Rolling On One

Back in November, the week before the week of Thanksgiving, we went out to visit my mom in Idaho.

We got up ridiculously early on Saturday and caught a flight that got us to Salt Lake City before noon.

It was a turbulent flight with noisy babies along, but the view out of the window was beautiful once we got past clouds which covered the eastern half of the country. It looked as though a light snow had fallen the night before over most of the high plains. A lot of ground was bare, but you could see where snow had drifted against fences and into low spots of the landscape near streams or gullies.
When we phoned my mom to say we were in SLC, she said, “Well, you have plenty of time to see something along the way. You should stop at the Bear River wildlife sanctuary.” So we did.

There’s a relatively new visitor center, with a beautiful modern museum about birds, a fraction of a mile from the freeway exit. It’s the second visitor center to be built there in the past couple of decades; another one was destroyed by a flood (of that same Bear River, naturally) just a year after it was finished.

The Bear River flows into Great Salt Lake near Brigham City. There are many square miles of wetlands near where it enters the lake. There’s a one-lane dirt road along a causeway which forms a big square around a lot of it, with spectacular views of the Wasatch Mountains over the marsh.

We didn’t see many birds, though the area is a major migration route for ducks and other water birds. Maybe it was a little too late in the season, or maybe the problem was that it was duck hunting season. Almost of the other people and vehicles we saw at parking lots along the way were duck hunters, with boats either painted in camouflage or covered with reeds to look like part of the marsh. At one parking area I spoke with a hunter who said it had been a kind of slow day. The three hunters in his party had just got five ducks for the day, two pintails, two greenheads (I guess he meant mallards) and a Norwegian (and I have no idea what kind of duck that is, but I sure hope it’s a duck.)

We drove to downtown Brigham City to look for a cafe and get a snack. We found a wonderful retro place called somebody’s cafe (maybe Mike’s? I can’t remember at this point) with walls covered with pictures and signs with cheerful slogans. The sign over the main street welcomes you to Brigham City, home of the world’s largest bird refuge.

Monday night we went to a meeting of the association for the blind, again I forget the exact name, at the IHoP. The president of the group referred to us and my mom’s braille teacher, who was sitting with us, as “light-dependent people.” The group had just received a van previously used by the Idaho Falls senior center, thanks to a couple of big donations. Our waiter was new on the job and didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to be a waiter. The food was so slow in getting to us that my mom’s braille teacher asked for hers to go, because she had to be somewhere at the time the meeting should have broken up, but that time turned out to be when the food got to us.

One afternoon Arlene and I drove up to Idaho Falls to visit the Museum of Idaho. We stopped at the highway rest area at the lava flow called “Hell’s Half Acre”, which is really many many acres with self-guided trails, and walked all along them. This is scenery and vegetation we don’t have in New England (although I could find you a few cactus growing wild in New England if you pressed me.)

Of course my mom’s dogs Dixie and Tsu-Ra were major presences —

Thursday evening we went to the university, first to a meeting of Move On which was gathering pictures and petitions to send congress in support of Obama’s campaign promises, and second to a movie “Expiration Date“. It’s a story an old indian tells a young boy who’s thinking of taking the bus off the reservation to the big city, about Charley Silvercloud III, whose grandfather and father were both killed by milk trucks on their 25 birthday. Charley is a week short of 25 as the story opens. If the movie comes to West Newton or the Embassy, or if you get a chance to see it on the Sundance Channel, you’ll enjoy it greatly.

The big wildlife event of the past week was in Newton, although it’s true that we saw two pine siskins in our heritage apple tree, and got a good long look at a pileated woodpecker across the driveway in Casco last weekend.

Driving home from work last Monday (Dec 29 ’08) I saw a red fox run across Parker Street, halfway down the hill from Dedham Street to Meadowbrook Road. My first impression was of a cat on the left side of the street running into the road, but it was a little too high and much much too long, especially the big wide fox tail! It was moving fast and was far enough away that I didn’t get a good enough look at the head to be sure, but “fox” is my story and I’m sticking to it.

Last weekend when we were shopping for something to cook for supper I said, “pot roast.” When the question arose of what to make with it, rice? I said, “No, kasha.”

