Mick Herron's Slough House

Wow, this series of books is addicting! It is about a department of MI5 which is used as a holding pen for agents and staff who have screwed up or are screwed up and can't be fired for one reason or another.  They are given mind-numbing, pointless tasks in the hope that they'll quit.  None of them do, mostly because they're hoping to be reinstated to the "A" team, even though they know that is unlikely.

The man in charge of Slough House, Jackson Lamb, is one of the most entertaining characters ever.  He is a legendary former "joe," or field agent, who worked behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. The Cold War being over, he now mans a desk. That he mans this particular desk (managing a group of screw-ups) relates to a job he did at the end of his tenure as a field agent.

Jackson Lamb is a rude, farting, belching, genius at reading people, interpreting events, and spotting weak points. His sarcastic remarks frequently have me laughing out loud.

While the staff of Slough House (nicknamed "Slow Horses," in a punning reference to their headquarters) are not supposed to be active agents, in each volume of this series action somehow finds them, and a huge part of the pleasure of the book is watching these persistently depressed and underestimated people blossom as they exercise their talents.

I have seen Mick Herron referred to as a new Le Carre. I don't know if I buy that comparison.  But Herron's sharp observations of agency politics and office interactions are a pleasure to read, and the twisty plots are also great fun.

Unsubscribed

After years of getting so many emails, from stores I no longer shop at, political organizations I really don't want to hear from, and restaurants that I ate at once, I am unsubscribing with determination.

For a long time I kept the political emails because I was an inveterate petition signer.  But having been persuaded that petitions don't really make a difference (for the issue being addressed), those emails (so many!) became just so much spam.  In the current environment, I am really trying to avoid outrage triggers.  They are so ubiquitous!

So my email box is becoming a lot leaner and we will see how my anxiety levels respond over the next weeks.

Hell or High Water

I was provoked by this review of the movie Hell or High Water by Richard Brody. In the same review, he wrote about War Dogs, which I have not seen and know nothing about (as opposed to Hell or High Water, which I saw and admired); he says both movies demonstrate "exemplary badness." What he means by this seems to be that they are clockwork entertainments, not a piece out of place, predictable in certain ways, and without eccentricity (except the couple he identifies and immediately discounts). He seems to be criticizing them for being overwritten, too driven by their (good) intentions, failing to give their performers room to create.

He puts these movies in the same category with The Big Short and Spotlight, two of my favorite of 2015--which also happen to be movies with missions.  I didn't see Hell or High Water as a movie with a mission; just a caper with a satisfying backdrop and a satisfying emotional hook.

Unlike Brody, I didn't find the actors' performances incapacious (Brody is careful to make an exception for Jeff Bridges--everybody adores Jeff Bridges); most of them succeeded in intriguing me. Throughout the movie I found myself nodding at the dialogue, thinking to myself, This guy can write.

Maybe that means the movie was overwritten, but it was pleasurably overwritten. I feel that way about some of the Coen brothers movies, too; certainly about Mamet movies,

I feel funny writing enthusiastically about a movie that, I admit, isn't great. But I do think it is good.  That is, it tells an interesting story well. It engages and transports the viewer. I agree that Jeff Bridges is outstanding in it. He has such a charismatic presence that he's outstanding in everything; like the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, or the living Mark Rylance, when he's on screen, he's all you want to pay attention to. But unlike some movies I can recall--in which, when the charismatic actor left the screen I wanted to leave the theater--I remained invested in the film even when the story turned to the two brothers played by Chris Pine and Ben Foster.

While Brody's review of these films objects to their overt politics, a few months ago I came across another negative Brody review of a movie I liked, The Lobster, which criticized it for the opposite reason: he seemed to think a Greek director had no business making a movie that failed to reflect the Greek political situation.

I guess I just am not going to agree with this critic.

Great Andrew Yang exhibit at MCA

Andrew Yang's current exhibit at MCA Chicago is both beautiful and thought-provoking. It is one of my favorite kinds of contemporary art--both intellectually stimulating and aesthetically pleasing. Yang has a background in science as well as art and holds positions at both the Field Museum of Natural History and the School of the Art Institute, His work combines these dual interests, which many would find mutually exclusive, in explorations of cosmology and natural history that remind us that human beings and our culture are also part of the universe studied by scientists, whether we're studying (for example) chemistry, geology, or astronomy.

In one piece, Stella's Stoichiometry (all things being equal, 6 lbs 3 oz.) (2012), Yang beautifully arranges substances representing the chemical composition of his newborn daughter in glass receptacles. In another, A beach (for Carl Sagan), Yang represents the Milky Way with a scale model made of piles of sand--seven tons of sand; one grain for every star (assuming 100 billion stars, a low-end estimate).

