Category: Uncategorized

After a week of traveling, it’s good to be home.  Although its tempting to dive right into holiday preparations, baking, and tackling the suddenly-more-noticeable accumulation of magazines and junk mail, I want to spend some time reflecting on the excess extravagance of Las Vegas.  I want to think about that in the context of what preceded it, about the perhaps equally excessive asceticism imposed by the desert on those who lived there in the centuries before it became Sin City.

In the state and federal parks we visited, there was invariably the story of Native Americans. Voices of the Nuwuvi, the People, were featured in our last road trip, to the Pahranagat Valley.  The area is on the Pacific flyway.  Kind of like Maumee Bay, but in the middle of the desert. We saw several dozen tundra swans and a bald eagle. The Nuwuvi believe they were put on the earth to keep it in balance, a balance which mostly ended sometime in the 19th century when cattle-rustlers brought their stolen herds to this remote area where warm springs create a mile-wide band of fertility surrounded by nothing but high desert and mountain ranges (and, today, an aspirational development featuring an unlikely golf course and mostly-imaginary community).  

Technology, epitomized by the Hoover Dam, was certainly one key to how the goats and tortoises gave way to the glitz of the Strip.  But it wouldn’t have happened without the ruthless ambition and ingenuity of humans, some of whose stories we read about at the  Mob Museum.  The story of the last 150 years of Las Vegas seems like the story of western civilization in an exaggerated microcosm.  Nature is tamed and destroyed, culture is created and corrupted.  I would not want to live anywhere near the Las Vegas strip.  But I would also not want to live as the Nuwuvi lived.

So I want to think about it all while enjoying my life of (relative) moderation.

 

Yesterday we dropped Craig and Sue at the airport, leaving us on our own for our last few days in Las Vegas.  I’m sorry they missed our first afternoon activity, an exhibition of Picasso prints and paintings at the Bellagio gallery.  The theme is the human form, with a focus on three of Picasso’s muses:  Dora Maar, Francoise Gilot, and Jacqueline Roque.  For many of the print series, the original plates are on display as well.  I’m looking forward to learning more about this period (1930s to 1960s) of Picasso’s incredible, excessive (fits in Las Vegas) life and work.

We wondered on down the Strip to take in Zarkana, my first Cirque de Soleil experience.  Again, I enjoyed it a lot, I am glad I did it, but I probably don’t need to do it again.  That seems to be the theme of my Las Vegas trip.

The experience I do want to repeat,  not surprisingly, is exceptional food.  We wrapped up the night at Sage, whose tagline is “simply indulgent.”  We started with Wagyu beef tartare, which featured “crispy chocolate” and a tiny egg.  Indulgent indeed.

Since we don’t plan to return to the Strip, I’m glad that our experience ended with a bonus.  We shared a dessert (chocolate panna cotta) and were ready to leave when we were presented with a final course:  chocolate soup in a tiny cup.

So from art to entertainment to food, today was about appreciating those who are making it in Las Vegas.

We’re planning one more road trip today before we come home, where I’ll be making simple food for at least a few days, but I think that I will have soaked up at least a bit of inspiration to enjoy the occasional excess.

For all its glorious excess, and despite the worn spots on the edges, Las Vegas is, well, new.  Yesterday afternoon we visited the Valley of Fire.

Fifty miles from the Strip we saw 3000-year old petroglyphs and rock formations whose sandstone layers were laid down in the time of the dinosaurs, 150 million years ago. Early Basket Makers people, as Michael Pollan described in Cooked, made grain-seed-small animal and fish porridges in water-filled baskets by dropping in hot stones. Goats and even tortoises were other sources of food.

 

 The Anasazi lived here for a time but eventually moved on, leaving the Paiutes who remain today. Earlier this week we visited a ranch originally owned by a settler who married a Paiute woman and adopted her children, a very confused family tree.

Only in the 20th century did invaders enter the valley.  Mormon settlers kept going because there were so few resources. Aside from the road and a visitor center, even today it’s not hard to imagine you’re sharing the space only with Gila monsters and tarantulas.