When I was a kid (and Hanna can confirm this if she chooses to comment on this post) pot roast and kasha was a single menu item. We never had pot roast without kasha, nor kasha without pot roast.

Kasha is buckwheat groats. It makes a starch dish, like rice or pilaf, but with lots of its own flavor. There’s a dish called “kasha varnishkes”, which is kasha and pasta bowties, but there is no such thing as one kasha varnishke.

I don’t know how to make kasha varnishkes, but I do know how to cook kasha, and as you guessed I’m about to tell you. The recipe on the box, which is preferentially a box of whole groats, just has you mixing kasha and boiling water. You can do that, if you want a mushy gluey mass. If you want kasha with separate grains, here’s what you do:

Break one egg into a small mixing bowl. Beat it with a fork or whisk. Add one cup of dry kasha and mix well. Now heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a saucepan and saute the kasha until the grains don’t stick together any more (that is, until the egg is all cooked). Then add however much liquid the box said to use for a cup of kasha and follow the directions on the box from there as far as cooking time goes. And there you have your starch dish to go with pot roast.
That’s a lot like my graduate-school landlady Mrs. Saghbazarian’s recipe for pilaf. Pilaf took one hank or skein of vermicelli (in Watertown we used to get noodles that were sort of coiled, not a box of straight ones. If you don’t have a hank of noodles, you want about four times as much weight of rice as of noodles), two cups of rice, one stick of butter, and four cups of chicken. Melt the butter, break up the vermicelli into pieces less than an inch long (with the skeined noodles you just have to give the skein a good squeeze), fry them in the butter until they just start to get a tiny bit brown — if you cook them too long, they’ll be burnt by the time the rice is fried enough–, add rice and fry it until it’s white instead of translucent, add chicken soup, bring to a boil (or if the soup was already boiling, you’re all set there), and make the flame low low and cook until the rice is done. That may strike you as a lot of butter, but it sure makes good pilaf.

Yesterday Arlene went to the (not so new, but we haven’t been there before) new Institute of Contemporary Art with some of her old art teacher friends, and stopped with them at Sofra in Cambridge,  at the border of Watertown and Belmont, for lunch. It’s in a building covered in somewhat garish glazed tiles that used to be a liquor store. We drove past that building all the time when we lived in Watertown, but neither of us had ever been inside it before. Arlene was very enthusiastic about the show at the ICA, but also about Sofra, which turns out to be a middle eastern (in that part of Cambridge/Watertown/Belmont, no surprise) take out place. She brought me home a piece of chocolate hazelnut baklava, which was delicious. But then, I’ve never met a baklava I didn’t like. It even came in a Bio-plus earth recyclable cardboard takeout container.

On Tuesday evening instead of our regular meeting of the klezmer class we performed in a concert at Hebrew College. It turned out to be more like a Hanukah party for Prozdor, the high-school program of H. C.

We had expected that there was another group on the program, the Prozdor klezmer band, directed by Glenn Dickson. Glenn had directed the JCC klezmer band for the first ten or fifteen years it existed, so I’ve played under his baton (well, metaphorically; I don’t think he ever used a baton. Mostly he played clarinet along with the group) a lot. It turned out that in addition there was a third group, consisting of younger home-schooled kids, also directed by Glenn. Pretty good idea — you’re home schooling your kids, but a school orchestra or band is a part of the curriculum you want to have, so get together with other people and hire a music teacher.
The concert was in Berenson Hall, where Koleinu used to rehearse and occasionally perform. It’s a big beautiful room but has funny acoustics; the front half has a very high ceiling and the back half has a normal-height ceiling, and the sound sometimes doesn’t make it very far past the dividing point.

The place was packed. I got the feeling that all of Prozdor and many of those kids’ parents were there. I stood while the other two groups played, and many people were standing in the back of the hall.

After we said the blessings and the people in charge of the program lit Hanukah candles and we all sung Maoz Tzur (Hebrew texts all power-pointed to the screen in front) the home school group played three songs. They were all young kids, between seven and thirteen years old, so it was a little like an elementary school orchestra concert, but strangely heavy on violas. Here’s Glenn directing them:

The clarinetist seemed to be having some trouble with his instrument for the first song, and I wondered if he knew which side was up, but he was right there on the second song, playing little ornaments as well as the tune, much better than I’m likely to be a year from now. The pianist was energetic and enthusiastic, as well as playing the right notes, so all in all the group wasn’t bad. I recorded one of their numbers, but didn’t catch the town in the song’s title. A few weeks later I emailed Glenn to ask the names of the tunes, so this post is updated with them. The tune is “Boyberiker Khasene”, “The wedding in Boyberik”.

