Category: Happy

flu shots, Minnesota nice

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“In Minnesota,” this morning’s NYTimes headline reads, “Flu Vaccines Go Waiting.”
Setting aside the question of how we got into a situation where throughout the country this year there are only a fraction of the flu shots which should be available, how can we get a bigger supply of this kind of people?

In most places, people are clamoring for flu shots – waiting in lines, calling every clinic in town, even going to Canada. But in Minnesota, the opposite problem has emerged: even people considered most vulnerable are forgoing the shots so there will be enough left for others.
This puzzling reaction has left state health officials charmed, but also urging an estimated 1.6 million high-risk residents to be vaccinated.
Concerns about quality control at a vaccine plant in Britain led to a shortage of flu vaccine in the United States and led health officials to ask that shots be limited to those most susceptible to complications from the flu, including children younger than 2, adults older than 65 and the chronically ill.
But in Minnesota, officials said, more high-risk people are passing on the shots than in years past.
Ann Thiel, 88, of Inver Grove Heights, said she had gotten a flu shot every year for the past decade after a case of the flu caused her esophagus to rupture. But after hearing about the shortage, she decided not to get her annual shot.
“I think an awful lot of money is spent on people my age at the expense of younger people,” Mrs. Thiel said. “I think I’ve had more than my share of good luck.”

[image from Northwestern Health Sciences University]

“Haroun and the Sea of Stories”

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Wednesday, the stage at the New York State Theater, before the lights darkened

We went to New York City Opera Wednesday night to see Charles Wuorinen’s new opera based on a short novel by Salmon Rushdie, “Haroun and the Sea of Stories.”
Almost totally bummed because of the national disasters reported over the previous 24 hours, we really weren’t expecting to be greatly amused. According to the reviews we had read we would find a delightful story seriously handicapped by its dependence upon the composer’s complex 12-tone techniques.
We both loved it on every level, for each of its elements.
We knew the story and it really is delightful. It’s definitely not simply a children’s story, although there were plenty of smart New York kids there with their parents. It was written while Rushdie was forced to hide from the mortal threat of the fatwa directed against him because of his writings. The book is a fable about free expression. It’s as fresh as tomorrow morning’s bread. In Act II the evil Khattam-Shud complains about the limits of his dark authority, singing,

Inside every single story
There lies a world, a story world,
That I cannot rule ar all.
It is beyond my control . . .
It spoils everything!

The libretto by the poet James Fenton, necessarily more condensed than the book, did so with great success, tightly playing with the pleasure of words both real and imagined, in delightful groups strung together and wound around or threaded through each other.
I admit that serial music holds no terrors for me and under normal circumstances I would have been delighted to be looking forward to a live performance of an entire opera using its forms. We have a large wall cabinet stacked with the sadness of 12-tone opera sound-only recordings, their visuals unfulfilled. I was surprised and delighted to find that Wuorinen’s score was a perfect foil for the story, the singers and the glorious sights unfolding on the stage.
And what sights they were! In their totally uninhibited color and movement, and with imagination not bound to any reality or even to the usual conventions of fantasy, the sets and costumes fulfilled the promise of the story. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more delightful on a stage, opera or otherwise. I’m not normally sighted shrieking in glee from a seat in Linclon Center.
Election? What election?
There are still three more performances, one tomorrow afternoon and one in the evening on Tuesday and on Thursday.

Bush is history

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The skys are blue again, all over the world.
But the real work is only beginning.
It’s not going to be easy rebuilding a nation and removing the curse which has rested so heavily on the planet [the cultists will remain to plague our wounded polity, and a hundred thousand lives have been wiped out in Iraq alone], but tonight Barry and I will be celebrating a new world with champagne. It will be French, of course, by definiton – and by choice.
Listening to: Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 2 in C minor “Resurrection” (Klemperer, Philharmonia, Schwarzkopf, Hilde Rössel-Majdan)

[image taken on Sunday afternoon outside our windows, about the time I was first convinced that Bush would not survive this referendum, at least without overturning it]

Capogiro: head-spinning gelato

I don’t know much about it. For some reason there doesn’t seem to be a website (even when those are now so ubiquitous we shouldn’t be surprised to find a website for the lemonade stand the neighbor’s kid set up last July). I do know that the makers of Capogiro gelato are in Philadelphia and I believe it’s a pretty small family business.
The fact that I’m writing about this food product should surprise me even more than it does my regular readers. I’m not even much of an ice cream fan; a pint has been know to for languish weeks in our freezer compartment, and I rarely think of going for a cone or a cup when I’m outside, even on the hottest summer day.
I do like to cook, but I have no patience for putting together a sweet when I’m doing savory stuff. Instead, if I’m planning a meal for friends, I usually go looking for some kind of simple, cool palate-cleansing finish, and that’s what started this rave.
Months ago I first came across Capogiro in our local Garden of Eden food market. The container had almost no identifying markings, and certainly nothing about calories, vitamins or dates of manufacture. Of course I was really intrigued, so I bought one. I even imagined that perhaps some local slow-food entrepreneur working out of an apartment kitchen might have placed the product in that freezer cabinet surrepticiously in order to create a market and a demand. When I tasted it at home and I realized how good it was, that story actually sounded even less preposterous.
I have never, ever before tasted any frozen dessert as wonderful as this one, at least on this side of the Tyrrhenian Sea. I hesitated to write about it for fear that my almost-secret supply might dry up, but I also thought that the best way to ensure its availability might be to do some word-of-blog marketing.
If the recommendation of someone who has just admitted he’s severely challenged as an ice cream fanatic isn’t enough to whet your appetite, let me tell you about just a few of the incredibly inventive flavors Capogiro has made available to its fortunate acolytes (meaning especially the people of Philadelphia). Here’s a short sample courtesy of Philadelphia Weekly:

How about prune armagnac, full of prunes swollen with fine French brandy? Or Mexican chocolate, powerfully flavored with canella (pungent Mexican cinnamon), bitter almonds and dried ancho chilies that make the back of the throat tingle. The La Colombe cappuccino is as frothily delicious as its namesake. Blood orange sorbetto tastes as though it were just picked from a tree, while cactus pear sorbetto, a shockingly pink confection, somehow manages to replicate the exact taste sensation of eating a cactus pear, minus the gritty seeds. Flavors change almost daily, depending on what’s seasonally appropriate.

My own favorite so far was called, I think, rosemary goat’s milk, but with Capogiro’s (head-spinning) inventiveness and taste, I doubt the competition will ever be finally judged.

lotus

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From 15th Street and our short glimpse of Pier 57 Barry and I headed down the pedestrian path along the Hudson this afternoon until we reached this exquisite lotus in the Koi pond just above North Cove in Battery Park City. After having to move around under an occupation for a week we were able to appreciate the freedom of the River, the sun and the fresh air more than ever.