Perhaps it’s the penetrating energy from the mid-morning sun on the terrace of the Grand Café du Cours. It is set, bare and unrelenting in a peerless Provençal sky, unmarred save by the tiniest wisp of a cloud that dissipates before I can capture it in camera memory.

Perhaps it’s the seven tables of rural flaneurs, taking a break, a mink coat here, a deep bronze tan there, the smoking cadres of brunette pony-tails (literally smoking—it’s permissible only out of doors).

Whatever it is, the aromatics of the coffee this morning are redolent, inducing only the best stirrings of gastric juices and saliva. The lure of it pierces even the thick crema that is the special draw of the espresso at the Grand Café, penetrating the nostrils and the gorge.

One stalwart, seated nearby, in a beret, with a massive gold signet ring and a thick moustache, chomping on a croissant extracted from the flimsy bag of the boulangerie, peers at the morning paper through his wire-framed glasses. The rest of the crowd, including me, have put on our shades. The sun’s beams are incessant, blinding.

I hear the patron, rushing in and out of the café with trays laden first with full cups and then with empties, pause to explain the uncommon warmth to the beret, as they peruse the thermometer mounted on a promotional enameled plaque courtesy of Martini & Rossi on the wall just above my head and just shaded by the awning extended only a meter or so—to maximize both the accuracy of a reading and the exposure of the clients. “Treize,” he says, “c’est treize!” and he points to the awning and the shaded gauge. Thirteen degrees (almost 56F, the floor of true warmth, especially smack in the middle of January, and with the seductive promise of true shirt-sleeve weather this afternoon). It’s only 11:30 and the sun will bake the open spaces into a hint of sultriness.

Six old-timers arrive and debate their first choice of table. One of them, the smallest and the baldest, argues, pointing to larger more exposed choices to their right, “Le soleil! Le soleil la bas!” and then he points to the tiny square table meant for four in front of them. But five of them have already seated themselves in the shade of a shrub set in a concrete combination planter and traffic barrier. The shrub stands a meter high, and so one corner of the table is, in fact, in shadow.

Save for one couple who have nursed a rosé (she) and a pastis (he) just beside me for the past half-hour, the crowd has exclusively been consuming the fragrant coffee in its many modes, mainly single espressos, the occasional double (including mine), a noisette here, an espresso “longue, très très longue” there. But the old guys are all here to drink, as I would have predicted, something a bit stronger. While they bake their bones and joke and jostle one another each savors his favorite tipple—in the tiniest of glasses. Even the beers are diminutive, perhaps a half of a “quart” (a quarter), that is, an eighth-liter or hardly more than four ounces. Another has a pastis, but, again, in a mini-portion. Another sips a sweet vermouth in a Lilliputian snifter, with an ice-cube crowding the spoonsful of alcohol. They are wetting their whistles. Mere lubricant for the fellowship that is their true purpose.

So much for the myth of mid-day French drinking.

Except for us solitary worshipers, or observers, or thinkers or diners, every table buzzes with talk. The French do talk.

But so do the Brits, and the Germans. The British are loud as their orange-y tans, the Germans sotto voce. The French adopt a uniform conversational tone, setting a universal and incomprehensible buzz, mixing with the heated currents of fresh air and the blinding rays of the relentless sun.

It is almost noon. The siren on the Town Hall will wail soon and for several minutes the shadows from that shrub adjoining the old-timers will disappear from the table top.

by

Miguel

Yesterday, to add to the dismay of reaching almost no one I cared to call I realized something about the “same difference” between my two states of geographic/cartographic being. At the risk of sounding particularly malicious or cynical, I could say I could call my friends here in France—Skype costs two cents a minute no matter the destination—but they, each of them, give the impression of having lives, as opposed to, say, agendas and itineraries.

But what is worse, there was, as has become usual, a dearth of email messages. But we’ll get to that in a minute, or several minutes, or several hundred words.

I do use Skype, a voice over IP (VoIP) service, that for a little more than two cents a minute allows one to call anyone anywhere in the world with a legitimate land line or mobile phone number, as long as you have a Internet connection of sufficient bandwidth. Being the true Scotsman you are, you are no doubt at least aware of it. However, as it’s the “magic” of Internet Protocol exploitation, or trickery if you are of a Creationist bent, anyone with caller ID on their receiving phone equipment sees only a meaningless sequence of ordinal numbers (something like 0000123456).

As a result, even Steve, who has become so sensitized as to the need to make wise use of his discretionary time (time when he is not actively engaged in either his current “thing,” which is playing music (a good thing, may I hasten to add), or the same mindless, heedless temporizing he’s been doing his entire life, when not actually earning a living, which he no longer is required to do even in these parlous times, and I am not picking on him, he’s only first among equals, a body of souls, as the 19th century Russian novelists would say, with remarkably similar lives — creating a new statistical category for taxonomic purposes, those of us sufficiently well off, even after abandoning careers of varying degrees of success for whatever compelling reasons: ennui, angst, sudden loss of interest in life’s calling, or, perhaps, caregiving to loved ones with terminal conditions, and still comfortable, i.e., not reading the help wanted pages, or networking by whatever means, even after the rampages and ravages of the Bushite last fiscal hurrah; I suggest the rubric, the “Non-Retired,” similar to the undead, without the inconvenience as yet of having passed through the actual throes of giving up the ghost)—anyway, he does not answer such calls, especially as his chief and only mode of telephonic connection to the rest of the world is a cell phone.

This means, of course, that he must pay, except for certain hours of the day, even for incoming calls. There is a limit, given the level of service he is paying for, to the number of minutes allotted on a monthly basis before his calls are thrown into a much higher category of toll charges. And, given that his home is in a nearly, but not quite, “dead zone,” (notice a thematic trend here?), which, as you might know, if you watched tv, from some ill-considered grisly television commercials paid for by Verizon, are areas where cell phone reception is absent, or intermittent, but certainly wholly unreliable, he is disposed, prudently, to consider which calls to take and which not.

However, I was trying to write about email, and not to perseverate on my frustration over not being able to contact anyone I know on the short list of people I care to speak by phone to in the United States of America—even in my sequestration in the most rural of precincts of anyone I know (and this includes a number of acquaintances, mainly female as it happens, who for reasons still unfathomable to me choose to spend their waning years, still mentally in full possession, and so forth, and still more than moderately attractive, in such locations as Kabul, Afghanistan, which, though definitely a form of sequestration, especially if you are white and female and have a passport from a so-called first-world country, are definitely not rural, but, in fact, other than certain strategic, if remote, mountain passes in the same country, but which have the definite disadvantage of being among the most deadly, literally, in the entire world, are among the most deadly living areas on the face of the planet). But, as usual, I digress.

The only deaths, according to the newspapers locally, that seem to prevail here in La France Profonde, are the result of suicide (a police captain, with a personal weapon, as opposed to his service weapon, as if the fucking gun would be dishonored with such a dishonorable usage, while sitting in his car, on injured reserve, or whatever the police call it, and not due to return to service until March; they are being unusually mum about the possible reasons; I suspect terminal boredom), or suicide pact, or suicide abduction or suicide seduction (a mother and daughter who elected, there being an absence of subway—to throw themselves in the path of a TGV train; TGV is the acronym for “train à grande vitesse,” which means very high speed train, that being in the area of 180 miles an hour at maximum — a sure fire way to off yourself, and give the coroner some very interesting studies in pathology), or homicide (a young farmer beat his young wife insensate, and then set his farmhouse, with her and their sleeping children within, on fire), there was also a celebrity incident involving his stabbing some bloke with a “poignard” (so much more romantic sounding even than “dagger,” which is what it is), but they are both, alleged perpetrator and his victim, merely under observation and not in danger.

