Friday, December 31, 2021

“I like to think of a new year being possible at any moment, as every moment is a kind of doorway,” said Joy Harjo, the United States poet laureate.

‘Get mad, and then get over it,’

Colin Powell: ‘Get mad, and then get over it,’ and 12 other rules he lived and worked by
Published Mon, Oct 18 20212:37 PM EDT Updated Mon, Oct 18 20212:41 PM EDT
Jade Scipioni@JadeScipioni

Colin Powell accomplished his goals by adopting a handful of key life principles along the way. Thirteen of them, in fact.

On Monday, Powell — the country’s first Black Secretary of State, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and national security advisor — died from complications from Covid-19, his family wrote on Facebook. He was 84 years old.

Powell, a four-star U.S. Army general, was fully vaccinated against Covid, but also suffered from multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer that hurts the body’s ability to fight infections.

His career spanned combat duty in Vietnam, his appointment as the youngest-ever chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989 and an aggressive push for the Iraq War under President George W. Bush. That last element of his legacy haunted Powell later in life, he admitted to Al Jazeera in 2011.

Throughout the ups and downs, Powell lived by a set of “13 rules,” which he laid out in his 2012 memoir, “It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership.”

Here are those rules for success and leadership:
1. It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.

This rule reflects an attitude, not a prediction. “I have always tried to keep my confidence and optimism up, no matter how difficult the situation,” Powell wrote.

A good night’s rest, Powell noted, usually reduces any problem or conflict. He also wrote that leaders should leave their office every night with “a winning attitude,” even while dealing with major problems, to convey strength to their team.
2. Get mad, then get over it.

Everyone gets mad. But, as Powell wrote, “staying mad isn’t useful.”

“I’ve worked hard over the years to make sure that when I get mad, I get over it quickly and never lose control of myself,” he wrote. “With a few lapses I won’t discuss here, I’ve done reasonably well.”
3. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

One of Powell’s tricks for combating ego: encouraging his commanders and staff to argue with him.

His guidance was simple: “Disagree with me, do it with feeling, try to convince me you are right and I am about to go down the wrong path,” he wrote. “You owe that to me; that’s why you are here.”

Minimizing your ego is crucial to success, he noted, adding that any decision “is not about you or your ego; it is about gathering all the information, analyzing it, and trying to get the right answer.”
4. It can be done.

For Powell, success was sometimes a self-fulfilling prophecy: If you believe that it’s possible, he argued, you’re more likely to attain it.

“Don’t surround yourself with instant skeptics,” Powell wrote. “At the same time, don’t shut out skeptics and colleagues who give you solid counterviews.”

His recommendation: Listen to what the skeptics have to say, while staying focused and positive on your goal. Sometimes, their concerns can help you address your blind spots.
5. Be careful what you choose: You may get it.

For Powell, this rule could also be summed up with four words: “Don’t rush into things.”

Even when you need to make fast decisions, there’s almost always time to examine the pros and cons, he noted — and when you can, you should.

“Some bad choices can be corrected,” Powell wrote. “Some you’ll be stuck with.”
6. Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.

Powell’s key to great leadership was pretty simple: “superb instinct.” Or, in other words, trust your gut.

When faced with a tough decision, Powell wrote, you should gather as much information as possible — but in the end, use your judgment and instincts to make the right decision.

“This is when you look deep into your own fears, anxiety, and self-confidence. This is where you earn your pay and position,” he wrote.
7. You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone else make yours.

You can always ask other people for advice when making decisions. Just don’t let someone else take over your decision-making process, Powell advised.

“Seek the advice of others, but be aware that people are always around who are full of advice and sure they know how you should decide,” he wrote. “All too often, your decision affects them and they are pushing you in a direction that’s more in their interest than yours.”
8. Check small things.

As a leader, Powell noted, he’d often drop in on other departments and wander around the office to see what others were working on. That’s because for him, success was built off small details.

“Leaders have to have a feel for small things — a feel for what is going on in the depths of an organization where small things reside,” he wrote.
9. Share credit.

When done correctly, Powell wrote, success should also a team sport — and when something goes well, you need to share the credit across the entire organization.

“Let all employees believe they were the ones who did it. They were,” Powell wrote, adding that people need recognition and a sense of worth “as much as they need food and water.”
10. Remain calm. Be kind.

When situations become chaotic, Powell wrote, stay calm and kind: “In the ‘heat of battle’ — whether military or corporate — kindness, like calmness, reassures followers and holds their confidence.”

Think about the type of leader you’d want to follow in times of crisis. Then, think about the type of leader you’d want to avoid.

Be the former, not the latter.
11. Have a vision. Be demanding.

Powell says employees need to know where their leaders are taking them, and why. So, if you’re leading people, you need to define a “sense of purpose” and get your team to believe in it as strongly as you do.

“Great leaders inspire every follower at every level to internalize their purpose, and to understand that their purpose goes far beyond the mere details of their job,” Powell wrote.

The focus, he noted, should always be on getting better and better.
12. Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.

