYr6v0Eyxt9bBV_2NI2u9bb4ARVcD1zFo5vwufUpLlSoIx-3t99r5ud4VI0vxaQxvT9DLJMb9bJjLXBe8aHdJs4ReFl8K-fVTy1CbvRG7SouitR/s1600/DSC_0003_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbjJyoD0nkD_1SAL2g8dkz3W-6XI8VDeYr6v0Eyxt9bBV_2NI2u9bb4ARVcD1zFo5vwufUpLlSoIx-3t99r5ud4VI0vxaQxvT9DLJMb9bJjLXBe8aHdJs4ReFl8K-fVTy1CbvRG7SouitR/s400/DSC_0003_01.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The other stereo speaker was in here somewhere. Took a month to find it, though.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The mess in the garage, early on<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">
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Then there's the fact that it seems a Sisyphean task, putting this all in order. But, like I said, I've mostly done it. Or made a big dent in it, anyway.<br />
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I used the opportunity of this change in my life to make some other changes. Anticipating the book advance for the second (and -- whew! -- final) volume of the rock and roll history, I went and bought a new car. Well, not new, exactly, but one with the new tech I'd admired in the Peugeot I'd rented last spring in France, and the old tech of a CD player. I've got a lot of CDs, a lot I haven't yet listened to. Having a car that'll take me as far as I want to go, assuming I keep it gassed up, I'll have that opportunity.<br />
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I've already made a couple of trips in it, because I've been promoting the first volume of the history: to Cactus Records in Houston, for instance, doing an in-store in a store where Hank Williams did an in-store (they have pictures on the wall).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbO5XPBa5hsNOw5C5OHK0w4DWdjnPKg6TReHB8mX_E1crTKtDxwtLOtRqtGl8Vk9df9twTe1vUjypyiw2F4T9g073mhrfrCOYiawM_b4kdQwokuf7Wdn2NbmIWroA2LeQGDKaT3pC0i8KK/s1600/Cactus.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbO5XPBa5hsNOw5C5OHK0w4DWdjnPKg6TReHB8mX_E1crTKtDxwtLOtRqtGl8Vk9df9twTe1vUjypyiw2F4T9g073mhrfrCOYiawM_b4kdQwokuf7Wdn2NbmIWroA2LeQGDKaT3pC0i8KK/s400/Cactus.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Almost got writer's cramp</td></tr>
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Also went for a couple of days in Galveston, since I don't enjoy swimming, but beach towns are cool in the winter. This particular one is a weird mixture of touristy and off-beat.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Architect here seems to have been a bit confused...</td></tr>
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Anything to get out of that attic!<br />
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I also went to New York on a book project that didn't work out, and, of course, a quick trip to Montreal, which is always fun.<br />
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But inevitably, I had to come back and try to get back to work. I'm almost there, but, well, there are some changes.<br />
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First, I got some awful news: my book hadn't sold very well, and my advance for the next one would be halved. This hit me hard: being homeless had cost me several thousand dollars I'd rather not have spent (okay, including the trips). I should have seen it coming. Inexplicably, it didn't get reviewed a lot and only <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/once-upon-a-time-rock-and-roll-was-strange-wild-and-dangerous/2016/12/12/c1230f96-bd52-11e6-91ee-1adddfe36cbe_story.html?utm_term=.4287d31df2ad">one of them</a> was in a major newspaper. Fortunately, it was very good. But the New York <i>Times</i> didn't chime in. More seriously, the radio show for which I've labored for over 30 years, presenting rock and roll history in much the way I do in the book, refused to have me on to talk about it. This is a big deal: <i>Fresh Air</i> is one of the major media outlets for new books. And, on a personal level, two of its other contributors had books out last year, and they <i>did</i> get on. No reason was given for their shunning me. Believe me, I asked.<br />
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So I quit.<br />
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I quit because in my world, you don't treat people like that. To tell the truth, it felt good, although it means there'll be a little less money coming in (not much: this is NPR), but I'm working hard on replacing that exposure for my work and ideas. Stay tuned.<br />
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I also realized that I was going to be back to something I knew how to do: live frugally. The trip to Europe I'd planned for, well, right about now, had to go, although I'd really like the kind of spiritual rejuvenation these trips give me, but even though I know well how to do them inexpensively, I really couldn't do it at the moment. And by "spiritual," I don't mean the Romanesque churches I obessively seek out, but, rather, the luxury of being in a different, and, to me, more congenial society, where people are for the most part more civil towards each other and cooperation can edge out competition as a reason for doing things. To say the least, I am not living in that society at the moment.<br />
<br />
In fact, I may be the only person I know who saw this alleged surprise of an election coming. I have not been very happy moving back to the States, and the State of Texas in particular, since outside the bubble of Austin there are some nasty people here. Two of them represent this state in the Senate, for instance. But Americans seem so addicted to spectacle, to what I've come to think of as the Entertainment Industrial Complex, that electing a reality TV star over a wealthy, unpopular, and subtle woman was a no-brainer. I suspect the country will survive, but I also think it's broken, and won't be even close to fixed for many decades to come.<br />
<br />
Exactly what I'll do about this I can't say. Obviously, given what I do for a living, I can't make long-range plans, so, as I jokingly tell people, I live like the alcoholics: a day at a time, except I can have a couple of beers or some wine with dinner.<br />
<br />
But it's time for some changes. The title of this blog, for instance, has come to mean something utterly different than when I jocularly started it with this name. I was moving to a city that, at least in its center, where I was living, actually was on a hill. (Well, according to geographers, three hills, but not so's you'd notice). Now, there are echoes of Ronald Reagan, invoked by today's elected extremists as an icon, although he'd likely be horrified at their behavior. I knew it had its origin in a Jonathan Edwards sermon, but, well, I'd like a different name for it, and a different look, perhaps.<br />
<br />
And because my book pretty much vanished from public sight (I realized this when Chuck Berry died, and I didn't get a phone call to comment or do an article or anything), I need to use it to promote my book, my next book, and all my other projects as they come along. So I have to get back into that. I need to post short bits of promotion instead of long posts like this most of the time, and I need to get more active because I'm an utter failure at Twitter and the rest of that (pretty good with Facebook, which may have sent some of you over here), but little bits of blog posts will be easy enough.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZqLdV8J9u2PjII6KRYLvw3cENoWpXSezPon01d-8yZI3sP0tyUdcq5-UZ_BoDhKyJEYjhHDDB_KJ-GEK0e4AgujhCktB5ospUtyu2gYkz9X3PM4jv206YgSu8PI1x_YiWpyQVdCTF-Hk8/s1600/Ward_History_of_Rock_and_Roll_vol_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZqLdV8J9u2PjII6KRYLvw3cENoWpXSezPon01d-8yZI3sP0tyUdcq5-UZ_BoDhKyJEYjhHDDB_KJ-GEK0e4AgujhCktB5ospUtyu2gYkz9X3PM4jv206YgSu8PI1x_YiWpyQVdCTF-Hk8/s640/Ward_History_of_Rock_and_Roll_vol_1.jpg" width="419" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reminder: Here's what it looks like, folks. Paperback coming later in the year, but why not buy a hard-cover now?</td></tr>
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But right now, I need a new name for my blog that will better reflect my -- and our -- new reality.<br />
<br />
No, hold on. Right now, I need to get out and take a walk. With Texas, you never know when the last day of the first half of the year will be, after which it'll be too hot to do that, and I find that an hour's walk brightens things up immeasurably. Not much else is gonna do it today while our elected government is condemning the poor to a slow, agonizing death, so since it's sunny, the birds are singing, and the temperature is temperate, I'm outta here.<br />
<br />
See you in the future.Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-38479294405151306352016-12-24T22:45:00.001+01:002016-12-24T22:45:20.568+01:00Notes From An Attic: The Never-Ending Vacation, Maimondes' Autograph, Promoting The Book, And MoreTwo months since I've touched this blog? Apparently so. And a very odd two months it's been. To recap: in early October, while on vacation in Spain, I received photos of water seeping outside the door to my house, which water proved to be the result of a toilet valve failing and 48 hours' worth of uncontrolled release of water. The landlord quickly shut it off, but sheetrock, ceiling, and wooden floors all needed replacing. He predicted three weeks or more.<br />
<br />
More. If the most optimistic forecasts are correct, I'll have been out of the house for three months by the time I get to move back in. Christmas and New Years will be elsewhere. Fortunately "elsewhere" isn't as onerous as it might be: after a week and a half in a horrible, expensive, poorly-run "extended stay" hotel, a Facebook friend offered me one of his airbnb properties, this not being the high season, and I moved into an attic on his property. It has its down side.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First rule: don't be tall. Photo credit: Special K</td></tr>
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Also, I packed for a three-to-four-week stay here, which meant I grabbed a few clothes and some kitchen stuff that was either in excess of what I needed or not enough. There's a stove (oven doesn't work) and a microwave, but cooking has been a problem. When the weather got cold, I had to buy some new shoes (fine: the winter shoes I bought in January sucked, and REI will take them back) and a down jacket thing (already have one, but can't get to it). Fortunately, the place is centrally located, which means I can walk a lot of places, and driving isn't quite the pain it is down south, where you have to drive places to <i>get</i> places. You kind of have to get out of where you are before you can start going where you're going, if you see what I mean. Here, it's a lot more like living in a city.<br />
<br />
So I'm still living out of a suitcase, eating out much too much for my comfort (both dietary and financial), but things could be worse: the main focus of the past couple of months has been assuring a smooth launch for <i>The History of Rock & Roll, Vol. 1</i>, which has certainly been interesting. Fortunately, so far most of the reviews have been very positive, and I've mostly done interviews with really intelligent people, like <a href="http://chimeraobscura.com/vm/episode-198-ed-ward">Gil Roth</a>, whom I'd never heard of before, and <a href="http://citypages.com/music/nprs-rock-historian-ed-ward-talks-new-book-chronicling-the-birth-of-rock-n-roll/407842905">Michaelangelo Mato</a>s, whom I had. There have been some radio interviews, most notably on <a href="https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2016/12/21/fresh-air-rock-historian-ed-ward-unveils-ambitious-history-of-rock-roll/">KQED's Forum</a>, which had the most chaotic, ill-prepared, ignorant host I'd ever dealt with. He'd never so much as opened the book, knew nothing of its subject, and couldn't keep the conversation on track. Unfortunately, I had a severe attack of cedar fever just as the mike went live, so I wasn't at my best initially, either. Fortunately, I recovered. The host...maybe not so much. And there was the Bellowing Celt who called in, completely bonkers. I'm still shaken, but I suspect that's the worst of it.<br />
<br />
That cedar fever, too, has slowed me down some: there was a cold snap in Austin and the trees went wild. Me, I went to New York and Montreal, where it was cold enough, caught some kind of flu in all the subways and airplanes and trains and whatnot, so I had to deal with that <i>and</i> the cedar disease when I got back. I haven't been very active, to put it mildly. Oh, and in November there was the Texas Book Fair, where all the music book writers were up against one another, so who do you think got the crowds: Thomas Dolby, me, or the woman who wrote a biography of Guy Clark, beloved late Texas songwriter, who, instead of having a panel in the Capitol building, had the Paramount Theater at her disposal, and had several local high-profile songwriters on board to do some of Guy's songs? I got to the signing tent, there was a huge line...but not for me, of course: her publisher had sensibly augmented Barnes & Nobel's supply. B&N only had 30 books for me to sign, and five were for the store. There were a lot more at <a href="http://www.bookpeople.com/">Book People</a>, though, for the official release event, and I even had to go down again to sign another raft of them there. (They have 'em on mail-order, too, if you want one).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXLzt3kIDtB_Q56594IYrZkgpyAq5ZBoBl8e-h67fHEHmYhdaklL6y3zWgVgx3hDWNSpXYlS_wga-BPlDIgM6SB0gE_bnOYk52W9rhbuqGT-W3z0FngAo6zQU9jm21hoSVdTywerW48xkD/s1600/IMG_0654.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXLzt3kIDtB_Q56594IYrZkgpyAq5ZBoBl8e-h67fHEHmYhdaklL6y3zWgVgx3hDWNSpXYlS_wga-BPlDIgM6SB0gE_bnOYk52W9rhbuqGT-W3z0FngAo6zQU9jm21hoSVdTywerW48xkD/s400/IMG_0654.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Still there, newly renovated for your Manhattan office address. Brill himself was in the menswear biz. </td></tr>
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<br />
<br />
This is all pretty un-chronological, I see, but at the end of November, I went to New York for a week on a project totally unrelated to the book (but got a bit of promo, if you can call five minutes' worth of interview on an AM New York Jesus station "promo": who knew New York had a Jesus station called THE ANSWER? Who knew New York had a Jesus station at all? What can the listenership of an AM station like that be?). Before I left, though, I decided to go to a couple of museums as long as I was in town, and it really felt good.<br />
<br />
MOMA had the first US retrospective of Surrealist painter Francis Picabia, whom I'd mostly known as a major pain in the ass to the entire Paris art scene throughout Cubism, Surrealism, and beyond. It wasn't until after I saw the show that I learned that at the age of 15, Francis, son of a wealthy man, learned to paint so that he could copy his father's collection of old Spanish paintings, replace them with his copies, and sell the originals to dealers so he could buy expensive stamps for his stamp collection. That, however, is consistent with the rest of his life, as is the excerpt from one of his writings that gives the show its title: <a href="https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1670?locale=en">Our Heads Are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Direction</a>. His thoughts certainly did: austere drawings of machines that actually do nothing, colorful abstracts, odd cartoon-like stuff, bland but disturbing hyper-realist oils, some of them sourced from soft-porn magazines, during the German occupation of France, and, if your feet are tired, you can sit and watch a film he and René Clair made called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpr8mXcX80Q">entr'acte</a>, which was shown during the intermission (<i>entr'acte</i>) of an Erik Satie ballet. It's exhausting and goofy, and the show made my day. Heads off to Picabia!<br />
<br />
The show I knew I wanted to see, however, was up at the Met, and I devoted a day to it:<a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2016/jerusalem"> Jerusalem, 1000-1400, Every People Under Heaven. </a> It was a bit odd: having not quite returned from a trip to Spain to try to get a handle on the three-culture Christian-Jewish-Muslim culture there, from which Crusaders went off to try to "reclaim" the Holy Land, here I was in New York watching the story from the other end of the telescope. It's not a particularly arty show, because two of the religions involved weren't much on representational art, and also because a lot of the prize exhibits are books. Delicate and tending towards fading, they're displayed in darkish rooms, and you really have to want to look at them -- and you need to to get the show's message. Here's a beautiful illuminated manuscript, obviously French 14th century, groaning with gold leaf, showing a biblical scene. The lettering's in Hebrew, though, and it was used by the Jewish community of Tours. Here is a deluxe fold-out map of Jerusalem, prepared for tourists -- or, rather, for a tourist, since it's hand-lettered and hand-illustrated. Of course, the guy who did it had never been there, but it's still amazingly accurate. Over here, a letter asking that some hostages be freed -- the caption says such letters are quite common from this period -- signed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides">Maimondes</a>! That gave me an electric shock and once again reminded me that this story I've been chasing -- whatever it is -- spreads over a huge area. I have to say, the show is huge, painstakingly fair to all sides, and not only fills in a lot of blanks on the three-culture story for me, but also shows that the idea of the tourist trap is millenia old: lots of the stuff on display was made for pilgrims to take back to Europe with them. Only open until January 8, so get down there if you can.<br />
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Most of the rest of my time has been spent waiting for the house down south to be finished. At some time after the first of the year, I'm confident that my publisher will make an offer for Vol. 2 of the book, and I can get back to doing what I do best: writing. I may attempt a couple of signing tours -- I'm trying to work one up with Amtrak so that I can take the train up the West Coast -- which I'll have to finance myself. But that's in the future: right now I want to move back into my house, sit on my couch, sleep in my bed, and cook in my kitchen again. Three months is too damn long. When you're walking up Madison Avenue (to the Grand Central Oyster Bar: some things never change) and you realize that you're taking a vacation from your vacation and soon will be on a train to Montreal to visit friends as a vacation from the vacation to the vacation, you realize how much you miss having a home.<br />
<br />
Of course, I've been feeling that way for about two years now, and the recent election only firmed up my decision to leave again once this next book is finished. I could, and no doubt will, go into that in some detail. But not today. Today is Christmas Eve in the attic. I have to stockpile some food for the weekend. Ho ho ho, y'all.Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-22531253525262798442016-10-21T20:05:00.002+02:002016-10-21T20:05:52.168+02:00Barcelona, Back To Texas, Viewing The RuinsThe room might not have been great, but Barcelona still was. I only had the afternoon to do all the things I'd planned, if I could beat back the drumbeat of the oncoming chaos I was sure would greet me in Texas. One thing I knew: I'd need some new clothes, because I wouldn't have access to mine for a while. Anyway, all the weight I'd lost in the past year meant all the pants I had that fit me -- two pairs of regular ones and one of Levi 501s -- were in my suitcase. I had the Levis on. They'd need washing soon.<br />
<br />
I've always like the clothing I'd seen in the high-end Spanish shops along the Paseig de Gracia and, indeed, on some of the Spanish men walking along the street, so, since it was nearby, I went over to the Corta Inglés, the giant department store one sees all over Spain, to see what it offered. It was much like any other department store except that it had Spanish stuff (and, of course, a giant supermarket in the basement, the only part of the store I'd ever been to). The guy at the Hugo Boss boutique on the men's floor even suggested I look at Spanish brands, which were just what I wanted, as it turned out, and considerably cheaper than what brands I can get in Austin like Ralph Lauren and Boss and so on were offering. Two shirts and a pair of pants later, I had what I needed. I'm not a shopping-as-therapy kind of guy, but it did feel good to know that I wouldn't be naked in Austin.<br />
<br />
And yes, I did head to the basement to pick up three cans of olives stuffed with anchovies and a couple of cans of Spanish tuna. I'm not a <i>complete</i> idiot.<br />
<br />
And, as is my custom, I had my last dinner in town at the always-wonderful <a href="http://www.9granados.com/home.html">Nou de Granados</a>, one of my favorite restaurants: a nice salad, and oxtails in a wine reduction on a pillow of truffled mashed potatoes, garnished with potato chips. Don't sneer at potato chips in Spain: they're a great example of the virtue of simplicity. I can't eat many because of the diabetes, but when they're perfectly crisp and greaseless but redolent of fine Spanish olive oil -- as these and many I was offered at bars were -- they put Lay's and the like to shame.<br />
<br />
The next morning I woke early, had a decent breakfast downstairs in the hotel and grabbed a cab to the airport. Barcelona to Paris Charles de Gaulle (the hellish Terminal 2) to Atlanta to Austin. I was lucky: not only had I bought economy plus fare (recommended for large or tall people and/or people with legs, not to mention those of us who've experienced lower vein thrombosis <a href="http://wardinfrance.blogspot.com/2012/12/starting-now-you-have-lost-right-to.html">or a pulmonary embolism as the result of a long flight</a>), but it was a Tuesday, so not that many people were travelling, and I had no seatmate. Air France has a fairly crappy selection of films (unless you've always wanted to see <i>The Angry Birds Movie</i> with Arabic subtitles), so I had lots of time to read and think.<br />
<br />
Something that's always annoyed me about the menu at the Nou has been the silly errors in the English translation, in particular "backed" for "baked." If I lived in Barcelona, I'd offer to edit their menu in exchange for a bottle of wine or something. (They've also confused "cherries" with "cherry tomatoes," the former of which one doesn't really hope to see in the Caesar salad -- and doesn't) But something Miguel had said in Madrid clicked in my head. He'd noted that Franco had suppressed the teaching of languages during his reign. I knew he'd suppressed Catalán and Basque and Valencian because he rightly feared that allowing them would lead to nationalism, but apparently all foreign languages were ignored until the university level, when it's arguably harder to learn a new tongue. So unlike Germany or France, elementary school kids didn't start adding languages until after Franco was gone.<br />
<br />
Of course, this was just the end-point of the story I'd been living in for the past couple of weeks: in 1492, Spain expelled its mathematicians, physicians, philosophers, navigators, businessmen, bankers and intellectuals -- ie, its Arabs and Jews -- turning the country into a land of peasants under the mighty heel of an autocratic church and its Inquisition and a bloated and not very intelligent class of aristocrats, up to and including the royal family.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">King Fernando VII, by Goya (detail). Does this look like a reasonable man? An intelligent one? Right on both counts, and obviously Goya detested him.</td></tr>
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By the time Spain revolted and threw out the Inquisition in the early 19th century, it had missed the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and had to import British and German workers to ramp up their technology. Fortunately, those workers did a great job -- and the Germans taught the Spaniards how to make good beer and sausages. To this day, a Frankfurt is a Spanish joint featuring beer and sausages! But the progress was halted again with the appearance of Fascism in the 20th century: it wasn't until 1974 that the transition to democracy -- and cultural freedom -- began, which is why the vibe of post-Communist Berlin is still noticeable in the air.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM676jxwXek6gLIoeynOSVeinyY-7KS0FQVbxauC0Oy5HFYR9W022f8N6_hos6LSDsQrB9W_AmRKX8aF8sXjUgsmBkxn1uJZCrJB5NniljbV9q9pamWh-zcEVE1lWUBijdgbljHrFsJkyR/s1600/IMG_0638.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM676jxwXek6gLIoeynOSVeinyY-7KS0FQVbxauC0Oy5HFYR9W022f8N6_hos6LSDsQrB9W_AmRKX8aF8sXjUgsmBkxn1uJZCrJB5NniljbV9q9pamWh-zcEVE1lWUBijdgbljHrFsJkyR/s400/IMG_0638.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spanish design of the '60s and '70s: a collection of SEAT automobiles in the Valencia train station. </td></tr>
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I think this explains a lot about Spain, and why it appeals to me: the process of discovery of new possibilities is still in the air, the Catalan secession movement may not succeed, but, like the Scottish one, may force some interesting and needed change, and the arts and the young people who make them, are still charging ahead.<br />
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* * *</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
Meanwhile, I was on an Air France flight back to a country where, for the first time in its history, it was being challenged by an overtly Fascist candidate in a Presidential election. And, on a more personal level, I was returning to a house that was unlivable and many possessions that had been destroyed, including materials I'd need for my next book. To soften the blow, I rented two nights in the most reasonable hotel I could find, actually <a href="http://fairviewaustin.com/">a big B&B in Travis Heights</a> that I found on the Hotel Tonight app. The first night, I just crashed, destroyed by 20 hours of flying and changing planes, including two hellish airports, CDG Terminal 2 and Atlanta, where CNN is blaring at an unreasonable volume out of the sound system. The next day, a friend and I went to see what was left of my house. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't as bad as I feared. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking from the living room into the office: the toilet that exploded was in the bathroom whose entry is seen on the left. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6wCHOGWxkvaJHtis2au7EpYBNL-zJPSETp8Hj6pwI9ALiXdk6TJthjJdqegZQbmV3TenNeHs58d2PyKreksX6halzlXeuytzDWzlhyGRoZH4vNTBKop8L3x2yhOu9BJ-5eZ0rK18Te6CU/s1600/IMG_1814.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6wCHOGWxkvaJHtis2au7EpYBNL-zJPSETp8Hj6pwI9ALiXdk6TJthjJdqegZQbmV3TenNeHs58d2PyKreksX6halzlXeuytzDWzlhyGRoZH4vNTBKop8L3x2yhOu9BJ-5eZ0rK18Te6CU/s400/IMG_1814.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These giant honking dehumidifying fans were everywhere. The electric bill will be stupendous, but I do believe the damage will be far less because of them.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb7Ti5rmTR04OjGYPYA9nd1BgYq6jikb9UXJfA_eh5aPXU3BoYoi2LZ5s2R3U7wJJ7OmJWY-S8_Om8Rgbgys-jXtOEEpPRFRPp-7zaQa7x3l5-p2oasYpmvcS0EnYbezQpwJz9XSErvejJ/s1600/IMG_1812.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb7Ti5rmTR04OjGYPYA9nd1BgYq6jikb9UXJfA_eh5aPXU3BoYoi2LZ5s2R3U7wJJ7OmJWY-S8_Om8Rgbgys-jXtOEEpPRFRPp-7zaQa7x3l5-p2oasYpmvcS0EnYbezQpwJz9XSErvejJ/s400/IMG_1812.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not a great picture, but a lot of stuff was saved. </td></tr>
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My landlord was great: he sprung into action and got a company involved that specializes in this kind of rescue. Despite my lack of renters insurance, his insurance covers the packing and storage of the contents of the house until it can be rebuilt. (Presumably they also bring the stuff back, too). The company gave me the weekend to take what I wanted for the period ahead, which, jetlagged and just a bit traumatized, I sort of did. I checked into the Extended Stay America on the corner of W. 6th and Guadelupe for a week, and arranged for a Facebook friend's airbnb to be my home for a month after that. Heaven knows if the renovation will be done by then; the landlord says the construction folks say it'll be ready by Thanksgiving, but he thinks mid-December is more likely. Whatever. All I can do is take it a day at a time, passively waiting for word.<br />
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Eventually, there'll be dealing with Austin Water and the electric company. On November 6, I'll be on a panel at the <a href="http://www.texasbookfestival.org/">Texas Book Festival</a> with Joe Nick Patoski and David Dunton, my agent, talking about writing about music from two viewpoints: biographical (Joe Nick's specialty) and historical (mine) and how the two approaches do in the marketplace. It's free, and I'll be signing some early copies of both <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/125007116X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=berlinbites-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=125007116X&linkId=489eea0a8dc75a44d08201fa7cacb50c">the rock and roll history</a> and the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HH4SL0C/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=berlinbites-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B01HH4SL0C&linkId=8c13c93e2152adbd6ac0988e4ab91924">Michael Bloomfield book</a>. If you're in town, drop by. If you can't make it then, there'll be a rock and roll history release party at <a href="http://www.bookpeople.com/book/9781250071163">Book People </a>on the 19th.<br />
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This hotel I'm writing this in is a circle of hell, and I'll be glad to be shut of it in a couple of days (the parent corporation has been pestering me with e-mails for my thoughts, and boy are they going to get them!), but when I moved in, I decided to try an experiment. Downtown Austin, in the 20 years I spent in Europe, changed utterly and completely. It's like aliens dropped an entire new city onto a few square miles, but I decided to try a little experiment while I'm here and spend as much time walking and looking at the new city as I could. There are primitive cooking facilities in the hotel, and there's the Whole Foods corporate mothership within walking distance, again making it my neighborhood supermarket like it was 30 years ago (except in a different location and with about a dozen times the floor-space). Waterloo Records and Book People are also at 6th and Lamar, and there are loads of new high-rises and boutiques and restaurants scattered all through the west downtown and what the property developers call the "warehouse district," which, yes, it used to be. </div>
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There's been much talk during the development of this of a "revitalized downtown" and a "walkable city" and how much revenue the property taxes will bring the city. I had lunch with a lifelong Austinite who used to live downtown yesterday, and his views were very interesting. "When I was down here," which was in the '70s and '80s, "the residential population of downtown was between 1000 and 2000. Now it's more like 20,000," although another friend had noted that many of the new buildings are 30% empty because they're used as second residences or "investments." I mentioned to my friend that as I'd walked the streets -- something not too many other people seemed to be doing -- I'd noticed that not only the people I'd seen, but the whole way the residences were marketed, were young, rich, and white. The boutiques also slanted that way, and certainly the restaurants did. (Many are parts of luxury chains with branches in upscale parts of California, Arizona, and elsewhere in Texas, and there's a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse not far from my hotel). </div>
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"Yeah," he said, "there was a lot of talk about rentals and a certain percentage of affordable housing, but in practice the way that plays out is that the renters of the affordable spaces live there for a while and then get offered enticing buy-outs so the developers can up the prices or condominiumize the place. As for the places that are already condos, they're hit and miss." He pointed out a couple that are pretty full, and indeed there's one particularly hideous one near me that's all lit up at night with just about every unit seeming to be full. Others, though, especially some of the more expensive ones, don't seem to be much occupied at night. Still, they keep building them and advertising luxury. Certainly West 6th, which is the thoroughfare I'm on and which I walk daily, is lined by very upscale bars (and a few corpses of failed ones), in contrast to East 6th, which has been party central for ages, and attracts frat boys and sorority girls to bars where the aim is to get blotto. West 6th isn't much different, but I sense that the bars are more expensive here. Offering valet parking for $6 to $10, which you won't see on the other side of Congress Avenue, they seem tonier, the patrons better-dressed and maybe more seniors and MBA candidates or law-school types than on the other side. It's comforting that UT's jeunesse dorée has its own blotto-toria. </div>
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As for the restaurants, I've found very few I'd want to return to. An exception is <a href="http://www.lambertsaustin.com/">Lambert's</a>, which has made a workable gimmick out of very good barbeque served in a fine dining context. But even there, the sheet listing the day's specials included a $27 shot of bourbon. As I remarked to a friend last night, for three times that you could probably buy an entire bottle of it. And <a href="http://www.manuels.com/">Manuel's</a> is doing a good job with upscale Mexican food, which needn't be as expensive as you'd think. The service bordered on servile when I was there, but it's usually a good bet. </div>
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It's a cliché for old Austinites to lament what's passed, but to me, there's change and there's change. I'd be a lot more in favor of the new downtown if it were more racially, economically, and culturally inclusive. It's not. I love the idea of waking up what was a wasteland of auto parts shops, printing supplies, and derelict spaces, but it looks like greed had far more to do with it than I'm comfortable with. Imagine that. </div>
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And yet, and yet... One of my favorite memories of West 6th was the spring day I had lunch at <a href="http://www.hutsfrankandangies.com/">Hut's Hamburgers</a> (still there! -- although now paired with an inedible pizza joint) and was walking back to my car, crossing the small bridge over Shoal Creek, and saw a mother turtle plodding down the creekside, with five or six youngsters following her. The other day, I was walking back from Whole Foods on the other side of the street and saw something by the creek. I stopped and held my breath: a heron, four feet tall, was stalking down the creek. It was a really magnificent bird, and I edged closer to the side of the sidewalk to look at it. A Type 1 jogger, togged out in expensive sportswear with some sort of phone/music player strapped to his bicep, swooshed past, hissing "Thanks" as he went by. I didn't do it for you, man. But I'd do it for a few seconds more with that bird. Anytime. </div>
Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-35290675537940619832016-10-20T19:12:00.001+02:002016-10-20T19:12:23.730+02:00Tarragona: End Of The Trip, SortaThe couple seated across from me on the train from Valencia had a couple of English-language local papers for the Costa del Something on the table. There are enclaves of coastal Spain that cater to retired Brits and are called Costa Brava, Costa Blanca, and the like, although the names probably preceded the expats. There are the same kind of sea-facing boring apartment blocks that de Gaulle built on the Languedoc coast, and they're largely peopled by right-wing British folks. I even recognized the papers: they were just like one published in France, whose name I forget, which deals exclusively with problems British people face in an environment where they don't speak the language, don't talk to the locals, don't understand the customs, rarely eat the food, and still feel privilege. They're there for the sunshine (which, admittedly, is a scarce commodity where they're from), inexpensive high-proof wine, and, in Spain, untaxed cigarettes, not necessarily in that order. They don't much like the locals (who return the favor), and they positively despise Americans, as I was reminded when the train stopped to let on some passengers and a guy and a woman, obvious tourists making their way through Europe, came into our car. They were both stocky, and I noticed the woman, in particular, because she was East Asian and had impressive muscles, hardly a delicate lotus blossom of a stereotype. They hoisted their bulging backpacks up onto the luggage rack, and my neighbor remarked to his wife "He didn't even offer to help her with her pack. You know why that is?" She said no. "<i>Because he's American</i>," he hissed. He picked up the paper and showed her an article headlined "The perils of Brexit," and said "I'm tired of seeing rubbish like this. They never talk about the good bits." Which, as I understand it, will make it more difficult for him to live in Spain.<br />
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The train was a slow one, taking two hours along the Mediterranean coast to my last unknown stop, Tarragona. It sounded interesting: Roman settlement, big seaport, Visigothic Christian presence, and, for the gastronome, home of the fabled romesco sauce, which is made out of olive oil, crushed almonds, and a particular dried red chile that isn't hot: recreating it in the US involved chile ancho. I'd had it once in Barcelona with a mixed-vegetable tapa, and again in Valencia with that mixed vegetable plate, but it's most often served with seafood, so I was ready for that.<br />
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But how much of the town would I get to see? For the first time in my visit, the clouds were dark, and the Mediterranean was choppy, its water varying from slate-colored to black ink. The sere, brown countryside I'd been seeing had made me forget about rain, except for its absence. But this didn't look good for a pedestrian visit to a city. It held off until I reached my hotel, charmingly located above the city's bus terminal. It seemed to have been airlifted in from Czechoslovakia in 1979: sort of modern, with much polished wood and stone, a totally indifferent front-desk staff verging on mildly hostile, and a room that was just a smidgen smaller than would have been comfortable. I checked my watch: it was almost 4:30, so I'd better figure out what was where. But by the time I got to the lobby, it was raining. Still, I intuited that this wouldn't last long, and I was right: a half-hour later it stopped and the clouds looked a bit friendlier. Off I went.<br />
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I knew that the traffic circle just outside the hotel was the beginning of a rambla, one of those delightful Spanish streets divided by a strip of park where people walk, and that the rambla ended at the Mediterranean Balcony which looked from a height onto the sea. Turning left from there would take me to the Roman Circus, the remains of a giant chariot-racing arena. There wasn't much to see from the balcony, since the clouds were lurking offshore, and the harbor was full of container ships waiting their turn, so I was off to the Circus.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJm2XQwprxXKMVtRfNHeoxIcEGK90-v-iRXvvIn7P_Hj17TBC-YFBNFfmPpsaHy2_IsbCRA91bL99uYI1k_tjSde-rM_5rQitYIBbgtsAzS5KLCaH9MLS_vd_3g4HbX5hyR4CIIEYJce31/s1600/DSC_0120.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJm2XQwprxXKMVtRfNHeoxIcEGK90-v-iRXvvIn7P_Hj17TBC-YFBNFfmPpsaHy2_IsbCRA91bL99uYI1k_tjSde-rM_5rQitYIBbgtsAzS5KLCaH9MLS_vd_3g4HbX5hyR4CIIEYJce31/s400/DSC_0120.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The moody Med, shot the next day from the Archeological Museum</td></tr>