I am not aware if either of them is in possession of a cell phone, or as they prefer to call it here, a “mobile.” It is pronounced with an accent on the first syllable, with a long “o” and the second syllable is pronounced like the excreta of the liver, and not like the city in Alabama. As in “Mo’ bile” similar to (in ghetto English) “mo’ betta’ blues.”

But the subject is email.

Yesterday, I received eleven pieces of email. Indulge me as I enumerate them.

One was actually an acknowledgment of an email that I caused to be sent to another friend, Bill, with a link to Frank Rich’s column in yesterday’s New York Sunday Times‘s “News of the Week in Review,” the sending of which the newspaper allows you to copy to yourself. Although no harm, of course, is done thereby, this kind of reflexive electronic mailing is at least analogous to talking to oneself, something I am proud, or always have been so, to say I never do, though there are those who claim that my style of writing is akin to being a kind of perpetual monologue—the only real monologue, or I should say, “true” monologue, there being no audience that I, at least, can attest to. I assume there is an audience. I will even confess to hoping there is an audience, but as Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller is famous for having written, “one never knows, do one?”—and at worst, it is a kind of slow suicide, intellectual suicide, if you will. So I don’t think that bit of email counts. On the other hand, Bill did acknowledge receipt, and then, in fact, commented on the content of the Rich essay. That was two emails for my one bit of do-goodism.

So that was a good investment on my part. It left me mindful of the golden years of email, back in the 90s, when, in addition to getting actual work done—a full day’s work, for which I was often handsomely rewarded; work that included the use of email for productive discourse concerning the substance of the work for which I was being remunerated—I would conduct sometimes lengthy correspondence with various correspondents, for no other purpose than the joy and pleasure of human contact. The content of those exchanges of messages may have been substantive as well, pithy, or philosophical, as these are natural dispositions, or at least ambitions of mine (and remain so, I might add), or entirely frivolous, if not mindless temporizing (see above). Often enough, certain of my regular correspondents would forward bits of humor they had received in the form of jokes (mainly), or cartoons, or the more technologically adept would forward files of music and the first primitive videos to appear on computers. This was long before the days of iTunes (and Napster… and now the myriad other means of downloading near-commercial quality recordings) or YouTube and its many brethren. Many emails largely consisted of a sentence or two, on the order of, “Check this out!” or “This is cool,” along with a URL to some clever Web site or bit of Web content.

On the average day, not even including actual business-related emails, I would receive for certain, guaranteed, dozens and dozens of emails—not spam or junk or spurious content of any other form; back then, it appeared only at a minimum, as it took at least a couple of years for the production of electronic instant garbage to become a global industry, and an international felony—and often enough, “Oh happy day,” they (email messages) would arrive in the hundreds.

And whereas others, including Linda (who had the onus of managers, and then their managers, and yet more levels of managers above them to the very executive level of the CEO, bearing down upon her to be productive and to cause her many minions to be productive, even whilst they all exchanged hundreds of emails that were, in the main, of that dreary variety of post called memoranda and cover-your-ass notes, all related to the business of IBM, and most of them, in fact, having nothing to do with her specific mandate) lamented the utter lack of headroom because of the volume of email daily, which had to be processed, and yet which arrived in such numbers, from so many levels of hierarchy, that the mere management of which messages to answer, which messages to answer in depth, which merely to store (lest it be sought, however unlikely the future possibility, in some forthcoming query, inquiry, or inquest—of course, now, we learn on the blessed evening of his departure therefrom, the Bush White House has utterly destroyed, lost track of, or simply can refuse to acknowledge ever existed, literally millions of email messages, and there is not a peep or a stir, except the usual ineffectual murmur of protest on the editorial page of The New York Times (another emerging theme here, but related actually, as the NYT is a newspaper, appropriately designated the nation’s “newspaper of record,” that is accurately positioned universally as a dead letter itself, dead news walking, or, at the very least, without over-dramatizing this, a moribund form of news transmittal)), and which messages, finally, to ignore completely, all of which meant that each day was fraught.

The processing of her email usually left Linda with about 20 minutes out of her nominal eight-hour workday, including a yogurt and piece of fruit lunch consumed at her desk, one hand holding a napkin, and the other (hand), no doubt, on either the mouse or the keyboard, in order to get all of her other work done, which means her de facto workday was usually ten to 12 hours. While I blithely would work at least as long, but only because I spent so much time getting all of my work done as well as conducting, if not more than holding up more than my share of, these lively email interchanges I so fondly recall.

But as I say, those were the golden years. And I, social creature that I am, despite my saturnine, if not curmudgeonly reputation, relished the contact, and encouraged it, and promoted it. I sent far more messages than I ever received. I know because I was my own Nielsen rating system, periodically telling my correspondents that, in toto, for each message I received, I had sent something like five or six.

If nothing else, it gave me an incredibly fast touch-typing speed, and, being younger, a much lower percentage of typos and the kinds of solecisms that are now only embarrassing, especially because no one says anything when I send a message that has at least two or three instances of English sentence structure that would be impossible to parse even by a linguist, because I typed a word that passed through my brain minutes before, while projecting ahead to the sentence to come. What the hell? My age is coming in line with the level of expectancy of such mistakes, so in addition to being a crank, I have an excuse for being incomprehensible as well.

However, the point is: in the past, hundreds of messages—I was in epistolary heaven. Today (or yesterday), eleven emails (and I haven’t lost track of the fact that I haven’t actually enumerated each of them as to provenance, subject or purpose).

Two emails were from sources sponsoring services to which I subscribed long since. Not for the pathetic reason of at least being able to expect the occasional quotidian contact, even if only from another machine—and yet, and yet… No, one was from the City of Cambridge, which offers a newsletter telling citizens of that estimable municipality just what’s happening in City Hall, and elsewhere in the confines of the People’s Republik, at least insofar as the official governors of our lives have any say in the matter. It does tell you when there are snow emergency days, and where the Department of Public Works is blocking traffic, and which departments are offering seasonally and temporally relevant services, etc. The other is from one of two sources that provide me with a listing of currency exchange rates for the world’s many great currencies, against the dollar. As I have to pay bills in France in euros, including a mortgage, and mortgage insurance, phone bills, Internet bills, electric bills, water and sewer, home insurance, and the taxes imposed by the government of the great Republic of France because I am a homeowner, and an inhabitant of French real estate, it’s helpful at least to know what the real basis should be of that portion of my daily allowance of anxiety about matters beyond my actual control should be.

I got an email, as I do with infrequent regularity from a diminishing list of friends who pass along what passes for humor, which inevitably has been forwarded to them from their dwindling sources. What is curious, aside from the innate lack of humor in any of the materials thereby forwarded to me, is the quality of a kind of mass or global perseveration. The jokes, or videos, or cartoons, or “astounding images,” or bits of audio, are materials recycled, as I would swear in court, repeatedly over the space of at least the last 15 years—the amount of time it is reasonable to expect is the maximum an ordinary citizen like myself could have possibly spent on the World Wide Web, as it used to be called.

In the old days (see notes on “golden age of email,” above) I could expect a regular flow of material, much of it quite humorous and usually coming from my stock broker (this being entirely reasonable, as brokerages were among the first businesses to comprehend the power and value of the Internet as a communications medium, and therefore were the first to expend the enormous amounts necessary to “wire” a network nationally for their employees, which thereby provided them with connectivity with all their peers in all the other brokerages and financial service companies). Because they were the only ones wired to one another coast-to-coast, brokers and their co-workers, managers, etc. were always the first to “break” new material, irrespective of the source, usually one coast or the other. That much of it was, in fact, not work related, but simply jokes and other kinds of humor, made of it, at worst, a benefit. I am sure bosses turned a blind eye. Stock brokering is a nasty business, as we all know, and anything that improves morale…

Anyway, the same, or very similar, materials are still being cycled and recycled.

