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A Friend in the Audio Business

December 17, 2025 by Leave a Comment

You may not know the name Paul McGowan. If you’re interested in high-end audio, and/or you listen to a lot of recorded music, Paul is someone you ought to know. He’s the “P” in “PS Audio,” a leading maker of quality loudspeakers. He and his team have designed and built all sorts of audio products. And he’s been doing this for a half-century. That experience is now captured in a library of ten (!) volumes of a series called The Audiophile’s Guide. They’re available as a set (www.theaudiophilesguide.com) and as individual books. Each book is substantial — several hundred pages long, and costs about $40.

There are ten books. They cover, for example, The Stereo, The Loudspeaker, Analog Audio generally, Digital Audio generally, Vinyl, the all-important Listening Room, the Subwoofer, Headphones, Home Theater, and a distilled version of the series called The Collection.

The book about Vinyl is especially helpful. It begins at the beginning: the development and evolution of records, followed by a very clear explanation of “groove modulation” — the way record grooves interact with a phonograph stylus, which leads to a discussion of cutting masters, plating and pressing, and my favorite part, the debate about the quality of records vs. other recorded media. And so, the author eases into groove wall resistance, natural compression curves, and other particulars that make records sound so good — especially when the playback equipment is right.

The sound of vinyl is much affected by the operation of the turntable — the way the motor turns the circular table, for example — and the design of the tonearm. These concepts ride in the background of audiophile discussions, but here, author Paul McGowan shines — his articulate, direct, simple language makes the concepts compressible. The chapter called “Engineering Challenges of Tonearms” is not a lesson in technical engineering, but instead, a 2-page essay that pretty much tells the listener what they might want to know. Cartridges are also confusing and difficult to understand, but here, moving magnets, moving coils, cantilevers and other types of cartridge technology come to life, make sense, and provide the listening with a good basic understanding of what matters and why.

McGowan is equally good on the practice of buying just the right product for your individual purpose. And so: choosing a pre-amplifier, choosing a cartridge, and so on. There’s a turntable setup guide here, too, but I wish it included diagrams. If you’ve heard terms such as tracking force and azimuth, this book provides an easy way to learn the basics.

If you want to listen to music, but you feel as though you ought to know just enough about technology to advance your listening experience, this book series can be a very useful tool.

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Around the World with Joe Boyd

October 24, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Every night, for the past two months, I have gone to bed with Joe Boyd. He wrote a book that’s more than 900 pages long — far too cumbersome to be read anyplace except on my pillow.

Here’s a photo of the author, the UK cover art, and the US cover art.

As it happens, it’s a terrific book, and I loved every minute of it. The title is: And the Roots of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music. Basically, this is a social and political tour, a history of the cultures that produced music we’ve come to associate with Jamaica, D.R. Congo, Brazil, Mexico, and dozens of other places around the globe whose artists have defined the concept of “world music.” The terminology is cumbersome, but the storytelling is not. It’s clear, and as engaging as any good history book, but this particular book explains, for example, how and why the likes of reggae, flamenco (see below), and the cha-cha are all part of a hyperlocal and a wonderfully global story. Happily, the story goes back a ways — back to the fifteenth century in some cases.

For example, you’re probably familiar with flamenco music, from Spain. Well, not exactly from Spain. Flamenco is more like gypsy music than Spanish music, but where’s the gypsy connection? And what, exactly, is a gypsy? The word gypsy derives from Egyptian, because that’s where these people sometimes claimed they had originated. But they didn’t. They came from India, but they often played on the streets, and saying they were Egyptian caused the people who were listening to give them more money. So, sure, they’re from Egypt. Or maybe they’re from Hungary — part of their story takes shape, there, too, which leads to Béla Bartók, and later, to world music star Márta Sebestyén. So, back to India: there were about 10,000 musicians imported from India to what becomes Pakistan, then dismissed when they were no longer wanted in Pakistan due to change of regime. So they traveled toward Europe, scattered, stayed close to one another, and continued to perform music for themselves and to earn the money they needed to stay alive. Later, when the king of Spain forbade the use of the term gitano in the late 18th century — the gitanos were gypsies — he determined that they were from Flanders, hence the term, flamenco. But that’s such a small part of the story, and music is only one aspect of the gypsy culture — if there even is a single gypsy culture because the people scattered to so many different places in Europe (and often seeded what is perceived to be music of specific local cultures).

The reason I love this book is simple. It’s not a linear history. Instead, it’s the grand story of interwoven cultures, places, peoples, instruments, political pressures against certain kinds of music (in many places, at various times in history, rulers prohibited the use of drums, for example). And so, the Rastafarians connect Ethiopia to Jamaica, and Cuba is connected to the Congo, Senegal and Ghana to England, and England to what was the empire.

In one chapter, we’re on the dance floor in the Latin jazz clubs of New York City, or in Cuba when Cuba was still an exciting place to visit and do things that might not be okay at home. In another, jazz saxophone player Stan Getz is making a record with João Gilberto, building a foundation that would solve a problem for middle-of-the-road singers as they tried to make their way through the 1960s. Traditionally, these singers relied upon songwriters we now associate with the great American songbook — Gershwin, Rogers & Hart, Rogers & Hammerstein, Cole Porter — but those sources had aged out, and they were replaced by rock musicians who wrote and performed their own material. The older singers needed a new source of fresh material — and found it in, of all places, Brazil. When Brazilian musician Sergio Mendez recorded a song by Antonio Carlos Jobim, the likes of Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra paid close attention. Jazz provided the bridge. And, of course, jazz was rooted in blues, and blues was rooted in music brought from Africa.

Joe Boyd is a wonderful storytelling, and a well-organized historian, but he is also a music producer who was often in the room where it happened — because he was the one who flew to Bulgaria or India, attended the performance of a magical artist with a spectacular local following, gained their trust, signed them, and got them into the studio to make records. Those backstage stories are fascinating because, more often than not, they take place in clubs and other venues in far away places with magic of their own.

