O Jerusalem!

It's not very often that a cookbook looks and feels like a work of art, and reads like literature. Nor one that makes a political statement.  Let alone a cookbook that does both -- and that is equally enticing and practical as a cookbook. I think the only example I could have come up with, until now, would have been Anna Thomas's classic, The Vegetarian Epicure. 

That was back in the seventies, when I was first learning to cook. At the time, that was a reluctant duty, in a relationship with roles I thought shouldn't be based on gender, but somehow were.  Cooking for Two on a Dollar a Day, off the magazine rack in a supermarket, got me over the initial surprise of discovering that there was more to spaghetti with tomato sauce than pouring tomato soup over boiled noodles. Then I came across The Vegetarian Epicure. Simply picking up the chunky, square, just-the-right-size paperback was a sensual pleasure, with its  toast-colored pages, brown typeface in a retro font and whimsical, distinctive drawings by Julie Maas. Her dreamy vegetable goddess and lively little carrots on the front cover expressed a friendly, playful invitation, even though I wasn't a vegetarian and approached cooking with a bit of resentment. I accepted that invitation, and The Vegetarian Epicure opened my eyes to what has become an enduring  joy in my life: cooking as an art form, a daily meditation, a way of showing love to others, delighting all my senses, feeling gratitude for the fullness of earth's bounty and my good fortune to share in it. 

Anna Thomas wrote the stories behind her recipes, in a gentle, warm voice that read like fiction; without preaching environmentalism, she  encouraged the reader to see the value of making honest, natural food from scratch, without waste, and sharing it with friends. I learned to enjoy vegetables I'd never experienced growing up in the '50s, where the suburban gastronomic heights featured soup-based casseroles, jello and TV dinners, and every head of lettuce was iceberg. And I discovered, literally, a world of cooking: French onion tarts and sauteed mushrooms served warm on cool, crisp leaf lettuce;Greek artichokes braised in lemon and oil; biryani and eggplant curry; minestrone alla milanese, and a version of macaroni and cheese, made with three different classic cheeses, bechamel sauce and freshly ground pepper, that has never been surpassed. I was hooked. I even named my cat Anna Thomas.

I've acquired probably a hundred shelf-feet of cookbooks since those days. And since I don't actually have a hundred feet of shelves in my kitchen, never did, the cookbooks that end up staying for a decade or two, or four,  are in select company. Ages ago, I had to replace my original copy of The Vegetarian Epicure, and I will do that again if I have to.  Some cookbooks stick around for a just few years, when I realize they are not earning their keep-- so out they go (to another home, of course). Others are very close friends I'd never show the door to: the works of Marcella Hazan and Julie Sahni, for example, on which I raised my family. Wonderful as they are-- thorough, user-friendly, well-illustrated  guides to the pantry, techniques and variety of Italian and Indian cuisine respectively-- I would not say they are literature, art, travelogue and a plea for world peace, all rolled into one.

I will say that of the new cookbook Jerusalem, a collaboration between Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. I'd noticed a lot of buzz around this book, including a Sunday Times Magazine  piece about Ottolenghi by Mark Bittman (another "keeper" on my kitchen bookshelf). So I checked it out a month or so ago on Amazon, and it never made it onto my wish list -- I had to have it NOW. 

First of all, the photos are gorgeous, along with every other physical element that book designers draw upon to make you keep turning pages with pleasure, even virtual pages. Of course, that's almost the rule for hardcover cookbooks these days. 

What hit me next was the imagined aroma and flavor of one dish after another that I began to crave: roasted cauliflower and hazelnut salad...lemony leek meatballs...swiss chard with tahini, yogurt and buttered pine nuts...YUM! (And so they were this week.) Can't wait for roasted chicken with clementines and arak (ouzo, or Pernod), potatoes roasted with caramel and prunes, fava bean kuku, a frittata-like dish, or shawarma, charred okra with tomato, garlic and preserved lemon, not to mention lamb slathered with a dozen spices and garlic, before slow-roasting. Beyond good eating, the recipes promised an expanded horizon:I'm eager to explore all of the ways the authors play with eggplant or hummus.  Some of the recipes suggested to me the connections between Middle Eastern and Indian cuisines, which is a big plus for my palate: for example, mejadra, an Arabic take on rice with lentils and fried onions, or a saffron basmati pilaf with barberries, pistachio and herbs. 

