Accompaniments to Cooking

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Kathy

I imagine I’m not the only one to put on my favorite music while I’m cooking. Then there are some pieces that are special to this season.

Our regular Christmas cd’s are satisfactory accompaniment, except John’s Slovenian Christmas album. And he’s not even Slovenian. Sorry. I just don’t like it.

My favorite Christmas-baking cd is Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances. It’s not Christmas music, but I heard it for the first time (or at least took note) several years ago at a holiday concert of the late, lamented Red: An Orchestra. Ever since, I’ve associated it with Christmas, though I play it all year round. We have a piano version, too. Try it. It’s the most celebratory music, especially the Bergamasca in Suite 2.

Then, closer to Christmas, I pull out my old News From Lake Woebegone tapes (a gift from Joel?), which came in a set of four–one for each season. I will be playing the entire Winter tape (go figure) while I bake or cook later this week. On one side, Garrison Keillor tells the lovely story of James Lundeen, a childhood friend, who yearned for a Lionel train set for Christmas but then found, after his dad almost died in an accident, that his real little town and family were sufficient.

On the other side, Keillor describes his childhood “storm home” — the refuge he was assigned if he was ever stranded by a blizzard in town after school. He realizes that just imagining the welcome he’d received at the Kruegers, a family he never actually met, provides comfort enough. “I suppose my storm home was a kind of fiction,” Keillor says. His principal might just as well have assigned him to Mr. Zuckerman’s farm with Charlotte and Wilbur the pig, or to a raft on the Mississippi.

Such are the comforts of fiction, and such the comfort of familiar sounds when the spritz cookies won’t spritz (like today), the brown sugar’s turned into solid rock, and, at last, the cookie sheets have to be scrubbed clean.

What’s your favorite kitchen accompaniment?

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The Gender/Cookie Theory

Posted on December 18, 2010 by Kathy

During this cookie season, my husband’s theory always comes up. To wit: women prefer crispy cookies, while men prefer chewy, soft ones.

At a holiday party the other day, a lady fell into the appropriate demographic. When I offered her one of my home-baked chocolate chip cookies, she asked if it was soft. Yes, I said with pride, because at my house that’s the preferred answer.

She shook her head and waved her hand at me. No thanks, she said. Ah! I said. You prefer crispy? She nodded.

What do you think? (And we’ll consider this poll scientific.) Soft or crispy? Does your preference fit your gender?

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Gridlock

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Kathy

Yesterday we had a big snowstorm here in Cleveland. My drive home from work – normally about half an hour — took five hours.

That’s right. Five hours. 2:30 to 7:30. Broad daylight to darkness. Along about the three-hour mark, I was thinking I could have driven to Canton, our hometown, and back again. At five hours, I realized I could have driven to Cincinnati. My friend Bob points out that I could have visited him in Rochester.

I was stuck on Chester Avenue for most of this time, watching traffic lights ahead of me change from red to green, back and forth many times, while cars were gridlocked in the intersection. The occasional snow squall would descend, so obscuring my vision that I’d lose track of where I was, just creeping along behind the dim tail lights ahead of me.

In these situations, you get fond of that Honda or SUV in front of you. An interloper would occasionally pull in ahead, and I’d momentarily feel resentful (darn those lane-changers!) until I’d begin to get attached to the new guy’s tail lights.

I listened to a lot of NPR. I heard plenty about Obama’s compromise with the Republicans regarding tax cuts and how mad his party is with him. I heard some horrible stories that I switched off. I listened to almost all of John Lennon’s last interview (yesterday being the 30th anniversary of his death) – an enjoyable but disconcerting experience, because John sounded so voluble and garrulous, almost goofy.

I even read a short story as I sat unmoving, tired of the radio, “Barcelona, 1975″ from Colm Toibin’s new collection The Empty Family, which I’m reviewing. It was pretty much gay soft porn, which I didn’t like so much as the other stories in the book, but it kept my mind off my gas gauge creeping toward “empty.”

Mainly what I realize from this experience is that it doesn’t really interest most people. Most people (me included, obviously) are interested in talking about their own experiences. They’re most interested, that is, in talking, not listening.

When I told people today about my five hours in the car, I heard about their daughter’s long two-hour commute or their co-worker’s three-hour commute. Yes, I wanted to say. But five hours. Do you hear? Five hours. They’d responding by talking about the snowplows and the Mayor and the police and the sprinkling of snow on the West Side.

One acquaintance explained that I hadn’t needed to worry about running out of gas because I could have just kept shutting off my car and starting it again. The experts say this is how to do it! You can save gas that way! When I cited my nervousness about the possible road rage of drivers around me if I didn’t start up my car quickly enough, she interrupted me. All about how starting the car doesn’t use as much gas as you think, the experts say so, and so on.