You probably know at least some of the musicians in the book, but many others are likely to be new to you. Heck, I wrote a book (for Billboard Books) about world music CDs, and many of the names are now on my buy lists (yes, I still buy CDs). My sloppy list would certainly include Los Van Van, Ali Farka Touré (from Mali, in Africa, along with many other musicians from that vital country), Celia Cruz, Ravi Shankar, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Fela Kuti, Tabu Ley Rochereau, Kanda Bongo Man — so many names, so much music that I want to hear again and again (much of my world music listening took place in the previous century!)

I should probably mention the many unlikely names in this book, too, because their stories provide a lot of valuable connective tissue, and lots of points of entry: Desi Arnaz, Igor Stravinsky, Dizzy Gillespie, Fidel Castro, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov…

This is not a book to read on a lazy weekend afternoon, but each (long) chapter is filled with a lovely combination of deep history and context. Taking it slow and easy is my recommendation. And, I would suggest you do something that I should have done — take notes. You will want to hear a lot of the music that the author discusses, but over nearly 1,000 pages, you will forget most of what you wanted to hear. Now, I find myself going page-by-page, constructing a proper list, finding some of the music on YouTube and some of it in my own collection, and, inevitably, buying more. It makes me very happy to buy a CD of ¡Cubanismo!, used, for $1.99, and to find out that there are concert videos on YouTube if I want to listen more, or listen for free.

That is: reading a very good book about music is not the end of the journey. It’s only the beginning.

Filed Under: Audio, Books & Print, International, Music, Travel & Food, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Forever Job

September 3, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Tenure is a strange concept. Imagine — a job for life!

Not many professions support the idea of tenure. Outside of education, Federal judges work with a lifetime guarantee, as long as their behavior is “good” (a term that can be widely interpreted). Some clergy, and some research scientists may enjoy tenured positions, and some union workers, with especially strong contracts, may be assured lifetime employment, but the term tenure does not officially apply to them.

Mostly, tenure is used to describe the employment guarantee associated with teaching. K-12 teachers are afforded tenure, so even if their current compensation is lower than it might be in other professions, there is a assurance that it will go on for a very long time (and there is often an ample rest-of-life pension following that employment). Tenure is also associated with teaching at the college or university level, but the situation may not be simple, may be messy, and seems to be losing favor. This, according to Deepa Das Acevedo, a law associate professor at Emory University, and author of a new book entitled, The War on Tenure. It’s a world of work that’s largely unfamiliar to most people, except, perhaps when a professor’s private life is revealed in a movie or TV series.

Tenure applies to a very small portion of the overall population, but that doesn’t stop political campaigners from including the abolition or undermining of tenure in their speeches. When a scholar (assume all professors are scholars) works for a public university, they are, in fact, state employees. This may generate political conflicts — almost anything taught in a classroom these days may be deemed controversial and inappropriate by somebody — and that often affects stable employment.

Of course, it’s easy enough for any university to sweep away a current batch of pre-tenure or non-tenure employees with simple budget cuts, or in more difficult situations, through workplace pressure. This pressure can be strategically timed so that an individual scholar may believe they are on the path to tenure, only to find that state or board of governors or a third party has the power to erase the track completely. And then, of course, there is a question of academic integrity — at some point, many university scholars are required to make an ugly decision. Do they do what has been demanded and keep the pre-tenure or tenure job, or do they refuse, and place themselves on the job market with a vague black mark on their record?

There are lots of reasons why tenure may be denied, or pulled. These include academic misconduct (including plagiarism, which is now exceedingly difficult to sort out, given the growing role of AI), sexual misconduct (including, for example, well-founded or unfounded claims by students), or unprofessional conduct (such as bullying, which is often difficult to prove or disprove). When a university decides to shuffle departments, perhaps reorganize because their academic offerings require updating, tenure may disappear. Ditto for financial hard times for the institution.

So, tenure is not really a forever job. It may be better than most. Until it’s not. And when it’s not, a scholar with a fairly specific area of study may find themself difficult to place in another institution. That’s one reason why we have tenure in the first place — to support the many academic scholars whose fields of study are narrow but whose work is important. (But is all work important? How important?)

For the person seeking tenure, the path begins as an undergraduate. There is future value in selecting a program of study at a respected, sometimes specialized, institution. Often, this comes at a cost (and so, the debt begins to accumulate). Then, there’s graduate school, first for the master’s degree, then for the doctorate. Again, there is debt, and because these activities are so time-consuming, little opportunity to earn significant money in the process. So the debt becomes larger. There is a term for this situation: “PhD poverty.” Many institutions of higher learning operate food pantries. Hunger is a real issue. For those who come from low income poverty, “keeping mind and body together” is a real problem.

Then comes the post-doc phase: cheap labor for universities, and a necessary step if you want to become a professor. You may know post-docs by other names, such as fellows, lecturers, and visiting assistant professors.

The odds are lousy. Maybe 1 in 8 people make it to tenure track. As for the others — including the many who invest heavily, take on significant debt, and watch their dreams of an academic life go astray — there may be staff jobs at the university (that is, non-tenure track, and often, without the same prestige), or jobs in the larger marketplace (without tenure, and often not repaying the investment made by previously hopeful student).

Why should we care? Assume there are about 1.4 million college professors in the U.S., and about a third of them are tenured. Is that a lot? And why does this whole issue matter? Why write a book about tenure?

It matters because knowledge matters, because these people are the keepers of our knowledge, and they are the people who construct new knowledge, presumably with high standards in mind. Their work is different from other peoples’ work. They go deep. They think and construct models, then challenge one another’s models so everyone can think even more clearly. Their time horizons are different from other workers’ — they may take 10 or 20 years to work out what needs to be known, or done, and may work for lifetime, often with colleagues, to accomplish a very specific goal. Without institutional stability, and employment stability, this becomes very difficult to do. Why? In part because there aren’t many alternative ways to get this work done. Yes, it’s different. No, not every tenured scholar is producing essential knowledge. And no, it’s not a perfect system. But this is a situation where the perfect can easily become an enemy of the good. Although they are currently under attack, and always seem to be coping with the low hum of criticism, universities have a role, and scholars have a role, too. Which is why, in the end, we should be working to improve the system, and not tear it down.

