Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart) explains capitalism

YouTube has a way of combing through hoi polloi's uploads, and removing those that violate copyright. I was enjoying watching full episodes of Joan Hickson's 1980s era Miss Marple, until they vanished. (Thank heaven I was able to file away the ejaculation "That's a non-starter, Murgatroyd!" -- from A Murder is Announced -- in my repertoire just in time.)

For the moment, someone has been allowed to upload Linus Larrabee's (Humphrey Bogart) one-minute defense of capitalism from the movie Sabrina. I'll paste it here, but if I too am found out, just know that the nub of it comes at about the 30 second mark. "By a strange coincidence," Linus says, after factories go up and a harbor is dug in an undeveloped area, "people who never saw a dime have a dollar, and barefoot kids wear shoes." And what's wrong with that?




If you watched the movie for Audrey Hepburn's eternal poise amid small tragedies, or for her Givenchy frocks, then this little lesson will come as a pleasant, cerebral surprise. I also like the old father, who when scolded that This Is the Twentieth Century, scoffs "I could pull a century out of my hat, blindfolded, and get a better one!" Also so true.

Apples and lemons, and events of the day

This will be very unpolished; but you will forgive me I think. Although, spending part of the day driving around doing errands and listening in the car to an audiobook biography of J.S. Bach, makes one tremble at the idea of producing any writing or photos, or doing any activity whatever that is not the most refined and perfect possible. Such a travesty of a waste of the time God gives us. Did Bach ever dash anything off in a hurry, and say, "well, I've just finished a big cantata (or what have you), let this be a tad unpolished"? 

I don't know. I do suspect that the good people at Naxos, who made this Life and Works 4 CD set some years ago, have made a mistake in their attributions however. The narrator, surely, is the amber-voiced John Shrapnel, and it is someone else voicing "Bach" in letters and so on. I was so convinced of this that I felt I had to comment about it on the chat boards at the Naxos site, and only then did I do a bit of perfunctory sleuthing on the movie site IMDB. I learned that I am a little confused as to which amber-voiced English actor named John played a small role in I, Claudius, -- and which did not. Anyway I still think they've made a typo on their CD case and enclosed booklet. [Full disclosure -- they didn't make a typo, this mistake is all on me. You can make yourself look entirely ditzy, sometimes, even though you're really not. Nevertheless -- ] Somewhere in the depths of Angela Thirkell's oeuvre a character says, "My dear mother thought the most extraordinary things and she never dreamed of supporting them with a shred of proof," or something like that, and so I take her as my witness that it's all right to do that. I also like the way she sprinkles her narratives with confident and completely non-sequitir-ish, omniscient-narrator "we's." "We think that was the right thing for Tom to do," and so on. Angela Thirkell in The Duke's Daughter also gives the most perfect description of a baby's skin in all English literature: she compares it to "gossamer jelly."  

Anyway I did better research later this afternoon when it came to the matter of finding out who is the soprano who sings "Bist du bei mir" (Art thou with me) on the second CD of the Life and Works. All sopranos are wonderful as we know. But this voice had such an effortless, eerie, yet strangely metallic quality that, singing as she did after the narrator had just told us of Anna Magdalena Bach's fine soprano, I felt almost as though I were listening to a voice from the remote past. As if to Anna herself, at her harpsichord in a little room in a house in Leipzig. I felt I must know who this soprano is.

If I have researched aright, she is Ingrid Kertesi, born in Hungary. I know nothing else of her that you might not also learn in a few minutes on Wikipedia -- except I suppose that she would not be flattered to know that a musical Neanderthal like me finds her voice eerily metallic.

I've also been exploring the world of e-publishing today. You do find extraordinary things. I am not impressed with Smashword, sorry. Years ago James Michener said that when he was starting out he had no fear of getting lost in any slush pile, because he had worked in publishing and he knew exactly what kind of competition was in the slush pile with him. I don't see Smashword in any fairer light. (I once started a sort of epublishing firm of my own, and it's still there.) HarperCollins' Authonomy seems better, so I chose to upload, ahem, the Whole Thing there. Do you think the people who actually, incredibly asked me to send them "a few chapters" will withdraw the invitation if they learn I've done that? I reason that Authonomy's soup is very thick, and that the chances of simultaneous acceptances are astronomically more remote now than they were twenty or thirty years ago.

