A Roundup of Recent Performances

Victor and I have been busy lately.  We have seen so many good shows!

Most recently, we were at Garfield Park Conservatory with cousins Christel and Frank, from Germany.  We took them to see a Music under Glass performance by Lester Rey. Unfortunately the mic quality was terrible, but in spite of that, the excellent neo-Latin-soul-hiphop sound and spirit came through and we felt lucky to be there with such an enthusiastic audience. A bunch of groupies in front of us were dancing in their seats, and so eagerly begged for more at the end of the set that Rey invited two of them up to the stage, where they danced, sang backup, and played percussion.  Other audience members joined in the dancing during the encore also, making it a really special experience for our German guests, especially in the unique and stunning environment of the conservatory.

The other night, we took our guests to Jackalope's 10th Annual Living Newspaper Festival, which took place at The Frontier. We have been to a couple of previous iterations of this festival, which involves six of the hottest young playwrights (mostly but not entirely local, such as Ike Holter and Calamity West) and six very topical newspaper articles upon which they are each asked to base a 10-minute play.  A cast and director are selected and after two weeks of rehearsal, the festival (roughly 100 minutes long, allowing for intros, breaks in between plays and the fact that many of the plays exceed 10 minutes by a little or a lot) makes for a stimulating evening of theater.  Some of the plays are more successful than others, but a couple of them are stunning, and the short length means the bad ones are minimally painful.

Just before our guests arrived, we attended a wonderful dance performance at MCA, choreographed by hip-hop dance artist Rennie Harris. Called Lifted, this show told the story of a young boy raised in the church who considers the "wrong" path but ends up confirmed in his choice of the right one. Some of the storytelling was a bit simple (literal-minded) for me, but much of the music and dancing was really thrilling.  As I get older, I'm more and more astounded by what young bodies can do. 

And the evening before that, we were at Theater on the Lake, where we have spent many Friday nights this past summer and the summer of 2018.  The renovated theater has become a real gem of summertime in Chicago.  The curators of this series (this year Quenna Lene Barrett and Tony Santiago) have done an extraordinary job highlighting some of Chicago's most interesting and creative productions in these summer remounts.  (Aside: I just realized Tony Santiago was a cast member in one of my favorite segments of this year's 10th Annual Living Newspaper Festival.  He gets around!)

At any rate, this past Friday we saw a very moving production of Pegasus Theatre's Eclipsed, which took place in Liberia during its civil wars.  The writing, by actress-playwright Danai Gurira (she was one of the king's guard in Black Panther!) was just outstanding and the acting entirely lived up to the writing.  Just a gripping show.

The week before, we saw the thought-provoking and transformational Tangles and Plaques, by The Neofuturists. This play, created by Kirsten Riiber, attempts to demystify dementia.  And does a darned good job of it.

The night before, we went to a show created by Dahlak Brathwaite as part of the MCA New Works Initiative. The show, called Try/Step/Trip used dance, music, and theater to tell and reflect on the story of his incarceration for possession of psychedelic mushrooms. It is amazing how effectively movement can convey the physical impact of the criminal justice system.  Super compelling work.

Last week we took my brother (visiting from Buffalo) and our niece and nephew on a fireworks cruise that was a fundraiser for the Field Museum. We had never been on a fireworks cruise before and I have to say it was pretty awesome to be out on the water with such a direct view on the spectacle.  We would certainly do it again sometime.  Also, it being a Field Museum event, there were scientists and other Field Museum folks on the boat talking about their work.  I was especially interested in a woman who works with teenagers in a program called Roots & Routes, under the Field's Keller Science Action Center.  So good to know such great work is being done!

The previous weekend we saw a good documentary about Bill Traylor, the outsider artist who started painting in the 1939 when he was 85.  Unfortunately I slept through parts of it, but I was really tired so I don't blame the film maker.  I hope it will be on Netflix at some point so I can see it again.

That weekend we also saw True West at Steppenwolf. We had not been to a Steppenwolf show in quite some time--probably well over a year--and this production made us feel like we ought to go back a lot more often.  It was really outstanding.  We had never seen the play before--unlike longtime Chicago theatergoers who probably saw the 1982 Steppenwolf production with John Malkovich and Jeff Perry--but it was hard for us to imagine the previous production could have been better.  Just outstanding acting.

I'll cut this off here.  More later.

Vitamix Happiness

Not long after we got the Instant Pot, we purchased a Vitamix (2018 was a banner kitchen-gadget year).  I am not sure what inspired that purchase, but I suddenly got a feeling we ought to have one and spent a lot of time researching before choosing a model.

We have had a bad history with blenders.  We registered for one when we got married in 1997.  We hardly used it, but when we did try to blend some things, it died on us.  Some internal fuse blew out.  Figured we had a dud, and exchanged it.  The replacement behaved the same way.  We tried another brand.  No luck. After a while, we just figured we were not blender people. 

Victor had brought an immersion blender to our household, and we loved that. We generally used that when we needed to blend.  When it died, we replaced it with a similar model but that one was not as durable.  I then did a ton of online research and bought the DeLonghi immersion blender, which is super over-engineered.  Very powerful. We have been thrilled with it.