I also recorded two numbers the Prozdor group did, partly just so I could learn the tunes. It was a bigger group, maybe 18 kids, including two trumpets, at least four clarinets, and two flutes. I guess a few violins too, a piano, and the drummers were absent.
Here are the songs from the Prozdor group: “Dem Rebns Tantz” (“the Rabbi’s Dance”)and “Der Zeyde mit der Bube” (“The Grandpa with the Grandma”). That sounds like a song that was played for a specific part of a wedding (or less likely bar mitzva) celebration, “OK, now let’s give the parents of the bride a chance to dance.” There are a bunch of klezmer tunes like whose titles are just descriptions of the function, such as “Fun der Khuppe” (From the khuppe, i.e. the recessional after the ceremony) and “Faren die machetunim aheim” (escorting the in-laws home).

The third number the Prozdor group did was a trumpet doina, which is a slow piece with a soloist. I was very impressed with the solo trumpeter.

The JCC klezmer band only got to play a third of the program we had prepared when the people in charge of the program told us that time was up. Kids were going to be picked up at that time, and we just did one more number, with all the musicians together. The prozdor trumpters sat behind me and said, “hi, we’re the trumpets.” I had been playing baritone horn on the last number my group did, so I said, “since you’re here I’ll stick with the lower brass.” We did hang around for a few minutes after the party broke up and played Tumbalalaika and Hava Nagila. All in all it was fun, though a little disappointing that we didn’t get to do our whole program.

I downloaded an audio recorder application to my iPhone just before going to band rehearsal Tuesday night, and figured out how to use it in time to record two tracks for here. Since I just put the thing on the floor behind me, I was the closest and sounded the loudest so the balance is heavy on trumpet. And since there’s no audio engineer, just a poor little iPhone trying its best to be a recording studio, it started clipping when the music got loud.

These are links to MP3 files. If you have an MP3 player plugin for your browser, you should be able to listen. If by any chance you want them on your portable MP3 player, feel free to download them.
Medley – Freilach #2 in D minor / Die Alte Tzigeiner

oops — it took us halfway through the first strain of the first one to get together on the tempo. On the whole I think it sounds pretty good after that.

Mazeltov

That’s me on trumpet, Jim D’Amicco on clarinet, Barbara (I think Burg) on C-melody sax, Jeffery Kleiman on flute, Alan Shuchat on melodeon, Barry Shapiro on accordion, Tobie Geller on piano, and Sarah Kaplan and Susan Farber on violin (if you can hear them)

This car was coming towards me when I went past the elementary school down the block on my way to work yesterday. It went the other way around the block and was ahead of me when I got out to the main road.

You can’t really tell from a quick look at that photo why I scrambled for my iPhone to get a picture while we were stopped at a traffic light. Maybe if I point out the important part?

See anything there? Maybe enlarged a little, and with some photoshop contrast enhancement?

There was also a big red pompom in the middle of the grille. I cracked up when I saw it.

Here are some photos from last Sunday (Dec. 7) in Maine. The sun came out enough to make things sparkle a little, but there wasn’t an overall gorgeous sparkly time. Even when there is, those are really hard to photograph.

So, Woods:

A close-up of some weed stems (maybe they’re blueberry bushes, not weeds!)

Close-up of some pine needles covered in ice — you can imagine how having ice like this on all the needles makes the branches six or ten times as heavy as usual! No wonder the pine trees always lose big limbs in ice storms!

Arlene liked how evenly spaced and uniform the icicles on the birdbath were.

..which makes no sense etymologically. It should be rhododendrothermometer, but I don’t like the way that sounds as well.

Monday morning Arlene looked out the window and said, “This is the first time this year I’ve seen the rhodo leaves all curled up.” We have a PJM rhododendron in front of our dining room window, and a couple of big-leaved rhododendrons elsewhere as foundation plantings. If you happen not to know, rhododendron leaves are sensitive to temperature and are an excellent guide to dressing for winter weather. Nice and spread out — comfortable. Slightly curled up — light jacket. Curled up — dress warmly. Tightly curled — brass monkeys may be damaged.

