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Dear friends,

Apologies to one and all.  (I am listening to Le Show right now, and as I typed the word “apologies,” Harry Shearer started reading the Apologies of the Week.  I love it when the universe decides to play along with me.) Having set the standard for long-winded bloviating on my first two weeks out of the blogging gate, I now find myself offering little more than interstitial crumbs.  Part of it, I’m sure, is that I’ll be offline for four days (Lloyd and I are headed to my parents’ house in Philadelphia on Christmas Eve and will be back on Sunday).  My brain has figured this out, and decided to start Christmas early.  I’m sure that after four days of reading the papers, playing Perquackey with my mom, sitting in the tv room eating cheese and drinking red wine and watching Lidia Bastianich’s show on PBS and wondering drunkenly if we can make that nice lasagne even though we don’t have any noodles or cheese or eggs or meat or spinach or sauce or parsley, I will be loaded for bear and ready to bludgeon my beloved friends with prose. 

I slept in an extra hour this morning, trying to recover from yesterday’s bake.  Packed up everything that had to be shipped out today, all of the cookies, all of the jars of jam—how do I forget every year that these things are heavy in quantity?—all of the fruitcakes.  I was around the block, halfway to the subway, when I heard a rip and felt a violent shift in balance.  One of the bags was giving way; oh, no, I thought, not the jams.  I had visions of an entire year’s work, the product of a hundred afternoons of standing over a boiling kettle when the temperature was already at 99 degrees, just so that I could say “Merry Christmas!  here’s your sour cherry jam!”, smashing onto the pavement.  Fortunately it was not the jam, it was the fruitcake, and I was able to catch them all before they fell to the ground.  But I knew that maneuvering all of this stuff onto the subway during rush hour would be impossible, and so I shuffled along, Caliban-like, toward the livery-cab stand underneath the elevated subway tracks on 31st Street, looking for someone willing to drive me into midtown.  I found a nice young man who was so willing, and thus I learned just how long it takes to drive the three miles from northwest Queens to 48th Street and Park Avenue at the peak of rush hour.  It takes 90 minutes, if you wondered.  Had I not been encumbered by pressies, I could have walked it in about the same time.  But if I had walked it, I would have missed the unique pleasure of hearing the worst Christmas song I’ve ever heard, or at least the second-worst.  (The very worst was that song floating around in 2001 that was supposedly the voice of God:  “You ask, where was I on September 11?” It is so awful that I have repressed the title, and the artist, and, well, everything about except for the feeling of nausea and murderous rage that welled up in me every time I heard it.) As we sat on the corner of Crescent Street and 39th Avenue for what felt like years, the radio playing one r&b reinterpretation of classic Christmas songs after another, I thought to myself, if I hear one more melisma, I will stick a blunt instrument into my own ear.

It was at that moment that the dj decided to take a break from Mariah Carey and play Lou Monte’s 1967 recording of “Dominick the Donkey (The Italian Christmas Donkey).” It has been 14 hours since I’ve heard it and I still feel unclean and embarrassed.  Oh, Bakerina, is it really that bad? Yes, it is.  It is worse than “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” Worse than “Please, Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas” by John Denver.  Worse than that damn Chipmunks record.  Listening to “Dominick the Donkey” is like watching a drunk relative at a wedding hector a relative of the spouse’s, and gradually realizing that this is not good-natured hectoring, and things are about to get ugly.  It is like watching David Brent’s motivational speeches in The Office, where you press your fingers into your temples and try to will David Brent, stop, please, stop, please.  At the end of the song, the dj said, “Now, you know for the rest of the day, you’ll be singing in your head, ‘chingety ching, ee-aw, ee-aw.’ You can blame me for that.” Ha ha ha.  Damn right I can, and I do.  Thanks, Richard.

(For those of you kind enough to click on the link, the last line in the second verse should be pronounced, “The labels on the inside say they’re made in Brook-a-leen.” Do you understand now why this song causes me so much pain?)