Even my family was surprisingly blasé. I’d imagined as the hours ticked by my husband and son would be worried about me. But my arrival home was like Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy returning to the wardrobe in the Professor’s house after spending years in Narnia: time works differently there. When I got home, my husband had gone off to work and my son was blithely watching TV, hoping I’d been to the grocery store. He was mildly disappointed that I hadn’t brought home something hot to eat.

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Thankfulness

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Kathy

I’m grateful for all the usual things. I’m lucky not to have to worry about clean water, cholera, mudslides, gang violence, political oppression, an adequate diet, and so on and on. Middle-class Americans are set apart from so much of the rest of the world in our good fortune. Closer to home, I appreciate my good health, my healthy family, my home, my dog, my friends, our jobs, and all the undeserved good fortune I’ve experienced.

Yesterday, though, I was giving some thought to a very specific object of my gratitude: the public library.

I stopped in to the Heights Main Library to return three books. Browsing among the new books, I picked up Michael Caine’s new memoir The Elephant to Hollywood and Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. (She wrote the gripping Seabiscuit in 2001.) While I was there, I also explored the magazines and got the idea to take home some Christmas, 2009, issues of Oprah and Martha Stewart Living to check out decorating and craft ideas I will never use.

How awful it would be, I thought, if the libraries were to go away. What if the small-government people decide that libraries cost too much, and people just need to fork over their $ to buy all their books and further the capitalist cause? What if we all have to buy a Kindle and pay $10 or more for every book we want to read?  What will I do if the libraries go away?

Other things I like have gone away. We used to have three actual grocery stores — one large one and two smaller ones — within walking distance of our house. They have all closed. About a mile away, we had a shopping center with a terrific deli, a movie theater, a great stationery store (not an Office Max!) and lots of other cool shops. It’s been razed, and the big, bare field there now has been awaiting further development. The Cleveland Indians went away from our basic TV stations. Our neighborhood ice-cream shop and bargain movie house have gone away. Card catalogs have gone away. Telephone books have almost gone away.

If libraries went away, I wouldn’t now be reading Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds. After viewing a BBC production of his novel He Knew He Was Right, I realized that Trollope, whom I always liked, had written a whole bunch of novels I’d never read. How lucky for me! There’s a whole shelf of Trollope at the Cleveland State Michael Schwartz Library at my fingertips.

What about you? What are you grateful for?

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Helping, Once Again

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Kathy

For people with BPD, the glass is never half-full and rarely even half-empty: it seems there has never been anything in that glass, ever.

I remember suggesting to my mom a few times that we were a lucky family, compared to the least fortunate. We weren’t starving, we had savings. Wrong thing to say. I’d get a reproachful look and a comment about my lack of understanding. I know now that what my mom wanted was some affirmation of her feelings. She wanted some acknowledgment of her sadness.

My tendency, though, was to resist, to contradict. I feared that if I gave her an inch, her misery would grab hold of me and suck me in. I had to dig in my heels and resist: “No, no no! Everything’s not that bad!” We talked past each other.

Here’s a piece of advice I wish I’d had before she died — S.E.T., which stands for “support, empathy, truth.” This acronym now helps me respond more compassionately, by offering supportive and empathetic words before sharing my own truth. I should add that I often have to force myself to do this. It doesn’t come naturally, hence the need for the acronym.

So, the person with BPD might say, “Nobody loves me. Even you are not really there for me. I wait for your phone calls, and they never come. Nobody calls or cares.”

You resist (and it’s hard) the temptation to react defensively and to recount all the phone calls you’ve made, all the efforts to reach out, all the patience you’ve tried to show, all the calls and efforts and patience of others in her life. You don’t say those things.

Instead, you say, “I do care about you, and I’m trying to be there for you, like lots of your other friends and family. We’re sure to fail sometimes, but we’re trying, and we’re not going anywhere.” That’s support.

Then you might say, “It must be so hard to have these bad feelings. It’s really not fair that you have to suffer so much. I’m so sorry things are so bad for you.” That’s empathy.

Then, after some give and take, finally, you might say, “Sometimes it hurts when you don’t recognize the efforts I’ve made. I called and emailed you last week, and so did a couple of other friends.”

Your supportive statements may (may, I emphasize) make it easier for her to hear your “truth.” You’ve already soothed and softened the way. You’ve resisted the temptation to contradict, which only strengthens the borderline person’s inclination to hear that they’re wrong, always wrong.

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Helping Someone with BPD

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Kathy

This morning I watched Dani’s video blog on borderline personality disorder and “object constancy,” that is, the difficulty BPD sufferers have with trusting in someone’s love when that person isn’t there. This provided lots of food for thought, but as I walked my dog later on, my mind wandered into other BPD-related territory. I resolved to ask Dani to post something about how family and friends could help their loved one with BPD.

