Postcards from New York

As I've been repeating endlessly lately, I spend last weekend in Manhattan. Glad about it, mad about it Manhattan. I am no stranger to The Big Apple but Saturday, December 11th has to be the best day I have ever spent in that city of cities.

I owe all of this to my right hand, JD. This whole weekend was his idea and it was for all intents and purposes a Christmas present. I had a couple of meetings in the city on Friday and Saturday was a day set aside for experiencing the many wonders of Gotham. Wonders I usually miss when I'm there.

JD'd booked us at the New York Palace. Without a doubt, it was the best hotel I'd ever stayed in. We were on the 31st floor and we looked across Madison Avenue and down on St. Patrick's Cathedral. That's Rockefeller Center in the middle left side of this photo.

So at around 7:30 on Saturday, I swung open the draperies and that was what I saw. I love Manhattan and I love Midtown specifically. Having a 31st-floor perch on the corner of Madison and 50th was as ideal a location as I can imagine. So after a round of room-service coffee we got dressed and went downstairs to eat breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Five-star hotels don't just have expensive rooms. I had a $30 bowl of oatmeal.

We walked around the neighborhood for a while after that and then jumped on the subway to head up to The Metropolitan Museum.

The Met is one of the world's largest art museums and it has a collection of nearly 2 million pieces of art broken into 19 sub-collections. The Met renovated its hall of ancient Greek and Roman Art four years ago and I'd never seen it. Their collection is spectacular, one of the best I've ever seen. That bronze in the photo above is more than 2,000 years old and it looks as if it were cast yesterday. Like an idiot, I didn't photograph its accompanying plaque and now I can't remember what it is and what it's representing. Any Met buffs out there who can help me with that statue?

The Met's an enormous museum and I don't think it's possible to get through the whole thing in a day. If you're considering a visit, look over their collections online first and make a plan.

From the Met (on 5th Avenue at 82nd) we headed back toward Midtown via Madison Avnue. It was a sunny, clear day and Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side is one of the best places in New York for window shopping (actual shopping too). It's a residential neighborhood and there's a shopping district that extends the whole way from up there down to Midtown. Along that stretch of Madison Avenue, you'll find everything from Hermès to Betsey Johnson. There are no fewer than four Ralph Lauren shops along that stretch of  Madison.

After a quick lunch I met up with Tess, a college friend who's the media director for the National Urban League these days. Tess and her family live in Harlem and we've both come a very long way from the rolling hills of rural Pennsylvania, that's for sure.

Then it was off to dinner. I'd made reservations earlier for Charlie Palmer's Métrazur. I'd been to Métrazur before at the suggestion of the great Jai Massela from Brizo Faucets. My second visit was even better than my first and dinner that night was easily the best meal I've ever eaten in New York. What pushed it over the edge was a generous serving of truffled mashed potatoes. I'm telling you, those things will haunt me for the rest of my days.

Métrazur is in the East Balcony of Grand Central Terminal and every table in the place has one of the most spectacular views to be had in the entire city.

Despite the fact that Métrazur is perched on a balcony inside of the busiest rail terminal in the United States, up on the balcony it's nearly as quiet as a church. Sound doesn't travel up inside of that cavernous terminal and the effect is pure magic.

After a truly spectacular meal, it was time to head over to Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera House for the big event. I've been learning about opera for the last five or six years. I wasn't ready for it until I hit 40 but now it's about all I listen to. It has a tradition that goes back centuries and the very act of singing operatically is a feat of superhuman strength and prowess. Seeing an opera at the Met is a goal of everybody with even a glancing interest in grand opera and JD and I had tickets for La bohème.

La bohème is the world's most-performed opera and the New York Metropolitan Opera has been mounting a production of it every season since La bohème made its US debut in 1900. I had pretty high expectations for what I was about to see and as the curtain rose on Act One and Marcello launched into "Questo Mar Rosso" each and every one of those expectations was exceeded and then some.

The Metropolitan Opera's world famous for the sets it uses in its production of La bohème. They were commissioned in 1981 and master director Franco Zeffirelli's elaborate creations nearly bankrupted the company. I knew they were going to be amazing but again, I didn't quite know how amazing.

La bohème is presented in four acts and act one takes place in the garret shared by Rodolfo, a poet, Marcello, a painter; Shaunard, a musician and Colline, a philosopher. The year is 1830 and it's Christmas Eve in Paris.