Fortunately, relief was at hand, for one of my pals from the always-reliable Plastic gave me a lovely and thoughtful gift, a mixer of Christmas music that does not make me want to kill, filled with good things like “Zat You Santa Claus” by Louis Armstrong, and “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)” by the Ramones, and “Spotlight on Christmas” by Rufus Wainwright (I have a monster crush on Rufus, and even with the knowledge that I lack the proper, uh, accoutrements to attract Rufus, I still think that he is cute as a bug, and his voice just drives me), and “Everybody’s Waitin’ For The Man With The Bag” by Kay Starr, and Guster’s wonderful “Donde Esta Santa Claus,” and Coldplay’s surprisingly charming version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” 1fastdog, if you’re reading this, you are a kind and excellent guy, and that cd you sent me is not only good and tuneful, today it may have just saved my life.  It certainly saved the life of a certain dj.

Hello, good people,

It is close to midnight.  The bake is done, long live the bake.  We have coffee malt brownies.  We have Jordan Pond House Oatmeal Bars, courtesy of Lora Brody’s brilliant Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet.  We have ginger fingers, which are so spicy they make my bottom lip tingle and my chest and tummy feel warm.  (I was once told by a cooking teacher that she found them too spicy, and that I should “listen” to the flavor of a dish, “and give it as much seasoning as it wants, no more.” I repeated this story to Lloyd, who was incredulous.  “What if you listen to the dish and it says ‘more seasoning, please?’” What a friend we have in Lloyd.) We have a small handful of cardamom rice-flour shortbread, which are going to my college roommate/dear friend in Pittsburgh.  (I do have ingredients on hand to make more, though, so if you want ‘em, please e-mail me your address, and accept my assurances that I will never ever ever ever give your address to anyone else, nor will I use it for any evil purposes, unless, of course, I’m coming to your neighborhood and need a sofa to sleep on.) We have more fruitcake, and this time we remembered to put the fancy Sicilian pistachios in the batter.  One of the mini-cakes came out a little crumbly, so that one is a spoil for the cook.  I cut it open—just for quality assurance purposes, you understand—and even though I make this cake every year, I never fail to be dazzled by how beautiful this cake is on the inside.  “Jewel-like” is a cliche of food writing that I always try to avoid, but the fruit and nuts in this cake really do give it the appearance of jewels, or stained glass.  I can’t believe I made this beautiful cake.  I want to make more.  But not tonight.

Now that I have finished the Xmas baking, I am ready—or I will be—to start my bread adventures again.  While I was chasing down rice flour at the health food store, I found a bag of teff flour and snapped it up.  Teff is a grain grown in Africa.  It is the primary ingredient in the Ethiopian flatbread injera, at which I’ve been dying to take a crack for years.  Thanks to this snappy information superhighway I keep hearing the young people talk about, I now have no fewer than seven recipes for injera, and I want to try them all.  Pictures will be taken, you bet.

December 21 marks what would have been my grandfather’s 83rd birthday.  He died on October 25, one month after the last time I saw him, two weeks after my brother’s wedding, the day before my brother and sister-in-law returned from their honeymoon.

There is a theory floating around the conventional wisdom ether that when we meet someone, we keep their age at meeting as a fixed reference point.  I know it holds true for me.  Lloyd, in my life for almost 12 years, will always be 30—no, make that 27, because even though he was on the cusp of his 31st birthday, he didn’t look a day over 27.  Lloyd cheats time in a way my friends envy.  It is why my mom will always be as a child bride to me, young and stunning.  And because I have early baby memories of living in my grandparents’ house, lying in a crib while my grandmom yelled at my teenage uncles to turn down the Frank Zappa record so that the baby could sleep, my grandfather is fixed in my mind as he was at 48.  It is why I’m always surprised when people ask me how old he was when he died, and I say 82, and everyone acknowledges that yes, it’s a shame, but 82 is not really considered too young to die.  I certainly thought he was too young to die.