Every leader needs to learn and understand their fears to make good decisions. If you don’t, your fears will control you in challenging times, Powell wrote.

“Fear is a normal human emotion. It is not in itself a killer,” he explained. “We can learn to be aware when fear grips us, and can train to operate through and in spite of our fear.”

As for naysayers, Powell wrote, they’re more often wrong than right. Of course, sometimes they’re correct — so they’re worth listening to, but only in small doses. Use them as “one line” in your decision-making calculus, he advised.

“Listen to everyone you need to, and then go with your fearless instinct,” he wrote.
13. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

The people around you will feed off your optimism, Powell wrote, adding that self-belief is equally contagious: “If you believe and have prepared your followers, the follower will believe.”

That, Powell wrote, was one of the greatest lessons he learned from the military — where effective communication alone can be a competitive advantage.

“Having greater communication and command and control over your forces than your enemy has over his is a force multiplier,” he wrote.

Be an Optimist

Betty White: ‘You Don't Give Up' and 4 Other Pieces of Sage Advice From the Beloved Star
Published 2 hours ago    • Updated 6 mins ago    
Amanda Edwards | Getty Images

Actress Betty White

In 2018, Betty White, who died at age 99 on Friday, told Parade that she’d like to be remembered “warmly,” and with a laugh.

Whie was indeed widely loved for her positivity and sass. But she also had a legendary work ethic: As of 2014, White held the Guinness World Records record for Longest TV Career for a Female Entertainer. She made her small screen debut in 1939 and starred in myriad hits from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The Carol Burnett Show" to "The Golden Girls" and "Hot in Cleveland." She even hosted "Saturday Night Live" at age 88. According to IMDB.com, White's most recent television role was in 2019, as the voice of character “Bitey White” on TV short, "Forky Asks a Question."

Over the years, the actress had sage advice about both life and work. In honor of White and her long life and career, here are some of her best bits of wisdom.
On passion
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“Everybody needs a passion. That’s what keeps life interesting,” White wrote in her 2011 book, “If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won’t).”

“If you live without passion, you can go through life without leaving any footprints.”
On attitude

Be an optimist. "Just looking at the positive side and not dwelling on the downside. Takes up too much energy being negative,” she told People in January.

And a sense of humor is critical, she said. "Don't take yourself too seriously. You can lie to others … but you cannot lie to yourself.”
On determination

According to Parade, White was repeatedly turned down when she first tried to make it as an actress, as she was considered “unphotogenic.” Obviously, she persevered.  

“You just keep plugging away,” White told Parade in 2018. “You don’t give up.”
On work and interests

White, who once said that the word "retirement” was not part of her vocabulary, told Katie Couric in 2017 that it’s important to stay busy.

“It's not hard to find things you're interested in, but enjoy them and indulge them, and I think that can keep you on your toes,” White said.
On career advice

White’s career advice to young people was do the work and be prepared, she told Parade in 2018. “Don’t think you can wing it, because you can’t,” she said.

Even in show business, it’s “fun, but take your business seriously, because it is a serious business,” she said.

Jules Swain, Yorkshire Paramedic Overheard:

"We’re ‘ard. We dunt wear coats on neets art."

We're hard we don't wear coats on nights out.

Oldest living surrealist tells all

Dorothea Tanning, painter, sculptor, writer and wife of Max Ernst, counsels young artists: "Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars."
By John Glassie
Published February 11, 2002

Dorothea Tanning's paintings and sculpture are featured in "Surrealism: Desire Unbound," a major exhibition that opened Feb. 6 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She is one of the only surviving members of the movement that, more than 60 years ago, turned the perceived world -- as well as the art world -- on its ear.

"As for still being here," says Tanning, 91, "I can only apologize." And as for surrealism, maybe the movement itself should apologize to Tanning for casting such a long shadow over her subsequent efforts as a painter, sculptor and printmaker, and more recently, as a writer and poet.

Today, she still paints and draws, and attends exhibitions of her work from the last few decades -- images that almost always evoke the female human form. But mainly she has been building a literary career for herself enviable to any young writer.

Her poetry has appeared in many publications, including the New Republic, the Yale Review, Partisan Review and the Paris Review. Last year, she was selected for inclusion in "The Best American Poetry 2000." And last fall, Tanning published "Between Lives: An Artist and Her World," a memoir of her long, heady and, one must say, romantically bohemian time on Earth.

Born in 1910 in Galesburg, Ill., Tanning moved by herself to Chicago at the age of 20 to study painting, where she met her "first eccentrics," she writes in her memoir. "They float through antic evenings to the sound of jazz and the tinkling of glasses containing icy drinks." A few years later, alone again on a bus and with no planned accommodations, she went on to New York.

In Manhattan, eking out a living doing advertising illustrations and trying to paint on the side, she "ate curry powder sandwiches, took Hindu dancing, read the 'Bhagvad Gita' and Emily Dickinson, impartially." She also went to see the 1936 "Fantastic, Dada, and Surrealism" show at the Museum of Modern Art. She was well aware of the movement, "but here, here in the museum," she writes, " ... are signposts so imperious, so laden, so seductive, and yes, so perverse that ... they would possess me utterly."