I have already learned a little about this. As I say in Missing, my memoir about my mom’s BPD, I’m something of a slow learner. After running repeatedly headlong into a cement bunker trying to “help” (i.e., change) my mom and then my friend Nancy, I gradually came to understand the futility of my efforts. “You’ll never change her,” my husband used to tell me about my mom, but those words always glanced off me. I couldn’t take them in.

Codependents, Melody Beattie writes in Codependents No More, “think they know best how things should turn out and how people should behave.” They “feel responsible for other people.” They “eventually fail in their efforts” and become “frustrated and angry.”  Has Melody Beattie met me?

What I didn’t understand, of course, was that I was dealing with a mental illness, with an emphasis on “illness.” I wouldn’t presume to fix up a person with diabetes or try to ameliorate the symptoms of schizophrenia or clinical depression. We have come to know that these last two are in some manner physical diseases, caused by an interplay of genetics and environment. You can’t love or care people out of them. So, too, with BPD.

BPD presents a conundrum. People with BPD can often function and appear quite normal in their workplace and around their friends. The symptoms, in some cases, appear only in connection with significant others. The friend and daughter (in my case) is constantly kept off balance, because there’s no reconciling the normal, effective traits with the depressive, anxious, self-destructive ones. You’re lured into thinking that you can just cheer up or comfort your BPD friend or relative.

But you can’t. I used to try dragging my mom out of her isolation to restaurants or stores. She resisted. I gave my friend Nancy a Brian Regan cd (he’s a very funny comedian), thinking she would laugh and feel better. Suffice it to say, it didn’t “work.” I have also shared lots of books and music with her. When I listen to Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, I think no one could listen to that music and stay depressed. I am mistaken.

You can’t shake the symptoms of BPD from a person who suffers from it. If you try, you’ll make yourself depressed and certainly resentful, because the other person is so damned uncooperative. Why don’t they just take your advice? Why don’t they go to a club or join a group or do something happy?

They don’t because they can’t, at least in this moment.

So does this mean you should simply give up? Let me know your thoughts on this, and I’ll post my own answer soon.

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Waiting for Jonathan Kozol

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Kathy

I saw Waiting for ‘Superman’ today, the much-hyped documentary by Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth). I was all set to defend the movie to my teacher friends who decry its anti-union sensibility, some of whom won’t even see it on that account.

Now, having seen it, I don’t feel much like defending it. I’m glad it was made, and I’m glad a lot of people will see how people in poverty have to struggle with lousy schools. I’m glad that the movie demonstrates that all kids can learn. I’m sorry, though, that the movie puts so much blame on teachers and teachers’ unions.

Call me crazy, but I really don’t think teacher tenure is the fundamental cause of our schools’ problems. That’s the conclusion many viewers will come away with. The film doesn’t show buildings falling down. It doesn’t show broken windows and stinking bathrooms.

Jonathan Kozol

I wish after seeing Waiting for ‘Superman,’ people would go directly to their local library or bookstore and pick up a book by Jonathan Kozol. He doesn’t think that raising test scores is the Ultima Thule of education, or that education’s highest purpose is to transform children into cogs in our economic system to ensure that the United States remains the Number One Country in the World.

“Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are,” he wrote in Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope, “we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation’s competitive needs.”  Jonathan Kozol went on a fast “as [a] personal act of protest at the vicious damage being done to inner-city children by the federal education law No Child Left Behind, a racially punitive piece of legislation.”

He dares to write about the joy of learning and the exuberance of children, not just about lengthening school days and mandating uniforms. “Why not give these kids the best we have,” he writes, “because we are a wealthy nation and they are children and deserve to have some fun while they are still less than four feet high?”

Since 1967, Jonathan Kozol has written twelve books on poverty and education and has spent countless hours working with teachers and schools and speaking tirelessly on behalf of urban education. It makes me very sad that he’s not even mentioned, let alone interviewed in Waiting for ‘Superman.’  I’m afraid that Kozol’s brand of idealism and activism is passe.

Have you seen the movie? Are you boycotting the movie? I’d love to hear what you think.

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Another Day…

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Kathy

…another marvelous CSU story.

This morning I went off on a tangent in Latin 201, telling my students I reread Crime and Punishment this summer and making some obscure connection between the Dostoevsky novel and our text, the Cupid and Psyche story from Apuleius’s The Golden Ass.

Bill said, “Funny you should mention that book. Crime and Punishment is why I’m here.”

Before recounting his explanation, let me tell you about Bill. In his fifties, he’s a good-looking, fit guy, with a blunt, blue-collar demeanor. He wears a baseball cap and jeans and runs his own painting business. He’s interested in medieval history and wants eventually to teach in a community college. He’s friendly and good-humored and plain-spoken, capable, conscientious, and down-to-earth.