From my reading about the Vitamix, it seemed to be similarly over-engineered so I thought it would be a good fit for us.  In the event, it certainly is. 

We have never worried about straining the motor.  It crushes ice and other frozen stuff with ease.  It can turn an apple into juice in seconds.  It is easy to clean and looks good on the counter.

Smoothies are now a routine part of our lives.  And while the immersion blender does a fine job pureeing soups, when we need something to be really smooth, nothing beats the Vitamix.

On the Instant Pot Bandwagon

I forget how I learned about the Instant Pot.  I suppose I saw an ad somewhere. I did a lot of reading online (checking out reviews, videos, and competing products). I was excited by the thought of a multifunctional device (it can make yogurt!  it can hardboil eggs!), by the promise of dry beans cooked quickly without soaking, and by the option of sous vide (available with the Ultra model that I decided to purchase) (even though I still haven't attempted it).

I've owned the Instant Pot for around 15 months, and it has become one of the most heavily used appliances in my kitchen.  I don't use it daily, but there are few weeks that it doesn't get set on the counter and plugged in.

The most frequent use, which I had not anticipated, is the preparation of vegetable broth.  I save vegetable scraps in the freezer and whenever I run out of fresh vegetable broth I throw the scraps into the Instant Pot with some herbs and spices and three quarts of water. Set some dials and push a button, and forget about it.  Whenever I get back to it, there's at least three quarts of broth, ready for use in soups and other recipes.  Cleanup is easy, but my favorite part is that the pot doesn't have to be watched.  I can go out and do errands; the Instant Pot finishes cooking and then keeps the contents safely warm until I get back.

The next most frequent use is for beans. We eat mostly vegetarian at home, which means beans are a significant part of our diet.  They turn out well in the Instant Pot, though I still try to soak beforehand if possible, because everybody says this helps the beans cook more evenly.  Even without soaking, though, you can get a good result.

The third most frequent use is for soups and stews.  The Instant Pot has a saute feature, so you can saute aromatics and other ingredients before the pressure cooking step if needed (it's not necessarily dump and cook).  But once that's done, I love locking the top and pushing the button and not having to futz. You can give your attention to other parts of the meal, or just take a rest. 

Finally, I've found the Instant Pot is a great partner for Indian food. Maybe the Instant Pot presses the spices into the food with more force? I don't know, but the Indian food I've made in the Instant Pot (saag, chickpea masala) turns out especially tasty. I've used recipes from the Internet as well as Urvashi Pitre's Indian Instant Pot Cookbook.

One really helpful resource for vegetarian cooking with the Instant Pot has been Lorna Sass' Complete Vegetarian Kitchen. This was written before the Instant Pot craze, but Sass has been a pressure cooker proponent for many years.  Most of her recipes include instructions for both pressure cooker and conventional equipment.  I have found the recipes pretty reliable and tasty.

The Instant Pot has turned out to be one of my favorite purchases for the kitchen.

Sexism Visible

I am a science fiction fan, and I am a mystery fan, and I am also a fan of book deals, so I subscribe to the Amazon Kindle Daily Deals list.  When books are two or three bucks, you tend to be open to trying new things.

Or old ones.  I've had a tendency to purchase books by classic science fiction and mystery authors whose titles I remember seeing on the shelves of the used bookstore I worked at in Boston. Stuff that was popular in the 70s and 80s. The series about the rabbi detective; the series about the journalist with a cat; the wizard in spite of himself, and so on. Some of them are remarkably decent.  Certainly I was pleasantly surprised by the Dorothy Sayers mystery series and Agatha Christie.

Lately I have found, though, that any narrative pleasure is severely diminished by the rampant sexism in these old genre stories--even those written by women! Maybe it is the Me Too movement, or maybe I am just getting old(er) and (more) curmudgeonly.  I no longer have patience for characters who judge women by the attractiveness of their bare knees (or more erogenous features).

I am aware of the recent hullabaloo in the fantasy/science fiction fan universe over the increasing popularity and success of feminist, gender- and race-inclusive, and politically concerned work.  Such work has always been among my favorite (I'm thinking of Ursula K. LeGuin, here, but there are certainly others) and I am glad that more of it is being recognized now.

As for series like The Cat Who... and The Warlock in Spite of Himself, I'm just done.  I guess that stuff used to be invisible to me.  Maybe the impact of Me Too is that none of it is invisible anymore.

Please Continue (Hamlet) at MCA Chicago

Victor and I went to see Please Continue (Hamlet) yesterday at the Museum of Contemporary Art stage. The show was presented as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, of which we are big fans. It consists of the trial of someone named Hamlet, for the knife murder of someone called Polonius, the father of a young woman named Ophelia, Hamlet's former girlfriend, and witnessed by Hamlet's mother, who is named Gertrude.

While this all feels familiar, these characters live in a rough neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, in our own time, where rats run rampant in public housing, it is natural for a young man to carry a knife for defense, and before his return at the death of his father (Hamlet Sr.), young Hamlet had been away in Georgia with his uncles, trying to get his life straight, free of the challenges and distractions of ghetto life.