Her subsequent paintings caught the eye of gallery dealer Julien Levy. These include the well-known 1942 self-portrait "Birthday," which showed her bare-breasted in a skirt of roots and a Elizabethan-looking jacket, surrounded by doors and thresholds, and with a rather strange friend: a lemur with wings. Through Levy she fell in with the French surrealist expats and other emerging artistic types such as, as she recalls, "Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Kurt Seligman, Bob Motherwell ... Peggy Guggenheim, Max Ernst, Max Ernst."

She and the dadaist icon Ernst became inseparable, and soon got married in a double wedding with photographer and painter Man Ray and Juliet Browner. Tanning found herself part of an inner circle that included André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró and René Magritte, and became friends with figures such as Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Joseph Cornell, Dylan Thomas, Truman Capote and choreographer George Balanchine.

After the war, she and Ernst moved to France, where they lived for 28 years. Tanning's work from this period is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery in London, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, the Menil Collection in Houston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and many others. During the '40s and '50s, she also created costume designs for Balanchine. She began making sculptures in the early '70s -- fabric and cloth pieces that conjured up limp ballet-dancing forms.

Tanning moved back to New York in 1979 after Ernst's death. Among others, she found a friend in Pultizer Prize-winning poet James Merrill. It was Merrill "who more than anyone at that point of my life, made me realize that living was still wonderful even though I felt that my loss, Max, had left nothing but ashes," she says. "So if I took up brushes again, and the pen, to work for 20 more solitary years -- and am still at it -- it was Jimmy who made me want to, and so proved himself right." Tanning began to write and published her first book in 1986, a collection of reminiscences called "Birthday," after her most famous painting.

"Youth is certainly the big Y word around here these days," she says. Nevertheless, she is "not disappointed. I think I've been a renaissance man -- if he could have been a woman."

At the age of 91, how do feel about carrying the surrealist banner?

I guess I'll be called a surrealist forever, like a tattoo: "D. Loves S." I still believe in the surrealist effort to plumb our deepest subconscious to find out about ourselves. But please don't say I'm carrying the surrealist banner. The movement ended in the '50s and my own work had moved on so far by the '60s that being a called a surrealist today makes me feel like a fossil!

Surrealism must have had a strong appeal for you at the time.

When I saw the surrealist show at MOMA in 1936, I was impressed by its daring in addressing the tangles of the subconscious -- trawling the psyche to find its secrets, to glorify its deviance. I felt the urge to jump into the same lake -- where, by the way, I had already waded before I met any of them. Anyway, jump I did. They were a terribly attractive bunch of people. They loved New York, loved repartee, loved games. A less happy detail: They all mostly spoke in French. But I learned it later.
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You came to New York to be an artist in the midst of the Depression -- just got on a bus one day from Chicago -- with no plan and without knowing where you would stay. I don't imagine there were many young woman doing that. Did you see yourself as a pioneer?

Not a pioneer but headstrong. Now when I look back, I'm amazed at my stupid bravery, going off like that with just $25. My head was full of extravagances, I'd read Coleridge and a lot of other 19th century dreamers and I had to be an artist and live in Paris. So New York was on the way. I finally got to Paris, just four weeks before Hitler started his March. Americans were told to go home; I went to my uncle's in Stockholm on a train with Hitler Youth. I got the last boat out of Gothenburg in September of 1939. In 1949, I went back to France and stayed there for 28 unbelievable years.

You write in your recent memoir that, even in those days the art world was "a kind of club based on good contacts, correct behavior, and certain tactical chic." How chic were you in those days, Ms. Tanning?

Chic! I didn't have any money to throw away on frivolities. I wore discount $5 dresses from a wonderful place on Union Square called Klein's. Also thrift shop stuff. A few of us took to wearing old clothes, but they had to be really old, from another time, way back. We'd show up in these rags as if it were perfectly natural. You had to be deadly deadpan about it. One of these appears in my painting "Birthday." It was from some old Shakespearean costume.

Well, excuse me for this, but "Birthday" is among other dreamlike things, a topless self-portrait. Is it fair to say that at that time, 1942, people thought you were immodest?

Well, I was aware it was pretty daring, but that's not why I did it. It was a kind of a statement, wanting the utter truth, and bareness was necessary. My breasts didn't amount to much. Quite unremarkable. And besides, when you are feeling very solemn and painting very intensively, you think only of what you are trying to communicate.

So what have you tried to communicate as an artist? What were your goals, and have you achieved them?

I'd be satisfied with having suggested that there is more than meets the eye.

In your memoir, you advise pretty girls who want to be artists to get ready for a lot of frustration. How frustrated were you?

I don't want to give the impression that I was a beauty. Just the same, I always noticed a curious reaction as if there were something unnatural about a really nice-looking girl doing something dead serious. It may be different today. Or maybe there are more pretty girls.

Is there any specific advice you can give to artists and writers cursed with good looks?