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At the Circus, the guy sold me a combination ticket good for several other attractions -- and good the next day, which was good because everything was going to close at 7. He also warned me that, the next day being Sunday, everything would close at 3 in the afternoon. Thus, I figured, I'd have to do all my inside activities early, and walk the streets afterwards.<br />
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The Circus didn't particularly thrill me: it's only partially excavated, since most of it lies under enough dirt to support the buildings of the nearby neighborhood, and, as I've said, I'm not thrilled by Roman art or architecture. Next to it is a Roman tower, to which the Spaniards added a story in the 14th century for the king to stay in when he was in town. Pretty dull. The Archeological Museum would have to wait for Sunday, so I just wandered aimlessly. Pretty soon I found myself at the Cathedral, and a quick look at its sign confirmed what I figured: closed to visitors on Sunday. Better take a peek.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjouFg7vJVHz78UmYYy_HGX_r281lPhGwXDacoRHsFB0EPc18H6FPTr89fUar9PfgIYdVtU6iV4hSeovewTDYAN0boonfUmPSxyyB3W1TV7Usui-7BClJPLQF7aHXZVBwlxRxss0DxsoLaz/s1600/DSC_0131.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjouFg7vJVHz78UmYYy_HGX_r281lPhGwXDacoRHsFB0EPc18H6FPTr89fUar9PfgIYdVtU6iV4hSeovewTDYAN0boonfUmPSxyyB3W1TV7Usui-7BClJPLQF7aHXZVBwlxRxss0DxsoLaz/s400/DSC_0131.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swarming with tourists on Sunday, of course. But again, no steeple.</td></tr>
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It's not the grandest cathedral on the outise, although all those saints are pretty charming, each one holding a scroll with his name on it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0-wxgz-PH5p3rzEuIlW2F0YY3UTmvLdPxXv4B9lCTShT-8I_FgpF8S6BBgJR2j9jzVCNSUk4eHEo3UiVDyKgofmww7JxCEoOtLUaA360d7cLiKxYUgCVzMVC6PnixIOGXZG0vXvj_zRzl/s1600/DSC_0130.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0-wxgz-PH5p3rzEuIlW2F0YY3UTmvLdPxXv4B9lCTShT-8I_FgpF8S6BBgJR2j9jzVCNSUk4eHEo3UiVDyKgofmww7JxCEoOtLUaA360d7cLiKxYUgCVzMVC6PnixIOGXZG0vXvj_zRzl/s400/DSC_0130.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hi! My name is St. ______!</td></tr>
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I hustled inside, and was awed. Not so much by the architecture or the art in the chapels, but because an organist was playing early Baroque Spanish organ music, which is some of my favorite music in the world: I used to own about 15 LPs of it, and have quite a bit in digital form. The organ itself was set up especially for this music, too. Off to one side, there was a glass door leading to the Diocesian Museum, a magnificent collection of Spanish Romanesque art that the bishop's people had saved from crumbling churches in the state of Tarragona. I rushed through it, wishing I didn't want to be back in the main sanctuary listening to the organist. Then there was the cloister, again, gorgeous. I whizzed around it. Back inside. But the Cathedral was going to close in about 15 minutes, so I reluctantly decided to leave. Fortunately for me, I got lost trying to find the exit. There was, as there always is, a gift shop that I found, with exactly zero recordings of this organ. Crazy. I finally found the exit and pushed the door and walked out, the spell broken. I will very likely return -- Tarragona's only an hour's train ride away from Barcelona, after all -- but I'll make sure to do it during the damn organist's lunch break!<br />
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I wandered down the steps in front of the Cathedral (dedicated to St. Tecla, the town's patron, and surely one of the more obscure saints out there) and found myself in a square into which<i> gigantes </i>were gathering. I'd seen these outsize figures before, this spring in Girona, but not in this quantity.<br />
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I have no idea what was going on, because they are supposed to show up (as are the famous <i>castells</i>, the human towers for which the city is renowned) for the festival of St. Tecla in mid-September. In any event, they were gone by that night.<br />
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I made it back to the hotel after some wandering, and finding a big square lined with restaurants that would be a good place to find dinner. And, later, I ascended the hill again and chose a restaurant that had fish with romesco sauce. At last! The waiter didn't speak any English, but we communicated and I placed my order. He came out again with the menu. No romesco. Grrr: I ordered langoustines in garlic sauce and then hake with what the menu called "burned garlic." I'd been notably garlic-deficient on this trip, so it was time to make up for that. It was just okay, and instead of a wonderful Spanish draft beer, they had Amstel. The Dutch are gradually taking their revenge for the years the Spanish colonized them (yes, they did: how do you think the Prado got all those Bosches?), I guess.<br />
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It was damp and chilly the next day, so I headed to the <a href="http://www.mnat.cat/">Archeological Museum</a> first thing. To my disappointment (but not surprise) it was 100% Roman, but at least it was dry.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The plaza outside the Archeological Museum. Notice umbrellas.</td></tr>
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One thing I liked in it was a few mosaics that had been found in town, including this wonderful depiction of the fishes of the Mediterranean:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The menu for a Roman seafood restaurant? No, it was originally on the floor, and the Romans didn't have restaurants.</td></tr>
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A lot of the museum is given over to Roman inscriptions, which I think is one of the most boring of the subsets of Roman archaeology, since they're mostly gravestones or celebrations of military victories. I read a little Latin, but the Romans didn't put spaces between their words and, worse, often left some vowels out. But there was a temporary exhibit about a remarkable structure some ways out of town, Centcelles. It has Roman mosaics, Arab baths, and Christian features, and was in ruins until a German team started digging in the '50s. They're still at it, and the wild thing is, despite all the artifacts and art that's been uncovered, nobody knows what it was. A rich farmer's house that the Arabs added the baths to? They're crowd-sourcing guesses, and you have until January 8th to add yours at the museum.<br />
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The Archeological Museum wasn't included in the ticket I'd bought at the Circus (although its ticket also gets you into other sites it administers, I found out too late and with no time). I wandered around, and discovered the only bit of Jewish presence I saw in Tarragona (although apparently an arch near the Archeological Museum was the gateway to its <i>judería</i>). It was an inscription on a stone supported by two Roman tombstones around the corner from the Cathedral.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfbB_7gGt-GLtHrXHh0hjZxfuIp395aTkm14r_MJuoA4y6Nxaf6uDcsz3uGxiKDZCe72qncWOHa-2D5q9tEg3Pm4wMfssbjYMaeVkmgdozkfc_SiX9Ru8eqWuX7lSG8EARq7iZLaOJDBUc/s1600/DSC_0132.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfbB_7gGt-GLtHrXHh0hjZxfuIp395aTkm14r_MJuoA4y6Nxaf6uDcsz3uGxiKDZCe72qncWOHa-2D5q9tEg3Pm4wMfssbjYMaeVkmgdozkfc_SiX9Ru8eqWuX7lSG8EARq7iZLaOJDBUc/s400/DSC_0132.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Thanks to a couple of medieval Jews I keep on retainer for just such emergencies, I found that this reads "This is the gravestone of Rabbi Chaim bar Yitzchak," and a date nobody can make out.<br />
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It was lunch time, and it was sprinkling again, so I went into one of the few places that was open for lunch. I just wanted a couple of tapas and a beer, and the waiter urged calamari with onions on me, so I also ordered some blood sausage with "chopped eggs." The calamari were standard fried calamari (but good: I suspect any restaurant in Spain that produces calamari with the texture of pencil erasers doesn't last a week) with a few crisp-fried onions on top. The blood sausage sat atop a bed of fried, cubed potatoes with some padron peppers. I asked the waiter if "huevos" was a local term for "patatas," and all he said was "my mistake." Since the potatoes a) weren't very good, and were probably frozen, another cardinal sin in this country and b) bad for my diabetes, I concentrated on the sausage (excellent, and redolent of cumin) and the padrons. Now, you know that the Spanish say that every sixth padron is hot? I'd had several dishes of them on this trip, with zero heat, which is disappointing because the sport is part of the deal. These? Every one made me fear I'd leak earwax, they were so hot. Dang.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxHRBnc5RPfDVVbn4B5bBhoLRurvBr_SrcZZIGcNnRSXIzlc0HqkAv42-Yt83x2B4XjLpGuZ9LPJjVZ5YXt9SDtgYQ-z2LnZ01fNtzIiwmrWMa6_F7-ndgkFsZrjg0g0QXBkCko1AgZIc8/s1600/IMG_0551.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxHRBnc5RPfDVVbn4B5bBhoLRurvBr_SrcZZIGcNnRSXIzlc0HqkAv42-Yt83x2B4XjLpGuZ9LPJjVZ5YXt9SDtgYQ-z2LnZ01fNtzIiwmrWMa6_F7-ndgkFsZrjg0g0QXBkCko1AgZIc8/s400/IMG_0551.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Padrons, but harmless Madrid padrons</td></tr>
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The rain let up again, I wandered, and came upon the city walls box office, which was on my Circus ticket, so I went in and absorbed far more than I wanted to know about the Roman walls and how they were added to by the Spanish in the 18th century. I wandered some more, and decided I'd had it with Tarragona. As with the Reina Sofia in Madrid, I wasn't in the mood. Despite my being perfectly aware of the fact that I couldn't do anything in Austin until I got back on Tuesday, and that I had a nice day ahead of me in Barcelona, something in my mind was tugging my attention away from what was in front of my nose. I walked down the hill, then back up later for a really bad meal in a Basque restaurant on the square, one of the few open on Sunday, then back down to the hotel. The staff refused to help me get a ticket off of my Spain Pass ("Why don't you buy one out of a machine like everybody else?"), so I woke up the next day and did just that. Bonus: the train stopped at the Paseig de Gracia station a couple of blocks from my hotel. Non-bonus: the hotel gave me the first sub-standard room I've ever had there.<br />
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I proclaimed the vacation OVER.Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-10137528924465481912016-10-19T22:19:00.001+02:002016-10-19T22:19:12.990+02:00Valencia: Catastrophe In ParadiseThe coating of hucksterism that comes with tourism is annoying, albeit in my case, in a selfish way. I'd have preferred to stroll the streets of Toledo making discoveries on my own and with Naomi as a guide to the unseeable, but that's simply not possible. It <i>is</i> possible, of course, that less-concentrated doses of what I was seeing could be found in the countryside, in villages and smaller cities. But the purpose of this trip was just to dip my toe into Spain and see what I might want to see again. In Toledo, I'd missed many of the churches, the Alcazár, and more. In Madrid, I obviously need to visit the Prado again, filtering out the stuff I'm not interested in, and return to the Reina Sofia when I'm more in the mood for the artistic revolution of the early 20th century.<br />
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So I was good and ready to re-enter Toledo's magnificent train station and head into the wild unknown. Not, of course, totally unknown: I'd been in the province of Valencia before, <a href="http://wardinfrance.blogspot.com/2011/02/weekend-in-spain.html">in January, 2011,</a> to do an interview at a rock festival in Castellón, and, since it was my first trip to Spain, I stayed an extra day to wander around, which I certainly did. In some ways, Castellón was kind of rinky-dink, a small provincial city, and in other ways it was fascinating. I bet myself that the provincial capital, Valencia, would be better, so I added it to this trip because, I saw, it also had a bunch of the history I was trying to figure out.<br />
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It took a while to get there, changing in Madrid and being welcomed by the turtles, then getting on another train which started out in that dull, flat, brown terrain but, as we approached the Mediterranean, sprouted some lovely mountains, rivers, and lakes. Then came the industrial outskirts of a city and bang, we were in Valencia. I liked what I saw from the cab as we sped to the hotel, and I definitely liked the hotel.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKB9nxm9YSfpuRMp9SniBDtwB37j1deQn2HM0a82Y1bHH7DL-ZKCoOUAj4S1er2JZp94y5Y_7IH5-o9rYquxkGyzca8ubkSTRuxSrduhRygwJb4gYHkXM7qvpldv0e3cO553RX_o_SGGmO/s1600/IMG_0635.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKB9nxm9YSfpuRMp9SniBDtwB37j1deQn2HM0a82Y1bHH7DL-ZKCoOUAj4S1er2JZp94y5Y_7IH5-o9rYquxkGyzca8ubkSTRuxSrduhRygwJb4gYHkXM7qvpldv0e3cO553RX_o_SGGmO/s400/IMG_0635.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What's not to like?</td></tr>
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<a href="https://www.carohotel.com/en/">The Hotel Caro</a> was to be my splurge on this trip, and boy did I make the right choice. You want archeology? We got archeology: the building was the former residence of one Marquis de Caro, and in gutting it to put the hotel in, they found all kinds of stuff. Eating breakfast in the restaurant, there were weathered stones on either side of the passage into another room. Most of the relics are captioned, and this just happened to be the gate in the wall of the Arab city. In my hotel. (Breakfast was excellent, and not even the party of 10 screaming Dutch tourists could ruin it. It had all the usual breads and cold cuts and cheeses one gets in Spain with some unusual stuff, of which my favorite was a two-inch pickle sliced in half and filled with that excellent Spanish tuna, a dish that became problematic when it was time to eat it: the pickle was hard, and the tuna squished out when any pressure was applied to the pickle. Tasted good, though. But sloppy.)<br />
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And by "the Arab city," I'm invoking Valencia's history. It was settled when the Romans found it, I guess by Iberio-Celts. The Romans made quick work of them and established a trading outpost, Balancia, with Jews helping manage the trade. The city was destroyed in 75 BC by Pompey during the Roman Civil War, and the city, remote as it was from the eastern Mediterranean, where the action was, remained empty (or mostly so) until somewhere between 5 BC and 5 AD, when Visigoths stumbled upon it: a mostly-built port right on the Mediterranean! Cool! They had a huge party, and at the end of it threw all the leftovers and crockery down a dry well, for which archaeologists thank them. Next came the Moors, who stayed for centuries, although El Cid's army recaptured it between 1094 and 1101, only to be driven out again. In 1238, Christian Spaniards conquered it, and have held on to it ever since.<br />
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It was mid-afternoon when I arrived, so I went for a walk to see where I was. The hotel was tucked away on a quiet back street, but it was easy enough to find (one great thing about Roman-built cities: the roads are built to a grid, and it's pretty easy to find your way around, at least if you have New York in your head), so I felt free to ramble. And I did, camera in hand.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjOhIwF5J6vO7cvjmukgUd_NDmIKfHj5uVmKKcJF99nKdek-41lTpaeY4bNr8OwPeV-iQm9i51hO7t91po_-857fz-3_Y2T86JrYGi6P_1prwB6jhkZsdeb27__Zs14gQ9MddxeeO1JJX3/s1600/DSC_0051.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjOhIwF5J6vO7cvjmukgUd_NDmIKfHj5uVmKKcJF99nKdek-41lTpaeY4bNr8OwPeV-iQm9i51hO7t91po_-857fz-3_Y2T86JrYGi6P_1prwB6jhkZsdeb27__Zs14gQ9MddxeeO1JJX3/s400/DSC_0051.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No idea. A block from the hotel. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiJp44p2C0ZPTZQmXrujI2YHaI3p3gVyV8EZt9MOhhwXf3g5CjmEiaH-VpjqrODEtMmQ5_SXBSKSsNx94bW16l84UswoJJjA8ZKkzRxnp9AyLetn6OZ8eaClnMx4nm5BSf92kfatsYtbMV/s1600/DSC_0054.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiJp44p2C0ZPTZQmXrujI2YHaI3p3gVyV8EZt9MOhhwXf3g5CjmEiaH-VpjqrODEtMmQ5_SXBSKSsNx94bW16l84UswoJJjA8ZKkzRxnp9AyLetn6OZ8eaClnMx4nm5BSf92kfatsYtbMV/s400/DSC_0054.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Cathedral has an octagonal spire. Thanks, Arabs!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfpDuoZ4R_ukiajdM3TisBMX18U1KknaG_gLpbxiZLLqBmWcpnq4wbhxwGu2_EPnHTTq_LZdMB5LBmzNoh6M0j5m2A_gf02c4dy11M_qb0nKPys15MhgFSt1KEDyM53kWLag76aey0Yz1X/s1600/DSC_0057.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfpDuoZ4R_ukiajdM3TisBMX18U1KknaG_gLpbxiZLLqBmWcpnq4wbhxwGu2_EPnHTTq_LZdMB5LBmzNoh6M0j5m2A_gf02c4dy11M_qb0nKPys15MhgFSt1KEDyM53kWLag76aey0Yz1X/s400/DSC_0057.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Serrano gate and towers</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_yR5W-FMZcTQiyr8rm5dkygEiJcZKOkeFZNMzNcnLF2lsLjXORmJi4ANSAtFAnSHBW66wLST6lu7CaKwjjqyhJpUSIMk7Rk5pkuUvKmMLZiz7a0xLdoRM8JHVWuYCOZctEGgGQOhAovGB/s1600/DSC_0064.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_yR5W-FMZcTQiyr8rm5dkygEiJcZKOkeFZNMzNcnLF2lsLjXORmJi4ANSAtFAnSHBW66wLST6lu7CaKwjjqyhJpUSIMk7Rk5pkuUvKmMLZiz7a0xLdoRM8JHVWuYCOZctEGgGQOhAovGB/s400/DSC_0064.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Basilica at the end of a street</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKB-GAoid_ahlMQ6eX6hNrQWppHbitYYlXu73N-XkuMYndvicCBYAPFL-sxjAQBhyphenhyphenLEhyphenhyphenZSeOHjEUDXxZiQHgWyl8R6c-JPXneCfb7L3rGEejMWI52ilXH-dg9rD0yy5U2b21dXpawgSB/s1600/DSC_0066.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKB-GAoid_ahlMQ6eX6hNrQWppHbitYYlXu73N-XkuMYndvicCBYAPFL-sxjAQBhyphenhyphenLEhyphenhyphenZSeOHjEUDXxZiQHgWyl8R6c-JPXneCfb7L3rGEejMWI52ilXH-dg9rD0yy5U2b21dXpawgSB/s400/DSC_0066.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Like Barcelona, Valencia is home to some of the coolest street art in the world. This guy is omnipresent.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5UhTgEMzQ7QnNQBA46NQ66bFO8OwCW0BIyiqRKrEqclGOZDJdtu0YCfdOUwlsPVay1ck0dMefT4aylX6ySm44ehuQdCPqnLA5RUwPghu7YtmmT-buEmw7Rrk-nJI_LizQGkfw2pT7jVWT/s1600/DSC_0071.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5UhTgEMzQ7QnNQBA46NQ66bFO8OwCW0BIyiqRKrEqclGOZDJdtu0YCfdOUwlsPVay1ck0dMefT4aylX6ySm44ehuQdCPqnLA5RUwPghu7YtmmT-buEmw7Rrk-nJI_LizQGkfw2pT7jVWT/s400/DSC_0071.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"In the kingdom of the blind," which I didn't know was a quote from Erasmus (and maybe isn't: don't believe everything you read in the street!).</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimoHRs0IYDe8dz7YgeFjjTx6P7dcdVoOf7zTWC7B6LeCEYjgZufMzYJlzxzh-wCpHnN_H32tQ35VlG0fpeZyEGBC4HOBYfUFXmzpkybPcaMQpGoyH2wAuPAGsa1nhPUCaZoc2b1P7ySABg/s1600/DSC_0073.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimoHRs0IYDe8dz7YgeFjjTx6P7dcdVoOf7zTWC7B6LeCEYjgZufMzYJlzxzh-wCpHnN_H32tQ35VlG0fpeZyEGBC4HOBYfUFXmzpkybPcaMQpGoyH2wAuPAGsa1nhPUCaZoc2b1P7ySABg/s400/DSC_0073.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The bullet holes in the Quart towers made me nostalgic for my old neighborhood in Berlin when I first got there, before they erased the evidence of the battle. These were inflicted in, I believe, 1833, when the French wanted in. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCYGwWRZ9gdGtYsiUG5yMGEWeQkCQzPgYxt3oz53nVrBO7z5sQex8MFnZ6j0rHcR1Jh5Y61jpaeYhBgotRPFoUuZw7XBNpJHaF6peHB0ja3AalwkF06QQr7V0ovqujmnRAnWTu6Z9RRvLG/s1600/DSC_0082.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCYGwWRZ9gdGtYsiUG5yMGEWeQkCQzPgYxt3oz53nVrBO7z5sQex8MFnZ6j0rHcR1Jh5Y61jpaeYhBgotRPFoUuZw7XBNpJHaF6peHB0ja3AalwkF06QQr7V0ovqujmnRAnWTu6Z9RRvLG/s400/DSC_0082.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here he is again, a particularly nice one. I shot many more.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPJgn3eZyzhY7lNdbtw1Sp_xGLvPgBeEZxbQi8Y7CEDuvgnTqtrvsD4wcciyfVyU2_cw39XFtZvfmoWWkcy9Jlgqycw42EqLTMcsqY8GbKrQnBIYeuspE9VKcbAZl-rzvI-G-6MY3TZ_9j/s1600/DSC_0083.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPJgn3eZyzhY7lNdbtw1Sp_xGLvPgBeEZxbQi8Y7CEDuvgnTqtrvsD4wcciyfVyU2_cw39XFtZvfmoWWkcy9Jlgqycw42EqLTMcsqY8GbKrQnBIYeuspE9VKcbAZl-rzvI-G-6MY3TZ_9j/s400/DSC_0083.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And am I right that this is a Banksy?</td></tr>
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As I reached the end of my walk, I suddenly realized that I'd circumnavigated the old town, and was just a block or two from my hotel. I was also bushed: it was still summer here (as it was in the rest of Spain, actually), so I retreated to the hotel room after getting dinner suggestions from the always-helpful front desk. I was told there was a tapas joint just down the street, and I got a couple of other suggestions, which I researched as I relaxed.<br />
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Still tired as dinnertime approached, I walked to the tapas place, although I actually wanted a full meal. But I forgot that there are tapas places and tapas places. I ordered the "three queens" (marinated white anchovies, regular anchovies, and sardines: incredible), a plate of grilled vegetables with romesco sauce (the waitress warned me it was very big, and it was) and one of their <i>tostas</i>, a big slice of grilled bread with a topping; in this case three local sausages. To go with it, I noticed some local beers, one of which, <a href="http://www.originalcv.es/tienda/xiii-hombres/">XIII Hombres</a>, called itself an "American IPA." Not only was it, but it was absolutely amazing. I had another.<br />
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The next day I arose lazily, took my time showering, and turned on my iPad to see what the e-mail had brought. And what it had brought was very bad news, indeed: I had asked a nearby friend to check the house every now and then because although I'd held my mail, UPS and FedEx don't do holds, so there was a possibility of a package on the front step. The friend had been called away by a death in his family and was in Buffalo, and he'd delegated the porch watch to another guy. This guy had shown up and seen water pouring out from under the front door, photographed it, and sent it to Buffalo, where it got forwarded to me in Valencia. I immediately sent it to my landlord, who went over to see what was happening, and what was happening was horrible: the toilet near my office had blown a gasket, and was shooting water out at a quick pace. It had flooded the entire house to a depth of 1 ½ inches, and caused ceilings to fall in and floorboards to warp. Anything that was on the floor, which included CD boxes and the entire inventory I'd had for sale at my Amazon store, was soaked. The closet opposite the toilet contained all my t-shirts, meaning what I had with me was all that I knew were wearable.<br />
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As I thought about it, I realized that there was nothing I could do. I didn't have renters insurance because I'd been almost dead broke when I'd moved back to the US, and then I'd just never thought of it. The damage was most likely done in the first couple of hours, as the paper fibers soaked up the flood. Even if I'd been in Austin, I might have been elsewhere when it happened. It was done. I didn't know just how badly, but it was done. I had another night paid for in my hotel, a couple more in Tarragona, and a last one in Barcelona, so I might as well finish the trip. Dealing with it would have to wait until I got back. I made a note to find a hotel in Austin, and then did what any rational human being would do when such a spiritual crisis hit: after breakfast, I went back to the room and prepared to go to church.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu1FLZexd3MPA3da5Zl1Bum36ALoB5QtzUfTg6C0mlQoEReW6sfArr5Q5tDuRXOFtGtgllyRMFziKRC7eLlFgpkAKMcaZYwPAsUcEdzyswM5_mrndDPzCgoc1919yDfx-KJplBXEa1StAC/s1600/DSC_0090.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu1FLZexd3MPA3da5Zl1Bum36ALoB5QtzUfTg6C0mlQoEReW6sfArr5Q5tDuRXOFtGtgllyRMFziKRC7eLlFgpkAKMcaZYwPAsUcEdzyswM5_mrndDPzCgoc1919yDfx-KJplBXEa1StAC/s400/DSC_0090.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The dome of the Mercado Central</td></tr>
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Valencia's Mercado Central, the central market, is one of the largest in Spain. Unlike the ones in France it doesn't open in the early morning and shut at 2; it opens at 9 and stays open until the early evening. There are over 1000 vendors, most of whom seemed to be out in full force on the day I went. And there was an amazing variety of stuff.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTRlM0zxulbepX9mq5VuDIPSdPBjET1L-NUIGNJpRwfDH_CXtmKSnaa3IIaVSFaVcWiy4VQFAN0IV3M_Q4NlXXTlXD0dZ3a5ocF8X9HSHTE9yous0Gj_2n346Gk5VbC2Zl3lAIf6d2vCeV/s1600/DSC_0092.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTRlM0zxulbepX9mq5VuDIPSdPBjET1L-NUIGNJpRwfDH_CXtmKSnaa3IIaVSFaVcWiy4VQFAN0IV3M_Q4NlXXTlXD0dZ3a5ocF8X9HSHTE9yous0Gj_2n346Gk5VbC2Zl3lAIf6d2vCeV/s400/DSC_0092.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pimentón is what we call paprika, and the Spanish take it very seriously as an important ingredient in their cooking. The heat levels aren't particularly scary, but the deftness with which a good cook adds it to a dish is. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7CnR9JsQ0IY3Cm7deKJuXlMCjuaHdXtNFGcw7LlsmByRyvFqkiI0B3WKS3lDo_g25ayNI-EP-jBpH9cXkTfHAU83tXP6gxZ6Bxa-X-ui_yfcfwg-0CkI68Zh_1SaNOkc8z5vauLwTjZmu/s1600/DSC_0093.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7CnR9JsQ0IY3Cm7deKJuXlMCjuaHdXtNFGcw7LlsmByRyvFqkiI0B3WKS3lDo_g25ayNI-EP-jBpH9cXkTfHAU83tXP6gxZ6Bxa-X-ui_yfcfwg-0CkI68Zh_1SaNOkc8z5vauLwTjZmu/s400/DSC_0093.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Does anyone know how you're supposed to eat these little crablets I saw all over Spain (but not on menus)?</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx-lwmy871Zs27KuGd_fq3A8wjN8O1m1ttcFpu-Wim5rD5u1aDoCDetDk0B1igy0-T56yH2MM8LjDmZccuQkZ3FYjdPstPm3H14LNurDdzTQU6MXi5sw5UTjN2apLMmAjHtbskusp-j1AK/s1600/DSC_0094.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx-lwmy871Zs27KuGd_fq3A8wjN8O1m1ttcFpu-Wim5rD5u1aDoCDetDk0B1igy0-T56yH2MM8LjDmZccuQkZ3FYjdPstPm3H14LNurDdzTQU6MXi5sw5UTjN2apLMmAjHtbskusp-j1AK/s400/DSC_0094.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Live eels, swimming vigorously. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Zao2M_QODXXIv03q80XacIbX_wH65cyjwtcus-AtLng6-uObQE-X0NxtQtV4Zzw8qQhVWRNXkRiKI4blgWpmRwj03cMoyUa7WRdIpuZlFn2oBRzAs2ZBf5IQtLF0WIWdPHZhGtJdNLsI/s1600/DSC_0095.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Zao2M_QODXXIv03q80XacIbX_wH65cyjwtcus-AtLng6-uObQE-X0NxtQtV4Zzw8qQhVWRNXkRiKI4blgWpmRwj03cMoyUa7WRdIpuZlFn2oBRzAs2ZBf5IQtLF0WIWdPHZhGtJdNLsI/s400/DSC_0095.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I hear those red shrimp are incredible. I'll find out how incredible next time. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW2WIX83iFQa78FAPHfZ088PcI4_zMUcRMunf75KmY2Tn6vLdpTIfRHhP_ESBez9-9Rp_T9re9MW9q6507iv0kVSgAaGAjXZOiqhsnygmRay0KNuKVo4OfjegUoaOttuMnozJg3ijQPCDh/s1600/DSC_0096.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW2WIX83iFQa78FAPHfZ088PcI4_zMUcRMunf75KmY2Tn6vLdpTIfRHhP_ESBez9-9Rp_T9re9MW9q6507iv0kVSgAaGAjXZOiqhsnygmRay0KNuKVo4OfjegUoaOttuMnozJg3ijQPCDh/s400/DSC_0096.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tiny eggplants of some sort. No idea what to do with them. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ9Hj-Ke6eXcSNletzZV62ckpkb-L2XzKPrOHA62JN62mm4NhPBc9jm1qHZ8UDC_ojF62gEmAzVc5KA380iRgpS-xvdg9DsEZID7wyu7o9O1tssq6x8x830yUOsIXRNrn9nMVQ2xUIik45/s1600/DSC_0097.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ9Hj-Ke6eXcSNletzZV62ckpkb-L2XzKPrOHA62JN62mm4NhPBc9jm1qHZ8UDC_ojF62gEmAzVc5KA380iRgpS-xvdg9DsEZID7wyu7o9O1tssq6x8x830yUOsIXRNrn9nMVQ2xUIik45/s400/DSC_0097.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beans and more beans</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS6QUX-b2JJSw_l_KnuPG-9QOvHfeSBWuFW9s8Y6dSlXXfbJvVgmdsg5I-FAKG_bWHXUmHF9cAuwCmzFT6HAlNnPA97CrnjWpb2NJXHMcTf5tgjZNXiUEV3gHwfLEXdvyLL9z5XwVeAocn/s1600/DSC_0100.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS6QUX-b2JJSw_l_KnuPG-9QOvHfeSBWuFW9s8Y6dSlXXfbJvVgmdsg5I-FAKG_bWHXUmHF9cAuwCmzFT6HAlNnPA97CrnjWpb2NJXHMcTf5tgjZNXiUEV3gHwfLEXdvyLL9z5XwVeAocn/s400/DSC_0100.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Believe it or not, this is a pretty mediocre selection of olives and pickles for Spain, and the only reason I shot this is they were so compactly displayed. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyFC4ZqCKdSaXxaIgWj1_vU4fa7_qaDX2Vn-GVpqbnz8wF2Z7f67kELizcZfo_TfCF2HrW5Uq04Mxx2WFAfvVYf65JXbDmYtvjba8-px4bIEnqUV2HY3Y1r4d4XC3nsHZ_ipVKUWtLVjc8/s1600/DSC_0099.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyFC4ZqCKdSaXxaIgWj1_vU4fa7_qaDX2Vn-GVpqbnz8wF2Z7f67kELizcZfo_TfCF2HrW5Uq04Mxx2WFAfvVYf65JXbDmYtvjba8-px4bIEnqUV2HY3Y1r4d4XC3nsHZ_ipVKUWtLVjc8/s400/DSC_0099.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fresh cheeses. You have to know what basket-imprint means what variety of cheese: they mature in wicker baskets that leave the impression of their weave on each piece. </td></tr>
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I bought some ham and lomo (cured pork loin) and a bunch of spicy chorizo (a cold-cut, not like the Mexican kind we get in Texas) from a nice lady at the Francés stand, and some equally sealed-in-plastic olives from a stand called Oiled & Salt (it's legal to bring the meats in if they're sealed), and headed back to the hotel to drop them off.<br />
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Believe it or not, after that long trek through the Mercado, I wasn't hungry: I'd indulged myself at breakfast on purpose. And, just a block from the hotel was a promising-looking archeological museum, so I headed over there. It turned out to be a continuation of the stuff found under my hotel: mostly Roman remains, a whole lot of the feast pottery from the Visigoths, and the remains of a small Visigothic chapel, which is thought to be where the city's first saint (whose name I didn't write down) was martyred. L'Almoina, as this center's called, is a modern building built over a 20-year dig, illuminated by a glass ceiling looking down on it all from the plaza outside. It's got ruins of the crossorads of the two main streets of the Roman city, the Arab fort, and various tombs. It's also got technical problems, making many of the explanatory videos either distorted or just plain not working, and when I was there there was a crew of filmmakers blocking access to a lot of stuff and shooing the few visitors away.<br />
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One thing I'd loved in Castellón, unexpectedly, was the art museum's entire floor of Valencian ceramics. This art came to this part of the world with the Arabs, and I fell in love with the primitive designs. I wanted to see if I could score a piece -- reproductions are still being made in the traditional designs -- so I also wanted to see what the Museum of Ceramics had to offer. This is in one of the most over-the-top houses I've ever seen, evidence that in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Spanish nobility had waaaay too much money.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVKTRz3ZoJgHuhjSRJnBPQ3h6NM_z0hE5bkzsz6EiWKulTScbyR-3sNlkTnEvUFd9a0PWresWLlI49gnPKfB4Ncq8-Und8xG3XNfDTahF_G6ZkFWKCopnU_5rFCBhcN2WZQe4OeOEL_jMf/s1600/DSC_0108.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVKTRz3ZoJgHuhjSRJnBPQ3h6NM_z0hE5bkzsz6EiWKulTScbyR-3sNlkTnEvUFd9a0PWresWLlI49gnPKfB4Ncq8-Und8xG3XNfDTahF_G6ZkFWKCopnU_5rFCBhcN2WZQe4OeOEL_jMf/s400/DSC_0108.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It was kind of hard to shoot, but you get the idea</td></tr>
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The interior is ghastly, too, and the museum personnel distinctly unfriendly, a novelty for Spain. But, over in one room, they had some of the plates I'd admired:<br />
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The other major piece of folk art there is a Spanish tiled kitchen.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2ZtfJOl1WKMbe6CK8PueGAMIt-88D0Ezh0XWJVXIGLY2cHtFWDSGDUkJGUnBSQb04hV1m_mzSp3-MhdZ0zIJJw96x4tv_1iueQhxjlJrT029vjldA15cof-MD55-huP2I6Yo1GZqi2C3_/s1600/DSC_0113.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2ZtfJOl1WKMbe6CK8PueGAMIt-88D0Ezh0XWJVXIGLY2cHtFWDSGDUkJGUnBSQb04hV1m_mzSp3-MhdZ0zIJJw96x4tv_1iueQhxjlJrT029vjldA15cof-MD55-huP2I6Yo1GZqi2C3_/s400/DSC_0113.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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But there was nothing for sale, either there or in the surrounding neighborhood, that I could see. I was somewhat less enthusiastic about buying a piece, too, when I reflected that I didn't know where I'd be living and I didn't really want to lug it around with me back in Austin.<br />
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So I decided to check out the municipal art museum, and realized when I crossed the river that I was actually slightly hungry, so after a nice dish of fried calamari and a beer in the adjoining restaurant, I went into the museum itself and saw some wild medieval altarpieces and even wilder baroque ones and some more ecclesiastical art (Spanish depictions of Christ tend to center on the Easter story, with him getting whipped, crucified, pierced by the lance, wearing the crown of thorns, and being taken off the cross, and he bleeds like an overripe tomato: the blood gushes in torrents), a couple of nice Goyas, and a lot of people in uniforms staring at me. I was touristed out: hotel time again.<br />
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Dinner, later, was at the same tapas bar with the same huge portions and a couple of beers from the XIII Hombres brewery that were a bit gentler. I remember a tremendous gazpacho, a seafood salad, and...something else. (The tapas bar, incidentally, is called Bar Almudin after the street it's on, and the huge Arab building across the narrow street, al-Mudin, and Bar Almudin has been there since 1932). I realized that there was some anxiety humming in the background, and tried to sort it out. Some of it was the usual "the vacation is ending" stuff, and there was also the certainty that I had no idea what was going to happen next, once I got back. I'd taxied to the railroad station in the afternoon and had my ticket for tomorrow's trip. I'd go to Tarragona, but I really wanted to stay in Valencia. I had a feeling I hadn't even scratched the surface and that there was much yet to discover and enjoy. But the vacation was, in fact, ending, and I was being propelled into the future, like it or not.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">15th century tiles in my room in the Caro</td></tr>
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<br />Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-77042026129257731912016-10-18T22:36:00.002+02:002016-10-18T22:36:51.271+02:00Surrounded By Jews -- ¿In Spain?Next stop Toledo. If I could manage it, that is: the brave concierge at my hotel spent 2 ½ hours negotiating the Renfe website trying to get a ticket, and the best he could do was to get a confirmation number for me to show the ticket agent. To be honest, if the cabbie hadn't taken me through the park, I would have known how close the station really was and done it in person, but we agreed it was an educational experience and he might be asked to do it again.<br />
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That said, I walked down to the train station, bid the turtles a brief adios, and got on a train that took a bit over an hour to get to Toledo. Again, the scenery was almost nonexistent, but once we got there, it was obvious why a city had grown up there, surrounded as it is by a river. But the first thing I had to do was get out of the train station. That was easy enough, but the station was gorgeous.<br />
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Although compared to the rest of the city the station is obviously recent, it deliberately recalls the work of the Mudéjars, Muslims who stayed in Spain after the <i>reconquista</i>, the taking of the former Arab state of al-Andaluz by the Spanish. This, and the vibrant Jewish community the city had supported, was part of what I came to see.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yawn. Another city on another hill. Taken near the railroad station. </td></tr>
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This time the cab driver took me through the park again, but he had to: Toledo is seriously pedestrianized, and its drivable streets aren't real intuitive. I'd picked my hotel carefully: it was the only one that mentioned that it was in the heart of the old<i> judería</i>, the Jewish neighborhood, which proved to be a smart place to be from a number of viewpoints. For one thing, it was away from the tourist crush. For another thing, signs all over town point to the synagogues, and just a few feet away was the Maria Blanca synagogue, which I hustled off to see. This had been built by the Mudéjars for the local Jews and then, after the Expulsion, had been turned into a church dedicated to the purity of the Virgin by a fanatical priest. Now it's been reclaimed as a historical monument, and the Arab influence is everywhere.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The main sanctuary is marked off by these pillars</td></tr>
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Outside, there's a small building with an art gallery in it, and that's where I headed next. A friend in Austin had told me that a friend of hers sometimes worked there, spoke English, and gave a great tour of the <i>judería</i> if you asked for an appointment. Her name is not Naomi, so that's what I'll call her: tour guides are heavily regulated in Toledo, mostly for good reasons (and there are tons of tourists on tours you'll encounter as you walk the streets). Leading an unlicensed tour can get you a massive fine, so if you're headed to Toledo and want the tour, let me know and I'll let her know. We made an appointment for the next day.<br />
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I had the rest of the day to wander around. The medieval city part of Toledo -- the part on the hill -- isn't all that large, and my next stop was the Sephardic Museum, housed in another former synagogue, El Tránsito.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Impossible to photograph the main room, but I tried</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Upstairs there was this room with these inscriptions. I later learned that the inscription in the roundel was probably Hebrew, but written in Arabic script! </td></tr>
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The inside of this synagogue reflects the wealth of Samuel Levi, who built it (and was later murdered by the king, Pedro the Cruel, who seized his money) and here again the Arabic influence is everywhere. The museum itself tries a bit too hard, presuming no knowledge of Judaism whatever, which, for Spanish visitors, might be true. It's remarkable, though, that as much of the original decoration and structure remains, and it's worth the couple of Euros it costs to get in just to wander around and gaze.<br />
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From here I wandered around a bit, going up the hill and looking for other sites that might fill me in on the city's history. My advice is to be careful: even the city-sanctioned sites can be a ripoff. There was a (non-sanctioned) museum in a former monastery dedicated to the Cathars and other sacred military orders who participated in the Crusades. It's run by a crazy deaf guy who hands you a book of translations of the captions on a bunch of pictures set up in the main part of the museum. Not a single authentic artifact around: it appears to be run by a company that produces ripoff "museums" like this and the inevitable Museum of Torture you find in various European cities. You'd learn more from a magazine article on the Crusades. But the church of El Salvador, which <i>is</i> sanctioned, is just as much of a ripoff. It advertises itself as an archeological site with Visigothic and Arab elements, but you go in and walk into the courtyard and up some stairs and see a bunch of stones with no labelling to tell you what they are. You emerge €2.50 poorer and no wiser.<br />
