Good Eats

We seem to fancy ourselves as farmers in our former lives, perhaps not subsistence farmers. More likely amateur gardeners who manage to kill fewer plants than we set out to cultivate. This spring we decided to add several types of peppers (poblano, habanero, santa maria) and tomatoes (heirloom and cherry) to our repertoire. These, in addition to the various herbs Katherine tends to, the peppers that survived the winter months (purple jalapenos), and the prolific pear and fig trees on the property that produce ridiculous amounts of fruit.

Our job this summer has pretty much been trying to find creative ways to use up the produce. Since the earth has been so good to us, it seems a real waste not to at least try to use the good stuff. With our first tomatoes and basil, we made a caprese salad and bruschetta. Since then, we've had many more caprese salads and put tomatoes in just about every dish. Our farm share has also been prolific with tomatoes, so on top of our own tomatoes, we've had extra grape and slicing tomatoes too. Tomatoes are rapidly becoming NOT my favorite fruit. It's almost a chore trying to find tasty and different ways to eat them. The logistics of eating seasonally and locally.

When we first moved into the house, we tended to leave most of the figs and pears on the trees or on the ground. Some years we would pick a bunch and share them with co-workers and neighbors. One year, we got out the ladder, picked the pear tree clean and took about 200 pears to the Salvation Army for its soup kitchen. Needless to say, the folks at the Salvation Army were a little puzzled and daunted at the prospect of using up all the pears - as had we, which was why we were trying to get rid of them in the first place.

Early on, our lovingly tended tomatoes fell victim to a blight that took a good half of them before they even ripened. Many of them started getting sunken black spots on their sides that spread to the entire fruit. When I sent a photo of a blighted tomato to the university's head horticulturist to see if she could tell us what it was and how to stop it, she emailed me back to say, "I've never seen this! Let me do some research." That wasn't reassuring, especially since we'd gotten the tomato plants from her arboretum in the first place!

We added some layers of newspaper and mulch to the tomato containers to keep the soil moist between waterings and since then, there's been many fewer blighted tomatoes but sadly, much smaller tomatoes. We're still not sure what we're doing wrong, but most of the tomatoes are pretty small, like golf ball-sized.

We seem to have very good luck with the produce we made no effort to take care of. Every time I pick a pear off the tree, five more come raining down. Every other day we pick a full basket of figs. Unfortunately, neither is the sort of fruit that's easily given away (I took two bags of pears to work one day and it took three days to unload the whole thing. Same thing with the figs) nor are they easy to cook with. An apple pie uses up 10 apples at once. A pear tart, maybe two. And we're not exactly thrilled or eager to start making pear or fig preserves. We could eat them out of hand, but that's a lot of pears. And, to put it delicately, eating too many figs is just...dangerous.

New furniture

We finally broke down and bought new furniture, a couch and coffee table. The coffee table I gave to one of my reporters who had just moved and was furnishing a new apartment. The couch we donated to Turning Point, an outreach organization for battered women seeking shelter from abusive relationships.

Here's a photo of the new couch. It's red, people! A nice change from the beige ones we'd been considering. We normally don't let Winchell up on the couch because she sheds so much, but for the purposes of modeling, you can see we made an exception. Normally we don't let John on the couch much either. Hee hee.

The coffee table is also a big departure. It's round, not rectangular, but that actually works better in the room, since the dimensions of the room are kind of narrow. It makes it easier to navigate without barking one's shins on a corner of the table.

Snow day

It doesn't snow in Alabama very often, just about once every five years or so. We're not prepared for it most years. Snowflakes tend to generate panic in most Alabamians, of the stock-up-on-bread-and-milk variety.

We'd been promised snow once already this winter, and in fact, the day turned out to be 60 degrees, so I tend not to believe the forecasters when they swear up and down that THIS time, we'll see the white stuff.

But for once, they got it right. Last Sunday, March 1, we woke up to about three inches of snow and more falling. It didn't stick around; most of it melted by 2 p.m., but it was still a sight to see.

Winchell enjoyed herself walking around the snow. At first, she wandered around, looking at the falling flakes with a WTF? expression on her face, but after it stopped, she made herself at home and cooled her undersides. Note the pawprints on the front porch. She had herself a time tromping around. Being an Alabama dog, she had never seen snow before so I have a feeling she didn't quite know what to make of it.

