July Book Report: Free Food for Millionaires

I read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko earlier this year and found it brilliant.  I picked up her earlier debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, because I had liked Pachinko so much.  As was the case with Pachinko, I loved Lee’s style and this book lured me right in.

Set in New York City of the 1990s, the book opens as the story of Casey Han, a second generation Korean immigrant who has made good and pleased her parents by graduating from an Ivy League university and now needs to find her way forward.  With a younger sister studying science at MIT, Casey’s economics degree doesn’t seem practical to her parents.  Caught between her desire to make money and demonstrate the success her parents expect and the reality of being a freshly-minted college grad with realms of confidence but no life plan, Casey is struggling.

The novel navigates the life of Korean immigrants finding their way in the United States and shows us the high stakes that Casey and her sister experience in the world.  In that sense, it’s a timeless American novel.

It’s well-written, with an honest and acerbic narrative style that is right up my alley.  The characters are well-developed and the third person omniscient narrative style ensues that we have the chance to view the world for their point of view.  Even though there were characters I did not like or respect, the style of the narrative ensured that I still found a way to sympathize with them. 

Lee has become must-read for me and it’s nice to know that she’s got a few more novels in her.  

Garden Report

I’ve had cherry tomatoes for a few weeks now but on Sunday I picked three lush ripe Early Girl tomatoes .  I wait all summer for these tomatoes to arrive and we are looking forward to a supper of tomato sandwiches later this week.

The canna bulbs are also looking lovely.

It’s been a wet summer and so despite the heat of late July, the yard around the garden remains lush and green.  I’m nowhere near tired of summer though the arrival of August means I have to think about the fact that the season won’t last forever.  

Let’s Have a Chat About Glasses

I first needed help for my eyes when I was in my early 20s.  For a while, glasses for night time driving or while watching a movie would do the trick.  After a few years of decorative glasses that I thought made me look studious, wearing my glasses all the time meant better vision.  Decorative glasses were fun; full time glasses were not.  I took up with contact lenses.  Over the years, contacts and I were BFF and I never envisioned (pun intended) giving them up.

Then my mid-40s arrived and my eyes felt more and more dry in my contacts.  By the time I was 48, contacts and I had to break up.  It was either that or pretend I didn’t mind uncomfortable red eyes that looked like I’d been on a bender or in a sandstorm, events that seem odd (or inappropriate) for a school teacher.  Plus, I’d reached the point where reading in my contact lens required reading glasses.  I read a lot and so this became stupid.  Reluctantly, I gave up contacts and began wearing glasses full time.  I invested in a pair of prescription sunglasses and prepared to make my peace with the new me.

Though I like the way they help me see things, I don’t otherwise enjoy wearing glasses.  Even after nearly four years of wearing them daily (and more than 30 years of needing them!), I don’t quite recognize myself in glasses.  I am incredibly picky about frames and nine times out of ten I end up disliking the frames I’ve selected, having concluded that I look foolish or fuddy (even though no one has ever actually noticed that I have new frames).

I realize that all of this makes me seem rather vain.  So be it.  A few weeks ago, I got new frames.  I loved them at the shop but now I feel the stripes are silly.  Reality, however, is that no one can see the stripes and the frame shape is like every other frame I have ever selected.

Sometimes, I exhaust myself.

Damaged Finger Update

Nearly three weeks out from the fingernail incident of 2019, things are looking pretty good.  

All of my nails have been close-trimmed since the event and I’m pleased to report that even at my advanced age, my fingernails grow quickly.  Other than a thick stripe of white where the knife struck pay dirt, my middle finger (key when you live in Jersey) is poised to make a solid comeback.

Here is where I vow to be careful with knives and other sharp objects moving forward. Blah, blah, blah.

Today in New Jersey: Shirtless edition

The backstory:  On occasion, I document that strange things people in New Jersey do and say.  I call this happy feature “Today in New Jersey” and if I know New Jersey, these reflections will make frequent appearances on this blog.  Today, we’re talking about shirtless men.

The men in New Jersey like to go shirtless, often in their yards but also while walking down the street, and pretty much any time they are outdoors.  I don’t want to body shame here, but let’s just agree these men seem to have few self-esteem issues.  Certainly none that would cause them to keep their shirt on.

Many is the day that I drive through town to see a hairy shirtless man working in his yard, tuning his car, and otherwise hanging out shirtless.  In my most charitable moods, I assume they are over-heated.  In my less charitable moods I want to shout out the window that they should put a damn shirt on.

Today, shirtless men achieved a new low: shirtless but wearing sweatpants.  I think we can rule out overheating as a cause.  This means we are left with the usual explanation: bad taste.

Oh, New Jersey.

We Have to Save Ourselves

Robert Mueller is testifying before the House of Representatives today.  There is nearly a fever pitch of excitement about this political moment.  I’m interested, of course.