La bohème is as funny as it is stirring which is quite an accomplishment since it was composed 120 years ago. After the four Bohemians have their moment, they decide to leave the garret and go to a tavern. The curtain goes down. 20 minutes later the curtain comes back up and reveals the most elaborate piece of stagework I've ever seen.

According to everything I've read, act two of La bohème has a cast of 280 people and it includes a full marching band a live horse. After an exciting romp through the tavern the curtain goes down.

20 minutes later, the curtain comes up and the action's shifted to a snowy pre-dawn. It's at the foot of a bridge on the outskirts of Paris.

It's snowing. As in it's snowing for real. It snows the whole way through act three. The lovers reunite and swear to be together forever again and the curtain comes down.

When the curtain comes back up we're back in the garret and it's spring time.

Now usually, this kind of a spectacle is a way to hide so-so musicianship. But I assure you that wasn't the case with the Met's bohème. The main characters of Mimi and Rodolfo were sung by Krassimira Stoyanova and Joseph Calleja. I'd never heard Calleja sing before and he was incredible. That man has a voice so clear it sounded as if he were sitting next to me. Here he is singing E Lucevan Le Stelle from Tosca, another Puccini opera.





If you listen to him in that piece, pay attention to how he modulates and controls his voice while at the same time singing at something approaching 180 decibels. Many thanks to the Metropolitan Opera Company for the use of those photos.

The opera wrapped up at around quarter to midnight and we jumped back in a train bound for another hidden wonder at Grand Central Terminal, the Campbell Apartment.

The Campbell apartment is tucked into the Vanderbilt Avenue side of Grand Central and most people have no idea it's there. The Campbell Apartment is the one time office and salon of John Campbell, Grand Central Terminal's first general manager. It's been renovated back to its gilded age glory and now operates as one of the coolest lounges in the city.

We'd made arrangements to meet up with six other friends for a night cap and by the time we got there the rest of the gang was already holding court. If you have a group and you want to hang out at the Campbell Apartment, call ahead and make a reservation. That's true of any good lounge in the city by the way.

It was great to see everybody and ward off the usual round of questions about when I'm moving to The City. Yeah right. There are a few places around the world where I feel at home instantly and New York's definitely one of them. By the time we made it back to The Palace it was well past three in the morning. I don't think I'd ever been so tired or so euphorically happy in my life.

My trips to New York don't usually involve five-star hotels and opera tickets but it was a welcome change to my own vie bohème. Flying home on Sunday night was an anticlimax I'm still recovering from. I'll be back in The City again in March only without The Palace, the Met or La bohème. It'll be a working trip next time but working trips have an allure of their own. So it'll back to 14th Street for me.

If money were no object: a Blog Off Post

The following is a Blog Off post. A Blog off is a biweekly event that's sweeping the internet. It's an event where bloggers of all stripes write about the same topic. You can learn more on the Let's Blog Off site. As the day progresses, a table will appear at the end of this post and it will list all of the participants as well as link to their posts.

The gist of the Blog Off this week is a suggestion to muse and meander about what I'd buy my loved ones if money were no object. Well, my loved ones don't really need anything that can be bought with money so I'm abandoning them for this exercise. Well, they'd be welcome to join me in the thing I'm about to muse and meander about but it doesn't involve the exchange of goods between us.

I've written quite a bit about an island in The Bahamas that's very near and dear to me, Cat Island. It has it has own keyword in my glossary it's so near and dear to me.

I never made it over to my Cat Island in 2010 but I will change that in 2011. I will.

I go to Cat Island for its isolation. I can relax there in its primitive loveliness like I can no where else. The combination of being cut off from the rest of the world and the hospitality of the Bahamian people touch me in a really profound way. The accommodations where I stay are pretty primitive but that just adds to the allure.

They're alluring because I'm a white American on vacation. The living conditions for the Bahamians who live on Cat probably don't hold the same romantic allure they do for me. The Bahamians I've come to know are a cheerful, generous lot. I doubt they realize it, but I've learned more from them than I have words to elaborate. Most of those lessons have to do with forcing me to see that most of what I tell myself is a need is an illusion.

The poverty on Cat Island may not feel like poverty to Cat Islanders but it looks like poverty to me. No one goes hungry, but life on the Out Islands of The Bahamas is hard.

I read an article in the Cape Coral, FL Daily Breeze last year that talked about the conditions at the Old Bight High School on Cat Island. I've driven past that high school more times than I can count but the article talked about how the Cape Coral Charter School System donated 2,000 text books to the high school in Old Bight. Prior to their donation, the kids at Old Bight High had one text book for every five to 15 students, depending on the subject. I read another article last October in The Bahamas Weekly that was written by the Honourable Philip "Brave" Davis, the Member of Parliament for Cat and its neighboring islands. Old Bight High School had to close in the fall of 2010 due to a lack of teachers and the unsafe conditions at the school. As of last year, Old Bight High School had 13 teachers to its 134 students. Those 134 students had to be absorbed by the already over extended Arthur's Town High School, 25 miles to the north.

25 miles is an insurmountable distance when your primary mode of transportation is your feet. I can't help but think that due to a lack of resources, any chance of a better life got snubbed out for those 134 kids with that school closure.

My proudest possession is my intellect and it hurts me deeply to hear about the educational conditions on Cat Island. That a generation of kids just had their intellectual opportunities pulled out from underneath them rubs me raw.

photo from The Bahamas Weekly

These kids deserve to be able to do anything they want with their lives and they can't do that without books and schools.

So if money were no object I would start a foundation, an educational foundation. A mistake a lot of western aid organizations make is that they're western aid organizations. Mine wouldn't be in the business of making sovereign people jump through hoops to get money. Instead, my foundation would be staffed and run by Bahamians, Cat Islanders wherever possible. My foundation would staff schools with Bahamian teachers and provide Bahamas-appropriate text books. My fantasy foundation would help to raise a generation of smart and proud Bahamians. They'd be a group of people who knew who they were and where they stood as integral parts of the sweeping history of the islands they call home.

But alas, my foundation is all in my head and likely to stay there. Unfortunately, money is an object all too real and the kids at New Bight High School got that for their big lesson this year.

It's unfathomable to me that schools close due to a lack of teachers and resources in a country just offshore from the US. A country where millions of North Americans and Europeans go every year to unwind.

So maybe what there is to do here is stop dreaming about money not being an obstacle to having basic needs met. Maybe what there is to do is find a way to actually lend a hand. Schools across the developed world throw away books by the truck load every year. It's true that Cat Island's schools represent a small, small portion of the total need, but they're the portion I know.

What would it take to partner up with a couple of school districts in Florida or elsewhere in the US? Anybody know somebody who can make a connection like that happen? Anybody out there want to lend a hand?

Further adventures in bread baking

Two of my glorious loaves

For the last couple of years, I've been on a real bread kick. I've written about it here a couple of times and I've taken this bread-baking thing to the point where I don't buy bread anymore. I doubt I save any money this way and it certainly doesn't make very efficient use of my time. However, there is nothing more satisfying to me than knowing I have a loaf of fresh bread sitting on my kitchen table. A loaf of bread I made from scratch.

Bread baking isn't just an activity I'm finding. It's a way of looking at the world. I actually like it that it takes time and effort for me to make the thing that holds together a sandwich or gets slid into the toaster. My bread baking teaches me to be patient and as proud as I am of the finished results, I am at the mercy of a fungus when it comes to the finished result.

The fungus in question is a yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae. S. cerevisiae is the yest sold as baker's yeast and it's the same organism that ferments beer. S. cerevisiae is just one of a host of related species that will make bread dough rise. For example, Saccharomyces exiguus is the yeast that makes sourdough bread taste like sourdough bread.

I've been reading a lot lately about the role different yeasts play in how finished bread tastes. It makes sense and I'm beginning to wonder if there's more to life than Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Susan Tenny's amazing blog Wild Yeast has been a real inspiration. My starter, to make a bad bread joke.

So yesterday afternoon I embarked on an experiment to culture my own Saccharomyces exiguus. There's a lot of folklore surrounding the whole process of harvesting wild yeast. While it's true that there's wild yeast everywhere, the yeast that will grow in my starter arrived with the flour my starter's built around. Over the course of my starter's life it will attract other local bacteria and fungi and it will lend a special St. Pete flavor to my breads. But my goal here is to culture the yeast that's already in my flour naturally.