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It was okay: I'd already paid the fake Crusader museum €2.50, and I was learning my way around this part of town. I'd eaten lunch next to a church where Toledo's most famous Christian, El Greco, had a painting (didn't go in: €2.50 saved), and marvelled at the huge number of souvenir shops selling swords (Toledo blades! A sign in the train station warns that you might not be able to take "certain souvenirs" as carryon luggage, and this is what they mean) and knives and lots and lots of bits of <i>damasqueño</i>, gold-inlaid steel, an art brought to the city by Jews from Damascus. I came close to the cathedral, but managed to miss it, and the afternoon was ending, so I headed back to the hotel to start to think about dinner.<br />
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A quick search on the web indicated that there wasn't much in the<i> judería</i> (and none of it kosher, not that that was an issue for me), but a restaurant called <a href="http://restaurantelaorza.com/en">La Orza</a> looked good. I used TripAdvisor's Fork app to make a reservation and went off at the appointed time. Turned out that Fork had made the reservation for the next night instead, but after a bit of sniffing, they found me a table next to a gaggle of obnoxious Germans who alternated their time between arguing which was the best Kenny G album and berating the waiter over various allergy issues. I alternated between hating them and marvelling that my German came back so quickly. But the food was spectacular: a "carpaccio" of fresh boletus mushrooms studded with some kind of truffle cream and a loin of venison with a not-too-sweet glaze. The wine was just as good: a locally-grown wine called <a href="http://www.martue.com/">Martúe</a>, which will set you back a whopping €6.80 in the local stores and is a stunning blend of Syrah, Cabernet, Merlot, Tempranillo, and Petit Verdot.<br />
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The next day at noon, I met Naomi in front of Maria Blanca, and was treated to a tour of the invisible <i>judería</i>. It's invisible, of course, because of 1492, the year Ferdinand and Isabella, co-rulers of a newly-unified Spain, ordered all the non-Christians out of the country, an order that was enforced by the Vatican's faith police, aka the Inquisition. Convert or leave was the order, and many agreed to convert, at least on the surface. It was the Inquisition's job to prove those conversions by trying those accused of continuing to practice Jewish rituals, a practice known as auto-da-fé. If you got that far, you were probably going to be sentenced to death.<br />
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According to Naomi, it's thought that the first Jews on the Iberian Peninsula came with Phoenician traders, and stayed on to form an infrastructure for traders. The Romans also brought Jews, who did business tasks, including banking. (I've always loved the fact that Cologne had Jews before it had Germans: it was a Roman colonial administrative center from which the Germanic tribes were, for obvious reasons, excluded). The conquest of Iberia by the Arabs didn't change much: their Islam had been coexisting with Judaism in northern Africa, and the two cultures' preoccupations -- theology, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, medicine -- meshed pretty well, although the Jews honed in on medicine and their kabbalistic studies had an impact on astronomy/astrology that helped the Arabs' Mediterranean seafaring become more accurate. Toledo had a whole section of its <i>judería</i> that consisted of nothing but kabbalistic synagogues and midrashes (schools). The <i>reconquista</i> forced the Arabs to convert eventually (although as the tons of Mudéjar work in Toledo shows, not immediately), but since the Jews were sequestered in the <i>judería</i> (both by decree and choice), they stayed on until 1492.<br />
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Naomi made an interesting point that I hadn't considered: Christian children were by and large not educated unless they were of the ruling classes. Education was paramount in Arab and Jewish society: madrassas and midrashes (notice the similarity in the terms) provided an education for all children, and in the <i>judería</i>, at least, wealthy Jews subsidized the less well-off. In this way, a bright but poor Jewish kid could ascend the ladder of society, lifting his family with him. No wonder the Christian rabble feared and despised them, and the Jews built walls to control who could get in and out of their community, and when.<br />
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As we walked the back streets of the judería, Naomi's x-ray vision saw through walls and floors, illuminating very ordinary-seeming things. The wall behind Maria Blanca, for instance, was oriented towards Jerusalem, and after the Expulsion, <i>conversos</i>, the nominally Catholic former Jews, would touch it surreptitiously. Secret signs pointed to a house with a well in it, essential for fire control in the <i>judería</i>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This ball is just one of several well signs; once you know about them, you see them everywhere in the <i>júderia</i>.</td></tr>
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A set of chains is a secret memorial for a Jewish blacksmith who lived in that house and was ordered to forge them to bind prisoners headed to the auto-da-fé -- many of whom were Jews.<br />
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Naomi saw through floors: the cellars of the Jewish houses housed some Jews before they could get out of Spain, and many of them buried their treasures there, confident Spain would let them back in. A house in the former <i>judería</i>, then, became a hot item on the post-Expulsion real estate market: Jews were forbidden to take money or gold out of the country when they left, and everyone just <i>knew</i> there were giant hoards of gold in thoes cellars. And there may have been, but the most recent item to emerge from a cellar was a tattered Torah, displayed in the Sephardic Museum.<br />
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Some Jews didn't go far: many <i>conversos</i> settled in the hills outside of Toledo, forming all-Jewish -- excuse me, <i>converso</i> -- communities who, over time, forgot about their heritage, at least a little bit. Naomi's visited some of them, and found a baker in one who made an egg bread on Saturdays that, for some reason, always sold out. Why make it then? Why does it sell out? It's a dimly-remembered challah, made with eggs to keep it moist over the Sabbath, when you can't bake a new loaf. A few Spanish scholars are beginning to look into this, and a trickle of money from Israel is helping out.<br />
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Most of Naomi's tour didn't lend itself to photographs: the Jews of Toledo are mostly ghosts by now. Even Naomi isn't Jewish by tradition: her father was a Sephardic Jew, but her mother isn't, and Jewish descent is matrilineal. I'm pretty sure she's officialized her Judaism by now; her passion for the subject shows a deep internalization of an ethos that exists proudly in a small number of Spaniards in the 21st century.<br />
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All over the <i>judería</i>, I noticed tiny tiles set into walls and paths.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sefarad</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSIOrmhsYlzNBiOCBf-z4pdE9vq4NJhC43Mqp4f0l6gxlfGFl7v2Ia0eb0CZfqFEa11VBM_x7astEEof5tvVd9FaGMe7wRAZLz7fOu_lsU23i53ZPwK6zPS14TD25AAY3u2omzjZPaGrD5/s1600/IMG_0621.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSIOrmhsYlzNBiOCBf-z4pdE9vq4NJhC43Mqp4f0l6gxlfGFl7v2Ia0eb0CZfqFEa11VBM_x7astEEof5tvVd9FaGMe7wRAZLz7fOu_lsU23i53ZPwK6zPS14TD25AAY3u2omzjZPaGrD5/s320/IMG_0621.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The name of God</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The mysterious menorah</td></tr>
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I didn't quite get Naomi's explanation of this, but the top one, when all of them are mapped onto a map of Toledo, forms a map of Sefarad, the Jewish name for the Iberian Peninsula. The city did this project to promote the Jewish heritage of Toledo, but they botched it badly: they placed them on the roadway, under trash baskets, and other inappropriate places: no observant Jew would tread on the name of God, but lots of nonobservant tourists (including me before I heard the explanation) would and did.<br />
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I was astonished how much I'd learned in a short time, and Naomi had to get back to work and pick her daughter up from school, so I thanked her profusely and gave her a tip, and wished her luck in her ongoing research into a subject that was actually pretty taboo until just recently. As I wandered off, in search of the El Greco House and lunch (not necessarily in that order) it occurred to me that Toledo's really missing a bet not marketing the judería to American Jewish tourists, but later I realized that American Jews are overwhelmingly Ashkenazi (Eastern European and, according to Naomi, more focused on rules and laws), not Sephardic (more focused on mysticism and science, she said). Before I could muse further, an outdoor <i>cervesería</i> with inviting food hove into view, and I sat. Lunch was a mind-blowing thing called a <i>timbal de codorniz</i>, which Google seems to have as any round, layered cold tapa. Mine had (I think) pickled rabbit and green peas in an aspic and was just what the doctor ordered.<br />
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It turned out that the El Greco House was just past the Sephardic Museum, and by this point I figured I had to give the Christians a little something of my time, and if there was a Toledan Christian deserving of it, it would be El Greco, who was, as his name shows, a Greek from Crete who came to Spain after training in Venice. He was sure that with his skills, he could get all kinds of gigs, especially in what was then the capital of Spain. He was wrong: the very things that make people consider him a master today repelled the authorities, and although he kept on painting, he never made as much money as his more conventional contemporaries. His stock was at an all-time low when the Toledan Marquis of Vega Inclán decided to celebrate him by turning El Greco's house into a museum. There were a couple of hitches: the property wasn't actually El Greco's former house (nobody seems to know where it was), and it turned out not many of his paintings were available to buy, since they were in the Prado, the Metropolitan Museum, and elsewhere. The Marquis got what he could, including a full set of portraits of Jesus and the Apostles (there's another set by El Greco, more conventional in style, in, I think, the Cathedral), slapped them into the house, threw in some period furniture, and then discovered that the house had been built over Samuel Levi's house, and its cellar was intact. (Did he find anything there? Who knows? But it's notable that although it's set back from the road, the museum is next door to the Sephardic Museum in the synagogue Levi built: €5 gets you a ticket to both). I was dead tired from walking by now, and just two blocks from my hotel, so I went back and crashed for a while.<br />
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When I woke up, I decided to walk to the train station to get my next day's tickets to Valencia. I exited through the Jews' Gate and walked twenty minutes to the station, got my ticket to Madrid and then Valencia (the guy wouldn't book me on the Valencia train that was eight minutes after the Toledo train got in -- gotta love ol' Renfe! -- so I'd have to spend an hour with the turtles), and walked back via the upper old town, where the Alcázar, the huge fort, was, getting there via a very convenient network of escalators, a very civilized way to ascend to that part of town.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Obviously not the Jews' Gate any more...</td></tr>
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That night, I ate at the hotel's restaurant, which was actually pretty good. I had partridge, which is the city's signature dish, and I would have enjoyed it more if it weren't the gaspergoo of the avian world: like the Cajun alleged-delicacy, it seems to have thousands of bones.<br />
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The next morning I had a bit of time, and went next door to the hotel and wandered through what I could of the church of San Juan de los Reyes, built to commemorate the union of the kingdoms of Aragon and Castille through the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. Built on the site of the kaballists' neighborhood, it apparently has chains liberated from the Christian slaves in Arabic Granada when it was liberated, but all that was open was a chapel and the cloisters, which show more Mujédar influence, its origins long lost to those who built it. Or were they?<br />
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Soon enough, it was time for a cab to the station. Next up, Valencia, and more Arabs, Jews -- and Romans, too.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Bye, Toledo</td></tr>
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<br />Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-72116300964877478362016-10-17T21:32:00.000+02:002016-10-19T22:46:10.516+02:00Spain 101, Part One: EntryHere's the way I figured it: In September, I'd be promoting <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1613733283/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=berlinbites-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1613733283&linkId=065d1c060c4e15ac35aa926cac1f0fe9">my Michael Bloomfield book</a> (you do have your copy, right?). Come late October, and going into November, I'd be hard at work promoting my first new book in 33 years, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/125007116X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=berlinbites-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=125007116X&linkId=f7017d45b4ff127d6cc38eeda4d84c75">The History of Rock & Roll Part 1</a>. There would be a gap, and in that gap airfares would fall. I was getting mighty sick of America, between the horrific election, the lack of civility in everyday society, and all the rest of the stuff I don't have to tell you about. Google Flights informed me that I could afford a round-trip ticket to Barcelona, which seemed, as always, to be a great place to shake off the jetlag. But I've spent a lot of time there, and I have, since <a href="http://wardinfrance.blogspot.com/2016/04/europe-spring-2016-part-five-spain.html">my visit to Girona</a> this spring, developed an inexplicable fascination for that part of Spanish history where Spaniards (whoever they may have been in any given area of the Iberian Peninsula), Jews, and "Arabs" (more properly Maghrebis, since they, like most of the Jews, were from Northern Africa) lived together, not always peaceably, but... Of course, it ended in 1492, when Spain kicked out all of its scientists, physicians, mathematicians, philosophers and businessmen (ie, Arabs and Jews) and descended into 350 years of being a peasant society under the heel of the Inquisition.<br />
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Thus, I decided to read up on this history and go visit some of it. Lest the trip be too medieval, I also planned to stop in Madrid, a city that went up mostly in the late 19th and 20th centuries, to see the Prado and visit someone I knew there. After that, it would be a short train ride to Toledo, which has a fascinating history of the three-culture society, then back through Madrid to Valencia, up the coast to Tarragona, and back to Barcelona for a good rest before getting back on the plane. I had about two weeks to squeeze this in, and let me tell you in front, that wasn't enough in some of these places. Also, I've missed a couple of important sites, most notably Grenada, where the Arabs held on right up to the Expulsion. I mapped it all out carefully, chose some good looking hotels, and bought a Renfe Spain Pass, which entitled me to five trips on the Ave, the Spanish national railroad's high-speed network.<br />
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Pro tip: Do not buy a Spain Pass. Allegedly, Renfe lets you print out your tickets. In practice, negotiating their website is about as difficult as it can be, as we'll see. Renfe has now displaced '90s-era Deutsche Telekom as the worst-managed public utility in Europe in my mind.<br />
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Another pro tip: Wherever you may be travelling, if you use the Rough Guide series, there'll be a Kindle edition of it on Amazon. I bought <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1409369137/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=berlinbites-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1409369137&linkId=8cabb8af41c6aa7148b44f41d5b3fcad">the Spanish edition</a>, and loaded it onto my iPad, and it was an unexpected joy: hot links everywhere to museum websites, local tourist info offices, and the like, as well as excellent maps which you tap twice and they blow up bigger than they are in the paper book itself. Highest recommendations.<br />
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Okay, I'm packed. Let's get outta here.<br />
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There's not much of Tourist Barcelona I haven't seen, but I do have a strong affection for the city, and love to start off my trips there. There were two museums I'd neglected, and they gave me an excuse to leave the hotel to do something besides eat. One was the <a href="http://www.macba.cat/en/">MACBA</a>, the Barcelona contemprorary art museum. Greil Marcus had just been there and seen a show dedicated to punk, which would be interesting because punk hit Spain very shortly after Franco was deposed, and my guess was that they'd have a very different take on it. I walked down there to discover that the show had closed on Sunday, and today was Thursday. Dang. But it was a lovely building, and what else was I going to do? Turns out the answer was not stay for very long: the ground floor was filled with an insufferable one-woman show by an artist whose work is criticism of the art world. I knew this kind of stuff existed, because a woman I know in Germany does it, but wall after wall of documents and videos of this woman complaining about minutiae can only be of deep interest to people deeply involved in it, which isn't me. Upstairs, the permanent collection also seemed to focus on conceptual and text-heavy work, never my thing. The one room I found fascinating, though, was a large one concerned with the Downtown New York scene of the 1970s, with a video by Vito Acconci, another by Gordon Matta-Clark, and, on a full wall, a documentation (perversely attributed to the woman who'd filmed it) of a Trisha Brown dance performance. I'd read a great deal about her, but of course never seen her in her prime. The word that fits is "furious." Not angry, just a phenomenal amount of energy channelled directly into the movement. It made the entire visit to the museum worthwhile. </div>
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I spent some time getting sort of lost in the surrounding neighborhood, relishing the street art and other weirdness before heading back to the tapas bar next to my hotel for a late lunch. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, this is an actual restaurant in Barcelona. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No idea who this artist is, but they're all over town</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Actual Barcelona bar. My kind of clinic, although who knows if it's my kind of bar</td></tr>
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And so, armed with a ticket I'd printed out at home, I bravely walked, with my luggage, to Barcelona Sants station and boarded an Ave to Madrid. </div>
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Jetlag is a nasty companion, so I dozed and missed some of the scenery between Barcelona and Madrid. I use the word advisedly: most of it isn't "scenery" at all, but, rather, sere brownness occasionally interrupted by what could only be called mesas, like in the American West, weird rounded hills with flat tops, made from sedimentary rock. Really bleak, really odd. But the train was on time, a cabbie whisked me to my hotel (an actual palace at one time, but Spain's so full of minor royalty a "palace" isn't quite as grand as it sounds), I checked in, and then went into the neighboring square for a late lunch. After that, I wandered around the vicinity for a while and tried to get a vibe. Back at the hotel, I contacted Miguel, my acquaintance there, and we made a dinner date. He's been living in Madrid for some time, so he knows the city, and later that evening (it's true: Madrileños eat late) we walked through some crowded plazas and down some streets and came to a seafood joint he likes. I never found out the name and have no idea where it was, but most of what we had was prepared the same way: broiled, doused with olive oil, sprinkled with paprika. This allowed the baby scallops, razor clams, and sardines to show off how fresh and perfectly cooked they were. Fine with me!</div>
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Sunday was devoted to the Prado. Now, what could I possibly say about the Prado, right? Well, here's one thing: in 2013, José Luis Várez Fisa and his family were kind enough to drop a nice collection of Spanish art from the 13th to the second decade of the 16th centuries on the museum, who stuck it in a fine set of galleries in the basement, which, if you enter the museum the way I did, can be the first thing you see. Since this is my favorite period of art history until you get to the 20th century, it made the visit totally worthwhile before I'd even gone anywhere. There was a bit more upstairs, but man, the ceiling they'd lifted from a church in León, painted with heraldic designs, Bible stories, myths, and a veritable 14th century kitchen sink of images made my day. </div>
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Upstairs, the museum most people go to see begins, and I dutifully walked it, dodging tour groups, as one does, and hoping to see something that would catch my interest beyond what I already knew would do so. Thanks to <a href="https://www.blogger.com/%3Ciframe%20style=%22width:120px;height:240px;%22%20marginwidth=%220%22%20marginheight=%220%22%20scrolling=%22no%22%20frameborder=%220%22%20src=%22//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=tf_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=berlinbites-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=0375711287&asins=0375711287&linkId=0f404d19a6cf2ab8657c53a69cbdba2b&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066C0&bg_color=FFFFFF%22%3E%20%20%20%20%20%3C/iframe%3E">Robert Hughes' magnificent book on Goya</a>, I had a newfound appreciation for Velásquez, and thanks to the way the Prado is organized, I noted that Velásquez, Zurbarán, and a guy named Cano with whom I hadn't been familiar, all flourished at the same time. I'm very much into Zurbarán, and although I lucked into a clutch of his work many years ago in Castellón, the Prado has, predictably, loads of great ones. In fact, I got so numb wandering through gallery after gallery that I missed his still life with a cardoon, which was a kind of fuck you to the dominant still-life style of the day with its white streak of cardoon stalk sweeping across the picture as if to say "Oh, yeah? Watch <i>this</i>!" But basically, as time goes on and the 17th century goes into the 18th and 19th, my eyes glaze over. </div>
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What saved the rest of the day was, of course, Bosch (whom the Spanish call "El Bosco," summoning up memories for those of a certain age of after-school chocolate milk), with the definitive collection of his work, and Goya. The Bosch room isn't big because it turns out his work isn't that big. It did have one work I'd totally forgotten about, a round tabletop depicting the seven deadly sins (and you can bet he did a great job of <i>that</i>), as well as the under-known masterpiece "The Haywain." And, of course, the tryptich of "The Garden of Earthly Delights," that enigmatic explosion of weirdness. There was an awful piece of bloviation about it in the <i>New York Review of Books</i> this year that added nothing to the world's knowledge of the painting except to note that in the very right-hand corner of the central panel, there's a little guy apparently giving a blowjob to another little guy, the only explicit sex act I could find in the painting, although there's some ambiguous male-female action and other weirder maybe-sexual stuff going on. I saw a great show in Rotterdam years ago, where just about everything but the Prado stuff was included, and it made a great case for some of the imagery in the "Garden" coming from pilgrim's badges, the tin souvenirs pilgrims to Santiago and other places bought to show where they'd been and pinned to their cloaks. But the great news is that the Prado has this thing close enough to stand and gaze at, and I did, for a long while. </div>
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Goya, with Hughes' writing still in my mind (it was the last book I read before leaving), was great. It was interesting to note how small the two Maja paintings were (and Hughes is right: her head's on wrong! Not that I was noticing when I first saw a reproduction as a kid), and thrilling to stand in front of his revolutionary paintings, and the "black" paintings that he did on the walls of his house in his last years, which Hughes doesn't reproduce all of, for obvious reasons. (I also, like many people, really loved the painting Hughes calls "Head of a Dog" and wonder why the Prado decided to call it "Drowning Dog." It may be Goya, but not <i>everything</i> in his life at this point was dark and gloomy.)</div>
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A day in the Prado can -- and did -- exhaust one, so I limped home knowing both that I'd be back (hell, big museums don't faze me: I used to work in the Metropolitan!) and that I'd had a very full day. Miguel suggested a secret restaurant in another corner of town called Asturianos, where Madrid's top chefs enjoy authentic cuisine from Asturias prepared by an old woman and her two sons and is, as far as I can tell, nearly perfect. I didn't much like the ultra-dry sherry we were served initially -- it seemed to have a chemical taste I couldn't shake -- but the sardines, beef cheeks and sausage-and-bean stew that came later hit the spot decisively. </div>
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One more day, two more museums, which, if I hadn't gotten lost, wouldn't have been enough to fill a day. Okay, to be honest, the Reina Sofia has a great collection of early 20th century stuff, and if you want Cubism, well, the Spanish sort of co-invented that. My disappointment was 100% not being in the mood, so I'll have to go back when I know what I'm getting into. Down at the other end of the big street connecting the Reina Sofia and the Prado is the <a href="http://www.museothyssen.org/en/thyssen/home">Thyssen-Bornemizsa Museum. </a> I was lucky: Monday Master Card underwrites free admission for all, with the caveat that the museum closes at 4. The collection here is the result of a Hungarian billionaire with a taste for art marrying a former Miss Spain who likewise had a passion for collecting. What's wrong with the museum, I figured out when I snapped that the color coding of the captions indicated whose collection was whose, is that it was a case of unlimited funds and limited appreciation of what they were buying. There are hundreds of paintings in this museum, a couple dozen of which, at the most, are worth your while. With that much cash to sling around, you kind of have to get lucky occasionally. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hey, Baroness T-B: I think the kid's in on the joke</td></tr>
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The acquisition was handled like a grocery-shopping trip: "Hey, we need Canalettos! Get some Canalettos!" And they did. There's a good reason why you've likely never heard of most of the painters here, as you'll see. Only just as they were about to close did I find a piece of the Baroness's collection when she began dipping her toe into contemporary art, with some decent pieces including two huge Richard Estes photo-realistic canvases -- hopelessly un-hip in the current market, but I thought they were pretty arresting. But, not wanting to get arrested any further, I allowed myself to be shooed out. </div>
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Dinner that night was an amazing "tapas" restaurant. I put the quotes in there because the portions were so huge. The oxtail stew alone was worth the trip. I'm not naming the place, though, because a guy who looked like Gary Busey walked up to us (Miguel had invited his chef friend Pepe along, and I was describing Cajun food) and noted as how he never heard American accents. Turned out he was from Dallas and owned the building and there were four floors and a rooftop terrace devoted to a private club above the restarant. The view from the roof was amazing (and would have been more amazing had I known more about what I was looking at) but I found the denizens, including our host, just a bit creepy. We finally got loose of him and said good night. Tomorrow, I'd leave for Toledo, and looking at a map, I noticed that the taxi driver who'd take me to the hotel had "gone through the park," as we say in New York. But the short walk to the station on a morning that promised a fine day was a great adios to Madrid. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Retail in the 'Hood I</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Retail in the 'Hood II</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Permanent residents of the Madrid train station gathering to say good-bye</td></tr>
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Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-64017384686839873202016-09-25T22:02:00.000+02:002016-10-19T22:46:46.648+02:00It's Almost Time...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In a couple of days, I'm going to disappear to rest up between the promotion of my Michael Bloomfield book, which I've been doing for the past month, and the -- much bigger -- promotion for this, my first physical book under my own name in 33 years.<br />
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A lot of people have asked me where they can pre-order it, so here's the skinny on that. First, though, some explanation. At this moment (ie, as I write this, on September 25), the pre-orders won't get you a discount. I seem to remember Amazon telling me that a book I'd pre-ordered from them might drop in price, and since I wasn't going to be charged until the book shipped, the amount I paid would reflect the price on the day it was shipped. You may or may not get a deal like this. You will if you wait, most likely.<br />
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What I vastly prefer for you to do is to patronize your local independent bookstore, because giants like Amazon threaten their existence. Indies tend to know their local communities and select the books they sell accordingly. An alarming number of them are literal mom-and-pop stores, family businesses. They mean a lot to your community, and any writers who may live in your community.<br />
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If you want an inscribed copy of the book, you're going to have to see me in person. I really, really, don't want to drive to the post office to mail one off to you, and no, I don't get hundreds of free copies when the book comes out. You can get inscribed -- or merely signed -- copies ("inscribed" means my writing "To Joe: I promise I'll pay you that $10 one of these days" or something; "signed" means just my signature) at my November 6th appearance at the <a href="http://www.texasbookfestival.org/author-page/?aid=6030">Texas Book Festival</a> here in Austin or at the release party at Book People on November 19th. Book People will also have signed books for sale after that, and they'll be available via mail order.<br />
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I also hope that there will be a modest book tour, although publishers no longer do them as a matter of course. I'd like to do a West Coast tour via Amtrak -- San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco/Berkeley, Portland, Seattle -- and an East Coast one of Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston/Cambridge. The only way this'll happen is if people in those cities ask for an appearance at a bookstore, and the bookstore contacts the publisher. So if you get to work, that might work out.<br />
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Meanwhile, for those of you who need to do this on-line, here are links to the pre-order sites:<br />
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/125007116X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=berlinbites-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=125007116X&linkId=f7017d45b4ff127d6cc38eeda4d84c75">Amazon</a><br />
<a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-history-of-rock-roll-volume-1-ed-ward/1123536919">Barnes & Noble</a><br />
<a href="http://www.booksamillion.com/product/9781250071163">Books-A-Million</a><br />
<a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250071163">IndieBound</a><br />
and <a href="http://www.bookpeople.com/book/9781250071163">Book People</a> in Austin.<br />
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I've written the pitch for Vol. 2 (1964-2000), and my agent will be arm-wrestling the publisher while I'm away. I'm hot to get started on that one, which will be pretty controversial and just as much fun to read as this one is.<br />
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And if you're just tempted to get only one, remember that Christmas is just around the corner!Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-2436095319111326212016-08-23T21:04:00.000+02:002016-08-23T21:04:09.192+02:00Midsummer East Coast Tour, Canada And Back<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Why the train is relaxing.</td></tr>
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There are better times to visit Montreal than the ones I've visited in the past. When I lived in Europe, I'd go as I left the country after SXSW, stopping in New York, then heading north. The trouble was, late March up there is like early February in other places, and I've had to make my way through loads of snow and slush just to get from one place to another. Not to mention the time the train back to New York froze and the rescue vehicle coming to fix it fell over on its way up from Albany. But summer, summer's very different.<br />
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In fact, this year, Montreal was suffering higher temperatures than New York, which was odd indeed, and I was beginning to regret having packed the jeans jacket I figured I'd be needing. Not to worry; it rained the day I spent on the train, and by the time I got there, it was considerably milder.<br />
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This was to be a quick trip, to come down from the New York experience before heading back to Texas to start doing publicity <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Bloomfield-Rise-American-Guitar/dp/1613733283/ref=pd_ybh_a_45?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=HMPK50G514TXM4RSFHTV">for one</a> of the two books I have coming out this year, so I wasn't in any particular rush to do anything when I got off the train except check into my hotel and get dinner. Fortunately my friends Terry and Patricia had done research on the latter and were at the station to hustle me into a cab. Dinner turned out to be up a side street around the corner from the hotel in a restaurant called <a href="http://www.restaurantbonaparte.com/en/">Bonaparte</a>. It was first-class: absolutely traditional French cooking -- I had a goose-leg confit with a mushroom ragout, and Terry and Patricia had skate wings and veal -- done perfectly. The big surprise was the wine: it was an extensive list, so I stuck to what I knew, and picked a Pic-St.-Loup I'd never heard of from <a href="http://www.zelige-caravent.com/Zelige-Caravent">a winery</a> that seems to be brand-new. A glance at their website doesn't show the wine we had, which had a Japanese name, but I know the area they're located in, and the rest of their stuff looks very interesting.<br />
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On the way to the restaurant we noted a video projected on the side of one of the buildings: a black woman was running towards us, fleeing a wall of flames. Terry said there was a 19th century woman who was accused of arson who'd become a symbol of racism and sexism. On the way out, though, she'd been replaced by a young Jackie Robinson, who'd gotten his start in the minor leagues in Montreal. Apparently there are a number of these things around the city, called <a href="http://www.tourisme-montreal.org/Discover-montreal/Montreal-by-theme/architecture-and-history/montreal-en-histoires-historical-multimedia-tour">Montréal en Histoires</a>, with an app that can help people discover where and what they are.<br />
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Terry was anxious that I see the Pompeii exhibition at the <a href="http://www.mbam.qc.ca/">Museum of Fine Arts</a>, so Sunday we hustled down there to discover a line out the door and down the block. So much for that, but there was also the <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/redpath/redpath-museum">Redpath Natural History Museum</a> at McGill University, right nearby. Terry described it as an instructive look at an institution of a previous century struggling to catch up with changing attitudes, particularly in its cultures-of-the-world section. I knew what he meant: the natural history museum in New York features quotes from Theodore Roosevelt about Manliness and Duty set in metal letters right in the marble walls, and as I waited for my ride to Nyack, I gazed at the huge bronze statue of him outside, on his horse, leading the inferior races -- an Indian in a big warbonnet and a mostly-naked Negro -- into a glorious future. They may have to deal with that some day. But for some reason the Redpath was closed on Sunday.<br />
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Trying to salvage the day, we headed to the Fur Building, a nearly block-sized structure downtown that had held the warehouses for furs, back when that was one of Montreal's biggest businesses. Today, the fur companies have left, and artists and galleries, happy to have such huge rooms with long windows at their disposal, have moved in, along with a couple of dance studios, martial-arts instructors, and yoga studios. We'd been there before, and the galleries never seem to be open at once, so you pick your way down the hall to see what's open. Of course, it was August, hardly high season in the art world, so there wasn't much to see. A couple of galleries were open, but I doubt they were showing their A-list clients. There was an amusing video shot under some elevated subway tracks, the images heavily treated, and one mysterious and effective installation where objects were placed in square columns of frosted glass. Some of them were moving, some not, and the amount of visibility on each side varied. It was clever, which was more than you could say about most of the rest of the stuff.<br />
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Having arted, we made it back to my hotel, rested our feet, and finally set out for an experience we knew would be deeply satisfying: dinner at Cuisine Szechuan, which I consider one of the best Chinese restaurants in North America. Since the last time I was in Montreal, Terry and Patricia have befriended the owner, who happened not to be in this time. Still, the place was superb again, and since they turned the ordering over to me (except for starting with both Szechuan-style -- in a tart sauce with Szechuan pepper and toasted sesame seeds -- and Hunan-style -- in a peanut-based sauce -- dumplings, traditional favorites going back years in this place) we wound up with a bunch of stuff nobody had had before: a meatball soup with glass noodles, crispy chicken with a lot of stir-fried vegetables and a sauce I'd never heard of before, and a casserole of eggplant and fried tofu in a garlicky sauce. (I think there was one other dish, but it's not coming back to me: it was one of the ones whose leftovers they packed up for the next day's breakfast). Two great meals in two nights.<br />