Now, re: fashion. I watched Funny Face last night, since my new computer takes in Netflix and everything. If there is a more gorgeous piece of clothing than Audrey Hepburn's first Paris gown in that movie -- the stark floor length white sheath with utterly stark, straight pink velvet cloak -- then I shall be glad to know what it is. It's curious to look at photos of Edith Head's designs, and photos of Givenchy's, and to realize that knowledgeable people consider the one to be much more sophisticated than the other; but which is which? That is a matter for more of your own research.

Finally, apples and lemons. You may call it an "Arc de Triomphe," or you may call it an Apple Brandy (or Calvados) sour. Either way, here it is. "Why does everything have to be sour?" my gentleman friend asks. "Because I like sours," I say.

Arc de Triomphe or Apple Brandy sour

In a mixing glass, stir, with four ice cubes:

the juice of half a lemon
sugar or simple syrup to taste (about half a teaspoon to start, or equal parts to the lemon juice if you like things less sour)
one jigger (1 and 1/2 ounces) apple brandy or Calvados

Stir well and strain into a cocktail glass. Enjoy with your next Audrey Hepburn movie. Or Bach.

   

Gourmet's pumpkin apple bread

My intentions were to find a fancier version of Beer and Jalapeno Cheese Bread, if such a thing could exist; a co-worker had given me an excellent loaf of the bread, and I had found what seems to be the only recipe for it, repeated many times over on all the cooking sites of the internet. Nevertheless I wondered whether some professional had perhaps improved the recipe with additions of some glorious cheese, or some glorious heirloom jalapeno or fine expensive beer.

Thumbing through the index of my trusted paper-and-binding Gourmet cook book brought me no closer to what I wanted. Perhaps beer bread is beer bread. But something else caught my eye there. "Bread, pumpkin apple," sounded very nice.

It is very nice. Gourmet (2004) credits the recipe to Rebecca's Gourmet Bakery in Cary, North Carolina. 

For the topping:

1 Tbsp. flour
5 Tbsp. sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp. butter, softened

Blend together flour, sugar, cinnamon, and butter in a small bowl with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

For the bread:

3 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp. ground allspice
1 (15 ounce) can solid pack pumpkin
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 and 1/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 granny smith apples, peeled, cored, chopped*

*Query, can we steep them, or perhaps even flame them in the Calvados we just bought?

Butter 2 9 x 5 inch loaf pans. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Sift together the flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice in a bowl. Whisk together pumpkin, oil, sugar, and eggs in another bowl. Add the flour/spice mixture to the egg/pumpkin mixture, combining well. Fold in the apples.

Divide the batter between the two buttered loaf pans. Sprinkle half of topping evenly over each loaf. Bake until a wooden skewer inserted into the middle of the loaf comes out clean, about 50 minutes to an hour.

Cool the loaves in their pans for about 45 minutes, then turn out onto racks and cool completely.

Little luscious treats like this are so very right in fall, with its abundance of harvest goods that go right into the bakery oven and the long-cooking stewpot. Pumpkins and apples here, nuts, cranberries, squashes, spices, and cream everywhere. We must do a little study of Halloween, you know, and find out why all its foods are treats and tibits -- but why no one sits down to a formal Halloween dinner. It seems to have something to do with the prehistoric Celts.  

Well, thank heaven for that

Thank heaven it was stored upright for more than two years. Calvados. Apple brandy from Normandy and only from Normandy. Karen MacNeil, of The Wine Bible, says that all Calvados, along with cognac and armagnac, must be stored upright because if it is "laid down" on its side, like wine, the high alcohol content will eat away at the cork and cause the development of unpleasant flavors. I have always wanted to try real Calvados, and since the customer who wanted a good apple brandy some years ago rejected this because the label did not say apple brandy in English, well, -- we have been sitting on an over-supply of it. Stored upright. Retail, my fatheads, about $50.

You know what Constable said of painting his favorite things:

But the sound of water, escaping from mill dams, & c., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things.  …As long as I do paint, I shall never cease to paint such places. They have always been my delight…

I can't give you slimy posts and brickwork -- actually, probably I could -- but I can give you one of October's last hollyhocks amid a lush desolation of fallen mulberry leaves and God knows what, plus the ornament of a single Chinese lantern, down in the corner. I even hear a robin, just now. Probably a juvenile bird, confused about when April starts.