He had been ill over the past four years, two go-arounds with colon cancer, surgery after surgery after surgery, getting thinner and frailer after each one, but he always bounced back, always.  It got to be like clockwork, a biorhythm:  now he is ill, now he is fine. My brother and I always secretly suspected that Grandpop would outlive all of us, that as long as there was something interesting for him to do on this earth, he wasn’t going anywhere.  He had plenty of interesting things to do: playing his guitars, acoustic and electric, with his friends; his watercolors; his woodworking; shooting pool with his pool buddies; teaching the other residents of his retirement community how to go online (his imitations of his more technophobic peers were cruel but funny).  The Wednesday before he died, my mom called to say that the “minor” heart surgery (his doctor’s words, not ours, as if there were such a thing as minor heart surgery on an 82-year-old man) he’d just had did not fix the “minor” problem of fluid around his heart, which was not fluid but some mysterious muscle inflammation that his doctors couldn’t fix, and that his heart was beating at 15% capacity.  Because I ached to make my mom feel better, I resorted to that last refuge of fools, mindless optimism.  “It looks awful now,” I said to my mom, “but he’s had much worse than this, and he always bounces back.” “I don’t think he’s going to bounce back this time,” said Mom, and even as I quieted down and listened to what she had to tell me, I thought, by Christmas we’ll all be laughing at this.  Thinking of this now makes me curl up inside, shrimp-like, with shame.

Everybody has at least one story in them, and my grandfather had dozens.  I am almost full to bursting with the urge to tell them:  how he was a technical sergeant in the Army Air Corps during World War II, on the ground crew of the Mission Belle, which flew 148 successful missions before being shot down on the 149th.  How he never told war stories, never bragged about battle, but did have fond memories of furlough travels through France and England.  How he had little patience with the lionization of elite fighting units—he believed that in the heat of battle, the people shooting at you don’t care whether or not you belong to an elite unit—and how irritated he was by the success of Top Gun.  How he took an instant liking to my best friend and her RAF firefighter husband when they came over for my wedding, and how we all longed to get him back to England, source of happy memories that had fed him for 50 years.  How crazy he was about the girl he married right before shipping off to Europe—no shock there, as my grandmother was so beautiful, movie-star beautiful, Gene Tierney beautiful, Vivien Leigh beautiful.  How after he came home, he went to work for Bell Telephone, the safest job you could have, a sure bet; once Ma Bell said yes to you, she said yes for life, or at least until you were ready to retire with your full pension that would never ever be touched by raiders; but he decided that there was more to life than safety, and he left the safest gig in the world to start his own business.  How he was able to sell that business when he was ready to retire.  How he was a careful but smart investor.  How he decided to learn how to do magic tricks in his 50’s, as an easy way to keep us amused, and how he applied himself to the task with the same singlemindedness he brought to everything he did.  How he loved his family, and how we loved him back, but more telling, how he liked us, and we liked him, how we always looked forward to a visit from my grandparents because we knew that the next two hours, or two days, would be filled with interesting and funny conversation.  How there are easily more stories to tell, how my mom and I wanted to tell them at his wake, but we didn’t, because most of them were off-color.  How I’m not going to tell them this year, or at least not tonight, because I honestly thought he would be here for this birthday, this Christmas, and I am furious at the universe because he is not.

Here is the poem, courtesy of Stephen Spender, that I read at his wake:

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are feted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s center.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

Dear friends,

It is another interstitial night here at PTMYB.  Having survived the Wednesday night LutherCorp office party, at which I was given the improbable nickname of Lady Godiva even though I am 99 44/100% sure that no nudity occurred on that night, I am headed out again tonight.  This time I will be joining a cluster of high-spirited femmes for Korean barbecue, which means I will arrive home full, semi-drunk, reeking of smoke and fermented fish-based sauces, and happy as a clam.  Poor Lloyd.

