Good Friday in Chicago

I spent most of yesterday shopping. It is funny how two years in London has changed my perspective. I am in one of the biggest cities in the US and wow… everything seems so incredibly cheap. In the midst of my shopping I stumbled upon Berghoff’s Restaurant. It was apparent that this place WAS something… just look at the sign. I later learned that it had closed and reopened, so it is no longer what it was. The portabello sandwich was good… and the homemade crisps (potato chips) LOOKED awesome… but unfortunately lacked any taste whatsoever… and some of them were quite rubbery. The Berghoffs apparently were brewers back in the day and they had a selection of beers, which I later learned are of the Dortmunder-style. I had the dark. I have apparently become a real/cask-ale snob because this stuff tasted like it had added carbonation and it had that mass-produced kind of flavour. I mean it any beats any of big piss-water makers (Budweiser, Millers, Coors, etc) hands down. But that’s about it. Staff was nice and friendly, but after living in London, I might have low standards for customer service. It was amusing watching the Chicagoans huff off out of the T-Mobile shop (store) after having to wait in a queue (line) more than a few minutes when I was getting my phone topped up (refilled).

Last night, the Shakespeare Association of America had an event at the Chicago Cultural Center, which is an old library. It was absolutely GORGEOUS inside. This morning, I am in search of a place called West Eggs Cafe in a few minutes. Then I am off to St Chrysostom’s for something called The Three Hours. Tomorrow after the conference, we are off to the Art Institute, where the Seurat hangs. Then its off to the floods of New England.

All Photos from Wikipedia.

Preparing to Visit my Homeland

This weekend, I am doing all those little things I like to do before going to the US. Today I am cutting my hair and organizing my computer stuff in case I don’t have easy access to the Internet. Later today I am going to experiment getting my travel files onto a USB stick so that I don’t have to take the MyBook with me. That will lighten my load quite a bit. I am planning on taking My Beloved to see her favourite painting: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. On Good Friday, I am hoping to find an Episcopal Church in Chicago doing a Seven Last Words service like they do at Grace, which is my favourite church service.

Another thing that I have to do is brace myself for anger and hatred directed at me by way of radio and television. In the recent and not so recent past, I have allowed myself to get sucked into the vitriol that passes for political discourse. The thickness of my skin has definitely declined living in London because there is not a constant attacking of my value system going on in the media here. It is funny that I didn’t notice it when it disappeared, but boy do I notice it when it returns… and it is a quite a shock.

I used to think that I had no problem with Limbaugh and his ever-expanding flock of imitators either fuming with rage or working their listeners into anger. What I thought I had a problem with was when someone close to me, someone whom I liked and respected would start applying inaccurate, disingenuous, and sometimes hurtful labels on to my values system. But I have been fooling myself.

I realise now that the problem is within me. I can wish for a world where we can listen to each other’s wishes to make the greatest nation on earth even better calmly and rationally. We would see why the other side has their view, maybe agree to disagree, maybe compromise to let each other have a little bit of what we want. But that would truly be a wasted wish. A much better use for such a wish would be to wish for a world without disease, ignorance, war, fear, anger or hatred.

As far as I can tell, a single wish or prayer will not wipe out all the suffering in the world. But I believe that one prayer can wipe out one instance. It is interesting that even Jesus did not wipe out all leprosy or all blindness: he just wiped out one instance of it at a time. And there is a lesson in that for me.

So here is what I hope to do from now on. I hope to remember that behind that fear, anger, and hatred, there is actually hidden behind it somewhere a message of good intention. The ones delivering the message have a good reason for delivering it in this way. Perhaps it is easier to manipulate emotions than to make a logical argument. Perhaps the emotional appeal is more entertaining. Perhaps it is intended to trigger an emotional response from the opposition so as to make them look unreasonable. Perhaps the deliverer lacks the skill to present a reasoned argument instead of an emotional one.

Luckily for me, I am blessed with friends and family that have strong political preferences for the both flavours available in American politics. The only thing I ask of either side to consider is: if anyone has made it this far into this entry is this: when someone is telling you what someone else believes in, don’t just take his or her word for it. Consider that the position may be misrepresented or exaggerated to elicit a response. In the meantime, I will do my part and try to remain calm in the face of anger or misrepresentation. Like all challenges, this is just another opportunity for me to grow.

If all my friends and family moved to London tomorrow, I could live a pretty good life here. But I would still miss my homeland. I miss innately understanding the culture. I miss the mix of people, the mix of cuisines. I miss the just knowing stuff that most people around me just know. I miss my career, customer service, NASCAR, and CarTalk. Living outside my country has shown me that I love it even more than I thought I did. Sometimes I miss it so much that visiting is downright painful. It just means having to leave it behind yet again. But despite the din of anger on the airwaves, there is no place I would rather live than the United State of America.