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Terry and I got into <a href="http://www.mbam.qc.ca/expositions/a-laffiche/pompeii/">the Pompeii show</a> on Monday, and it was very much worth it. A lot of what one goes to see at Pompeii isn't exactly moveable, nor were all the first-class artifacts taken on the road for this, but the show (which I can't seem to find moving elsewhere, although it showed in Toronto last year) brilliantly exposes daily life in Pompeii (and the other two towns that got hit by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Herculanaeum and Stabiae, the latter a tiny resort town that never gets mentioned) through intelligent labels and well-lit displays. Sports, sex, business, daily life, all get their rooms, and then one walks into a room with a dramatically-lit cast of a dog that died in agony and the four walls projecting the progress of the disaster, the chronology of which we know because the Plinys, father and son, were living nearby and went to rescue friends of theirs from the eruption. Pliny the Elder's lungs got filled with volcanic dust and he died during the rescue, while his son, when it was over, wrote a detailed letter to the historian Tacitus about what had happened. It's a dramatic use of space: after we've seen all the artifacts, the decorations, the silverware, the shrines to the household gods, the statues of unknown people, we're in the destruction. The next room has casts. Everything was covered by ash so quickly that people were suffocated, and when the ash hardened, their bodies disappeared. When these hollow areas are discovered, casting material is poured into them and the cast is excavated. There are men, women, a child, all at the moment of death. In the next room, a film shot by U.S. Army personnel stationed in the area documents a 1944 eruption, the latest major one.<br />
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After this bravura display, the rest of the museum could have been a letdown, but it wasn't. A fine Toulouse-Lautrec show had many of his familiar images, but put them into the social context of his circle and Bohemian Paris in general, and was just large enough. The permanent collection, like those in many regional art museums, is largely filled with the best work of second-tier artists, enjoyable in its way. At least that was true for the older stuff: downstairs there is some first-rate stuff by "name" modern and contemporary artists and some surprises by folks I'd never heard of, not all of whom were Canadian. There was a separate gallery for Canadian stuff, a design gallery, and lots more, but I began to get art burn after a while, so we left and headed to the Redpath, which was quite a let-down after what we'd both seen and, yes, trying its best to put things into the current cultural context.<br />
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I was pooped, so we headed back to the hotel to meet Patricia, who'd been studying at Terry's office at Concordia University. She was going to take a French proficiency test, passing which will mean she can work in Quebec. Make no mistake: French is the first language in Montreal, even if it isn't for a lot of its population. It's a shred of cultural identity for Quebec to hold on to, and they do so like pit bulls. We took a bus to Point St. Charles, the tough Irish working-class neighborhood that's very slowly gentrifying, so I could see the current progress on their house. (Others who are interested should check out <a href="http://pointstcharles.terencebyrnes.com/">Terry's blog</a> on the subject). We had no idea where to go for dinner, so we decided not to go far. Across the street, as a matter of fact. Chez Dallaire is a hipster bar in a non-hipster zone, but it seems to attract enough people to keep going and has added a small but interesting menu. Across the street is a place I have yet to try, Boom-J's, run by an affable and savvy Jamaican. So while it's a bit premature to suggest the Point as a destination for dining, I bet in five years it'll have some great stuff to offer. As for now, we had pork rillettes in a little glass jar for appetizers and "grilled cheese" sandwiches for the main course: toasted high-quality bread enveloped a wad of smoked meat -- Montreal pastrami -- and had a tangy cheddar-like cheese melted over it. Along with the craft beers they pour, a satisfying meal. These guys look like they'll make it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWsEA2tGQSMtc8tqnfQ4lGNC1v3jb4YkD_KmzVcNU3ssyJ71cIWzx1P0BVdIyG2YbL69YHeClANtwx73sNbvMLLCYaSFa01d-GCIf8XvVoc3iR2VqG_Z3OzBsEgZn6ez7OnJFezt1VXOhE/s1600/IMG_0532.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWsEA2tGQSMtc8tqnfQ4lGNC1v3jb4YkD_KmzVcNU3ssyJ71cIWzx1P0BVdIyG2YbL69YHeClANtwx73sNbvMLLCYaSFa01d-GCIf8XvVoc3iR2VqG_Z3OzBsEgZn6ez7OnJFezt1VXOhE/s400/IMG_0532.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Happy diners, Chez Dallaire</td></tr>
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<br />
Having had a "sandwich vietnamien" that was made from canned tuna in the museum, I was anxious for the real deal, and Montreal's Chinatown was just down the street from my hotel. With Terry and Patricia sidelined by work for much of the day, I'd have time to find the place Terry had told me about when I was expressing my disappointment with the museum sandwich: real Vietnamese banh mi. I had Terry's instructions with me, but no such place was in evidence. I walked the streets of Chinatown, untempted by the Chinese places (I'd just been in the best of them), and finally settling for a place with a specialty of "soupe tonkinoise," which, because Quebecers don't like foreign languages, means pho. This place had a line in front of it when I first passed, but by the time I'd scoured the rest of the neighborhood, it had calmed down, and despite its weird name (Pho Bang New York, possibly connected to a New York restaurant also called Pho Bang) I went in and had a pho that had the best tasting broth I've had in a long time. It's at 1001 Boulevard St-Laurent if you're in the neighborhood. And another cool thing was stepping into a tiny shop to see if they had gong fu shoes, which make wonderful house slippers, and not only finding them, but finding big enough ones to fit my feet, a sign that Chinese people are indeed getting biger. Ten bucks Canadian, too. Can't beat that.<br />
<br />
The latter half of the afternoon was meeting up with Terry and taking a whirlwind tour of the magnificent Atwater Market to pick up groceries he needed and admire the just-in Quebec strawberry crop, which I wished I could teleport back to my place in Texas. The tomatoes also looked great. After depositing this at the house, we decided to visit another gentrifying neighborhood, this one with a lot of history. For a long time, much longer than was healthy, Terry was married to a woman he'd met in college (we both went to Antioch). I performed the ceremony, in fact, with my Universal Life Church credentials. Eventually, the marriage fell apart, divorce papers were filed, and much ugliness ensued, with the bright spot being Terry's deepening affair with one of his students, Patricia, whom he followed to Japan, where she was teaching. During Terry's previous marriage, they'd lived in a suburb called Verdun, where I visited many, many times. It was gritty, working-class, and not that easy to get to on the Metro, either. But it did have potential, and now some of it is being realized. Terry remembered that Wellington, a main street a quick bus ride away, had a number of good restaurants on it, so we headed down there. Alas, it may have had, but like many pioneers, they'd gone out of business or been forced to change menus. True, there were two Indian places, which I certainly would have appreciated way back when, but we stumbled on a fish joint that doubled as a market: <a href="http://queuedepoisson.com/">Queue de Poisson</a>. They do excellent fish and chips, the grilled monkfish I had was perfect, and there's a good selection of Canadian craft beers. (A note on these: Quebec microbrewers seem to be chasing French beer as an ideal. Folks, French beer just sucks. Try to embrace a teeny part of your English -- or even American -- heritage for at least a couple of your beers. Thanks.) Once again we ate outside, once again the young folks who ran the restaurant did a great job. First Point St. Charles, then Verdun. There's hope for Montreal yet.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6bWnrpiTHYm0br2bCT_yMwuvpiAQsyR5PpaJQhneUM8dp1KGZVpGsuJjQuJZ-FqTYkz6KOVEW73xdnFC4YWVyoudGaXdXDQfqf8wlJ4TnE7qiaPBXtq2wklJEmUNlimUgQYt2JxzWaP3-/s1600/IMG_0533.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6bWnrpiTHYm0br2bCT_yMwuvpiAQsyR5PpaJQhneUM8dp1KGZVpGsuJjQuJZ-FqTYkz6KOVEW73xdnFC4YWVyoudGaXdXDQfqf8wlJ4TnE7qiaPBXtq2wklJEmUNlimUgQYt2JxzWaP3-/s400/IMG_0533.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset, Hudson, NY railroad station</td></tr>
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<br />
I said good-bye to Terry and Patricia when they got off the bus and then rode it the rest of the way to my hotel. The next morning, Amtrak took its sweet time getting me to New York, but I managed dinner and a good night's sleep, then spent the next day shopping for salt-cured anchovies (at Eataly, of all places, and a good sight cheaper than in Oakland) and got to JFK with lots of time to spare.<br />
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I was headed home, and happy about that. Less happy, though, that that home was in Texas. Not that I'd gotten any inspiration where to go next (which won't be for a while). Jersey City has pockets that are real nice, and much larger areas that just exude despair. I hadn't seen enough of Nyack, Hoboken was out of the question, and forget Canada. Still looking. I've got time.Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-5446453031612357812016-08-20T22:11:00.003+02:002016-08-22T20:44:50.832+02:00Midsummer East Coast Tour, The U.S.File under "offer you can't refuse": my agent, David, asked me what I was doing around the beginning of August. His wife is from Hawaii, and every year they head down that way with their kid and visit the in-laws. Would I be interested in house-sitting for him in Jersey City? Oh: and cat-sitting a ten-year-old cat. How hard could that be? Jersey City is a couple of stops on the PATH rapid-transit system from Manhattan, and although it was August, there'd be stuff to do there. My publisher for <i>The History of Rock & Roll, Vol. 1</i> was having a typical publishing August -- ie, not doing much -- and wanted to sit down and chat about the book. Playing around with Google Maps with a vague idea of renting a car and going somewhere for a day came up with all kinds of interesting suggestions. And best of all, it'd be free, at least up until the last day, when I'd hop on Amtrak and head to Montreal for a few days.<br />
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So I said yes.<br />
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David's house is about a mile from the PATH station, Little India, and many other attractions. I was determined not to over-plan anything, except to nail down a lunch with the publisher and explore JC. I'm still planning to leave Austin as soon as it makes sense -- ie, not for a while yet -- and wanted to see what the place was about.<br />
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After a conversation with last-minute details (which I should have taken notes on) I went back to the Ramada (the only hotel except for that weird Indian one I stayed in a couple of years ago in that part of town) and crashed. The next morning, I checked out, carefully picked my way down JFK Boulevard, and arrived at the place I'd be occupying for the next ten days. No sooner had I arrived than Maud, the cat who I'd been assured would mostly sleep while I was there, emerged and started yowling, hissing, and spitting at me. No matter that, over the rest of my stay, I would feed and water her and clean her litter box, she didn't ever warm to me. Far from it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinpK5DKA7tgDqlwBg4sW624Dubna0ZR118H2Rrv8GDzrXpf6j52Wds3E5ivZA9xe8VbLrhnuU1so6B1LBZfzUFey2aZn-Klba981xYPXpWF3-FcMWUoXDpSARlUny3fSQo3iy8ioHVbWB-/s1600/IMG_0499.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinpK5DKA7tgDqlwBg4sW624Dubna0ZR118H2Rrv8GDzrXpf6j52Wds3E5ivZA9xe8VbLrhnuU1so6B1LBZfzUFey2aZn-Klba981xYPXpWF3-FcMWUoXDpSARlUny3fSQo3iy8ioHVbWB-/s400/IMG_0499.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maud, none too happy</td></tr>
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I actually had no clear plan for touristing, except I did want to go to the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum's collage of medieval buildings in Ft. Tryon Park at Manhattan's northernmost point. I hadn't been there since I was a teenager, and by now I've seen lots of stuff of the sort it contains, as well as having visited the church in St. Guilhem le Désert where they got one of their cloisters. Plus, I heard they had a piece by the Master of Cabestany.<br />
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My first day, though, was spent finding a grocery store and familiarizing myself with the surrounding neighborhood. There would be a farmer's market the next day at the PATH terminal in Journal Square. Didn't expect much from that, but it'd be worth looking at. I took a quick look around Lincoln Park as the sun set and walked back to the house.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn9jH6q_lxCwyxwIoapgSq9rGu97r0V23p-c6F3PJR0skJTPRPqsA3LtUo17IeHURor61mEUpAnGuTQ03vveVHEDufgoTeJeM58OD2caW3a1B1rLNFbdNdppXlLIWesHVziJK8OFL8AQx0/s1600/IMG_0473.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn9jH6q_lxCwyxwIoapgSq9rGu97r0V23p-c6F3PJR0skJTPRPqsA3LtUo17IeHURor61mEUpAnGuTQ03vveVHEDufgoTeJeM58OD2caW3a1B1rLNFbdNdppXlLIWesHVziJK8OFL8AQx0/s400/IMG_0473.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Monument to the early settlers of JC who fled the Irish potato famine, Lincoln Park</td></tr>
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There was no doubt where I wanted to eat that night: <a href="http://www.deccan-spice.com/">Deccan Spice</a> in Little India is one of the best Indian restaurants I've ever enjoyed. Thing is, I forgot something important about them: as you approach Newark Avenue from JFK, you see their sign, so naturally you suppose the restaurant on which it hangs is Deccan Spice. It's not. Deccan Spice is two doors down, and if you're walking up Newark Avenue, there's a sign facing your way on the right building. I chose the wrong restaurant, and paid for it: it's called Home Kitchen, although it also has another name, too. The menu is confusing, but not as confusing as something I thought I spotted on the way in: a Bible, a picture of Jesus, and a rosary with a crucifix on it. The chicken dish I had was very ordinary, except for the effect it had on my intestines an hour later. That was impressive.<br />
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That farmer's market was also a surprise the next day: only one farmer was represented, along with a Puerto Rican food truck and a bakery, but the vegetables looked top-notch. With the idea of making a salade niçoise, I bought lettuce, a red potato, some green beans, and some black cherry tomatoes. Now all I needed was some good tuna and I was ready to rock. And I knew where to get that: David's printed guide to JC mentioned Carmine's Italian Deli, where he said cops and firefighters went to get sandwiches. It wasn't far.<br />
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Not, that is, if you read the address right. Instead, my brain told me it was on a nearby street, albeit a fair walk down that street. So, after walking the mile back to the house and resting up a bit, I started walking down that street. And walking. And walking. Finally, a sign I was looking for came into view, but not Carmine's. Cool Vines was the wine shop David had mentioned, so I went in and looked around. They seem to import everything in the shop themselves, so there was nothing I recognized, which was good and bad. The proprietor was a bit sniffy, but I bought a couple of interesting-sounding bottles and walked all the way back to the house. I sat around until I got hungry and realized there was no vegetable steamer in the house with which to make the salad. I consulted the list again, and started walking down that same street to downtown JC in search of <a href="http://www.razzanj.com/">Razza</a>, an upscale pizza joint. For some reason, pizza was just what I wanted, and there was apparently no old-school pizza joint in JC any more. Razza more than fulfilled my expectations. Let's just say that I rarely eat all of the crust. I ate all of the crust. The heirloom tomatoes with a chive vinaitrette was also a perfect opener. And let's face it: after all that walking, I was ravenous. I took a cab back and collapsed into sleep.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmqQ7X_qSEkSD0Xq_frmcWrbhAAFTm05eOkQkuQh3s56musak__4piyrz5xer1Al0amCSjMtwpHmACucWEK916dbLyxmkW0jrzPRh9b1G4lzHga_yfzdwcXd9j0zeiwa8Opnzo4sFpXD4E/s1600/IMG_0477.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmqQ7X_qSEkSD0Xq_frmcWrbhAAFTm05eOkQkuQh3s56musak__4piyrz5xer1Al0amCSjMtwpHmACucWEK916dbLyxmkW0jrzPRh9b1G4lzHga_yfzdwcXd9j0zeiwa8Opnzo4sFpXD4E/s400/IMG_0477.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">JC Astrology #1</td></tr>
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I was annoyed enough the next morning that I'd made so many mistakes that I decided to do something I knew how to do: go to the Cloisters. And I did. It was a beautiful day for it, too: the Hudson's palisades were as lovely as I remembered them, and Ft. Tryon, or at least its site (Washington thought he could invade New York City from there and boy was he wrong), a cool and quiet place to spend time.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxuBhFKh1JGQwcNDyDpFR3NxuBRtiz1UYmMlGCmBvPMLwBxJs63wXdpGrRyN0JVHtDF5aCK-JU8JVIVlyDEapj7ebWhUfPPvHwA6sILRBMpQA2h-DlbcomR6qiPvlmWUXuGNAdVbUHcSkW/s1600/IMG_0479.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxuBhFKh1JGQwcNDyDpFR3NxuBRtiz1UYmMlGCmBvPMLwBxJs63wXdpGrRyN0JVHtDF5aCK-JU8JVIVlyDEapj7ebWhUfPPvHwA6sILRBMpQA2h-DlbcomR6qiPvlmWUXuGNAdVbUHcSkW/s400/IMG_0479.JPG" title="" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Note to Founding Father: you can get there from here, but it's not a good idea.</td></tr>
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The Cloisters' collection had been added to considerably since I was there last, and I was gratified to see that I could pick out pieces from places I'd spent time, most notably Catalonia, Germany (a <i>bunch</i> of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilman_Riemenschneider">Tilman Riemenschneider</a> wood carvings) and of course the Eastern Languedoc.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLeBfv3cr8ynOyXz5Rd7LpGvJYQeUsNGnEOAYQD_pOPYfzDfi0_kxkBZMjGogguPbSuLcZl0ryyetyb6RakI40S8JNjJY5fElwA84fU7kAMNZQxHg_7sSn2k7Ry5HHgVIDVpSTe63AS2hO/s1600/IMG_0480.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLeBfv3cr8ynOyXz5Rd7LpGvJYQeUsNGnEOAYQD_pOPYfzDfi0_kxkBZMjGogguPbSuLcZl0ryyetyb6RakI40S8JNjJY5fElwA84fU7kAMNZQxHg_7sSn2k7Ry5HHgVIDVpSTe63AS2hO/s400/IMG_0480.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And there it is: the cloister from St. Guilhem le Désert!</td></tr>
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There was a lot of stuff to see, and yet the place was small enough that I believe I saw it all. One note I made was that the familiar yellow Valencian pottery that had unexpectedly entranced me all those years ago in <a href="http://wardinfrance.blogspot.com/2011/02/weekend-in-spain.html">Castellón</a> was using identical colors to Moorish pottery made in the same vicinity. I found this exciting because I will be in Valencia in a little over a month and am hoping fate steers me into more information about this. I realized after visiting the Cloisters that I seem to have picked up a hobby after all these years: figuring out the three-part society of pre-expulsion Spain, as the Moors, their fellow North Africans the Jews, and the Spanish worked out a way to live together, albeit with some tension. I attribute this to the pieces that clicked into place this spring in Girona.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2y4kQEUj9SXJifrrgzeSMEYuC5gzv5sf-S7T-le-6JWa0ue3SKUDzbJHzCfHd67PhuzmeYhlcSqA_nFPUEyZXsCHuhyphenhyphenjhftXfwlrFAtQfqRyJayfmVWelbkUzub47Q6np7Zy3zA2BgXPv/s1600/IMG_0482.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2y4kQEUj9SXJifrrgzeSMEYuC5gzv5sf-S7T-le-6JWa0ue3SKUDzbJHzCfHd67PhuzmeYhlcSqA_nFPUEyZXsCHuhyphenhyphenjhftXfwlrFAtQfqRyJayfmVWelbkUzub47Q6np7Zy3zA2BgXPv/s400/IMG_0482.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And here's the Master of Cabestany's piece, considerably larger than I thought. If he existed, this is by him. </td></tr>
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I left the Cloisters feeling great: between the weather, the views, and all the stuff I'd just seen, I was in a good mood. I pulled out my phone to send the Cabestany picture to a friend in Austin and a grandmotherly black woman with a teen in tow asked me if I were playing Pokémon Go. I told her no, I was trying to send a photo, but had just discovered I couldn't, and also told her that seeing me with my phone was a rare sighting indeed. She clearly approved. I walked a bit further and came upon a setup where a photographer was erecting lighting and tripods and such and a tall, thin black man had a drone in his hand. A couple in full wedding gear were sitting waiting and suddenly I put the pieces together. "If you don't mind," I told the drone pilot, "I'm enough of a geek that I'd like to watch this." "Sure, just stay out of the shot." Easily done from the bench once the couple stood up and too their places. The drone hovered in front of them and then shot out over the Hudson River. Then it hovered a bit and he brought it in, more slowly, as they waved. Man, they don't do wedding videos like they used to.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7eAmLez127ZALRb7lZ09FhpWYy2K2YSRbB24CP6VnbsIeAJhRPAXdx1x0MKtNpaS15YLtTmdVGoswev5SKeG1i9VsqrCUt3Olwddsf5BLY3iL3MkFBJxPDXN4wJo8hS8VQa7Em6pRRLlC/s1600/IMG_0483.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7eAmLez127ZALRb7lZ09FhpWYy2K2YSRbB24CP6VnbsIeAJhRPAXdx1x0MKtNpaS15YLtTmdVGoswev5SKeG1i9VsqrCUt3Olwddsf5BLY3iL3MkFBJxPDXN4wJo8hS8VQa7Em6pRRLlC/s400/IMG_0483.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bride, groom, drone</td></tr>
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<br />Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-62866715596651126212016-07-19T21:41:00.000+02:002016-07-19T21:41:51.260+02:00Critter Report, Summer 2016Any day that starts with a lizard in my pants is okay with me. This morning, I walked out of the bathroom, put on a t-shirt, reached for my pants, and saw a swift motion out of the corner of my eye. Fortunately, I didn't reach out to smash whatever it was, mostly because I thought it was a roach, and those guys are <i>filled</i> with goo that you have to clean up. Nope, I could see it clearly, looking up at me: a tiny lizard. And I knew just which one it was.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Don't make it sound too good. Tell 'em we got bugs that'll hurt you bad. Plants that'll poison you. There's rattlesnakes and other critters that don't mean you no good. People should think about that before they decide to move here.</i></blockquote>
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<div style="text-align: right;">
Hondo Crouch, in an interview with me, Luckenbach, Sept. 26, 1976</div>
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I grew up in a lizardless region, the New York suburbs. There were salamanders, and I always liked our vacations in Vermont because there were toads and frogs around the lake the cabin we rented was on, but there were few critters around the place I spent most of my time. </div>
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But, as Hondo Crouch (who died the day after I interviewed him) made clear, that simply isn't the case in Texas. You've got to be careful in Texas. The plants can get you: I've never seen such opulent poison oak as used to thrive in the woods by my old house on West 9 ½ Street. Pecan trees were everywhere, and you could pick up a snack any time from the windfalls. If, that is, you were willing to crack them and then very, very carefully pick out the membrane from the meat. It contains so much tannic acid that your mouth will pucker so badly you'll be hard pressed to get anything in it. And of course, there's cactus, but nothing as lethal as the cholla that's all over the place in Arizona. </div>
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Some of the animal life seems incredibly exotic, too. One morning my dog got very excited, the hair standing up on his back as he ran around on tiptoe, growling. I was still asleep and yeah, I heard something walking outside the window, but it was moving quickly and after a while the dog calmed down. After breakfast, the dog and I went on our customary walk in the woods and found two cops with Stetsons and rifles on horseback, and a very excited little Latina girl, about six. "Did you see the <i>pantera</i>?" she asked. "Yeah," one of the cops said. "We got a report on a panther on the loose around here." It happens, I guess. The lady next door to me complained about armadillos digging up her garden, and I'd see them occasionally when I went to pick up my girlfriend in way-far-north Austin (hardly way-far-north these days, of course) and once, on Thanksgiving, I was invited to dinner out in the country, and took a British friend who was about to return home. "I've really enjoyed my stay here," he said, "but I'm sorry I've never seen an armadillo." As if by magic, two appeared at the side of the road. They were, um, making more armadillos. </div>
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So far, there's been a decided lack of such critters here in suburban far south Austin. There are birds, of course. My office looks out on my back yard and I can hear birds with the windows open, which alerts me to their presence. For a while, I had a woodpecker who pecked a wound in one of the trees he visited daily. The wound bled sap, which was sweet, ants were attracted to it, and the bird would show up to eat them. I'd always assumed there were bugs in the wood that they were after. There's also a cardinal couple, who seem to hunt as a pair. He is the most brilliant red imaginable outside of the tropics, a magnificent bird. She, conforming to the ways of birds, isn't. She's a kind of drab brown with a tiny bit of red on her head. That seems to be how bird love works: "Darling, I've seen some drab females in my life, but you're <i>really</i> drab." "Ooh, listen to mister sweet-talk." </div>
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The one bird I've been wanting to see, but hadn't until recently, was the monk parakeet. Friends tell me of them visiting their yard, but they don't come here. Finally, one day when I was walking to the nearby middle school to vote -- it might have been the primary -- I heard a familiar sound, and sure enough two green birds, bickering loudly, swooped over my head and onto a branch. I have no idea why they don't come to this side of South First, but I've never seen one here, although I'm about ⅛ of a mile from that sighting. I also enjoy them in Barcelona, where they seem to outnumber pigeons. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bigger than a budgie, and surprisingly omnipresent. Wikipedia photo</td></tr>
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But this year I made the decision not to mow the back yard. This was in large part because of the regal toad that used to come every night and sit beneath the light on the back of the house, which also attracted bugs, or, as he thought of them, dinner. I hoped there were more critters out there. Benign ones, of course. And there were: as springtime came on and the rains let up a bit, at sunset giant clouds of lightning bugs would lift off of the plants back there, a luminous flying carpet. That was nice. And I knew I was getting somewhere when I found a small brown Cuban anole hanging out on the deck sunning himself. </div>
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The toad hasn't been back, but the back yard wasn't my only concern. The tree in my front yard was host some days to a magnificent Texas spiny lizard, which I'd never seen before, and whose commanding presence (at about 11") just plain looked good, even though he was expert at dodging the camera. </div>
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He hasn't been back yet, either, but I gather they have a pretty good range they wander, eating bugs as they go. Welcome back any time, dude. </div>
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And I was aware that there was other critter action in the front, dating from two years ago, when I found a J-shaped toad turd in the driveway, and running up to early May of this year, when I returned from shopping to find a small snake waiting by the front door. I ran inside and grabbed a camera (or maybe it was my phone) and found he'd stuck his head under a pile of leaf litter, so I took a stick and pulled him back to photograph. His head arched up and he took a good snap at the stick, hard enough that I felt it. Then he sat back and let his picture get took:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcNxqZpMQEIf2HOhQdbCyTJGd5NR5DxwXaM0IF8YXMQUPTBTv21vgF7auxhMRmpBUTiaDuikqdFJ4GZTSAQSpMtBObnR0aBbmIQmMUh_ibnNPuSmYyuabq8PGYYLqPh9U9HuD1iaBUMlSO/s1600/DSC_0001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcNxqZpMQEIf2HOhQdbCyTJGd5NR5DxwXaM0IF8YXMQUPTBTv21vgF7auxhMRmpBUTiaDuikqdFJ4GZTSAQSpMtBObnR0aBbmIQmMUh_ibnNPuSmYyuabq8PGYYLqPh9U9HuD1iaBUMlSO/s400/DSC_0001.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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A Texas garter snake, a <a href="http://www.austinreptileservice.net/austin_area_reptiles.html">useful website</a> told me. </div>
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I haven't seen him since, but I suspect he showed up because a bit up the hill Google Fiber was putting in cable. This has resulted in a bunch of eco-upheaval, because there's a tiny stream up there, right where they're working, and its critters are abandoning it. The most remarkable one I've seen was hanging out in the parking space in front of my house, fortunately when I was carrying my phone. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Somewhat traumatized by the speed at which he was moved, a red-eared slider, who later moved on to another small creek. </td></tr>
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You can tell by the pattern on the shell that he was just hanging out in a diminishing stream when the decision was made for him to move. Nine inches long, and plenty heavy. </div>
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Then there was the night when I went out to light the grill and this guy hitched a ride on my shoe and hopped off when we returned to the house.</div>
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Not a great photo, but he was jumping around like crazy, and I wanted him outside where he could do some good: a tiny, tiny toadlet who could have perched on a quarter. Progeny of Back Door Toad? Maybe, maybe. At any rate, a quick ride on a piece of paper, and back to foraging for bugs. </div>
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Because there are bugs. Anybody who lives here knows that. The most common one is the ant, of which Texas seems to have 23,847 kinds. My computer hasn't gotten clogged with Raspberry Crazy Ants, fortunately, but there are small ants who manage to squeeze through the windows, and, recently, great big ants I call Iron Ants because you step on them and they kind of go "ow" and keep on walking. They hold regular love-ins in my shower, where I literally pour cold water on their assembly, and they either go down the drain or retreat behind the shower lining into the wall. Last night, though, I saw something odd that I've never seen before: an Iron Ant walking with another one in its mandibles, a kind of a T walking across the living room floor. I have no idea what that was about. </div>
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And, sadly, there are roaches. Mostly, there are the big ones, the ones you can't step on unless you want to get down on the floor with a paper towel or something to clean up the ooze that results. My research, though, says that these so-called palmetto bugs or waterbugs don't want to be in the house, since it's not their natural habitat. The way I deal with them now is to stun them with a broom and then go all Canadian on their asses and play curling with them, opening the door and launching them outside. Sometimes I say "cheeseburger" to alert the neighbohood reptiles and birds that a sumptuous meal awaits. (Or any Thais who might be around: I found a small Thai grocery here that sells them canned, and in Montpellier there was a Thai restaurant with an insect menu that I never went near). They're not real smart, but they are real fast. And, according to Wikipedia, they're properly called American cockroaches. The ones you don't want because they <i>do</i> want to live in your house (and which you can whack with impunity) are brown, or German cockroaches. I never saw one in my 15 years in Germany, so maybe this is a xenophobic leftover from one of the World Wars, like "liberty cabbage" for sauerkraut or the more recent Freedom Fries. </div>
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Another new visitor this year was one I found irrationally scary. I routinely approach the bathroom by my bedroom with watchful eyes, because there appear to be a couple of entryways from outdoors, and the big roaches get in. Well, the other night there wasn't a roach, but under the sink was a three-inch scorpion, reddish brown. There are over 1000 species of scorpions, none of the ones in Texas are lethal (for that you have to go to the Sonora desert in Arizona), but I, a Scorpio, freaked out, whisked it out with the broom, and stomped the hell out of it. Then I swept it out the door and waited for the adrenaline to subside. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Right there, on the wall, under the brace, that's where it was. </td></tr>
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But wait, the lizard in your pants, aren't you going to tell us about that? Well, yes, because the above photo is about that, in a way. </div>
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A few weeks back, I was passing in and out, grilling something for dinner, and a two-inch brown Mediterranean gecko (not unlike the Moroccan geckos who occasionally visited in France) ran in. I tried to dissuade him, but no soap: he ran to where I couldn't get him and it was at a crucial part of dinner so I gave up. Anyway, I don't mind a gecko in the house. They have prodigious appetites, and the summer I moved away from Austin to go to Berlin, my house suddenly had two of them in the kitchen. There had been a problem with German roaches, as there usually is in a house with no central air conditioning and open windows and doors. There was, within 24 hours of these two moving in, no longer a problem with German roaches at all. And, with his propinquity to the shower and the ant love-ins, I suspect this one had found a good place to hang and was hanging and dining well. I tried to photograph him, but it was before I'd had my coffee, so it didn't happen: the camera refused to click when I had him in focus and when I returned with the phone (and its clip-on fancy lenses) he'd vanished. But I was curious why the camera wasn't working so I aimed it at the under-sink area, and hence the above photo. </div>
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I'm blessedly without mammals, although a large, fat white cat with black blotches saunters through my yard each day. He is manifestly not welcome: I caught him staring at an area where the toad hung out during the day last year, and wished I had a pan of water to throw at him. Cats are stupid hunters and predators, and with the cardinals and the various reptilia, I just don't want them in the yard. And yes, there are squirrels. I don't pay them much mind, but this spring, there was a very cool sighting. Remember Pizza Rat? He was a thing on the internet a few months ago, a tiny rat straining to take a mammoth slice of pizza down the stairs to the New York subway. Well, one day this spring, I noticed a squirrel behaving oddly, and saw that it had a slice of pizza in its mouth. No camera nearby, no phone, and he was moving quickly: he was, after all, bigger than Pizza Rat, and the slice was smaller. And I kind of felt sorry for him. Pizza Rat was rewarded by a luscious New York slice. Poor Pizza Squirrel probably had Domino's. But no matter where it was from, it didn't matter: none of us critters in Austin have access to good pizza. </div>
Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-37237844969203096762016-07-10T23:47:00.000+02:002016-07-10T23:47:44.341+02:00On Returning, Part...Uh...Lord, it's been a while since I touched this thing. I have to keep reminding myself it's not just a travel diary, but, then, what else has been of interest recently? I've been contemplating using my new camera to keep a log of the critters that have been in and out of the house, but I'm waiting for a moment when there's a critical mass of critter-to-photo data. Anyway, the summer's only just settled in. I'm sure there'll be more.<br />
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As for the rest, I'm mainly just hanging around waiting for the books to come out. Not a lot to write about there. I'm reading, doing very little writing, taking the opportunity to grab DVDs from Netflix while they're still trafficking in physical media, and, well, that's about it.<br />
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But it was that last bit that inspired me to write something today. A friend recommended a film, suspecting that I might have a reaction to it. Since none of the things I actually want to see on my Netflix queue are coming very quickly, this one got delivered last week and I watched it last night.<br />
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Having been elsewhere during his ascent as a filmmaker (although I think I got screwed by <i>Mother Jones</i> under his leadership), I'd never seen this one, but the premise intrigued me: Moore visits ("invades") a bunch of mostly-European countries, "stealing" good ideas to take back home as the spoils of his invasion. Thus, we learn about why Finland's educational system rates as the highest in the world, how workers in Italy get so much time off but still manage to be productive and competitive with other economies, why the French take school lunches and sex education so seriously, and so on. So I watched it, and fired off this e-mail to the guy who suggested I watch it. I've edited it somewhat, but this is mostly first-draft, top-of-the-head stuff.<br />
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As you might expect, I looked for counter-arguments and/or hidden nuances behind the rosy pictures he presented. Here are a few of them. </div>
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FRANCE: Despite the nutritional benefits of those school cafeterias, he tiptoed around the big issue, which is that they also have to accommodate Jewish and Muslim students by observing dietary laws. The good news is, Kashruth and Hallal are almost identical. The bad news is, nativist right-wingers are using this as a wedge: several schools in more right-wing parts of the country have refused to stop serving pork. This became a major issue in Denmark, actually, where the Right is blooming like the Occupation never happened. </div>
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ITALY: Yeah, that lifestyle looks good, but a lot of Italians don't pay the taxes that support it and it's a good question how much longer they'll be able to keep going unless some serious enforcement among the titans of industry takes place. On the other hand, Berlusconi is obviously dying, and I would imagine his type of "legit" "businessman" (ie, non-mafia) is also becoming a thing of the past, since there's no postwar economy to build up and make obscene profits from these days. </div>
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GERMANY: Yes, they're hyper-vigilant about any possibility that fascism will return. So much so that neighbors like Austria and Denmark worry about the effect on free speech and the foreigner-in-the-street wonders why the few undeniably positive things that can be said about German culture and history are so rarely mentioned. In fact, that's one of the things that made life there finally unbearable for me. Well, that and the food and the weather. But the fact that they've hidden the remains of the Old Synagogue in Berlin always spoke volumes to me: starting in the 18th century, it spawned a revolution in Jewish thinking, leading to a renaissance in German intellectual life, German business, and, not coincidentally, the birth of Reform Judaism. But not a peep about that on site, and Libeskind's much-vaunted Jewish Museum, like much contemporary German thinking, continues to present Jews as victims. </div>