Yang's work tends to juxtapose items that we generally don't think of together (like lava flows and human placentas, as in placenta/lava (2011), so we notice similarities we might never have looked for, and wonder about their coincidence. While we have likely studied geology and biology separately in school, some unspoken relationship between the two seems apparent here.

Similarly, in the installation the Way within (2016), Yang has arranged a large quantity of collected stones, shells, fossils, and manmade objects. Confronted with this miscellany, we wonder about the relationships between these objects--why they belong together, or don't.

The exhibit opened yesterday and closes 31 December.  I look forward to returning frequently.

Life without a Landline

I didn't actually turn off our landline until late last week.  I was a bit scared to.  After sending a notice to our friends and family, I changed our phone number with our credit card companies and a few other places but I kept worrying that I'd forgotten something important.

Now that the landline is gone, it's a bit quieter at home.  We used to get several spam calls each day (marketing calls, surveys, political and charitable solicitations); now we don't get any.  When I first opened my Google Voice account there were a few spam texts, but after I blocked those senders we were not bothered again.

One thing that annoyed me about not having a landline was needing to carry my phone around the apartment. I generally keep my phone in a purse, not my pocket.  I don't always have a pocket.

Then I remembered reading about connect to cell cordless phones. These phones use Bluetooth to link with your cell so it can stay in one place charging and you use the cordless handsets strategically placed around your home to make and receive calls. You don't have to have a landline to use them. I ended up buying a VTech model and it is working well for my phone. Unfortunately, even though it is supposed to be able to connect to two different cell phones and even appears to do so (the linking process goes smoothly), Victor's phone doesn't make the VTech handset ring.

Not a big deal, though, since Victor is used to carrying his cell phone everywhere.

We haven't had much occasion to use Google Voice yet, but I did give the number to a department store salesperson a couple weeks ago and thus had an opportunity to experience this cool feature in which Googlebrain transcribes voicemail and texts it to you.

The transcription was perfect!  We are definitely living in the future!

Caught by Sideshow Theatre

We saw Sideshow Theatre's Caught at the Victory Gardens theater last weekend. While we didn't enjoy this one as much as the two other Sideshow productions we've seen (Idomeneus and Stupid Fucking Bird), we found ourselves discussing it a good deal afterwards--it's a tricky play--not at all obvious what it "means."

The set includes a selection of what appears to be contemporary Chinese dissident art, which the audience is encouraged to walk on the stage and view as if the stage is a gallery. Afterwards, the artist is introduced (we may have seen the recent New Yorker profile of him) and gives a talk reflecting on his artmaking, which led to a stint in a Chinese prison. Then we see a conversation among the artist and the writer of the New Yorker profile and her editor. There are concerns about whether elements of the artist's story are true.

This is followed by a conversation between the actor who played the New Yorker profile writer and the young Chinese woman who wrote the preceding scene and actually created all of the artwork on the stage. The artist-playwright references real-life conflations of expectations of truth with fiction such as Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs and fake-memoirist James Frey. She talks about how American ideas of "truth" are different from those of other cultures and how proud we are of own "truthfulness." However, she wonders whether our fixation on facts enables us to ignore more substantial issues. The conversation is at first friendly and then fraught, as the theoretical jargon spouted by the artist-playwright completely confounds the actor, who just wants to know what the point of it all is.

The final scene involves two Chinese-Americans at home (the actors include the one who played the male dissident artist in the beginning and the female artist-playwright in the previous scene). These characters have created everything that preceded this scene in tribute to a dissident artist--their mentor--who died in a Chinese prison. After they congratulate themselves on an excellent performance they begin to quarrel about proper interpretations of their mentor's legacy and eventually realize that they each had relationships with the mentor that the other didn't know about. The mentor fooled them both.

So the play is very obviously (perhaps too obviously) about how we get hung up on "truth." And as we watched it I think we felt that it really was much too obvious.

But in retrospect the way each scene builds on what happened before--rather like covering over an onion, instead of  unpeeling it--does make you seriously reflect. Throughout, you are sort of wondering--is this really the play now?  Is that really the artist?  Is there really such a person?  Is the art real, or was it just made up for this play? (Throughout, the assertion that the show is a collaboration with a gallery is repeated in various iterations.)  What does that even mean? As the artist-playwright would say, it's not the point. Afterwards you're replaying it all in your head, wondering whether or when what's true really matters.

Very thought provoking play.  Well worth seeing.

The School of Life

I just discovered the School of Life. Recently I read one of its publications, How to Worry Less about Money, which I found surprisingly helpful, It was more like a philosophy book than a self-help book, which you would think would make it less useful, but actually when it comes to worrying, philosophy is extremely helpful, because it is all about how to think about things. (When you worry, you are often thinking about things the wrong way.)