The only other material of this type I see are videos of commercials, usually advertising products in foreign markets, and usually with overtones of sexuality that are, in the main, verboten on American television. Further, while I’m on the subject, and not that I object, except for the fundamental sophomoric, if not jejune, quality, and ultimate sameness, at least some of these occasional “pass-along” messages (usually with the admonition in the subject heading, either to turn down the volume, or to view the screen in private) include photographs or videos that feature, prominently, the naked and almost fictive breasts of young women of uncommon beauty and usually of the age segment known as nubile. Needless to say, being on the far reaches of the segment known as “middle-aged” myself, these images are usually sent by middle-aged men of my circle who really, in my opinion, should be spending more time thinking of ways to make their mates, if they are so happily provided, aware of how much they appreciate them—with flowers, say, or terms of endearment, or kisses involving the tongue, or caresses. There’s no need to belabor this.

One email from yesterday, much treasured, is from a female acquaintance—I would like to say a friend, but it is not for me to say—whom I recently met, and who was responding to an email sent by me to her, and upon whom, I should add, I would readily bestow instances of the foregoing suggested attentions I have outlined above. I was lamenting the inadequacy, or lack of reliability, of electronic media. This as a pertinent subject, as she has just returned to the United States from foreign travel, and I remain here, in this state of compromised sequestration, and all we have are phones and computers with which to communicate. And, as if to emphasize the point I am carrying on at such lengths to elaborate here, in fact, as so many people still do, or once again do so, she prefers the phone to email. So I cannot hope for much solace in that form—the electronic epistolary form—from that quarter.

The last of the emails I have not accounted for comes from an old dear friend, a man I have known for 35 years, well, 36 now, with the new year. He makes his living as a consultant and adviser to senior management, and he is very good at it. He is kind and courteous enough to include me on his mailing list of clients to whom he regularly sends, gratis, tips, very brief, and, actually, substantive and useful, as a way of reminding them that he stands ready to serve in any number of possible roles to the betterment of their business.

Obviously, I cannot avail myself of his services, and, though I’d prefer a personal note, even of equal brevity, he has to make a living. I understand this perfectly, but the value of the email he sends me is thereby reduced. Indeed, it’s a form of rubbing salt in the wound of my own incapacity, or indifference, or mere lack of initiative, in pursuing, by the same means, some kind of interest on the part of my potential audience by regularly making the same sort of contact with the objective of periodically extracting money from them in exchange for matters of value produced by me.

One could say that this essay, as it has turned out to be, is my own form of maintaining contact with those whose relationship to me I treasure. But, I am now pushing 3300 words, and counting, with this particular utterance. And I know, long since, because my friends, and other members of the audience I do have—usually as silently as they maintain themselves—that long-winded disquisitions, excrescences, call them what you will are non-starters. The age of the epistolary exchange, even over distances far shorter than that between my living room in the deepest heart of La France Profonde, and the living rooms of Cambridge, Boston, New York, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, and many other great cities, north, and south and east of these destinations, which are the dwelling places of my dear friends, has long since died—I’d say in about 1876, when Alex Bell first uttered that immortal summons to Mr. Watson.

And it was the progeny of Bell’s great invention that sealed not the fate, but the tomb of that latter day epistolary form. As Bush, and all other politicians, and millions of businesspeople, will tell you, email simply is trouble.

Further, of course, no one writes any more. They text. Words are dying. Memes are rampant. Why should I write to you, when I cn txt u?

So I’ll finish by saying simply this, my friend. l8r

by

As often happens when I am in Provence I have a sense of living parallel lives.

I no longer think in terms of “back home” when I am either in Cambridge or in Fox-Amphoux. They are co-extensive. Or, I suppose, I should say co-existential.

My sense of privilege in this regard, that is, having two places to call home of equal merit and with equivalent worries attached, has heightened in the past seven or eight months. The quotidian details of what there is to be concerned about in either place are of equal merit, or equal unimportance, depending on my point of view. There are leaks of tiny size here and there both here and there. There are stuck doors, or ill-fitting ones, and windows in the same disorder in both places. This is of little moment.

The question of privilege is an important one. Stanley Fish, the redoubtable professor, now of law, formerly of English language and literature, reminded me of the privilege in a recent blog entry of his on The New York Times site. His theme was his own grouchiness, and his brief private war with the ridiculous, yet official, corporate syntax, of his telephonic nemesis, AT&T. It seems he must contend semi-annually, as he closes down one household and prepares to occupy another, with old Mother Bell to have them minimize his service in his absence.

As he said, he knows at least 50 people will rebuke him for complaining about conditions which only the privileged suffer. Hence my allusion. However, I am, of course, not complaining, not by any means.

As much as there are similarities, there are as well many differences. Which explains the title of my book that is mainly about the nature of life over here insofar as I can construe it from my parallax view (the book is Same Difference / Life in France: Peter Mayle Got Some of It Right, and you can buy a special edition, with a special limited edition cover photo and design and other rare appurtenances, here: https://www.bertha.com/same_difference/private_edition.html ). The book aside, I do have plenty of time to ponder the Franco-American duality of my life.

Here, there was a rare and powerful snow storm, which paralyzed the entire region. It occurred four days ago, and the natives are still recovering. At worst, here in the heart of the heart of the southeast, which is referred to as Haute Provence, because of the elevation, we had perhaps five or six inches of the white stuff. The local daily paper is still printing photos, today’s shots being aerial views that they repeatedly refer to as “un vrai carte postale de montagne.” Or such was the description of, among other localities, our little village, as shot from the air, making the rear page of the paper. The publisher, Gantié, must be hard up for talent. One wonders too what they make of the world-wide reputation of the region in general at all other times of the year, in all seasons, and of which one has one’s pick from thousands of true post card views of the mountains, not to mention the valleys, the grape vines, the lavender fields, the Alpine snows, the Alpine lakes.

Day before yesterday, the big headline, on the front page of the paper, was “Haute Provence paralysé par chutes de neige,” in case anyone who happened to be in the territory (and you couldn’t get out, because they closed Marseille airport and one of the major autoroutes for two days—the paper yesterday and today was festooned with powerfully stupefying photojournalism showing the six-hour traffic jams on the secondary roads) missed the prevailing conditions.

I shouldn’t be so cynical I realize about what are truly rare conditions. I’d say once in a lifetime (they used to speak of 100-year snowfalls, they came so rarely; only they now come, well, about every eight years or so, but that’s climate change for you—no one in France, a country unencumbered by a mistrust of science as we in the U.S. experience it, speaks of global warming, perhaps because warming does not explain temperatures averaging six degrees cooler than usual, and 10 centimeter snowfalls, instead of crippling rainstorms that last for days). But it’s no longer once in a lifetime unless we speak of the lifetime of fruit flies. Here it’s nevertheless truly news (les vraies nouvelles), far more so than the same inane images and hyped prose that passes for news every winter and summer, as ordinary conditions on local U.S. stations and the dying newspapers crowd out real news happening outside our native North American borders.

What happens within our Yankee borders, aside from the weather, seems ordinary enough as well. I note that the Senate has been sworn in, save two seats, left empty because of our biennial political snafus—not precisely hundred-year affairs, far from it.

Except for primaries, runoffs are rare in our country. I am no student, never mind a scholar, of such matters, but I assume there are few if any runoffs to settle electoral disputes, at least for the highest offices. I believe there are local and regional contests that are settled by runoff. But in the main, that is, for state-wide and Federal offices, they are increasingly rare. Rather for the most part, and sadly for democracy, these matters are now infamously decided by courts.

The less than redoubtable Coleman of Minnesota has elected, so to speak, to challenge his challenger, the now formerly jocose Al Franken, in court, because after repeated recounts Franken is now a hair’s breadth, electorally speaking, in front in the Senate race.