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(I'm having zero luck finding the photos that went along with <a href="http://berlinbites.blogspot.com/search?q=synagogue">this blog post</a> and hope they're still recoverable, and the post makes far less sense without them, but whaddya gonna do?)</div>
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NORWAY, FINLAND & SLOVENIA: One thing missing here is the lives the ordinary people live, and the spaces in which they live them. Mile after mile of postwar identi-housing, very small living quarters, dreary public spaces. Of course, some of this is inherent in the physical properties of the countries themselves. My guess is that prison in Norway isn't quite as cheerful in February as it was when Moore and his crew visited, and yes, the old town of Ljubljana sure is pretty but I'd guess that a ten-minute walk in any direction from the central square puts you smack in the middle of a bunch of Tito-era kleenex-box buildings. And it's nice that the Finns enforce equality the way they do, but it's a very small population they're dealing with, so micro-solutions work. </div>
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TUNISIA: Moore's surprise ending may well present an over-optimistic view of the situation here, the one country in the film that I don't have as much first- or second-hand knowledge as I'd need to comment with any authority. The reactionary Islamist forces aren't as benign as the old man with bad teeth who comments here, especially the ones operating out of the country's neighbors like Algeria and Morocco. My optimism is a bit more guarded than what's on display here. </div>
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The film seems to naively suggest that these solutions -- made, as several Europeans note, out of American ideas (Thomas Dewey, among others, I imagine) -- could work if applied here. The problem with that is that they *are* in fact American ideas, and they've been tried and discarded here. Not always for good or even desirable reasons, or with enough of a trial period to make a reasonable assessment of their viability or worth, but there is definitely a large, well-funded, powerful opposition to them. Barring a catastrophe, our grandchildren will die of old age before even modest progress will be made along those lines. In other words, I continue to believe that this country is doomed. Self-doomed, at that. </div>
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As I am not the first to mention, Moore is a very clever polemicist and propagandist. It's just that it feels nice to be in the choir being preached to. For a change. </div>
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Moore does not look well. He's gargantuan, and it's all fat. Expect we'll be losing him soon.</div>
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If you think the above touches on my ongoing deep ambivalence about my repatriation to the US, well, you don't win a prize. For a long time after my last blog post, way back there in April after returning from France and Spain, I struggled to make clear an idea that had formed during the trip, and finally it came to me. I had returned from a civil society to a highly uncivil one. This goes way beyond the events of this past week here, the various cop shootings and shootings of cops, or the candidacy of the most manifestly unsuited candidate for President in American history. For me the annoyances are far more granular: the way people drive, the astounding amount of self-absorption, the refusal to give an inch in compromise, even when all that's gained is getting to the red light faster. I try not to let it get to me, and I fail a lot. I got too used to something different, and it's not that I'm having trouble adjusting, it's that I resolutely don't want to adjust. </div>
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I'm pretty sure by the time we figure that all out it'll be way too late. As for me, I have two books coming up that I have to promote, as well as another one to plan and, I hope, write. So for now, I have to stay where I am, get out when I can, and put one foot in front of the other. Live like the alcoholics, as I always tell people, one day at a time. And plan my escapes wisely: I may well be house sitting in Jersey City and then go to Montreal next month, and I'm planning a trip to Spain at the end of September and the beginning of October. Then back to taking it as it comes. Which is okay, given that I'm living somewhere I don't particularly like. But hell, I've done that before, and at least I'm pretty capable of expressing myself in its native language. </div>
Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-53195221879610014012016-04-19T22:16:00.000+02:002016-04-19T22:16:15.968+02:00Europe, Spring 2016, Part Five: Spain Again and Out<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'll admit to a certain relief as I steered the Peugeot out of Montpellier and on to the motorway (which was, along most of its length, the old Roman Via Domitia) towards Perpignan to return it. Maybe if I'd had someone with me to whom I could have shown bits of my past, perhaps driven up to Pic St. Loup and up the tiny road that leads to the ruined castle hanging off its companion escarpment l'Hortus that I thought I'd hallucinated until I actually was able to stop and photograph it. Or maybe I needed the down-time as a day of drawing a deep breath before heading into the last couple of days of this trip.<br />
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Spring in this part of the world announces itself with wind. Cold winds sweep out of the mountains and lower the temperature until they're countered by warmer winds from the south, the Mediterranean, and Africa itself. I used to sweep up a fine yellow dust that blew into my apartment, and someone who knew told me that this was sand from the Sahara in Algeria, picked up and transported to coastal France. The winds were in full effect on the highway, and I had to pay attention to stay in my lane, and make sure that the gigantic semi-trucks stayed in theirs. Fortunately there weren't many campers on the road: signs in French, English, Spanish, and German appeared every dozen or so miles warning against violent cross-winds.<br />
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But at least I didn't have any problem finding the Center of the World again, even if I did make a misstep finding the parking garage and, then, the rental return. It was okay: I had plenty of time before my train to Girona at 3:17. I was concerned about the scratches -- very concerned -- but just as concerned that Europcar had closed for lunch and there were various customers milling around. My body was sending me signals, so I went to the main waiting room, found some packaged sandwiches, and found a French BLT, speck, lettuce, marinated tomatoes on a seeded baguette. I knew I'd burn off enough glucose toting the case of wine that this wouldn't be an issue. Then I headed back to the Europcar area to wait. Apparently someone had tipped off the cops that someone arriving on the train from Marseille, a teenage boy, might be trouble, and a number of suspects had their luggage searched. Another pair, who looked to be in the demographic, were apparently undercover cops, checking in with the uniforms from time to time.<br />
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Eventually the agent reappeared, several families pushed ahead of me and got their cars, and I returned mine. She didn't seem unduly concerned about the scratches and I still haven't heard anything. My American Express card showed only the $100 I'd charged on it, so who knows. And the train to Girona, when I finally got on it, was impossibly crowded and noisy, but it was only 45 minutes, so I arrived in Girona, got a cab despite the fact that my hotel was only a few blocks away (luggage again) and checked in to a once-elegant hotel (cigarette burns on the desk? really?) crowded with British and Scottish golfers. I went out as soon as I'd stashed my luggage to look at the town, but the weather had other ideas and I returned, somewhat damper for the experience, about a half-hour later.<br />
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For dinner, I hit the city's oldest restaurant, <a href="http://www.casamarieta.com/Presentacion/situacion.asp?idi=2&f=0">Casa Marieta</a>, and had some odd pâtés to start, then a dish of squid with green peas, which was interesting. But I'd read a description of the place as "tired," and that's just how it seemed. Surely there was someone doing something more interesting with Catalan food here. Fortunately, there was.<br />
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The next morning I set off to see the obvious sights and to figure out what the story was with Girona. I'd read that it had the best-preserved Jewish quarter in Spain and deduced from that, mistakenly, that the Jews hadn't been expelled from Girona with the rest of the Spanish Jews in 1492. A visit to the <a href="http://www.girona.cat/call/eng/museu.php">Jewish Museum</a> set me straight, as well as inadvertantly providing me with a perfect first stop in figuring the place out. The Jewish quarter, El Call, had apparently existed in one form or another since before 1000 CE, and besides becoming a center of trade, it was a center of Jewish intellectual life, epitomized by Mossé ben Nahman (1194-1270), who must have been a busy guy, since he penned famous commentaries on the Talmud, systematized the Kabballah, wrote poetry, practiced medicine, and found a little time to preach at the synagogue, which at the time was located atop Girona's hill next door to the cathedral. He left town in his old age and died in Acre, which the museum puts in Israel, but I seem to remember as a Jordanian city. By the time of Mossé's death, though, Gironans had become suspicious of the Jews, and demanded a wall be built around the Call. Riots and laws persecuting the Jews began in 1381, and a lot of them converted, at least outwardly, but they continued to socialize with the unconverted and also made mistakes when practicing their new religion's rituals. The Inquisition finally came to town to see what was up, mostly because Barcelona, where they'd been working, kept having bouts of plague, and Jews started emptying out the Call. The usual punishment for being a Jew was burning in a bonfire, but so many had left by the time the Inquisition's bureaucracy had found them guilty that straw dolls were used in almost every case. And by 1492, of course, the Jews had all left. The Inquisition proved so popular with the people of Girona that in 1820, during the Riego Uprising (unexplained in the wall caption), the House of the Inquisition was burned to the ground, destroying all its records. With the Jews gone, they'd gone after herbalists, homosexuals, witches, Lutherans, and anyone else they didn't like.<br />
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If you wanted to sum up the history of the Jews of Girona, a rather ugly sculpture in the museum's courtyard does a great job:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On one side, the Zodiac, an astrolabe, various navigational instruments, and Mossé with a book...<br /><br /></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRMgw8jD3RdLpwKCBMfsmg26g57nF-soPVxIyotPrhbfBlOgtxIt3NFUHIZsyJeQr6ByAMOglOBwnwZnxdeKsL-KjAiwLnWnL8sclCCq9WNME1s77DXD9TFMDO-_kFP7KgugcbEg0A0ndQ/s1600/DSCN0865.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRMgw8jD3RdLpwKCBMfsmg26g57nF-soPVxIyotPrhbfBlOgtxIt3NFUHIZsyJeQr6ByAMOglOBwnwZnxdeKsL-KjAiwLnWnL8sclCCq9WNME1s77DXD9TFMDO-_kFP7KgugcbEg0A0ndQ/s400/DSCN0865.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...and on the other side, Columbus sailing from a Jew-free Spain using those instruments.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">
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It was time to climb the hill, where the rest of the story would unfold, and explore the cathedral and its surroundings. The Museu d'Art is located in one of the buildings where the cathedral's bureaucracy was once housed, including its prison, and it has an impressive amount of mostly older stuff (ie, right up my alley), including a minor work by the Master of Cabestany, a long painted beam of unknown provenance, showing a procession of monks,</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rather badly captured here, but click to enlarge<br /><br /></td></tr>
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the ubiquitous lion-eating-a guy carving, <div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There's one in Montpellier, too. No idea.<br /></td></tr>
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and lots more. Impressive. Eventually, you leave into the plaza in front of the cathedral, where, letting my eyes adjust to the bright sunlight, I saw an act of rather shocking violence: I was noting the seagulls that were up there among the pigeons, because they were about two feet from one end to the other. As I was trying to decode whether or not the cathedral was actually open (it still serves as a cathedral, after all, with several Masses a day) I noticed that one of the seagulls had taken a small black pigeon in its beak and had broken its neck, and was bashing it against the pavement to hasten its death as it flapped its wings, ever more feebly. I'd always known that seagulls were eaters of every sort of junk available, but had no idea they'd hunt live prey. </div>
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Although, in its odd way, it set me up for the cathedral, which is big, filled with Baroque chapels as over-the-top as any Spanish Baroque art can be (and that's plenty, althoug I do like that period's organ music), lots of depictions of martyrdom (Spanish Catholicism is gory) and its treasury has, as its central display, a very old tapestry depicting the Creation. I liked that a lot: it was a cheapo way of teaching the bible to the illiterate masses and it's crowded with bible stories and other goodies, like the pair of Jews at the bottom who serve as an informal logo for the Jewish Museum. </div>
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Outside again, I descended the hill and headed for the grandly-named Archaeological Museum of Catalonia, housed in the former church of San Pere de Gallegants, which has a nice cloister and good paintings in the museum part showing how ancient people lived here (burning the dead, putting them in ceramic vessels, and burying them surrounded by mini-Stonehenges of rocks) and were influenced by the Greeks and, later, the Romans. Christianity seems to have arrived early, around the 4th century, possibly with Roman colonial settlers, and there are apparently small basilicas out in the countryside dating from then, centered around the cult of St. Felix the Martyr, who remains the city's patron saint. </div>
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Next I went to the "Arab baths," so-called not because they were made by resident Arabs (a people who seem missing from the city history, interestingly enough) but because they were in the style the Arabs employed: first a cold dip, then outdoors, then a hot room for the steam. The building dates from 1194, but there really isn't enough of it to warrant a visit, and it was made less pleasant by a couple of those cult-kids making new-agey music on what looks like an overturned wok with dimples in it. Those suckers are <i>loud</i>!</div>
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It was time for lunch, and as I made my way down the street, I passed the City Museum, which would be the perfect knitting-together of the various threads I'd gathered so far, but I wasn't going to miss another meal and get goofy, so I went to a place in the Call and had the one signature Catalan dish I'd missed in my visits to Barcelona: botifarra amb mongetes, which looks like this: </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Right: sausage and beans</td></tr>
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It wasn't all that distinguished, but it was just enough to fill the gap, and I was off for my last museum of the day. </div>
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The City Museum starts out with one of the weirder rooms I've ever been in. It was once a Capuchin monastery, and when the monks died, they were arranged in a seated position and placed in the dessicarium. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dry up, bro!</td></tr>
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When the corpses were mummified by the air circulating around them, they were dressed in their old robes and displayed in another part of the monastery. Memento mori, dudes!</div>
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The city museum is big on history and light on artifacts, which was okay by me, and the period between the Romans and the Inquisition is wisely left to other institutions in the city, but come the 19th century and the city's realization that its economic growth was stunted by its still being encircled by the age-old city wall, the citizens decided to tear most of it down so the city could grow. It became a printing center and had a few other industries, but it also suffered badly when it was bombed (by the Spanish government) during the Civil War in 1938. There is an amazing small display of children's drawings of the bombardment, all done in typical primitive kid style with bright crayons, and it reminded me that, starting with that, Spain became ruled by a fascist dictatorship under Generalissimo Francisco Franco, with full support from the Church, and that it remained so until 1975. With the current stirrings of reactionary right-wing politics fuelled by extreme conservative religion in the United States, remembering Spain's history during these times is a disturbing and, I'd say, necessary thing to do. </div>
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After that, I was museumed out, and started strolling back towards the hotel. Along the way, I passed a restaurant that looked interesting enough, wrote down its name (incorrectly, but thank heavens for Google Maps, where I just zoomed in further and further until its name appeared) and, when I eventually got back, I checked out their website. There, I thought, would be a meal worthy of Girona's spirit. </div>
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Because there is a spirit there, as there is in Barcelona, but it's more concentrated because the town is smaller. The place thrums with activity: Lance Armstrong, Gerry told me, took a house here because the hills were great training places for him and his team, and although I'm used to being a minority group as a pedestrian in Austin, not until Girona was I outnumbered by bikers. Had it not been for a book festival in the evening that drew crowds to its entertainment part, between the golfers and the bikers, I might not have seen any civilians at all. I liked this place, and once I arrived at my interesting-looking restaurant (where I'd reserved: you have to, I'd say), <a href="http://llevataps.weebly.com/">Llevataps,</a> the deal was sealed. I started with a warm salad that contained calçots, a uniquely Catalan cousin of the green onion and leek that's usually roasted, touched with a bit of romesco sauce, went on to an absolutely amazing dish of grilled artichokes and razor clams, which concentrated the artichoke flavors while charring the leaves -- a tour-de-force -- and finished up with tender octopus whose method of preparation I didn't note, because by then I was too full and had to regretfully leave half of it behind. With this, I had a bottle of Io Masia Serra, a brilliant combo of Cabernet Sauvignon, black Grenache, and Merlot, one of those creative red blends I've favored recently, and which paired with the artichokes and clams spectacularly. Without question, the best meal of the trip, and not nearly the most expensive. The staff was friendly and the whole experience underscored my belief that Catalonia is well ahead of France in experimenting and creating within the tradition, extending it instead of merely preserving it. I gotta get back to this place. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Obligatory cliched pic of houses along the Onyar River</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Non-obligatory picture of feline residents of the river's edge</td></tr>
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* * *</div>
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I had no train to meet to get me to Barcelona the next day, but I wanted to get going, even though I knew the hotel wouldn't have my room ready. But I seemed to have trouble getting out of hotels on this trip: construction workers hit a power line in Narbonne, trapping everyone inside (the front door had an electric eye to open it) for an hour or so, and Sunday morning in Girona, there was the city's annual 10,000k run. The brilliant folks who organized it managed to cut off the three big streets surrounding the hotel so no cabs could pick anyone up. This lasted for 90 minutes, with one of the desk ladies getting testier and testier with the cab company, who didn't seem to have any idea if there were a solution or how long the race would last. I hung out in the lobby, watching runners dash in to use the john and then dash out again, and finally the thing ended and a cab took me to the railroad station, where I was offered a fast train and a slow train. The fast train got me into Barcelona ten minutes earlier, so I chose the slow one, which took a different route and went through some lovely countryside. Had I but known, I could have gotten off at the Paseig de Gracia station in Barcelona, two blocks from my hotel. I also realized that, if one left at about 9, one could do a day-trip to Girona from Barcelona. Llevataps is open for lunch, too. </div>
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Monday I checked out, but I also met a friend from Austin who arrived that day to start a trip with his girlfriend that would also take in Florence, where they would do some work on a film they're making. She wouldn't be in until later, so I took him to try to get a cheap phone, then to the hotel/housing agency that handled the apartment they'd rented to get the key, then to the apartment, and then back up to the housing agency's next door neighbor, a stellar northern Spanish tapas joint called <a href="http://www.barcelta.com/">Pulperia Bar Celta</a>. A perfect last meal in Barcelona!</div>
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I'd also booked this end of the flight badly, and had to overnight at an overpriced, dingy hotel at Heathrow, a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone. After that, though, I had a long time to think about the trip (and, much as I'd disliked the Austin-Heathrow nonstop on the way out, this flight wasn't nearly as crowded, so I had some room). And I did. Beauty had clearly been encountered and enjoyed -- luxuriated in, even -- both natural and man-made. Love was, of course, unchanged, except for a nagging realization that a lot of women I'd been encountering in the States thought it unseemly that I could still be interested at my advanced age. Of course, my friend who was just starting his Barcelona trip was with a woman ten years younger than me -- and he's nearly ten years older than I am. I landed in Austin to discover a text from him: "What a big lovely city, Paris with a better attitude." Can't say that about the city I'd just landed in, and I'm going to have to cope with that somehow. I'm about to embark on a period where if all goes well I should see some changes in my material and professional life, and I intend to take as much advantage of that as possible. I would dearly love to get out of Austin: it's a bad fit, and had I known, I needn't have come here when I realized I couldn't stay in France any more. This isn't the place to bitch about that now. Just do your work, keep the love and beauty thing in your mind, and keep on. </div>
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Two days after I got back, I ran out of coffee and headed up to Anderson's to re-fill. The next morning I poured some beans out of the bag into the grinder and took the egg man's rubber band to close it up. It snapped. </div>
Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-53113061792496109442016-04-18T21:24:00.002+02:002016-04-19T18:07:00.359+02:00Europe, Spring 2016, Part Four: Montpellier: You Can/Can't Go Home Again<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ahhh, Montpellier!</td></tr>
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There was little enough reason to stick around Narbonne, when I knew that the road I'd parked on eventually turned into the road that'd drive me straight to my next destination, Montpellier, the city where I'd lived for five years before having to return to the States. I'd booked four days <a href="http://www.hoteldesarceaux.com/en/">in a hotel</a> there, planning to use it as a base of operations as I went out into the countryside visiting wineries and seeing more of the landscapes I'd loved.<br />
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I left Narbonne early enough on Monday that I realized I could drop down to Sète on the way and grab some fish for lunch. Once again, it was a grey day, and windy. At this time of year, I remembered, the sun could warm you if you stood in it directly, but it wasn't making an appearance, and as I drove into Sète, I saw big waves in the Mediterranean crashing against the seawall: there was a storm out there somewhere, and it was a big one. After parking under the canal, I came up and walked around the main drag, then a couple of other streets, working up a hunger and noting that almost nothing had changed. I had in mind a tielle for lunch, a local specialty best described as a pie with octopus cooked in a spicy tomato sauce as filling, but the best place in town, the place that, in fact, was credited with inventing the tielle, was closed for the season. I settled for one of the canal-side restaurants -- one of the few that was open -- and had a fish soup with croutons (not so hot) and a rouille sètoise, which, the last time I'd had it, was cuttlefish under a blanket of hot, saffron-scented mayonnaise on a bed of rice, and this time was cuttlefish in a spicy tomato-based sauce with a dish of spaghetti on the side. It was far better than the soup, but the place wasn't exactly doing a lot of business on a Monday out of season.<br />
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It was too cold to do any more wandering, or to go up the hill the town is built on, so I got in the car and headed towards Montpellier. I'd arranged this trip so that I'd wake up at the hotel on Tuesday, walk downstairs, and go to the Tuesday market, which stretches out across the street. It wasn't the best season for the market, but I could tell just what time it was by visiting it, I'd spent so much time in the past buying my food there. Meanwhile, there was Monday to kill by strolling around the center of town, seeing what had changed and what hadn't. The hotel itself was much improved from when I used to stay there on my visits from Berlin: no more rickety furniture and lumpy bed, no tiny shower booth leaking all over the place. It was too cold to take breakfast in the hotel's wonderful garden, but it would be possible later in the year.<br />
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A quick stroll confirmed a few things. First, despite the Virgin Megastore's demise, the covered market was still open, although I'd heard otherwise. Neither the Musée Fabre nor the Pavillon Populaire had shows up currently, which, in the latter case, was too bad. Not having to endure the surliness of the Fabre staff was fine with me. Wandering out onto the Comédie, there were no patrons at the outdoor cafés, and slipping down the side-street towards my old place revealed that the former jeans store was now a beer-bar with an actual good list of beers (must be the American exchange students). The biggest disappointment was when I came to my old house, and the Lebanese snack bar was still in operation, but redesigned, and with someone I didn't recognize manning it. Had my pal Hani disappeared? Apparently: he wasn't there when I passed a couple of days later, either. There was a new burger joint where there'd been a nail salon, and I recalled the words of a Facebook friend whom I don't actually know who'd preceded me by about a week: he said that food in Montpellier had changed to pandering to students, and that cheeseburgers were now a fixed thing, even on the menus of decent restaurants. There was no reason for France not to have great cheeseburgers: they have good beef, many different cheeses, and great bakers capable of crafting a bun, but when I lived there, there was only one place that did a decent burger, the Vert Anglais (which, I saw, was now called something else). Now, burgers are omnipresent, and, at least in France, they ain't for dinner. Still, I wasn't worried about getting a good meal.<br />
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The saddest change was the old hat store on the Rue de la Loge, which had been run by an old man with a great story: he was Jewish, but didn't know it, and when the Occupation came, concerned Montpellierians hustled him out of town, ran the store for him, and got him out of hiding when it was safe again. That's as much a story about French laïcité as anything. But it was shuttered (I'd considered buying a straw hat there) and the few hats in the window were dusty.<br />
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Back at the hotel, I took care of some other business, calling my Apple tech support guy, Etienne, to tell him I had my old iPad and an old iPhone he'd asked me to bring, along with some sort of memory card for an Apple Cinema Display he'd bought. He'd wandered into the English Corner Shop one day, and impressed Chuck and Judi with his abilities, although back then he was only a teenager, and now, at 21, he's at loose ends, buying and selling computer stuff, and kind of vaguely thinking about coming to America. He's also into cars, and wants either a Cadillac or a Ford Crown Victoria, of all things. But his automotive knowledge would come in handy.<br />
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There was no question of where to eat on Monday: I'd already checked, and the Chat Perché, my absolute favorite restaurant, was open on Mondays. The menu in the window looked unchanged, but inside, it was a different story. The people running the place looked different, and there on the menu was the dreaded cheeseburger and fries, where the seiches a la plancha once were. There were other things, though, and I started with a fresh green pea soup, cold, and went on with a roulade of chicken breast stuffed with Conté cheese. And, of course, I had a bottle of Mas de la Seranne Sous le Figuier with it. My favorite winery, clearly keeping up the quality, I noted, waiting for the food. The soup was good, but the chicken was dry, and the vegetable side-dishes, always a highlight there, were bland. Bland! Clearly the Chat had fallen on hard times. Very sad. I remembered so many meals with friends (including the young woman whose philosophical conversations I remembered in the first part of this travelogue), and my sister's surprised "Who puts mint in mashed potatoes?" when she had dinner with me there. The Chat did. But not any more, apparently.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Montpellier's Muslims have tacos instead of cheeseburgers. I have no idea if this is a common North African street food, if one of them is called "a tacos," or whether some Moroccan guy thinks this is a taco. </td></tr>
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Of course, for the Tuesday market, the heavens had opened up and it was pouring. There were stands set up, though, and I decided to see if the storm would pass, and about 11, it relented, and I made a quick tour of a much-diminished market. The egg guy was there, and, moreover, he remembered me. We had a genial chat, and I almost asked him for one of the rubber bands he uses to keep the egg cartons closed. I'd been using one, my last physical connection with my Tuesday-Saturday market ritual, to hold my bags of Anderson's coffee shut back in Austin. But I figured he'd never understand why I'd want one, so I didn't. It was obvious that a lot of folks had bailed on showing up, but the Italian guy with the fresh pasta and salumi was there, busy as usual, the quiet guy with the best vegetables (usually) in the market was there, of course (most of his trade is with restaurants), but not many others had ventured out. The herb, spice, and soap people were obviously not there, because you can't display dried herbs and soap in a downpour, and I'd promised to bring back some of their famous Marseille soap, but there was a little guy with some hiding under a canopy, so I got it from him. It was kind of slippery because it had gotten wet, but it'd do.<br />
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The rest of the day, I just left the car in the hotel's newly-leased underground parking spot and did some random stuff. I visited my friend Kirsty, a Scottish woman who seems to have defeated the various crises she was going through when I'd left, and she filled me in on the latest idiocies that the city was perpetrating (not that, when a major hunk of the city is torn up, it wasn't obvious that <i>something</i> was going on), surprised the hell out of the woman who used to cut my hair by dropping in for another trim (this, too, was something I'd hoped to do), and, later, met my friends E&J, who made plenty of appearances in this blog back in 2011, for a catch-up at <a href="http://www.airdarmenie.fr/">an Armenian restaurant</a>, of all things (well, J is vegetarian, after all). A good, relaxed day.<br />
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The next day, Etienne had asked if he could tag along while I visited some wineries. Despite a surname that means "wine jug," he declared that he didn't like wine, but was curious as to why people did. The weather had turned brilliant, and it was a good day. And Etienne's car-geekery came in handy, too: I'd scratched the paint getting into the parking spot in the hotel's lot, and although it wasn't dented or a very serious scrape, I know that these things can come back and sting you, so I'd asked him if there were someplace I could get a quote for a quick buff-and-paint job. I managed to scratch it again getting out of the space and then out of the garage -- this wasn't a big car, but damn, I'd forgotten about French parking spaces -- so our first visit was to a Peugeot dealership on the edge of town, near where we'd get on the motor route towards wine country. The only guy who'd talk to us there kept us waiting for about 20 minutes, did a superficial look at the car, and, no doubt smelling panicked rich tourist, said if we left the car now, he could have it ready by the end of Friday for €3000. Um, no. Thanks, but no. But this was a concern, and it was preying on me a bit: I'd declined CDW when I'd rented it, and although people with more experience than I said that it might not even matter, I was hoping not to have to deal with insurance.<br />
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But now, our job was to get to Aniane, and the first winery on my list. Well, there were actually only two, but I was keeping my options open. <a href="http://www.mas-seranne.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=35">Mas de la Seranne</a> has been my favorite Languedoc wine since I tasted my first bottle on an early visit to Montpellier, and some of my favorite wine experiences have involved it (and one of my least favorite, when I spent €13 I didn't have on a bottle of one of their higher-end wines, Clos des Immortels, for a birthday treat and...it was corked). I'd always wanted to visit the winery, and now I had an excuse. I'd ordered a swell piece of luggage from <a href="http://www.lazenne.com/">a company that makes a collapsible suitcase</a> that can contain cushioned holders for a dozen bottles of wine, which you can then check like normal luggage. (You declare 9 liters of wine for personal consumption at Customs, and the government charges you something like $1.35 a bottle). I'd bought one and had it delivered to a friend in Nîmes, whom I'd see later.<br />
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We got to the winery just as they'd reopened from lunch, did a tasting, and I discovered that they had <a href="http://www.mas-seranne.com/vin-herault-aniane-13-bonaventura-2013.html">a new high-end limited-production wine </a>in the range, and upon tasting it, added it to the rosé and Clos des Immortels I already knew I wanted. Mme. Venture put up with us nicely, and let me take a photo in the room where the magic happens:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Well, <i>some</i> of the magic: the rest happens in the fields.</td></tr>
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The next stop would be St-Saturnin, the traditional last stop on the little driving tour I'd give visitors, whisking them up and down the hills through medieval villages and UNESCO sites and, finally, stopping at the Domaine d'Archimbaud for a tasting with Mme. Cabanes, who was always gracious about it once she'd bullied me into trying her III Pierres white. I told her I didn't drink much white wine, but I'd loved her rosé at the Estivales, Monpellier's summer-long wine festival. Turned out the white was as good as the rosé, an astonishing feat for a region that isn't particularly regarded for white wine. This time she let me taste it again and made another sale, and so I made off with a white, a rosé, and her top bottle, Robe de Pourpre, a thick, intense red that calls out for a winter evening and a hunk of roast beast. To my surprise, Etienne declared that he'd never had a wine like that (well, I could believe that) and he loved it, so he got a bottle, too. As we drove away, he was making plans to serve it with a dish of magret, the breast of a duck that had been raised for foie gras.<br />
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It was a little early to head back, so I remembered that on the way in to St.-Saturnin, we'd passed <a href="http://mas-conscience.com/">Mas Conscience</a>, which was not only back in the Terrasses du Larzac appelation like Mas de la Seranne, but, like them, had made an early transition to all-organic, certified and monitored. Their wines had been hard to get in Montpellier, but I remembered them as excellent, so we decided to check them out. Mme Ajorque was rather surprised to see tourists draw up, but arranged a tasting. Not only did I score two bottles, but I talked her out of a straw hat with AOC TERRASSES DE LARZAC on the band, decorations that had no doubt been part of the presentation at this year's Vinisud, the big biannual wine trade fair held in Montpellier. So now I really <i>would</i> look like a tourist returning from vacation on the plane! I also got a catalogue of their wines: starting this year they've imported a few pallets of wine to San Francisco and New York, and seemed open to talking to a Texas distributor. So next time I visit <a href="http://www.theaustinwinemerchant.com/#">Austin Wine Merchant</a>, I'll hand it off and see what happens.<br />
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It was a good day out in the country. The fields were yellow with wildflowers (ground cover, no doubt) with the occasional bright red poppy, and the vines had been grafted and were spindly green. Back in Montpellier, I parked in the outdoor lot near the hotel. No more scratches for me, and birdshit washes off. I dropped my haul off at the hotel, and fielded a text on my phone: "Headed in, traffic jam." It was from <a href="https://viciouscycleblog.com/">Gerry</a>, the guy in Nîmes to whom I'd shipped my wine suitcase, who I was expecting to have dinner with the next night. It hardly mattered: I had no dinner plans tonight, and I was glad to see him. We had a fine chat over a nearly inedible dinner at Le Vieux Four, a restaurant I'd never really liked, but I was stupidly obsessed with having seiches a la plancha, a favorite that had disappeared from the Chat Perché's menu in favor of the cheeseburger, and I was also obsessed with eating someplace that <i>didn't</i> offer a cheeseburger on the menu, thereby narrowing choices greatly. The seiches -- encornets, actually; cuttlefish of a larger size -- could have been used to patch the tires on the Peugeot, and I struggled through two of them before giving up. Memo to self: never go on a restaurant search with low blood sugar due to having skipped lunch. I got back to the hotel, saw that Merle Haggard had died, and fired off a tribute on Facebook, then crashed.<br />
