Getting Down with Pie and Jazz

It's Thanksgiving, the dinner has been eaten, and the dishes are soaking. It's been a quiet holiday, but as Thanksgivings go, I've seen worse, I promise. One of the best things about today was the mild and sunny weather, a nice departure from the typical drab-and-overcast Thanksgivings we usually see around here.

Over the last couple of weeks, the trees have been slowly shedding their leaves, and the fall colors have faded into a landscape of dun, charcoal, and dull green. Earlier in the week, a red or yellow tree here or there stood out like a beacon in a world of brown; now even those outliers have subsided into leaflessness. But when I sat outside for a few minutes this afternoon, drawn by the sun, I was looking at a blue sky through all those bare branches, and all in all, it was a pretty fair view. I don't know that I've ever sunbathed on Thanksgiving before--I wouldn't mind doing it more often.

I spent this past week cleaning and getting ready. Last Friday, it was shopping; Saturday and Sunday, it was cleaning and dusting. Monday I vacuumed and mopped the floors; Tuesday I did the laundry and made iced tea. Yesterday, I made pie crust, and finally, the piece de resistance, my Thanksgiving pie. I usually make Thanksgiving dessert ahead of time, and this year was no exception, but the dilemma of what to make preoccupied me for several days. It was probably the only thing I really had to think about, since I'd already decided on the potato recipe from last year that was so good with bay leaves and olive oil, the homemade cranberry relish, and some old standbys from years past.

I'm of the persuasion that thinks you ought to have pie (as opposed to cake or something else) for Thanksgiving. The question was, what kind? I've gone off pumpkin pie, which I used to like; I considered a chocolate pie, but in the end, it just didn't seem "Thanksgiving" enough. I've already had plenty of apples, it isn't the season for strawberries, and coconut is just plain wrong. So what about the pie I had last year, the caramel-walnut pie that was almost like eating candy and tasted so good in the buttery crust I made for it?

I thought about it, but the truth is that I associate that pie with a conversation I had while making it, and I didn't want to bring that memory into my preparations for this year's feast. New year, new plan. So I searched around in an old cookbook I have and found a recipe I'd never tried before, a nut pie with raisins and spices that seemed like the perfect accent to a Thanksgiving meal, traditional enough to go with the menu but unlike anything I'd made before. It called for corn syrup, an item I don't recall having in my kitchen since at least the early '80s, but it turns out that sugar and molasses work just as well. I made the pie last night, and as it cooled, a brown crust formed on the top, just like in the picture, giving no hint of what the center looked like.

This afternoon was a whirl of rinsing, chopping, and stirring, and I threw off my planning a little by sneaking off for sunbathing, but it didn't make any difference in the end as everything seemed to come together somehow. On the stereo, I put together what I considered to be the perfect soundtrack as a background to not only cooking but also eating and cleaning up: two parts jazz, one part roots rock, one part Linda Ronstadt (in her Nelson Riddle Orchestra days), and one part Irish fiddling. In case you've never tried it, jazz goes great with turkey, and there was enough variety in the mix to keep it all lively.

So what about this pie? I had imagined it would be similar to pecan pie, and it was, only . . . better. It actually has more sugar in it than last year's pie, which seems astonishing, but it doesn't have as much fat because, no cream. It's like a pecan pie with something unexpected, those raisins hitting your mouth like little nuggets of sunshine, the cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves complicating the sweetness to just the right degree. I had thrown in some hazelnuts, too, as a good Celt should. I don't know that I would have liked this pie as a kid, but I hope my tastes have matured at least a little since then. It's a dessert for grownups who can appreciate the layering of flavors without just swallowing the entire thing whole, and it probably makes you smarter, too (=hazelnuts).

So that was my Thanksgiving: smoky jazz, turkey and dressing, blue sky and sunshine, a pie that will stand up to a week in the refrigerator, and a sink full of dishes. I hope yours was good, too.

Crocodile Tears

In view of this past week's events in Paris, this seems like a good time to stop and reflect, as Americans and world citizens, on the actions we should take and the kind of world we want to live in. I was uncomfortably reminded the other night--when I heard of the calls for sending more troops to the Middle East--of some of the consequences unleashed by 9/11. Up until now, it seems that many of our interventions in the region have only created new problems, so I'm not sure how people can be so convinced we'd see better results this time, but they'll tell you they are.

To me it seems that many suggestions for fighting terror are "after the fact" remedies, whereas it would be more constructive to address the causes of terrorism at the root. In medicine, the principle for good health is "an ounce of prevention"--why shouldn't this apply to geopolitical conflicts as well? I've heard people well-versed in the politics of the region discuss such factors as global warming, joblessness, and sectarian divisions as having a role in much of the violence that's occurred in recent years. At the same time, many people are trying to understand the success jihadists have had in recruiting members from other countries, so it's obviously a multifaceted problem.

Unfortunately, it's my impression that some of our leaders, despite what they say, are not as committed as they ought to be to really eradicating terrorism. War profiteering is a real thing; there's a lot of money to be made in that arena, and some of the people responsible for decision-making in matters of security have conflicts of interest that make you wonder how they could possibly be the best judges of these things. This is not to say that war is never justified, only that some of the people making these life and death decisions for us don't have the purest basis for doing so.

I'm regularly put off by discussions in which people attempt to discredit someone's argument based solely on who he or she is: "What do you expect from a Democrat?" or "What do you expect from a Republican?" does nothing to touch on the logic of what's being said. But it's naive not to consider a person's motives when you're weighing positions he or she takes on high-stakes issues that are more a matter of conjecture or professional opinion than pure logic. Someone may sound quite reasonable when they speak of Middle East policies, but what are they leaving out? How is their position influenced by factors you're not aware of? In some cases, decisions may be shaped by nothing grander than self-interest and profit motives. That's why, when I hear the hand-wringing over the killings in France, I wonder at the disingenuousness of some of the actors involved; the phrase "crocodile tears" comes to mind, and it's only too apt, I'm afraid.

I think it's a good idea to take the long view of any solutions the United States considers, in concert with other nations, in response to terrorism. The solutions that seem more likely to result in lasting peace would likely require wisdom, time, patience, and a re-evaluation of some of our past policies. I've often wondered why more isn't done to eliminate the financing of terror groups, for instance, but I'm afraid the answer is that in some cases we haven't wanted to look too closely at the sources of their support because of what we might see.

The problem of terrorism reminds me of a Mobius strip; some of the efforts to "fight it" only feed into it, and this is according to many people more familiar with the situation than I am. It's a loop that doubles back into itself, all of a single piece, where terrorists and their would-be antagonists are, at times, indistinguishable. It's like one of those M.C. Escher pieces in which stairways lead crookedly in all sorts of wild directions except the true one, or like Jorge Luis Borges' Library of Babel, in which an entire universe of books, an infinite trove of them, leads to boundless searching, bottomless to-and-froing, and endless climbing up and down--but never ever, not once, to any meaningful answers.

L.A. Sees a Shooting Star

A news item showed up this week about a strange light in the skies over Southern California last Saturday night. I almost didn't read the article (because when isn't something odd happening in Southern California), but the story came with an amusing video shot by some excitable kids as well as descriptions of a host of reactions from residents. There were anxious calls to authorities and theories about UFOs and meteors, but the reality turned out to be somewhat more, well, if not mundane, at least more terrestrial in nature.

A ballistic missile submarine conducting a test fired the unarmed missile from off the coast, creating a spectacular display that was apparently visible even across state lines. The submarine was the USS Kentucky, conducting a test that was routine but unannounced--hence all the nervous speculation from the public. Yes, the USS Kentucky, but don't go thinking I had anything to do with it. Do I look like I know how to drive a submarine? Besides, I was thousands of miles away, in actual Kentucky, exiting Starbucks to avoid some excessive and unconscionable oversharing at the next table, though this may have happened a little in advance of the missile test.

But I don't have to have been there to imagine it. Over on Melrose, conversations over organic salads and vegan sandwiches would have ground to a halt as trendy diners tried to figure out if this was part of a filming; some of the beachgoers in Santa Monica and Malibu may have wondered if California was under attack--up at the Getty Center, people may actually have ducked. Near the observatory, a shooting star might have seemed quite plausible, while in the line at Diddy Riese, the UCLA kids must have had a field day with their cell phones. I'm not sure how much time people in Beverly Hills spend on their lawns; if someone was having a party, there may have been speculation about it all being a stunt for their amusement. Up in Topanga Canyon, it might have seemed like the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Maybe in Watts, someone had a glimmer of the truth.

If it had happened here, I'm sure there would have been, likewise, a variety of theories, but the Age of Aquarius probably wouldn't have been one of them; the Second Coming, maybe, but not the Age of Aquarius. We see the world through the lenses we're used to using, but I imagine explanations for what was happening would have run a similar gamut. Such an unexplained event is bound to turn into a Rorschach test of sorts.

The article didn't say whether the test made any noise or not, but if it didn't, I think it was a missed opportunity. A little sonic boom to shake up the cocktails on the rooftop bars and rattle the teacups at the Huntington Tea Room would have been just the thing for a full-on Night of Mystery. The video I saw featured no sound but that of a bunch of girls yelling as a radio played in the background, which was entertaining but provided little context.

