• People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn **** (of 4)

    February 2, 2023

    In a series of essays, no not essays, but rather really well-done rants, Dara Horn made me pause and reconsider a lot of what I have accepted about Jews that have died. She opens with Anne Frank, probably the most famous dead Jew, and Frank’s long lasting message. Something to the effect of, “In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.” Seriously?

    Is Anne Frank revered because she offers absolution to non-Jews who participated in or stood-by as the the steamroller of the Holocaust desecrated millions? Would Anne Frank have become an icon if she instead of dying, she had survived the war, published her diary, but gone on to be an aging, embittered housewife living on Long Island. People love dead Jews.

    Or consider the book’s longest chapter about a righteous gentile doing his best to save Europe’s most famous artists from Nazi decimation. He was supported by others hoping to save the best of western civilization. At first, laudable, but Dara Horn asks, what about the less famous, the less artistic, the apparently less intellectual, and more religiously Jewish. Were their lives worth less?

    Horn’s willingness to dig deeply into Shakespeare’s depiction of Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is a masterpiece of literary and historical analysis. Defenders of one of Shakespeare’s most oft-produced plays is that his portrayal of Shylock is not anti-Semitic because of a single speech.

    But as Horn unpacks the rest of the play and its historical antecedents she makes a compelling case that Shakespeare was trumpeting the anti-Semitism of his day. During the middle centuries surrounding its writing Jews had been expelled from England, derided in virulent anti-Semitic sentiment across England and Europe, confined to Venetian ghettoes and the enforced business of usury. Shakespeare knew all that. Today’s critics are whitewashing a play whose very caricature of a blood thirsty money-lender (“I demand my pound of flesh,” cries Shylock) is a continuation of centuries old tropes about the conjured belief that Jews killed Christian babies to extract blood for Jewish bread. Excusing Shakespeare, says Horn, is to overlook the basis upon which Jews have been slaughtered for centuries.

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  • Sourdough Naan

    February 2, 2023

    Is there any more perfect combination than freshly baked dough schmeared with melted butter (ghee in this case), finely chopped baby herbs (cilantro in this photo), and crushed garlic?

    Naan is so simple, but this recipe from Maurizo Leo’s new book, The Perfect Loaf, produced exceptionally poofy breads.

    Started with these.
    Fry in a skillet.
    Have the toppings ready and apply as soon as the naan leaves the pan.
    And make plain.
    With charnushka seeds.
    With seeds and garlic.
    Or with the works.

    Are you hungry now?

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  • What it is Like to go to War ***(of 4)

    February 2, 2023

    There are not a lot of books about the philosophy of war, but there should be, especially as we are a country that in the last couple of decades has sent our troops to Iraq (twice), Afghanistan (for the longest war in U.S. history), Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Uganda, Syria, and Niger. The goal of war, this book makes perfectly clear, is to kill people. Karl Marlantes asks a simple question. What happens when we send our youth — young people whose full sense of judgement and character has not yet reached maturity — to contravene the fundamental tenets of society.

    Raised with the legal, moral, and religious tradition that Thou Shalt Not Kill, we nonetheless ask 18-year olds to kill other human beings. Often the requirement comes in a situation where opposing youth are being asked to do the same to them. Increasingly, however, the use of so-called smart weapons means a gunner or drone pilot could be 100s or 1000s of miles away. Still, their job is to kill, and to know that no weapon is smart enough to always distinguish between an enemy combatant and innocent bystander.

    Karl Marlantes descriptions of battles he engaged in while in Vietnam are surreally alive and frighteningly tangible. Interspersed with battle scenes are Marlantes’ discussions of what it feels like to kill another person, to be involved in a life and death situation, and to try to reintegrate into society afterward. Marlantes calls upon literature from the Illiad and Baghavad Gita forward. He investigates psychology and spirituality. He talks about PTSD and pain and love and recovery.

    Unfortunately, he, like many military professionals is still processing the last war, rather than thinking fully about the next one. Hand to hand combat and trench warfare, though they are at play again in Ukraine, have been displaced by drone and satellite driven technology. Killers take lunch breaks and go home to their spouses at 5 PM. Their spouses, unlike in Vietnam, are often husbands. Today’s volunteer Army is comprised of individuals whose motivations and backgrounds may well be different than those drafted in the 1960s. His book needs to be updated to match the trials of more modern warfare, but his principles remain very much in need of discussion.

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  • Sourdough Fig and Walnut Bread

    January 17, 2023

    Every once in a while everything comes out just right, or almost just right. The scoring on this bread and the other loaf I’m not showing you did not meet my expectations. Disappointing, but also the motivation and the fun to keep trying.