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We Have Some of the Answers

August 24, 2025 by Leave a Comment

There’s a new book called Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe, but I think the subtitle under-sells the book. The subtitle should probably be Lessons for Every Country from Around the Globe. The author is Natasha Hakimi Zapata, a journalist and university lecturer based in London.

Answers to big questions may not be so hard to find. Better public schools? Renewable energy? Health care? These problems are being solved all over the world, but most people don’t know much about what’s being done and why it might just work in our own countries.

She begins a book of nine solutions with health care, and describes “the United Kingdom’s groundbreaking universal health care system.” It’s not perfect, but Zapata believes, and offers convincing reasons, why this model could and should work in the U.S. (and elsewhere). As she outlines the history — “prior to the twentieth century, health care in the United Kingdom was provided by a disjoined mix of charity hospitals, the local welfare committees that ran so-called poor law workhouses, and private care.” The system was oriented toward low income communities, leaving those in the middle class with few good options, so they came to rely upon emergency care in emergency care facilities at local hospitals. In the U.S. today, we are trying to solve a similar problem, this time for our lower income residents. Government programs incrementally improved the situation, but did not solve it, but the situation changed with the end of the Second World War, when Britain was in dire straits. “The key principle enshrined in the 1946 Bill was that health was a right, not a community to be bought or sold, or subject to market forces.”

And there’s the pivot. The 1946 Act was an “extraordinary success” because it “incontrovertibly made people’s lives better.” Service began in 1948. In England and Wales, it now employs 68 thousand nurses, 12 thousand doctors, and 22 thousand midwives — and they are a small portion of a workforce of 1.4 million people. (And this does not include Scotland.) It’s funded by general taxation. The range of services is vast, including not only ambulance, maternity care, dental care, prescriptions, mental health, long-term care, and optical care. “Patients rare, if ever, pay out of pocket for anything.”

Yes, there has been enormous political capital poured into the service and its growth, and yes, there are special issues of all sorts — an “immigration health surcharge,” for example.” Overall, the system works, and because it is right and not a privilege, it is very much a part of British life.

The important idea here: it is possible for a large country to operate a national health service. There is a model. More people ought to know how it works, and the power of large numbers of people should make sure the success is widely known so it can become the basis for a new U.S. healthcare system. Certainly, there are reasons why this will never work, but that has been the rallying cry for the (hugely successful) opposition. Zapata provides a useful starting place for discussion, here and in other large area of life.

Estonia is a much smaller country, but it has pursued a very big idea. It’s a simple one: access to the internet is a human right (yes, human rights are a theme in this book). This is a country that was part of the Soviet world, with clunky technology, crumby infrastructure, not a lot of money, and political inflexibility. As the nation began to enjoy the new realities of independence, several organizations worked with government to make free internet connections possible. “In 1992, two of the biggest universities in the country [were] provided with free internet service. Soon enough, fiber optic cables were being laid throughout the country.” The pathways led through government, and a new concept of “e-government” was established as a means to operate the nation by, essentially, distributing power and responsibility to the people. This ignited a very different way of thinking about the relationship between a citizen and the government. “One of the main ideas behind Tiger Leap,” which placed education at the center of Estonia’s future, “was to raise a new generation of computer- and internet-savvy Estonians that could create innovations that could spur socioeconomic growth.” In time, Estonia’s Look@World Foundation helped Estonians of all ages to collaboration “in close cooperation,” and begin to see the importance of 100 percent internet access for all Estonians. And the story continues to unfold, with nearby Finland providing more examples and fueling a competitive spirit, too. Estonia is ahead of international curve on I-voting (via the internet, e-ID systems, and more. Estonia raises serious questions about private control of digital technology in the U.S. — they have certainly demonstrated the value of public-private partnerships, respect for the needs of individuals and the evolving role of government.

The author tells similar stories about Portugal and its drug policy; Norway and its family-friendly laws; Uruguay’s approach to renewable energy, and Aotearoa New Zealand’s approach to universal pensions.

Indeed, another world is not only possible, it has taken shape, but the future is not evenly distributed. In many ways, the U.S. seems to be far behind, a remnant of old thinking about power and the unproductive alliances between government, big money and big companies. There are other ways to think about running countries on behalf of their people, and Zapata’s book is enormously useful in imagining what could and should be.



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Dogmen & Dynasty

November 20, 2023 by Leave a Comment

The castle and the surrounding landscape are magnificent, so I thought I would begin with a big picture.

Martyn Rady is a historian and a very good storyteller. He is a Professor Emeritus of Central European History at University College London. He is also a leading expert on the history of Central Europe, which happens to be one of the regions of the world that is, for many people, myself included, very difficult to capture as a coherent idea. Along the way, I’ll place Rady pretty high on my list of historian / storytellers — and I hope he will write another book that is equally wide-ranging.

Rady begins long ago, when early Christian scholars debated the existence of dogmen — creatures with canine and human characteristics who lived on the margins of the known world. He is specific: “One ninth-century account tells of how a missionary bishop in what is now Austria denied a place at the table to visiting pagan chieftains, instead laying out bowls on the floor.” A few centuries later, Turks were “described as agents of Satan, with an insatiable taste for blood…and all sorts of extravagances including bestiality and sexual relations with fish… but from the very first, they, too, were associated with dogmen.”

Where, exactly, does Central Europe begin and end? That question is difficult to answer. Depends upon when, of course, because countries keep expanding and contracting, and gaining/losing parts of their territory. Roughly, Central Europe seems to be what is now Germany to the West, what is now Russia to the East, not quite Scandinavia to the North, and down into what was once Yugoslavia to the South, but sometimes, parts of what is now Italy, Ukraine, and Greece, too. It is here that the vague and changeable boundaries of Prussia take shape and shape-shift, where Poland is and then is not a country, where unimaginable violence was the rule for many of the centuries covered in this 500+ page volume, and where Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and Western classical music originated and continues to thrive. There are knights, castles, pogroms, insane monarchs, endless political intrigue, war after war after war, peasants galore, Catholics dominating religious beliefs, and, generally, miserable lives for the people who lived there until very, very recently.