“My wife and I were going to see Crime and Punishment at the Cleveland Playhouse a few years ago,” he explained. “I thought, ‘I haven’t read a novel in twenty-five years. Maybe I should read the novel before we see the play.’”

So Bill read Crime and Punishment. He couldn’t believe how good it was and even cried a little at the end when the faithful Sonya accompanies Raskolnikov to prison in Siberia. So then he read The Brothers Karamazov and loved it, too. Then he read The Adolescent and The Idiot and a couple more and loved them all. “He’s a great writer,” Bill says.

“I decided that I might want to do some more of this. Reading and studying. So I enrolled in college.” He continues to attend school full-time, look after his family, and run his business.

I wonder what it might mean to callow adolescents (I love them, but they’re callow) to sit in a class with Bill. He doesn’t pontificate as older students sometimes do, he doesn’t talk down to anyone, and he struggles with Latin conditionals and deponent verbs like everyone else. Just by being here, though, and by being himself, he sets an example.

He’s in college because he read Crime and Punishment. What book changed your life?

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Superwoman Lives

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Kathy

Recently one of my CSU students invited me to sit in as she defended her Masters thesis. (I’ll call her K.) I had helped K. with some Latin translation last semester as part of her research but hadn’t seen her since.

K. was a memorable character. Beginning Latin in 2006 as a sophomore in her late twenties, she went on to take all the Latin she could get at CSU. At the same time, she was raising three kids as a single mom and working full time to support them.

She was a good student. She purchased flashcards that go along with our Wheelock Latin text and kept them wrapped in a rubber band in her purse. Whenever she was waiting for one of her classes to start, she’d pull out her vocab and review.

When she graduated, she decided to continue straight on with grad school. She had grown to love the academic life and resolved to pursue a Masters degree in medieval history.

So, amazingly, since 2006, this single mother of three had completed both her Bachelors degree and Masters degrees. In my experience, nobody completes these things on time. Everyone always needs an extension on her thesis writing. Not K.

So, when I walked into the conference room at about 1:00 for her thesis defense and greeted her, sitting at the long conference table chatting with a friend who’d also come to lend support, and I overheard the word “induced,” I said, “No. Don’t tell me.”

K. stood up. She was very pregnant. Since I’d seen her the previous semester, she’d gotten married. Now she was a pregnant mother of three, finishing grad school, and working full-time. I expressed admiration and awe.

 “Wait,” her friend said. “There’s more.”

 K. explained calmly that immediately after her thesis defense, she was heading to the hospital, there to have labor induced. She planned to have the baby around 5:00 pm that day.

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“Wounding, Destruction, Despair, Healing, and Love”

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Kathy

Millicent Monks gives new, horrifying meaning to the term “sandwich generation.” Her memoir Songs of Three Islands: A Story of Mental Illness in an Iconic American Family describes being caught between mentally-ill parents and a daughter with borderline personality disorder.

Monks herself has suffered from depression at some points in her life and much understandable rage. When her mother wasn’t neglecting her, she was insisting that Millicent had been poisoned from unpasteurized milk. In an obsession resembling Munchhausen by proxy, she had Millicent hospitalized and medicated over long periods of time. Her father, an alcoholic and sex addict, abandoned the family.

Then, in an unbearable irony, after Millicent had married the love of her life (Robert Monks, an attorney and business consultant) and seemingly escaped her parents, her daughter showed symptoms of mental illness — violent tantrums, irrationality — in very early childhood, and Millicent and her husband have continued to struggle with feelings of guilt, questions of responsibility, and their daughter’s rage and rejection.

After an initial diagnosis of schizophrenia, doctors settled on BPD for Millicent’s daughter, and Millicent has subsequently ascribed the same diagnosis to her mother. She was left alone with her mother, as I was, and I can relate to the confusion, loneliness, and anger Millicent experienced.

The “iconic family” of the book’s subtitle is the Carnegies; her maternal great-grandfather was Thomas Carnegie, brother of Andrew. Millicent has inherited islands (literally) and lives now off Maine in a large family complex, housing as many as sixty or so family members and in-laws and various step-relatives and ex-step-relatives, including her estranged daughter.

Songs of Three Islands wanders chronologically and spiritually; it veers too far into psychic phenomena and New-Agey jargon for my taste. But Monks’s take on BPD is clear and affirming, and because she loves her daughter, she tries mightily to skirt the stigmas.

P.S. At the risk of sounding hypercritical, I was puzzled by some odd editing. “Mourning doves” are mistakenly called “morning doves” several times, but not consistently; once, both spellings appear in the same paragraph. At another point, the word “morning” (i.e., the opposite of evening) is spelled “mourning.” Weird.

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