The School of Life is something I wish were headquartered in Chicago instead of London. It purports to be about building emotional intelligence, but it's basically a consulting philosophy business. There's a Youtube channel that includes videos about Plato, Doestoevsky, and (a favorite of mine) Secrets of Happiness in 60 Seconds. You can book (pun intended) a bibliotherapist to get a reading prescription for what ails you. And you can scan the calendar and wish you lived in London to be able to take advantage of the in-person program. Some of it is too targeted to corporate customers for my taste, but many of the offerings sound just wonderful. For example, "How to Stay Calm," "Mastering the Art of Kindness," and "Drawing as Therapy."

It's exhilarating to imagine that a business like this can thrive--that there are enough people interested in enlarging their worldview. For people who can't--or don't want to--enter an academic philosophy program, and for those wrestling with a wide range of personal and social crises and concerns, the School of Life offers injections of philosophy designed to address the underlying issues.

I look forward to exploring more of what's available on TSOL's Youtube Channel, site, and online shop.

What Good Is a Landline?

This month finds me contemplating getting rid of our landline.  It costs us about $300 a year, with taxes and fees, and seems mainly a vehicle to receive marketing and fundraising calls. Further, for the past year our phone service has been supplied by our cable provider--that is, the landline is more of a "landline."  It won't work when the electricity goes out, which used to be a reason to keep at least one phone plugged into the wall.

When my deaf mother was alive, I couldn't seriously consider getting rid of our landline because the TTY device I used to communicate with her weekly required a landline and I couldn't find an analogous device that would work with a cell phone. I imagine that's because deaf people who use cell phones likely just text each other--the market for those who want to use a cell phone with a TTY must be vanishingly small.

When you Google "should I get rid of my landline?" the chief objections seem related to emergencies.  In our current situation, as I mentioned, we aren't protected from an electrical outage. We have no children, so we don't need to worry about young kids (presumably without their own cellphones) needing to contact someone in a crisis. We generally don't have trouble keeping our phones charged so the "emergency" of running out of battery seems less applicable.  Plus, we have additional devices that can make calls over the Internet (Skype, Facetime) should the phones die. Of course, if the Internet died, we'd be screwed, but that would be true with our current "landline" also.

I didn't see any discussion of my main concern--not wanting to give either of our cell numbers to credit card companies, political and charitable organizations, and so forth.  Also, wanting a number that represents our household as opposed to only my husband or only me.

The answer to that seems to be Google Voice.  So I think this week I am going to take the plunge: get a Google number, let folks know we have a new number, and drop the landline.

(deep breath)

Will update on how it goes.

Being Your Own IT Department Can Be a Drag

I am the person in our household who understands computer and networking technology best, which seems pretty laughable. It is not that I understand these things well, but that even though my husband is an engineer, he's not that kind of engineer. Also, he doesn't apply himself to understand computers and networking--he doesn't need to. At work he has a real IT department to worry about that stuff and at home he has me.

So when the problems of last week recurred (my docked Windows laptop couldn't get to the Internet through its ethernet connection), it was on me to fix. Victor had already complained that his laptop was unable to get to the Internet via our home wireless network; I discounted his complaints because all my devices managed to access the Internet via wi-fi just fine and he has a cellular connection that he can use when wi-fi is unavailable.

This morning, testing revealed that while my iDevices (including the iMac) connected to the Internet--wired and wi-fi--the Windows laptop couldn't do it, nor could the Roku.  I didn't take the time to check the Apple TV--we use it very little.  But I guess--since it is an iDevice--that the Apple TV would have worked fine. I recall that was true last week.

Many power downs and power ups later, there was still no positive change. Except one: my laptop's wi-fi connection returned!  Mystified by why or how, but even though the connection returned the laptop could not reach the Internet through the network.

Changing Ethernet cords around didn't do any good, either; nor did (for example) connecting the Roku directly to the router instead of to an Ethernet switch. Since the problem came and went, I wondered whether the router, which is a few years old, might be going bad.  So I switched it with the router provided by the cable company.

The substitute router worked seamlessly for the iDevices and didn't make a bit of difference for the other devices. Worse--it broke Sonos.

It is another bad-weather day, and I would have been inclined to think that's what caused the trouble, but Victor was so disdainful of this conjecture when I brought it up a last week that I did some googling on the subject and learned that he is likely correct to be disdainful.

The inconsistency of the problem was particularly aggravating. The Power Over Ethernet adapter in the dining room worked fine (that's where the iMac is connected) while the one in my office (where my laptop was connected) was failing to convey the Internet signal.

Another thing bugged the hell out of me.  When I manually connected to "My Network" it became "My Network 2" after connection. There is no "My Network 2."  This had happened when I tried to troubleshoot Victor's laptop also.

Then I thought about what had changed recently. One thing is that I have been beta testing some software. That didn't seem relevant to network issues. The other thing is that I added a new Apple Airport Express to our network to support AirPlay with Sonos.