It’s the story of people whose names you may have heard, but don’t know much about. One example: Louis Kossuth (“spell-binding orator who could hold audiences of both politicians and peasants mesmerized in speeches that lasted more than three hours…a master of self-advertisement … [who] led Hungary to disaster.”

Another: “Otto von Bismarck remained a gluttonous, hard-drinking oaf for the rest of his life — eventually, even his doctor refused to treat him, recommending instead that he consult a veterinarian.”

Another: “as a ruler, Frederick William [of Brandenburg, a hotchpotch of territories reaching from the Lower Rhine to the Polish frontier] avoided war as much as possible, while doubling the size of his army to make it the fourth largest in Europe. Frederick’s drillmaster instilled discipline with ferocious punishments and by having his troops learn to march in goose step….[which showed at a glance whether the troops were marching in unison]. But Frederick William’s quest for abnormally large grenadiers was a pointless conceit because the men were often disabled as a result of their height. Altogether, the king had several thousand of these giants, whom he personally drilled and tried to marry off to equally tall women. All had to be at least 188 centimeters (6 feet 3 inches), but there were plenty who hit 213 centimeters (7 feet) . In order to magnify their appearance, Frederick William gave them tall mitre cap, and we are told, deliberately dressed them in uniforms that were too small. Frederick William himself measured just 160 centimeters (5 feet 3 inches).”

Sensationalism and goofy stories aside, this is an extraordinarily well-constructed saga of what is now Slovenia and Slovakia, Latvia and Poland, Moldova and Belarus, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, Russia and Germany, Austria and Hungary, and countries that no longer exist. It is the origin story of much of Europe, with tales of the Huns and the Mongol-Tatars and the Goths, the Hapsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire. And it is the story of the Nazis.

If this book was assigned to me, I never would have read it. If this book was suggested by a friend, I might have wondered whether I would ever take the time to read a book about the history of central Europe. Probably not. But there it was in the library, with the magnificent castle on the cover, so I picked it up and started browsing. Rady’s prose and storytelling invited me in. And, just as he began this tale with dogmen, that’s where he ends it, too: “Today’s dogmen may lack the imaginary snouts and tails of their forebears, but with their rocket launchers, tanks, and drones, they are just as terrible and no less subversive…”

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LAND, from the prolific Simon Winchester

June 24, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Simon Winchester has taught me a great deal. Including: in any given used bookshop, there will always be at least one nonfiction book by Simon Winchester that I have not read before. Past encounters, each one a pleasure, include: Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire; Hong Kong: Here Be Dragons; Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles; Pacific Rising; The Map that Changed the World, or was it A Crack at the Edge of the World; Atlantic (or, maybe, Pacific); Oxford; and probably several more. I believe The Map That Changed the World and The Professor and the Madman are patiently waiting for my attention.

So why another? And why this book? Mostly, because he’s interested, and, as a rule, if Simon Winchester is interested, then I am, too. The new book is called LAND: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World. If my count is correct, this is his 33rd book, but even the publisher is reluctant to name a number (“the acclaimed author of many books).

His fascination begins with his own land, formerly owned by “a plumber named Ceasare,” a “second-generation Sicilian-American.” The tract is “123 1/4 acres of forested and rocky mountainside, located in the hamlet of Wassaic, in the village of Amenia, the town of Dover, the County of Duchess, in the state of New York.” That’s quite a lot to unpack, a string of political decisions organized, in part, to claim title to land that once belonged to nobody, but was certainly taken, in a series of shameful acts, from the natives who once relied upon the area for sustenance. Before British royalty determined that their might gave them the right, long before, there was a long history, dating back over hundreds of millions of years–“geological turmoil executed on a titanic scale…a tortured and spectacular history that begins with volcanic land formation, and is given over to eons of sudden fracturing, splitting, compressing, heating, pummeling, twisting, folding, and breaking, followed by millions more years of inundations by tropical seas…” (you get the idea).

The author is British but based in the United States, and so, there is a lengthy discussion about North American natives and how they were stripped of their land. Happily, Winchester’s view is global. And one of the most important questions about global land use is just how much of it exists–and how it might be measured. And mapped. The mapping of the earth is a very complicated project, a crazy idea promoted by glacier expert Professor Albrecht Penck, who nearly succeeded in mapping the entire planet at a scale of one to one million. Penck’s design would have resulted in a scale model about the size of a house. And it would have disallowed the likes of Terra Incognito, or Here Be Dragons. But there were fierce arguments between governments that would need to cooperate–the French, for example, insisted upon the Metric System, and the English refused to go in that direction. Remarkably, the project moved ahead, albeit nearly two decades later than planned. Remnants remain, including the use of Greenwich (Prime) Meridian), and an abundance of really good maps–“France mapped much of francophone Africa. Germany made maps of all German-speaking countries in Europe. The entirety of the Roman Empire was mapped.” There was a fifty-sheet series on Brazil, and 107 sheets on Hispanic America, and more. It took eight years of trekking and wandering to map Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan; it was done by forty scientists from six countries protected by thirty infantrymen and more than three hundred camels, plus a large number of local helpers. Mapping 37 billion acres of land, without much technology, was an amazing accomplishment, but the job was completed. Still, the project remained alive, if on life support, until December, 1986. By that time, airline maps (which were simpler, easier to produce and update) served global needs.

As I learned this morning, there is still quite a bit that I don’t know about the distinction between, say, a republic and a nation, or a nation and a country. All the same thing? Although the author does not address the question directly, he did cause me to look more closely at Apple’s Maps application when I was speaking with a colleague in Armenia. Yes, Armenia is a country, because it is a nation with its own government which occupies a particular territory. The part about a nation is related to people with common interests, and this is certainly true of Armenia. It’s a republic. It’s located west of Azerbaijan, which is also a republic–but part of Azerbaijan is separated by the rest. That is, Armenia is both east and west of Azerbaijan. Armenia also borders Iran, Georgia, and Turkey. But if you look just a bit further north, you’ll find a bunch of republics with unfamiliar names: the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic; the Republic of Karachi-Cherkessia, The Republic, of Adygeya, The Republic of North Osetia-Alania, and the Republic of Dagestan. There’s also the Republic of Chechnya, which is familiar. CIA Factbook to the rescue: “46 provinces (oblasti, singular – oblast), 21 republics (respubliki, singular – respublika), 4 autonomous okrugs (avtonomnyye okrugi, singular – avtonomnyy okrug), 9 krays (kraya, singular – kray), 2 federal cities (goroda, singular – gorod), and 1 autonomous oblast (avtonomnaya oblast’) Ah, but just what is a republic? Wikipedia’s definition: “Kabardino-Balkariya is a ‘Federal subject’ of Russia.” As Winchester points out, there are often stories that explain what happened and how we found ourselves in the present situation, but there are so many conceptions of land, ownership, colonization, nations, and so on, with such a long and twisted history, not much of it is guided by reason or consistent practice. This is unfortunate for social studies teachers who are already overburdened, and fortunate for those of who live in 2021 because there are online resources that can, at least, clarify these stunningly complicated ways to say, “this is my land” or, perhaps as often, “this is not your land.”

If you begin with the assumption that nothing makes sense except power, it’s easier to navigate the strange story of Japanese farmers in California who made unproductive land productive, but were then chased from their land because of World War II paranoia, never to return. Or the complexities associated with Scotland’s potential as a new country, independent from the British Empire after all of these years. Or, perhaps this book provides the framework to comprehend the ways in which colonists redesigned Africa’s borders to form countries whose borders still exist, but rarely make sense. And then, there’s climate change and the potential for natural borders to wash away, for productive land to become useless, for icebound land to become productive.

The book is filled with stories, some familiar, some astonishing, all useful in gaining a contextual understanding of how humans interact with land. The book is, in essence, a really good course in global social studies, written for adults who really ought to know enough about the subject to teach our children. Most of us cannot do that. I know a lot about geography and I cannot do that. Simon Winchester can, did, and I hope he’ll do it again. I want to read Land: The Saga Continues or whatever he decides to call his second book on the subject. If he’s not working on this book just yet, perhaps we can encourage him to do so.

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Indonesian Food!

June 11, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Now is not the very best time to try new restaurants, but it is a very good time to try new cookbooks, and perhaps, new cuisines as well.

Let’s begin with Eleanor Ford’s Fire Islands: Recipes from Indonesia. Like many of today’s cookbooks, this one is visually beautiful, with photographs for each of the dishes and locales. Indonesia is one of the world’s largest nations–it’s just behind the U.S. with 270 million people, making it the world’s fourth-largest country. We don’t see a lot of Indonesian restaurants, but the numbers seem to be growing: according to Yelp, there are 4 in the Boston area, 10 in the Philadelphia region, a half dozen in and near Seattle (some are food trucks, others are mixed with Malaysian). Indonesia is an archipelago, and it emerged as a unified nation coming out of World War II, but the islands were previously unified as the Dutch East Indies, a colony in 1800. Indonesia is a very large country–with more than 17,000 islands.

Start in the west (above left) with Sumatra. Aceh, on its northern tip, was “capitol of a spice empire”–if you remember your world history, Columbus and others were in search of spice islands, and Sumatra was one of the largest, a source for cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, fennel, star anise. “The Minangkabau people…have developed a sophisticated cuisine that has traveled to become Indonesia’s most popular. No town in the archipelago is without a Padang restaurant, named for the region’s largest city. They serve delectable dishes, rich with coconut and scented with kaffir lime. The crowning glory is rending, beef or buffalo that is slow-cooked until caramelized and infused with chili, lemongrass, turmeric, and ginger.”

Next, on to Java, “the center of Indonesian politics, economy and culture.” Here, you’ll find the mega-city of Jakarta. Try “asinan, a…pickled vegetable salad swathed in peanut sauce.” Or, fish in a banana leaf with the scent of basil and lemongrass.

The island of Bali is a tourist center, where you might try Babi Guling, which is a suckling pig steam with hot stones in an earthen oven. Order it with lawar, a green bean dish with coconut dressing.

And we’ve begun. Let’s cook something.

“It starts with bumbu — “the bass note to almost every Indonesian recipe is a spice paste called bumbu. This gives depth and resonance with a combination of heat, sharpness, and space. Candlenuts are often added, which give body.”

Easy enough to begin by cooking up some street food. Begin with Peanut & Lime Leaf Crackers. These are super-crispy, and it takes some practice to ladle the batter so it slides into the hot oil and finds its way to the hot center of the pan for “final crisping.” What’s inside? Skin-on peanuts, garlic, candlenut (or almonds), coriander seeds, salt, rice flour, some black peppercorns, and two lime leaves. Nothing that’s difficult to find.

Still on the streets, IFC (Indonesian Fried Chicken) is very popular, and there are lots of different recipes, but the author strongly favors a Yogyakarta version (see map) with spice-scented coconut water. Other ingredients: Asian shallots, garlic, coriander, salt, flour. We’re seeing a pattern here. You know Chicken Sate from other Asian restaurants–this is a good introduction for the reluctant-to-try, and always a favorite with children because it’s fun to eat off a skewer.

Indonesia is influenced by many different cultures, including India, which is not very far away. No surprise to find a Lamb Korma recipe here–and a suggested recipe for golden lace pancakes as a suitable side dish.

Indonesia is an island nation–lots of fresh fish. Scallops gulai introduces gulai sauce, which is “spicy, sunny colored, and coconutty.” It’s quick to prepare (it uses bumbu spice paste, prepared in advance), and ridiculously tasty.