Yes. Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads and idiots and movie stars, except when you need amusement.

I imagine you have struggled with the label of being a "woman artist" as well as the "wife of" Max Ernst, who was a founder of surrealism and a seminal figure in 20th century art. Would things be different for you today?

Yes and no. You need fortitude and patience. This goes with a big dose of indifference to the art world; you absolutely need that indifference. If you get married you're branded. We could have gone on, Max and I, all our lives without the tag. I never heard him use the word "wife" in regard to me. He was very sorry about that wife thing. I'm very much against the arrangement of procreation, at least for humans. If I could have designed it, it would be a tossup who gets pregnant, the man or woman. Boy, that would end rape for one thing. And "woman artist"? Disgusting.

Many people have been using the word "surreal" to describe the events of Sept. 11th. The horrors of the world wars were a factor in bringing about dadaism and surrealism. Do you think artists will have a similar impulse now?

"Surreal" has become such a buzzword. There may be a need for something equally moving but certainly not for going back to something. Anyway, yes, there is certainly a need for hard and different thinking after what has happened and before what may happen.

But what kind of thinking? You've lived through the Depression and several wars. What is the role of art in such times?

Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now.

What do you think of some of the artwork being produced today?

I can't answer that without enraging the art world. It's enough to say that most of it comes straight out of dada, 1917. I get the impression that the idea is to shock. So many people laboring to outdo Duchamp's urinal. It isn't even shocking anymore, just kind of sad.

As you mentioned, there was a lot of shock value in the work of the dadaists and the surrealists that you fell in with. Was that somehow different?

In its beginning, surrealism was an electric time with all the arts liberating themselves from their Snow White spell. There is a value in shaking people up, meaning those who have forgotten to think for themselves. Shock can be valuable as a protest. Like the dada fomenters, sitting there in the Cafe Voltaire in 1917 -- their disgust with the world they lived in, its lethal war, its politics, its so-called rationales. Shock had value at that time. But ideas and innovation will always prevail without any deliberate effort to shock.

What about folks like Dali, walking his lobster on a leash?

Dali used his silly shenanigans to get publicity, to which he was extravagantly addicted. He made some sublime paintings, he was a master painter and his exhibitionist tricks didn't enhance him as a person or as an artist. It was a pity really.

What's your take on recent controversies at the Brooklyn Museum: the "Sensation" exhibition, the elephant dung and the more recent Last Supper in which the artist portrayed herself, nude, as Jesus Christ?

The Brooklyn show was blatantly shock-hopeful. And our mayor took the bait like a fish. I probably would not have liked it any more than the mayor if I'd bothered to go.

Were you in favor of the Guiliani's moral standards panel on art?

Hitler banned and burned "degenerate art." Stalin did the same. I suppose they had their moral standards too. I can only say that if a work doesn't make being sane and alive not only possible but wonderful, well, move on to the next picture.

We live in an age when so many people seem to want to be artists of some kind. Why do you think that is? And what does it say about our culture?

All these young hopefuls swarming the big city and getting nowhere fast; that's such a sad thought. But if there has been a big surge in the number of people making art, it's because our prosperity has released so many of us from need. It has allowed our creative impulses to test themselves without starving the body. Many people find joy in actually doing something the pragmatist would call useless.

We are also obviously living in a society that prizes youth. Has this larger cultural bias had any effect on you in recent years?

You are so right. Even old people want to be teenagers. But if my memory serves me well it wasn't all that glorious. To my surprise, I have come to like being old. You can do what you want.

You have been friends with so many important cultural figures. May I ask you to play a little pseudo-surrealist free-association game? How about your husband Max Ernst?

His humor. Ironic, amused, bemused. We laughed a lot. Even today, I have to keep from finding things absurd, which mostly they are. At the same time I'm crying my eyes out.

How about André Breton, founder of surrealism and dadaism?

Severely: "Dorothea, do you wear that low neckline just to provoke men?"

René Magritte?

Sweet.

Truman Capote?

A neat little package -- of dynamite.

Orson Wells?

Scowler.

Joseph Cornell?

The courtly love of the 13th century troubadours.

Dylan Thomas?

How could anyone resist his bardic exuberance, his dithyrambs?

Duchamp?

Peerless.

Picasso?

One time when I was at his house, Jhuan-les-pins, for an afternoon visit, we stood at the kitchen door yard for farewells and he broke off the last flower from an old rose bush and handed it to me. How would you feel?

James Merrill?

Best poet, best friend, best fun. He died much, oh much, too soon: seven whole years ago.

What are you working on now?

I still write poems. Not that I overestimate them, but it gives me such pleasure why deny myself? The other day I read a beautiful pair of lines by Stanley Kunitz: "I have walked through many lives/some of them my own."

If you could change anything in your life, or lives, what would it be?

More color in my dreams.