    I did not have apricots so substituted figs in this recipe and something about the combination produced loaves that were not just tasty, bright, a little crunchy infused with toasted walnuts, but also the softest bread I may have ever made.

    We ate half of one loaf for dinner and have continued to eat it at every meal since.

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  • Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan **** (of 4)

    January 17, 2023

    The perfect follow up to We Didn’t Know Ourselves, Claire Keegan’s novella describes in exquisite detail the conflict between religion and morality within the mind of a father of five girls in 1980s Ireland. Bill Furlong is just making do, which is no small feat in Ireland’s stagnant economy. He delivers fuelwood and coal to client’s, many less well off than he and his family. Among his customers are a village home for mothers and babies (the guarded prison-like fortresses where young girls were closeted after becoming pregnant before marriage) run by brutally strict, powerfully connected, nuns.

    Rumors swirl about what might be happening inside the homes, but villagers long ago agreed that it was best not to pry. When Bill makes a coal delivery in the days before Christmas he inadvertently learns more about the despairing conditions of the incarcerated girls than he cared to know. Already burdened with a mid-life crisis, concerned both for the welfare of his five daughters and the monotony of shoveling coal for a living, Bill Furlong must now cope with the added conundrum of trying to do right by himself and the world.

    What makes Small Things Like These and We Didn’t Know Ourselves such exceptional books is the incomparable ability of both authors (Keegan and O’Toole) to spin a yarn. They each draw us into a dark, cold evening by an Irish fireplace listening to a master Irish storyteller.

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  • Mercury Pictures Presents *** (of 4) by Anthony Marra

    January 17, 2023

    Anthony Marra starts off well enough. His lead characters Art Feldman, a 1940s B-lot movie producer and his plucky assistant, an Italian immigrant named Maria Lagana, together make crummy movies on a tight budget. The movies are worth paying attention to because Art and Maria both have relatives trapped by Nazis and Fascists in Europe so they see it as their duty to call truth to power. They battle wartime censorship and American fascists (America First members) looking to shut down a Jewish filmmaker by making schlocky films about the hypocrisy of American propaganda.

    At its strongest, Marra captures the patois of an indomitable, snarky Jewish director with six toupees, each toupee bearing its own name, and the Italian banter of Maria’s three aunts who communicate only in insults. Listening to the dialogue is as joyful as watching an old black and white movie.

    Then Marra introduces Art Feldman’s twin brother, Maria’s father entrapped in Italy, the village of San Lorenzo in Italy and all its villagers, a Chinese American actor, German refugees seeking work in the film industry, an Italian policeman and his ambitious sidekick, a Senatorial hearing on acceptable film making, a German American architect working as a miniaturist in a film studio who is later called up by the U.S. Army to build a painstakingly accurate, life size depiction of Berlin in the middle of the Utah desert to be used as target practice, and rebuilt each time it is burned, a Black prisoner wrongfully convicted and sentenced to fifty years in jail, an on again, off again relationship between Maria and her mother, an archaeological dig, and rapacious stockholders anxious to promote profit over art upon Hollywood.

    Mercury Pictures Presents is one of those books reviewers refer to as a sprawling novel, and most reviewers loved Mercury Pictures Presents. Alas, sprawl overtakes Anthony Marra as he tries too hard to cover too much. His story of a B-level movie studio comes off as a B-level book.

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  • Ducks by Kate Beaton *** (of 4)

    January 5, 2023

    Newly graduated from college with artistic talent, a liberal arts degree, and a mountain of college loans, 21-year-old Kate Beaton departs her economically depressed home in the Canadian maritimes in search of work and income to pay down her debts. Like many other Canadians, she emigrates to the land of big salaries, the oil sands of Alberta.

    Ducks is a coming of age story endured by many college graduates who combine wanderlust, a can-do attitude, and the immortality of being young. Not unsurprisingly she faces isolation, loneliness, and the exhaustion of trying to adapt while working as hard as she can in a new land far from home.

    But Kate is also immersed in a sea of roughnecked men in a frozen, dark wasteland bearing little semblance to a balanced society. The level of sexual aggressiveness and mistreatment directed at the few female employees is appallingly high and carefully rendered in cartoon characterizations, generally six panels per page for more than 400 pages. While the book’s title might refer to a band of migratory ducks poisoned in a waste-tailings pond, it probably also refers to the author’s position as a “sitting duck” hunted by predatory miners far from their own families, hope, or the restrictions of normal civilization.

    Separating men from women, implies the author, in mining camps, college dormitories, the army, or by religious restriction is likely to lead to sexual degradation of women, LGBTQ+, and anyone with perceived or conceived weakness.