But I am not hopeful.

By all accounts, including his own statements, Robert Mueller does not wish to testify today; he has no plans to say anything more than was in his original report.  For heaven’s sake, he willingly sought the guidance of Trump stooge and Attorney General Barr before he has even uttered a word.  Mueller is going to stick to the report here and we’re not going to learn what he thinks outside of it.  I’ve read a great deal of the report and I think it is damning.  But once the Trump-controlled Justice Department declined to prosecute, the ball landed squarely in the hands of Congress.  They can’t prosecute, but they can impeach.  So far, they’ve not come close; I don’t expect anything that Mueller says today to change that calculation.

Though there are many Democrats who are clearly frustrated and wish to impeach the president (and, good lord, he deserves that fate and then some), the reality on the ground is that as long as the GOP stands by Trump, impeachment goes nowhere.  It was in Congressional inquiries that the wheels fell off the Nixon bus.  When Republican Senator Howard Baker called out the president’s duplicity, the tide began to turn against Nixon.  Baker was a principled and brave man with a safe Senate seat.  That cannot be said about the current crop of Republican Senators, who can’t find a single principle together, let alone on their own.   They plan to dance with them that brung ‘em and haven’t yet found cause to do anything other than occasionally disagree with Trump.  Even that is accomplished in a hand-wringing weasel-loyalist fashion that offers no hope of full-scale condemnation, let alone action.  Republicans are not interested in opposing or impeaching Trump.  Nothing that Mueller says today will move the needle on that front.

We must save ourselves.  That requires a well-informed, consistently angry population who demands that the Congress take action against our venal, lying, self-serving president.  This has always been the case and nothing that happens today will change that fact.  

Today in New Jersey: Rainstorm edition

The backstory:  It’s about time that I document that strange things people in New Jersey do and say.  We’ll call this happy feature “Today in New Jersey” and if I know New Jersey, it will be making frequent appearances on this blog.  Today, we’re talking about rain storms.

When I arrived at work today, a colleague and I shared a wry laugh at the morning’s traffic.  We had buckets of rain last night and downed tree limbs and overflowing creeks had caused one of our routes to school to be closed.  That put many more cars on the other route, one which featured a traffic circle.  Traffic circles never bring out the best in people and so in addition to being slow, the traffic was angry.  This is a classic New Jersey response.

On the way home, I drove a different route (that’s also classic New Jersey….one route to work and another route home in a brave but futile effort to avoid traffic) and this took me back over the river.  With 4 lanes on the interstate at 3 pm, one should be able to assume that the traffic would move right along.  But not in New Jersey.  Predictably, everyone slowed to look over the bridge at the muddy river below and so we were briefly jammed up.  This happens after every storm and we have a lot of storms.  The river always looks the same after this sort of event —— swollen with debris, muddy, and fast-flowing.  And still we slow, likely all saying the same damn things…“look at the river”…“we sure got a lot of rain”…”would you look at that.”

Oh, New Jersey.

President of the Racists

After the president’s ugly tweets over the weekend, I felt a new kind of heartsick; an actual anxious nausea as I contemplated the consequences of those words, the meaning behind a claim that American women of color serving in the Congress should “go back” to some other place.  It is ignorant and venal; ugly and mean.  But most of all, it is racist, the sort of ugly racism that none of us can casually ignore.

For starters, to reject another point of view as American is both ignorant and a threat to liberty.  We do not live in a perfect nation and responsible citizens must feel free to criticize their government in an effort to make things better for themselves, for their families and the people they love, for the benefit of all of us; for our nation.  Without criticism, intentional and serious criticism, we won’t get better.  When abolitionists opposed slavery, they were being critical of their country.  When the women of Seneca Falls issued a Declaration of Sentiments critical of the men in America, they were dissenting from the status quo and asking for their rights.  

I could go on and on.  Criticism is built into the American fabric and we must value it if we are to sustain our liberty.  Dissent and criticism has a long and proud history in this nation and because of it, we are a better people.  A better nation.  I am an adherent of the views of James Baldwin.  When he says, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually” he is expressing an idea that must be the cornerstone of responsible patriotism.  

To believe that criticism makes a person less of a patriot is to be ignorant and stupid.  Had Donald Trump left it at that, it would have been just another in a long line of dumb things he's said.  But he doubled down with a racist trope that cast four members of Congress, not coincidentally four outspoken women of color, as people who must be cast out because they disagree with him; because they are not white like him.  That is racism.  Trump is racist.  There is no other way to understand what he said.  