I wish there were a runoff. It seems the only fair way. Yet it is always positioned as undemocratic, without substantiation. What it is is expensive and time-consuming. And cost is the ultimate political factor in a capitalist republic such as ours.

Given the deeper costs of seating compromised candidates, I wonder at the wisdom of such economies—not to mention the inevitable price to the public of the allure to so many politicians who finally attain the offices they seek of exploiting their hard-won mandate, and the power and the glory that go with it. To speak of power and glory with regard to a seat in Congress may seem like overstatement, but we are now living the nightmare of unchecked, that is, unregulated, activity in a wide spiral of financial manipulation… and all because our sworn representatives failed in their responsibility to take adequate steps to leave legislation in place where it existed, or to create it where it didn’t, that would have been at least a stumbling block for the greedy.

Some will long lament, and for a long time to come many will make an industry of studying, the effect of having the sitting Supreme Court of December 2000 determine the legitimacy of George Bush’s presidency. And all because a recount was aborted in a single state. Never mind a runoff.

Given the vagaries of the constituents of the Florida election debacle that was settled by the nine old men and women of the Supreme Judicial Court of the nation, we might still be attempting to settle that one.

Nature, implacable as we understand it to be, has nothing on the sense we have in the United States (and likely almost every other “stable” government on earth) that nothing, but nothing must be allowed to stall the progress of civilization as embodied in the transition from one sitting administration, or office holder, to the next one, duly elected. As if an election had the mystical power of an ineluctable body; usually of the sort we believe to derive its authority from some other source than the world, or, more broadly, the entire physical universe. As in, the infallibility of religious leaders.

Who are we to thwart such an inevitability as the installation of a political officer at his appointed time in the appointed place? We might as well else stop a typhoon or a hurricane. Impossible? Of course, but we’re working on it.

In the meantime, in a much smaller way, but equally ineluctably, there is a runoff here in the higher reaches of the littoral. The snow, so much a burden and an obstacle, was doomed to a short life. And, just as every spring, even in the highest reaches of every inhabited corner and cranny of America, there is a runoff, from the high places to the low, the snow has quickly turned to what it is after all, and all in all, but simply water.

For four days, what does not simply melt into air, melts into streams and rivulets and slim threads of drainage. I have been listening to it run, just outside my door and windows. Listening to it drip from the eaves. Just as it is all over the region.

The sun has re-asserted itself, and temperatures even in the barely lengthening days of mid-January reach back into the high 40s and 50s. And with the runoff, which will end deepening the water table, in check for the coming thirsty grapes, comes some hope, once again, of spring not being too far off. We mark the new season here, as I have noted elsewhere in the past, somewhat earlier than in the northeast of the U.S. Spring unofficially arrives on the day, usually in February, though last year and the year before, pace climate change and all that, it arrived in late January, when the almond tree just outside the cemetery gate blossoms. As if Persephone had passed a spectral hand across its boughs.

By then, I will be back in the United States, and dreaming of my village, and with waking thoughts imagining those blossoms and their promise of renewal. I will think of the runoff here, life-giving. There is no other way to think of it.

And I will hope, as millions of others will hope, that our fears that the fiscal snows, blindly raging as they have been, unstoppable, freezing us in place, ineluctable, if not, for good and all and finally, as in our worst fear, implacable, will also melt away. And there will be that runoff that augurs spring and rebirth, and a blossoming.

by

Although there is a permanent means of subscribing that’a’way (<), in the left-hand column, it is kind of buried.

So, periodically, I’ll put the link in your face, as I’m doing here.

Once you subscribe by this means, you will get an email reminder every time I publish a new post, including an excerpt and a link to the full post on this site.

Here’s the mechanism for subscribing by email:

You can also, of course, subscribe to a feed, which amounts to the same thing. Look for the little RSS logo and click on it, and your browser will ask you how you want to take care of the rest. If you don’t know what RSS or a feed is, this may be a mistake until you find out.

Enjoy! And remember, subscribe today! Never miss another post of “per diem”

by

Osso Turko (turkey thighs cooked in the manner of osso bucco)

serves four

Braising dish or deep paella pan with a domed lid, preferably about 13” in diameter

2 Large turkey thighs (to really do it right, have the butcher use a meat saw to cut the thighs in two, transversely, that is, so there’s half the thigh bone in each half; you would end up with four halves this way), at least 1-1/4 lbs each, preferably a bit more [make sure they use a saw; poultry bones splinter… your guests will be crunching on tiny slivers of turkey bone thinking they’ve broken a tooth or a crown]

1 28-oz can of San Marzano whole tomatoes, grown and packed in Italy (use others, like from the U.S., but most of them are bland, unappetizing, and will make this dish taste a little less swell; they are increasingly cultivated in other countries; San Marzano is a variety of plum tomato, originating in the commune of San Marzano in the Campania region of Italy; the best of this variety comes from this region)

1 cup, more or less, robust red wine (I use an Australian Shiraz, though any syrah will do; or a Mourvedre, a Sangiovese, a chianti, a pinot noir, a Cahors Malbec)

1 – 1-1/2 cups beef stock [stock, not broth]

1/4 cup Marsala (dry) wine (or any fortified “dry” wine, even tawny porto)

1/2 large fresh fennel bulb, finely chopped

2 large stalks celery, finely chopped

1 medium to large yellow onion, finely chopped

3-4 whole cloves of garlic (or even more if you like garlic) skinned, with the green shoot removed from within the cloves, finely chopped

Sea salt

Whole black pepper in a good grinder

1 Tablespoon of very good cocoa powder (not processed, not cocoa “mix,” but pure cocoa)

Fish sauce (Vietnamese, Thai, or your favorite)

3-4 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (I shouldn’t have to say this, but use French or Italian olive oil; they’re better), plus a little extra

12 ounces dried pappardelle pasta (preferably imported from Italy; god luck finding pappardelle made in this country, unless it’s fresh made)

kosher salt

Rub the turkey thighs with olive oil so each one (or each half of one) is completely coated. Try not to disturb the skin on the turkey. Grind some black pepper coarsely on both surfaces of each thigh, and sprinkle both surfaces with a little sea salt.

In the braising dish with a domed lid or the equivalent, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over a medium-high flame.

When the oil is hot, and not smoking, place the turkey pieces skin-side down in the hot oil. Allow to brown well (kind of a deep mahogany) and turn to brown the other side equally. Set aside the turkey when done.

While the turkey is browning (it should take at least four minutes to a side, if the flame is adjusted properly, and you haven’t burned it by that point), drain the can of tomatoes into a bowl, preserving the tomato juice/puree, discard the remnants of basil leaves in which they are traditionally packed, and getting the tomatoes themselves as free of liquid as you can.

Add another tablespoon or so of olive oil to the hot pan, after removing the turkey pieces to a plate or platter.

When the added oil is heated, add all the chopped aromatics (garlic, onion, fennel, celery) and mix well, coating every bit, in the pan. It should all be sizzling in about a minute or two. Turn down the heat to medium-low or low, and cover the pan.

Let the aromatics sweat until limp and translucent.

While sweating the aromatics, chop the tomatoes coarsely (not anywhere as fine as the aromatics).

Remove the cover and stir the aromatics, and then add all the chopped tomatoes. Mix everything to disperse the tomatoes, and recover over the same heat. Allow the tomatoes to sweat for maybe three to five minutes.

Remove the cover, and there should be a fair amount of water, released from the tomatoes and other aromatics. Turn up the heat to medium-high or even high, if you’re prepared to be vigilant, and stir the aromatics occasionally (every half-minute or so) until the water is almost all boiled off, and the aromatics have formed a thick jelly.