Last night’s, uh, spirited post about Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland and his wife attracted the attention of my friend Vee, who had more beauty and integrity at birth than I will ever hope to achieve in my whole life.  Unfortunately, she had to slap my hand, and rightly so, for failing to attribute the title of the post.  Whoops.  No, I did not make up the title by myself; I cribbed it from “Frankly Mr. Shankly” by the Smiths.  “You munged the line, too,” said Vee.  So I did.  I should have said “I didn’t realise you wrote such bloody awful poetry.” Anything else, Vee?  “Yes.  One begins to ascertain that you are not a Buddhist.” Such a card, that Vee.  It is only because she is a dead ringer for Diana Rigg that she gets away with it.

By now I should be well-acquainted with the perils of office food, and not check out the leftovers from the board of directors’ lunch this afternoon.  So it is my fault that I spied something that looked like strawberry mousse in the lunchroom and decided to try a little ramekin of it.  Hmm.  A curious mix, this.  It is supposedly made of whipped cream, but there is not a whisper of dairy taste about it.  It is topped with fresh strawberries, but it doesn’t taste of strawberry.  It doesn’t taste of any fruit of all, come to think of it.  It does taste vaguely of cinnamon – but why in the world would you put cinnamon in a strawberry dessert?  I am starting to fear that I have just participated in a blind food-additive test, when a co-worker walks into the caff.  “Is that strawberry?” he asks.  “Nnnnno,” I answer.  “What flavor is it?” he asks.  “Uh, I think it’s pink-flavored,” I answer.  Co-worker laughs, grabs a spoon, tastes it.  A look of puzzlement crosses his face.  “Oh,” he says.  “It is pink-flavored.”

The aforementioned Miss Vee has suggested that I put up some happy news, to offset yesterday’s philippic.  This is not happy news, but it is news I am glad to read.  Gary Ridgway, the confessed Green River Killer, was sentenced to 48 consecutive life sentences on Thursday.  If you are not familiar with the Green River Killer, and the path of fear, misery and destruction he carved into Washington and Oregon, ask a Pacific Northwest-based friend about him.  (Or read this article from the Tacoma News Tribune, but be warned that it is painful.) There was much controversy over a deal that the prosecution cut with Ridgway, sparing him the death penalty in exchange for full disclosure of all his crimes and the whereabouts of his victims’ remains.  Although I’m sure my opinion would be much different if it were my mother or sister or best friend or cousin who crossed his lethal path, I have to admit that I’m glad the deal was made, simply because Judge Richard A. Jones was able to say, in effect, you will pay for what you did to Wendy Lee Coffield.  Gisele Ann Lovvorn.  Debra Lynn Bonner.  Marcia Faye Chapman.  Cynthia Jean Hinds.  Opal Charmaine Mills.  Terry Rene Milligan.  Mary Bridget Meehan.  Debra Lorraine Estes.  Linda Jane Rule.  Denise Darcel Bush.  Shawnda Leea Summers.  Shirley Marie Sherrill.  Colleen Renee Brockman.  Alma Ann Smith.  Delores LaVerne Williams.  Gail Lynn Mathews.  Andrea M. Childers.  Sandra Kay Gabbert.  Kimi-Kai Pitsor.  Marie M. Malvar.  Carol Christensen.  Martina Theresa Authorlee.  Cheryl Lee Wims.  Yvonne Shelly Antosh.  Carrie A. Rois.  Constance Elizabeth Naon.  Kelly Marie Ware.  Tina Marie Thompson.  April Dawn Buttram.  Debbie May Abernathy.  Tracy Ann Winston.  Maureen Sue Feeney.  Mary Sue Bello.  Pammy Avent.  Delise Louise Plager.  Kimberly L. Nelson (also known as Tina Tomson and Linda Lee Barkey). Lisa Yates.  Mary Exzetta West.  Cindy Anne Smith.  Patricia Michelle Barczak.  Roberta Joseph Hayes.  Marta Reeves.  Patricia Yellow Robe.  Jane Doe.  Jane Doe.  Jane Doe.  Jane Doe.