Would you believe some people can look at a wine as black as ink, taste thick flavors that go beyond mere "jamminess" and blueberry-chocolate caramels, and then pronounce it flat and watered down, and decline to buy? What else are they drinking?

It's very good, though I am not sure I want it with a meal. Think of it as a cocktail, or dessert. Retail, about $10 on sale. I like to imagine that the ancient wines we know nothing about, except we know they were prized, must have tasted like today's hot-climate New World reds. Why not? Egypt is hot and Rome is hot, and the Romans loved their Falernian and of Egypt, Hugh Johnson writes that certainly we know enough about their production methods to produce wine as they did, but in doing so we "would not expect wine of any quality. ... Yet to dismiss what people of such culture as the Egyptian aristocracy described as good, very good, or excellent, took such trouble in making and pleasure in drinking, clearly cannot be right" (Vintage: the Story of Wine, 1989). Why shouldn't a lot of it have been Carnivor-style delta fruit bombs?

Do you know what else occurred to me? I wonder if the human passion for control of one's fellow man -- control of his major life options, control of his neighbors' attitudes, most subtle -- has been so horribly thwarted by a few centuries of pantywaist democracy that now the passion is simply coming to its full flowering, or rather to its autumnal slimy decay and blowsy seed-scattering, not with physical violence but with a kind of moral violence? I am talking about our own experience of judicial fiat overturning realities that the stupid "People" want to enshrine in their laws, or of the global warming mania that has crawled its way actually into the idea of the military. In a way, we are lucky. The same clerics (essentially they are) who enforce today's catechisms would have had the power to burn non-believers at the stake five hundred years ago, and might have thoroughly enjoyed doing it. At least today, pantywaist democracy still keeps them in some check; but I wonder if the moral violence they do will at some point prompt a really violent response that everyone will claim to be shocked by.   

I've decided to immerse myself in the 12th century

And what better day to start than Columbus Day, day of rejoicing in exploration, discovery, and Western triumph?

My idea was to do some research for a little project investigating why today's hijab for Muslim women looks so much like the habit of a nun of ages past (and some contemporary ones, still -- I especially like the "Pink Nuns," the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters), and so to start off I consulted my own bookshelves and found The Divine Order: Western Culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by Henry Bamford Parkes (Knopf, 1969). Another public library withdrawal. In its introduction, I found this:

The twelfth century, which marked the apex of medieval creativity, was the century of the chansons de geste and of the poems of the troubadours. These displayed no understanding or appreciation of the Christian ethic, warfare being glorified, but in their emphasis on the necessity of self-control they had a profoundly civilizing effect. They were thus important influences in the movement forward from barbarism. But the twelfth century was also the age of Abelard, who began the process of rationalizing Christian dogma, and of St. Bernard, who gave it new life by transforming it into deeply felt personal experience....

This fusion of traditions was unique in history, and has given to Western civilization its unrivaled spiritual richness and complexity. ...No other civilization has been endowed with such a rich supply of memories ....

Well, you can't read that and then not immerse yourself in the twelfth century, right? I mean --- I say -- dash it all, as Bertie Wooster might put it. A little more brief research into the matter might bring you to a Wikipedia page in which you find the names not only of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard (who suffered hideously for his romance with the beautiful Heloise) but also Hildegarde of Bingen -- I actually owned a reprint of her Scivias once, and gave it away thinking "I am never going to read this" -- and all kinds of other names, too. Eleanor of Aquitaine, St. Francis of Assisi, Frederick Barbarossa, Anna Comnena, Maimonides. To me, this is adventure: plunging into the rich supply of your culture's memories. You can keep your deep sea night dives off Hawaii's Big Island, although I am sure that experience is so strange and the sights so ethereal that it adds to the general richness, too.

I will let you know how I get on. Meanwhile, because I did not entirely neglect Hildegarde even then, here is something of hers to introduce us to the era of our immersion. Also, later you can have a glass of wine.