Turn down the heat to medium-low, and add each turkey piece, skin-side up to the pan, trying to avoid having the pieces touch (they shouldn’t in a 13″ pan). Spoon the aromatics that are not under the turkey on top of each piece of turkey, distributing it evenly, and coating each piece completely with the aromatics.

Pour the tomato juice you drained into the pan.

Add the Marsala (or other fortified) wine.

Turn up the heat to medium-high.

Add the wine, trying to distribute it evenly without pouring it directly on the turkey.

Sprinkle the cocoa evenly over the liquid, but not the turkey. Stir carefully into the liquid.

Sprinkle a shot or two of fish sauce in — no more than a 1/4 teaspoon or so. This stuff is killer salty, in addition to being a ready source of umame, which is why I say put it in.

Now add as much stock as is needed to bring the level of the liquid in the pan about half-way up the height of the turkey pieces. Stir the liquid so it’s well blended, stirring carefully so as not to disturb the turkey or the aromatics coating the pieces.

When the liquid has begun to boil, turn down heat to a simmer, or slightly less. Re-cover the pan.

Check in two or three minutes to make sure the liquid is barely simmering.

Periodically (no longer than every 15-20 minutes) uncover the pan and spoon the pan juices over each piece of turkey carefully, not disturbing the aromatics covering each piece).

Halfway into the cooking, at least an hour or so (this is more by way of “feel” or intuition; braising is inexact, and you will be a way from being able to tell if the meat is tenderizing sufficiently), turn over each piece of turkey with tongs, and recover with aromatics piled on each piece.

Cook for at least two or two and-a-half hours, the longer the better. Test for doneness, but sticking the tine of a carving fork or a metal barbecue skewer into the turkey. It should enter the flesh and be withdrawn with not very much effort (in short, it should be very very tender). Have tongs at the ready to hold the meat down while you extract the fork (if needed; and if so, the meat isn’t tender enough)

Start a large stockpot of water for the pasta on a high flame to reach boiling.

Scrape the coatings off each piece of turkey, and remove the turkey with tongs to a heated platter. Set aside.

Turn the heat to high.

Reduce the liquid and aromatics in the pan, stirring regularly, scraping the sides and bottom of the pan, until they are a very thick sauce, the liquid should be the consistency of heavy cream or maple syrup draining off the spoon.

[You may also add the extra step of setting the turkey aside on a heated platter and covering loosely with a “tent” of aluminum foil. Strain the sauce filled with aromatics through a very fine sieve. Use a wooden spoon gently to force all the liquid out of the solids. Don’t try to crush the solids to get out every drop of liquid. You can press on the pulp. You’ll get it with practice. This extra step produces a more unctuous, almost soigné version of this still very meaty robust sauce.]

Place the turkey back in the pan with the sauce, turn down the heat, and spoon the sauce over the turkey. Re-cover and set the flame to the lowest setting possible, or simply turn off the flame.

When the pasta water is boiling, add a palm-full of kosher salt to the pot (sea salt is OK also, but it’s more expensive). Add the pappardelle noodles to the pot and stir and cook to direction. Imported dried pasta should cook to al dente firmness in about four minutes.

When the pasta is ready, turn the flame on under the turkey (if you have turned it off) to lowest setting, just to regain any heat lost, and keep the cover covered.

Drain the pasta and distribute to four plates.

Serve the turkey on top of the pasta, and spoon an ample amount of sauce over the turkey and pasta on each plate. If you have not had your butcher cut the thighs in two as suggested, the meat should be so tender that you can serve it out of the pan, cutting each thigh in two using the edge of a large cooking spoon. Two of the lucky diners will get the piece with the bone to gnaw on.

Bon appétit.

[Note: you can enrich this recipe and the flavor even further, by adding dried porcini mushrooms that have been revived in hot beef stock and a little wine for about a half hour; do this when you start the recipe; add the mushrooms and their liquid (about 1 to 1-1/2 ounces of dried mushrooms in about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of stock and a little wine) at the same time you add the wine and the beef stock to the pan as braising liquid; you should still maintain the “no higher than half way up the sides of the turkey pieces” rule, so just add less beef stock.]

©2008, Howard Dinin. All rights reserved.

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This is not the pear in question. This is, for one thing, not a comice pear. Indeed, strictly speaking, this is not a pear at all.

I have just eaten a perfectly ripe comice pear. It sat on the cutting board on top of a utility cart full of cooking implements and wine. It was there for about five days now.

It is my lunch.

I divided it using one of those metal nine or eleven bladed rings that cut the fruit in slices and at the same time core it.

As I ate it, I concentrated less and less on what I was thinking. What I was thinking was probably either inconsequential or anxiety-provoking anyway. I concentrated instead on the experience of eating each section of this juicy, but not dripping, fruit.

If it were possible to make candy that tastes like that pear, it would give whoever did so the chance to know in one very tiny way what’s it like to be a god. It only seems simple for a moment.

Happy now?

by

That’s my response to one of the guests I’ve just fed, often a good friend, very often a woman. Whether it’s in my own home, or at the home of a friend, where I’ve been enlisted to cook, sometimes the whole meal, sometimes part of it, often to consult on the ministrations of the host or hostess.

Maybe if I were Marcella Hazan, they'd listen. She had this to say, in an opinion piece just posted on the New York Times web site, here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/opinion/29hazan.html

Cambridge is so, well, Cambridge, that it has three Whole Foods Markets, serving a city (and some surrounding towns) with a population of only around 100,000 people, and amply studded with nearby Shaw’s, Star Market (owned by Shaw’s), Foodmaster, and several other chain food market outlets.

The Whole Foods nearest me, on River Street, just a few hundred yards from the bridge that takes you to Cambridge from Boston, which I came to know quite well, for location of goods, etc. recently underwent a massive renovation. They remodeled the store, enlarging merchandising areas, and rearranging departments significantly. The greatest change was the amount of space they gave to prepared foods, especially hot foods, sitting in grand, freestanding stations, with dozens of dishes every day kept at serving temperature in bains marie.

They added an appetizer bar to the cheese and wine section, selling various savories, olives, and spreads, like tapenade and its variants, for $9.99 a pound.

All this, as I quickly discovered, at the expense of a significantly diminished inventory of varied SKUs. Favorite raw and dried, and especially bulk (as in "whole") foods, grains, legumes, flours, meals, etc., all these foods began disappearing months ago, as the store slowly and then more rapidly made its transition into, essentially, a glorified cafeteria. There has always been seating, mainly booths, at the front of the store, and these areas are always full of diners at lunch and dinner time. I suspect, however, that most of the prepared foods (they now have a pizza bar, where they are constantly turning out large oval pizzas in a stone oven designed to produce results that simulate a wood-fired brick oven. They sell the pizza by weight, reheating it in the oven if you like) go home with the customers, for a hurried meal, or a spread for grazing by various itinerant members of the household.

I've already lectured at least one assistant "team-leader" (they have no one called "manager" at these Whole Foods stores) saying there are still some of us who actually cook, you know? From scratch?

They are always sympathetic, but tell me that their observations passed along are essentially worthless.

I'd say the game is up, when one of the country's largest and most successful purveyors of the goodness of "whole foods" — well, duh, it's in the name, it's the brand guys — capitulates to the demands of a market that grows increasingly less self-sufficient, never mind the corrosive effects on our sense of family cohesion, community, and the meaning of friendship and the bond of closeness.

Give it up Chef Marcella. You're too late.

by

I have been struck (I probably deserve to be struck many times for current, and certainly for past, transgressions), by two things among many observations I have had to make in the last four or five weeks. It is in that time that I effected a major alteration in my routine, at least temporarily, by subscribing (paying actual cash money, or the equivalent) to not one, but two on-line dating services. Should it become germane or salient to what I have to say at any time I will name one or the other of them. In the meantime, I assume at this point that my experiences are typical, irrespective of the specific virtual venue. Individual details may cause them to differ, but largely as a result of the actual narrowness of target marketing of the service.