I usually avoid the the “pano” setting on my i-Pad, but everywhere I looked there was a panorama:

We arrived fairly late, after dropping my daughter at the airport, and as a result of that happy accident we were in the park as the sun set.

Finally (reluctantly) we headed back to downtown Las Vegas, where the light show at the Fremont Experience was a bit of an anticlimax.  I won a few dollars in the slot machines at the Four Queens and we watched rodeo on the televisions over dinner at the Golden Nugget, but it is the Valley of Fire I will remember forever.

This trip has made me think about excess.  Can excess be a good thing?  If excess means more than the usual or necessary amount, then it depends, doesn’t it? There is no doubt in my mind that the Hoover Dam exists because of an excess:  an excess of ambition, of money, of everything it took to dam up the Colorado and pour so much concrete that they had to invent a way of cooling it, without which the concrete poured in 1935 would still be giving off heat.   But it’s not the engineering that I find most fascinating, it’s the people who decided that it was not just okay to intervene in nature but that it was necessary.  The money people and the political people and the 16,000 people who actually built it.  What gave them such nerve?

Most people like seem to like the result, whatever the cause.  That’s certainly not universally true of the excess of the Las Vegas Stip; many seem to find it depressing.  During the day, I couldnt agree more, and I suspect that this one-week visit will be enough for me.  But at night there’s something irresistable about all that light, all tht motion, all that energy, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to eperience it.  Last night’s trip was especially strange.  When we got on the resort-provided  shuttle, the driver explained that he couldn’t drop us at the usual point, Caesar’s Palace, because they had “a jumper.” Lots of bad jokes followed, from the driver and a fellow passenger, and I had an unsettling sense of how they and hundreds of thousands of others felt no connection to “the other,” whether it be a depressed guy who lost all his money, got drunk, and inconvenienced our evening or a refugee or immigrant whose religious beliefs are not our own.  But Love Trumps Hate, right? I hope so, excessively perhaps.

Before we Ubered back to our condo (the jumper was in custory, but we wanted a quick ride home), we stood for a while to watch the “dancing fountains” of the Bellagio. While it certainly doesn’t deliver electricity  and water to millions, this water show, excessive that it is, is my favorite thing on the Las Vegas Strip, and I can’t imagine it happening anywhere else.  It takes a minute to load, but enjoy with me: IMG_3804

I am not surprised by the excess of Las Vegas; it’s what everyone told me to expect.  But there’s something kind of fun about seeing the levels of excess.  Each casino is excessive in its own way, maybe.  And it’s wonderful to see the contrast between Las Vegas “culture” and the nature that’s just a few miles away.  Yesterday we went to Red Rock Canyon, and it is spectacular!

We visited a ranch once owned (but apparently never visited) by Howard Hughes, and we were compelled to stop at virtually every pullout along the 13-mile scenic drive through the canyon.  Since we had previously read about the growth of Las Vegas and the (relatively) recent history of the city, learning about the area’s geographic origins and the early settlers who lived among the Paiute Indians gave me a new perspective.

We couldn’t resist a return visit to our new favorite Thai restaurant.  Instead of going back to the Strip, we stopped at an off-strip casino just down the street from our condo.  It’s National Rodeo Finals week in Vegas, and the Orleans promises “the best Rodeo after-parties.” I can’t vouch for that, but I will admit that the lure of penny slots pulled a few dollars out of my pocket (I came out ahead by $2.47) and the video clips of the day’s rodeo winners were compelling for a few minutes at least.

The aspect of Cooked, the book I read last week, which I like best was the continual reference to the cook as transforming nature into culture.  Here the transformation is less subtle.  And, so far, the culture is less, well, cultured.
Today we’re off to the Hoover Dam, which promises yet more excess.  And maybe a return visit to the Strip and the “high-end” casinos which probably won’t offer penny slots.