I am the last person who should be surprised or dismayed by odd behavior from our elected leaders. (If you are worried that this is going to turn into a “look what those knuckleheads in Congress did today!” screed, fear not. I would like to think that I have more going on than that automated dj machine on The Simpsons, the one with which KBBL station management keeps threatening to replace Bill and Marty. But maybe I don’t, and of course you are invited to tell me if I am indeed mistaken.) Because I literally cut my teeth on one of the more sordid chapters in American history—when my kindergarten teacher asked me what my mommy’s favorite television show was, I answered “the Senate Watergate hearings”—I should not be surprised by bizarre, labyrinthine, paranoid or just plain loony efforts to rationalize it. I remember my mom hooting at Ron Ziegler’s comment, after Richard Nixon had made a statement that contradicted a statement he had made a week earlier, that the previous statement was “inoperative.” Years later, as a teenager, I remember the woman who Ronald Reagan had tapped to run one of Health & Human Service’s family planning divisions, the mission statement of which was “no premarital sex, ever!”, trying to explain why she was traveling on the government’s dime to watch her son play pro football, in the company of a man who was not her husband. (Yes, she had a husband, too.) I can’t remember what the actual explanation was, but whatever it was, the White House was not impressed and she resigned. And I was actually home from college on a break, visiting relatives in Philadelphia, when we watched a live press conference called by our recently-convicted-and-about-to-be-sentenced state treasurer R. Budd Dwyer. He read a long, paranoid, multi-paged statement before killing himself on live television.

I mention all of this to remind myself that there is no room for surprise or naivete in me anymore. It sounds terrible, the laziest form of cynicism, to say “nothing the bums do surprises me,” but I cannot lie. Nothing the bums do surprises me. Or didn’t, anyway. Then I read how the governor of Connecticut and his wife spent their day yesterday.

Those of you from Connecticut and surrounding states—you know who you are—please bear with me, because I know you already know all of this. For those who don’t, the governor of Connecticut, John G. Rowland, is in hot water lately. Having previously denied that he had accepted favors from state contractors and potential bidders on state business, last week he admitted that he accepted free work on his lakeside cottage, a hot tub and a heating system from businesses, aides and friends who are now at the center of a federal investigation into state contract awards. His friends are being subpoenaed. Congressmen (and fellow Republicans) Christopher Shays and Rob Simmons are urging him toward full disclosure. His constituents, in rising numbers, are finding him untrustworthy. A Quinnipiac College poll shows his approval rating at 30%.

It is under this unhappy cloud that Gov. Rowland gave a speech yesterday before the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce. His friends and aides, including those being investigated by the feds, were in attendance. So was his wife, Patricia. So were several soldiers, recently returned from Iraq. So were members of the press, who were not allowed to ask questions of the governor.

I will not dwell on Governor Rowland’s repeated references to his own Christianity. I will mention only in passing his quoting of C.S. Lewis, pointedly identified by the governor as a Christian: “In our adversity, God shouts to us.” I will not begin to enumerate my feelings on his introduction of the newly-returned soldiers from Iraq, and his attempts to glom onto the capture of Saddam Hussein (”...it was the Fourth Infantry Division...but it could have been any one of our Connecticut servicemen or women."), as well as his attempt to downplay the relative importance of the federal investigation compared to events overseas. It would be easy to rant about any of these, but then we wouldn’t have room for Mrs. Rowland’s poem.

The short version is that Mrs. Rowland wrote a parody of Clement C. Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” a/k/a “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” in which she lays the blame for the year’s tribulations at the feet of the Hartford Courant. About a third of the way into the poem, the crowd began to gasp, and she turned to her husband to see if he wanted her to continue. “Go for it, hon,” he said to her. “What can they do to us?” She replied, “They can’t make it worse,” which to me sounds like a double-dog-dare challenge to the Fates to cook up something really good for the Rowlands.