A beautiful day to swear in a president

Here is just how close we were to the Capitol building at Pres. Barack Obama's inauguration. See the tiny little top of the Capitol dome in the distance? Clearly, we were nowhere close.

But the trip was exciting anyway, even with the inconveniences. We were on a bus for 16 hours, sitting with a bunch of strangers. Our seats were in the second-to-last row, meaning we were right opposite the toilet. The TOILET ON THE BUS. The driver had warned everyone this was a TOILET ON A BUS and, in the most delicate terms, forbade anyone from doing anything in there more, uh, fragrant than necessary. Luckily, everyone seemed to agree that no matter where they were sitting, a charter bus does not have the capacity to render anyone out of the reach of noisome odors, so everyone complied.

We left the mall parking lot at 3:30 a.m. the day before the inauguration. Everyone else was clad in their finest Obama gear, and I mean decked out like Christmas. There were Obama buttons, hats, shirts, jackets...someone even hauled out Franklin Mint Obama plates and started hawking them while we were somewhere outside Charlotte, NC. This is a picture of Billy Evans ("I go by Meatball") and his bedazzled Obama skull cap.

We got to Richmond, Va. about 11pm Monday night and had to get up at 3am the next morning (again) for the 90-minute trip from Richmond into DC. We had to arrive early to beat the crowd. The bus company had lucked out and gotten Secret Service permission to drive into DC and park the bus by Nationals stadium all day, about 10 blocks away from the National Mall. That was unbelievably lucky, since by the time we got to DC at 5am, it was clear we had not beaten the crowd at all. We were right in the middle of it.

It was kind of exciting seeing so much activity in DC that early in the morning, and knowing we were part of something momentous. That early in the morning, however crowded it already was, little commerce was going on. The only business that was open at that hour was the McDonalds on First Street SE, which was doing a booming business.

As soon as everyone piled off the bus, John and I lost most of our group. I had hoped to tag along with a couple of people and get their impressions of the day, but everyone took off in different directions. We'd been given easy directions to the Mall ("four blocks up, turn left, five blocks up and you're there") but no one could follow them because most of the streets had been blocked off by emergency vehicles. I heard later that all the slower people on the bus started following me because they figured "the newspaper lady" would know where she was going, but we were walking too fast for them to catch up. John and I ended up running into a much larger herd of people headed for the Mall, so we joined them, since we were clearly not going to get to the Mall at the entrance we'd hoped. It was far too crowded already and the Mall was already halfway filled by 6am. We'd have to enter it much further back.

Here's what I loved about the day: It was happy. Just...happy. Even the National Guard troops who were stationed at every intersection to make sure we didn't wander off and try to steal a tank were smiling. They stopped traffic so we could cross the street. They smiled and said "Welcome to DC!" They gave an endless stream of people directions to everywhere. They joked and laughed with us about the size of the crowds. It was like everyone in DC, for one day, was on their best behavior because they wanted the day to be perfect. And while we had some trouble getting out of the Mall after the swearing-in ceremony, I heard there were no arrests that day. NO arrests. In DC. On a day when 1.8 million people were in the city chapping their hides in 17-degree weather for hours. Is this a great country or what?

John and I got onto the Mall about 6:30am and walked as close as we could toward the Capitol. There was a lot more room to walk around, as far back as we were, because no one was pushing and shoving. We were all so far back there was no point in trying to push your way to the front because the view would have been the same. We just tried to get within viewing distance from a jumbotron.

We ended up stopping next to a guy with a sign on a stick who told us we were welcome to share his space. Turned out he was from Birmingham, was a lifelong Republican and had volunteered for the Obama campaign after hearing him speak in Selma in March 2007. He had brought his daughter Leanne and her 7-year-old daughter, who Leanne said had been the only Obama supporter in her third grade class.

The Mall was freezing. There is no other word for it. I brought hand warmers and toe warmers and we needed them. I had to keep taking my gloves off to twitter what was going on, so every few minutes I'd send a tweet and then shove my hands in my pockets to warm them up, and then take my hands out to sent another tweet. There was plenty going on to keep us occupied while we waited. The jumbotrons showed parts of Sunday's inauguration concert and most people were dancing around and jumping to the music to stay warm. The dignitaries started showing up around 9am, and the jumbotrons showed them arriving and taking their seats. There was a lot of booing and hissing for the usual Republicans, some choruses of "Nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye!" whenever a Bush showed up on screen, and a resounding hissing for Joe Lieberman.