I am that supreme and fiery force that sends forth all living sparks. Death hath no part in me, yet I bestow death, wherefore I am girt about with wisdom as with wings. I am that living and fiery essence of the divine substance that glows in the beauty of the fields, and in the shining water, and in the burning sun and the moon and stars, and in the force of the invisible wind, the breath of all living things. I breathe in the green grass and in the flowers, and in the living waters .... All these live and do not die because I am in them .... I am the source of the thundered word by which all creatures were made, I permeate all things that they may not die. I am life. 

It may seem a tad anticlimactic, but after all wine is a part of life, too. Dona Paula Los Cardos malbec, very good. Retail, under $10.
 

  

2013 La Petite Perriere sauvignon blanc

Fresh, tart, and delicious when you are in the store in your last week at work, buying in a "three-stack" of a new, inexpensive wine as one last favor to your favorite salesman. Customers tend to shy away from French sauvignon blancs, opting instead for the blandness of California versions or the bright and almost obnoxious grapefruit effects of the New Zealand style. However, at $7.99 and with a subtle French crown on the label, this one might work.

Speaking of work, I felt I had to pay a visit to my peeps (sp.?) at an old blog, and show them the below picture first, because -- well good grief, because there seem to be quite a few of them there. I had no idea my Pond's cold cream saga still helps pull in 1,100 page views a month. What I showed them, below, is the result of what I have been working on for the last three years. It's done.  My tell-all divorce novel/memoir. This was what I was talking about, when I said I had finished "It" and that now my posts here might be a bit unpolished, as I relaxed for a while and just wrote what I felt like without overmuch proofing and fussing.

Funny story: last night I was telling my gentleman friend that I agreed it was important, when you are leaving one job for another, to "play till the whistle," that is give of your best up till the time you punch out on your last day. Another salesman had told me this motto, as he continued to take orders and tell me of three-stack deals up until 5 o'clock on his last day. He was an ex-school athlete, as you might have guessed. Anyway the attitude was noble and sensible, I thought and I still think.

But my gentleman friend always has to have the contrary point of view. "Whose whistle?" he barked after a moment's thought.

Cicero grows grapes

Natural dignity: is this then a duck, because both swim in ponds?


I suspect that men and women will devise new marriage rituals; they will dispense perhaps with the ring on the fourth finger, or the white gown and the large attending party. So long as human dignity exists, it will quietly rebel at being told that up is down, or that a giraffe and a lamppost are the same thing, because both are tall.

I have a great fondness, you know, for old bits of knowledge that peep out of anywhere. Here is Miss Marple, in her old world garden, internally lamenting the behavior, the deep moral laziness, of her gardener:

"He was all in favour of syringing roses for green-fly, but was slow to get around to it, and a demand for deep trenching for sweet peas was usually countered by the remark that you ought to see his own sweet peas! A proper treat last year, and no fancy stuff done before hand" (Agatha Christie, The Mirror Crack'd, 1962).

So it seems you must "deep-trench" your sweet peas. Also you must read Cicero.

Need I mention the starting, planting, and growth of vines? I can never have too much of this pleasure -- to let you into the secret of what gives my old age repose and amusement. For I say nothing here of the natural force which all things propagated from the earth possess -- the earth which from that tiny grain in a fig, or the grape-stone in a grape, or the most minute seeds of the other cereals and plants, produces such huge trunks and boughs.

Mallet-shoots, slips, cuttings, quicksets, layers -- are they not enough to fill any one with delight and astonishment? The vine by nature is apt to fall, and unless supported drops down to the earth; yet in order to keep itself upright it embraces whatever it reaches with its tendrils as though they were hands. Then as it creeps on, spreading itself in intricate and wild profusion, the dresser's art prunes it with the knife and prevents it growing a forest of shoots and expanding to excess in every direction.

Accordingly at the beginning of spring in the shoots which have been left there protrudes at each of the joints what is termed an "eye." From this the grape emerges and shows itself; which, swollen by the juice of the earth and the heat of the sun, is at first very bitter to the taste, but afterwards grows sweet as it matures; and being covered with tendrils is never without a moderate warmth, and yet is able to ward off the fiery heat of the sun.

Can anything be richer in product or more beautiful to contemplate? It is not its utility only, as I said before, that charms me, but the method of its cultivation and the natural process of its growth: the rows of uprights, the cross-pieces for the tops of the plants, the tying up of the vines and their propagation by layers, the pruning, to which I have already referred, of some shoots, the setting of others. I need hardly mention irrigation, or trenching and digging the soil, which much increase its fertility.

