Another List

Whether they be columnists working for honest-to-goodness publications, or mere bloggers such as myself, writers love compiling lists as they are one of the easiest methods to meet a deadline. Especially today in the age of social media where you can post a question asking your followers to name things they like or don't like about a chosen topic. Pick your favorite responses and you're done.

Perhaps the only thing easier is to take somebody else's list, then reprint it along with your own snarky comments.

Which is what I'm about to do.

An interesting list came over my Facebook feed the other day. It came a little late as it was published around last Halloween, hence its title: 20 things Chicagoans officially want to ghost, written by Emma Krupp.

The other nice thing about compiling lists rather than actually writing something, is that readers are guaranteed to "eat them up like hot cakes". Like the writer compiling them, lists require less commitment from the reader as well, "more bang for the buck" as they say.

I use those somewhat antiquated terms deliberately to illustrate the age difference between myself and the author, who leads her first sentence with this:

Sure, maybe you’ve ghosted a bad Hinge date or abruptly cut the cord on a meandering situationship...

I had to look up two things in that sentence fragment.

Anyway, as you can probably guess from the title of the article, it is a list of things people don't like about Chicago and would like to see "ghosted," or in older folks' language, go away. The author points out in not so many words that it is not scientific survey, but a curated, random list of some of her and her editors' favorite responses.

The responses to the query are quoted verbatim here as they appear in the article, however I reserve the right to present them not exactly in the order in which they originally appeared to suit my own purposes.

So sue me.

The original responses are in bold type as you can probably figure out, and my responses are not.

Here goes:

From 20 things Chicagoans officially want to ghost, an article that appeared in the October 28, 2022 issue of the online version of Time-Out Chicago, written and complied by Emma Krupp:

 

People who live in the ‘burbs but say they’re from Chicago.

Hmmm, identifying oneself with a particular place, sounds like a good subject for a post of its own. Wait a minute, I already wrote that post, in fact, it's my last post, you can check it out here.

This is an issue that concerned me back when I was a teenager living in the 'burbs, but really felt more connected to the city. Even though I lived a mere four blocks from the Chicago border and desperately wanted to tell people I lived in the city, honesty compelled me to say that I lived in Oak Park. I regretted it though, as if the community where I went to bed at night made me somehow unworthy. Now I'm older and wiser, or so I think. This time I live in the city but only a mere few blocks from another suburb, Evanston, and realize there is no special street cred for living in the city rather than the suburbs.

The Chicago Metropolitan Area is vast, extending into both Wisconsin and Indiana, and all of us living here share many things that make us belong to a greater community. We work together and cheer on the same sports teams, except baseball of course. We may never set foot in any of our cultural institutions, but nevertheless show pride in them, claiming them as ours. We all share the Lake. Even if we don't swim in it, we drink its water, and we benefit from it tempering the climate, because bad as our weather is, it would be much colder in the winter and much hotter in the summer without it. And at least in the era when I grew up, we all watched and listened to the same local TV and radio programs and commercials, things that all these years later, still connect us, whether we grew up in suburban Bensenville or Romeoville, or Bronzeville in the heart of the city.  

On the flip side, the City of Chicago on its own is immense and diverse, a collection of 178 officially recognized neighborhoods, each with its own identity. What does it mean when you say you live in Chicago? Do you live on the South Side, the West Side, the North Side or the Loop? Do you come from Sauganash, Albany Park, Austin, Little Village, Chinatown, Chatham or Hegewisch? None of those places are alike and the difference between living in any two of them is at least as vast as the difference between living in the city and the suburbs.

The obvious thing when it comes to telling someone where you live is that it makes sense to them. It would be pointless to tell a person who doesn't know the area that you lived say, in Berwyn, because he'd have no clue where Berwyn was. If however, you lived in Berwyn and told a native Chicagoan you lived in Chicago, you'd be lying to her.

The interesting thing is that on a number of occasions while traveling, mostly around the Midwest, I would tell someone truthfully that I lived in Chicago, then without hesitation  they would respond, "what suburb?" Like everything, it's all relative.

People who call it ‘Chi-Town.

I prefer "Windy City" myself, but by-and-large, real Chicagoans aren't much for calling their city by any nickname, it's just "Chicago" most of the time.

It's the pronunciation that changes. Some folks say "Shih KA go", others "Shih KAW go", while my personal favorite is the late Hizzonor, Richard J. Daley's pronunciation which was closer to this: Shih KAW geh, as in "deh great cidy uh Shih KAW geh".