Photo Credits:

Sunday Afternoon

Rush

Jesus Heals a Leper

Considering Head

Barack Ray and Tom

Flag

Sandwich King

At work, I am known as The Sandwich King. It is a triple decker. It evolved from my making two sandwiches and putting them in a single baggie, which I just peel back while eating it. At some point I realised that since I was not taking the sandwiches out, I could load up the condiments and other various juices from the sandwich ingredients on the middle two slices. This has two advantages: 1 it maximises the flavour of the drippings and bread, and 2 the outer slices do not disintegrate. Having had a sandwich or two here in London, I can tell you that the typical London sandwich is bone dry. There seems to be a fear of soggy bread. Maybe it is the same at home too and I just always ate at soggy sandwich places, but I can say that I always loved the flavours of ingredients mixing together and getting absorbed into and mixing up with the bread… yum!

I am not comfortable with the title Sandwich King. I find the ones who care about titles are often lacking in actual skill and thus are totally reliant upon the title for a sense of distinction. But it is not that. Perhaps my American roots give me a mistrust of monarchs? No it isn’t quite that. For me, I think it is the basic rut that my sandwich has become. Except for whatever is the cheap fruit that week at the market, my sandwich is basically the same.

Immediately interior to the two outer most slices are layers of lettuce, which shield them from disintegration. The lettuce is stuck onto the interior slices with an adhesive layer of Dijon mustard and Marmite. Marmite is hard to describe, and as far as I know it has no American equivalent. It is primarily yeast extract. It is thick and salty. Its flavour is reminiscent of cheese for me, which is an interesting sensation because as many of you know I pretty much do not eat diary. So in that way I find it intriguing. It also has the suggestion of concentrated ale… kind of like what a stout or porter might taste if you boiled away the water and alcohol maybe… perhaps I will try that sometime…

So that leaves the interior, which is inevitably mayo, tomato. and a guest fruit. Frequently the guest is kiwi, plum, and peach. Less frequent guests are avocado, apple, pears, and Sharon fruit (a kind of persimmon). And the juice from cutting up the tomato and guest fruit are carefully transferred to the interior slices before packing it up into its baggie. In some ways, the sandwich is a throwback to my vegetarian days. But I really do look forward to it.

Recently, my sandwich has been the source of inspiration for some sandwich making at work. We often discuss each other’s ingredients over lunch. I have to say that these other sandwiches sound amazing, like a multiple course meal like prawns (shrimp) and chillis or salmon cheese and walnut… plus what ever salads (veg). I feel more like the sandwich peasant than the Sandwich King in comparison. Maybe it is the size, or maybe because I was first?

Anyway, there has been talk of a contest. That would be fun. But I kind of like my cheapo ‘fruity salady’ sandwich. I will definitely miss Marmite when we finally move back. But there is no point focusing on that now: Monday, I will be having my usual with avocado.

Photos:

Bread

Marmite

Tomato

Avocado

Crown

Am I a Londoner?

I’m not certain the exact moment when it happened, but at some point I think I might have become a Londoner. It isn’t just that I can mentally work out the way to walk or cycle to the various places that I know in London while waiting for the bus. In fact, I probably still know New Bedford and Providence at least as well as London. It isn’t that my brain first goes to words like ‘rubbish’ and ‘whilst’, or that I have to think for a minute to remember that US therapists call ‘zimmer frames’ ‘walkers’, or that I am equally bad at finding grocery items in both countries. It isn’t even that I call there home when I am here, and here home when I’m there. I pause whenever I come to the ‘@’ in typing. The last time I went home, the salad arrived before I remembered it would when we went out to eat. During my Christmas holiday/vacation, I become extremely restless when I can’t work on my personal projects. When step off the pavement/sidewalk, I automatically look over my right shoulder. I suppose it is a sort of critical mass of those things. At some point, there were enough of them together that made me a Londoner.

I recently came to the realisation that after two years (and still counting) of yearning to move back to the US, that I will actually miss this place. I know I won’t miss it as much as I miss my own country. But I will miss it. The food will definitely be one thing I miss. I remember when I said something like this to a friend of ours during a prior visit to the US and she was quite surprised. I am not taking about British cuisine. I am not bashing British cuisine either. The bland factor is something that England and New England have in common. The best thing about living in London is that we have the world at our fingertips. And while that is true of any big city, the flavours of London are quite different from those of the large US cities due to Commonwealth influence. So for example, while home-made hummus still blows away the store bought stuff. The store stuff here almost tastes like hummus and bares no resemblance to the barely edible swill that is passed off as hummus in US stores. And the same can be said of the other cuisines as well. So there is good eating. And there is loads of cask (or real) ale here, which have so much flavour, I am tempted to classify them as food rather than drink.

Although I frequently berate the British tendency to acquiesce, I already miss the standing on the right and walking on the left that carries over from the Tube to shopping malls and other semipublic establishments with escalators when we visit home. We have met some incredible people here… and that has been quite a surprise. The city gives off a lonely, and sort of standoffish air. But let me tell you, it is not short of kind, compassionate, giving people.

I am not sure what other actually things I will miss. But when I thing back to the people I knew back home who had move their from another country, I remember them occasionally talking about feeling like a foreigner in both countries. I have a feeling I may understand on a more personal level when I finally return.

