The Cure have done plenty of grim and dark songs, to be sure, but I’ve always found that they’re at their best when they’re performing really quite sweet love songs in their signature bizarre way. Plus this one has kittens in the video. I tried to find a better-quality upload of the video, but most of it’s there, and kittens. Lots of kittens.
Talking to Horses
About a year ago I started taking horseback riding lessons. Yet it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I could clarify what I really want out of my time with my horses: how to talk to them.
The moment of clarity came during a trick clinic. That is, an all-day affair where each participant worked with her horse on fundamental training principles with fun payouts–the tricks. Getting the horse to “smile,” or step up on a small block, or hug you. I was having the time of my life and we didn’t spend a single moment on horseback. It was the engagement with the horse, his interest in what was happening, the painstaking process of figuring out how to elicit the correct behavior that I loved. The conversation.
When I returned to horses as an adult, remembering only my confidence with them when I was younger, I was shocked to find how much I had changed. Sense of my own mortality, etc. I thought confidence would return as I spent more time with them both on the ground and in the saddle. Some has, for sure. But I realized at that trick clinic that I needed a tool set. Techniques for dogs don’t necessarily translate to horses; body language has different meaning; predator and prey cannot be equated.
I feel like I heard a new language for the first time at that clinic and have been trying to practice ever since. My teacher always says that she doesn’t whisper to horses, she listens to them, and while I have intellectually understood the difference I feel like I’m just starting to understand what that actually means now. And although I’ve got a long way to go, it’s astonishing how much more confident I have felt simply having that insight and a new tool set.
Last week, I had the opportunity to take another “language lesson” with the same trainer. This clinic was divided into trick training for the first half and versatility for the second–that is, intentionally pushing your horse’s limits in order to build up their confidence and deepen the trust which is the focus of all training.
I got off easy for the second part. My partner for the event–as for the first one–was a hunky AQHA named Skippy who could be the dictionary definition of “bombproof.” At one point, I was riding him while holding a veil over his head, asking him to walk over a mattress and through a fence of pool noodles (at one point, while two hula hoops hung around his neck), and he acted like we were taking a Sunday stroll through the park. We had to work through a few tough moments, like walking onto and over a horse-sized seesaw or finding a giant plush iguana on the ground where there hadn’t been one a moment before, but on the whole our conversation was more like easy bantering than a debate.
My second trick training clinic left me grinning like an idiot and reinforced how right this system felt to me. Of course, not all horses are the same, and just as with humans, you can’t have the same conversation with two of them. I was riding one of the most reliable horses at the barn the other day, an expert lesson horse who could do what I’m asking her with her eyes closed. But she spooked.
All of a sudden I couldn’t even remember how to have any conversation, let alone what language it ought to be in. So I panicked and dumped myself off onto the sand. She looked at me, I looked at her, we both felt a bit ashamed of ourselves. A few moments later the source of the spook ran by, and let me tell you, it was the most terrifying chipmunk I have ever seen. So yeah. The confidence recipe includes a hefty proportion of practice and I’m far from that magical threshold.
This spring, I wrote about being an adult beginner. I was out for 6 weeks as a result of the fall that prompted that post; then I traveled for a month during the summer; and lately, I haven’t been riding much as we’ve been busy moving the barn to new facilities. Honestly, I don’t feel a lot closer to answering the questions I posed to myself back in May. However, through my first few falls and scary moments, through a sticky hot summer and a hell of a lot of hard work, I can now say (with a certain amount of pride) that I have been sticking to it. Talking to horses will take a long time to do well and I don’t know if I’ll ever be fluent. Fortunately, though–time I’ve got.
Friday Fave: Thandie Newton
I had been planning on watching Westworld in the way I’ve planned on watching most of the new shows that HBO and Showtime have rolled out over the last three years or so–just barely remembering to set the DVR, not paying attention to who the leads are until the opening credits. I know the shows will feature compelling visuals and fine acting; I also have faith that they almost invariably feature strong writing. (Although season two of True Detective severely tested that faith. Severely.) I never question if these shows will be good; it is always a matter of whether the story will appeal to me. Even with the shows that I like, though, I tend to be lackadaisical about getting around to watching them; I only have an hour or two a day to pay attention to a TV show on weekdays, and I find that they often benefit from being watched in longer chunks than an hour at a time, so I save them up for weekends when I do the ironing.