The first thing we did in Las Vegas was to pick up a car and drive the Strip.  It seemed dismal, and I was worried that this would be a verrrry long week.  Then we tried to check out the container park in the Arts District, which the travel guides promote as an up-and-coming hip area. I’m pretty sure we found it, and, unless I’m wrong about that, the Arts District must have a talented publicist – we couldn’t even find a place to have lunch!  So we spent a couple of hours in the pool and the hot tub at the off-strip resort where we are staying, which helped. I can imagine worse things than a week of mindless relaxation.  Then we found the off-strip restaurant I’d been eyeing on all the travel sites, and I revised upward my opinion and my expectations for the week.  Really good Thai food, an incredible wine list, great service and affordable prices.  I can imagine worse things than a week of dinners at Lotus of Siam.

Eight hours sleep on Saturday night was restorative, and on Sunday, after picking up my BIL and SIL at the airport, we went directly to the Mob Museum, located in the old post office/courthouse, and the site of at least one of the Kefauver hearings.  By the time  we left we were pretty mobbed-out and over-grislied, but it’s really a well-done project and comprehensively informative.  Then we made a quick turnaround, dropped the car at the resort, and returned to the strip via shuttle.  The Strip at night is a whole other experience!  We had no time for a real dinner, so ate at Chipotle in a food court before we went to Harrah’s for a show which re-created a legendary impromptu jam session at Sun Records in 1956.  I wasn’t listening to rockabilly as a six-year-old, but I did hear lots of it growing up in upstate NY, and the music of The Million Dollar Quartet brought back memories and had all of us on our feet more than once.

So we walked through two casinos – Harrah’s and Caesar’s Palace -without feeling the need to gamble, and walked the strip to gawk at the lights and the sights.  My SIL says that the dancing fountains at the Bellagio were worth the trip, and I’m inclined to agree with her, but I still want to see a few more of these extravaganzas.

Not sure I’ll be a return visitor to Las Vegas, but I’m glad I came.

I have always been fascinated by magic.  Not sleight-of-hand, not the kind of magic that manipulates objects, even if the objects are very big or even human.  That doesn’t interest me.  I like magic that transforms and creates. The kind of magic that can produce The Night Circus.

 It is simply there, when yesterday it was not… Erin Morgenstern

The kind of old magic that could save England.

I reached out my hand, England’s rivers turned and flowed the other way…
I reached out my hand, my enemies’s blood stopt in their veins…
I reached out my hand; thought and memory flew out of my enemies’ heads like a flock of starlings;
My enemies crumpled like empty sacks.
I came to them out of mists and rain;
I came to them in dreams at midnight;
I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled a northern sky at dawn;
When they thought themselves safe I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood…  Susannah Clarke

In real life, the closest I come to that kind of magic is baking bread.  Michael Pollan, in his wonderful book Cooked,  describes the cook as an intermediary between nature and nurture.  In his chapter “Air” which focuses on bread, he argues that unlike grilling or pot-cooking, where the ingredients are more or less recognizable in the final product, bread is different.  The end is so much more than the sum of its parts; something entirely new has been created.

I don’t know whether to be proud of myself or sheepish about this, but over the last two days I made bean bread.  I had made a pot of beans and used them in a recipe for which they had to be drained.  I could not bring myself to throw out that bean water, and after an hour or so of reading Pollan on Tuesday evening it struck me that I could use it as the liquid in a batch of bread.  It turns out I’m not the only one to have had that idea, and I adapted a promising recipe from The Fresh Loaf  .  I mixed the dough last night, retarded it in the refrigerator until morning, and have just taken three loaves out of the oven.  They are not my usual free-form loaf, and this was not my usual purist flour-water-salt-and-yeast approach, but hopefully they will make good sandwiches.  Wish me luck.

I suppose you could say I love outlaw American culture.  Jamaica Kincaid

What is it about outlaws?  I’ve always been drawn to the romance of Robin Hood, Zorro, even Bonnie and Clyde. While I’m in Chicago, since I’m not attending conference sessions with John, I have time to indulge this weakness. On the recommendation of my sister, I’m reading Backlands, the story of Maria Bonita and her bandit husband Lampiao, based on a real gang who terrorized the rich and powerful in a large part of Brazil for several decades early in the 20th century.

