(Brown crowders, black-eyed peas, purple-hull peas)
Ya'll won't have good luck this year if ya'll don't eat field peas TODAY. This dish was brought to the American South from Africa. Traditionally served with a side of collards or other greens.
HOPPIN' JANE
1 cup field peas, traditionally black-eyed but could also use crowders or purple hulls if you want to live a little dangerously
5-6 cups water OR -- canned/frozen peas instead of making your own
Bacon, sausage or ham hock
1 Vidalia onion, chopped
1 cup brown rice
Lots of freshly-ground black pepper or other versions of heat (tabasco, peppers, etc.)
If you're making the peas from scratch: Wash and sort them. Put them in a saucepan with the water and remove any peas that flat. Bring to a boil, turn down to gentle boil, add the pork and onion and cook uncovered until tender but not mushy, about 1.5 hours. You sholuld have 2 cups of liquid remaining. Add the rice, cover and simmer over low heat for about 20 minutes, never lifting the lid.
If you're using canned peas: Put in a saucepan, add the pork, onion and pepper. Add enough water to make about 2 cups of liquid (probably need to add 1.5 cups). Add the rice, cover and simmer over low heat for about 20 minutes, never lifting the lid.
Remove from the heat without removing the lid and allow to sit, steaming, for another 10 minutes. Pour into a bowl, fluff the rice, and serve immediately.
While ya'll are eating, here's some good news to chew over as well:
David Letterman's production company, World Wide Pants, has made a deal with the Writers Guild of America giving them EVERYTHING the guild was requesting. A fair deal for all future writers. This is going to put enormous pressure on other producers, and means the Letterman show can go right back on the air.
To read a wonderfully uplifting account of it all, check out the post at Group News Blog by Jesse Wendel, complete with moving Speechless videos.
And if you want to start off the year with a mitzvah, take five minutes to write a letter to these folks thanking them for doing such a good thing. World Wide Pants can be reached at:
1697 Boradway, Suite 805, NY, NY 10019; phone 212-975-5300, fax 212-975-4780.
I couldn't find an e-mail address for WWP, but you can write CBS (which airs the Letterman show) with the same message at CBSmailbag@aol.com.
Celebrate your victories twice as hard as you mourn your losses.
Gelukkig Nieuw Jaar
Nouvelle Année Heureuse
Glückliches Neues Jahr
Καλή χρονιά
Nuovo Anno Felice
Ano Novo Feliz
С Новым годом
Feliz Año Nuevo
Akemashiteomedetougozaimasu
Zuri Pya Mwaka
Glad Nytt År
Щастлив Нов Година
Iloinen Veres Ikä
Heldig Nytår
Boldog {j Évet
Hamingjusamur Nýár
Maligaya bagong taon
Szczęśliwego nowego roku
Fericit Nou An
Srećan Nova godina
Srečno novo leto
Glad Nyåren
'n ddedwydd 'n Grai Blwyddyn
Mutlu yeni yıl
Gauisus Novus Annus
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Saturday, December 22, 2007
A WORD AFTER A WORD AFTER A WORD
A word after a word after a word is power. --Margaret Atwood
As a writer, I'm grateful for the reminder of how dependent we are on our storytellers out on strike during this dismal holiday season, even as I miss them terribly. When I heard the corporate fobbing swag-bellied puttocks intended to flood the airwaves with even more "reality TV shows" (as if any of those situations or losers represent reality), I took an oath to find other ways to fill my time until the strike is over.
This oath is not particularly new. I've never seen a single episode of Survivor, Wife Swap, Big Brother, or the other crapola. I did watch part of an Amazing Race because some blog had mentioned there was a gay couple on it, but I lost interest rapidly and changed the channel. My one exception to the genre is Extreme House Makeover, because they actually help real people in dire trouble in a way that prolongs lives, creates exponentially more opportunities, and rewards poor/nonwhite/nontraditional families as if they deserved as much respect and faith as Ozzie and Harriet. And yeah, it's all about product placement and hype, I know, but I've followed up on those families, they actually benefit long-term. It's more than just a Sears circle-jerk.
(Patti LaBelle as winner of the Excellence in Media Award at the 18th Annual GLAAD Media Awards)
But: I broke my oath last week to check out the first night of Clash of the Choirs. Because, my god, it was Patti LaBelle heading up one of the choirs. I have to say, she definitely did not disappoint. Michael Bolton and his Connecticut milquetoasts were an embarrassment, and at least the country-western guy was honest in admitting he didn't have a fucking clue about anything except kicker music. But Patti blew them out of the hemisphere. I got hooked, in spite of myself. I learned that choirs don't have to sound like badly homogenized eunuchs (or Mormons), and I was fascinated with the all-too-brief glimpses of how Ms. LaBelle formed her musical judgments and pushed her pupils to perform dazzling displays above the rest.
