The persistence of memory in objects

My dad died six years ago this month.  My mom in 1995.  They had both lived full and fulfilling lives.  Mom was 83.  Dad 99.  I had them with me in life much longer than most people have their parents.  This post is not about how they lived or how they died.   It is about how their lives live on, for me, in objects.   Objects that make me feel their presence.  Or spark memories that bring them back, if just for a mind's eye's instance, madeleine-like.  Right now there are two such object in my immediate world.  The first, Dad's last pc, has just been shut down and is being put out to pasture.   We gave it to him almost nine years ago.  When he died I inherited it and have used off and on ever since.  When my last laptop died, around 2008, I switched to this full-time.  It has become increasingly slow and unable to keep up its out-of-the-box speed as well as the speed with which data is now transmitted, something for which it was not intended.  I should have ditched it long before my wife gave me a new laptop this Christmas.  It couldn't hack it any more.  I kept it   because Dad used it.  Pure and simple.  It still contained some artifacts from his use and whenever I chanced across them, I smiled.  For one nano-second I felt him. And it was enough.  The second object, a small (four inches in diameter) styrofoam ball, that I carved out of a cube of styrofoam in Sunday school when I was five.  I cut off a piece of dark blue, velvety pipe cleaner, bent it, and stuck it in the ball.  It was transformed into a Christmas ornament.  Mom declared it was the most beautiful one she had ever seen.  Each Christmas after that, up until we had to make the horrible decision to place her in a home for Alzheimer's sufferers, it was, by her decree, the first ornament to go on the tree each year.  It became less rounded, a bit yellowed, but year after year took its honored place on her tree.  After she died I inherited it, or swiped it, and each Christmas it is the first ornament on our tree.  Mom loved Christmas more than anyone I have ever known and she still gets to celebrate it in our home every year with us.  When I place it on the tree I think of her, of past Christmas celebrations, and smile, warmly.    I am not sure why objects my parents touched mean so much to me.  They are objects, nothing more.   They are not imbued with some gift or magic.   Still, they mean that my parents resonate within me once more, in proper perspective, caught in the film of life that plays over and over in my mind. That film glows brightly again, rescued from the dimness of time and age.   It is like that also with photos of my boys in their youthful days, when I can see them, feel them, as they were.  It is not that they are not mature, good, decent people now.  But they were uniquely mine years ago and the sense of love and responsibility for these children of mine recalls a time in my life that was overflowing.  I just didn't know it then.  I touch the objects.  I feel their touch on them.  It is that simple.  Maybe they just let me turn my gaze back on the past instead of keeping always on the present or future.  Maybe that past is warmer, more wonderful in my mind that it was actually was.  I don't care.  For those brief moments I can drift back to what was, who was, and smile.

And flip-flopping is bad why??

As we are  half way through the current presidential race heading to the election in 2012, one thing strikes me as absurd, or at least frightening; the use of the term "flip-flop" as a derogatory epithet.  It means, I gather, at least in current attack ad parlance that some candidate has changed his/her mind about an issue they once either opposed or supported.  Sticking to one's guns in the face of attacks is a hard thing to do and is often borderline heroic.  But not always, not always.  Life is about constant learning, or should be.  We are bombarded constantly with new information.  As if that is not enough, this marvelous age of information allows us to seek out new data, facts, opinions, etc., about almost any imaginable topic.  If we continue to push the boundaries of our personal knowledge, to take in new discoveries, thoughts, ideas,ones that do not just reinforce our own currently held opinions, how can we not, at least from time to time, change our own opinion about a few topics?  To think that it is heinous to do so intimates that once someone forms an opinion it is set in stone, never to be revisited or modified.  How silly.  That would mean that no one ever evolves intellectually after the age of, say, twenty one.  It would mean the end of learning and adapting that learning to old tenets, keeping those  that are still deemed worthy and adjusting those that cannot hold up in the light of that new knowledge (think the Bush administration and global climate change).  That way of thinking would mean that good people of differing opinions could never talk, never negotiate, never arrive at a consensus.  It would mean a congress like the one by which  the American people are now encumbered.  Some of them signed a piece of paper years ago vowing never to raise taxes  Most of them did so at a time of spiraling wealth creation and growth and under tremendous pressure from money-rich PACs.  That growth has ground to a halt.  That wealth has been redistributed upwards.  Times have changed.  New solutions are called for.  But they cannot or will not change their opinions in the face of growing evidence that to not do so will be ruinous for most Americans.  On the other side of the coin, some members of congress are so tied to how the  programs of the past are structured that they cannot or will not change their blind defense and support of those programs in the face of a crushing debt load.   C'mon.  Continue to grow and learn. Let in new ideas and ways of looking at things.  Take a chance.  Flip Flop.  All of you.

death to foodie-ism

For the first time in many years I have some time on my hands.  That can be good or bad, for you or me.  This blog will offer opinions and insights or a variety of topics:  Food and Wine (areas where I have professional experience), Travel (which I have done much of),  Politics and Politicians (just too easy not to include) and other things that come to mind.  If you like it, thanks and please comment. If not, go in peace somewhere more suited to your temperament and needs.

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I hate the the idea of "Foodies".  Most of the professionals I know and have worked with, except those trying to sell the Foodies something, do also.  Don't get me wrong, I think it is enriching and fun to increase one's knowledge and enjoyment of unknown (to the novitiate) and diverse cuisines and dishes.  It is all part of being intellectually alive (some other blog will deal with why so many people think "intellectual" is a pejorative term, like "liberal") and I am all for adding new experiences to life.  However, the idea of blindly following each new trend or mini-trend from restaurant to restaurant, cookbook to cookbook, is, simply, silly.  The fabric of world cuisine is rich in color and texture.  The things that people see as new have, in fact, existed for decades if not centuries and their discovery is not a discovery at all, just a widening of some one's own horizons.  I have been around far too many people who chase each new fad, hoping to be in, chic, in front of the curve. etc.  Well, they may be each of any of those things among their own set of friends but everything that they follow breathlessly has existed and been enjoyed somewhere else, by someone else, for years.  I had a collegue once who would have raved about Tawainese monkey brain and testicle stew if any one of her friends told her about the dish or she had read about it in some obscure (like this one) blog.  She knew nothing about food or taste, only what was the next new thing.  Try not to try so damned hard to be first at everything, just chill out and enjoy the new taste and texture sensations.  Being first is not a badge of honor, unless you are Ferran Adria, who always claims he is not first, just evolving.  If he can do it without getting caught up in some perceived glam quotient, everyone else can, too. So, Foodies, take a step back, stop thinking that running after everything new or trendy (food trucks, street vendors, flavored popsicles, regional/seasonal, funky hot dogs) (I actually endorse all but one of these The popsicles not so much) and just enjoy the total food experience without seeking some medal for your brave embracing of each apparent newcomer.  Foodies of the World, disband.  Now.  Please.