Once the  book was in my hands, I couldn't put it down. Sure, nearly every recipe has a photo, and they all entice. But not all the photos are of food. We see the people of Jerusalem here, in their shops and markets and kitchens, going about the daily work of sustenance. Beyond their images, an introduction and numerous short essays and recipe headings bring to life the city of Jerusalem, its millenia of conflict within a triad of faiths and their different yet related ways of cooking and eating, sometimes as much at odds with one another as members within one family. I began to appreciate, through images and the tastes and smells they conjure up, just what makes this city so special, as an experience, not just a religious and political symbol. The authors share their backgrounds as two men -- one Arab, one Jew-- who are both natives of this land, now combining their different perspectives and cuisines into a partnership far from home, the London restaurant Ottolenghi. Their friendship with one another, and their shared yearning for peace in the world of Jerusalem, shine through this volume to make a powerful statement of hope and a possible means to bring it to reality, through the basic, not simple, act of sharing good food, its many flavors expressing the richness of all Jerusalem's peoples.

I found the recipes clear and easy to follow, not wordy and not fussy, but with enough comment to keep me on track. The hardest part of using the cookbook in the kitchen will be to keep it clean, because it's so beautiful, and I know I'll be using it often.

I always thought I was half-English and half Scots-Irish. Fond as I am of all things Brit -- like the great social novels of the 19th century, tea the drink, tea the meal, vine-covered cottages, the BBC, the royal family-- I wasn't too proud of being half-English. There's the Empire, for starters. And being American, and a history buff, there's the way the English colonists treated the people who already lived here, a scandalous story that we gloss over with our Thanksgiving myth. I also lived in Brooklyn, the greatest city on earth, for ten years, and I came to appreciate, if that's the right word, how bland an ethnicity is English...You can't taste it, smell it, sing it, turn it into a festival (at least, not unless there's a royal wedding). There's a reason why, too: that old ruling class that dictated English ways in America become our cultural "norm," colorless and pervasive as the air we breathe. Whereas I love Indian food, Italian markets and Irish music.

So imagine my joy at getting around to a spot of genealogical research a year ago, and discovering (through a solid source, an entire book on my family in America, written by a Naval officer and currently in the Library of Congress, online to boot!) that my surname is NOT English. My ancestor, going back to the early 17th century, was a Scotsman, who changed one letter in his name to anglicize it, probably a career move in 1640. I am Celtic through and through. That explains a lot! Including my earthly soul mates, my beloved late husband and my current companion, as Irish as they come. And my broodiness.

Which brings me to my faith. Recently I've reconnected with my Christian upbringing, which was not evangelical, for sure, but no one back then was clear about the important idea that that, as Marcus Borg puts it, the Bible can be taken seriously but not literally, that its truths don't depend upon taking it as historical fact, and faith is not a litmus test, but an orientation of the heart. My parents were a strong example of the meaning of church as community and public service, but short on theology, and though I joined their church as a youngster, with so many unanswered questions I soon drifted away.  Eventually I found the UU denomination, a noble hodgepodge of essential values  I now describe as "necessary, but not sufficient," since it's all too easy in some congregations to play with the trappings of world religion (in my case, Buddhism lite) without really being spiritual at all. (One warning sign would be when you discover a coterie of imported second-home-owning millionaires running things, no mention of God or Jesus, all the music is politically correct African spirituals or un-singable "PC" versions of old hymns with new lyrics and no harmony, and all the sermons are about politics or "mindfulness," code word for "feeling good about being me." I exaggerate a bit, but that's mostly accurate. )

Now I have discovered a deeper experience in a UCC church, one that is moving toward what's now described as the "emerging church," or "progressive Christianity." (There's the joke that UCC stands for "Unitarians Confused about Christ," and its liberal approach is actually closer to the kind of Christianity embraced by the original Unitarians and Universalists than what you will likely find in a UU church today.) I've already mentioned the influence of Borg, not only on the name of my blog, but on my ability to see Christianity as something quite apart from any church, or the horrible things done in its name, to see the real meaning of Jesus, the historical Jesus, the real man, in his message and life example: "Go and do likewise." And that brings me to an early experience of Christianity that is part of my new-found heritage, Celtic Christianity.

I had a wonderful guide in Kenneth McIntosh, in his new book, Water from an Ancient Well: Celtic Spirituality for Modern Life. The author explores in each chapter a different aspect of the Celtic worldview and how that was expressed in their folkways and  faith both before and after becoming some of the earliest converts to Christianity. He discusses the Celtic sense of the inter-connectedness of all beings-- captured in so many beautiful designs on stonework, jewelry, artifacts of daily life, texts, and the Celtic Cross, for they valued artistry and craftsmanship as part of everyday, not a luxury; the sacredness of the natural world; music as a bridge to the divine; the power of story and of scripture, to express truth symbolically in a way that reaches our hearts; the need for community (a fairly egalitarian one, at that, especially for women)...I found myself saying, Yes! Yes! and feeling delight at the notion of my kinship with these ancient peoples. 