As to the advantages of manuring I have spoken in my book on agriculture. The learned Hesiod did not say a single word on this subject, though he was writing on the cultivation of the soil; yet Homer, who in my opinion was many generations earlier, represents Laertes as softening his regret for his son, by cultivating and manuring his farm. Nor is it only in cornfields and meadows and vineyards and plantations that a farmer's life is made cheerful. There are the garden and the orchard, the feeding of sheep, the swarms of bees, endless varieties of flowers. Nor is it only planting out that charms: there is also grafting -- surely the most ingenious invention ever made by husbandmen.

I might continue my list of the delights of country life; but even what I have said I think is somewhat overlong ....

Cicero, On Old Age

Thinking inside the (wine) can

"Well, that's pretty low brow," a customer muttered as she stopped and looked at the shelf. She was gazing unimpressed at a display of Underwood pinot noir, from Oregon, and yes, in 12 ounce cans. 

The nice salesman told me that the Chicago area is a test market for the packaging. I tried it and liked it (they also make a pinot gris, yes, in a can), and agreed to take a chance. It's selling. The pinot noir is so delicate as to make one question, a little, in this world of jammy "fruit bomb" wines, what is the difference between delicacy and meh-ness? Not that Underwood is meh, not at all. In fact I wonder if the winemaker is not sharing with us all a very sophisticated joke -- a pinot noir as ethereal as possible, in a package that the uninitiated will call "low brow."

And I say uninitiated for a reason. The customer who wasn't impressed also probably wasn't impressed by other innovations in the drinks industry, which she now buys happily. I am thinking of flavored vodkas, cocktails in foil pouches, screwcap-closure wine bottles, Beaujolais Nouveau for Thanksgiving, and so on. She got initiated. And at some point, she will buy wine in a can because it makes sense for a certain need. Just for a start -- it's unbreakable, light-protective packaging in a perfect size for two people on the go. 

It is a fascinating glimpse into human nature, though, to see people rear back and instinctively reject something ... and then slowly come around. In some matters they never do come around -- wasn't there that car, the Edsel? -- in some matters they have to be coerced (the mercury-filled CFL light bulb) -- in some matters they shouldn't come around at all. But that's another story.  

Flowers, amateur and professional

My fatheads! When was the last time you saw the fuzzy yellow caterpillar of your childhood? Here he is. I forget what butterfly he develops into. This one may not have developed into much of anything, because when I came out to give him a better look a few minutes after taking this picture, he was gone. Either he developed a tremendous burst of energy and went somewhere, or he went into the fixings of some bird's dinner.

He had been exploring the tall fronds of a cleome gone to seed. They are the lovely "spider flower" of midsummer, seen in shades of pink, magenta, and in white, with their long green spokes striking out from the delicate flower head and the upper stem. When was the last time, also, you saw a moonflower in bloom?

I'm told that once these settle in, -- being perennial -- they become rampant, which is fine with me as perhaps then it will help hide an ugly garage back.

You do have to position yourself judiciously to get a good photo of some of the things in your backyard garden; at least I do. Below, some decorative grasses and black-eyed Susans.

One is all the more impressed with a professional effort. Below, a bit of the ever changing beauties of the Lincoln Park Conservatory. Just think, they have the same light as I do. It's the glass walls and the heat and the humidity and the staff and the knowledge and the sourcing and the professionalism that make the difference.

My favorite room in the Conservatory is the Fern Room. My gentleman friend thinks it's boring. I like the huge but subtle variety in all these ancient plants. Some of them are huge, really. Scale is difficult to see, but an adult could stand in the base of these fronds and they would almost reach his head.

 Up close, you see the various species' delicacy.  "A small dinosaur would be at home in this room," the sign says. That is part of the fun, too.

After the Fern Room there are the sumptuous and garish and profligate orchids. We like those, too.

VanderGhinste oud bruin sour ale

The retro art! The men in straw boaters, à la Maurice Chevalier! That deep French (or rather perhaps Flemish) blue!

And that delicious taste. We know how we love sours. VanderGhinste ranks right up there with our favorites, the Duchesse and Ichtegem's, which is now hard to find.