When I read the article, to tell you the truth, I had a whimsical thought, which was that the whole thing reminded me of Mary Chapin Carpenter's song, "Halley Came to Jackson." It's a very sweet song about the effect of Halley's Comet on the inhabitants of a small town in 1910 Mississippi. For the people in Jackson, the coming of the comet is a visit from heaven, a time of celebration, awe, and wonder, as well as the occasion for a little well-placed wish-making. So Cal may not seem to have much in common with Mississippi, and perhaps it doesn't. (I can tell you, though, that even places as disparate as L.A. and Lexington KY are a lot more like each other than you might guess, and I know, because I've seen both of them.)

So I say that if you choose to "dream a little dream of a comet's charms," as Ms. Chapin Carpenter says, well, why not? A practical explanation may be perfectly true but doesn't rule out the phenomenology of the miraculous. Many of the people observing the mystery light experienced a sense of the marvelous, and who's to say they're wrong? Not I. My theory is that all proper wishes made on celestial objects on the supposition that they're shooting stars count. Unarmed missile, ball of gas and dust, what's the difference? I'm not being facetious--it's bound to beat anything you'll see on TV this week. I'm just glad someone else knows how to work the submarine.

Three or Four Views of Florence

I spent some time tonight looking up paintings by artists of the Italian Renaissance described by another writer in her memoir of Italy. Whether it was something in her descriptions that moved me or the power of the paintings themselves speaking through her (or both), I'm not sure--but I made a note last night to get online and look for digital versions of the works. Many of the frescoes, paintings, and statues she mentions are familiar to me from a long-ago art class as well as my own brief visit to Florence years ago, but I hadn't thought about them in a while.

One of my clearest memories from my visit is climbing Giotto's Tower on a sunny afternoon and seeing the hilly Tuscan countryside, already resident in my imagination from that undergraduate art class, unroll in full, three-dimensional life from horizon to horizon. I have been trying to think of the word that describes that experience--it wasn't surreal, or even hyperreal, though it was more than a little magical, like any experience in which something beautiful, imagined, and hoped for turns out actually to exist in the material world. Saying that I had a sense of shocked (delighted) recognition probably comes closest to the truth.

While looking tonight at online versions of Fra Angelico's frescoes in the monastery at San Marco, I started to think I was right about a suspicion I began forming last night that this monastery was also a place I'd visited on my trip. I recall being in an ancient and intensely cold thick-walled building, traipsing around from monk's cell to monk's cell with the tips of my fingertips practically blue, looking at some famous art. The author of the memoir I'm reading was obviously not there in November, since she said nothing about cold and was apparently at leisure to contemplate the paintings without brain freeze or actual frostbite entering the picture (in fact, I believe she was there in late spring). Tuscany was beautiful in the sunshine but also turned out to be surprisingly cold, especially in some of those venerable interiors.

I was only in Florence briefly but formed an impression of an elegant and severe beauty softened by the enfolding countryside. The author of the memoir, who knows Florence intimately, writes of the simple happiness she experienced sitting in public squares, visiting shops, observing architecture and people, and partaking in the rituals of daily life. She made me believe that many of the things I only glimpsed in my brief stay would be there waiting for me should I ever chance to make my way back. Dante, Giotto, cappuccino, gelato--what more could you possibly hope for?

It was only on the heels of reading an excellent crime novel set in Florence that I decided to revisit Ms. Harrison's (also beautifully written) memoir. I picked up the novel at the library a few weeks back, thinking it would be interesting to read something set in a city I had visited and found intriguing. I hardly recognized Florence in the novel, which was written from the point of view of an embittered ex-policeman turned private investigator. Though he obviously loved his city, it was a love without illusions, born of long experience as a police officer. He saw it with warts intact, cheap cafes and sketchy riverside districts included. I believe I imagined him as something of a latter-day Dante, with the poet's somewhat embittered love for a place that had turned its back on him.

Contrasting my memories with the points of view of a fictional Italian PI and an Italian-American memoirist has taught me several things: Florence is prone to devastating floods (I must have missed all those historical markers); there is a place called the Boboli Gardens that evidently didn't figure prominently in our guidebook; I didn't spend nearly enough time just sitting in piazzas; and if I ever go to Florence again, it will surely be in the spring. I hadn't even read Dante in a serious way the last time I was there, so that alone is reason to go back. I trust and believe that the Tuscan landscape is still as beautiful and inspiring as it was 26 years ago, and that my own eye, veteran of many more sunsets, sunrises, and hilltop views since then, will appreciate it even more.