I'm partial to King Arthur flour and no that's not a paid plug. I think their bread flour is a perfect consistency and I get good results with it. King Arther also has a great website and it's their website that got me started on this grow your own yeast kick.

From what I understand, this will take a few tries until I get it right but I'm dying to see how this affects my breads.

Photo via K. Fields

OK, from King Arthur's website:

• 2 cups warm water that's been allowed to sit for a day to let the chlorine dissipate
• 1 tablespoon sugar or honey (optional)
• 2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

Mix the water, flour and optional sweetener together thoroughly in a clean, scalded glass or ceramic bowl. The scalding will ensure that you’re starting “pure.” Cover the bowl with a clean dishcloth. Put it in an area where there’s apt to be the highest concentration of airborne yeast as well as the warmth that is needed to begin fermentation.

If the surface begins to look dry after a while, give the mixture a stir. It should begin to “work” in the first day or two if it’s going to at all. If it does, your trap has been successful. As you would with a dried starter or active dry yeast, let this mixture continue working for 3 or 4 days giving it a stir every day or so. When it’s developed a yeasty, sour aroma, put it in a clean jar with a lid and refrigerate it until you’re ready to use it.

If the mixture begins to mold or develop a peculiar color or odor instead of a “clean, sour aroma,” give a sigh, throw it out and, if you’re patient, start again. Along with the vital yeasts, you may have inadvertently nurtured a strain of bacteria that will not be wonderful in food. This doesn’t happen very often though, so don’t let the possibility dissuade you from this adventure.

Have any of your guys ever tried this? Any words of advice? I know there are some bakers out there.

I'll keep you posted on my further adventures in bread baking.

Fun stuff from around the internets

It's Christmas week, web traffic's in the toilet and rather than taking the week off, I'm going to phone one in instead. That's dedication.

I find things in my interweb meanderings and most of them get saved to a favorites file, never to bee seen again. Until I have some space to fill that is.

So here are some finds from the last couple of months. They weren't topical or meaty enough to warrant a full post of their own but they are perfect fodder for a random collection of fun stuff.

First up, this ad kills me.

It absolutely kills me. Can this be seven year scotch I wonder?

Even though I'm a recent tea convert, I still have a place very near to my heart of espresso. I think these espresso cups are about perfect.

The satisfy my love of espresso while feeding my appreciation for the Italian Renaissance and its revival of the Roman putti. These Putto espresso cups have silicone wings that stay flexible for an more secure grip on that first espresso in the morning.

I love stop-motion video as much as a dread the idea of moving. This video has plenty of both.



The Move, Paper Animation from Mandy Smith on Vimeo.

If that video's any indication of what moving's like in The Netherlands, maybe I ought to relocate there.

I love a good illusion, and photographer Håkan Dahlström has a good one here.

That's a street in the Russian Hill section of San Francisco and believe it or not, those cars are on the level. Seriously, hold up a ruler to your screen.

Here's the actual street. In order to take that first shot, Dahlström turned his camera to make the street appear to be flat. I like the effect.

One visit to San Francisco is all it takes to understand why no one there has a weight problem. Just getting to your car is a work out.

Speaking of my thing for all things Italy, I found a website called ItalyGuides recently. ItalyGuides features a large collection of hi-def, interactive photos of sites all over Rome.

I just zoomed up to the oculus in the ceiling of the Pantheon.

Here's what it looks like when you look toward the bronze entry doors from inside.

Here's a shot of the Trevi Fountain.

Here's the inside of the Coliseum.

There are a large number of these interactive photos. While they're no where near as cool as being there, there's enough detail that you can use them to plan what to expect when you do make it to these sites.

ItalyGuides has similar interactive photos for the sites in Florence, Venice, Milan, Bologna, Naples and Palermo.

And while I'm waxing nostalgic for Italy, here's the definitive Italian Christmas carol as sung by the definitive Italian singer of the 20th Century, Luciano Pavarotti. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle.




Ahhhh. That's bliss.

Have a terrific week everybody.

I'll never look at pocket doors the same way

I was never a big Star Trek fan. I know, I know, that's some kind of blasphemy. Anyhow, I may not have thought much of the show, but I loved the doors that the original Starship Enterprise had.

They were so cool and now somebody's gone and converted them for use in the home.




The only thing missing is the oh so satisfying whoosh sound from the original TV show.