Shows that I like so much that I simply lack the patience to save up several episodes for a mini-marathon are increasingly rare–there was The Killing, the first couple of seasons of Downton Abbey, Borgen, season 1 of Rogue, last year’s Deustchland 83, and now Westworld. I read a few conflicting reviews, one focused on Evan Rachel Wood and another, more critical, claiming that the show “starts off with a bang but then falls down a rabbit hole of Lost-style strangeness.” I disagree particularly with this last, as much as I usually like Vox’s reviews–my impression was the show’s writers and producers know exactly what they want it to be, there is one central mystery of which all the “disconnected” mysteries are threads, and if the rest of the season measures up to this first episode it will be a fine and particularly creepy exploration of our fear of AI. Just because it’s subtle doesn’t mean it’s a mess–there is no bad here, as far as episode 1 goes.
And there is this cast, this amazing how-did-they-cram-so-many-awesome-people-into-one-show cast. Jeffrey Wright, Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Sidse Babette Knudsen, Evan Rachel Wood, Jimmi Simpson, Ben Barnes, and most of all Thandie Newton, who was the heart of the aforementioned Rogue until she left it and it was ruined.
I’ve loved Thandie Newton’s work since I saw Flirting on TV one afternoon, years and years ago. It was one of my favourite films for a long time, until I read about the director John Duigan’s abusive relationship with her; I haven’t been able to watch it since. In some cases I can separate what is on screen from what happened off-screen, but this is not one of them.
Fortunately there is a wealth of other excellent work Newton has done since, in addition to being an outspoken women’s rights activist and having, from all indications, an enviable family life. She’s never fallen into the trap of being typecast, doing comedy, drama, and action–she’s as adept at costume drama as she is at being a total badass, on screen and off. This will serve especially well in her role in Westworld, which, if the hints in episode one pan out, will be far more complex than simply an android sex worker. I find it a bit frustrating that all the articles I’ve read on the series thus far have been either breathless or cross in discussing the presentation of sex in the show (and most of them refusing to acknowledge that there is a difference between portraying sexual violence with the aim of highlighting its negative effects and doing so gratuitously), but only a few have mentioned the questioning of the nature of free will that the show explores, and none at all have even touched on the matters of consciousness and identity that made this first episode so compelling to me. I’m thrilled that Newton has a new role as promising as Grace in Rogue was, and I look forward to seeing where she takes Maeve.
Further reading on some of the activism Newton is involved with, and her own blog:
TED Talk: Embracing Otherness, Embracing Myself
Now Playing: Heroes, by David Bowie
It’s been a rubbish sort of morning and I desperately needed something to cheer me up, so here’s David Bowie, sexy as ever, performing Heroes in Berlin in 2002 with some slightly altered lyrics.
Now Playing: Last Nite, by The Strokes
Sleep has been something of a challenge for me over the last few months. I often find it difficult to fall asleep, and I wake up at least once most nights. Last night was one of those lovely rare occasions where I fell asleep quickly and wasn’t having nightmares or back pain. Then some horrible person phoned me at a quarter to two wanting to know had I just phoned her. I hadn’t; thoroughly annoyed, it took me the better part of an hour to get back to sleep.
Less sleep means rough mornings for me, and today all I wanted to do while taking care of the morning’s chores was to listen to something loud and cheerful. I played through several music videos before finding one that made me feel a bit better: the Strokes. My favourite song of theirs is actually ‘Soma’, which got me through the first few months of being desperately ill with UC and anemia, but those same associations make it rather hard for me to listen to now. This song has altogether better memories associated with it–dancing in my friends’ underground kitchen in Queen’s Gardens and doing the polka home with fellow graduate students from the pub to our hall of residence a couple hundred feet away. Back when staying up half the night wasn’t painful and I wasn’t allergic to caffeine. I do miss those nights.
Friday Fave: Marley Dias
Marley Dias is one of my heroes. Her story started spreading over the Internet at the beginning of this year, when she founded the #1000blackgirlbooks movement. I loved books every bit this much when I was eleven; I had approximately 0% of her social awareness, discipline, or self-confidence. Over twenty-five years later, I have some of her social awareness and a tiny bit of her discipline, maybe a little more self-confidence than I started with, but I’m still lagging waaay behind. I still 100% hate being in front of a camera. Forget just being a role model for kids; a lot of grown-ups could learn a thing or two from her.