John Glassie

John Glassie is a writer in New York

 

Born Dorothea Margaret Tanning 25 August 1910 Galesburg, Illinois, U.S. Died 31 January 2012 (aged 101) Manhattan, New York City, U.S. Painting, sculpture, printmaking, writing

 

Dorothea Tanning, Birthday, 1942, oil on canvas, 40 1/4 x 25 1/2 in./102.2 x 64.8 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art. ©The Estate of Dorothea Tanning

Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning in 1948.

 AAA inverobe 11954-2.jpg

Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning in 1948. Photo by Robert Bruce Inverarity in the Smithsonian Institution collection.

Dorothea Tanning Portrait de Famille

 Portrait de famille (Family Portrait)

Portrait de famille (Family Portrait)

1953-54
Oil on canvas
39 3/8 x 31 7/8 in.

Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

In her own words...


....I've always been attracted by the fantastic.  You see I was born in Galesburg, a hamlet of Illinois, which is nothing exciting in itself, but my father, of Swedish origin, a very authoritarian man ...

Marcel Duhamel:   This is particularly evident in Family Portrait, where all the characters are represented in proportion to the importance they had then in your eyes.  Looks like you settled accounts?

Not really ... It is more generally a comment on the hierarchy within the sacrosanct family.  My father, despite everything, brought us a breath of exoticism.  He told stories of distant snows, the fleeing boy skates on the ice, fast, fast ... the wolf at his heels ... I felt the hoarse wolf breath on my neck ... it was delicious.


[....J'ai toujours été attirée par le fantastique. Voyez-vous je suis née à Galesburg, un patelin de l'Illinois, ce qui n'a rien d'exaltant en soi, mais mon père, Suédois d'origine, homme très autoritaire ...

Marcel Duhamel:   C'est particulièrement visible dans Portrait de famille, où tous les personnages sont représentés proportionnellement à l'importance qu'ils avaient
alors à vos yeux. On dirait que vous y réglez des comptes?

Pas vraiment... C'est plus généralement un commentaire sur la hiérarchie au sein de la Sacrosainte Famille.  Mon père, malgré tout, nous apportait un souille d'exotisme. Il racontait des histoires de neiges lointaines, de garcon chaussé de patins fuyant sur la glace, vite, vite.  Le loup à ses trousses ... Je sentais l'haleine rauque du loup sur ma nuque ... c'était délicieux.]

     —from interview with Marcel Duhamel, Dorothea Tanning: Numéro Spécial de XXe Siècle.  Paris: Editions XXe Siècle, 1977, p. 110.

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We'd Better

We’re not only allowed to think about audience, we’d better. What we’re doing in writing is not all that different from what we’ve been doing all our lives, i.e., using our personalities as a way of coping with life. Writing is about charm, about finding and accessing and honing ones’ particular charms. To say that “a light goes on” is not quite right—it’s more like: a fixture gets installed.

GEORGE SAUNDERS

The continually reassuring thing is that we’re all novices when we start a new work.

 ― Alice McDermott

Jacques Pépin’s vegetable soup

 Jacques Pépin’s vegetable soup recipe is satisfying, simple cooking at its best.

Chunky Vegetable Soup
Active time:20 mins
Total time:40 mins
Servings:6 (makes 12 cups)
By Joe Yonan
March 21, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. EDT

For someone whose seminal book is named “La Technique,” Jacques Pépin is one of the least dogmatic chefs I’ve ever met. He demonstrated it back in the 1960s, when he went to work at Howard Johnson’s to help pioneer the use of high-quality frozen food, rather than take a White House job cooking for President John F. Kennedy.

Pépin, 86, can slice and dice with the best of them — I’ve seen him turn garlic and salt into a paste in mere seconds, using nothing more than a knife — but he also is refreshingly fond of shortcuts. He’s demonstrated countless timesaving techniques on his many public-television shows, including my favorite series, “Fast Food My Way,” and its follow-up. In his latest cookbook, “Jacques Pépin Quick & Simple,” an update of an earlier work, Pépin continues spreading the gospel of effective cooking made fast by smart choices. He writes about his love for, among others, the microwave, the pressure cooker, the toaster oven and the food processor, every one of them a timesaver in the kitchen.

Just because you can chop a mountain of vegetables by hand more quickly than the average cook doesn’t mean you want to.

The recipe that jumped out at me in “Quick & Simple” is exactly what the book’s title promises: a light soup that uses water, not stock, to showcase the vegetables and uses a food processor, not a knife, to slice them thinly enough that they soften in 15 or 20 minutes. You use the same food processor (without bothering to clean it) to puree parsley, garlic and a little olive oil into a vibrant paste that you stir into the soup right before serving.

On the cusp of spring, when the days can still be crisp, it makes for a soothing lunch or dinner, with a side of crusty bread for dipping.

The recipe also contains a multitude of lessons, about using whatever you have, about seasoning at the right time, about letting flavors shine — and about being willing to use whatever tools you need to get dinner on the table in a flash.
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And that befits Pépin’s reputation as perhaps the world’s best cooking teacher, a reputation he lives up to year after year through not only his books and YouTube videos but through his foundation, which supports community kitchens that offer culinary training to adults with high barriers to employment. To support the foundation’s work, you can become a member and get access to content such as two Web-based “books” that offer a total of 100 recipes and videos from some of the nation’s most acclaimed chefs — Pépin included, of course.