Now my fatheads, I have just finished a three year project, writing, polishing and re-polishing my memoir/novel, so you must pardon me if I use Pluot, at least for a while, as an excuse to relax a bit and still write, but perhaps polish less. There above, you have your sour to enjoy; and what else?

Quite a while ago, some nice people at a p.r. firm sent me a copy of Adam Rogers' new book, Proof: The Science of Booze (Houghton Mifflin, 2014). It's full of good information and interesting stories from his travels in the researching of booze, and I especially like the organization. The eight chapters take us right through the making and ingesting of drink, from microbes up, "Yeast," "Sugar," "Fermentation," "Aging," etc., all the way to chapter 8, "Hangover." What I find difficult about it is the style. It's written in very conversational, abbreviated guy-magazine talk, into which old-fashioned prose formality still creeps from time to time. All of it becomes halting and distracting. "That'll be where we go next," "what'd be the difference if it did?" and so on. But if you are going to use constructions like that in a book, I suppose for the sake of hipness and accessibility, why not maintain them? He jumps from "would've" and "it'd" in one sentence to something like "it would not have been the first time that" in the next. Shouldn't macho hipness and accessibility in language be good all the way through? 

So I would suggest you want Proof as something to consult, not to savor. Full disclosure: I must admit that for me a little chemistry goes a very long way. My gentleman friend would probably roll his eyes and sum up. "You females like your romance novels, don't you."

What else? We've been through this before somewhat, but the new opera season is starting and I have also surfed a bit on the station's "Chime In" comment board and so have seen the way people unburden themselves of their opinions there, so we'll revisit the issue --  

-- I have a sort of love-hate relationship with our legendary local classical radio station, WFMT. I love the fact that it exists, that it educates me and often plays nice things; I hate the fact that, for example, its potentially most interesting program, "Exploring Good Music" with Bill McGlaughlin, is hosted by a man whose "dese dem 'n' dose" diction should drive anyone to madness ("an' den Bayd'ven wrote a sym'fny, over by dere"). I furthermore hate the fact that so much of its late-night programming is so awful. After 10 p.m. is precisely when I want WFMT to lull me to sleep with nice things, harpsichords mostly. And yet, on four or five nights out of seven, 10 p.m. is precisely when the station chooses to be awful. Monday is "Critical Thinking with A---- P------" (liberals, nattering). Wednesday is all about the Chicago record company Cedille, which might be all right as a subject except this hour, too, seems to involve little else but liberals nattering. Friday: hoary rebroadcasts of Studs Terkel -- more "dese dem 'n' dose" diction, and liberals, nattering. Saturday is folk music: liberals nattering.

This leaves only Thursday as our prime hope for good late night music, followed by the smaller hope of Tuesday. Thursday gives us "The Baroque and Before," usually sheer delight, and Tuesday gives us the Tuesday Night Opera. Sometimes this is screechy -- to this day my son, who sleeps in the bedroom next door, remembers the time he couldn't get any peace for an hour because the opera was a very early and awkward Verdi -- but sometimes it is Handel. (We have forgotten to finish the tally of our nights of musical hope from WFMT. Last of all is Sunday's 10 p.m. "Pipe Dreams" and its organ music. We can't count it, because it's simply strange beyond reckoning. That people go to churches and applaud what sounds like one-dimensional calliope or baseball park thundering is fascinating in itself. We wouldn't even know they did so, except that "Pipe Dreams" always seems to play live concert recordings, from churches, where the people clap sacrilegiously after the organist is done.)

At any rate it happens that on a recent Tuesday, the opera was Handel. Rinaldo. Lovely and pleasant. Some weeks ago, sometime in August, it was Vivaldi. Griselda. Also lovely and pleasant. And, yes, full disclosure, I did fall right asleep both times.

However, I did also rush to YouTube the next afternoon to look up Handel and listen to whatever I might find. Can there be anything more lovely than Joyce DiDonato singing "Dopo notte" (after night), from an opera called Ariodante? Or, than Ann Hallenberg singing Rinaldo's "Laschia ch'io pianga" (let me weep)? We must have more operas in which medieval Crusader princesses resort beautifully to prayer after being abducted by an evil sorceress. I even bought a CD of Joyce DiDonato's Furore, to play in the car. ...a bit screechy.