Crazy Plant Lady

Schefflura plants grow quickly and mine seems to be the dictionary example of that truth.  I got it two years ago from my secret source of amazing houseplants, Ikea, and it grew steadily that first summer it lived at Sassafras House.  Last year, it grew so big I had to transplant it into a larger pot at the start of the summer.  I did that, brought it inside for the cold weather and set it in a southern window. By the end of the winter I had a tree.

It’s outside on the front porch now and it’s enormous and getting bigger by the day.  If a windy storm blows through, its leaves rustle and it is in danger of being tipped over.  So I haul it inside for its own safety.  It’s nearly 5 feet tall and as I’m barely 5 foot 3 inches, this has become ridiculous.  I should trim off the three tall limbs, leaving a still-generous schefflura to grow.

But it’s a live plant and that’s a really hard step for me to take.  And so I lug it inside during storms and otherwise cater to its whims and needs.  This is the lot of a crazy plant lady and I’ve no choice but to embrace it.

Posting Has Been Light….

And I’ve been feeling a bit guilty about that.  It isn’t that I don’t have anything to say.  Far from it……but I damaged a key typing finger earlier last week and so my hands have been quiet even as my mouth has been yammering.  It all started on Tuesday, when I made tacos for JT and a couple of his friends.  

In the course of chopping jalapeños for salsa, I got a little careless with a very sharp knife and cut off a portion of my fingernail.

A significant portion.  

In hindsight, I’m lucky that I pulled back fast enough to save my fingertip.  But I cut off a third of my fingernail on my middle left finger.  It hurt in the moment, of course, and I bled like a stuck pig.  But once T and I got the bleeding to stop, it was merely the inconvenience of a bandaged finger and the fact that jostling it caused pain that slowed up my typing.  Things are better now (the finger doesn’t hurt and the fingernail is growing back) and I’ve got a lot to say.

July Front Porch

I've been off from work this past week and have spent hours on the front porch, which is one of my favorite things to do in the summer.  There is coffee in the morning and iced tea in the afternoon; bourbon is always an option.  Out here, I read, I daydream, I write, I look after my plants, I spy the neighborhood wildlife....hours pass as easily as the breeze and I feel my body and soul relax.

My porch plants and decorations are a source of happiness that is one of the nicest constants in my daily life.  For July, there is a patriotic theme.  There’s a front door wreath made by my friend TO that is cute as a minute and a reminder that the American flag belongs to all of us.

The flag and tablecloth are blue and white.  Hints of red and my new navy blue-trimmed birdhouse make a lovely addition.

This rocker has logged plenty of hours with readers in this family.

It’s only July and there are many more hours to sit before the summer warmth slips into cooler temperatures.  

That’s happy!

Food Friday: Arugula & Tomato Salad with Burrata

This salad is the perfect warm weather dish and served with some fresh fruit and crusty bread, it’s delicious and easy.  The recipe is a riff on a burrata and peach salad I saw on Cup of Jo and it’s become a Summer staple at Sassafras House.

You’ll need a bag of arugula, a cup of cherry tomatoes sliced in half, burrata, Italian salad dressing (I use Newman’s Own when I don’t have homemade on hand), and a fourth a cup each of toasted pine nuts and pesto, either fresh pesto or pre-made from the grocery store.  Easy is the theme here, so don’t sweat the details.

Fill an 8x8 dish with the arugula and then spread the sliced cherry tomatoes along the edge of the dish.  Place the burrata in the middle and sprinkle the pine nuts over the dish.  Dollop the pesto on the burrata and the tomatoes and then add salt and pepper over the lot.  Pour a tiny bit of the Italian dressing on the arugula.  Go easy here because you can always add more.

Served alongside fresh  fruit and crusty bread, this will serve four people.  Add some grilled chicken or shrimp and it will stretch to feed six.   Yum!

On Independence

I read the Declaration of Independence this morning, a tradition for me.  Some years, the Declaration flows smoothly through my mind and I celebrate its meaning and the better parts of our nation’s history.  I’m always aware of its imperfections, of course, and some years they seem to loom larger.  When that happens, I stick on the hypocrisy, often with a frustration born of contemporary politics.  

Every year, I remind myself that this nation took a very long time to actually recognize the equality claimed for humankind in the opening sentences of the Declaration.  Most years, I recognize that beyond the obvious hypocrisy of the claims was a powerful belief in the promise of equality and self-government, a promise that bore fruit for the patriots who became Americans but also for other citizens of this world.  We aren’t perfect, far from it, but the idea of America became an inspiration for the growth of democracy and equality in the rest of the world.  We can still be proud of that.

The more I think about the Declaration and the Constitution which eventually followed (and I think about it a great deal, thanks to the subject I teach), the more I prefer the Declaration.  Its promise, the one we celebrate today, is a powerful statement of human potential.  Even in 2019, it continues to inspire and bear fruit in the world.  Though it makes all sorts of political claims rooted in the times, at its best it transcends politics and serves as an ambitious philosophy about what humanity can and should be.  