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The next day was my last in town, and I did...essentially nothing. Etienne checked in with two more shade-tree body shops he'd found who offered to do the job for €700 and €1100 (he'd taken pictures with his camera), and I decided that, with a $1300 hold on my credit card, I'd take my chances. I actually liked having nothing to do after all of the intense activity of the past week, and Friday would mark the last segment of the trip: drive to Perpignan, turn in the car, take a train to Girona, Spain. So Thursday, I wandered some, stopped in a restaurant Etienne had recommended for lunch (Les DouSoeurs, which had just opened when I left, and specializes in dishes from the Aveyron, in the north of Languedoc where there's no wine grown, but they make up for it with pork: the charcuterie-laced salad I had here was the best meal I had in Montpellier), wandered some more, found a small wine shop with a bottle of the Trois Lunes wine I'd had in Perpignan in the window -- the last bottle in the store, and the last of its vintage, the woman said -- and then wandered into a comics store and found that my favorite French comic artist, <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Denis">J.C. Denis</a>, not only had a new book out, but one featuring his long-time character Luc Leroi, whom I thought he'd abandoned. I spent some time at the hotel packing, goofing off, and went back into town for a non-memorable meal.<br />
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There's no doubt in my mind that I'll return to Montpellier next time I'm in France because of the many friends I have there and the memories I also have, and because it's still the best place to base yourself for explorations of the surrounding countryside, and there are still places I want to see. And it was empowering to walk its streets now with no fear that my being broke was limiting me. I had spent a lot of time there frustrated, wanting to do things that I couldn't because my carefully-planned move was sabotaged by the capricious cancellation of a project I was working on with a music-biz sleazeball, and the subsequent $20,000 hole it left in my plans. Now I could walk into a good restaurant, drive a car into the hills, buy whatever I wanted (although I didn't want much). But knowing the town as I do, I no longer want to live there -- or, most likely, anywhere in France. The whole country still exerts a powerful pull on me, but, well, I don't know. At any rate, there's time to think before acting, and I have work to do.<br />
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And, I thought, turning out the light, there were still a few days to go, once again in unknown places.<br />
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<b>Next: Spain And Out</b>Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-161655747959219252016-04-17T20:21:00.000+02:002016-04-17T20:21:49.676+02:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Not about to trust to fate, I got a fairly early start on Sunday, with a plan to see some of the ruined castles of Cathar country. Again, this was a part of the world I'd never seen, and I had no idea what to expect. But then, expecting nothing usually brings the information to you cleanly.<br />
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It was much easier to get out of the Center of the World than it had been getting back into it, and Sunday was much sunnier and brighter than Saturday had been, which meant that the huge mountain one can see so clearly from Perpignan hung in front of me as I drove out, its massiveness still about ¾ covered with snow, which gleamed against the blue sky. Of course, I got lost almost immediately, which is to say I somehow missed a turnoff to the route I'd written down -- hardly "lost," since it's pretty easy to find your way despite the occasional deviation from the route if you're equipped with a trusty Michelin yellow map (#344, Aude, Pyrénées-Orientales in this case) and the navigation system of a Peugeot 2008, which, although I couldn't program it, showed the names and locations of towns. You could just say okay, I'll aim for there, and I'll know where I am on the map.<br />
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Plus, the distances weren't as great as they looked on the relatively large-scale map. Somehow, I had headed southwest instead of northwest, and my job was to find the large D117 road. Heading north sent me through some hills on one-lane roads through tiny villages. In one of them, a band dressed in traditional clothing was waiting for everyone to show up, at which point they'd head into the village for a fair or something. Others snoozed Sunday away; the streets were pretty much deserted.<br />
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After what seemed like hours, I found the highway and had overshot my destination, a town called Maury, by so much that I had to backtrack, but after missing a turn in Maury and getting stuck in a tiny side-street which took all my driving skills to do a 180º turn, I saw the signs to my destination, Chateau Quéribus. This isn't the most famous of the Cathar castles, but it's probably the most dramatic.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, you do have to walk up there</td></tr>
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Calling it a "Cathar castle" is a bit inaccurate. The Cathars were a Gnostic sect, a spinoff of the Catholic Church who believed that people could know God directly, and had no need of priests or saints to intercede for them. In France, they were the first small-p protestants, protesting against the siphoning off of money and resources to Rome, and with a message that resonated with rural communities in the hills and mountains. This, of course, pissed Rome off -- not to mention the French crown, which depended on military and financial support from Rome, and the Inquisition was let loose to rid the country of the scourge of these people, a crusade against the so-called Albigensian Heresy of Catharism. Since Cathars lived semi-communally, entire communities were threatened by the Vatican's thugs, and many people fled to places whose fortifications and remote locations protected them. Chateau Quéribus was one of them: built sometime around 1000 CE, and 728 meters (2388.5 feet) above sea level on the highest peak for miles around, it was intended as a border defense against Spain, but its commander was sympathetic to the Cathars and in about 1244, it gave shelter to a bunch of them, including important clergymen. The castle protected them until 1255, at which point Inquisition forces under French command defeated the knight Chabert de Barbaira, who was defending the structure. The Cathars who'd been living there, meanwhile, sneaked further into the hills to other refuges.<br />
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There are a number of other castles nearby, all of which have histories with the Crusade against the so-called Albigensian Heresy, but this one, I'd decided, would be first. The road up there is narrow and twisty, and ends at a parking lot with a wooden shed from which tickets (and walking-sticks, and other souvenirs) are sold. You have to hike up a trail to the castle. So I did.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fortunately, any good castle has defensive positions where you can catch your breath<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another defensive position. That mountain's the same one I saw from Perpignan, and a sign up here called it Roc de France, which the map locates on the French/Spanish border SSW of Perpignan<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Once you finally climb to the top, there's a door. It's pitch black inside, but eventually a pillar and a couple of narrow spiral staircases emerge from the murk, and although I started up one of the staircases, my childhood acrophobia hit bad, and I backed down. Outside, I noticed you could climb the hill a bit to another door, and as I did, a couple came out of it, speaking English. I asked them what was in there. They'd been in the so-called Pillar Room, too, and climbed the stairs, only to come out here. From what I can gather from aerial photos, this means that the largest part of the structure is inaccessible to the public. Which meant walking back down, acrophobia in full effect. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I finally hit the parking lot, rather disappointed by everything but the view: besides the defenses, I had no insight into life at Quéribus, which had gone on until 1659, when it was abandoned as no longer necessary. It was a good walk, I suppose, but I didn't feel particularly enlightened. In fact, I realized upon thinking about it, what I felt was hungry. The village which had existed to serve the fort, Cucugnan, was still there, and was a short drive away and, more importantly, the only place for miles where I could get lunch. Surely it was a tourist trap -- they have you, and where else are you going to go? -- but I drove there anyway. There was parking at the base of the village, and a restaurant/hotel nearby. One glance at the menu meant I wasn't going to be eating there: tourist food, probably largely frozen, but cheap. I walked on to the more settled part of the village and saw signs for a restaurant called L'Auberge de Vigneron, which also rents rooms. Their menu was also cheap, but the food looked edible: and so it was. Much as I wanted to dig into their cassoulet, there was a 30-minute preparation time and anyway, I was wary of eating too much at lunch and getting logy on the remaining drive. There was a terrace, populated largely by middle-aged British women, and I sat out there and enjoyed a selection of local charcuterie -- sausages, hams, a little pâté, local bread, a tiny glass of cold creamed asparagus soup, and the most perfect accompaniment to all of this possible, a little jar of shredded pickled apple. There was no reason to expect anything this good, and suddenly the hike up the mountain was worthwhile. I ate slowly, enjoying the sunshine, the view of Quéribus in the distance, and a sound like the world's most boring gamelan orchestra, which was made by dozens of belled sheep below us, grazing in their field.</span></div>
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Not exactly the view from the terrace, which was around the corner</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The road out of Cucugnan gave me the choice of two more Cathar strongholds, Chateau de Peyrepertuse to the west and the Chateau d'Aguilar to the northeast. I'd already been disappointed by one, and I'd lingered over lunch too long, so I decided to start heading to Narbonne, although on back roads. The signs alerted me to something I hadn't realized: I was in the Corbières, a small mountain range that, at its lower altitudes, is one of France's great secret wine-growing appelations. And so, as I twisted along the narrow road, signs for wineries began to appear. </span></div>
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Random Corbières landscape: note vines.</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I was still pretty high up, and at one point passed a place where a wind-farm was going in, its entrancce marked by a warning to the trucks bringing in the parts: MANOEUVRE IMPOSSIBLE. In other words, get it right the first time. And now I was really glad I'd picked Sunday for this trip: I didn't want to share the road with these guys at all. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I could well have stopped at the Chateau Aguilar, and in retrospect probably should have. I've also been chided for not hitting Peyrepertuse. My response is that I'll do both of them next time, now that I have at least a basic idea of what the terrain is like. And the map told me I'd be on minor roads all the way to the outskirts of Narbonne, so who knew what rockslides or other problems might await. It was awe-inspiring all the way, and scary enough that I couldn't pull over to shoot photos. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">In contrast to Perpignan, the approach to Narbonne was easy, and parking was, too -- plus, it was free until 9am on Monday. I had no problem finding the hotel, and announced to the lady at the desk that I had a reservation and gave her my name. Turned out she was British. But she knew the town well, so she had a couple of ideas about restaurants that would even be open on a Sunday. A late-afternoon stroll renewed my orientation of the city (<a href="http://wardinfrance.blogspot.com/2009/12/day-trip-to-narbonne.html">I'd been here before in 2009</a>) and at a decent hour I had a good dinner of présalé lamb (the animals graze near the ocean on grass made salty by the wind off the ocean, and their meat really is "pre-salted"). </span></div>
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Narbonne's historic center from near the market</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Narbonne's cathedral, which you can see in the distance there (the tower on the left is the bishop's residence, the grey one to its right is the cathedral) was the last stop of the Catholic bishop who once ruled from Elne, and as such, is the easternmost stop in Catalan France, a cultural boundary evident in the fact that there are almost none of the signifiers of Catalan culture around in the food, the language (we're switching to French here, but up in the hills it once was Occitan not Catalan), or the religion (not many Cathars to chase here, I think). </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I felt a certain foreboding. Tomorrow I'd drive the short distance to Montpellier, where I'd lived for five years. Friends were expecting me, and memories were potentially about to ambush me. I'd booked four days; too many or not enough? </span></div>
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Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-60413024253476590262016-04-15T22:38:00.002+02:002016-04-17T17:12:02.873+02:00Europe, Spring 2016, Part Two: Ola Catalunya/Bon Jour Catalogne<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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The unexpected extra day in Barcelona was good and bad news. Good in that I really like the city and now I had an extra day to do some of the things I'd never done, but bad in that I hadn't planned it and wanted to get on the road fairly quickly. After all, the next stop would be Perpignan, where I'd pick up a car and head into the mountains. <br />
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The room was ready, I did my customary three-hour nap, and woke up about 7. Still too early for a proper dinner, but not too early to think about it. I love me some tapas, but there's more than that happening around Barcelona, and I'm still learning about it. I had a list from some friends-of-a-friend who lived in the Gracia neighborhood, but I was still paranoid about carbohydrates. The cuisines I'd be negotiating over the next couple of weeks aren't too carby, but I still didn't want to blow the diet too soon. I needn't have worried. The best find on the list was <a href="http://www.elnacionalbcn.com/en/">El Nacional</a>, which would be a tourist trap if so many locals weren't there. The concept sounds odd: four restaurants, four bars, all under one roof. Odd, but as I'd find out later, it works. I chose the fish restaurant, <a href="http://www.elnacionalbcn.com/en/restaurantes/la-llotja/">La Llotja</a>, where I had the anchovies and then the clams and razor clams, as well as a green salad. They also, as many restaurants do, give you a bunch of olives to nosh on while you wait for your food. Spanish olives are the absolute best, and the never-ending ways of curing them and stuffing them are a delight: the garlic-cured ones and the chile-cured ones here knocked me out.<br />
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As did the beer and the walk home. I was already so spaced out by jet-lag that I'd missed this huge joint, located in a mid-block alley just three minutes from my hotel, but I enjoyed the walk up the Paseig de Gracia in the relative calm of a Tuesday night until I realized I'd have to walk all the way back. Ah, well, tomorrow was another day, and if jet-lag was doing its usual thing, I'd be awake early enough to pack it with activity.<br />
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Which is why I found myself climbing my first mountain in search of beauty. I was curious about the <a href="http://www.fmirobcn.org/en/">Fondació Joan Miró</a>, because one-artist museums can be all over the map: consider the dozens devoted to the Surrealist charlatan Dalí, another Catalonian, or, indeed, Barcelona's Picasso Museum, which is a great collection of stuff created while Picasso was becoming Picasso, but nothing next to the <a href="http://www.museepicassoparis.fr/en/">Musée Picasso</a> in Paris. Then there's the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, which left me vaguely unsatisfied until I realized that he was terribly prolific and that the best versions of some of the paintings on display were in other museums. The Miró was better than that. He, too, was incredibly prolific, but he was also an abstract painter, not recycling scenes like Van Gogh's wheatfields, but trying one thing after another, chasing motifs and colors to see what worked. What I didn't know about the Fondació was that it was up one side of Monjuic, the huge hill capped by the <a href="http://www.museunacional.cat/en">MNAC</a>, which I'd previously ascended by the series of escalators the city nicely provides on the approach from the Plaça Espanya. So I started walking down a street lined with electronics shops and bakeries, then a market in the middle of the street covered by tent-like structures (I didn't stop, fearful that I'd lose a bunch of time), and, after a bit, onto the Carrer Margarit, which led to my destination, but led to it up a fearful hill, which I gamely climbed.<br />
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The Fondació was a perfect introduction/overview of Miró's work: consisting of donations from his family, other artists, and museums who've put works on permanent loan, it shows how Miró developed, hanging out in Paris, befriending Alexander Calder, whose work has the same sense of play as Miró's, and struggling to come up with a personal style. Although we think of him as a painter, he also worked in textiles (there's a huge tapestry in one room) and sculpture, with some witty assemblages made from junk he picked up and painted bright colors sitting out on the terrace. I learned a <i>lot</i> about color here: he was obsessed with it, and worked hard at getting exact shades that would harmonize with each other. I stood for a long time in front of this:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.affectionplus.com/images/album/33936_13V5302697.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.affectionplus.com/images/album/33936_13V5302697.jpg" height="400" width="261" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Lark's Wing Circled by Golden Blue Rejoins the Heart of the Poppy Sleeping on the Diamond-Studded Meadow</i></td></tr>
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It's so simple you <i>have</i> to look at it a long time. Elsewhere there's a room devoted to the year Miró made a hundred works on paper, which shows a guy just bursting with ideas, and a fine collection of late works donated by a Japanese collector. In the basement there is Miró's own collection of art given to him by friends -- Yves Tanguy, Henri Matisse, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg and others -- and some of the winners of the annual Miró Prize. I'm going to have to go back to this place next time, just to further absorb the bounty.<br />
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Staggering back to the exit, I noticed that I'd inadvertently done a smart thing: I'd arrived shortly after opening. The line was down the block by now, so I skipped out and walked back to C/Margrit to head back to the hotel. Do I need to tell you I got lost? Well, I did. Given that so much of Barcelona is a grid, the angled streets can throw you off. Or threw me off. Next thing I knew, I was looking at a big statue of Columbus, and a quick check revealed I was at the foot of the Ramblas, the touristy strip I avoid because of crime and tourists, one of which attracts the other. But I was exhausted and knew that if I traversed the entire thing, I'd be a couple of blocks from my hotel. I was also hungry as hell, and knew just how bad most of the tapas joints here were. So I soldiered on. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmhgKeqKvyhpBz12X_87ekkWfsTH6A5bQEmxAWDrn_EyfCj6fNrjvZNSjH_sD-eW6la0uMWruZPPVsucnW2k_V1XSkicZ1K0hEOuN1RHkzRjQTuyoTmEyh7u8y4MfUS3XuaUjEez4_SyzH/s1600/IMG_0400.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmhgKeqKvyhpBz12X_87ekkWfsTH6A5bQEmxAWDrn_EyfCj6fNrjvZNSjH_sD-eW6la0uMWruZPPVsucnW2k_V1XSkicZ1K0hEOuN1RHkzRjQTuyoTmEyh7u8y4MfUS3XuaUjEez4_SyzH/s400/IMG_0400.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This area had a bunch of these weird trees, which develop a kind of pot-belly and have huge fruits that look like cucumbers, which split open to reveal a cottony substance. I have no idea what they are. </td></tr>
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Finally, I was in friendly territory and instead of hitting the hotel and collapsing, I had lunch at <a href="http://www.barcelona.com/barcelona_directory/restaurants/tapas/ciudad_condal">Ciudad Condal</a>, the tapas restaurant on the corner. It was insanely busy, since it was mid-afternoon, which seems to be lunch time for Barcelona locals. I had some of my favorites -- a couple of croquetas, white anchovies marinated in vinegar, and, from the daily specials menu, a mixture of vegetables with romesco sauce. This last was something I'd never had before: a luke-warm stir-fry of eggplant, zucchini, asparagus, tomato and probably something else (I inhaled it immoderately), very close to ratatouille, with a puddle of lumpy red sauce next to it. Romesco is a Catalan sauce, and is made from hazlenuts, almonds, dried mild chiles and...other stuff. It's largely served with fish, but I didn't know that as I let it puzzle my taste-buds. Now that I'm back, I'm going to make some. </div>
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Unsurprisingly, a nap and some vegetation in the hotel room ate up what was left of the afternoon, and I already knew where I was going to eat: <a href="http://www.9granados.com/home.html">El Nou de Granados</a>, an old favorite that I'd recommended to other friends and which, I understood, was still good. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPOJqm969aj4tYBtpWwcCh_znunaSo7BB7F7R9nm4QJ8JSAN2iVI-6JqmO8lkVWtjttoZXjAtlYUfQEP9yNLyEyLMj4NzsqqkQkwNtPHEXP8RJWVFT5K_pTMw_94WMhCgah6WPIthggKe7/s1600/IMG_1572.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPOJqm969aj4tYBtpWwcCh_znunaSo7BB7F7R9nm4QJ8JSAN2iVI-6JqmO8lkVWtjttoZXjAtlYUfQEP9yNLyEyLMj4NzsqqkQkwNtPHEXP8RJWVFT5K_pTMw_94WMhCgah6WPIthggKe7/s400/IMG_1572.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Satisfied Customer at El Nou, 4/14/16</td></tr>
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I like this place because they have fun with their menu, the service is excellent (and English-speaking to a degree) and the wine list is wide and innovative. I had their take on a Caesar salad and, um, I'm not sure what else, because Spain has a way of handing you tons of paper when you go to museums or other sights and towards the end of the trip, I tore up a bunch of it which unfortunately included some restaurant receipts. I do remember the wine, though: I'm getting into eccentric red blends, and this definitely fits that bill. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn34AmcJeQwOXMdvAh9w53WFZ8ubAohFbGyzCFnGwYlE9u4fHm3Qa9RBAPRUCDVVLS9ra2mBm-hWdQhy8o1wnDMAowGMJHUo_MEuPrYNV9a0VcaXHQZIuuBr_KP_Dy4rJ8okOHb2zZeKA-/s1600/IMG_0404.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn34AmcJeQwOXMdvAh9w53WFZ8ubAohFbGyzCFnGwYlE9u4fHm3Qa9RBAPRUCDVVLS9ra2mBm-hWdQhy8o1wnDMAowGMJHUo_MEuPrYNV9a0VcaXHQZIuuBr_KP_Dy4rJ8okOHb2zZeKA-/s400/IMG_0404.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No idea what this label is all about</td></tr>
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The next day there was business to take care of. The last time I'd had to take a train out of Barcelona, I was headed back home to France, and the guy at Renfe, the Spanish national railroad, refused to honor my French-bought ticket. Moreover, there was nobody in the entire gigantic station, including the travellers' aid folks, who spoke English. Thank heaven there was a young graduate student near me in line who helped, but Renfe still wouldn't accept the SNCF ticket. I was going to head to France the next day this time, but I needed to avoid dealing with Renfe directly. I also wanted to check out the <a href="http://www.mmbcn.cat/">Museu del Modernisme</a>, which was right near me. And my friend Bob (seen checking his phone above) was going to arrive on my last day in Europe, at the end of the next week, and had rented an apartment in the Born district, Barcelona's new hot-spot. I'd agreed to meet his airport bus and take him to pick up the key and check out the apartment. </div>
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It turned out that the Corta Inglés, the huge department store near me, had a travel agency in the basement, and the woman who waited on me confessed to "a leetle" English. In no time, I had my ticket to Perpignan and was back at the hotel so it'd be safe. Then I headed to the museum, which, although small, was a wonderful education in Modernism, the movement -- largely in decoration -- that preceded Art Nouveau in Spain. Gaudí was the most famous (and extreme) exponent of it, but there were lots of others. The museum was founded by two guys with an antiques business who decided some of the furniture they were buying needed preservation and exhibition -- and promotion as a strongly Barcelonan product. The collection is small, but superb, and there's even a Gaudí piece in it, for those like me who don't particularly want to stand in line for several hours, pay over €20 for entrance to one of his houses, and view reproductions of pieces looted by Japanese tourists over the years. (Robert Hughes has a great rant about this in his book on Barcelona). In the basement, there's a large exhibition of the works of <a href="http://www.ramoncasas.cat/">Ramon Casas</a>, whose 150th birthday is this year. Casas was both a fine artist, painting beautiful women, for the most part (modern beautiful woman, not afraid to smoke a cigarette or -- shock horror -- ride a bicycle), and he put this skill to advertising art, so there's a bunch of that. And if you're a first-time visitor to Barcelona, just seeing what Modernism is will open your eyes, and you'll notice the many, many buildings, especially in the Eixample neighborhood you're in, that are built in this style. Many masterpieces are on the Paseig de Gracia, but many are not.</div>
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After a quick trip to the hotel to check that I had my bearings right, I headed towards C/Princesa to get my routine for Bob down. I turned onto the Via Laetana, an old Roman road, now a major artery, for some time, turned left and there the street was. I walked almost to the end to the hotel that also rents apartments, noted the address, and was delighted that it was next door to one of my favorite lunch joints, <a href="http://www.barcelta.com/princesa/">Bar Celta,</a> so I dropped in and had lunch. Refreshed, and with nothing else to do that day, I wandered Born, which has some magnificent little alleys, as well as several large plazas. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjupzJm1L2YqgUUIcDeVSW0ukBiuOjLnQnpbB7UlHbcvZ1jQsqtpC7_eniHLlB66ZFQvaJEOnaJcr66UzWJByXGf3l2v_wI8Onx4x9Vwa5FG_IZiUIZ5uvjQ_DDClj3DwvpC_ly5EbX1TNh/s1600/DSCN0778.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjupzJm1L2YqgUUIcDeVSW0ukBiuOjLnQnpbB7UlHbcvZ1jQsqtpC7_eniHLlB66ZFQvaJEOnaJcr66UzWJByXGf3l2v_wI8Onx4x9Vwa5FG_IZiUIZ5uvjQ_DDClj3DwvpC_ly5EbX1TNh/s400/DSCN0778.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I kept wondering what the apartments in this crazy skinny building looked like</td></tr>
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Also, at the end of Princesa is the Citadel Park, which I'd not known about previously. It has the Catalan Parliament building</div>
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and the second-most-over-the-top fountain I've ever seen (number one is in Béziers, but this photo doesn't give a true feel for how crowded with symbolic crud this one is)</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No, that's not the Brandenburg Gate's Quadriga on top, but close</td></tr>
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and somewhere in the park is the Zoo, although some critters are loose</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fortunately, he was too stoned to move</td></tr>
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I then walked back to Born, where I admired the street art -- and the streets themselves. </div>
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Then it was back to the hotel, another meal at El Nacional (the meat restaurant this time, although I got lost after hitting a bank machine for some cash and I lingered at the wine bar for over an hour waiting for the phone call saying my table was ready -- the woman had lost my number, and it was close to midnight when I ate), and bed so I could catch the train to Perpignan, over in Catalan France.</div>
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Dalí proclaimed Perpignan station to be the center of the world, a title they use to advertise it, but I'm not so sure. It's not even in the center of Perpignan. It was, however, close to the neat little hotel I'd chosen, so it was a ten-minute walk to the <a href="http://www.nyxhotel.fr/">Nyx</a>. They were super-friendly, anxious to practice their English, and I was settled in in no time. This gave me lots of time to wander the historic center of Perpignan, which is compact, and overlooked by the Palace of the Kings of Majorca. Yes, the tiny island in the Mediterranean once ruled significant parts of Catalan France and Spain. The building is best seen from outside: although I paid admission, there's nothing but empty rooms, devoid of decoration inside. I was also hustled out by a surly guy even though the place was supposed to be open for another 40 minutes. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixUow6xZRGaXvyw9uSiDV3BzbKoaLO8v906_5h_W-cbPUQ8WEwCsMP2baZkjNKT6qBMF-5RjzoVcjY7XM-p4ibHAo-Y5ZpEGfwc3NOzW_zSfsbRtWIiceHS_wymZm6QzTOUfAYEB1ZnQrz/s1600/DSCN0805.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixUow6xZRGaXvyw9uSiDV3BzbKoaLO8v906_5h_W-cbPUQ8WEwCsMP2baZkjNKT6qBMF-5RjzoVcjY7XM-p4ibHAo-Y5ZpEGfwc3NOzW_zSfsbRtWIiceHS_wymZm6QzTOUfAYEB1ZnQrz/s400/DSCN0805.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Big, but boring</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I wandered some more, looking for places to check out the next day, getting lost in the warren of streets and generally enjoying the ambience. Next to the Cathedral of John the Baptist, I saw a restaurant that looked good, and so I went there that evening. Le Saint Jean is a wonderful combination of Catalan (a fine charcuterie plate to start) and French (veal with a wine reduction), and although the owner hypes his own wine, Mas Divin, I went for another, and was transported: again, an eccentric blend of reds was a knockout. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-QR4NqcwR3SpZWFYeLwmiKN8S_YNc4UK-9pZRLK-W5DuIxq99I7DRcNpU5p0t-eDoUCW_WRN16cwANxrsOA5bcCiX2ThVmGqY56Sj9ZCpewsPv4DP8E1UruYzqlMZ1QOxX50FF0uWFCXj/s1600/IMG_0408.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-QR4NqcwR3SpZWFYeLwmiKN8S_YNc4UK-9pZRLK-W5DuIxq99I7DRcNpU5p0t-eDoUCW_WRN16cwANxrsOA5bcCiX2ThVmGqY56Sj9ZCpewsPv4DP8E1UruYzqlMZ1QOxX50FF0uWFCXj/s400/IMG_0408.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The veal</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkV7oc-pE03iQMhdLCawxtrAK9NZVdVM7Z14zo35N4OmWTbaygu8vmX7vS3viDsWyWBgEToe4j6GaqulqPT8NYLyhNeYpk9hcJUySer-4wR9B1u-Ghv0FFmD9d69iHmIkL67U8KZQ0Xu3M/s1600/IMG_0407.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkV7oc-pE03iQMhdLCawxtrAK9NZVdVM7Z14zo35N4OmWTbaygu8vmX7vS3viDsWyWBgEToe4j6GaqulqPT8NYLyhNeYpk9hcJUySer-4wR9B1u-Ghv0FFmD9d69iHmIkL67U8KZQ0Xu3M/s400/IMG_0407.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The wine</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I'll be back again to try his wine, too: this place was a find. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The next day, I picked up the car I'd have for the next week at the train station. As they'll often do, they upgraded me to a Peugeot 2008, a car I came to love driving. Neither the Europcar guy nor I could make the navigation system make sense, but the map itself showed enough to get me around. The day, though, was overcast, not quite raining, but not quite not raining, either. My goal was to find a number of Romanesque chapels nearby and also to visit a museum dedicated to a single Romanesque sculptor, which I thought was pretty unusual, in a suburb of Perpignan. The lady at the desk kind of talked me down, though, and I'm glad she did. She mentioned a church in Elne that was a must-see, so I decided to do that one first. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And I got lost, of course, in part because one of the roads to Elne was blocked off. First, I landed in Canet Plage, one of the horrible decaying holiday villages de Gaulle built in the '60s. Great day for a beach:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimmbPrXkCDHgek2WYwdc-_YAxpiD6tG13eGHdUds44XD0d5AUC2jIFD0vzGSKIzNHyquk2tdcZ9XInHseR4j4beYRM0rfCpzxf1cimhMgZxwEqOwBDJ-xTvuc9vrPC76ijGJfW4JXh-qAV/s1600/IMG_0410.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimmbPrXkCDHgek2WYwdc-_YAxpiD6tG13eGHdUds44XD0d5AUC2jIFD0vzGSKIzNHyquk2tdcZ9XInHseR4j4beYRM0rfCpzxf1cimhMgZxwEqOwBDJ-xTvuc9vrPC76ijGJfW4JXh-qAV/s400/IMG_0410.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">See the lone joggeur?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Then I got lost some more looking for Elne. The weather was something else: stopping at a pullover at a winery called Mas Senior, I snapped this hallucination.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgPDxZEhMQ2Ie4iLaJzuKMxQ_q4SqvUhjWgil8AxS83qVlDOGvFxsMkUGHofoCdqzKEJjrX9yFweJ_eKpTqSA7GYp4QVVZNgUenA3Q_xpUo9V1oA2JosNnP76kVTRyBGMmszcBQxx48h3_/s1600/DSCN0821.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgPDxZEhMQ2Ie4iLaJzuKMxQ_q4SqvUhjWgil8AxS83qVlDOGvFxsMkUGHofoCdqzKEJjrX9yFweJ_eKpTqSA7GYp4QVVZNgUenA3Q_xpUo9V1oA2JosNnP76kVTRyBGMmszcBQxx48h3_/s400/DSCN0821.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Floating mountain</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Finally, I hit Elne. It's a fairly small place, although the church isn't. And it's got a hell of a history. As a plaque tells it:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In 1285, war broke out between Pere II el Gran, king of Catalunya-Aragon, and Philip III le Hardi, king of France </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The French troops besieged Elne and broke into the city. On May 25th, the inhabitants sought refuge of last resort in the cathedral but the besiegers burned the door and massacred the population in the sacred place. </blockquote>
A ceramic memorial outside the church goes into gory detail, albeit in Catalan, from a 13th century account: women raped on the altar, then murdered; babies smashed against the pillars; every single inhabitant killed and all of the buildings reduced to rubble. They rebuilt, and the cathedral, too: this was an important center for the Church, and a monastery was added to it. The monastery's cloister has been restored, despite resistance from the French government, for some reason, and it's the most spectacular collection of Romanesque sculpture in its original context that I've ever seen. I'll try not to post all the photos I took.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC4_a0_9oM7FS4sTAUpZoavX1yZ6Z8pVphyVm6Vvrs47w5DqFjbBBbWR14acEhfuaztkVntSRUiqhNc-xmi7cTnP2Cet8gFthQCMsry-QnIdVyq6dpg2zoSESg9L8y6cFJAiRrZhakXAt6/s1600/DSCN0826.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC4_a0_9oM7FS4sTAUpZoavX1yZ6Z8pVphyVm6Vvrs47w5DqFjbBBbWR14acEhfuaztkVntSRUiqhNc-xmi7cTnP2Cet8gFthQCMsry-QnIdVyq6dpg2zoSESg9L8y6cFJAiRrZhakXAt6/s400/DSCN0826.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bible story? Who are the three guys? Are they dead?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXBVp_3MAf7ulsjtJ0ULxVieqoZg5SaAtcpgpeExSiuNLHlXRh2O4BS40NpejKMSW3sv3TGpysAsSGbdk-9b2mGxbqs5pZOF-K1g3iCslkl6Fa7cfINNTuEUkq1CnGKBH4T7hxiWNqYZqW/s1600/DSCN0829.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXBVp_3MAf7ulsjtJ0ULxVieqoZg5SaAtcpgpeExSiuNLHlXRh2O4BS40NpejKMSW3sv3TGpysAsSGbdk-9b2mGxbqs5pZOF-K1g3iCslkl6Fa7cfINNTuEUkq1CnGKBH4T7hxiWNqYZqW/s400/DSCN0829.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No idea</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiueMYBnVlMb9FbVjeqlmt_f2WULZrP0tVLS2_fOpS3NwhRdPnMeC_UTvUx6nNh89xPeFbood9p3eDb4iwQKfWx2pf-eCJDgpl3RX5s93gVHAJxPtSLwf_Nyuaka3I34Q7MT9ztNxvkIIUA/s1600/DSCN0831.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiueMYBnVlMb9FbVjeqlmt_f2WULZrP0tVLS2_fOpS3NwhRdPnMeC_UTvUx6nNh89xPeFbood9p3eDb4iwQKfWx2pf-eCJDgpl3RX5s93gVHAJxPtSLwf_Nyuaka3I34Q7MT9ztNxvkIIUA/s400/DSCN0831.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lots of weird animals on these pillars</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEpnu_FFJ-0BWNhwmigirGLBfQTsA8NcOXi64-hJZhhSKFZNDGyhEwB0AV06sXB-ZrDLXsHhbpsMI4QT61bmye0bWaMPQSe4DG7VxcOcfd2LFo7IgBhHF6O8xa4IzO9XzIYpkOZTdUX0Pa/s1600/DSCN0834.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEpnu_FFJ-0BWNhwmigirGLBfQTsA8NcOXi64-hJZhhSKFZNDGyhEwB0AV06sXB-ZrDLXsHhbpsMI4QT61bmye0bWaMPQSe4DG7VxcOcfd2LFo7IgBhHF6O8xa4IzO9XzIYpkOZTdUX0Pa/s400/DSCN0834.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Again, no idea, but the snake's cool</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg953yDIWqIKm9hAyDnhhhoih8xRHHPbk4FvTHAWLrOhrPD0Ufn3JYb0uzSn_jXs8y4hFALlMtdSSDSW9NR1dsu8ycFSz5XehnyirF2yQju7fql72giFjj8dcrKkXaXIFlJAr8Z5fVh4K97/s1600/DSCN0837.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg953yDIWqIKm9hAyDnhhhoih8xRHHPbk4FvTHAWLrOhrPD0Ufn3JYb0uzSn_jXs8y4hFALlMtdSSDSW9NR1dsu8ycFSz5XehnyirF2yQju7fql72giFjj8dcrKkXaXIFlJAr8Z5fVh4K97/s400/DSCN0837.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Small lizard on the pediment</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Elne lost its vootie to Perpignan eventually, and some of the cloister's pillars were looted by antique dealers, but a lot of it's been restored and every single one of these pillars is worth looking at: it's the medieval mind gone nuts. I was breathless by the time I left.<br />
<br />