And suddenly, I thought, that's it. The Airport Express creates a wireless network; it's creating some kind of interference in the dining room (where it was connected to a Sonos speaker) and the non-iDevices are trying to get Internet from there  instead of the router, as if the Airport Express were a network extender.

This proved to be the case. Once I disconnected and unplugged the Airport Express from the Sonos device and restarted everything, everything functioned properly.

Except Sonos.  To bring back Sonos, I had to revert to the original router. Some day I will devote some time to figuring out why that is.

Another day I will also devote some time to understanding why the Airport Express should have caused a problem when (I am pretty sure) I had turned off its wi-fi broadcasting capability.

But enough hours have been spent on all this today. I would much prefer if I had someone knowledgeable to call on when stuff like this happens.  All this technology is fabulous when it works. When it doesn't it's incredibly disruptive.

I had so many things to do today and now I just want to go lie down.  

Goodbye, Unlimited Data

When I first got an iPhone, more than five years ago, AT&T was the only cellular provider partnering with Apple, and they offered an unlimited data plan for it. Later, as additional carriers partnered with Apple offering different deals, AT&T stopped offering unlimited data plans to new customers; however, I was grandfathered in as long as I didn't change plans or carriers. I was pretty proud of having been smart enough to have an unlimited data plan even though the achievement had nothing to do with smarts and everything to do with timing. I stuck with AT&T through multiple iPhone replacements in part to preserve my access to an unlimited data plan.

Recently I AT&T alerted me that the cost of my plan (which had been the same for the entire time I've used an iPhone) is going up. This prompted me to check out other options, and it turns out that AT&T is now offering a 2GB data package that costs substantially less than I now pay for unlimited data.  When I checked, I learned that my average monthly data use is less than 1GB; I approached 2GB in only one billing period in the past year.

When I was new to smart phones, an unlimited data package seemed like a great option because I had no idea how much data I would use and was afraid of being dunned crazy amounts of money for using Google on street corners. Now that I know I rarely exceed 1GB data a month, I don't need to pay more for the "insurance" of unlimited data.

So, goodbye unlimited data!  

Yet Another Purple Carrot/Meal Kit Delivery Update

We are still pretty big fans of the Purple Carrot though we continue to be troubled by all the packaging materials and the fact that the stuff is being sent to us from halfway across the country. The quality of the recipes is just excellent, and almost every recipe includes a new (to us) ingredient or technique, making our membership feel like a cooking class.

For example, we had not cooked much before with tofu products, and never with seitan, so it's nice to have excellent recipes that highlight really tasty uses for these products. A technique that surprised and then excited us was searing portabella mushrooms in a pan alongside a cut lemon.  The lemon's juice makes its way into the mushrooms without your squeezing it; you end up with a beautiful charred lemon for garnish and a remarkably delicious pan-grilled portabella mushroom.

There has been a lot of variety in the recipes so far, which has makes cooking (and eating) more exciting.  A lot of international influences (from Japan to Morocco to New Orleans) are evident, as is a bias toward seasonal ingredients (such as root vegetables and winter squash in December).  And it is a great convenience that hard-to-find ingredients not stocked at the local grocery store (such as fresh curry leaves) are included in the box.

Still, even with a somewhat relaxed holiday schedule, we fell behind, so I have put the delivery service on hold to give ourselves a chance to catch up. There are two meal kits in the fridge right now, and I have plans to make a meat-based dish (the traditional Eastern European Jewish cassoulet called cholent) tonight since the temperature has dropped so much lately.

Because of our travel schedule, we will probably keep The Purple Carrot suspended till the second part of February, at which point we may finally check out Lighter, A review I found online made it sound somewhat more personalized than Purple Carrot--you can tell them what you already have at home (for example, a can of pinto beans, or ground turmeric) so they don't send you unnecessary stuff.

I had researched other services such as Meez and Blue Apron, but these don't interest me as much, both because the vegan offerings are not as attractive and (at least in Meez' case) they use prepared sauces.  That makes me feel like I'm not doing the cooking. While I understand it's a convenience intended to make my own cooking go quicker, I'd rather take more time and cook it all myself.

Mystified

Yesterday after a  busy morning and early afternoon (exercise, cooking) I finally sat down at my Windows computer and the Internet didn't work. I use my laptop at a docking station with a wired connection (to a Power over Ethernet adapter) so I tried to switch to wi-fi.  But my laptop seems to have forgotten it ever had a wi-fi connection. There are no wi-fi connections listed, so no adapter to enable (in the event it was inadvertently disabled).

That's one mystery.

The next is why the wired connection couldn't get my laptop to the Internet. Tracing back to my router, the router was connected. It provided a solid wi-fi connection for my wireless devices (phone, tablet) and the wired connection for our iMac (also wired to a Power over Ethernet adapter) was working, though slow (which is normal). I could surf the Web just fine from the iMac.

