Thursday, March 22, 2018

Washington ladies lunching well

   On an obnoxiously weary first day of spring, several dozen women and a few men gathered for a reception, program and lunch at what is believed to be the largest private estate in Washington, DC. proper. Which is, surprise, the Peruvian Embassy - some 24 hilly acres in the District's Northwest, with an open gate and driveway leading slowly to a handsome mansion containing splendid examples of that country's art. forms: painting, pottery, textiles.  Why surprise? Because in the hurly-burly of social-diplomatic Washington, with nearly 200 such entities competing for attention, whoever thinks about Peru? Shamefully enough, whoever spends much time at all pondering South America, our  prominent Southern neighbor and how one of its countries owns so much handsome property?The event was a goodwill assembly: the PEN/Faulkner Founding Friends, a Folger institution-based nonprofit that, among other  projects, supports writer visits to DC public schools. Peruvian-born author/ critic/editor Marie Arana was featured - discoursing  Q&A fashion on her life and work at the behest of the Ambassador's wife Consuelo Salinas Pareja. Toughest question: explain differences and likenesses between so-called Latin and Western temperament and character. Marie Arana hedged, fudging a bit, saying the answer could best be found in her latest book, 'Bolivar,' about the complicated, controversial South American 'liberator.' Latin America "has brought so much to the world," she pleaded in an elegantly polite manner.No one present  offered a challenge.
"Is anyone here a writer?" asked a supremely well-groomed woman seated at one of the round tables set up in the glass-enclosed patio for  a buffet lunch.  (meat, corn, potatoes basically) A tall modest man in the group did somewhat reluctantly manage to confess he wrote in the line of duty: he had been a negotiator under several presidents dealing with such foreign governments as North Korea. Thus does politics in many guises inform and energize - ah, even dominate - the social side of Washington.A city often dedicated to navel-gazing. At that moment, an upheaval  of sorts was taking place in Peruvian government politics taking place: the likely impeachment of the country's president and what that would mean for its citizens. It never figured in the conversation.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Trader Joe continued

Of course this fine retail establishment tries to be upright and careful about how it takes responsibility for products it sells. Nothing is made by them but nearly everything is labeled by them. Contracted out.
'Trader Joe's Chicken Tikka Masala'.  (gluten free, if you care to note).
A well documented box of Indian spiced chicken pieces (so few!) in a partition next to the "cumin-flavored basmati rice" ( I quote from the box).  Made for a single serving. Calories 360 of which half come from Fat, also plainly stated.) The sodium content is way up . List of ingredients are over the top, and few are visible on the plate.
Adjectives abound, the worst of which  is 'robust" - don't we see this everywhere today in political analyses. Here it goes with Robust Cream Sauce (though really not very far up on listing of ingredients).

My gripe is that a pretty package does not prepare one for a disappointing meal. Serving size is for a single but surely not anyone with an appetite. The rice has a few flecks of the promised cumin. I pick and swallow. I have a feeling of fulness if not of satisfaction. The box will go directly into the trash  -cardboard with plastic, and I'll be pleased to have had a bit of protein in my system, plus the exalted (tiny) bit of turmeric (way down on the list). I'll call it dinner, more or less.

Friday, March 2, 2018

"New City' - What It Might Be



 Always a good topic for discussion. Extremely current in light of  unending squabbles over gentrification, traffic congestion, restoration and preservation issues. A New York Times essay  on Sunday February 25 took it on anew under the headline -Tech Eyes the Ultimate Start-Up: An Entire City. Utopian city building as only the talented Silicon Valley upstarts can imagine it. Worthwhile in every way as exploration if not illumination, beginning with admissions that  such schemes in the past rarely have succeeded. Every solution is a contradiction.  So Uber and other ride-sharing operations might start to work as delivery services, hand in hand with Amazon Prime.  Does that mean fewer people using their cars as delivery vans and thus takes more vehicles off the streets?
Or will that simply expand the number that clog arteries everywhere?

Another somewhat related article to recommend. An essay commenting on two books about Istanbul, in Feb. 22nd issue of New York Review of Books. All about the many quirks and wonders of that most incredible city, crossroads of two continents (Asia and Europe) and religions (Christian and Muslim), between two civilizations as well if East and West can be summarized so neatly.  A troubled place under its current leader/self-style sultan Racep Tayyip Erdogan whose latest scheme is to build this year a new $10 billion canal across the Bosphorus - how such  a project is both far-reaching and backward looking.  He already has managed to dig for an underwater tunnel across the Bosphorus. And always the story of a great migration building up a city - Turks from the countryside.

Some gorgeous city views figure as backdrop to a recent  violence-soaked movie  - 'Red Sparrow,' notably a few splendid hotel interiors and street scenes in London, Moscow and Budapest. But none of the exteriors make up for what seems like gross and gratuitous murder and mayhem in the plot. The only, slimmest excuse is  to show women characters behaving both absurdly well and badly - usually at the behest of men.