Oh, hell, why rant about it anymore? Why not read the poem for yourself (which I got from the good folks at Newsday)?

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except me the first spouse.
I was waiting for Santa, that jolly old elf, to give him the list I had drawn up myself.
For I had hung all the garland and tinseled the trees and festooned the house for the public to see.
I’d sent all the cards to our friends far and near, and thanked all our staff for their hard work this year.
I’d shopped and I wrapped all my gifts full of love for our five picky teens, the black Lab and the guv.
I kept quiet and calm through December’s dark storm, protecting my family from those who wish harm.
So now it was my turn to get Santa’s ear, to tell him what I wanted for Christmas this year.
When out on my yard there arose such a hubbub, I thought maybe (Hartford Courant reporter) Jon Lender had jumped in the hot tub.
Now surely that man needs to go soak his head, but there on the lawn stood Santa instead.
“Come in, dear Santa, and rest for a while. I’ve got cookies and milk,” I said with a smile.
“I am late,” said Santa. “My last stop took hours, all that coal I delivered down The Courant’s tall towers.
“They used to be good girls and boys,” Santa said. “But the poison pen’s power has gone to their head.
“And I have the same problem at the media stations, they’ve just simply forgotten good human relations.
“Their thirst and hunger for the day’s biggest story has earned them black coal for their ill-gotten glory.”
“Oh Santa,” I said, “that is sad, I agree. They’ve acted like Grinches who have stolen our tree.
“They whipped themselves into a mad feeding frenzy. They’ve embarrassed our children and our Mama McKenzie.
“But this is the season of joy, peace and love, and forgiveness which comes from our Lord above.
“A time for compassion to give what we can, to lift up the spirits of our dear fellow man.”
“Ho, ho, ho,” went Santa. “I say that’s the gist. Now why don’t you tell me what is there on your list.”
“Dear Santa, this year bring warmth to those cold, and safety each day to the young and the old.
“Bring our soldiers home safely without any hitches, and give evildoers a kick in the britches.
“Help the lonely find love, and the lost find their faith, take the drugs off our streets so our children can play.
“Give our teenagers wisdom and courage and health. Show them family and friends are the best kind of wealth.
“And last, but not least, for the man next to me, a new year that is peaceful and refreshingly free of rumors and hearsay that do nothing but smother the positive works we should do for each other.
“This man who has given you many years of his life, who has stood tall and strong throughout good times and strife.
“He has championed our cities, our schools, and our arts. He’s made sure our children are ready and smart.
“He doesn’t get bullied by big union bosses who picket and whine and dwell on their losses.
“He’s the man with the plan for the good of our state and he won’t let the press twist and turn our state’s fate.
“So please, Mr. Santa, won’t you grant me this plea, and tackle this list that I have drawn up for me?”
Santa stood up and gave me his hand. “That’s quite a tall order, but I’ll do what I can. I’ll spread Christmas cheer to each city and town, to each man, woman and child, and I won’t let you down.”
He jumped in his sleigh, and then flew out of sight. He said, “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

I know that this is supposed to be the season for peace and goodwill.  I know that I try to live by the Buddhist ideals of compassion and kindness, even though I am not a Buddhist.  I know that I have no quarter for pointing fingers at Connecticut’s dirty politics, considering that I have lived in New York and Philadelphia, no slouches themselves, government-venality-wise.  I know that there are bigger fish to fry in the world, and that children are starving in North Korea.  I am still pissed off by this, this whining, this craven invocation of God and country, this shitty, shitty poem.

Not that she has asked for my advice, but if she did, I’d give two pieces of advice to Mrs. Rowland. Piece the first is that you may want to be careful talking about the Courant‘s “ill-gotten glory” when your husband just admitted to getting a free hot tub. Piece the second is that you may want to be careful about getting cute in public. One of the other things I remember from my teenaged years is Imelda Marcos getting cute on camera, zinging her husband’s political opponents in song, and I remember how well that turned out for them.