Two chapters were a bit of a struggle for me, in the sense of stretching my mind around them, though unquestionably they focused on significant aspect of Celtic Christianity it would have been remiss for the author to ignore: their belief in miracles, and in "angels and demons." I do have an open mind to the possibility of a supernatural aspect of existence (one powerful personal experience of it), but I'm not about to accept the reconciliation of miracle and physics offered by C.S. Lewis, an Irishman himself. My favorite chapter was about the Celtic concept of a "soul friend," who acts as a confidante with a loving care to nurture one's spiritual growth.

McIntosh uses stories from his own life, along with retellings of the lives of the Celtic saints and legendary heroes, to make his points, all  interspersed with Celtic prayers and sayings. Each chapter ends with suggestions for ways to bring this spiritual dimension into our everyday practice.His prose is graceful and inviting, and while I read this as an e-book, I wish I had the hard copy, as it is filled with the striking Celtic designs. His work is thoroughly documented with chapter notes and references, making it a valuable introduction to a topic I will want to explore for a long time to come. That's a good effect to have upon a reader!

Dreaming in Hindi

     When I was a high school junior, back in the Dark Ages, my favorite subject wasn't English, but French. Years before, I'd fallen in love with the language, and with the idea of language itself, when I came across my father's old high-school French textbooks stashed away in the attic, my secret hideaway in homage to my favorite heroine of that time, Jo March. 

The books were cloth-bound, faded, but suspiciously free of any markings suggesting they'd ever been studied. (Follow up with Dad confirmed as much; the real mystery here is why he'd saved them.) Some were skinny, dull-gray volumes, abridged and foot-noted versions of short novels by the likes of Alphonse Daudet, free of any scholar-distracting illustrations. I set them aside for "someday."  (Which has yet to come, in fact.)

But one book became a favorite. I can still see its dark reddish-brown cover impressed with a gilded fleur de lys, and I can still call up the aroma of musty paper when I cracked it open. This was a real textbook, a series of numbered lessons, each with a vocabulary list of words and phrases, the French in boldface, with phonetic spellings in parentheses, then  the English in italics (I loved lists).  Each list was followed by strings of numbered sentences, one paragraph in French and the next in English: you learned the language by reading and writing it, translating back and forth these quaintly formal sentences on general topics apparently suited to life in a Parisian townhouse with a servant: Ou est ma parapluie? Je veux aller au magasin aujourd'hui. Ouvrez la porte, s'il vous plait. And that is what I started to do. 

Around that same time, in fifth grade my class began spending a few minutes each week on a French lesson, and I was excited to match real French sounds (or what passed for them, from a non-native speaker in Schenectady, New York) to the strange accents and vowel combinations in the text book, at least for days of the week and counting from one to ten. Eventually, with the misery of middle school (or as we called it then, junior high) came real French classes, where the teacher played LPs--I said this was the Dark Ages--of short conversations, recorded with pauses for us to parrot the speakers aloud. The conversations were set in places like the school cafeteria : Qu'est-ce qu'il y a a manger ce dejeuner? Des saucissons, sans doute. Corny as it might be, for me complaining about hot dogs for lunch, over and over, was the highlight of a day filled with duller repetitions.

I'm sure this approach to learning a foreign language will strike my colleagues today as hopelessly out of touch (English teaching has changed just as much). But it hooked me. Writing was more fun with the accent grave, the accent aigu, and the circonflet that cloaked an "s" in English, not to mention the cedilla. I loved the sing-song sentence rhythms and the breathy quality of vowels, the earthiness of consonants. I loved the surprises of new words, weirdly assigned genders, often familiar roots with odd affixes, and sometimes bearing the gift of an idea not expressed by a single English equivalent. By high school, I was a strong reader of French literature (I loved Balzac), a decent writer, and an enthusiastic speaker, though no one would have confused my spoken French with a native speaker's. Then came the exciting news that our school would sponsor two students for a summer in France through the Experiment in International Living program. Students interested would compete for the honor through a series of interviews, references and a written application. I was the least competitive, most shy student of the swinging 60s, but I had to do this. I had to. 

One night finalists were called back for our last hurdle, a scheduled interview with a panel of teachers, the principal, and a representative from EIL. For someone afraid to raise her hand in class (even though an A student), this was sheer terror. I knew a few of the teachers, not all; I knew the principal, barely, since I never got into trouble, but I also knew his daughter was a competitor too. I don't remember what they asked. Maybe one of the questions was something like, Why do you want to do this? Or even, why do you like French? I only remember part of my answer, and it was a moment of epiphany for me, the first time I realized, consciously, something I'd known all along, about the joy of learning and especially, learning a second language. I remember struggling to express this (even now it's hard), and I found myself saying at one point, "You see the world differently. It's as if you become a totally different person."