There may also be certain self-selecting differences as a result, insofar as one site vs. another might show an apparent variable demonstration of one aspect of behavior linked to the specific affinity or sense of identity associated with that site. My hypothesis: one site may call for people to join who feel a particularly strong affinity (ethnic, behavioral, cultural or intellectual propensities, hobbies etc.) and that affinity may carry with it certain expected behaviors. In practical terms, my experience has been that female participants on one site are much more likely to initiate a correspondence than on the other.

On the other hand, this latter less assertive-minded service would appear to have a very large and compendious membership and therefore a larger database of possible stated fantasies (wishes, hopes, desires, ideals, dreams, etc.) the member would declare as a desirable trait in a potential mate, and, also, of course, a larger number in any one demographic segment, women or men of a specific age range, than rival, more targeted services. They operate in a larger tent.

There are arguments for joining either type of group, and so, of course, I joined both. This was a major mistake, but the nature of that mistake is a subject for another time. The positive aspect of this error in judgment is that I briefly intensified, or amplified, the overall experience, and I was also exposed to (in almost all polite senses) a very much larger number of candidates for my attention than I might have with either one alone. My conclusions about the most striking phenomenon I observed are the subject of what I have to say here.

By no accident, the preponderance of the women I “met” (which I put in quotation marks, because I met, face-to-face, a very small fraction of the women I contacted, either on my own initiative, or because I elected to respond to their overture to me), were more or less local and more or less within five years of my age. And the ones I met in person, were but a very much smaller fraction still of the overall number of women brought to my attention one way or another, and these covered a range of ages. A very wide ranges of ages.

At the highest level of “screening,” these services allow a user at any time to know and to view not only the basic identifiers, like age, geographic location, and photo, if there is one, but the entire profile, of any individual member who has elected one way or another to linger over a view of the entire profile of that user. In short, if they looked at you and decided to take a closer look, you know it, and you can look at them. The ultimate in reciprocal voluntary vetting (using tainted data, as every narrator is suspect; these services all make clear in disclaimers that you cannot avoid seeing that they do not do “background checks” on anyone, so it’s caveat lector).

In this case, the entirety of the membership, paid or unpaid, may view my profile, including photos, carefully selected, as well as written personal characteristics and thoughts or feelings about myself, carefully crafted, plus the usual lists of “traits” drawn mainly from a list of choices, otherwise inalterable, that appear in drop-down menus for “multiple-choice” factual facets of one’s being. There are as well “short answer essays,” for example, last books read, or music preferred, or favorite places. Some sites make it simply a laundry list of various aspects of what is presumed to be personality. “I am considered by others to be…,” or “I consider myself to be….” Adventure is a major theme and "life as an adventure" a major taxonomic category for a great many members, at least among the women. At first I began to think they were all Lara Croft in their minds.

One factor that becomes paramount among members of a “certain age” (yes, this is that famous age, or age spread, if you don’t mind my use of this possible pejorative; we rarely want to speak of anything that is “spread,” or “spreading” — it only seems as if aging is spreading, the fact is we tend to clump ourselves by age), that is, adults in the ages between 50s and 60s, plus-or-minus, with a larger than 3% margin of invention, er, error, is precisely and honestly how old you are. As opposed to say, how old you are in your head, how old you appear, how old you’re taken for, how old society determines is superannuated, or over the hill, how old you are when you really must take a position on this whole life after death thing.

I am 62 years old, for about three more months. In what is very rapidly becoming six months, I will have been made a widower by the death of my wife. I have no reason to lie about these facts of my life, though I needn’t broadcast the specific temporal details, and certainly not my state-of-mind, emotional state, etc. I do not see this as a lie by omission. Marital status is one of the very few items that everyone sees if they are shown, or seek, or accidentally scroll past your basic listing: photo (if you’ve posted one), age, marital status, gender of user and gender sought. I have never, in fact, lied about my age. I have been accused of it, usually by someone I always suspect of being ingratiating (or perhaps of an overly pitying disposition) who declares their amazement and the certainty that I am lying in the upward direction. Of course I am, dude. Society places such reverence in old age (anyone over 45). It’s an ironic situation to be in, in all events, as it was my, the boomer, generation, which made popular and universal the notion that no one over 30 is to be trusted. We were off by almost 30 years.

I have also, I hasten to add, never lied about my marital status or whether I have children. These seem, as a matter of course, things people don’t lie about in general. So it’s not a particular mark of self-esteem. Finally, if asked, I have never lied about how recently (in relative terms) my late wife breathed her last. Not that that isn’t top of mind to some. A number of women whom I’ve spoken to in real time, either on the phone or in person, have asked about how recently Linda died, and other salient questions concerning her death, my involvement, etc. soon after the conversation began. I think they were either trying to make some assessment, using whatever skills they have, of my actual emotional “availability,” or merely were making some measure against what they understood somehow or other as some behavioral or emotional yardstick (straight out of the school of prescriptive thinking: if it’s the third month, you must be angry). Everyone a social worker (actually there's a remarkably high incidence of people in the behavioral health professions… so one must always be prepared to be under scrutiny, even if you seem not to be).

However, age falls into another category altogether, especially for us boomers, who are neither the “greatest generation,” nor the most obtuse, or the most post-modern, but we are the generation that will never say die, or, presumably, ever go gentle into that good night.

After five weeks on these dating services, having observed hundreds of photos (most of them inept snapshot quality, though a very few are clearly of professional quality or the equivalent, these surprisingly being of women who obviously want to show themselves, but honestly, to their best advantage, and not, as one might suspect, or anticipate, in order to use the significant technological advances in photo editing software to mask their stage of maturity) I can make certain general observations. The most blatant treatments or methods in obscuring the appearance (which is not the putative objective in terms of participant expectation — we’re supposed to attract one another; not keep each other at arm’s length for as long as possible while somehow conniving to move on to the next step: actually of meeting) are the Vaseline-on-the-lens gauzy, luminescent, “ready for my close-up C.B.” method, which obscures all detail or makes you think you’ve forgotten your reading glasses, and in the process, eradicated wrinkles, crepe-like skin, flaccidity, and the “what are those? Oh, you know what they’re called, there under your chin, where your neck used to be, etc.?” or there’s the “here I am from a distance” method, which mainly reveals that you are most likely to be recognized as female even by victims of myopia, and that you have hair — this is always a much better focused photograph usually showing a great deal of detail of the surrounding landscape — though we are by no means in the realm of the environmental portrait. The more creative individuals actually place themselves in surroundings that are, in themselves, interesting to observe (and associate in one’s mind with the individual under scrutiny), and I’m not talking about beaches or blatantly tropical venues — these are sui generis: I’m almost tempted to say that every woman out there loves the beach (especially walks thereon, either at sunrise or sunset), anything having to do with water, including merely gazing out upon vast expanses, and they also not only love dogs, but have at least one. Many “portraits” include a pet.

The less blatant strategy is simply to use out-of-date snaps from a time that you could be shown to much better advantage — many women (I may appear to be singling out women; I simply cannot account for what men do, as I haven’t seen any profiles of any males; I have no reason to think they don’t act in the same self-deluded way, if not worse) hedge here, by including some disclaimer in their grand essay, “About Me,” that the photos shown are current. This can be a very elastic adjective: “current” seems to mean anywhere from, “within the past year” to “taken no earlier than the last decade of the previous century.” I think it’s safe to say that anyone who has had a nominally ordinary existence within the confines of society, as opposed, say, within the confines of an eight-by-eleven foot one-room shack in the foothills of the Allegheny mountains since the age of six, sequestered from anyone over the age of 25, and who has normal brain function and studied basic arithmetic, will discover a sense of cognitive dissonance when observing photos of an adult female, claiming to be, let’s say, 59 years of age, and yet who looks remarkably and refreshingly as if she were still in her 40s, if not her 30s. One woman alternated, cleverly, contemporaneous full color photos of herself with sepia photos of what must have been herself at a very young age, in the first full flush of womanhood, late teens or early 20s, the embodiment of that great adjective (which men invariably believe is somehow salacious in meaning), “nubile.”