PJM rhodo — dress warmly. When it’s really cold, this one’s leaves look like bunches of pine needles.
Large-leafed rhodo — dress warmly.

We drove up to Casco on Saturday morning rather than Friday evening because of the storm. In Newton it was just rain on Friday and had cleared by midafternoon, but farther north there was sleet and freezing rain, the storm was continuing later into the evening, and there were warnings of slick roads. What we didn’t want was to get to Casco at ten thirty at night and find that we had no power and therefore no heat.

We stopped first at the Costco in Danvers (we went past Waltham ten minutes before the store there was going to open) and got a clock radio with an iPod dock so I can wake up to music from the iPhone as well as keep the iPhone charged. Also a set of cordless phones for Maine, where it would be really nice to have a phone we can take outdoors.

We got off the New Hampshire stretch of I-95 at the tolls and went up the coast, hoping to see some sea birds. We didn’t see birds, but there was heavy surf after the previous day’s storm. Spray was flying over the seawall in Hampton. We stopped to look out over the water in a couple of places, but the surfers(!) seemed to have scared the ducks off, and the chill wind drove us off quickly too.

There’s a bridge under repair on route 1-A near Portsmouth, so we followed a detour back to the main highway. Multitudes of tree limbs were down — we hadn’t been seeing them along the coast, probably because there aren’t trees along the road there — and we had to stop for a policeman directing traffic around a downed power line.

It was early enough that we thought we could stop at Crate and Barrel in Kittery. We got off at exit for the outlets. The traffic light just before Kittery Trading Post wasn’t working — no power. Suddenly it looked as though we weren’t going to Crate and Barrel. I pulled into their parking lot, but the store was dark and there was a sign on the door, “closed – no power.” We were ready for a rest room stop, but the highway rest area at mile 5 was also closed, no power. We continued to the Kennebunk rest area, hoping that either power was on there or that the brand-new (or year-and-a half old) rest area would have been built with some backup power. Besides the rest rooms, we were concerned about the gas tank. We had left Newton with almost a full tank, but not enough for a round trip. If no gas stations in Maine were going to be pumping gas, we would be in trouble.

The lights on the gasoline price sign at Kennebunk were on, so we figured the power was on there. We and the car left the rest area feeling much more comfortable and confident.

Next stop was the Portland Art Museum. Portland had the power on. There was a show we hadn’t seen in the main gallery (and we probably missed one after the Georgia O’Keeffe one, too) and a show of “Lynne Drexler, painter” on the second floor. We had never heard of Drexler. She left the New York art scene in the early ’80s and moved full time to Monhegan Island, a small island not too far from Boothbay Harbor. Arlene sometimes looks at paintings and says, “now, that’s PAINT.” I said that about Drexler, and Arlene said, “even more, that’s COLOR.” There was a long video about her showing as part of the exhibit. We watched it all. Possibly the most impressive part was seeing all the canvases that were in the house after Drexler died, and hearing the people talk about taking them outside and sorting through them, with half the people in town (it’s a small island) watching; and seeing the canvases going on the boat to the mainland.

When we got to our car, a children’s theatre Sesame Street production had just got over, and hundreds of families were leaving their spots in the parking garage ahead of us. We crossed the street to the L.L. Bean’s outlet store and ended up getting six pairs of pants at deep markdowns. Back at the garage the line to exit was gone, and we figured that we were probably leaving the garage 15 or 20 minutes later than we would have if we hadn’t been shopping for the previous 30 minutes.
It was quarter to four when we left the parking garage, and we were still an hour from our house. We figured that if there wasn’t power there we’d be able to get back to Newton at a reasonable hour with the gasoline we had, anyway. We were seeing lights on in houses all the way up North Raymond Road, but after West Poland there were a couple of utility trucks on the small road going towards our house. As we got closer to our house, though, we were seeing Christmas decoration lights in many houses. We figured that although people might be operating on backup generator power, they probably would be saving that power for running the heat and water to their houses and maybe a couple of lights, but probably not the decorations; so we were pretty optimistic. When we got to our house, phew! The garage door opener lit up and the door opened.