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  • We Didn’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole **** (of 4)

    January 4, 2023

    The book’s subtitle is accurate: A Personal History of Modern Ireland. This history of Ireland begins in 1958, more or less, when O’Toole was born. In the 1950s, Ireland was an Old World agrarian country: nearly three-fourths of the population worked farms. Families were enormous, schooling was negligible, the government corrupt, and the Catholic church set values, standards, mores, and rules. Economic gain was achieved, as it had been for centuries, by emigration.

    This is the story of how in just fifty years Ireland not only joined the world of modern, high-tech, gig-economy nations, but also passed some of the most anti-Catholic, pro-Abortion, pro-LGBTQ+ laws in the world. It is hard to think of another country in the world that has undergone such a transformation in so short a period while maintaining relative stability. Or done so without a revolution.

    O’Toole’s thesis is that there were, and always have been, two Irelands. On the one hand the structure of church monitored, inviolate rules on marriage, divorce, sex, sexuality, and devotion. Yet, on the other, the church itself violated nearly every one of its own rules by disappearing children born out of wedlock or into inescapable poverty into severely abusive private institutions. They beat children in regular schools. They incarcerated mothers with unwanted pregnancies. They sexually assaulted children for decades.

    Concurrently, Irish people swore allegiance to the Church, while living authentic lives reflecting the full gamut of human desires: they were sexually active, they loved people of the same sex, they sent their daughters to England for abortions, and they invented work arounds for birth control.

    The country changed in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s as government corruption and clerical abuses became too large to ignore. In essence the private lives of Irish people became public at the same time that the private abuses of church and state were finally acknowledged.

    The lessons for me is the ability to be hypocritical or to hide the truth from our eyes while it stands in plain sight is not a uniquely Irish trait. We Americans also maintain principles based upon mythology: we are supposed to be a country of equal opportunity where hard work and strong family values are all one needs to get ahead. And yet the lived experience of many Americans is riven by uncrossable class divides and deeply entrenched racism, all plainly visible if we choose to look.

    The good news is that if Ireland can make a leap into the first world of commerce and culture in just two generations — and hang onto much of its core culture — is it possible that other countries in Africa or Asia might do the same?

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  • Uncle Marty Week – 2022

    January 4, 2023

    Every year, Sue’s brother Marty (uncle to our children) comes and cooks, cooks, and cooks some more. This year in a slight break with annual tradition and the generous loan of an Ooni Pizza oven, Marty and I made about 25 pizzas.

    As days are short at this time of year, much of our pizza making took place after dark.

    As the week progressed, we improved our shaping.

    And our cooking.

    Of course, Marty made other foods and I made other breads.

    Roast beef, red cabbage, apple sauce, latkes, and Brussel sprouts.

    Which left our kitchen looking like this.

    We made pumpkin breads from freshly roasted pumpkin.

    Using some leftover bread…

    Croutons with fresh herbs.

    And BAGELS!

    The circle of life.

    From which come Nature’s Most Perfect Food.

    Bottom to top: bagel, schmear, lox, red onion, tomato, chives.

    On the fry side of the holidays, Channukah, we made latkes.

    And some shockingly good sourdough onion rings.

    But ultimately, 2022 will be known as Pizza Week.

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  • Ultra by Rachel Maddow **** (of 4)

    December 7, 2022

    Not a book or, at least, not yet a book, but a podcast.

    The genius of the production is that it is ostensibly a recounting of the hidden history of American duplicity and sedition during WW II, during which members of Congress in collusion with right-wing nationalists tried to abrogate American democracy, overthrow the Constitution, and install a fascist President.

    Armed insurrectionists, whipped up by pro-Nazi, virulently anti-Semitic, extremely popular media hucksters attacked Congress, American industries, and Jews.

    An American munitions plant blown up by Americans who supported the Nazis in WW II.

    Congressmen used their political privilege to distribute Nazi propaganda (while being paid by the Nazis to do so) to tens of thousands of their constituents.

    Do those look like ordinary Congressional waves to the crowd to you?

    Every episode of this podcast is a masterpiece of storytelling and revelation of a chapter in America’s past most of us were unaware of. The value of the U.S. Justice Department’s ability to withstand overwhelming political pressure becomes paramount (powerful Senators forced the Justice Department to end its investigations of the events outlined in Ultra). The actions of journalists and ordinary citizens committed to protecting democracy cannot be overstated.

    The consequences of right-wing politicians willing to condone insurrectionists, remain silent, or lie following acts of violence against Jews, Blacks, and law enforcement officials instigated by their rhetoric is horrifying. The direct line from what was then called America First to today’s MAGA is self-evident.

    I challenge you to listen to the first episode, and resist listening to the next one.

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