The Constitution, on the other other hand, is more clearly a political document rooted in the desire for compromises to maintain the unity of an already disparate nation.  Those compromises enshrined slavery in our founding, a decision that becomes more divisive and troubling with each year that passes in the absence of reparations or real efforts to understand the racism upon which slavery was built.  In its preservation of state power and slavery, the federal system creates some additional quirky features.  Among them are a Senate that gives two representatives to the least populated state in the Union, Wyoming, with just 572,000 people.  The largest state, California, with nearly 40 million people, gets the same.  An obvious problem of representation follows and the Electoral College, a direct function of this system of state representation, was bound to create democratic illegitimacy in our Executive branch, rather than the political certainly the founders intended.  We live with that problem today in the form of Agent Orange.

If the Constitution has redeeming value, it’s in the document’s fear of tyranny and its (sometimes) reluctant faith in democracy.  Hard though it is to achieve, there is room to amend, a function that demonstrates a group of founders who knew that the Constitution and its compromises were likely to prove fallible.  It set up ways to check expressions of power, especially in the executive.  It also demands a citizenry that take it’s civic duties seriously, the challenge of our current polity.

It is imperfect, as all human institutions are bound to be.  But it is ours and we must take the necessary action to create a more perfect union.  After all, that was the very claim made by the Declaration of Independence.  Its an idea we should especially consider today, when we celebrate independence and would be well-served by considering what independence truly means.

An Ode to My Back Yard

The backyard at Sassafras House is lush and green, overgrown, really, but I rather like it that way.  Though I have lived away from California for years, that state and my hometown in the arid Central Valley is my default setting of what a landscape should look like.  A yard like this feels exotic and wonderful to me.

There is a garden behind the garage.  These days, it’s a small patch with tomatoes, basil, and zinnias, looking quite hazy in this morning’s fog.

The plot back there is capable of being quite large.  This spring, I lacked the time to properly set up the whole patch because I was busy getting ready for T to move in.  But underneath the overgrown ivy are roses and hostas (always the hostas with me) and this Fall, with T moved in, I really hope there will be time to clean out the whole patch, add some Spring-blooming bulbs, fertilize it in the Winter, and plant a huge garden come the Spring.  Until then, I’m pleased with what I have.  There are some canna bulbs getting after a showy display, my turtle garden marker, the sprinkler ready for action as the heat builds.  I visit the patch daily, to check on the progress of my growing plants.

Though my apple and pear trees invariably surrender their harvest to the squirrels, the peach tree alongside the fairy garden may bring me a crop this year.  I very much hope so because I can nearly taste the peach ice cream this fruit might could flavor in a few weeks.  I’m excited about the potential but, like any sensible gardener, resigned to an outcome that is less than ideal.

I like a garden and yard that are works in progress, as this one always is.  For all its imperfections, it’s a lovely corner of my world.  Between the red oak and the dogwood, there are branches soaring high in the blue sky.

We sit on the back deck under the shade of these trees and enjoy the chitter of the squirrels as they try to help themselves to the bird feeder and peaches and then sleep off their food coma in the dogwood tree.  I welcome the cardinals, goldfinches, and robins that visit here.  Come the evening, I glory in the lightening bugs that light up the dark corners.

The backyard feels like home and that’s very happy.

The Splendid Clematis

I planted my clematis in 2010 and from the start it delivered a flower or two, usually in late Spring.  I trained it to grow on the trellis and it did so, a garden success.  It was pretty but never splendid.  This year, it’s been splendid.  There's been an explosion of blowsy purple flowers blooming for more than a month now.

From the looks of the blooms, there are a few more purple flowers to still come our way.  The plant is certainly sturdier than it was in its first few years but I think this year’s thriving abundance of flowers is the result of all the rain we enjoyed in May and June.  I’ve taken note and will be sure to water it next Spring so that we can enjoy another season of prodigious, happy blooms.

July 1: Fairy Garden

The current dry air not withstanding, the last few weeks have brought on the warm and increasingly humid weather that fireflies enjoy.  Come the early evening hours, the fairy garden twinkles with fireflies.  I don’t have the photography skills or equipment to capture what it looks like but it’s magical, all the more so because the firefly season is fleeting.  A fairy garden is a perfect accompaniment for the flashes of light and I enjoy sitting on the back deck to watch my garden light up.

Things are pretty garden in the sunlight as well.

The peach tree branches are full of fruit and though the squirrels are enjoying a healthy share, I’m hopeful there will also be peaches for us to eat.  I’m already planning some homemade peach ice cream.

The arrival of July feels like summer is flying by, a development that is worrying because I have yet to reach my fill of relaxation.  For now, I’m reminding myself to live in the moment and enjoy the relaxed days.