Clearly, one of the author’s favorites in Ayam tailiwang, which she describes as “truly everything you could hope for in a grilled chicken. The skin is burnished and glazed, contrasting with the succulent meat inside. There is a fiery smack of charred chili and deeply smoky savoriness from the garlic.” Her recipe comes from a local chef in Lombok, who got it from his mother.

Vegetable urap

Vegetable urap with fresh spiced coconut has its roots in Bali. It’s a salad with green beans, beansprouts, coconut oil, shallots, garlic, chili, black-eyed peas, and lime. She recommends pakis, which are fern fronds, but if you catch the time of year just right, you could probably pop a few fiddlehead ferns into the salad in addition or instead. For a variation, try Sweet Coconut & Basil Salad, which features kencur (it’s fun to experiment with unfamiliar ingredients; it’s are aromatic gingers).

“There’s not a tourist restaurant in Indonesia that doesn’t serve Nasi goreng, which is a “Unami-packed fried rice.” You’ll want to get to know your rices, too: there’s red rice, which is nutty and a bit chewy; black rice, also sometimes purple rice, high in antioxidants (the color comes from the same pigment as blueberries), often served in a pudding with salted coconut cream; white rice, which is brown when the bran layer is intact), best if you buy the long-grained Jasmine which carries a delicate perfume.

You’ll want to know about sambal, too: it’s a “spicy crescendo” and often a complement to bumbu. Sambal is a relish, not cooked into the dish but dropped onto the top. There are lots of variations from Padang Red Chili Sambal to Sweet Tomato Sambal to Strawberry Sambal.

For dessert, you could go for the Coconut Custard Pie, leftover from the colonial era, but ambitious bakers will give Terang bulan a try. It’s a street food sandwich “rather like a giant crumpet” and you choose your own filling. “A rubble of roasted peanuts and sesame seeds, frosted with lots of sugar and a little salt is good.” She also recommends a surprising combination of chocolate and cheese as a homemade filling. If you’re a fan of peanut brittle, give coconut brittle a try.

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Magical World: Nom Wah!

June 9, 2021 by Leave a Comment

If you happen to wander through Chinatown, in New York City or in Philadelphia, the name Nom Wah may mean something to you. Sure, it’s a Chinese restaurant, but not many Chinese restaurants date back to 1920–a hundred years ago! Nom Wah Tea Parlor has roots in the Chinese Exclusion Act, which restricted immigration to the U.S. from China. Mostly, the now-restaurant began as a bakery serving tea, moon cakes filled with red bean paste (a particular delicacy, made very well by Nom Wah), and as a pre-lunch meal, Dim Sum. In time, in accordance with the market needs of its times, Nom Wah was a popular supplier of Chinese baked goods to other restaurants, and eventually, the Dim Sum business became the center of it all. Not many U.S. restaurants do Dim Sum better. And now, there’s a Nom Wah cookbook (now begins a relative term, as explained below).

In a world without COVID-19, Nom Wah would be a place I would visit several times each year. A great place to bring a small crowd of co-workers, family, friends. For the best Dim Sum in town. Ordered off a menu, so everything is freshly made (most Dim Sum palaces serve off rolling carts, which is fine if the place is big and busy, but Nom Wah is neither big nor busy). And so, it’s a place where Dim Sum can be ordered on demand, not based upon what happens to roll by. And I wanted to eat some of that food, in situ, prior to writing about this cookbook.

Begin with the hardware. You’ll need a proper wok, a wok lid, a wok ring, and a wok chuan (a spatula with a curved end to make its way around the wok), and also a spider (a long-handled mesh spoon to fetch the dim sum from a hot liquid). Also, a bamboo steamer and a Chinese cleaver. In the pantry, your checklist includes dark and light soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, chicken powder, fermented black beans (which smells in a distinctive way), two kinds of rice wine, rice vinegar, rice flour, cornstarch, potato starch, and several other items. You can find everything online, or from a good Asian supermarket or grocery store. Much of it can be stored for later use.

Now, think in terms of two types parts of Dim Sum: the fillings and the wrappers. And begin to practice three techniques, all essential: steaming, pan-frying and stir-frying in a wok. Next, before you attempt to cook anything, just sit down and read about the history, ingredients, and processes associated with Bao, and the Bao dough that you’ll use to make, for example, Char Siu Bao, or House Special Roast Pork Buns–in your own home. To me, this seems like magic, but when I review the ingredients and try it myself, it’s not as impossible as it seems: oil, white onion, sugar, light soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, dark soy sauce, chopped pork, cornstarch, water and the basic ingredients of the Bao dough: yeast, water, flour, sugar, oil, baking powder. It’s all in the instructions–but it is neither easy nor simple to get everything right without a lot of practice and a fair number of mistakes.

Ah, but when you do get something right, and it either looks or smells or tastes as it does in the restaurant, there’s good reason to grin. And to practice by making even more buns, and more mistakes. Stay focused. Get the buns right, and the dumplings become that much easier, too.

That’s the next step: the master fillings associated with dumplings: pork, shrimp, and “no pork no shrimp,” a vegetable filling. There are a lot of different types of fillings here, distinguished not only by their preparation (fried, for example), but their shape and their color. Then, there are Har Gow, the dumplings made in a bamboo steamer. and the Shanghai Soup Dumplings (Hiro Long Bao), which contain liquid and just be managed just-so, lest you make a gloppy mess.

Everyone is familiar with fried rolls–egg rolls and spring rolls, for example, but the floppy and slippery version, sometimes called a rice roll, is far more difficult to control.

And then, there are the cakes. You probably know Scallion Pancakes, but there are other kinds, too, perhaps more familiar in Asian than other households. And, rice and noodle dishes–but you won’t be making your own noodles this time around.

We’re about 2/3 done. There are feasts and various chef’s specialities, all wonderful, but I think of Dim Sum when I think about Nom Wah, I decided to concentrate my efforts on those dishes.