Could this place in the suburbs, in Cabestany, be worth it? Aaah, it was on the way back to town, so why not drop in? It was an easy enough drive, Cabestany touts the museum, so it was easy to find, and I paid my dough and went in. And, although I'd just seen some of the best Romanesque sculpture I'd ever seen, I was agape. A piece of an altar had been discovered not too long ago while making repairs to the church in Cabestany, and it seemed far more accomplished than most Romanesque art.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2MJKirmPnIprXiOYQNUcIHPavn7kCMuytFJddsBw2jvDFPjn3vEjLSvUjQWYQDE2gEe-SBhyphenhyphen4LPAoqAt_W82AXKeGbHYVwMboXGiF9y1wtElwOaOzp_lQuR6H72jcG25iIc9ZGBhmMK4V/s1600/DSCN0843.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2MJKirmPnIprXiOYQNUcIHPavn7kCMuytFJddsBw2jvDFPjn3vEjLSvUjQWYQDE2gEe-SBhyphenhyphen4LPAoqAt_W82AXKeGbHYVwMboXGiF9y1wtElwOaOzp_lQuR6H72jcG25iIc9ZGBhmMK4V/s400/DSCN0843.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dramatically lit, like everything in the museum, this is it</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The fragment excited the world of Romanesque scholars and other pieces that seemed to be by the same hand began to surface in a bunch of different churches in France, Spain, and Italy. Who was this guy?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGPaRQonnIDywO1b3VUTRfSnZSM5ReBfDgw0IDguv5SonSZnzXlwiT5wJn2ZB8dkTN6lPkpTzcN2SQMi6n5RkoJusFdGyCWC2mGZtu1XsrpD-a9EVAI6B0nk3eI-w_9vawNBzIVGb0Q6qG/s1600/IMG_0422.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGPaRQonnIDywO1b3VUTRfSnZSM5ReBfDgw0IDguv5SonSZnzXlwiT5wJn2ZB8dkTN6lPkpTzcN2SQMi6n5RkoJusFdGyCWC2mGZtu1XsrpD-a9EVAI6B0nk3eI-w_9vawNBzIVGb0Q6qG/s400/IMG_0422.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOLL3wtoyMeP94QXHF3-nFpsjzj2yDn-XjRnGj-7RJ302RRsGn0bjUaN28KnvkupH8leQteFliX9hP3hi-R25f4h_NirxZ8zmvro-mH8YDyL5pH6_Is-FK1J42uPBmMp5dxPHYOctERgnE/s1600/DSCN0850.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOLL3wtoyMeP94QXHF3-nFpsjzj2yDn-XjRnGj-7RJ302RRsGn0bjUaN28KnvkupH8leQteFliX9hP3hi-R25f4h_NirxZ8zmvro-mH8YDyL5pH6_Is-FK1J42uPBmMp5dxPHYOctERgnE/s400/DSCN0850.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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The museum is <a href="http://www.maitre-de-cabestany.com/diaporama_lieux.php">refreshingly frank about the answer</a>: basicallly nobody knows. He might not even be one person. Then again, he might be. Whatever the case, the museum has a wonderful collection, as well as a great explanation of it, and of Cabestany's role in that period's history. Why, it was the home of Guillem de Cabestany, a troubador whose object of adoration was the lovely Saurimunda, wife of Raimond de Castell Rosseló, who had him killed and his heart served to his wife, cooked and peppered. When she found out what she'd eaten, she killed herself, and when the king, Alphonse II, heard the story, he had Raimond imprisoned, where he died. Apparently this legend originated in India and has many versions in Arab poetry, which explains how it arrived in Cabestany.<br />
<br />
I was so impressed that I bought one of the Master's works. Oh, it's only a reproduction from the gift-shop, but I wanted a souvenir of this day. The lady at the desk packed it well ("There. You can now play football with it.") and it survived the journey to Texas. I'm not sure what it represents -- an angel? a saint? something else? -- but it's good and mysterious.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYPV4La4IvGzc9QW3Rz3YgtMTFiyNlrridgFrY-CfKmzNyjtjduuEb7YtNi2wVYxBHS94SQIK_QNtquxoKyWKPVa-2JAaTEt5uik1SpA6ZJfPtHFV8qoJ0N55pf74BXJpuAnKg83cHzlin/s1600/DSC_0002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYPV4La4IvGzc9QW3Rz3YgtMTFiyNlrridgFrY-CfKmzNyjtjduuEb7YtNi2wVYxBHS94SQIK_QNtquxoKyWKPVa-2JAaTEt5uik1SpA6ZJfPtHFV8qoJ0N55pf74BXJpuAnKg83cHzlin/s400/DSC_0002.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We'll stare at each other a bit until we get to know each other.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Getting back to Perpignan looked easy from Cabestany: it was only a few kilometers. And that train station may have been the center of the world, but it was very hard to find: it took me two hours, between the frustrating one-way streets and the construction. I parked the car, went back to the hotel, and only emerged for yet another fine meal in Perpignan at <a href="http://restaurantlefiguier.fr/">Le Figuier</a>, recommended by the front desk. Wine by Mas Senior, of course.<br />
<br />
After all that driving, I was pooped. The next day's drive was only to Narbonne, but I was taking the long way there.<br />
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<b>Next: Another Day, Another Mountain</b>Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-56654649248276231252016-04-14T21:23:00.000+02:002016-04-14T21:23:04.988+02:00Europe, Spring 2016, Part One: The Backstory<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaADHkmwpTKdXZWjXQKlL_d61Om2xxr3QgC5TD8U6JAhVfa3vj41fCHWpu43YBs4AtTuIG1BKkTfurQF3NeH6iHjSojG-Q4m_JBjiYYmeyrUIR0xdvDsjAmqt62qoFgoYeTwFWau4ObUL2/s1600/DSCN0777.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaADHkmwpTKdXZWjXQKlL_d61Om2xxr3QgC5TD8U6JAhVfa3vj41fCHWpu43YBs4AtTuIG1BKkTfurQF3NeH6iHjSojG-Q4m_JBjiYYmeyrUIR0xdvDsjAmqt62qoFgoYeTwFWau4ObUL2/s400/DSCN0777.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i>Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita...</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Well, not quite, but it was going through my head a lot, so a bit of explanation may be in order. Early last fall, when I finished my rock and roll history book's actual writing, I knew there would be a lot of post-writing work to do. I also had the second half of my advance, and it was, in a sense, more than the first half because the immediate debts I'd had to repay with the first half weren't there, giving me some room. And I knew what I wanted to do: return to Spain and France as a tourist, seeing stuff I'd never seen before, like the western end of Languedoc-Roussillon in France and some more of the area around Barcelona. So I went to <a href="https://www.google.com/flights/">Google Flights</a> and started playing around. By then it was too late to ensure a pleasant experience: fall was coming in, and although that meant good things for food, it also meant that the driving I was anticipating doing could be hard, particularly in some of the places I was planning to go.<br />
<br />
Eventually, a plan emerged. UT Informal Classes had me down for the two I was going to teach (Austin music history, and a new one about being a tourist and being a resident in Europe) and the first one would start on the evening of April 13. SXSW took up two weeks in March, and I knew from returning to Europe after a number of SXSWs that what I wanted wouldn't be ready immediately thereafter. The alternative, waiting until after the classes, would probably give me the best weather, but the book stuff would be getting hotter around then, probably. I narrowed it down to Easter Monday (March 28) to April 11.<br />
<br />
And then I did some boneheaded stuff. Prices were all over the map, and the best one seemed to be to fly from the US into Rome, then back to Barcelona. Weird, but in terms of time in the air, not very different than something that seemed more direct. I decided to think about it: I was committing a bunch of dough to this and I didn't want to screw up.<br />
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I did anyway, though. As time moved forward, I decided I had to act, only to find that the flight I wanted had sold out. Aha! I thought. British Airways has a non-stop from Austin to London, and I could connect there! But the BA website wasn't cooperating. I'd get to where I'd pay and it wouldn't load. I started the process over. Same deal. I quit in frustration, knowing I'd mess up if I were too angry. And I went back the next day, booking through American Airlines, which runs the route with BA. Austin-London, London-Barcelona and, in reverse, back. I was so happy to see the website work that I didn't notice that I'd booked a nine-hour layover at Heathrow to start and an overnight layover there on the way back. I had an idiot for a travel agent, all right. Me. But I'd bought it, so that was that.<br />
<br />
As I went through this two-day process, what surprised me was the vehemence with which I was doing this. The project had gone from "I want to go" to "I have to go." What was up here?<br />
<br />
That question began to be answered only weeks later. Shortly before SXSW was due to begin, John Morthland, an early colleague at <i>Rolling Stone</i>, my very best friend on the staff, and, afterwards, a guy who'd shared my house for a while before moving into San Francisco with other friends, had been found dead at his home of natural causes. My age, approximately. And the day of President Obama's speech opening SXSW, news spread in the crowd that Louis Jay Meyers, one of the event's founders, had died of a heart attack in the night. Again, my age, approximately. Naturally, I didn't know these things would happen when I was booking, but the idea of getting out of town suddenly, for some reason, seemed more urgent.<br />
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And there was more, not life-and-death, but a gathering storm of personal and professional issues that were closing in. The publishers of both of my impending books were working faster than I'd thought (thanks, digital age -- and I'm not being sarcastic) and there was stuff that needed doing. I started doing it, but I'd warned both publishers that I'd booked this trip and couldn't change it. Mostly, they were gracious about it.<br />
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And in the back of my mind, there was more, which the two deaths had nudged loose. Which I have to digress to explain.<br />
<br />
Some years ago (not many, I see now, looking it up; not as many as I'd thought) my friend Mark Rubin alerted me via Facebook that some friends of his were coming to Montpellier. They were busking their way through Europe and had just been in Denmark and were headed to Italy. A duo, male and female, they wandered the world like this. The male half had been producing a singer/songwriter from New Mexico in Denmark, the female half told me as I picked her up at the Montpellier train station, and the two of them would arrive soon. And so it developed, and it's a long story, but they found a house with some hippies to stay at and the singer/songwriter and I started hanging out and having long conversations. She was a doctoral student in botany, about to take her exam for the degree, but was also pursuing a music career. She was also smart as a whip, sharp as a tack, and all of that. And gorgeous. And too young for me. I managed to get the three of them a gig at a friend's bookstore, and there I heard some of her songs, and it seemed something was not quite right. Besides, of course, the fact that she hadn't copyrighted any of them and was selling self-burned CDs at gigs, which led to more conversation.<br />
<br />
But that was nothing next to what happened once she returned to the States. A question about proofreading, posted on Facebook, led to a correspondence, which led to an uprooting of a lot of my cherished beliefs. If our late-night yammerings in France had been intense, our transatlantic correspondence was positively incandescent. We batted ideas back and forth via e-mail and occasionally in video calls with Skype. She was obsessed with architecture, the way we capture space and live in it and arrange it to make that act of habitation as pleasurable as possible. As she hurtled on to her PhD, she challenged my entire intellectual superstructure on a daily basis. It was like a carnival ride.<br />
<br />
It ended badly, of course. I invited her to SXSW and she came, which was, from her end, not such a hot idea, cutting in to her study and preparation time as it did. I selfishly wanted to spend time with her, which I couldn't do in France, where I still lived. What happened in Austin was that the thing essentially imploded. She got her degree, although she had to put it off for some months after Austin, and she moved to the desert. The songwriting career seems to have quieted down. We lost touch, which is probably best for both of us.<br />
<br />
I can't speak for her, but some of those discussions we had profoundly affected my life and thinking, and for that I'll always be beholden to her. After months of thinking about it, I can distill one of the main changes like this: Everyone needs reasons to stay alive, by which I mean far more than food and shelter. I decided that the only two things worth living for, on that level of existence above food-and-shelter, were love and beauty. The former you have to be open to, but if you search too assiduously, it will elude you. The latter is all around you, and you can also increase your input of it by going to places -- art museums, concerts, natural spaces -- where an elevated level of it may be available. This became my mantra, and I've been much happier ever since it has.<br />
<br />
And that was foremost in my mind when I booked this trip. The love thing continued to be problematical. The beauty thing was waiting for me in specific places I knew -- and in places I had no idea existed. The deaths just underscored this in a big way, as did the changes these books would likely make in my life starting this fall. It was time to escape for a while and let things dangle. And, of course, to let other things in.<br />
<br />
The trip started well, too: I asked at the Austin airport if I could somehow rectify my stupid mistake and not have to spend an entire jetlagged day in Heathrow, and the guy clicked some keys stared at a screen, went to talk to someone else, and bingo: a 90-minute layover rather than a 9-hour one. I'd just bought myself another day in Barcelona, getting in at 2 rather than 10:30pm. I'd planned the trip rigorously, as I always try to do, knowing there would be things that didn't go as planned, and being open to them.<br />
<br />
Two weeks. This was going to be fun.<br />
<br />
<b>Next: Ola Catalunya/Bon Jour Catalogne</b>Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-38047122361562641672016-03-21T21:14:00.001+01:002016-03-21T21:14:15.768+01:00SXSW '16: Where Did It Go?Events that lead off with deaths tend to be muted, and so it was for SXSW this year. Even before it started, the news that my old friend and former Rolling Stone editor and housemate John Morthland had been found dead at his home on Monday the 7th was on a lot of people's minds. Mostly us old folks, of course, those who knew him or passed his way. Although he apparently lived nearby, I never ran into him or saw him socially since I've been back. He was very private, very mysterious. Then, at the end of that week, news came that Louis Jay Meyers, a co-founder of the event who was also a musician, an artists manager, event promoter, and former head of the Folk Alliance had had a fatal heart attack in his sleep. This news came as President Obama was addressing the conference, an event I missed due to a <i>Fresh Air</i> taping.<br />
<br />
So this was all history by the time my SXSW began this year, on Friday. I hadn't particularly prepared for the event, but I knew the first thing I would do: <i>BANG! The Bert Berns Story</i> had its premiere on Friday evening at the State Theater, and, having seen a rough cut some weeks back, I was anxious to see it on the big screen. The film had its genesis with a <i>Fresh Air</i> piece I'd done some years ago, after which I'd been contacted by Brett Berns, the producer/songwriter's son, to thank me for it. He talked about doing a full biography of his dad, which sounded great, but perhaps because I was still living in France, the topic faded out. Later, I heard that Joel Selvin had gotten a deal to write it, and figured the project was in good hands. Then, when it was turned into a documentary and Bob Sarles signed on to direct it, I got excited, because Sarles is good at what he does. The film, as expected, was pretty wonderful, and told the story of Berns' short but action-packed life -- music, gangsters, money, and the looming diagnosis of a weak heart due to childhood rheumatic fever hanging over his head -- in fine fashion. After the screening, various unsavory characters were spotted in the lobby.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7NRBa2EWN9M7jbaj6dWd15BeOEGZC_F8iZ4cou2fYeEvsX__cjLnss9eWuaGjmXrUwb_NU-vq8126btxZJAyXAR8Y8hKocJKbJjPEYXAc7Ln-0aFDX6-2kT3Yt0khNhhIiGSDuA2gQBD-/s1600/Ed+and+Bob.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7NRBa2EWN9M7jbaj6dWd15BeOEGZC_F8iZ4cou2fYeEvsX__cjLnss9eWuaGjmXrUwb_NU-vq8126btxZJAyXAR8Y8hKocJKbJjPEYXAc7Ln-0aFDX6-2kT3Yt0khNhhIiGSDuA2gQBD-/s400/Ed+and+Bob.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Director Bob Sarles, right, at the premiere. Photo by telebob</td></tr>
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I now know better than to attempt to attend most of the Interactive panels. They're mostly hype for a book or an app, anyway: one learns to read between the lines of the titles and descriptions. Last year, I'd gone to a couple of South Bites food panels, but this year they were more oriented towards technology and less towards discussions of issues, and a couple were pretty obviously "sponsored." Any time you see a panel entitled "The Future Of ______ " you can bet that the presenters have seen the future and it's them.<br />
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Sunday was the 12th annual Ed and Jon Breakfast, this year at <a href="http://www.manuels.com/">Manuel's</a> again, which made it a bit hoity-toitier than when it was at Curra's, and a lot of the people who RSVP'd didn't show (it being the first day of Daylight Savings Time might have had something to do with that) but it was a good time even with the smaller crowd. After that, I sauntered over to the Convention Center to pick up my bags and program books and check out the trade fair.<br />
<br />
I've always been a devotee of trade fairs, and a quick trip around my desk shows various useful and not-so-useful things I've picked up at them, just as my closet has a few t-shirts for mysterious Taiwanese tech incubators and one from Adobe that, in a fine example of techie arrogance, declares "I know something you don't know." Well, don't we all? But that gets worn only as an undershirt. This year, though, the show was big, both in terms of exhibitors and square footage, although it was as enigmatic as ever in terms of just exactly what some of the stuff was. There was the usual film stuff, the gear pretty to look at, the services not of much use to me. Then there were all the apps for things some people might find necessary, less music sharing than in the past, more stuff of use to businesses. An aisle of future-of-food exhibitors had some interesting folks: a tuna-fish vendor whose product was guaranteed to have no mercury was pitching to pregnant women and kids, and gave me a can of tuna, which will come in useful, although the pitchman said he ate tuna about five days a week, which I thought excessive. Still, he's in the business. There was also the mysterious <a href="https://picobrew.com/">Pico Brew</a>, which claims, against all scientific evidence, to be able to make five liters of craft beer out of preassembled ingredient packs from a long list of brewers, in two hours. I don't have much experience making beer, but someone who does asked how you can do a second fermentation in so little time, and now I'm wondering, too. And something calling itself the National Hispanic Cultural Center turned out to be a front for <a href="http://buenofoods.com/">Bueno Foods</a>, who gave me a fistful of coupons and a very interesting cookbook. There were fewer enigmatic stands than usual, although Japan had a row of app developers whose products made no sense at all: "Your stuffed animals can chat with each other!" one booth proclaimed. It was a very long time ago, but I remember having a small menagerie and it never once occurred to me that they <i>weren't</i> chatting with each other when I was away. But then, I had an imagination. I do wonder how that may have changed when I see parents letting smartphones calm their little kids. But that's a rant for another time.<br />
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I had some other takeaways from the trade fair. Like this thing. It has a peel-away strip for an adhesive on the back, and is made from some kind of rubber. I have no idea what it is.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0cBdGPPh72EEPlVPaTIolfhYN6HM0Chqm1z4NcJzh12nHI0osxv7N6GAQ3lsUJY5HFyc8a1s9SKkpD8mE8BnDQU-j4sgMulY2bLit-Mv4JArF5UnDxccuyOE15NA9gbT9rBYfgrN7wvcQ/s1600/IMG_0396.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0cBdGPPh72EEPlVPaTIolfhYN6HM0Chqm1z4NcJzh12nHI0osxv7N6GAQ3lsUJY5HFyc8a1s9SKkpD8mE8BnDQU-j4sgMulY2bLit-Mv4JArF5UnDxccuyOE15NA9gbT9rBYfgrN7wvcQ/s400/IMG_0396.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Quarter added for scale. </td></tr>
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Anyone?<br />
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There were a couple of booths selling clip-on lenses for iPhones, and I was impressed with this one, and even more impressed once I bought it and took it home to play with. There's a wide-angle, a fisheye, a zoom, and a macro lens for extreme closeups which you get by unscrewing the fisheye lens.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXrje1kfpR5eYZdczFHzpf_cL7rvObrEfO914t4u9H7s7jefSiY_l2cflnx-cfmU8j_2POPafd0F4DEmkEiDeGhTxyQ4elQVzGUGqj-fPet56wlASu6p6IvR4LZvciG8kClV9PMKiTTdN4/s1600/IMG_0395.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXrje1kfpR5eYZdczFHzpf_cL7rvObrEfO914t4u9H7s7jefSiY_l2cflnx-cfmU8j_2POPafd0F4DEmkEiDeGhTxyQ4elQVzGUGqj-fPet56wlASu6p6IvR4LZvciG8kClV9PMKiTTdN4/s400/IMG_0395.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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A bit unwieldy in that it's hard to carry in your pocket the way your regularly-configured phone can be, but I believe it'll get some use, especially in the next couple of weeks. And out in the atrium of the Convention Center, Mazda, one of the event's sponsors, had a deal whereby if you signed up (I had, in advance) you could get rides within six miles of the event anywhere in town. Anticipating this, I'd parked in front of a friend's house in South Austin and taken Lyft (another sponsor) to Manuel's. Mazda got me back for free. (Which is good, because tricky Lyft was charging a 75% surcharge due to increased demand. At least it wasn't Uber, who, as I noted in January, charged me a super-premium rate with no warning, and who are now trying to unseat an Austin city councilwoman who -- horrors!! -- is trying to get them to do background checks on their drivers. Regulation? Libertarian billionaires will have none of that! Mazda also handed me this when I got my ID bracelet for the rides. Apparently the clip grabs your rearview mirror and your smartphone-cum-GPS fits into it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIRyO2MBm5Z3M4T7rH8M394yoGcvm_zsiHiSI7NgTmQU9Gk0Y7wXoliDlrQkFXrU0v6n4Rvm4JX5Z02bVGdGphX5BMfWdsHTKfOpQsS2zUNcNLLDNxc7dWAju-ap_-oZaBLTgIs5Q6l0sE/s1600/IMG_0397.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIRyO2MBm5Z3M4T7rH8M394yoGcvm_zsiHiSI7NgTmQU9Gk0Y7wXoliDlrQkFXrU0v6n4Rvm4JX5Z02bVGdGphX5BMfWdsHTKfOpQsS2zUNcNLLDNxc7dWAju-ap_-oZaBLTgIs5Q6l0sE/s400/IMG_0397.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clip hidden on right by inept photographer</td></tr>
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<br />
I had to sit out the Monday events -- none of which looked appealing anyway -- in favor of going over the copy-edited manuscript of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Bloomfield-Rise-American-Guitar/dp/1613733283/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458581123&sr=1-1&keywords=michael+bloomfield">the Bloomfield book</a> and answering the fact checker's questions, but Tuesday afternoon saw me at the Rollins Theater at the Long Center for a couple of films. The first one was <i>Goodnight Brooklyn: The Story of Death By Audio</i>, a most curious document. A couple of guys who made stomp boxes for guitars needed a space to make them in and found an industrial space in an odd corner of Brooklyn. Before they quite knew what happened, several of their friends moved into the space and they all worked on renovating it. Another bit of evolution was when they started putting on shows there, using word of mouth to get the word out. By now, this corner of Brooklyn wasn't so odd, and they helped make it so. Then, Vice Media announced they were buying the building (and the buildings of several other Brooklyn underground venues, interestingly enough) and served DBA with eviction papers. It seems (the film treads lightly here, for reasons those with a deep knowledge of Vice may understand) that harrassment and sabotage now entered the picture because Vice wanted them out quicker. At any rate, there was nothing they could do but plan a last month of concerts, evacuate the building, and document it as it happened. As soon as the impact of the film cleared, I found I had a buttload of questions, all revolving around a central issue: first, why didn't the DBA guys (this is a heavily male scene, apparently) talk to the other venues Vice was threatening? Why weren't they a sort of community all along? Not to get all 1930s labor union on them, but there's strength in unity, surface differences notwithstanding. Vice's inability to see that they were killilng birds who were providing them with golden eggs of content is perhaps understandable: it's a monster consumed with greed. But where was a sign of resistance, not only from the venue owners (the other venues only get a couple of minutes, if that, in the film, interestingly enough), but from the audiences? Are audiences so passive, so bent on being solely consumers, that a thriving music scene in their back yard means nothing to them? Do they just think "oh well, there'll be more venues?" DBA is gone and, um, that's the end of the film. Sorry to be all '60s hippie, but I was pretty shocked.<br />
<br />
Then it was time to go outside and line up again for the next film at the venue, <i>Orange Sunshine</i>. This, speaking of '60s hippies, was about the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the gang (there's really no better word for it) that first provided massive quantities of marijuana, hashish, and psychedelics to America's illicit drug consumers. I was quite excited at the prospect of this film: the Brotherhood was very tightly knit, and only managed to get busted rather late in the game. I had understood that part of its unravelling was due to internecine quarrels and betrayals, not to mention ongoing cooperation -- or did they? -- with organized crime. Well, folks, what we have here is a heartwarming tale of some hippie entrepreneurs who just wanted to spread the love and beauty they found in LSD. Of course, the story starts with two of them robbing a film producer of his LSD stash at gunpoint and then taking it to find out what it was. You kind of forget about that once the tale starts: these guys took insane risks and, because nobody was looking for these drugs (LSD wasn't even illegal yet), getting away with them. At one point, they claim, they were sitting on a ton of pure LSD: 100 million hits. But... There are other sides to this story, the outrageous outlaw aspect aside. They befriended and abetted Timothy Leary, an alcoholic renegade Harvard professor whose ego, far from being dissolved by his many acid trips, caused him to self-promote, equating himself with the psychedelic experience, much to the chagrin (never voiced here) of a research community who were on the verge of impressive discoveries about easing addiction, depression, and what came to be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I (and many others) hold Leary responsible for the swiftness with which the federal government declared the drug to be on the same level as heroin and cocaine. And, it should be noted, after the Brotherhood and the Weathermen helped Leary escape from prison, it was rumored that he threw some of the Brotherhood under the bus to save his own skin. This is never whispered in the film. It would seem that one day -- bummer! -- there was a huge raid on their complex and it was over. Now, they're just a passel of silver-haired lovable old hippies, talking heads in their own movie. And -- there's no denying this -- that movie is a triumph, technically: there are reenactments of a lot of the past feats that are so skillful they made me wonder how crazy these people must have been to film themselves loading kilos of pot into Volkswagen buses or going through customs inspection of antiques coming back from Afghanistan. But I would point you towards any of the several book-length histories of LSD and, in particular, the CBC-Saskatchewan documentary <i><a href="http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/hoffmans-potion/">Hoffman's Potion</a></i>, for a clearer and more reliable account of all of this.<br />
<br />
And that, to my surprise, was the end of my movie-going: two in one day. Unlike last year, when I missed a couple I dearly wanted to see, there were very few films clamoring for me to attend them. There were a couple that looked like knockoffs of <i>Twenty Feet From Stardom</i>, the blockbuster about backup singers from a few years ago, a film about the fabled Austin honky-tonk the Broken Spoke that I missed a couple of times, the Miles Davis biopic, which friends who saw it at the Berlinale weren't so hot about, and some mildly interesting non-music flicks. The descriptions of all of these films was beyond awful: reading the review of <i>Midnight Special</i> in the New York <i>Times,</i> it sounded way more interesting than that SXSW description made it out to be. And yet, you sit in the theater watching the promotional slide show and wonder who'd want to watch some of this. I probably missed something, but I didn't hear any buzz, so maybe not.<br />
<br />
Which left the music part of the festivities. I no longer go see live music, at SXSW or, for the most part, anywhere else, which is, again, a matter for further discussion elsewhere. But as SXSW's original panels coordinator, back when it was <i>just</i> a music event, I'm always up for the panels and the music tradeshow. The film/interactive tradeshow closed early on Wednesday afternoon, so I figured it'd reopen on Friday. Wrong. For the first time in its 30 year history, there was no music tradeshow at SXSW. It used to be that at least the national exhibitors -- Brazil had a huge presence this year -- would swap out their tech guys for their music guys and just change the focus. Some of the gizmo folks would stay on, and organizations promoting their music scenes -- New Orleans was always predictable -- would promote their showcases, give away CDs, and otherwise loll around. Not this year. What this means is not only that the worldwide music industry is broke, but that the export agencies of the various foreign countries see no sense in promoting the music other than via live showcsaes. Of course, when you're Italy and the best you have to promote is a band called Moustache Prawn, maybe that's for the best. Moustache Prawn?<br />
<br />
That left the panels, most of which were squeezed into one day, Friday. As usual, I went for the history-oriented panels, and unfortunately I missed Tony Visconti's keynote (I missed Michelle Obama's, too, the protocol for attending which was announced at about 3am the day of the speech), and I understand he was very pessimistic, as one would expect from a veteran of his stature. I did, however, get into town in time to catch a panel on Ardent Studios' 50th anniversary (some neat stories, but you kind of had to be either a studio nerd or a Memphis music nerd to really enjoy it), another on the Ramones, which was uncharacteristically dull, one on British punk, which was much better, and finally an onstage interview with Dion by Richard Gotterher, which was hilarious. At the end, I thanked Dion for distrupting my childhood and left.<br />
<br />
Friday evening there was a memorial for Louis Meyers, which was like a homecoming. In fact, I resolved to skip my annual ritual of wandering around the Sunday softball game because everyone I knew who would be there was here. The mayor read a proclamation, there was some funny video, and everyone wandered around talking to each other until the venue evicted us. I walked across town to the bus stop and, well, although I went in the next day for a short while, my SXSW was over.<br />
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Kind of a muted affair, like I said.<br />
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A week from this evening, I'm taking one of those brand-new BA non-stop Austin to London flights, and connecting in London for a hop over to Barcelona, where I'll spend a couple of days and then head to France, where I'll explore part of the Languedoc region I've never seen and then head to my old home of Montpellier for a few days' exploration and wine-hunting. Expect a bunch of blogging when I return -- I can't feed pictures from my phone or my camera into the iPad Pro I'll be taking to keep in e-mail and web communication -- and it should include a bit of food porn, too. </div>
Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-19012764320234569222016-02-22T22:38:00.001+01:002016-02-22T22:38:54.333+01:00Cajun Taco, Or, A Quick WeekendA friend who's had a hard year deserved a birthday present, and I had a need to go back to Louisiana and finish the food-buying trip I started in October on my way back from the Ponderosa Stomp. So on Friday morning I picked up a car from Hertz and we blasted off for Lafayette. I expected some great Cajun food -- and I wasn't disappointed -- and what I emphatically did <i>not</i> expect was great Mexican food. But I got some.<br />
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I always have trouble with lunch when driving to or from Louisiana, and have never had a decent solution to it. Once, I stopped at Al T's in Winnie, which advertises itself as a Cajun restaurant but is instead a mediocre something kind of restaurant, an insult to Cajuns. Other times I've stopped in Houston at non-memorable joints, or just taken along a bag of nuts and stopped for a soft drink to wash them down.<br />
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And every time I've done this, just as Houston is fading in the rear-view mirror, I've seen this little clutch of Mexican seafood restaurants and thought "One day..." Well, one day came on Friday. We both decided this was the time I try one of them, and drove down I-10 until the next exit. Then we backtracked a couple of miles and pulled into the incredibly crowded parking lot of Ostioneria Arandas Seafood. The name was familiar, but the food sure was different from what the taquerias of the same name offer in Austin. There was only one choice for me as soon as I saw the menu: Cocktél Vuelva a la Vida. Many years ago, I briefly lived in Santa Monica, California, and frequently ate at a place called Lucy's Mariscos, on the second story of a building at a crossroads featuring a used tire place, a barbequed goat place (which for some reason I never tried) and a vacant lot. I always got the calamares rellenos, squid stuffed with rice and green peas, toothpicked back together, and smothered in a wonderful ranchero sauce. I've been searching for them ever since, as I've been searching for Vuelva a la Vida, which is a shrimp, oyster, squid, and octopus cocktail, the seafood swimming in a spicy tomato-based sauce, well-cilantroed, with bits of avocado mixed in, which I invariably ordered as an appetizer. Arandas' version of this was sweeter than Lucy's, with less avocado and cilantro, but all of the seafood was perfection, including the squid and octopus, which were perfectly prepared. My friend got one of the daily lunch specials, fried shrimp and stuffed crab, which came with one of the weird things this place offers: fried rice. Yup, like in a Chinese restaurant, with shrimp and mung bean sprouts. (There is also eggroll on the menu). I snagged a takeout menu on the way out, and noticed that this Arandas was indeed the same as the Taqueria Arandas joints in Austin, and there was a phone number on the back to get information on franchising. I think if Arandas opened an Ostioneria in Austin they'd be mobbed, and we'd finally have a first-rate Mexican seafood joint. We already have El Catedral de Mariscos next to a La Quinta on I-35 around Oltorf, but it's mainly fried stuff, and not very good at all. Okay, that's my free get-rich tip for today.<br />
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Louisiana was as wonderful as ever. First night's meal was gumbo and crawfish etouffée for me at Prejean's, and some kind of catfish with hollandaise and crab for her. <a href="http://prejeans.com/">Prejean's </a>is an institution on I-45 just outside of Lafayette, although I'm sorry I never tried their main competition, Prudhomme's, run by Paul Prudhomme's sister, who died a couple of years ago and was acclaimed as a far better cook than her brother. </div>
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The next day, we headed straight for LeJeune's Sausage Kitchen in Eunice, because last time I was there I hadn't bought enough tasso, and the small piece I had bought went bad in the refrigerator. They're closed on Saturday and Sunday, but I begged Mrs. LeJeune -- no, I'm lying: she told me that if I could get there by 10, she'd open up for me. And she did, saying "You should have bought a box," which I did. I promise, therefore, to show up on a weekday when I run out, which I will, because there is no better sausage anywhere in Acadiana, as far as I've been able to discern. </div>
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We drifted into Eunice and looked around, checked out the <a href="http://www.nps.gov/jela/index.htm">Prairie Cajun museum</a> (one of the six Jean Lafitte historical sites run by the National Parks Service) just behind the Liberty Theater, got a very good coffee at a small coffee shop, and then drove up to Mamou, where I took a sort of wrong turn -- the idea had been to go back to 190 and head east -- and saw that we'd stumbled on <a href="http://tboysboudin.com/">TBoy's</a>, allegedly the home of the world's best boudin. Well, no longer allegedly: although my diabetes is the sort that goes nuts if I'm in the same room with a cooked grain of rice, I said to hell with it and bought a boudin ball, which is, to one way of thinking, a stupid idea when you could have a link, and, to my way of thinking, the only way I could check out TBoy's brag without causing a problem. Now that Johnson's Grocery in Eunice is extinct, this has to be the state of the art, and no MSG that I could detect -- and I detect it real good, I'm afraid, as I discovered when falling for the hype of the various places around Scott that people had recommended. </div>
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We drove around trying to get back to 190, but with a whole afternoon to do it in and a glorious afternoon at that, getting lost in the back roads of the prairies, cruising past the flooded rice fields with the crawfish traps out, seeing beautiful old houses and the clouds floating above the fields, was hardly a hardship. And yes, we found 190, since we'd come almost to Opelousas, so I turned west and soon came upon a photo op I hadn't responded to last time. This place was apparently last known as the Southern Club, and that may have always been its name, but it's in poor shape and the last remaining big dance-hall around these parts that I know of. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A real fixer-upper</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">But apparently they get their mail elsewhere<br /><br /></td></tr>
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Further down the road Marc Savoy is still doing business (although a guy who wandered into the Jean Lafitte place was complaining that his hand-made accordions are now selling for $2300 -- and there's a waiting list -- which didn't seem too onerous to me), but he'd had his Saturday morning jam session and the place was locked up. There was a sign in typical grumpy Marc fashion saying that the jam session was for older musicians and youngsters were not welcome to jam, his way of saying that it was for traditional Cajun music only, and which, like a lot of what Marc says, could have been phrased in a, shall we say, kinder fashion. I'm not chastizing him, though, not for a second. He's been a bulwark while a culture rebuilt itself after the anti-French movement in the 1950s, and he's entitled. </div>
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When we got to the outskirts of Eunice, I U-turned and we headed back towards Opelousas, as I searched for the location of the now-vanished Richard's Club near Lawtell, and in the process didn't stop to figure out a building which had a sign saying it was the Zydeco Hall of Fame, although I think it's probably a performance venue rather than a museum. Another one for next time. We did not stop in Opelousas for a fried chicken salad at <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g40351-d1650297-Reviews-The_Palace_Cafe-Opelousas_Louisiana.html">the Palace</a>, but headed straight for a hidden gem back towards Lafayette, <a href="http://www.grandcoteau.org/">Grand Couteau</a>. I love this lost-in-time village, whose main street now has a bunch of tourist-oriented businesses, but running parallel to it is a short street lined with houses that mostly date to the 1840s, traditional architecture and Spanish moss-chinked walls intact (except for the one at the end of the street, which has an 1840 plaque on it and needs rescue <i>tout de suite</i>). We tried to top the afternoon off with a visit to <a href="http://www.vermilionville.org/vermilionville/index.html">Vermilionville</a>, a collection of traditional Cajun structures from all over Acadiana, but it closes at 4, and as usual Google Maps was no help whatever, getting us there late, so we sat by the side of Vermilion Bayou and watched the costumed tour guides leave. </div>
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Dinner that night was, of course, boiled crawfish at <a href="http://hawkscrawfish.com/">Hawk's</a>, especially since my friend said she didn't see what was so great about boiled crawfish. Really? Oh, come with me, <i>cher</i>... My radar has really been good lately, and although I'd copied down instructions from their website, none of the route numbers matched. I did have their phone number, though, so I knew we could call if we got lost. But no, there were the hard-to-see signs directing us to the middle of nowhere (a more apt description for where the place is than "sorta near Rayne, but not really") and just as we pulled up, a departing gentleman offered us his parking spot. A short wait later, another Texan knew what was so great about boiled crawfish. That wasn't hard. </div>
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We had to get back to Texas, though, so I pulled the car out of the parking lot and pointed us down I-10. And wouldn't you know it, just as we were both thinking it was time to get lunch, we found ourselves on the outskirts of Houston and saw the Bank of America building that was the signal to turn off for Arandas. However, we both agreed that finding one of the other seafood restaurants might be fun, so we drove past Arandas and pulled up at Tepatitlán, which also said they offered seafood. It was a much smaller offering, though, and the <i>campechana</i>, their version of Vuelva a la Vida, only featured shrimp and oysters, so we settled on the dish after which the restaurant is named, a plate of beef and chicken fajitas and three shrimp, also grilled. This was the right decision: I've rarely had beef fajitas that well prepared, the chicken was also fine, and only the shrimp -- which, let's face it, don't hold up well to this treatment -- was so-so. We'd accidentally asked for corn tortillas (flour are more traditional), and that was another discovery: thick, meaty, flavorful tortillas made in-house, some of the best I'd ever had. And two people splitting the order for one was perfect for lunch. This strip in Houston is a very happy discovery. I'll gladly stop there next time. </div>
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<i><b>Ostioneria Arandas Seafoods</b>, 10601 I-10 East Freeway, Houston, tel (713) 673-5522. </i></div>
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<i><b>Tepatitlán</b>, 10337 I-10 East Freeway, Houston, tel (713) 676-0758. </i></div>
Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-70922493206965226472016-02-03T00:20:00.001+01:002016-02-03T19:14:11.013+01:00Go East, Part Three and LastObviously, with being under the weather much of my first week here and in Boston for part of the second, I had to make up for some lost time if I was going to be a good tourist. So after ascertaining on Sunday that the streets were going to clear up some, I figured I was smart enough not to try for any museums on Monday and so instead wandered around Brooklyn some more. This time I headed for DUMBO, which seemed to be down the hill, and looked around. There was another view of the Statue of Liberty, another hunk of downtown Manhattan, and a couple of old buildings I found myself wondering about.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Now an ice-cream shop, which used to be what?</td></tr>
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I walked the streets, noticing the rampaging gentrification and idly musing about how the vibe reminded me of SoHo in the late '80s. There was St. Anne's Warehouse, which is now a theater, and I vaguely recall a Lou Reed connection, like that was where he put on one of his latter-day multimedia pieces. There was the looming hulk of the Manhattan Bridge, not nearly as charming as its neighbor, Roebling's more famous bridge.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brooklyn offers a yellow YO in the distance</td></tr>
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There were some pizzerias, a very popular restaurant whose motto was "You don't cook; we do," which I didn't go in, and a big used bookstore. A lot of it, to be honest, was too industrial to be interesting, and the snow hadn't been cleared as much as it had been up the hilll, so it was a kind of a slog. Old-timey and new seemed at a precarious standoff.<br />
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Looming at one frontier of the neighborhood was the Eagle Warehouse building, which I couldn't get a decent shot of because of the sun. It's a lovely building, and the plaque on it says it was erected by a famous architect on the site of the Brooklyn <i>Eagle</i>, the newspaper Walt Whitman edited, after it had gone out of business. (Walt's also got a plaque on the building). No longer a warehouse, it's now apartments.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A dragon, not an eagle. See? You can't trust the media!</td></tr>
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And across the street is a nice old bank, one of the first cast iron buildings in Brooklyn, which is now a pizzeria.<br />
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But the one thing it was, was wet and cold, so I mounted the hill -- turns out I'd taken a way long way around -- and contented myself with having made the discovery. There's every indication that this part of town would be far more charming in the summertime. </div>
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The next day I set off for the Brooklyn Museum to see the Coney Island show. I didn't dawdle around the house, I didn't waste half the afternoon reading the Web, I found the direct subway line to the museum, got on the train, got off at the right stop, mounted the stairs and there was the museum in front of me. My adventures with unknown public transportation generally aren't so successful, and I felt good that I didn't have to turn around, switch trains, or anything. I did, however, have to return, because the Brooklyn Museum is closed on Monday and Tuesday. So I wasted the <i>other</i> half of the afternoon reading the Web. </div>
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Determined, however, to make something of the day, I decided to take myself out to dinner. I'd passed a very interesting-looking joint called <a href="http://www.henrysend.com/">Henry's End</a> on my way back from DUMBO. It appeared to be kind of old-school (no fancy stuff, some classic dishes) and kind of new-school (well-chosen ingredients, interesting preparations). I wound up going there three times, and having great meals each time. The first night I had the duckling with wild mushrooms, which was phenomenal (and plentiful), the second, a special of a kind of breaded chicken breast roulade stuffed with mushrooms and blue cheese napped with a beige sauce that might well have had cognac in it, and the third time their take on veal piccata. The first night there was almost nobody there, except for a lively table of four, one of whom looked very familiar -- is Marshall Brickman still alive? The second time was on Friday, and the place was packed. I got into a conversation with the couple at the next table, both of whom were Brooklyn natives, and I said that I'd been wandering the area and liked a lot of what I'd seen and that I might be interested in moving there, whereupon the woman, in classic New York style, said "I'm glad to hear that," and produced a card, saying "I happen to be a real estate broker!" Okay, Emily, you'll be my first call. And my last meal there was my last dinner in town, and I couldn't think of anywhere else I'd rather go. As befits a high-end neighborhood, it's a neighborhood joint, but kind of high-end, and has been there since 1973. If you must spread the word, use some discretion who you spread it to. </div>
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The next day, I had a meeting with my agent to get a sense of what will happen when on the road to Nov. 1, publication day for my book. I was determined to get some authentic New York pizza into me, but he had to stay on Manhattan because he had appointments later, and almost apologetically he chose <a href="http://firstpizza.com/">Lombardi's,</a> in SoHo, which claims to have been serving pizza since 1905. If that's true, then they may well be America's oldest surviving pizzeria. Whether they're the first American pizzeria is an argument I don't really want to get into, but my reference book says that both Totonno's in Coney Island and John's on Bleecker Street were started by former Lombardi's employees. I can state from empiric evidence, though, that they know how to make a pie. </div>
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After we had our talk and parted ways, I decided that it was warm enough to walk to the new <a href="http://whitney.org/">Whitney Museum</a> to see what the foofaraw about the Frank Stella show was about. Next to the Picasso sculpture show at MOMA, this was the big show in town, and I guess the weather had scared off the tourists, because there was no problem getting in. The Whitney still has some of those iconic works from the '20s on that they're famous for, but I have a real problem with the highly-interpretive labels, which are annoying. If you read anything but the name and title of the work, you're forced into someone's idea of what's going on. I'd like some bare-bones stuff: who the artist is, the circumstances in which the art was made, stuff like that. I'll make up my mind what's happening. There may have been more of this in <a href="http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/FrankStella">the Stella show</a>, but the big statements from him that are in each of the rooms are jut so down-to-earth and sensible that you have to just laugh at the art historians tying themselves in knots. There's a short dialog in which an interviewer asks Stella if those pieces that escape the wall are paintings. He says of course they are. A sculpture is just a painting that came off the wall and stands there. I found myself taking no notes as I walked around, lost in wonder at this guy's ability to reinvent himself and plunge into whatever new idea takes his fancy: he's 80 this year, and is currently working with CAD software and 3-D printing, which, after you've taken in all the stuff here, is no surprise whatever. </div>
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Stella's remarkable Moby-Dick series, his work with all manner of materials and colors, his progression from a kid in his 20s making rigorously thought-out black paintings to things that leap off the wall, from geometry to seeming anarchy, it's all here. I compared the show to being on drugs: you don't really know what to say while it's happening, and it stays with you for a long time. Unfortunately, it's not staying at the Whitney much longer, and closes on Feb. 7. If you're in the vicinity, it's well worth your time. (EDIT: Hey, Texans just got lucky! This show moves to the <a href="http://themodern.org/">Ft. Worth Contemporary Art Museum</a> from April 17 to Sept. 18. I'll go see it again, that's for sure!)</div>
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The next day I went to a museum pretty much around the corner from where I was staying, the New York City Transit Museum. I had two goals in mind: one, to see the museum, of course, and two, to see if I could get one of those dime-sized tokens with the Y cut out of the middle that my dad used to bring home and toss into his change drawer. They fascinated me as a kid, although of course now it's all done with a magnetic strip on a Metro Card. The museum is in a closed-off part of the Court Street station, into which representative subway cars from all eras of the city's history, starting in 1905, are parked. It's got all the old turnstiles, all the old ads, a long section on the building of the lines (several sandhogs digging the tunnels under the river were involved in blowouts that shot them into the air -- and many of them lived) emphasizing that it was a job that'd take anyone, so that blacks and recent Irish and Italian immigrants could get jobs. You do, however, have to be a serious nerd to linger over the old rolling stock, but I saw what I came for and hit the gift shop, where I found that there were no loose tokens, but stuff made out of them, so I bought a key holder whose padlock-shaped base has one of those little tokens embedded in it. I wasn't pleased that the stock description next to the bar code said "key holder w/antique token." Antique my ass!</div>
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It was nice enough to keep wandering, so I told myself I'd head to Caputo's, the Italian place that makes its own mozzarella, to see if they had salt-cured anchovies. It was a long walk, especially after the museum, but I got there and found that a can of the same anchovies I have here would cost the same as ordering them from Amazon, which I'd rather not do. Also, with my radically decreased consumption of pasta and pizza at home, I'm not going through them as fast as I used to. I passed and started wandering again. I needed some lunch, but what? I saw a place that called itself a "Jersey pork butcher," that offered Italian delicatessen, and walked in. It was a place a friend of mine has mentioned often, notable by its ridiculous names for sandwiches. I forget what they called an eggplant parmagian sandwich, but that was just what I wanted. It was still hot when I got to the apartment, too! </div>
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The next couple of days involved some business stuff, some maintenance (I had to do my laundry), and planning the last few days in Brooklyn. Along the way, I found a nice unpretentious sort of northern Italian joint, <a href="http://www.rucolabrooklyn.com/">Rucola</a>, which was an invigoratingly long way from the apartment, meaning I was burning up those carbohydrates as I walked to and from there. Dean Street has some very old wooden houses on it, although the restaurant's in a brownstone. The roast chicken turned out to be a masterpiece, and I recommend it. </div>
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On Saturday, I wanted to get a pair of shoes, specific shoes I'd seen advertised and thought might be something I could wear in more formal situations, since my shoemaker of choice seems to be Nike, not always the right choice. My New York radar seemed to be working great: I found the shoes and started walking until I hit Union Square, where it occurred to me to call my friend Mike, with whom I'd gone on a wander in Brooklyn the week before. He had just sat down with his girlfriend to have lunch at the White Horse Tavern, so I just started walking. That's not a section of town I'm familiar with from childhood, but somehow I managed to walk straight there passing a couple of things I'd never seen before, including a house with a plaque honoring Charles Ives, who'd lived there, and a tiny triangular plot of land with some very old gravestones in it, which turned out to belong to an ancient Portugese synagogue. Amazing. At the White Horse, the three of us sat around talking and when they were finished with lunch, we set out walking downtown on Hudson Street, which soon turned into terra incognita for me. We walked and walked, with Mike expatiating on some of the history we were passing, which was increasingly being hemmed in by these huge buildings that I'd seen from Brooklyn, new buildings I had no names for. There was also a condo in TriBeCa which I'd seen ads for, one of those buildings being built for the oligarchs and .01 percenters. It looked like a stack of glass blocks poised to fall over, easily one of the ugliest buildings on an increasingly uglifying island. Eventually we reached Battery Park, although it was too dark to see anything there, and thoughts turned to where I could have dinner. In that general vicinity -- Mike works down there, so he knew the area well -- there are a couple of protected blocks of very old houses, including <a href="http://www.frauncestavern.com/">Fraunces Tavern,</a> where Washington bid farewell to his troops after the Revolution, and, much later, some Puerto Rican nationalists blew the hell out of one of the rooms. The place turned out to be huge inside. The museum was closed, but the various bars -- there's a beer-specialist room, a virtual museum of whiskey, and several dining rooms -- were open. We had a beer -- mine was a stout, actually -- while making up our minds what to do next, and it turned out that the whole bar/restaurant thing had gone broke and been rescued by a craft brewer from Ireland called Porter House, whose stout I was drinking (there was an oyster stout on the menu, but it wasn't in yet). Eventually a live band started playing and drove us out into the street, where we wandered looking for a restaurant without any luck. We wound up in the Fraunces again, and all had a beef pot pie that was very nice, although maybe a bit heavy on the thyme. But it was value for money, and not what you expect from a place that has definite tourist-trap vibes around it. I'd go there again. We wandered a little more and I saw the U.S. Stock Exchange, heavily armored now against bombs, and the Federal Building with its huge statue of Washington, since it's where he took the oath of President. </div>
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My last destination on this trip was that <a href="https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/coney_island_american_dreamland">Coney Island show at the Brooklyn Museum</a>, and I'd left it until Sunday, a day when it might have been mobbed. I'd never been to this museum before, and I have to say it impressed me. They're changing a lot of stuff around, and a lot of it is closed, but I got to see a very good show of stuff from their African collection, which is very impressive, a collection of feminist art, the centerpiece of which is Judy Chicago's <i>The Dinner Party</i>, and a collection of historic interiors which includes two early Brooklyn houses in their entirety. But the Coney Island show blew my mind. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The smiling face of the Steeplechase</td></tr>
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According to the wall caption, Coney Island's heyday was the first half of the 20th Century, and some of the graphics support that. I would wager that today's children would be more scared than enticed by the Steeplechase's grinning trademark, and a number of film excerpts, too, show it when it was a place to meet girls (the theme of several films) and engage in a day of innocent fun. There was also the boardwalk and beach, for perhaps less innocent fun, although Weegee's famous picture of the beach crowd during a heatwave (he got on a tall ladder and had them all face his way) shows that privacy might have been a bit hard to achieve on some days. And there was a kind of desperation to the fun, which I think comes out in the numerous Reginald Marsh paintings of the place, and is very explicit in Henry Koerner's scary oils. (Red Grooms, who I hear is Bob Dylan's favorite painter, has a couple of pieces in this show, too, including a multilayered reconstruction of Weegee's photo on glass). The show digs into the sociology and the response by fine art and fine art photography to this massive collection of rides, fortune tellers, taffy-sellers, and dance pavilions. This, for instance, is from the teens:</div>
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I didn't know that Mae West grew up in Coney Island, where her father was a prizefighter, nor that Jimmy Durante started as a piano-player in a cabaret that offered drag shows to a racially-integrated audience. But horror and fun mixed closer together than they'd dare do in this time of trigger warnings and helicopter parents. This was another icon:</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hello, boys and girls!</td></tr>
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The fact that age has had its way with this demon just adds to the icky affect of its cyclopean gaze. </div>
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And then, around the end, where the amusement park was in stark decay and only minority kids were hanging around the ruins (and, some of them, making art), came a wonderful surprise: an installation about Coney Island by a remarkable graffiti artist who briefly worked in my neighborhood in Berlin, and whose new pieces always gave me a thrill when I'd encounter one: Swoon. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swoony, baby!</td></tr>
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It's kind of hard to depict this, since it's her usual paper work, some of it X-acto cut, some charcoaled, all of it in 3-D and standing up. It binds the past and present of Coney Island together, and is a great end for the show. You've got a little more time with this one: it closes March 13. Go.<br />
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Which is what I had to do next: go. Monday saw me cleaning up the apartment, packing, running into the city to celebrate, a couple of weeks late, National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day at <a href="http://www.bensdeli.net/">Ben's</a>, a new place to me (it started on Long Island, apparently), with a friend who works at the <i>New York Times</i>.<br />
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I had been gone three weeks, and really needed to get back to Texas. I mentioned in an e-mail to my agent that I had to go home but on some level didn't want to and he replied that I wanted to go home but was wishing that home were somewhere else. And he nailed it: very probably, moving back to Austin was the only thing I could have done in October 2013, given my circumstances. While I'm not even sure that moving back to the U.S. was a smart thing to do, I'm very sure that Austin, while it'll do for now, isn't the place for me any more. Walking the streets of Brooklyn was somehow soothing: my family has a long history in the Northeast, and that's where, eventually, I should probably be. It won't be now -- I hope there's a second volume of the book in the future -- but I suspect it'll happen. Brooklyn, the Hudson Valley, maybe even somewhere in New England or (perish the thought) New Jersey. But this trip shook me, and in a good way. I have a lot to do in the coming months, but now I have this to think about.<br />
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To be continued in the months to come.Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6564134964285988310.post-23057447986256673492016-01-24T22:58:00.000+01:002016-01-24T22:58:10.052+01:00Go East, Part TwoWhatever it was I caught on the plane coming to New York had dissipated by the end of last week, and Monday, since it was a holiday, my friend, the street photographer/union activist <a href="http://www.mleephotoart.com/">Mike Lee</a>, came to visit. Mike used to live in this neighborhood, and we took a long walk, talking about this and that, catching up over lunch at the most wonderful old-school Italian joint imaginable, which we just happened to walk into. Both watching our carbs, or I would have suggested splitting a pizza, but as it was, I had mixed shrimp and scungilli (that's conch, folks) in a Fra Diavolo sauce: it doesn't get more old-school than that. No, I'm not going to divulge the name of this place yet because I'm going back for dinner this week.<br />
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We walked as far as Caputo's, an Italian deli that makes its own mozzarella daily (except Monday, when it's closed) and then we cut across on some side-street and headed back to the apartment. It was sunny, but cold, and with a lot of wind, making it worse. I saw places I hadn't seen before, the famous Brooklyn row-houses, one after another.<br />
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I was trying to figure out what this all reminded me of, and then it hit me, later: this was like Greenwich Village's pleasanter quarters in the years I first discovered them, but at a (relatively) affordable price. I probably still can't afford to live here, but it feels comfortable, and the mixture of hip (but not hipster) and family and old-time Italian is very appealing. Maybe it's time to play the Lottery. </div>
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Tuesday was about packing: I'd bought a ticket on the Acela, the so-called high-speed train Amtrak runs between Washington and Boston, to spend a couple of days seeing Boston for the first time in oh, maybe 40 years. An old friend from Austin, Stewart, had moved there and fallen in love with the place, posting odes to cold weather and snow on Facebook that would've gotten him lynched back home. Turns out this may be deep-seated with him: doing research, he discovered that his first ancestor in the United States had a farm in what is now Harvard Yard! </div>
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Well, I packed, but I also panicked. I'd used Amtrak's phone app to buy the ticket, and then couldn't get at it. I had apparently forgotten the password, and repeated inquiries got no help from Amtrak. Fortunately, there was an e-mail, and when I found it, I discovered the train was at 3, not 3:30, as I thought. This was going to be the test of my new iPad Pro, which is like my laptop but lighter and with fewer apps, but suitable for the Web and e-mail, as well as having the New Yorker and a bunch of Kindle books to read: a perfect travelling companion. Which I dutifully put in its bag and left on the couch, as I discovered as I was entering the subway station. </div>
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The train trip was uneventful, with some immensely fat guy asleep next to me the whole way. Of course, you never see the most scenic parts of where you are, but I was fairly thrilled by the maritime activities in New London, Connecticut, and a sand beach a bit further up the route. We crawled a lot of the way -- word is it that Amtrak doesn't have much in the way of high-speed rails on this leg of the route -- but as soon as we got a glorious scarlet sunset, we started jamming. </div>
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Boston was even colder and windier than Brooklyn, but the subway stop I needed was only a couple of stops away from the station, and then there was what seemed like an interminable walk down Charles Street to the hotel. </div>
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But <a href="http://www.beaconhillhotel.com/">what a hotel</a>! Only a dozen or so rooms, and Stewart (a chef by profession) told me he'd heard good things about the restaurant. It hardly mattered: I was so cold that if I'd been told the hotel restaurant was awful, but the place across the street would give me the best meal of my life, I'd still have dined in. It was <i>cold</i> out there! And as it was, I got the best meal I've had all year, although I did remind the staff that the year was only 20 days old. There was a charcuterie plate with a homemade pâté (served too cold, a common failing, but time will take care of that) that I loved and a duck liver mousse that was extraordinary. Then I had their take on what's becoming a welcome cliché, the iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing. This was little gem lettuce with various add-ons and a "blue cheese compote," with a bit of what they described as Serrano ham subbing for the bacon that's usually there, and which I don't think was Serrano ham. Whatever, it was good, and I was getting stuffed, so I was happy that the portion of leg of venison with "heirloom carrots" and mushrooms was as good as it was -- and enough to finish the job. With it, I had a Languedoc wine, <a href="http://www.gerard-bertrand.com/en/domaines/chateau-l-hospitalet/">Chateau L'Hospitalet</a>, that matched everything perfectly. (I know, Gérard Bertrand is not a well-loved figure in Languedoc wine, but there's a pretty stellar wine list in this restaurant and this was a good compromise between affordable and correct). This was an expensive meal, but well worth it, and well worth having to subsist on celery sticks for the next week if I have to. </div>
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The next day, I met Stewart to hit a couple of art museums. The first was the Isabella Stewart Gardner House, site of the largest unsolved art-heist in America when a couple of guys disguised as cops lifted a Vermeer and about 39 other paintings about 40 years ago and a scandal erupted when it was discovered that security was virtually nil in the place, a sprawling pile designed after an Italian villa. Mrs. Gardner was left $1.5 million when her father died (not such a huge amount in today's crazy art market, but this was the late 19th century) and immediately decamped with her husband to Europe to start buying art. She got decent advice and went back year after year, stuffing it in her villa willy-nilly. When her husband died she came into more money and continued collecting until she died. Her will stipulated that the house be open to the public, but there would be no rearrangement of anything at all, no labels on the works, no change of any kind. The minute you step into the place you can tell one thing: she was mad. Some of the art is good, a lot is mediocre, some is just plain bad. There's a Rembrandt self-portrait that's more important for documenting the way he looked when he painted it than for any particularly artistic merit (mind you, I'm not much of a fan of his, and I do wonder how the "cops" missed this one, because I identified it right off). The place is dark, disordered, claustropobic, and I was happy when we headed towards the door. </div>
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Except we didn't, and I'm glad. The place has an active trust that's bringing in money, and at one point they had Renzo Piano enclose it in a sort of glass box, as well as create a second building in the enclosure. This has a gallery that pays host to travelling shows or shows curated by the foundation, and at the moment has a show dedicated to the Italian Renaissance artist Carlo Crivelli, aka Cucumber Dude for the number of cucumbers that appear in his paintings. I'd read a rave about it in the <i>New York Review </i>(or maybe the <i>London Review of Books;</i> I can't find it in either), and was happy to catch it. His weird gourd obsession aside, he had a masterful eye and sense of color, and although there aren't that many paintings of his surviving, the bunch here are lovely, and, given the chaos next door, well-displayed. It closes tomorrow, so I'm very glad I saw it. </div>
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Next up was just around the corner -- well, nearby, anyway. Stewart is a member of the <a href="http://www.mfa.org/">Museum of Fine Arts</a>, and breezed us past the admission desk with his card. I'd still have paid, I realized as we were leaving. This place is as chockablock full of great stuff as the Metropolitan Museum. Its collection starts later, with the Italian Renaissance, its Egyptian collection isn't nearly as big, but although I'm not sure I saw everything I would have wanted -- the building is in a confusing shape, thanks to a rotunda whose ceiling is covered with a huge John Singer Sargent fresco. Its American collection, particularly from around the time of the Revolution and the early days of the Republic, is, unsurprisingly, tremendous, as (also unsurprisingly) is its collection of Sargents, including "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singer_Sargent#/media/File:The_Daughters_of_Edward_Darley_Boit,_John_Singer_Sargent,_1882_(unfree_frame_crop).jpg">The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,"</a> which Stewart tells me was as controversial as his "Madame X" in the Met. It's displayed flanked by the gigantic Chinese ceramics it portrays. And one of the coolest things in the museum is a humongous Roman statue of the goddess Juno -- well, it wears her head, although that seems to have been added later, albeit during Roman times. Juno stood in a garden in the Boston suburb of Brookline until it was donated to the MFA, at which point it was transported by helicopter and deposited, through the roof, at its present location via a nail-biter of a helicopter ride, all documented at her base. </div>
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I wish I could be as kind about its contemporary collection, but there are very few first-rate works in it, if what was on display is anything to go by. Of course, I was also experiencing art burnout by this point in the afternoon, as any reasonable person would. Clearly, this is a collection shaped by the Boston Brahmins of years past, with an admirable spirit continuing into the present, but perhaps without the vision of the Met or the talent of MOMA and the Whitney. </div>
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Thursday was my last day in town, so Stewart showed me some of the tourist attractions which, it being colder than humanly imaginable, were pretty thin on tourists. I realized that I had a strong affection for pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary tombstones, dating back to family vacations in Vermont where my father became convinced that where Revolutionary War veterans were buried there'd be copious blueberry bushes. This is irrational, but he was right almost all of the time, and he had two willing helpers with kid-sized hands to harvest them. Needless to say, there were no berries out at this time of year, and in Boston probably at any time of year, but we tromped through the Old Granary Burying Ground and I snapped away. </div>
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All manner of famous people are planted here -- Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, John Hancock -- and as you can see it's quite a collection of funerary art, American style. </div>
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After I dragged Stewart to another graveyard, he insisted we go warm up at the Boston Athenaeum, just up Beacon Hill. He's a proud member of this, too, and spends some of his days doing research here. What, exactly is it? The best I can do is that it's a venerable private library with impressive holdings of periodicals (I saw bound <i>Harper's</i> and <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>s going well back into the 19th century, and no doubt they have the entire run) all housed in a building dripping with art (part of the reason the MFA was built was to house the Athenaeum's collection, which it then grabbed when it became a separate institution), serving, for most of its existence, a rarified stratum of Boston society. After all, a lot of people in Boston have access to libraries at Harvard and MIT, whose collections must duplicate some of this stuff, and there's also the Boston Public Library, which probably has a book or two. And, in fact, the membership at the Athenaeum was literally dying off when the trustees mounted a membership drive that coincided with the digitization of the collection (a mighty undertaking, I bet) and a revamped lecture and concert series that seriously lowered the median age and boosted the membership rolls. It subscribes to a huge number of magazines, which was heartening to see for an old magazine-head like me, including everything from <i>Toad Suck</i> to <i>One Story</i> (which prints one story per issue) to <i>Petite Propos Culinaires</i> (the number of scholarly food magazines was impressive, too). I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. </div>
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We then took a leisurely stroll up Beacon Hill so I could see where Stewart lives, and as we passed one building he noted it was subsidized housing and he was on a list to get into it. It was astonishing enough that he could afford to live on Beacon Hill at all, but I was flabbergasted that in this age of real estate greed the city of Boston would have this large, beautiful building available for lower income residents. After all, right around the corner are some of the older buildings, one of which houses John Kerry and his wife. </div>
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Next up was the show I most wanted to see. The Institue for Contemporary Art is way the hell out on a pier (don't worry, it's being developed for high-dollar residences with breathless marketing hype on the fences keeping people out of the building site) with a commanding view. <a href="https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/leap-you-look-black-mountain-college-1933%E2%80%931957">Leap Before You Look</a> is an exhibit about Black Mountain College, and back when I was being pressured to figure out what college to apply to (despite mostly mediocre grades), Black Mountain was my choice. There were great composers, painters, and not so many writers, but it seemed like a place where I'd meet the kind of people I wanted to meet, some of whom, I devoutly hoped, would be girls. And I would have, had the institution survived past 1957, when I was in third grade and not thinking much about girls at all. One of its first stars were Josef and Ani Albers, on the run, as were several other early faculty members, from the Nazis. The Albers were Bauhaus veterans, and it shows, not only in their work, but in the way they and the other faculty approached the learning process. The college wasn't very rich, and students helped grow their own food and constructed some of the campus buildings while learning painting, dance, design, textiles, and pottery. John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Lou Harrison, Ruth Asawa, Robert Motherwell, the names go on and on, a roll-call of '50s avant-garde luminaries. Which were students and which were faculty? One takeaway from this show, which it's at pains to point out, was that it destroyed the hierarchy of the arts, and, along the way, the teacher-pupil hierarchy. In the end, a very Bauhaus idea. I'm sure I would have loved it, but experiments like this don't last. It sure looks like it was, well, not fun, but something bigger than that, while it lasted. Later, I went to the bookstore and they had a Black Mountain college pennant and a t-shirt, but at $40, that was a lot of mazuma for a t-shirt, so I let it sit. And as we left the Black Mountain show, we were presented with this installation:</div>
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Just what I needed. </div>
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Dinner plans were to go to Legal Seafood, a Boston institution that, according to a friend of Stewart's, was good despite its having turned into a chain. I wanted good old New England Atlantic seafood, but hell, it wasn't even 5:30. So we jumped onto the MTA and headed to Harvard Square, where there was a branch of the restaurant plus <a href="http://www.harvard.com/">The Harvard Bookstore</a>, which Stewart assured me I'd like. It's not the official university store -- that's the Harvard Coop -- but an independent book store with everything from a zillion new and used books to a machine that can access obscure books and print and bind them right in the store. Much as I love Book People in Austin, I wish we had something like this there, too. We spent tons of time there and when we emerged from the used/remainder section in the basement, an author was giving a reading/talk. Right then and there, I decided I want to do one there when my book comes out, although I doubt my publisher will do much in the way of a tour. I think I'll be coming to the New York area, though, and this is just a train-ride away. </div>
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We managed to spend enough time at Harvard to work up an appetite, and Legal was only a few icy blocks away. I had a kind of Yankee cioppino, where lobster replaced the crab. Most of the shellfish in it (as with the steamer clams I'd ordered for an appetizer) was overcooked, sad to say, but the broth was great -- I got tomato, white wine, and herbs -- and there was enough left over for Stewart to take home for lunch the next day -- and to torment his cat with. </div>
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The next morning I hopped on the Acela, and saw the stuff I'd missed in the dark. This is the part of the country in which I grew up, although time has done a good enough number on it that it doesn't twang my heartstrings with nostalgia, and I doubt I'd want to move back to it. Brooklyn, however...</div>
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I had been following the news, which told me that a gigantic blizzard was coming, so as soon as I got home I put up enough food for two days -- or so I thought -- and hunkered down. The first day was no picnic, and I didn't go out into the blowing mass of snow, but today's okay if you're not going to take a long walk, and I'm sure tomorrow will be, too. </div>
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Plus, I've got another week here!</div>
Ed Wardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12846657618234700638noreply@blogger.com1