The trial is conducted with an actual Chicago-area judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, medical examiner, co-counsel, and court clerk.  The jury is randomly selected from the audience. Each performance makes use of a different set of legal profesionals; however, the defendant (Hamlet) and key witnesses (Ophelia, Gertrude) are portrayed by actors.

The entire show can exceed three hours, but it is remarkably gripping.  While most of us are familiar with the bare bones of Hamlet's story, the details of what he's accused of here, and how the prosecution and defense build their cases, are fascinating.  Certainly the possibility of being chosen for the jury also compels the attention.  Audience members are provided with memo pads and pencils to take notes.

In Chicago, Hamlet was charged with two counts of first-degree murder.  Intent to kill or grievously harm was cited as key to the charges.  While those of us familiar with Shakespeare's play know that Hamlet didn't intend to kill Polonius, he did intend to kill his uncle Claudius, who he thought was hiding behind a curtain while he argued with his mother.  In this play, though, Hamlet and his mother claim they heard a rat scurrying behind the curtain; Hamlet, quick as thought, stabbed his knife where he thought the rat was and was shocked to realize he'd struck Polonius.

Then followed a day of coverup, before the police got involved and were first lied to and then confessed to.

We saw the last performance of this production in Chicago; it was first performed on Thursday night, when State's Attorney Kim Foxx represented the prosecution.

Before seeing the performance yesterday, I breezed through Chris Jones' review in the Chicago Tribune. From this I learned that Kim Foxx had not stayed beyond her opening statement, and that the colleague she left behind was not able to get a conviction.  According to Jones, this was quite rare ("he'd hardly ever gotten off before"), which enabled Jones to contribute to the mythology of a Chicago where victims can't get justice, and where Kim Foxx lets criminals slide.  The headline reads "...Kim Foxx lets Hamlet beat a murder rap."

The truth is that around half of the Please Continue (Hamlet) trials end in acquittal.  Among the trials with guilty verdicts there have been a wide range of results, including alternate charges (in Chicago Saturday night, Hamlet was convicted of manslaughter), and sentences of less than a year to more than 15 years.

Part of the point of this production, actually, is to convey the arbitrariness of the legal system--how the performances of the various parties in the case (witnesses, attorneys, judges, and juries) critically influence the outcome, so that the fate of the defendant is not so much about the facts as we like to think.

Chris Jones apparently missed this point. He was too busy trying to ding Kim Foxx and contribute to the meme of Chicago corruption and impunity. And also to put his two cents in about the prosecution's failure to note that a rat is not as tall as a man.

Regardless, I was delighted that the jury quickly acquitted Hamlet yesterday afternoon (even though our prosecutor repeatedly brought up the rat/human size discrepancy).  The question was not whether Hamlet's rat story was believable, but whether the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.  And (in our opinion) it had not: Ophelia was the only witness presenting damning evidence against Hamlet and she was not convincing.

Anyhow, I was grateful for a piece from the Guardian that usefully discusses the show.

Please Continue (Hamlet) was created by the European theatermakers Cie Yan Duyvendak and Roger Bernat and has appeared at theaters and festivals around the world in the past few years. Kudos to MCA Chicago for bringing the production here.

Keeping Track of Cookbooks

I just learned about this terrific Web site called Eat Your Books.  It's a service that indexes cookbooks.  It may seem pretty random, but if you have a lot of cookbooks, and you cook a lot, it is sometimes hard to remember where a recipe you cooked once came from.  And going through your cookbooks to find it can be a chore--again, if you have a lot of cookbooks, and also if you have a tendency to distinctly remember things incorrectly.

For example, the other day I was wanting to make a vegetable soup I had cooked before.  I remembered it had lettuce.  I also remember it had no added water--rather, you stacked all the vegetables in the pot and cooked it slowly so the vegetables gave off their own water. 

I was pretty sure this was from one of Mark Bittman's books.  I remembered he referred to another cookbook writer for this recipe.  I looked quickly through my Bittman books and didn't find it.  Then I tried this site.

I searched for Bittman, lettuce, vegetable soup. No dice.

I tried to remember the name of the other cookbook writer.  I thought maybe it was Mimi Sheraton.  I looked up Mimi Sheraton, vegetable soup. No dice.

Then I decided to assume I was wrong about almost everything.  I looked up vegetable soup, lettuce.  And there it was.  Nika Hazelton's Garden Vegetable Soup, from Arthur Schwartz' Soup Suppers. A favorite cookbook of mine for more than 20 years.

Convinced, I bought a subscription ($30/yr) and quickly loaded in all my cookbooks.  Not all of them have been indexed yet, but many of them have.  What this means is, I get more use out of my cookbooks.  When I am not sure how I want to cook, say, a bunch of haricots verts, I can do a search for these on My Bookshelf and see the names and sources of most of my haricot vert recipes.  Instead of just looking randomly on Google (which is OK, too, but doesn't leverage my cookbooks).

Anyhow, I am delighted, looking forward to finding surprises in my own cookbooks, and getting further inspiration for my culinary adventures. And when I have time, maybe I'll help out by offering to index a few of my not-yet-indexed volumes.