I can understand the desire for appearing to be much younger than one actually is. Some people, men and women, are endowed with the genetic makeup that brings this about. Linda, my late wife, was regularly taken for a much younger woman, even after suffering the ravages of several years of cancer and its treatment. Indeed, her appearance, especially when we first met and courted, and then co-habited, caused me no end of chagrin. No doubt as I have a tendency to appear far more decrepit than I actually am, despite what I said above; some people, I suppose are simply cruel, in order to be kind — these days I am regularly taken for 63, sometimes even 64 — and she was regularly taken for 28, even when she was 42, as she was when she moved in with me (a mere 46 myself), I was accused of the most scurrilous motives regularly (and, strangely, more by men than women; so I think jealousy was a major factor). However these are the rare and fortunate exceptions. It’s also possible, looking backward, that until they found out the truth about Linda’s chronological age in fact, these women, pleasant and smiling and friendly as always, were in reality seething.

At some point, and this might as well be it, I might as well make the usual observations about the more narcissistic traits of my generation, the baby boomer generation, and its cult of youth. I doubt we are, or have been, any worse than any previous generation in regard to the apparently very human trait of somehow mentally fixing our sensibilities for life somewhere around the age of majority. My mother, at the age of 87, admitted to being a perpetual 19 in her head (and hence being startled often when looking into a mirror at the ancient creature staring back at her), and this is, I admit, about the age I am probably fixed at myself.

However this may or may not be true of human nature, it is certainly true of boomer nature that we have institutionalized a kind of mass denial. For the longest time, this allowed us to imagine that we were capable of not only great things, but of almost anything, including the impossible — ours was the generation of great potentiality. I have only two words to say in the face of that: George Bush. And hasn’t the most repeated thing you’ve heard lately about the man who is still our President, and will be for another 72 days or so, been along the lines of how these eight years have “aged” the poor man?

Ours is not a generation that takes kindly to aging, or to admitting it. Which is the other thing that is true of boomers, and that is, somehow, that we will age, but we will never get old. For in age, old age in particular, is not only the inevitability of death — and at least five or six per cent of us will concede that we are, in fact, mortal; goddam-it — but the inevitability that age will overtake us, and the skin will wrinkle and sag, and the hair will turn grey and then white, assuming we keep any significant percentage of it, and our muscles will lose their tone, and our limbs will lose their, well, limber.

The great anodyne is doing it all together. And intimacy of the sort we still manage to nurture and preserve among ourselves as couples and close friends brings with it a kind of softness of vision (not of the correctable sort) that transcends reality, or perhaps magically allows us to see the individual for who they may appear to be to all others at this very moment in real time, while also seeing them as we have always seen them in our mind’s eye (never needing vision correction, as memory is always 20-20, even when it is wrong or inventing things), from the moment we met them, and certainly from the moment we fell in love.

However the combination of age and strangeness is a cruel formulation.

And being alone, or, that is, without a mate, at just about any age beyond 50, I’d say, makes everyone suffering this condition strange. There is no escaping it. It doesn’t matter how well tuned in you are to your own condition of mind. It doesn’t matter how “well-adjusted” you are. When you have no mutual (or reciprocal) love interest you are lonely, and loneliness makes you strange.

It makes you do things you otherwise do not approve of, in others especially. It certainly makes a great many women who put themselves out there simply lie.

They lie about their ages. They lie about the evidence of their ages. They lie about the contradictions inherent in anything greater than the most perfunctory analysis of the facts they present for appraisal. They lie in the face of physical evidence. They lie in the face of adherence to truth as one of the values they espouse in life. They lie to men who say they hate lying (or, to put it positively, who say they prize truth and honesty above almost all other virtues as the foundation for what is essential in a long term relationship — LTR for short — and that is, trust).

Two excuses are given, if the subject even comes up as the basis for further discussion once you are past that very brief, sometimes off-handed moment — and, in my experience, with no indication that the perpetrator, that is, the liar, has any sense of the conversational diversity and richness to be effected by a little syncopation, for example, by slipping into a discussion about politicians that they are not really 58 (or 52), but 61 (or 62), and seeing if they can get a rise, or hoping they won't and they will have already so charmed their would-be suitor that he simply no longer cares — when they admit to their profoundly minor transgression.

It has been always, in my experience, handled en passant. My instincts have told me that the best way to behave, that is, for me to behave, is entirely passively, that is, as a listener, or if you prefer, a receptacle. There is no point in having an entire encounter hinge on my reaction to being informed that the human sitting opposite me has lied to me, about anything, before learning anything of any consequence regarding our suitability to one another, that is, what used to be called our compatibility. Therefore, I have been mum, certainly with the women who have admitted to the prevarication, not to mention any others who may have misrepresented this inalienable, very specific and incontrovertible fact about themselves. In two very specific instances, by some exquisitely similar timing, the admission as to age, off-the-cuff, off-handed in one instance, and in an appropriate conversational context on the other, came well into the same point of our first meeting, which involved sitting down to dine. Ensemble.

I’m not so preoccupied with the specific matter, though I am with truth-telling in all regards, that I distract myself with my feelings on the matter, as soon as it is apparent that there is an issue. It’s always an issue for me. I simply prefer the truth. And the fact is, despite the requirement that we state an age preference for our sought-after dates or matches, call these couplings, or what you will, I really don’t care about someone’s age. I will either be attracted to them or not.

In addition to whatever attraction (which I guarantee will be more likely the more comely the object of my desire; and facing facts, as it’s as true of men as of women, there is more comeliness of a certain species-perpetuating variety among the younger members of our society — there’s a reason for this, but this is no place for a discussion about biology or genetics, especially as I’m discussing ethics). Whatever my attitude, or that of any other man, or at least putting this aspect of the argument aside for just a moment, it is clear that women of a certain age must face the question of age with far more gravity than the world is willing to admit openly.

A very good friend, a long long time veteran of having to seek connections, or matches, or whatever it is we are to call the liaisons that we manage to make: proto-friendships (but these women aren’t interested in making friends; they want a mate), contacts, possibles… I can’t conjecture actually and the language has not revealed itself as yet, in any event this long time friend makes no bones about lying about her age, insofar as she posts it on-line along with photos she swears are not only recent, but in all but one case, shot within the past year, which I know not to be the case. She says among the first things she brings up is the small adjustment in reporting her age that is required in the face of the truth.

The actual age is not important in this or any other case. The adjustment is only slight, say three or four years. Yet it must be made, according to my friend, because of, well now this is interesting. It’s because of the men. Because of us, the other, because, when you get right down to it, because of me!

Men want younger women, and put down age ranges that, if the system as it’s explained by the vendors offering these on-line services is accurately and faithfully adhered to, would exclude women outside that age range from their attention.

I put down, at first, for reasons that I had very calculatedly worked out, ages based purely on marketing principles I would have applied were I my own client and I had been asked to consult on the matter. There’s nothing wrong with stating a preference surely. When I first joined the larger of the dating services, I put down a range of 39 to 58 years of age. The only assumption I made is that I would rarely, so much so I figured the rareness would be never, discover any genuine interest expressed by a woman who was 39 or anywhere close to that age. Not in me, a 62 year-old widower, with silver gray hair (quite an abundance of it, and accompanied by an appearance of “cuteness,” as in youthful — for a 62 year-old widower — and insofar as I understood the cuteness factors, I made sure they were emphasized by the photos that were all shot by myself, except one, the main one, which was shot by someone else as I gazed lovingly at her, directly at the lens; I will say no more, other than, given that I am not obese, or even remotely fat, I made sure the photos indicated this. I only described myself in words, from a list that included “athletic and toned, or fit,” and “slender,” as “about average.”