Eu sou português!

When I showed my uncle my shiny new Portuguese national identity card and declared that I was Portuguese, he very dryly replied, “I could’ve told you that without the ID.” Of course, he meant that I am very clearly of Portuguese descent and have been all my life. And in America, we all walk around declaring that we are Portuguese, or Italian, or whatever the nationality… but what most of us mean is Portuguese-American, Italian-American, or an American who has parents or ancestors from another country. Living abroad, I have learned that this is an American construct. Even though all of my ancestry is Portuguese, I cannot declare that I am Portuguese in London. If you are Portuguese in London, it means you are ACTUALLY Portuguese. I even have a friend who declared herself half American (in other words, she has an American parent). And I can assure you that she was not referring to Native American. Perhaps it is because I grew up in a sea of American immigrants, but I found this assertion of being half American because one of your parents is American to be disorienting. In my neighbourhood, most of us dissected our lineages and combined as appropriate. Such an exercise for me was easy because my parents’ families are from the same mid Atlantic island. But for most Americans, this is a more convoluted operation. My best friend is half Irish and half Portuguese. And I don’t remember the various fractions of most of my other friends, but they are various fractions of Portuguese, French, and other various European countries. However, earlier in 2009, my perspective has shifted again. Now I can declare that I am Portuguese in any country, whether in London or in Lisbon: I am Portuguese. I have always been proud of my heritage and I am very excited to be connected to my ancestors in this new way, even if it is just on paper.

Christmas

As I wake up this Christmas, my body is straddled across an ocean. It is a sacred ocean for at one end is the land of my ancestors. And at the other end of it is the land of my birth. And back at the other end, my current home. And there are yet more ends to the ocean because an ocean ends at each of its shores. At one shore, where my eyes currently linger, it is dawn. The growing hopeful light signals a beginning. At another, where my brain lingers, it is midday. And that brain, be sure of itself, has triggered the release of chemicals signalling the height of the day. So there it is, this Christmas, my brain is on one shore, and my eyes on another. I dare not contemplate where and when my feet may be.

Advent (the preparation of Christmas) has always been my favourite time of year. It is about getting ready for something magical. It is like when the pace car pulls into the pits just before the green flag at the Daytona 500. The team has been preparing, pouring all of its energy and enthusiasm and hope into that new beginning. And when that flag drops, I eagerly anticipate that this moment is the first one of the emotional highs and lows as I accompany my driver to victory lane. Or. It is like when the house lights go down just before the conductor plays the overture to Giselle. The company has been preparing, pouring all of its energy and enthusiasm and hope into that new beginning. And when the first note wafts into the audience, I eagerly anticipate that this moment is the first one of the emotional highs and lows as I accompany my favourite dance to scores of curtain calls.

Most races do not end with my driver taking the checkered flag. Most ballets end with only the choreographed curtain calls. And as 2009 comes to a close, every indication so far is that it will fade into lost memories. But this Christmas neither morning nor afternoon, I am bathed in the warmth of family and the wonderful expectation that this year will be THE year that I realise all of the joy that is in the promise of the birth of compassion incarnate: Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas to you, my online family.

My mobile phone

So I got a new mobile phone several months ago. I forget what happened to the old one that made me need a new one. But the new one has a camera in it. I know... to you this is nothing new... but to me, this is my first camera phone. I thought to myself: wow, having a camera in my phone will be great because now I can take pictures when I see stuff. Well, good idea… until I realised that having a camera on my mobile phone does not suddenly make me a person who takes pictures of stuff.

Now that I have a camera phone, there are times that I think: Hey, that might make an interesting picture and I have a camera on my mobile phone… naw, it’s not that interesting… I will wait until it is more interesting… Yes, I am that lazy...

There have, however, also been a few rare occasions that I actually carelessly snapped a shot or two. I say carelessly because it seems that the recent ones are quite blurry, so that is how I know it was careless. For example, here we are in West Hamstead making our house warming tea set in October (Thanks Susanne).

And here’s one from another weekend in October. My beloved & I went to Borough Market. It was a wonderful market (no pictures). They even had mulled apple juice (what Americans call ‘apple cider’, which bares absolutely no resemblance to the English drink of the same name). It was delish and it reminded me of the taste of home. So on the way back we stopped at The George for a pint. The George is my honey’s favourite pub. It is the last galleried coaching inn in London. Apparently, entertainers would perform on the ground and people viewed them from the galleries above. Well, in the spirit of the old galleried inns, a group of morris dancers showed up and gave us all an impromptu performance. Morris dancing is sort a modern incarnation of old folk English folk dance, steeped in tradition, whose origins are lost to history but will stir a frenzied debate amongst the competing dance teams. This is my first morris dance experience. There was lots of beer. And one of the team member came by and chatted with us afterward. He was very friendly and sweet, and patiently explained the ritual to us answering all of our burning morris dance questions. It was a fun experience and my phone sort of captured this moment (they are way in the background...).