Perhaps I’ve given the impression that The Nom Wah Cookbook is a book filled with recipes from one of my favorite Chinese restaurants. Yes, it’s all that, but I’ve omitted the sub-title: “Recipes and Stories from 100 Years at New York City’s Iconic Dim Sum Restaurant.” Of course, the food is terrific, but the stories and the people and the places are so much a part of this book. There’s “The Man: Uncle Wally Tang,” a sixty-year employee who worked his way up from dishwasher to Dim Sum master. We learn about tea from “The Tea Guru: Timothy Hsu,” shopping in Chinatown from “The Queen of Pearl River: Joanne Kwong of Pearl River Mart,” and “The Grocery Store Goddess: Sophia Ng Tsao of Po Wing Hong.” And related: “The Tofu Kid: Paul Eng of Fong On.” All of this is a bit like traveling to a place that you’ve seen but never entered to explore. People who live and work in the community, who eat together, and share their food because that’s what friends and family do.

Many cookbooks attempt to combine technique, recipes and a sense of people and place in a single volume. It’s not easy to do, or to do well. Here, Wilson Tang and Joshua David Stein make it all work–and Alex Lau’s photographs make it all seem possible. For me, I love the book, but it draws me more toward the restaurant than to endless practice with results that will never be as good as the food I buy and eat at Nom Wah Tea Parlor. But that’s not exactly the point. For me, the point is owning, touching and feeling a part of Nom Wah, and, from time to time, attempting to conjure some of its magic in my own kitchen.

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The Self-Important Year of 1974

June 6, 2021 by Leave a Comment

A good friend told me about a new book called Rock Me on the Water: 1974, The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics. He was excited because we experienced some of the adventures that author Ronald Brownstein described, at least tangentially. It’s interesting to write about this particular book and this particular era because I happened to rewatch Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe’s film about his adventures on the road with The Allman Brothers Band (as a sixteen year old journalist for Rolling Stone, late 1973).

The book tells the story–a very good story at the start–about Linda Ronstadt and the way she built her career. This leads to background about David Geffen and the evolution of community of musicians in and around Laurel Canyon in the Los Angeles area. In short, they shared just about everything–life, love, shelter, food, drugs, music, songs, recording sessions, and a gigantic creative heart. In time, this culture evolves into a big-money enterprise, as evidenced by, for example, The Eagles, and the played-out sensibility so effectively described in their song, “Hotel California.” Indeed, this is music journalism at quite a high level, pleasant to read, deeply connected with outside events, evocative of time and place, and, viewed from the distance of time, something quite important. At the time, or shortly afterwards, I happened to be working (at a very junior level) at Warner Bros. Records in New York City. It was clear that everything had shifted west, but when the opportunity to move to Los Angeles came up, I turned it down. But I could sense that 1974 was right around the time when New York City lost a lot of ground as the center of the entertainment universe, and Los Angeles had gained what NYC had lost.

I come from a television background, but I had never thought much about how the development of Norman Lear’s sitcoms and Mary Tyler Moore’s small empire were related to this shift. I suppose I figured that sitcoms had always come from Los Angeles–for a long time, anyway–but I did not connect the creative energy in music to the creative energy in television. But there it is, and again, author Ronald Brownstein lays it all out in ways that suggest a much larger story.

And yes, there was a lot happening in the movie business at that time, too. All in Los Angeles. There was the old guard and the remains of the studio system, and Warren Beatty who seemed to be able to play both in the old ways and in the new. And there was Jack Nicholson, who was a somewhat awkward fit (mostly as a writer) but a far better fit for the independent orientation of the new. This, too, takes shape at around this time (1974 is a loose peg, but a good one). And much of what Brownstein describes is deeply connected to the larger shift in creative power.

But then, we meander into the “I wish I cared” world of Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, and the very specific strange politics of the Vietnam era. The national material is good, if well-known, but the California politics is slow-going, and although the author tries very hard to connect the dots, that felt like a struggle. The politics of this era were all about the Vietnam War, but Los Angeles was tangential to the story. Unfortunately, the long story of Jerry Brown extends the book’s dull middle section before we see the light at the end of the tunnel–which turns out to be yet another motion picture screen, this time featuring the work of young Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. The story of the younger directors–Brian de Palma and Martin Scorsese among them–lifts the story back to a higher level, but now, the connections between their efforts, Los Angeles and the year become more diffuse.

The first half of the book is great fun, and somewhat provocative reading (as provocative as pop culture goes, I suppose). The second half contains interesting stories, but I lose the point of the book. Yes, I enjoyed reading about the development and success of M*A*S*H*, and the struggles between Carrol O’Connor (Archie Bunker) and Norman Lear, but neither really illuminates how and why Los Angeles and 1974 changed the world. We begin to see female directors, but that happens, mostly, later on. Here and there, we see some non-white faces and some non-white directors, and we do see “two hundred movies centers on Black characters” from 1971 until 1975, but the shift in Hollywood takes shape, in a meaningful and sustainable way, much later. Similarly, there are non-white recording artists and the beginning of a new segment in the industry, but the action here is in Memphis, Philadelphia, and soon after, in disco capitals throughout the U.S. It’s not really an L.A. thing, not that L.A. isn’t part of the story, it’s just that the book promises a deeper and more long-lasting connection.

The book regains some strength when it returns to Linda Ronstadt, whose story about career development is also not an L.A. thing. Her work with Peter Asher is more about her own independence and versatility as an artist (one who made a lot of money, who started her career in Los Angeles but then became full-scale U.S. star). Again, worth reading if you’re curious about Ronstadt and because she happens to be a very smart, wise, and talented artist–and in part, because she comes up as several other smart, wise and talented women are blazing their own paths. This, too, is partly tied to Los Angeles (Sherry Lansing becomes the first head of a major studio), but it’s also happening throughout the world at that time–and quite slowly, everywhere.