In addition to her ongoing book campaign,–she has hit her target, but why quit when you’re ahead?–and BAM, a related project/website she runs with her friends Briana and Amina, the magazine Elle recently invited her to edit a special edition ‘zine called Marley Mag. (I’m not entirely sure how a ‘zine is different from a magazine; is this a new thing, or just shorthand for the same thing we pick up next to the grocery-store check-out?) She is self-possessed when meeting the likes of Oprah and Ellen, and not a little photogenic; that she finds time to do all this and still attend school on a regular basis–and still read books–amazes me. I get a little tired just thinking about how much energy that must take.
I’d put money on her becoming the Lin-Manuel Miranda or Misty Copeland of the publishing world by the time she’s 30 20, at the rate she’s going.
I might have mentioned a time or twenty that I’m an avid reader; I also work in the publishing industry, and am a writer myself. I hear and read a great deal about how literacy is dying, people aren’t learning handwriting any more, everyone’s reading e-books and computers instead of printed books, and thus not absorbing as much of what they read. Insofar as that is true–and I agree that it is, at least in part, although all the dire warnings from the 1980s that by the year 2000 only a fraction of the population might be able to read proved wildly overstated, and I suspect that the predictions of the extinction of the printed page will prove similarly exaggerated–it is on us to keep that from happening. There are severe problems with the educational system, to be sure, and they do need fixing, but no one is going to enjoy reading if they only do it in the schoolroom and then in the workplace. Bemoaning the loss of literacy and writing skills makes no sense when as a nation we take such brief notice of people like Marley and other kids with similar, if less revolutionary, aims, such as Blake Ansari, Tyler Fugett, Evan Feldberg-Bannatyne, and Kirstin Shipp. I love that someone this young, with a bit of star quality and a ton of ambition, has made the celebration of reading and a demand for greater diversity in literature her mission in life. This is how we can save our literary culture. More power to her, and all those who have decided to emulate her.
Now Playing: We Are Young, by Fun.
There are several images and phrases this election regularly brings to my mind, on a weekly if not a daily basis. One of my preferred images is the bar fight in the video for Fun.’s We Are Young; at least they look like they’re having a good time in between slinging stuffed animals at each other and breaking things. Also, I’m fascinated by Nate Ruess because he looks precisely like I always imagined Tom Sawyer would look like as a real person (well, the adult version thereof). I find myself pulling up this video often these days when politics-related fretting starts to get too much. The song also features Janelle Monae, one of my personal heroes, who is always worth watching–more on her later.
Friday Fave: Cheese Chasers
Cheese has always been a serious matter in my household. My father is in general one of those people unwilling to spend more than absolutely necessary on what he needs; if I’m buying a packet of cocoa powder, or a cut of meat, or a new phone, he has always found it necessary to query why I’m buying this or that particular brand or style, and inform me (usually more than once) that I would have spent less if I’d bought said thing somewhere else, or a different brand’s version. There are, however, a few things he does not compromise on: marmalade, bread, and cheese. Never once has he argued with me over the price of a loaf of bread, and anything labeled as “cheese food” or “spray cheese” is not allowed in the house. We bought Velveeta once to make nachos, but it was pronounced a failure. I do remember a brief period from my childhood when we had Kraft slices at home, possibly because I had begged for them–I have absolutely no memories of taking them to school for lunch, but I think we used them for cheese toast–but when Cabot cheese appeared in our local supermarket, that was the end of individually wrapped, plasticky cheese. I also remember my mother describing how someone had told her that she cooked macaroni and cheese for dinner at least once a week, because it was so tasty and saved her money, and wondering how it could possibly save her money when a block of cheese for the dish cost so much; I’m not sure my mother had ever realized, at least at that point, that a box of macaroni and cheese mix included powdered stuff that resembled cheese sauce when prepared.
As long as there has been high-quality cheese available in our local supermarkets, preferably imported from the UK or France or Italy, there has always been a block of cheddar in our refrigerator. It is often accompanied by a piece of brie or camembert, and more recently, Danish blue. I’d make a great many more trips to the Whole Foods cheese counter if my income allowed. (When I lived in Edinburgh there was J. Mellis Cheesmongers, one of the nicest cheese shops ever. Mellis has six locations in Scotland; I’ve lived within a five-minute walk of three of them, at various times. Of the many, many things I miss about Scotland, this is one of them. If Atlanta has anything comparable, I haven’t found it yet.) Costco has been, if not a life-saver, at least a great boon in this regard.
One of the perks of frequently housesitting for friends is getting to watch the cable stations that my own provider doesn’t carry. A few years ago I was channel surfing and came across a show called Cheese Slices, or Cheese Chasers. (It seems to have different names depending on where it’s aired.) It’s a half hour program devoted entirely to cheese, and honestly, given how much people love cheese (it’s as addictive as a drug, apparently, did you know?) I don’t know why no one thought of this years ago. Each episode is devoted to a different region of the world known for producing a specific variety of cheese, and the host, Will Studd, goes to different commercial and home-grown businesses that produce the cheese. They discuss each variety’s history, the milk it’s made from–often accompanied by shots of the herds kept to produce said milk–the legal restrictions it’s subject to, and usually a meal or two that features the cheese. I find it fascinating, and endlessly irritating that it’s only available in broken-up segments on YouTube–I’d happily buy the series on dvd if it was available; episodes are available for purchase on his website, but I don’t know what the cost is per show. I suspect it’s more than I’m willing to pay, at least for now. There are clips available on YouTube, if you hunt for them–look for Will Studd, because if you just do a search for “Cheese Chasers” you get a lot of clips of a classic cartoon episode by the same name. If you happen to have a cable service provided that carries the otherwise ridiculous Wealth TV (now labeling itself A Wealth of Entertainment), keep an eye out for it.
Studd himself is an evangelist for unpasteurized milk and dairy products, which I don’t entirely agree with. I do think it’s silly to prohibit the sale of unpasteurized cheeses, because they do have a flavor that can’t be achieved with pasteurized milk, and can be delicious; I don’t know of anywhere that prohibits the making and consumption of sushi, as long as any such sale is accompanied by the obligatory warning about the possibility of becoming sick from eating uncooked fish. On the other hand, the law on the sale of unpasteurized milk exists for a good reason, as grotesquely and effectively illustrated in an early episode of Boardwalk Empire. People can easily see the difference between uncooked and cooked fish, chicken, and meat; pasteurized and unpasteurized milk, and the cheese made therefrom, isn’t similarly distinguishable at a glance.
But back to the cheese. Each episode finishes off with a meal–many of them are simple picnics, pairing the cheeses with local meats and wines, and some require specific pans that I don’t have access to, or techniques I haven’t mastered (I *will* make a proper frittata one day. I will), but there was one recipe that I am going to try just as soon as I find the right sort of cheese. I wish I could link to the original clip, or give credit to the family who seems to have thought of this (unless it’s a traditional local dish that I just haven’t been able to guess the name of, I did try searching by ingredients), and the next time I get a chance to see the episode I will (it’s in episode 6 of season 1, I think), but until then, try this, it looks delicious.
You will need a bowl at least 3 inches or so deep and a saucepan large enough to fit the bowl easily inside. A steamer insert would also be handy, but isn’t necessary. Fill the saucepan an inch deep with water and bring the boil. While the water is heating, crumble or shred a few slices of Lancashire cheese and sprinkle them in a ring around the edge of the bowl. Crack an egg into the center of the cheese ring. (Amounts of cheese and egg can be increased according to how many people are sharing the dish.) Cut a fresh Roma or other small tomato or two into thin slices and arrange them over the cheese in a ring. Set the bowl carefully into the pan of boiling water–use an oven glove or a dishtowel to avoid burning yourself. (This is where the steamer basket is a handy thing, if you have one.) Cover the saucepan with its lid and allow to steam for five minutes–more time may be necessary if you’ve got more than one egg. Remove the bowl carefully from the pan, again being careful not to burn yourself. Serve with a loaf of crusty bread, toasted or fresh. Spoon the melted cheese and poached egg onto the bread as you eat. Comfort food at its finest, and great for a cool autumn or winter morning.
Rotisserie Chicken: The Best and Worst of America
Things are awful, people are awful, the world is a terrible place and I want to cry: these are my general reactions to my daily doses of the news. The United States, like a complicated new baking recipe, is a fabulous idea but in the early stages of its development, a hot mess. Which brings me to rotisserie chicken.
Look. I know the food systems in our country are a tangled web of special interests, subsidies gone wrong, the degradation of most of our arable land, and animal cruelty on an unspeakable scale. I don’t eat a ton of meat and I try to find sustainably (or at least humanely) raised meat when I do buy it.
Yet there are days–long hours of hard work at the barn, or hours spent trying to write with nothing to show–when I realize I should probably feed myself, and that my husband would appreciate me including him in the effort so I shouldn’t just eat popcorn, and it’s really irresponsible and expensive to order out, and I’m exhausted, and I want something that tastes like Real Food but I absolutely do not want to cook it, that I remember rotisserie chickens exist.