Now company has arrived for a visit, so I must go.


VanderGhinste oud bruin, retail, about $5 for a 12 ounce bottle.

Navan, or -- "you need to start being more shy"

Since in a few minutes we are going to try a Navan sour -- a cocktail made with Navan, a vanilla-infused liqueur that the Grand Marnier people no longer produce -- it seems appropriate to have a little discussion about retiring things.

My daughter and I were having this talk the other day. She happens to be the youngest and newest hire at her workplace, but is also tagged as "acting manager" when the manager is not around. The air quotes are put in for a reason, because her "title" causes problems. Surely no normal twenty-two-year-old enjoys telling fifty-year-olds what to do, just for a start. And it's not easy for the personality type uncomfortable with do this and go thither to say those words. The difficulties are compounded when everyone knows so much of the thither to be commanded is unworkable and silly.

I said to her that her situation reminds me of my years teaching Sunday school. Just as her co-workers know that going out "prospecting" -- accosting innocents at the spa, dunning them to sign up for more services -- causes clients to flee in impatience, so my students and their parents knew perfectly well that Sunday school was fake school. Yet, in both those situations, if you as the authority figure don't carry on smiling and enforcing the pursuit of fake work, pretty soon nail techs are lounging around your desk gossiping instead of prospecting, or nine-year-olds are ignoring you. Pretty soon you have people above you saying, "you need to be more assertive."

Upon hearing this the retiring person unsheathes, at least mentally, that sword he will likely never use. You'd like me to be more assertive? Really? As in, get away from my desk and go find clients, it will help you run off some of those extra pounds? As in, fake school or no, if your home life were different I don't think we would be seeing these behavioral problems? .

Oh, of course not. That would be going too far. People who ask the reticent to be more assertive always have rules about it, unspoken shape-shifting rules, which they don't dream of obeying because aggression comes so naturally to them anyway. They don't need guidelines. And it's very curious that no one ever seems to ask the bumptious to change their personalities, except perhaps in school, which is just exactly when everybody has one thing in common. We're all children then. After that the world seems to throw up its collective hands at the bumptious, and leave them to the coercion of law and other forces. Or the world politely marvels: "such a strong person." Anyway while a teacher may say "quiet down" she doesn't dream of telling some six-year-old, no one ever tells any adult either in that flat judgmental way, "You need to start being more shy."

There is no answer for it, I suppose. The quiet and the slaveringly pushy must simply reconcile themselves to sharing the same planet. The pushy rush about founding charitable non-profits and not taking no for an answer when someone does not care to attend an event -- say, the annual golf outing and shrimp boil. "It's so much fun! I'll call you again in a few days." The quiet remember Marcus Aurelius' injunction to live for the gods, and stealthily write everything down.

We mentioned the liqueur Navan at the outset. I unearthed a tiny sample bottle in the back room the other day, peered anxiously at the difficult-to-read label, identified it as a cognac and decided to take it home and try making a sour with it. It's all right to attempt cognac sours, our master Charles Schumann allows it in his American Bar.

Out came the mixing cup, the dab of sugar, the half lemon, the lemon juicer, the cocktail glass, the barspoon and the tray of ice cubes. The little sample bottle was of course the perfect jigger, as sample or "airplane" sized bottles tend to be. I measured, squeezed, mixed, dropped in the jingling ice and stirred and poured. And the sweet, sweet vanilla, wood-like and faintly smoky aftertaste of a Navan sour reminded me exactly of the smell of my local liquor store. This is not a slur, only a description. Every time I push open the door of this place, to toddle in and buy my inexpensive and delightful bottle of rum to make my real after-work sours, I sniff the same smothering aroma. The fresh air of the outside world rushes away behind me and I am enveloped in the scent perhaps of a few old cigarettes, but mostly of -- what? I am not sure still, but the smell calls to mind stacks and stacks of old wooden liquor crates, soaked in vanilla and sitting in the back room for years. And now, it calls to mind Navan.

Navan was once made by Grand Marnier. Flavored with Madagascar vanilla, it was produced for a few years in the early 2000s and then discontinued when its sales did not please. I gather the complaint about it was too sweet. (It must be frustrating to develop sweet liquor products for the sweet-loving American market and then find out you've, inexplicably, gone too far.) ...the retiring tend to be that, too.