I know people have criticized the crowds for having booed Bush and especially Cheney (who rolled up in a wheelchair, making the crowd laugh hard), saying it was in poor taste. I have to say I frankly don't blame them. After eight years of wandering in the desert, a cool, refreshing drink of water feels really good. I think the crowd wasn't angry so much as relieved and happy that the Bush era was finally just a few short minutes away from being over over over and the nightmare would end.

But the biggest noise came when Obama and Biden took their oaths of office. I thought I would cry when the moment came, but instead, I just felt overwhelmingly happy and proud. It's a cliche to say it now, but I really never thought the day would come when a majority of Americans would willingly choose a black man to lead them. But I guess a message of unity, change and hope still has far more impact than one of division, partisanship and hate. And that's something to keep us all going. I was proud of my country that day, proud that so many of us hope for the same thing: justice, equality and the hope that our country can stand tall in the world and be a beacon for peace and democracy. The kid in this photo is from Virginia, and his sign says "Proud to be an American."

Getting off the Mall was a lot more arduous than getting on it. For one thing, security seemed to have entirely disappeared. All the police officers and National Guard who had been ubiquitous before the ceremony were gone, off to take part in the inaugural parade. John and I had to figure out how to get off the mall, past the parade route and into the Hart Senate office building to meet my reporter and his cousin, who would let us into her office so we could file our stories and download our videos and photos.

We ended up walking for what I estimate was two years and 15 miles. First we went to the north side of the mall, the same side as the Senate buildings were, only to be told by cops that that way was blocked. We decided to walk south, go the long way around the back of the Capitol building on the House side and get to the Senate side that way (House offices are on the south side of the Capitol building, Senate offices on the north). We passed the MSNBC portable broadcast booth on the way, where Olberman, Matthews, Maddow, et al were still going strong. If you look closely enough at the photo on the right, you can see Chris Matthews' giant bucket head behind the glass. In fact, I think they were at it all night too, because they were still broadcasting from the booth when we got back to the hotel at 9pm.

It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 3pm before we finally met up with my reporter, Jamon, and his cousin. I'm grateful we found them and that she was able to get us into a warm building. John and I had been lugging a 17-inch laptop, the video camera, a still camera and several copies of that day's Washington Post (I couldn't help myself. Newspapers are still relevant, dammit!), which severely weighed down the bag, for hours. We were both exhausted and really needed someplace to relax and take a load off.

Coming out of the Senate, we passed the Capitol building again on our way to our bus. The sun was setting and the atmosphere seemed much calmer than earlier in the day. We felt much more relaxed too, after resting a little, putting down our gear and filing our assignments for the day.

It was a beautiful day for an inauguration. Looking back, we are both so glad we decided to take the trip, however inconvenient it was. It was history in the making and we were a part of it. And it was a proud day.

Big Apple

John and I are fundamentally lazy about certain things. One of them is unloading photos from the camera.
We just now got around to unloading about 18 months' worth of photos from the camera, the entire run of photos from the moment we got the camera brand new.
So I have finally organized the photos into albums on iPhoto.
Here's a run-down of our trip to New York in April 2008. John had never been to New York before, but instead of doing the typical touristy things, we did a lot of eating.
At right is my dinner from the famous Carnegie Deli. This was one of the least expensive sandwiches on the menu, just a plain corned beef sandwich. I ate, at most, a third of it. The rest, sadly, went to waste.

One morning we went to the farmers market in Union Square, which has great produce, artisanal cheeses and breads, fresh flowers, grass-fed beef, seafood, free-range eggs...in short, everything an organic cook would need, ever. I can't imagine anyone in New York shopping for veggies at Safeway when they've got places like Fairway or the Union Square farmers market. In this photo, John and I took a break from sampling the wares and just enjoyed the sun.

Clearly, we had to visit some cheese shops while we were in New York, so we visited two branches of Murray's Cheeses, the main store in the West Village, the other in Grand Central Station. Grand Central is one of the most beautiful spaces in New York; the ceiling is painted with a mural in blue that makes the whole space feel airy and light.