By “December” (each chapter is titled with the name of a month, but the months have nothing to do with the order or organization of the storytelling), everything is falling apart. ABC has out-maneuvered CBS, so the Norman Lear shows are losing ground to the likes of the fluffy-but-fun Happy Days on a newly competitive network. JAWS introduces the blockbuster film, leaving the rich potential of independent film in an early 1970s bucket that would take a long time to find its footing, and shifting priority of studio executives to a much better money-making proposition. Stadium shows took the place of small rock club performances–shifting the creative power back to NYC as punk and other alternative forms suddenly seemed a whole lot more interesting than anything that was going on in L.A. Fleetwood Mac, once an interesting band with blues roots and a critically acclaimed take on progressive rock, added Stevie Nicks, and became wildly popular among the stadium concert goers, and simply irritating for those who reveled in the early 1970s creative culture that was once, for a brief period, the center of the universe.

Filed Under: Books & Print, Creative, Music, Trends, TV & New Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

We Were Not Alone

February 2, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Seems like science fiction, but for a long time, Homo sapiens were not the only human beings on earth. And there were a lot of them. And they lived in a very large area that included most of Europe, much of Asia, and probably, in many other places, too (but we haven’t yet found the evidence). They were far more sophisticated than you might imagine, very similar to our own kind as we evolved, in parallel, from about 350,000 years ago until (fairly recently?) until about 40,000 years ago. If we extended our individual family trees back to that time, most or many of us would find parents, aunts, and uncles, and plenty of cousins who were Neanderthal or mixed with our own kind, and quite likely, mixed with other early humans, too (and, probably, other species). This is not some exotic scientific story. This is the story of our own lives. And no less messy.

This morning, I happened to see a cartoon drawing of two large bears inspecting a minivan. On the back window of the vehicle were stick figures of a human family. One bear remarks, “Look! A menu!” It’s not easy to study the Neanderthals, or other early hominids, because they were eaten, destroyed in battle and accidents, burned, and buried. In fact, buried is good–if you know where to look. So far, we’ve been lucky enough to find bones, tools, settlements, but not many of them. Still, it’s a start, and we’ll no doubt find a lot more throughout the 21st century as we improve our satellite imaging (for example). In the meantime, scientists and historians have figured out some parts of the puzzle. Bear in mind that humans have been pursuing archeology for just over 150 years–and for the first 50-100 years, there were a lot of questions about validity, integrity, and there was astonished disbelief because humans (and their religions) didn’t want to consider the possibility that we were not alone as a human race. Getting past the idea of a “missing link” between humans and apes was, and perhaps remains, a problem, too. And this is made more complicated because Neanderthals are “extremely similar creatures to us” but “many simultaneous pathways existed, some finishing in dead ends, others like Neanderthals developing their own unique bodies and minds that were a match from our own.”

I’m quoting Rebecca Wragg Sykes, a remarkably talented storytelling and scientific historian whose book, KINDRED: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art is an absolute delight. She keeps the story interesting (fascinating would be a better word), piling on the historical details, open questions, likely facts, and the vast vastness of things we don’t know. I love that.

So far, we’ve found about 250 Neanderthal bodies, or enough parts and pieces of bodies to develop some ideas about their lives. We will certainly find a lot more. Their brains and our brains–about the same size (“just as big and deliberating as your own”) Their brow–more expansive than ours. Their babies’ chins–less prominent, so our babies are, or were, probably cuter than their babies. Their eyes–bigger than ours, noting that “people from higher latitudes have eyeballs up to 20 percent bigger than those from near the equator.” Their ears–very similar to our own, inside and out. Their noses–certainly larger, so they could “snort in the air at almost twice the rate we do.” But why? Here’s the speculative layer that’s found throughout the book–questions about whether the larger nose provided greater airflow, more air filtering and conditioning, or a more powerful or refined sense of smell. “…in some ways, Neanderthals’ large internal structures resemble reindeer and saga antelope, which have extensive mucous membranes to reduce dehydration and heat loss…[but] the internal structures in Neanderthals appears to be worse at air conditioning than our own.”

There’s a strangeness about discovering Neanderthal life expressed in time and distance. They lived for several hundred years in an expanse from Spain to Siberia. When something is discovered about a particular body or settlement, one must consider not only where it was found but also when. That’s because cultures and communities are always in motion–so a place-based assumption may, in fact, be more of a time-based assumption. Think in terms of discovering a human body from the Middle Ages in France and another from two years ago in Vancouver, British Columbia, and making statements about their dental care, or their diet. Assumptions must be carefully considered. Now, expand the time scale from a thousand years to twenty thousand years–the assumptions become that much flakier.

Tools: “More artisans than klutzes, [Neanderthals] appreciated the right tools for the job. Selecting hammers…was crucial. Small cobbles have the necessary mass to hit hard for big flakes, but for more delicate work, pebbles are better. And using soft rather than hard hammers produces different effects. Elastic organic materials like antler and bone or even dense rock like limestone spread out the kinetic energy and produce thinner, longer flakes…Tools were often retouched, sometimes to give a particular edge, but often to resharpen them–flakes dull very fast even when cutting meat.” So: yes, Neanderthals made and used a variety of tools for a variety of purposes, just as we did, and do today. This suggests the range of activities they pursued–hardly anything as simple as hitting a bear with a wooden club, though they may have done that, too. They used wood to make spears: “far from pointed sticks…finely crafted from thin spruce and a single Scots pine, their tips are all at the stump end: the hardest part. The shafts were systematically carved off-center for increased strength…Experiments show that the shorter-throwing spears easily range to 30 meters (30 yards).”

Their diet was varied. “Beavers’ fatty tails would have been succulent treats…they certainly gorged on tortoises…dolphins, seal and large fish…ticks and lice might have been nibbled while grooming hair…Neanderthals hunted [bears] more than other predators…burning hints at cooking right there in the den.” They ate plants, too–pine, mushrooms, moss. They cooked stews. They soaked acorns, then boiled them, a far more sophisticated conception than eating only raw meat. They fermented food, one of many examples of planning and preparation.

I could go on through where they lived, how they raised their children and families, the art they made, their customs and care for the dead, and more. There is so much in KINDRED, and so much of it is captivating. And I am so looking forward to the next book from Ms. Sykes. I have found a new favorite author.

Filed Under: Books & Print, Creative, International, Learning, Travel & Food, Trends Tagged With: , , , ,
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