I have since changed that desired female age range to something I think significantly realistic, in terms of reasonable expectations on my part, especially at the margins, of from 46 to 62 years. I’m 62, I should be willing at least to consider women my age, or why should I expect anyone to consider me. In all honesty I should simply make it from the earliest age they permit you (probably 18) to the eldest, like 80. The fact is, aside from what I stated above, that I really am not hung up on the specific age, I believe whatever I say will be ignored not only by the women in the database themselves, but by the computer as well. And I have been proven correct empirically by my experiences over the past five weeks. In that time almost 1200 women have looked at the photos of me along with my profile; I can’t tell if they perused these, or simply glanced quickly at them. I have been solicited for my interest in starting a conversation, or correspondence, call it what you will, by maybe 150 women, and in turn I have expressed my interest in about three dozen women. I have had matches suggested to me by both services, and the suggestions continue to come in on a regular basis. In no case did I feel that some woman was excluded from my attention or consideration because of her age, not excluded by herself, not excluded by the service.

I have had overtures, one way or another, from women from 22 to over 70 years of age.

How can I possibly take the matter of age seriously as a barrier to entry?

Therefore I assume the presumptive reasoning by women who say they’re 58 when they’re really 61, or 47, when they are patently significantly north of that age (I don’t find out, if I’m not told, because I don’t ask; I in fact think it’s rude and ungentlemanly, though I wouldn’t mind at all being asked anything about my stated age) is that they are stating a wish or expressing a denial. In either case, my sense of this is only reinforced if the reason volunteered is that it’s me, that is, it’s the men, who want someone young and gorgeous hanging on their arm, and by formally stating their fantasies or wish-fulfillment conditions. There is no denying that some men, certainly with enough money, status, or power to attract them, are not denied them. But I also doubt these men actually enroll on an on-line dating service, at least not of this ilk.

My question of my friend, described above, and of one woman I met who admitted to being older than she has stated in her profile — she informed me as if I had at my finger tips all of the facts from her dossier; I was confused when she announced her age, as I had no reason to think otherwise, or that this was a declaration, presumably redundant, that her statement of age was not redundant of previously published information, but an adjustment — was, “Why would you want to go out with a man who would not consider even meeting you, never mind going out with you, with the possibility, however strong or weak, that it might be the start of something big, simply because he didn’t like how old you, in fact, are, and cannot be other than?”

No answer.

I understand lies are perpetrated all the time, all around the earth, every second. They are perpetrated for reasons of expedience, necessity, self-protection, the protection of innocent parties, to spare feelings the evocation of which might be worse as a matter of ethics than having committed an ethical breach by virtue of lying.

We’d all like to follow the guideline that if you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said. I try to live that way, and mostly I succeed. I also have trouble with copying music from whatever source and giving away copies, even if I have paid for the original, and I always pay. I have trouble pirating software, or not paying for shareware. I have trouble being confronted about that which I might have gone out of my way to avoid entering the ken of my confronter. But I always speak the truth, and figure I’ll deal with the consequences.

I’m not a confessional sort, and it’s probably difficult extracting certain information from me because, for one, the desire to do no one any harm supersedes this strange antipathy for being lied to, and preference for truth.

(the song of King Gama in "Princess Ida," Gilbert & Sullivan)

I’m sure I’m no ascetic; I’m as pleasant as can be;
You’ll always find me ready with a crushing repartee,
I’ve an irritating chuckle, I’ve a celebrated sneer,
I’ve an entertaining snigger, I’ve a fascinating leer.
To everybody’s prejudice I know a thing or two;
I can tell a woman’s age in half a minute – and I do.
But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can,
Yet everybody says I’m such a disagreeable man!
And I can’t think why!

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I was told very early on in the process of grieving the death of my wife that were I fortunate (this is not the word that was used; indeed, it was presented to me as neutral fact) to live in, say, Newton, Massachusetts, there would already be a pile of casserole dishes piled on my front door step.

And sure enough, while browsing through a relatively new cookbook I had gotten last spring (it was the source of one of the last new dishes I made for Linda, to add to a quite vast repertoire of dining favorites we had accumulated, because it was a great hit), called Bake Until Bubbly, was a certain recipe. That is, it’s a cookbook only of casseroles, a later accompaniment, as a volume, to the vastly more interesting (to me) book of Real Stews, by the same author, Clifford Wright. Mr. Wright is otherwise a quite scholarly food historian and has written several other books, some of mammoth proportions, commensurate with the subject, and full, alongside the voluminous scholarly notes, of recipes that allow the modern cook to replicate dishes whose provenance goes back centuries.

The recipe in question, Widower’s Casserole, goes back only to the retirement community that is home to the 87-year-old mother of the author, whose friend supplied the recipe that Mr. Wright adopted. It seems, says Trudy, that the widows supply this casserole, vying for who will be first. The recipe is an extravaganza of saturated fats, consisting mainly of four chicken breasts, 3/4 of a pound of mushrooms, pureed to become a suave thickener for the cup of cream and the cup of sour cream that round out the recipe. He notes it is full of meat, as it is meat that these Depression-Era widowers crave. Not to mention the extent to which a demise from coronary artery disease can be hastened with such a diet. But I bet it’s nice and rich.

In any event, it’s probably now four or five months after this observation was made to me. So far, not one casserole. I have even been on two (count ‘em) online dating services for well over a month now.

No casseroles.

I have not cooked anything for any new friends or acquaintances, even though my reputation comes before me as a cook of some great skill. I should know, because I’ve been pushing it in front of me for the last five weeks. However I have not done so sufficiently convincingly to have engineered a dinner at my own house, prepared by these hands.

I suspect that such a move would have a certain connotation, a semiotic value, in some protocol. I am positive there’s a protocol, but I’m damned if I know, beyond certain basic guidelines I’ve mapped out for myself, and seem to derive from what I’d like to call common sense, but to be honest, I’d have to call truthfully only my instincts as to what is right, based on my experience to this point in my life.

Be honest at all times.

Offer no gratuitous information. When your opinion is desired, it will be requested.

Have a point of view. This is not in contradistinction to the point above. The point above is derived from etiquette. This point is derived from the several facts: we speak in order to exchange either information or express our feelings on various matters: from something as innocuous as politics (couples have made it or broken up over political differences; why? is what I want to know), to something as important as what you did today. To have no point of view is to say, you are oblivious. At our age, you have a choice. You choose just how much silence you want to withstand.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

If you think you have nothing to say, see if there’s anything on your mind that wouldn’t be inappropriate to relate. If there is, and it wouldn’t, say it.

Make no promises you can’t keep.

Be on time.

Smile.

Look at her while she speaks, and actually, well, this is hard to explain, but, listen.

Don’t talk yourself out of any internal conclusions you reach in the presence of this woman, and remember them for later.

Don’t allow too much time to pass before making contact again. If what feels like too much time has elapsed, insofar as common manners allow, apologize sincerely, unless you don’t, in which case, why are you bothering?

Try to avoid merely ignoring people

If you do provide an answer, let your instincts be your guide. If a brief, succinct, thanks but no thanks will be sufficient, do that. Otherwise, provide a long, detailed answer to every question, matter, issue, or problem you can, without getting emotional or personal, and assume that will be sufficient. If it isn’t, and you hear further, you’re not the problem (repeat that to yourself, “you’re not the problem.”)

Make clear the pace at which you feel you must allow things to progress, or try to have a hand in allowing, and if there’s a reason, give it.

So this is the protocol I have followed for five weeks.

Still, no casseroles.

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