Here's why I remember that: because to my shock, one of the teachers I didn't know (not the French teacher, certainly)  interrupted me. "Surely not," or "Hardly," or whatever she said -- her actual words are lost. I only remember the shock, what felt like a put-down. Not just disagreement or incomprehension (or the rudeness of being interrupted mid-thought), but a sharp rejection of some inmost, essential part of me I had tried to share, perhaps marking me as foolish, most unsuitable for this public honor of representing my school and my country abroad. What kind of person, after all, wants to be a different person? A loser, no doubt.

And here's why I recommend Dreaming in Hindi by Katherine Russell Rich. Her memoir of the year she spent in Udaipur, Rajasthan, learning to speak Hindi, captures the hard-to-describe sensation, inspiration, trepidation, exhilaration, of immersing oneself in another language, and the world that speaks it. 

Rich didn't go to India to inhabit a tourist bubble, staying with a series of host families and studying and making field trips with her tutors and fellow expatriates at the language school they'd enrolled in. She went out into this new world on her own, she met people, she made friends, she volunteered at a school for deaf boys. She struggled to read the news, attended a literary convention, visited poor villages on a health care mission with a Brahmin nurse at Christmas time. She chatted up shopkeepers, she joined in the street festivals, she went to parties, pushing herself to use her new language to make real connections. Even, sometimes, connections that got her into trouble. Her high-caste Hindi teachers were deeply offended that she would want to talk to untouchables, for example. Lower-caste Hindus, and Muslims, were offended that she would want to speak in Hindi instead of English, which now represents a neutral zone between Hindu right-wing extremists and their opposition. The unrest following 9/ll, which happened soon after her arrival, complicated the challenge of navigating in her limited Hindi through a complex social scene.

Rich juxtaposes the sights and sounds and smells of this part of India, and her intense experience of culture shock, with a back-home investigation into second-language learning, trying to understand her struggles with her learning process from the angle of brain science and linguistics. Whichever way she looks at it, I feel vindicated. From the scientific viewpoint, for example, Rich found that second-language learning draws upon different parts of our brains than our native language. (And it's easier for this to happen when we're younger, which is why she struggled.)  A hefty majority of bilingual speakers say they feel they have a different personality in their second language. No wonder, when the language script we use actually shapes our perception of physical reality: In one fascinating study, Indian Muslims speaking Urdu (written right to left in Devanagari script) consistently skewed the mid-point of a line segment to the left, while Hindus speaking Hindi (very similar to Urdu, but written in Arabic script, left to right) skewed the mid-point to the right. 

And Rich's experience gradually led her to the insight of her motivation for this extraordinary venture: she was trying to become a different person. After ending a marriage, ending a career as an editor to strike out as a writer, and ending a long treatment and recovery from a cancer for which there is no cure, Rich was learning to live, as she puts it in her subtitle: "Coming Awake in Another Language." And succeeding. 

Wanting to be different, to explore a new language and a new world and open oneself to change, is not the mark of a loser. Not at any age.  BTW, I did win the opportunity to go to France that summer with the Experiment in International Living. (So did the principal's daughter.) It changed me, too. 

The Lifeboat

Friday I attended my last high school graduation as a member of the faculty. Our graduates, in their blue and white robes, sat beneath a canopy; we sat in rows of wobbly folding chairs that marched up the long grass slope of our school's front lawn, toward the "front steps," which fittingly lead to the library. We faced the students, and beyond them, a stunning view of the White Mountains across the Connecticut River valley.

At our school, unlike at others, students are the sole speakers, and the opportunity is open to any student who wishes -- not only the valedictorian or salutatorian. Near the end of the two-hour ceremony, the last speaker had several tough acts to follow, and one more challenge: We sat beneath a looming thundercloud, tickled by flashes of lightning, increasing rumbles, and a few drops. We'd been spared by the powers that be, or be not, but for how much longer?

The young man, a round fellow with a big mop of curly blond hair and a big grin, began by announcing he'd accomplished the impossible: he'd written a graduation speech. Then he spoke about the changes ahead. Many of us, I'm sure, mentally squirmed, one eye on the sky. Our intrepid speaker went on to say he was about to make a very personal change, right this moment. He reached under his robe, and whipped out a pair of scissors. Several hundred spectators gasped in unison as he brought the shears to his curly mop, where he sported a tight braid he'd had since kindergarten.