So I thought--maybe it's just a blip. I'll restart everything and see what happens. Our media/tech center (cable modem, TV, AV equipment, router, NAS drives, etc.) are located in our guest room, mostly powered through a heavy-duty surge suppressor.  So I flipped that off for a minute and then turned it on again. Waited.

No help for the Windows computer connection. Restarted again, unhooked and rehooked cables. We have a lot of equipment and not enough ports on the router, so we use an Ethernet switch to connect the additional devices. I moved cables around, checked whether different devices were affected.

During the course of my efforts, wi-fi was utterly lost and later regained. But Sonos (our wireless sound system that plays music throughout the apartment) was gone. Later it came back, but only one or two units (we have speakers in every room). It could play stuff in our local music library but nothing accessed from the Internet. Later it couldn't find the music library but played stuff from the Internet just fine. Tivo wasn't working. Our Roku worked on wi-fi but seemed not to recognize any connection when wired. And the Apple TV worked fine when wired. (Our Apple TV is an older model without wireless capability.)  I checked to see if my laptop worked with a wired connection direct to the router.  It did.

By the time Victor came home from work I was really beside myself. I had just restarted all the equipment, and the phone stopped working (we have digital phone service through our cable provider).  I figured I'd broken EVERYTHING.  Victor said, why don't you shut down the power and restart?

I had done that, but now I did it again.  And the phone worked!  But neither Sonos nor Roku were functioning. I stopped struggling once I got Roku working on wi-fi, and Sonos working enough to play the sound from the TV.  We made dinner and later settled down to stream our evening's entertainment.

This morning, Sonos was gone.  So, back to the drawing board.  I thought maybe the Ethernet switch was bad, so I tested that by substituting a different switch used elsewhere in the apartment. No effect on Sonos (the critical path at this point). Anyhow, the problem with the bad switch hypothesis was that Sonos wasn't working even when directly connected  to the router. So I started checking cables, one after another, to see if there were cables that worked and cables that did not work. Switched one cable.  I can't even remember why I thought that was a good idea. No immediate effect, but after restarting everything, and moving cables from one port to another in the substitute switch, Sonos was back.  Totally back! I couldn't believe my eyes! I switched everything back to the original switch. Still working!  Checked NAS drive connections.

Not working.

Moved cables around.

Working.

Then came to sit at my computer and see if the wired connection would work.  YES! (I'm using it now.)

Still no sign that my laptop is wi-fi-capable.  How does that happen? It could be unrelated to recent events; I rarely undock my laptop, so I can't recall the last time I used its wireless adapter...

The fact is that even though most issues are resolved I remain completely mystified as to what the problem(s) was (were) and what solved it (them).  My best guess is weather (it was an awful, windy, sleety day yesterday) but it's not a very satisfactory one. 

The Purple Carrot Update and Other Healthy Food Delivery Options

We changed our minds quicker than I expected about The Purple Carrot, and are anticipating another delivery this Wednesday. A couple of immediate spurs to this this decision: last week due to foul weather I didn’t make it to the grocery store on the day I’d planned, and then the meal I’d planned to make required ethnic ingredients that weren’t available in my neighborhood. So my good intentions basically collapsed due to poor planning.

Instead, we ordered from Sprig, which a friend had tipped me off about: it’s an organic meal delivery service. On the upside, the meals are priced reasonably, arrive relatively quickly, and are made of wholesome organic ingredients (which—along with calorie counts—are clearly communicated). On the downside, the flavors (on the two occasions on which we ordered) are underwhelming.

My new interest in grocery and/or meal delivery pointed me to another service, Lighter, which serves Chicago.  Like The Purple Carrot, Lighter delivers the ingredients and recipes of wholesome meals; however, ingredients are sourced locally and delivered in person rather than by FedEx (you schedule your delivery so you can receive it).  Other big differences: you can choose a plan that includes meat or only vegetables and meal plans start at nine meals a week and go up from there—but meals may include breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner—you choose how many of each (The Purple Carrot offers a standard meal size/type).  Further, Lighter has a more custom bent: the idea is that you choose your goals, indicate what foods you can’t/won’t eat, and their nutritionists design a meal plan.

I like the idea of a more complete, customized meal plan, and would prefer that my ingredients aren’t sent from across the country, but our schedule right now doesn’t permit us to try Lighter.  Maybe next year.

In the meantime, we look forward to our next delivery from The Purple Carrot. Since we are traveling a few days each week until mid-December, it’s actually going to be a great convenience to have the ingredients of three healthy vegan meals delivered to our home—during a very hectic period we won’t have to plan anything. We are also excited about the opportunity to learn more relatively quick techniques (preparation of the meals takes 45 minutes or less). In the first week of using The Purple Carrot I learned to make tahini sauce, massage kale, and make the quickest black bean burger ever, all of which I found pretty thrilling. Also, every (Mark Bittman-written) recipe we have tried from The Purple Carrot has turned out delicious, which is hugely persuasive.