Scale and get a printer-friendly version of the recipe here.

Storage: The soup can be refrigerated, without the herb-garlic garnish, for up to 1 week or frozen for up to 6 months. Defrost and reheat on the stove top or in the microwave, and add the garnish right before serving.
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Ingredients

    1/2 medium onion (about 4 ounces), peeled and cut into chunks
    1 rib celery (about 2 ounces)
    4 scallions, trimmed
    4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
    1 large carrot (about 4 ounces), trimmed and scrubbed
    1 zucchini (about 6 ounces), trimmed
    1 small white turnip (about 3 ounces), scrubbed
    1 wedge green cabbage (about 4 ounces)
    1 to 2 russet potatoes (8 ounces total), scrubbed
    One (15-ounce) can no-salt-added navy or cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
    1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt, plus more to taste
    7 cups water
    2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, plus more to taste
    6 cloves garlic
    1 cup lightly packed fresh flat-leaf parsley or basil leaves, or a mixture
    Freshly ground black pepper

Step 1

Fit a food processor with a slicing blade and process the onion, celery and scallions. (Alternatively, you can roughly chop them by hand.)
Step 2

In a large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil until shimmering. Add the sliced vegetables and saute until tender, about 3 minutes
Step 3

Meanwhile, cut the carrot, zucchini, turnip, cabbage and potatoes in halves or quarters lengthwise (getting them narrow enough to go through the food processor chute), and use the processor to thinly slice them. (Alternatively, you can thinly slice them by hand.)

Add the vegetables to the stockpot, along with the beans, salt and water, increase the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer until the vegetables are very soft and the soup is flavorful, 15 to 20 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice, taste, and add more salt and/or lemon juice if needed.
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Step 4

While the soup is cooking, change the food processor to the chopping blade. Combine the garlic and herbs with the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in the bowl and puree until smooth. (Alternatively, you can finely chop the garlic and herbs by hand, and stir together with the oil.)
Step 5

Divide the soup among serving bowls, top each with a generous dollop of the herb mixture, season with the pepper, and serve hot.
Nutrition Information

Calories: 215; Total Fat: 10 g; Saturated Fat: 1 g; Cholesterol: 0 mg; Sodium: 518 mg; Carbohydrates: 27 g; Dietary Fiber: 6 g; Sugar: 4 g; Protein: 7 g.

Adapted from “Jacques Pépin Quick & Simple” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020).

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Casual Lentil Curry Soup

A friend gave me a bag of lentils + rice. I boiled them and added chicken broth and Bengal Spice tea and olive oil garlic celery bell peppers onion and today I added cooked and shredded chicken breasts and curry powder, cooked diced carrots and more water and bullion cubes. A delicious dinner. I love soup, especially soup in a big mug. The mug makes it all feel casual and relaxed.

Listen to Duane Pitre's Music

 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/arts/music/duane-pitre-just-intonation.html

Healthy Biscotti

Recipe by Geniale Genie

READY IN: 1hr 3mins
UNITS: US

INGREDIENTS

Nutrition

DIRECTIONS

  • Blend oil and sugar. Mix in extracts, lemon juice and zest; add eggs. Beat until creamy and light.
  • Combine flour, salt, and baking powder; gradually stir into liquids.
  • Work in cherries and nuts by hand.
  • Preheat oven to 300°F.
  • On a lined baking sheet, form dough into two logs (12 x 2 in) - if dough is too sticky, wet hands with cold water.
  • Bake 35 minutes or until lightly browned. Allow to cool or 10 minutes.
  • Reduce oven to 275°F.
  • Cut logs diagonally into 3/4-inch think slices; lay on their sides on same baking sheet. Return to oven another 8-10 minutes, or until dry.

RECIPE MADE WITH LOVE BY

@Geniale Genie
Contributor
“These are very versatile, feel free to mix and match flavours. Here are a few ideas: coffee liqueur/hazelnut/dark chocolate chips, cranberry/orange/pistachio, orange/walnut, date/hazelnut, pineapple/coconut, vanilla/white chocolate chips/Macadamia nuts, etc. etc. Cooling time is included in cooking time.”

Shiu-Min's Spicy Relish

Saute chopped green tops of scallions in light oil, add sesame seeds, red chili flakes, fresh garlic. Splash with soy sauce and use it as a relish.

a bit like this https://thewoksoflife.com/ginger-scallion-oil-with-chilies/

Peanut and Scallion Relish

March 2014 Issue

Peanut and Scallion Relish

Peanut and Scallion RelishPenden + Munk

A favorite, try this versatile crunchy peanut mixture with braised-chicken-thigh lettuce wraps.

Ingredients

Makes about 1 cup

1 large scallion, green parts only, thinly sliced
3/4 cup coarsely chopped unsalted, dry-roasted peanuts
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Step 1

Combine scallion, peanuts, cilantro, and brown sugar in a small bowl; season with salt and pepper. Use immediately. (Don't prepare this relish ahead of time—the cilantro will make the peanuts soggy.)