The young man began to saw away at the braid. And saw some more. What he'd clearly intended to be a dramatic flourish stretched into a largo. Moments passed; his face reddened. "This wasn't supposed to happen," he apologized. "I got these scissors from the library, and I guess they aren't too sharp." More moments passed; the braid resisted still. Then a junior stepped forward with another pair of shears, and she finished the job. Finally, the graduate could flourish his braid in the air, to wild applause. And we could sing our last anthem, watch the processional and escape before the deluge.

Looking back, I realize this moment meant more to me than one student's very dramatic illustration of his rite of passage into a new phase of his life. This particular step forward wasn't one he could make as planned: he needed help. We needed help; we were part of his plight. And help came.

I see this moment as a reminder: When we struggle -- perhaps silently and bravely, we imagine -- we have an impact on others that we may not appreciate, or intend. Asking for help, not for our sake alone but for the sake of others, is the bravest thing. Offering help, unasked, is a greater act of generosity than we may know; the one we help touches many other lives.

Is there a book in here somewhere?

There is. A few days before graduation, I finished The Lifeboat, a first novel by Charlotte Rogan. According to a recent review in The New York Times, Rogan spent decades working on this off and on while she raised a family. I wonder if the timing of its release, to well-deserved enthusiastic reviews, was meant to take advantage of renewed public interest in the sinking of the Titanic, on its hundredth anniversary: The Lifeboat takes place a few weeks after that tragedy, with the sinking of another luxury liner.

I'm not giving away anything the dust jacket doesn't, in saying that the protagonist, Grace, is a newlywed and now a widow, who survives to face a trial for murder, along with two other women on the lifeboat. In the weeks adrift we spend with Grace, who narrates the story (and it feels like real time, even though this is a fast read), we are simultaneously invited to connect, to identify with her-- and to judge her at arm's length. Could this be me? Is this really what I would do? we ask ourselves.

Obviously, the fates of the thirty-nine people on the lifeboat are entwined, regardless of the different ways they respond to their ordeal; but Rogan is going beyond the obvious here. She doesn't package her boat with obvious heroes and villains. She raises, through Grace and the other characters, questions of moral obligation to self and others in a situation of mortal danger from nature and from society. She shows how hard it can be to know our own intentions, let alone our obligations. She encourages us to question what gives a person authority, what we want to rely upon, what leadership means. She invites us to consider how we see God. A being we can  petition? A force of nature? Something within ourselves? Do we have the capacity for that kind of goodness?

The prose itself is like the sea, rising and falling in cadence, clear and yet hard to see through its depths to a simple statement. It's  beautiful, and it makes you think.

Welcome Readers

I hope this blog space will be a stimulating  but courteous place to dialogue about the way we read to live and live to read. I'm using "read" here as a shorthand for a process that all book "belovers" will understand: a heart and mind-filled dialogue with another soul, living or dead, through his or her words. It amazes me to realize that through this medium, if we are active readers, we can "speak" with people we can never meet, people separated from us not only by continents but by centuries,  or longer! Of course, even when we read the words of a living writer, we are in a different kind of conversation than we could ever have if that person were sitting at our dinner table. The conversation between a reader and a writer is uniquely intimate -- literally, as readers we are "mind readers"-- yet also formal, as we accept these words come to us from rituals of convention: genre, grammar and usage, literary devices, to name some.

 If we think of a blog as a book-in-progress, I hope we will put the same care into our words here -- not in a literary sense, perhaps, but in the spirit of honest communication that invites considering new perspectives, rather than pursuing some sort of personal victory.

Some of you may recognize my borrowing of a word from one of my favorite writers, Marcus Borg, who describes faith as a matter not of believing, but of beloving: it does not mean accepting any doctrine in defiance of one's reason, it means giving one's heart and soul to the truth of what we value. Though he was speaking of a way of looking at Christianity, one that has led me to seriously explore my own spirituality, I am using his word to describe how I feel about books. If you're reading this, maybe you feel the same way as I do: books are a metaphor for an orientation to the challenges of life, a path of openness to new ideas, new people, our common humanity, and how we can work together through dialogue to take the kinds of actions that will make our common lives richer, more just, fair, peaceful, loving and beautiful. Books shape the way we think and feel, what we can imagine, and that in turn shapes what we do and say.

Books have helped me envision new possibilities in the darkest of times; they have helped me explore tough questions; they have helped me to understand others; they have taken me around the world and into space. With books I'm never bored or alone, and bringing books to people (as a mother, as a writer, as a teacher) has been a joyful work of my life. And this is my first blog. Write and start a conversation about a book and the value it's had for you!