Checking out The Purple Carrot

Last year around this time, I read Mark Bittman’s VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . for Good after hearing him talk about it at last year’s Chicago Humanities Festival. Bittman was promoting the idea of eating vegan, whole foods for breakfast and lunch—and relaxing restrictions at dinner. He explained that he invented the system to deal with his own health issues (creeping weight gain, newly borderline cholesterol, blood pressure, and pre-diabetes conditions) and found it to be eminently doable, effective, and also delicious.

I found his talk inspiring, and his book equally so. The book includes great advice, like prepping vegetables when you bring them home from the grocery store, so it’s less of a chore to cook on a weeknight. For some months I was cooking a lot more at home, but frequent travel would get me out of the habit.

Recently Bittman left the New York Times to join The Purple Carrot, a vegan food delivery service. It’s a business that suits his ideals, encouraging families to eat vegan at least a couple of times a week. He makes the recipes, and the delivery service makes it easy by providing the ingredients you need to cook those recipes, already portioned out.

So I tried it. The recipes are great, but I was underwhelmed by the delivery service. Last Wednesday I got a big heavy box, with ingredients for three recipes. I found all the packaging embarrassing. They make a big deal about how you can recycle the cold packs (slit them open, dump the gel in the trash, and then put the plastic in the recycle), but doing that weekly just seemed an awful waste to me. And I didn’t see the need to get stuff delivered that I normally keep in my pantry (cans of black beans, or cumin). So while I had success with the recipes (even with one for which the packers omitted one of the requisite vegetables), I cancelled.  I thought I’d work with the recipes (which are available to anybody) and do my own shopping.

Today I’m questioning that decision. I’d planned to go to the grocery store, but it’s pouring. And tomorrow I can’t shop, either.

Hmm.

Maybe in the new year I’ll rejoin.

The Thompson Center

There’s an interesting post about the Thompson Center on the Chicago Architecture Foundation website. Victor and I hated this building for a long time. It seems out of scale and out of keeping with its surroundings, round for the sake of being round; it is accompanied by an extravagantly ugly piece of public art; and the interior, with its enormous atrium showing the galleries of floors above reminds me of a really depressing Hyatt Regency Hotel. 

The building was designed by prominent architect Helmut Jahn, and our opinion of him was quite low for a long time in spite of the way he is often highlighted on the CAF boat tours we take approximately annually with out-of-town guests.

Two things changed our point of view about this building (somewhat). First, some years ago, with a friend visiting from out of town, we had a chance to visit the tippy-top of the Hard Rock Hotel, which is located in the former Carbide and Carbon Building.  They were renovating at that time, and the elevator took all the way up even though it was under construction. We had a chance to look out the windows, from which the views down on the city were just fabulous. And when I saw the Thompson Center from that vantage, I said, “Oh, I know why they chose that design. In a maquette it would have looked awesome!”

Second, we visted Berlin a couple of years later and encountered the thrilling Sony Center, also a Helmut Jahn project. It is hard to find good photos because the complex is so enormous, but when we saw it Victor and I both thought, This is what the Thompson Center was practice for.

Our attitude toward the building thus transformed. Perspective is all.

Substitution in Thinking about Activists

There is something so very wrong when college students are subject to racial epithets and ugly vandalism and nothing is done, as has happened at Missouri State University. Now, because the football team decided to strike, there are at least some administrative changes in the offing, but there is still not much clarity around how the racist behavior at the root of current events will be addressed. 

And when the protesting students make (perhaps) a misjudgment (the refusal to tolerate a media photographer at their tent city on campus), the world rushes to condemn them.

As if pushing one reporter away outweighs addressing any harm the students have suffered and will suffer due to entrenched racism in the university community.

I suppose it is because racism makes us so uncomfortable. We much prefer to believe it doesn’t exist, or if it does, then it isn’t our responsibility to fix. 

The other night I was glued to Twitter, reading a conversation between Roxane Gay (who recently spoke at the Humanities Festival here in Chicago) her friend, sociologist Dr. Tressie Cottom, and David Simon, the former journalist who created the great television series The Wire and Treme. David Simon was arguing for absolute freedom of the press, criticizing the protestors for barring access to photographer Tim Tai. Gay and Cottom were making a more nuanced argument, accounting for the protesters’ wariness of media and their desire to foster a safe space.

What stunned me most was how much Twitter energy was going into arguing over this incident—one viral video. This was more worth discussing than how we fix the real problems that those protesters are facing? Tim Tai himself tweeted, “Just want to reiterate that while I think we need to talk about the 1st Am issues from today, the larger story is not about that.”