Lentil Soup

Last night I made a lentil soup using a head of celery, red onion, peppers, chicken bullion, leftover red wine and Bengal spice tea, and olive oil and a whole bunch of fresh ginger and garlic. It was delicious for breakfast.

The thing to do is to grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear. ZORA NEALE HURSTON

“most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet


“In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
 
“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
 
“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
...live in the question.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet


“The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame... at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant...”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“The necessary thing is after all but this; solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself for hours meeting no one - this one must be able to attain.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation...Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrased, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers--perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“At bottom, and just in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone, and for one person to be able to advise or even help another, a lot must happen, a lot must go well, a whole constellation of things must come right in order once to succeed.”
Rainer Marie Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“there is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along....”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.
This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

all the dragons

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

A mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone. William Wordsworth

 “For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity.”
― William Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

“Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.”
― William Wordsworth

“The eye--it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.”
― William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads


“The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.”
― William Wordsworth, Great Narrative Poems Of The Romantic Age

“With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”
― William Wordsworth

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
― William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads

“Then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.”
― William Wordsworth

“Be mild, and cleave to gentle things,
thy glory and thy happiness be there.”
― William Wordsworth

“Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her.”
― William Wordsworth

“Rest and be thankful.”
― William Wordsworth

“Come grow old with me. The best is yet to be.”
― Wordsworth

“Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.”
― William Wordsworth

“Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

 “Love betters what is best”
― Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

  "Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future."

William Wordsworth


“The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”
― William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
― William Wordsworth

“When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude”
― William Wordsworth

“Wisdom is oft-times nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.”
― William Wordsworth, The Excursion 1814

Let everything happen to you

 Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

 Rainer Maria Rilke  

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Chest Cold

How to Feel Better

Below are some ways you can feel better while your body fights off acute bronchitis:

  • Get plenty of rest.
  • Drink plenty of fluids.
  • Use a clean humidifier or cool mist vaporizer.
  • Use saline nasal spray or drops to relieve a stuffy nose.
    • For young children, use a rubber suction bulb to clear mucus.
  • Breathe in steam from a bowl of hot water or shower.
  • Suck on lozenges. Do not give lozenges to children younger than 4 years of age.
  • Use honey to relieve cough for adults and children at least 1 year of age or older.

Ask your doctor or pharmacist about over-the-counter medicines that can help you feel better. Always use over-the-counter medicines as directed. Remember, over-the-counter medicines may provide temporary relief of symptoms, but they will not cure your illness.

https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/bronchitis.html

Ginger Snaps New and Improved January 7th 2024

I am addicted to these. I have made four batches in 2 weeks. I love them with a half teaspoon of freshly ground pepper in the recipe and extra ginger. The flavors bloom over days if they last that long.
I am not quite ready to put away the holiday cookie tins. The cold wind and 8 degree forecast had me starting up another batch of cookies. This time it's ginger snaps. Years ago my favorite children's book editor Dick Jackson told me that he had heard from an in-law who had worked in a cookie factory, that ginger snaps were made from spicing up all of the leftover cookie dough scraps mixed together at the end of the day, including the bits swept up from the floor! I loved the image and have never forgotten it.
Ingredients:

3/4 cup dark brown sugar
3/4 cup corn oil
1/2 cup dark molasses (not blackstrap)
1 egg or  better yet a  flax egg (which makes the cookies crisp)*
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1-2+ teaspoons ground ginger (or finely grated fresh or frozen ginger root)
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon cocoa powder (optional)
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (optional)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
In a large bowl, mix together the brown sugar, oil, molasses, and egg. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger; stir into the molasses mixture. Roll dough into 1 inch balls before placing them 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets or cast iron skillets or baking stones.
Bake them for 7 minutes in a preheated oven. Cool on wire racks. Store in an air-tight jar or tin. They are delicious with hot tea.

*Add flaxseed meal and water to a dish and stir. Let rest for 5 minutes to thicken. Add to recipes in place of 1 egg (as original recipe is written).

-adapted from Mom's Gingersnaps All Recipes.com
(re-posted from my other blog, The Insomniacs Kitchen, January 3, 2012)

Minnie Adkins

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/money/louisville-city-living/2020/09/17/minnie-adkins-is-a-self-taught-folk-artist-woodcarver-kentucky/3411372001/

“The thing that bothers me the most is people’s selfish decision not to get vaccinated and the failure to see how this affects a greater group of people. That’s the part that’s really difficult to swallow.”

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/12/28/iowa-dale-weeks-hospitals-covid-sepsis/

Gar Waterman

https://www.connecticutmag.com/arts/a-new-haven-artist-enlists-sea-slugs-as-climate-ambassadors/article_b96a02f2-5de6-11ec-a76b-df494b886c37.html

GEORGE ORWELL

If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them. 