I wound up taping and watching all five nights (taping was essential because I really couldn't sit through Bolton & Co.) And every single night, LaBelle's crew mopped up the floor with extremely original, ambitious, outrageously moving performances. But: the format relied on the standard "let the idiots with cellphones make the final decision" and even my cynical self could NOT BELIEVE IT when Nick Lachey (Mr. Jessica Simpson) was named the winner.
Gag me with the patriarchy. Gormless white boy beats out Patti LaBelle? Yeah, you just convince me it wasn't all those hip-hop-lovin' racist pasty-skinned suburbanite testosterone-poisoned BOYS who couldn't bring themselves to vote for a 50-something black WOMAN. I was utterly disgusted, most of all with myself for giving it a try.
Back to my oath.
And here's the thing: These "reality" shows are designed to bring out the worst in people. Designed to reinforce woman-hating and white supremacy. Even more, they are sops to distract us from the class war being waged with increasing ferocity against most of the population. Shadocat recently pointed out how many daytime shows have devolved into flashy giveaways to audience members, a high-tech throwback to the old Queen For A Day shtick of let's get everyone to believe help from drowning will eventually arrive. It's obscene.
If you care about the survival of unions, the compensation of merit over corporate greed, the value of diverse voices: Check out the Writer's Guild of America site and lend your solidarity. You can go here to find out ways to support a fair contract -- even if it's just writing an e-mail which they'll post, it makes a difference.
And if you'd like to create your own devastating insults such as the I used in the second sentence of this post, check out The Shakespearean Insult Kit for ideas. Language is at our disposal, and we don't have to be stupid or obscene to wield it with maximum effect.
Speaking of art and language...
(Ira and George Gershwin at work)
I watched the American Masters' special on George Gershwin yesterday, and was struck again by how what we think of as pop culture in this country would not exist without the outscale contributions of Jewish immigrants and African-Americans. Gershwin, coming from Russian Ashkenazic immigrant parents who were not in the least musical, still somehow found his way to a job on Tin Pan Alley by the age of 15, playing piano as if born to it and blending Hasidic longing with jazz and blues to create an unmistakable sound. He was especially dependent on his family for emotional sustenance -- never married and, from the sound of it, never even came close to it, although it doesn't seem he was a closet case, either.
It was deeply interesting to hear the two main stars of Porgy and Bess, who owe their roles in that smash to Gershwin's groundbreaking insistence that only blacks be cast for black parts, present two completely contradictory reactions to the fact that the first successful African-American opera was written by a white man: One of them, Todd Duncan, had no problem with it, and one of them, Anne Brown, said tactfully but with strong emotion "I just wonder what it would have looked like if it were written by someone who wasn't white." We'll wonder forever, won't we?
George's creativity found home port when his older brother Ira began creating the lyrics for his songs. They were temperamentally very different, but extremely close friends as well as collaborators, living a life joined in most aspects. Ira Gershwin was the first lyricist to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize (for Of Thee I Sing, a profoundly political and still radical script), and his ability to wed words to George's extraordinary music leaves me simply in awe. These brothers made an American art form of musical comedy.
During the late 70s and early 80s in San Francisco, almost weekly I stepped away from my intense role as a radical dyke activist to watch old movies at the Castro, York, Rialto, or other theaters around town. It was a habit I didn't talk about much with my serious revolutionary friends, but I can now see that it fueled my faith and creativity in profound ways. I had a movie-going buddy, Laurie, and the sum total of our relationship was Fred Astaire/Ginger Roger movies. We saw every one of them, more than once. A New York Jew, Laurie found validation of her culture somehow in those dances and melodies, while I reveled in the language and meter. Laurie, if you read this, write me. No, no, they can't take that away from me.
I began crying at the end of the PBS special, not over George's tragically early death at 38 (though I still consider it a great loss), but over the revelation that when he died, he had created the music for a final song with Ira but Ira didn't write the lyrics until after George was gone. That song was his goodbye to his beloved little brother, and no wonder it's one of my favorite of all time. Knowing the history has altered the meaning for me irrevocably for the better:
It's very clear
Our love is here to stay
Not for a year, but ever and a day
The radio
And the telephone
And the movies that we know
May just be passing fancies and in time may go
But oh my dear
Our love is here to stay
Together we're going a long long way
In time the Rockies may crumble
Gibraltar may tumble
They're only made of clay
But our love is here to stay
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