Yet The Twitter conversation went on! I was deeply disappointed in David Simon, although this discussion has been proposed as an example of a useful debate on Twitter.

Can we have multiple conversations (e.g., about racism and about the importance of the first amendment)? It seems like we ought to be able to. But when one conversation is difficult, we tend to supplant the difficult conversation with the easier one. And if the easier one involves switching blame to the victims we might be complicit in harming, so much the better.

We not only get to avoid the difficult conversation, but we get to weasel out of our responsibility to fix the root problem. It’s like focusing on a rape victim’s tacky fashion sense, or—even more typically—focusing on the shoplifting activity of an unarmed teen killed by police.

I don’t know what stops this. Per Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow), answering an easier question when we’re asked a hard one is something we just do. Recognizing that we do it is one step forward, but only the first.

P.S. Good article by Roxane Gay on student activism here.

Out of Love with Twyla

Victor and I went to see the Twyla Tharp 50^th Anniversary Tour performance at the Auditorium Theatre last night and were disappointed.  It wasn’t the first time. We were underwhelmed by Tharp’s Movin’ Out on Broadway (in 2005) and by a subsequent performance in Chicago.

I was introduced to Twyla Tharp by a couple of 1980s movies. I was struck by the choreography in Milos Forman’s Hair, which remains one of my favorite movies of that era, and in White Nights, which I went to see in the theater repeatedly (it remains a guilty pleasure to see again on video).  The idea of ballet had always bored me, but now I felt that there was something to it. I was utterly thrilled by the mix of movement and emotion.  Perhaps it was Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines as much as Twyla Tharp who enraptured me. Regardless, she went to the top of my mental list of who to go see live when I had means and opportunity.

That took more than a decade.  We were living in Columbus, Ohio. The Wexner Center for the Arts brought Twyla Tharp in 2002. She had a long association with the Wexner and appeared in person after the performance to crankily answer the questions of dance students in the audience.  While I don’t remember the performance specifically, I remember feeling much the same thrill—and feeling very fortunate.

I can’t say the same of Movin’ Out, which I’d looked forward to intensely.  After all, I’d grown up adoring Billy Joel’s music. Adding my favorite choreographer to the mix could only be a bonus.

That was a miscalculation. The choreography was so literal and uninspired, I felt embarrassed. I remember saying it was like watching the Solid Gold dancers. Almost every choreographic move was sexualized, as if mimicking sexual intimacy was the only interesting choice. (In fact, when you make that choice every time, it becomes dull.)

While the current performance isn’t all about sex, it is unfortunately much about sameness. After a brief First Fanfare, the new Preludes and Fugues (the music is from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier) contains a number of lovely and surprising moments but they are repeated without development over 45 minutes, which diminishes their impact. The second act starts with a stunning Second Fanfare—brief, like the first. The striking choreography of this piece is enhanced by silhouette effects on and behind the curtain.  The long Yowzie has a vibrant early jazz soundtrack, but in spite of some delightful moments, the repetition without development eliminates any feeling of excitement you might have had at first.

This is a busy time of year for us, and I think our disappointment was sharpened by the feeling that we could have had a night off!  Our powerfully positive early impressions of Twyla Tharp have been pretty definitively wiped out. 

We will no longer be going out of our way to see Twyla.

The 606

I rode my bike over to the new 606 trail yesterday with a friend. It’s a hugely popular new elevated park, on the site of a disused rail line. It’s similar in concept to New York City’s Highline, but a different animal. The 606 is twice as long (just over three miles), allows bicyclists, and is located in a part of the city that’s a lot less dense. That means most views from the 606, while pleasant, lack the spectacular punch of views from the Highline. You see a lot of different residential real estate (some of which looks brand new—as if built or rehabbed to leverage a potential gentrification boom around the 606’s popularity) so it feels more neighborhood-y, which is appropriate to the kind of city Chicago is.

On a beautiful Wednesday afternoon, the trail was heavily used by strollers, loungers, bicyclists, joggers, speed walkers, and school kids. Part of the vision for the 606 is to connect to different parks on Chicago’s West Side, and it looked likely that the school group was using it for that purpose. The new park works a more beautiful way to commute between Bucktown and the far West side and as a beautiful (and perhaps delicious) way to explore a different part of town, if you’re not from there. 

During both my visits to the 606, I ate with companions at 90 Miles Cuban Café, which is just north of the trail on Armitage Avenue at Rockwell in Logan Square. So it’s a great resource for neighborhood residents and also offers potential for turning these West Side neighborhoods into destinations.

The plantings along the trail are still in process, and will doubtless take some years to really come into their own, but even now the greenery creates a tranquil environment, and the several seating areas and short parallel trails (some with soft walking surfaces, surrounded by more heavily planted areas) make the trail even more parklike. As parks continue to be developed near its access points, the 606 will be an even more attractive greenspace.

Eric Oliver at the Chicago Humanities Festival

Last night at the Chicago Humanities Festival we saw Eric Oliver, a professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, who gave a talk about American magical thinking. He sets up a dichotomy between what he calls “tangible” and “symbolic” thinking, which is best exemplified by a survey he describes, in which respondents are asked whether they would rather stab a photo of their family four times or stick their hand in a jar of slimy worms. Or spend the night in a beautiful house in which a family had been murdered versus spend the night in a seedy bus station. Would you rather wear pajamas that belonged to Charles Manson or pick up a nickel from the street and put it in your mouth?  

The gist of these questions is probably clear. The first items in these pairs are symbolically (and negatively) resonant but don’t cause actual harm, while the second items carry real risk. Oliver found that people who consistently choose to avoid the symbolic negative resonance (and bear the real risk) tend to have other magical beliefs, such as beliefs in angels, conspiracy theories, the idea that we are living in biblical end-times, or the healing power of crystals.

Oliver connects his work to that of Daniel Kahneman, who, in his Thinking, Fast and Slow describes how we frequently use cognitive shortcuts that lead to wrong results. For example, if a ball and bat together cost $1.10, and the bat costs $1.00 more than the ball, how much is the ball? 

Did you come up with 10 cents?  Think again. 

Similarly, if the asking price of a house is $400,000 we tend to believe its value is something around that, but the asking price is not relevant to its value. Determining value from scratch, though, is very difficult question. Starting with the asking price is a convenient shortcut, even if we are effectively answering a different (easier) question.

Oliver traces the surprising post-enlightenment persistence of magical beliefs to uncertainty—which he sees as always at the root of magical thinking. For example, a tribal fishing culture he discussed had few magical beliefs around river fishing, which they understood very well; however, there was a whole set of magical beliefs arranged around deep-sea fishing, which was fraught with dangers and offered uncertain rewards.

Magical thinking, then, is a kind of cognitive shortcut we use when we are uncertain or uncomfortable. While this explains particular beliefs—for example, uncertainty and discomfort about the finality of death leads some to believe in reincarnation—it’s not as clear how such beliefs are effectively tackled. Indeed, Oliver was asked that question and didn’t have a good answer.

Because we have a political discourse that is plagued by magical thinking and the denial of science, this is very troubling.

Fruit

When I was in grad school, I remember a friend saying, “I wish we could just live on fruit.” Many creatures do, of course, live on mainly fruit. I’m thinking of certain berry-eating birds and tropical monkeys; no doubt there are others. But humans aren’t made that way.  We need our veggies, our protein and fat. Still, many of us probably don’t consume enough fruit, although we’re lucky, in this stage of human history, to have access to so much of it so much of the time.

Right now, for instance, there are two apples, an orange, a plantain, a mango, a lemon, and three limes on our kitchen counter. In the refrigerator, there is a bunch of grapes. Only the apples are seasonal now in the Midwest. None of the other fruits ever grow here. We’re already nostalgic for summer, when we feasted on peaches, nectarines, and plums that came from nearby states.  Even when they came from the West Coast, they tasted good.

(I’ve never had winter stone fruit—what my mom called “fresh fruit”—that tasted good.)

When I go back to the grocery store, I expect to pick up more citrus, maybe some berries, bananas, pears, more apples.  The apples and pears might be from around here; the rest will come from California, Mexico, or even further afield.

A lot is being written about our unsustainable food system. It’s kind of crazy that I can be eating mangos from Brazil and grapefruits from Texas, not to mention bananas from equatorial countries and citrus from wherever it’s warm right now.  It’s possible that in some years or decades, we’ll be back to a situation where oranges are a special winter treat (which I almost remember from my childhood—at least, I remember we had a relative in Florida who would annually send us a box of oranges and it was a big deal) and we almost never see papaya or pomegranates in Chicago.

But we are so used to having whatever we want, whenever we want it. Produce has gotten a lot more expensive in the past 10 years, but when you consider that you can buy a mango for a dollar—less than you spend for an apple from Michigan—you realize how ridiculously cheap food really is. One solution probably involves pricing food more realistically.  It doesn’t make sense that a pound of bananas from Honduras costs much less than a pound of pears from a local farm. 

Does it?

I guess issues of scale come into it. This is something discussed in the fine carbon footprint primer How Bad Are Bananas? (The answer to the title question is “not so bad, actually,” because they are transported in ships, which are pretty efficient.) Locally grown produce is transported in more and smaller vehicles, which may not be as energy efficient as a large truck—certainly not as efficient as a giant container ship.

So it’s complicated. For now, I remember to be grateful for the variety and deliciousness available and try not to let it go to waste.