GEORGE ORWELL

When vaccination rates and behavior changes are not enough to stop the virus from spreading, those infections are much more likely to lead to hospitalization and death for unvaccinated people.

 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/28/us/covid-deaths.html

Carmen Amaya

 

Carmen Amaya

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Carmen Amaya
1942 - Lyric Theater - 8 Dec MC - Allentown PA.jpg
1942 newspaper advertisement
Born
Carmen Amaya Amaya

2 November 1913 or 1918
Barcelona, Spain
Died19 November 1963 (aged 45 or 50)
Begur, Spain
OccupationFlamenco dancer, singer, actress
Years active1926–1963

DancesFlamenco

Carmen Amaya (2 November 1913 – 19 November 1963) was a Spanish Romani flamenco dancer and singer, born in the Somorrostro district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

She has been called "the greatest Flamenco dancer ever [1] and "the most extraordinary personality of all time in flamenco dance."[2] She was the first female flamenco dancer to master footwork previously reserved for the best male dancers, due to its speed and intensity. She sometimes danced in high-waisted trousers as a symbol of her strong character.

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

AMERICAN GINGERSNAPS

American Cookie: The Snaps, Drops, Jumbles, Tea Cakes, Bars & Brownies That We Have Loved For Generations by Anne Byrn

American CookieTake a break from all the holiday hustle and bustle and indulge in our cookie-themed Read the Revolution! Anne Byrn’s latest cookbook, American Cookie: The Snaps, Drops, Jumbles, Tea Cakes, Bars & Brownies That We Have Loved For Generations, mixes sweet treats with history take you on a journey through America's most beloved confectionaries. The following little morsel from the book highlights a classic American cookie–the gingersnap. Enjoy!

Excerpt

AMERICAN GINGERSNAPS

The spicy gingersnap truly snaps when you break it into pieces. And real gingersnaps, the old-timers say, contain no eggs, plenty of butter, and molasses that has cooked down on top of the stove.

The first mention of gingersnaps took place around 1805, according to John Mariani in The Dictionary of American Food & Drink, although cooks were baking gingerbread long before then. What we call gingerbread cake and gingerbread cookies today were parts of the collection of "gingerbread" recipes baked in Colonial America. The oldest examples were hard gingerbread pieces pressed with a decorative pattern using a stamp. These early ginger cookies originated in Europe and came with the German, Dutch, and English settlers to America. Gingersnaps were named from the German or Middle Dutch word snappen, meaning "to seize quickly."

In the United States, gingersnaps were associated with Muster Day or Militia Day, a military training and social event the entire town attended. Food historian Betty Fussell says that after the Revolutionary War, America realized the importance of a town militia for protection, and on Muster Day after the new recruits were signed up and the drills took place, there was plenty of rum to drink, gingersnaps to eat, and games and festivities to enjoy.

The following method for making gingersnaps might seem odd. You thinly roll the dough and drape it onto a pan before baking. Then, while still warm, the cookies are cut into strips and diamonds with a pastry wheel or pizza cutter. Nothing is wasted–there are no scraps from cutting out rounds of dough to bake. It's resourceful and fast–an old technique that works with busy lives today.

  • ½ cup light brown sugar, packed firmly
  • ½ cup molasses
  • ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
  • 2 cups unbleached flour, plus 3 to
  • 4 tablespoons for rolling the dough
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons ground ginger
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon ground allspice
  • ½ teaspoon ground coriander
  • ½ teaspoon salt

MAKES: About 5 dozen (2” to 2 ½“) cookies

  1. Place the brown sugar, molasses, and butter in a large saucepan and heat, stirring constantly, over medium-low heat until the butter melts, 5 to 6 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and stir well to combine.
  2. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, coriander, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Spoon the flour mixture into the brown sugar mixture in the saucepan. Stir with a wooden spoon until well blended. Transfer the dough to a glass bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator to chill for at least 2 hours. (You can chill overnight, but you will need to allow 1 ½ hours for the dough to warm back up to room temperature.)
  3. Place a rack in the top third of the oven, and preheat the oven to 350°F. Set aside a 17½" x 12" baking sheet.
  4. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Sprinkle the rolling pin and work surface with flour. Place about a third of the dough on the work surface and roll the dough ⅛" to 1⁄16" thick. Loosen the dough from the surface using a thin metal spatula. Carefully wrap the dough around a rolling pin and lift it onto the baking sheet. Unroll the dough so that it is centered on the pan. Place the pan in the oven.
  5. Bake the dough until it is browned around the edges, 11 to 13 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, and allow the dough to rest on the pan for 2 minutes. Using a pizza cutter or sharp knife, cut the dough into strips or diamonds. Let the gingersnaps cool on the pan for 10 minutes. Break apart the snaps and place them on a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat the process, rolling another third of the dough onto the cooled pan, bake, score, and cool. Repeat with the final third. Store the cooled cookies in an airtight metal container for up to 2 weeks.

The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside you.
Richard Brautigan, The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster

One Day

“One day
Time will die
And love will bury it”
― Richard Brautigan