Here’s one of my favorite passages so far, describing an incident in 1926: “NOVEMBER 25: Lampiao takes hostage American representatives from Standard Oil, demanding ransom.  When they explain they have to type the demand in triplicate, he smashes their typewriter, burns their car, and takes them hostage. NOVEMBER 26: Violent skirmish outside of Morada, with Pernambuco troops, attempting to rescue the hostages. The fight lasts all day and all night, until Lampiao, with a hundred and twenty men, puts the troops to flight. Ransom is then paid, and the hostages set free.”

The author, Victoria Shorr, manage to combine a love story with a philosophical examination of the remote geography of the barren scrublands, which supported indigenous Indians for centuries, combined with the arrival of the Portugese and the subsequent creation of large ranches which were doomed to fail, led inevitably to the society which produced Lampiao, a victim who decided to strike back.

Recommended reading, if you love outlaw culture too.

 

Jennifer Rockwood and I were never close friends.  I first met her almost forty years ago, and I’ve been an admirer ever since.  Our circles overlapped and our lives have intersected periodically. When I became the first woman to serve as executive director of the county D party, Jennifer, after viewing the local media coverage, intervened.  She called me with advice (NEVER wear shiny dangly earrings on television) and referrals – for new glasses, a haircut, and a makeup lesson.  I think her motivation was not just to help me succeed but to make sure that my image inspired other women.Those who know me know that I would have resented that advice from almost anyone else, but from Jennifer it was a gift.  I still buy my glasses from Georgeanne, and Carmen still cuts my hair.  While I was a party leader, I occasionally turned to Jennifer to help tune up a candidate’s public persona.  Her analysis was always insightful and often surprising. While I worked at UT, I watched how she inspired students and inspired their growth.

I’ll miss her.

I have never lived on a farm, and I probably never will.  I’m okay with that.  The house where I grew up was on two acres completely surrounded by dairy farms, and I’ve worked with enough farmers to know that they work harder than I do or want to.  I’m delighted to be a member of a CSA and a regular shopper at the Toledo Farmers Market.  But this weekend I jumped at the chance to visit the farm that produces the eggs, chickens, and the pork I’ve purchased this season.  The drive out to Weber Ranch was about 40 minutes, much of it alongside fields of undoubtedly-GMO corn.  I passed several men on riding mowers, diligently maintaining lawns guaranteed to be hostile to all wildlife, including birds and pollinators.  I saw a lot of sprawl.  But then I arrived at the ranch.  We loaded my chickens (15, for the winter) into my coolers, and then I had a tour!

 

Tony and Michelle Weber are first-generation farmers, and they purchased the farm just a couple of years ago. It’s an old farm which has had only a few owners, and they’ve been able to learn a little bit about its history.  Although it’s not the one pictured, the farm did have a windmill, as well as a water tower and a smoke house.

 

 

 

Like all the Weber’s animals, the chickens spend most of their time outside, but this, the farm’s original homestead, is where the chickens brood.  Not, of course, in the Shakespearean sense, but where they lay their eggs and raise their chicks.

 

 

 

The pigs were enjoying corn cobs and looking forward to pumpkins but will soon be turned out to forage in the woods where they will get acorns as well. They’re Berkshires, and I can vouch for their deliciousness. Honestly, I can no longer enjoy grocery-store meat, and without the Webers and other local farmers I’d probably be a vegetarian.

 

 

Next door is a field of beans, and even after 40+ years in Ohio I was struck by its flatness.  I buy beans from Rancho Gordo in California, and, judging from the wide choice of heirloom varieties offered there, I don’t think their growers are mono-culturing like most Northwest Ohio farmers.

 

 

 

The grapes on our vines at home have never survived the deer, but at Weber Ranch the dogs scare off the deer and the chickens take care of the insect grubs, so Michelle’s harvest was enough for her to make grape juice and jam.  I made grape jam this year too, from seedless grapes I found at the store, but only 3 jars and I’ve already given away two!

 

Apparently deer don’t like most herbs, so when I got home I made Chicken Provencal with chicken from Weber Ranch and herbs from my garden.  I’m grateful for both.

“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac