The heartbreaking photo on page three in yesterday's City Paper of the man who often panhandles near the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, who is missing so many pieces of himself I can't bear to count, made me think to read last year's My Christmas Prayer. But in that missive, it's the wind-up - all I had read in the Sun that day - not the pitch, that I'm still chewing over, maybe because today I collaborated on another stunning image with amazingly gifted Sun photographer Amy Davis, for perhaps the last time, for maybe my last Sun food story. I am told the budget for most freelancers was wiped out, and with that, my favorite paying, creative gig since 1991. There's symmetry, at least - Amy was the first Sun photographer with whom I worked.
I've taken to weighing our emaciated hometown newspaper of record every morning; it was at its lightest ten days ago at 4.95 ounces (update on 26 January - 3.7 ounces). Usually awaiting me at 4 AM, thanks to my carrier who knows I really really must have my paper first thing, I pick it up and utter, yes, a prayer, that it not be the last time to appear in my vestibule.
Bizarre, but true - I have never missed reading a Morning Sun, Sunday Sun, or Evening Sun (may it rest in peace) since kindergarten - reading the paper in arrears the few brief times I ventured from range. A priceless childhood memory, and no doubt the impetus behind the obsession, is of sitting with my father every morning, he with his coffee and me with my tea, reading the paper in silence. In fact, I was not allowed to speak until he finished the paper. He often disappeared to soak in his tub and converse about what he had just read with Carl Schoettler, a career, now-retired, Sun reporter. My daddy got lots of Sun ink, making the news (often hilariously, when being a hometown character was akin to being a hero) and also commenting on everything in endless letters to the editor.
And so I followed in his footsteps, insisting on a cone of Sun-reading silence; doing newsworthy, albeit not so crazy things (hmmm, well, there was that front-page goldfish incident); writing letters and commentary; making decades-long friendships with reporters and photographers; but also being lucky enough to write food and features stories and style photographs.
Uh, sorry to be post-tense so post-haste. But when the Sun and the Washington Post are set to share content and even the solvency of the New York Times is questioned, I naturally think the Baltimore Sun probably mirrors that (lack of) fortune. And BTW, the check for my last story and photo bounced and I'm doubting I'll get paid for what I just wrote and styled.
My Christmas 2008 prayer is that 365 days from now, I am still getting the paper, whatever it weighs, through my mail slot (at 4 AM, please) and that none of my friends or anyone else at the Sun is bought out or booted in the process.
Heck, I'll go for a miracle - that a local interest buys the paper and pulls it back from the brink and that youngsters - and their parents - again find that starting the day with the newspaper is non-negotiable.
25 December 2008
09 October 2008
Udderly Important
I had my yearly mammogram on 1 October, the first day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month - not consciously planned, but very appropriate, as this year I'm once again reminded of how the disease hovers around my family, swooping in and picking off (or trying to) relatives of all ages - one cousin was 37 when it struck (she won).
During the first week of 2008, my older sister, who was 49 when breast cancer was first diagnosed, went into the hospital five and a half years after chemo and radiation ended, and almost didn't come out. She was hospitalized for months, including more than a week when a tangle of tubes, including a huge one down her throat and into her chest, kept her alive.
This intelligent woman felt a lump two years before her initial diagnosis, yet fear kept her from confronting it. I thought about this as I had my mammogram, though I had to think fast, as the entire procedure totals barely five minutes.
I have little patience with women who pass on this exam because they say it hurts. Get a grip. They say they don't want to know. Get over it.
Imagine, instead (and I pray that's all I ever have to do) knowing the physical and mental pain of surgery and its aftermath, chemo, radiation, and then relapsing and doing it all over again, all because you delayed having a mammogram. Imagine your family's pain.
Not having health insurance or not having enough is no excuse - it's easy to find a mammogram for free or on a sliding scale. How can you afford not to do this?
During the first week of 2008, my older sister, who was 49 when breast cancer was first diagnosed, went into the hospital five and a half years after chemo and radiation ended, and almost didn't come out. She was hospitalized for months, including more than a week when a tangle of tubes, including a huge one down her throat and into her chest, kept her alive.
This intelligent woman felt a lump two years before her initial diagnosis, yet fear kept her from confronting it. I thought about this as I had my mammogram, though I had to think fast, as the entire procedure totals barely five minutes.
I have little patience with women who pass on this exam because they say it hurts. Get a grip. They say they don't want to know. Get over it.
Imagine, instead (and I pray that's all I ever have to do) knowing the physical and mental pain of surgery and its aftermath, chemo, radiation, and then relapsing and doing it all over again, all because you delayed having a mammogram. Imagine your family's pain.
Not having health insurance or not having enough is no excuse - it's easy to find a mammogram for free or on a sliding scale. How can you afford not to do this?
18 July 2008
Table For One
Google "dining alone" and read the comments in response to mine on Elizabeth Large's blog piece Table For One At Ruth Chris and it looks like eating out alone at a special occasion place is a fear greater than public speaking. Those who do it are just generally considered pathetic losers - probably by people afraid of their own shadows. I normally don't care what others think; still, with this being Smalltimore, I wondered how weird it might look should I run into a business associate. Everyone to whom I mentioned my plan practically "shook their heads in pity," to quote Mary Chapin Carpenter.
But I wanted what I always want for my birthday dinner and with none of the usual suspects available to accompany me, I dined alone at The Prime Rib tonight. No big deal. And in fact . . .
I got to truly focus on the food. Other than one or two hamburgers a year, I eat beef only at The Prime Rib (why bother anywhere else?), and as that's rare (pun intended), I savored and appreciated the experience maybe even more. I'm pretty sure the slab of prime rib served me tonight was the most tender I have ever eaten. OK, it was food porn. In lieu of no appetizer, I had my two favorite sides, the stuffed baked potato and the creamed spinach (in EL's blog, I asked which restaurant meals were worth the $$$ because they could not be duplicated at home, and I certainly cannot copy this because milk and meat can never meet in my kosher kitchen). I got to rip the ends off all the bread. I was served some incredible chocolate thing, on the house, with a candle. I was fussed over without a big fuss, never waiting for anything, including endless refills of their excellent coffee.
In EL's blog, I wondered about weirdness for me, the staff, and other patrons. But the place is dark, I had on a big, gaze-obscuring hat, and without my trademark tiny dark specs, I can't see anyway, so if I was being stared at, I didn't know. The staff couldn't have been more gracious, when I made the reservation and requested my favorite table (and probably everyone else's) and when I was there. I was occupied with - no surprise - one of my BlackBerrys, working on a piece for my EBDI blog. And when I couldn't stop looking at the top of the piano - it was like staring at a map of the EBDI footprint - I googled commentary on an ee cummings poem shared with me by someone who used to occupy valuable real estate in my heart. I thought about the various good and bad buttons pushed today and who pushed them, and had yet another one pushed as e-mail from a far-away friend arrived with the bread and butter. I made my annual "A Year In The Life" list, of all the things, good and bad and just thangs, that are new and important since the last birthday. Not that I need a tally, but, jeez, it's been a most meshugana twelve months.
On my twenty minute walk home, made safer courtesy of Artscape, and defraying maybe two minutes intake of that just-about-perfect meal, I renewed the vow I make every year on my birthday, really an edict from my favorite philosopher, Eleanor Roosevelt, "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face . . . do the thing you think you cannot do." Cross off confronting the social taboo of fine dining alone. Would that everything were such low-hanging fruit.
But I wanted what I always want for my birthday dinner and with none of the usual suspects available to accompany me, I dined alone at The Prime Rib tonight. No big deal. And in fact . . .
I got to truly focus on the food. Other than one or two hamburgers a year, I eat beef only at The Prime Rib (why bother anywhere else?), and as that's rare (pun intended), I savored and appreciated the experience maybe even more. I'm pretty sure the slab of prime rib served me tonight was the most tender I have ever eaten. OK, it was food porn. In lieu of no appetizer, I had my two favorite sides, the stuffed baked potato and the creamed spinach (in EL's blog, I asked which restaurant meals were worth the $$$ because they could not be duplicated at home, and I certainly cannot copy this because milk and meat can never meet in my kosher kitchen). I got to rip the ends off all the bread. I was served some incredible chocolate thing, on the house, with a candle. I was fussed over without a big fuss, never waiting for anything, including endless refills of their excellent coffee.
In EL's blog, I wondered about weirdness for me, the staff, and other patrons. But the place is dark, I had on a big, gaze-obscuring hat, and without my trademark tiny dark specs, I can't see anyway, so if I was being stared at, I didn't know. The staff couldn't have been more gracious, when I made the reservation and requested my favorite table (and probably everyone else's) and when I was there. I was occupied with - no surprise - one of my BlackBerrys, working on a piece for my EBDI blog. And when I couldn't stop looking at the top of the piano - it was like staring at a map of the EBDI footprint - I googled commentary on an ee cummings poem shared with me by someone who used to occupy valuable real estate in my heart. I thought about the various good and bad buttons pushed today and who pushed them, and had yet another one pushed as e-mail from a far-away friend arrived with the bread and butter. I made my annual "A Year In The Life" list, of all the things, good and bad and just thangs, that are new and important since the last birthday. Not that I need a tally, but, jeez, it's been a most meshugana twelve months.
On my twenty minute walk home, made safer courtesy of Artscape, and defraying maybe two minutes intake of that just-about-perfect meal, I renewed the vow I make every year on my birthday, really an edict from my favorite philosopher, Eleanor Roosevelt, "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face . . . do the thing you think you cannot do." Cross off confronting the social taboo of fine dining alone. Would that everything were such low-hanging fruit.
29 June 2008
Brother, Can You Spare A Tummy Tuck?
I scored some blueberries, nectarines, and blessedly, white peaches, this morning at the downtown farmers market, but this bounty cost a ransom. It’s not the farmers’ fault, of course.
This week and last, Doug Woerner, my quince and main white nectarine and white peach man, has been beside himself with the almost lack of business at the Pimlico and Howard Park farmers markets. Fixed incomes just can’t stretch. I'm grateful for the option of fewer niceties to afford the meteoric rise in the cost of healthy eating, but just like medical care, food at an affordable price should be an unalienable right.
And speaking of health care, the lead story in today's Sun details doctors who are closing their practices because of the ever-increasing cost of doing business. My two most important doctors, both with huge practices, retired early for this reason. Here, in a city and a state with the world's most famous medical institution and a plethora of other extraordinary hospitals, it's projected that we'll have a shortage of doctors.
Money makes the world go around - to be sure, it's a simplistic view of complicated economic theories way over my head, but I wonder how close we are until the escalating cost of everything, fueled in part by the unceasing price of oil, brings us to a full stop.
As I jumped from the Sun’s front page to finish the story, I encountered an ad for - I swear - a well known plastic surgeon's fifteen percent sale on cosmetic surgery. Things must already be worse than I thought.
This week and last, Doug Woerner, my quince and main white nectarine and white peach man, has been beside himself with the almost lack of business at the Pimlico and Howard Park farmers markets. Fixed incomes just can’t stretch. I'm grateful for the option of fewer niceties to afford the meteoric rise in the cost of healthy eating, but just like medical care, food at an affordable price should be an unalienable right.
And speaking of health care, the lead story in today's Sun details doctors who are closing their practices because of the ever-increasing cost of doing business. My two most important doctors, both with huge practices, retired early for this reason. Here, in a city and a state with the world's most famous medical institution and a plethora of other extraordinary hospitals, it's projected that we'll have a shortage of doctors.
Money makes the world go around - to be sure, it's a simplistic view of complicated economic theories way over my head, but I wonder how close we are until the escalating cost of everything, fueled in part by the unceasing price of oil, brings us to a full stop.
As I jumped from the Sun’s front page to finish the story, I encountered an ad for - I swear - a well known plastic surgeon's fifteen percent sale on cosmetic surgery. Things must already be worse than I thought.
06 June 2008
Be kind, be kind, be kind
Today is 40 years since the death of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. I still hold him and his ideals in great regard, of course, but I also admire his eldest daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, whom I've neither met nor have ever had any contact.
She and I have much in common - a strong committment to volunteerism, fathers who were cut down in their early 40s at the hands of madmen, and an unshakable belief that from grief - from which we agree there is never closure - we must find hope, effect change, and always always push forward.
I once heard her convey a massively important piece of advice she said her father often repeated - be kind, be kind, be kind - shorthand for the Golden Rule - the root, the essense, of civility. Indeed, just about two thousand years ago, the great scholar Hillel, demonstrating he could teach the entire Torah standing on one foot, needed cite only the Golden Rule.
Today's headlines detail the colossal challenges left in the wake of $139-a-barrel oil, with kindness unfortunately not the cure. So I'll focus on the almost matter-of-fact, race-and-genderbending achievements of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and their new-found detente, made possible via respect and civility. America will recover from our economic mess. There's hope, there will be change. We are most definitely pushing forward.
She and I have much in common - a strong committment to volunteerism, fathers who were cut down in their early 40s at the hands of madmen, and an unshakable belief that from grief - from which we agree there is never closure - we must find hope, effect change, and always always push forward.
I once heard her convey a massively important piece of advice she said her father often repeated - be kind, be kind, be kind - shorthand for the Golden Rule - the root, the essense, of civility. Indeed, just about two thousand years ago, the great scholar Hillel, demonstrating he could teach the entire Torah standing on one foot, needed cite only the Golden Rule.
Today's headlines detail the colossal challenges left in the wake of $139-a-barrel oil, with kindness unfortunately not the cure. So I'll focus on the almost matter-of-fact, race-and-genderbending achievements of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and their new-found detente, made possible via respect and civility. America will recover from our economic mess. There's hope, there will be change. We are most definitely pushing forward.
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