One night we went out late, nearly midnight, to get hot dogs at Grey's Papaya. We had the Recession Special: two dogs and a papaya smoothie. John still talks about those hot dogs; I think that was his favorite meal in New York, even better than the pasta tasting menu at Babbo (which was a three-hour meal, with three desserts). On the way to Grey's Papaya, we walked past the new New York Times building. The building was partially blocked off by a security barrier to keep would-be daredevils from trying to scale the side of the building; just before we got to New York, a man had managed to make it to the top of the building, some 56 floors high. The building has horizontal bars across one side, all the way to the top, that keep the temperature inside the building even.

Instead of taking a ferry to Ellis Island, which would have meant a trip of several hours, we opted to take the Staten Island Ferry, which was free and takes us right past the Statue of Liberty. After we were dropped back off at the ferry terminal in Lower Manhattan, we wandered around Wall Street, which was pretty deserted since it was a weekend.









We also met up with our friend Lou and his girlfriend Patty for pizza in Brooklyn at a restaurant just under the Brooklyn Bridge. Our first thought was to walk across the bridge from the Manhattan side and end at the restaurant, where we would have lunch, but Lou convinced us walking across a wooden bridge was only for those without a fear of heights. So we took a cab instead. The pizza place was clearly popular; we waited in line for two hours for a table. The pizza was indeed excellent.

On our last night in New York, we took a long walk to Rockefeller Center and down Fifth Avenue looking at store windows. I don't think we saw one piece of clothing we could afford. But I loved seeing so much activity downtown so late at night. The energy of the place is incomparable.

Yes he can

John and I are headed to Washington DC early Monday morning to join the 2 million other people with the same intention. I'm going for work; John's going because he just wanted to tag along.
An inauguration in January was a dumb idea. Clearly, the Founding Fathers were not in their right minds when they decided DC in January was a fine time to swear in the commander in chief. At least members of Congress get to be sworn in indoors. But the steps of the Capitol building? Weather's a little brisk, my friends.
We've tried to prepare for every contingency: rain ponchos, thermals, bottled water, chemical handwarmers. I feel like we're arming ourselves against a siege. Security is so tight we can't even bring umbrellas onto the National Mall. Obviously we won't be completely comfortable standing outdoors in 20-degree weather for several hours, but hopefully we'll have done what we can.
The trip is a 14-hour bus ride from Tuscaloosa. There's a local travel agency that books inauguration bus tours every four years so I pitched the idea of riding along to Doug, my editor. The entire three-day trip was suprisingly cheap: $375 for two nights in a hotel, the round-trip on the bus and transportation into DC for inauguration day. The paper will reimburse my portion of the trip; I tried to talk John into get the university to comp his portion but he wouldn't do it because then some other poor student wouldn't be able to go. Such scruples.
Witnessing history isn't my only reason for going, obviously. Mainly I just want to be there when Barack Obama is sworn in, just to experience the giant roar from the crowd when he takes the oath. I truly believe, that after eight years of a president who managed to get us into two wars, a recession and the most extensive erosion of civil liberties in decades, Obama will be not only a much needed change but a president of whom Americans can actually be proud and who will restore our moral standing in the world. I'm tired of a president who makes his contempt for the media, the working class and anyone who dissents from his Manichean world view crystal clear. Let's celebrate a president who values intellectual curiosity, who believes in the power of community, who has a sense of social responsibility and knows that hope can bring people together for a higher purpose.

America's Next Top Model

This is Winchell's portfolio shot. If we ever become show biz parents, this is the shot we'll put in her portfolio. This picture was taken a couple of years ago when one of my reporters needed a dog model for a story she was doing on how students do homework. The idea for the photo was to take several shots of a kid getting distracted doing his homework, by TV, by sports, by video games, and in the last panel, he's reduced to telling his teacher that the dog ate it. We failed at getting Winchell to take a bite of the homework. Maybe if we'd smeared it with peanut butter we'd have had better luck. In any case, I think it was pretty good we managed to get her to sit in the chair and stay there for the time it took to take this photo.

After the photographer was done, she leaped from the chair and made a run for the door of the studio. She didn't get far; the studio's in the basement of the newspaper building. She did get some treats for being such a good model. I believe we gave her the leftover chips in the bag.