What a soothing product. What a shining beacon of American-ness. Sometimes they just make everything right with the world: they are available everywhere, they are consistently good and sometimes delicious, and they are appallingly cheap (often 30, and as much as 50, percent less than the cost of a similarly sized raw chicken where both are sold).
America! How did we invent this miraculous product? Of course, the food item itself is probably one of the oldest known to humanity, but why and how has this become a ubiquitous quick dinner solution across our nation?
(I should note that the quintessentially American rotisserie chicken does, as do most of the best food traditions in the western world, owe a debt to France. Apparently, the notoriously food-fickle Napoleon was kind of an addict. For instance: “When he rode out of Cairo on Christmas Eve to survey the Suez isthmus, the only provisions he took were three roasted chickens wrapped in paper.”)
But I digress. ‘Murica! The Washington Post wrote a piece a couple years back claiming that our national trend began with with the expansion of the Boston Market food chain in the 1980s. A grocery store economics site says the store chickens are so cheap because many markets are just getting rid of food that wouldn’t otherwise sell (i.e., reaching sell-by dates). Some stores do have dedicated rotisserie chicken programs in order to churn out as many as possible. I assume stores discovered that folks would come in for that one low- or no-margin product and leave with many other more profitable ones. I know that’s what happens to me whenever I cave and stop in at Costco or Whole Foods on the way home.
The 1980s timeline makes sense to me. The ’80s were when women–overwhelmingly the ones doing the food shopping and cooking–entered the work force full time in droves. There was suddenly demand for fast food that tasted like you might imagine home-cooked food would taste if you’d never had it. Plus, that’s when a lot of chains were making the jump from regional to national.
So this is a foodstuff that grew in popularity as America became steadily more connected coast to coast and as our food systems deepened into the painfully contorted knots first tied by ag policies dating to the Great Depression. Rotisserie chickens simultaneously reflect one of the great goods of America (affordable abundance) and one of the great evils (refusal to address the true environmental and health costs of underpriced goods).
After the initial still-hot dinner meal, I have my leftover guilty pleasure chicken on top of salads or grains, mixed into pasta, or nibbled cold out of the container because I’m a monster. I knew a woman who bought a Market Basket rotisserie chicken every single week, got two meals out of it, then made stock. What do you do with yours?
If this post has left you craving some, don’t worry, you can watch a full length movie of one roasting thanks to Netflix. Or, you know, visit the Costco Rotisserie Chicken official Facebook page. Like you do.
A Note on Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights
I discovered Cassandra Clare’s The Infernal Devices trilogy last year and fell head over heels for the steampunk London she created and the characters inhabiting it, so much so that I barely cared about the anachronisms and inconsistencies in details of the story that are supposed to be realistic–something that usually strikes me like nails on the proverbial chalkboard.
One detail of the story really did bother me, though, and it isn’t something Clare alone is guilty of. When the heroine, Tessa, is falling for the boy of her decidedly literary dreams, she envisions him more than once as Heathcliff, from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.
When and how did Heathcliff get turned into a figure of romance and desire?
Wuthering Heights is a phenomenal novel, one of my personal favourites and one of the greats of English literature. If you haven’t read it, do, it’s amazing. The thing is, it’s not a romantic, bittersweet love story. It’s a story about a boy who is tormented by his adopted family who grows up into a violent, bitter sociopath. Heathcliff is not a nice man, and he is not written that way. I am endlessly confused as to where this idea that he belongs among the ranks of Mr. Darcy and Pip from Great Expectations came from; why it persists is less of a mystery, but it’s still frustrating.
It must have happened before the 1970s, for Heath Ledger’s parents to name him and his sister after Heathcliff and Cathy. Was the soppy 1939 film version responsible? Are people reading the Cliffs Notes version and skipping the actual book? I would love to start a conversation about this, because it isn’t the sort of thing one can find an answer to in any volume of criticism on Emily Bronte, and unless I know where to read for the answers I want I’ll be trailing around in the dark for who knows how long. If you have any insights, please please please feel free to leave a comment.
(P.S. if you’re looking for a more faithful adaptation of the story, the 1992 version with Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche and the 2011 version by Andrea Arnold are both excellent, although Arnold’s only covers part of the story. I love Tom Hardy and all, but the 2009 version was a disappointment–particularly because he would have made a brilliant Heathcliff if the script had been better. )