Classic Chicagoese.  

Privatized city street parking and traffic cameras.

Thank you Ritchie Daley, son of Hizzonor.

The anti-ketchup people.

I have a confession to make, ketchup turns my stomach. So I guess that makes me an anti-ketchup person, although I don't impose that dislike on others. But I think this commenter is referring to Chicagoans who insist you must not put ketchup on a Chicago hot dog. 

This is true. No ketchup, no mayonaise, no wasabi, nor any other condiment that is not mustard, relish, chopped onions, tomato wedges, a pickle spear, sport peppers and celery salt, is what makes a Chicago hot dog a Chicago hot dog. 

Once you put ketchup or anything else on it not on that list, by definition it becomes something else. Putting ketchup on a hot dog and calling it a Chicago hot dog is a culinary faux pas akin to ordering pizza with pineapple topping in Naples. You can ask for it but probably won't get it. What you certainly will get is a lot of grief. It's their food culture after all, and ours as well.

  

All the politicians! All of them.

No argument from me on that one. 

 

Navy Pier.

I think the main problem with Navy Pier is that it tries to have something for everyone and in the process, it is not entirely pleasing to anyone. There are certainly in my opinion, truly wonderful things at Navy Pier, The Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the Ferris Wheel, the Auditorium at the east end of the Pier, some of the best views of the skyline, etc. Yet there is always the feeling that something is missing, and I can't quite pin it down. It always seems to be in the process of figuring itself out. Maybe one day it will get there.

But quite honestly, when my children were small, some of the happiest moments of my life were spent at Navy Pier. 

From the Wayback Machine, here's a piece I wrote about Navy Pier back in 2011.

 
The men.

I told you this was a highly curated list.

Malört.

I just learned of a peculiar tradition in Dawson City, Yukon called the "Sour Toe Cocktail." It is said that in order to fully experience that remote city near the Arctic Circle, you need to partake in a ritual which involves drinking said cocktail consisting of Klondike Vodka, a few flecks of gold dust (in honor of the Klondike Gold Rush), and a petrified human toe. There are only two requirements beyond drinking the concoction, the toe must at some point touch your lips, and you must not swallow the toe. Where's the fun in that? 

Malört, in case you don't know, is the Chicago version of the Sour Toe Cocktail. 

I had lived nearly a half century in this town before I learned about Malört. A young colleague originally from Iowa was talking about the foul-tasting spirit and when she found out I had no idea what it was said: "What? you're from Chicago and you never heard of Malört? 

I felt only a little better after I asked several native Chicagoans around my age and discovered most of them hadn't heard of it either. 

Malört is the Swedish word for wormwood which is its principal ingredient. My guess is the hooch, which had been around since the 1920s, suddenly became a "Chicago thing" around the turn of this century when I assume a local bartender with a strong affinity to Tom Sawyer, tried to unload a case of the stuff by convincing newbie Chicagoans like my former colleague, that in order to prove one's mettle as a true Chicagoan, you have to down a shot of the vile tasting liquor. Then as part of the act, the regulars at the bar who knew better, would gather around the victim to watch the look of anguish on his or her face, upon tasting the concoction. 

It caught on, making Malört the stuff of local legend. It has inspired a wide range of testimonials ranging from "it tastes like pencil shavings and heartbreak", to the moniker: "the Champaigne of Pain", to the only slightly erroneous claim that the Russian translation of Malört, is Chernobyl. 

But let's face it, as a method of proving one's mettle, drinking a shot of Malört doesn't come close to things that test the limits of human perseverance or fortitude, like running a marathon or jumping into the Lake in sub-freezing weather. And it certainly doesn't rate with things that test the limits of human decency such as drinking a Sour Toe Cocktail.

It's just drinking something that tastes rather unpleasant, kind of lame by comparison if you asked me.

On the other hand, I'm all for social bonding and compared to that other stuff, none of which I have any intention of doing, it's pretty harmless.

Skol.

 The Taste of Chicago.

You mean the The Waste of Chicago? 'Nuff said.

 

Never-ending construction on the Kennedy.

You think traffic is bad now? Imagine city streets filled with horse carts, streetcars, folks on bicycles, pedestrians, all moving in every direction, and no traffic lights. To make it easier for folks to get around, they invented cars and along with them, traffic lights. To make cars get around easier, they invented expressways:

Photo by Theo Iska

Then in the endeavor to improve traffic congestion, planners in their infinite wisdom, built more expressways with more lanes, hence construction. 

Finally, as they say: "build it and they will come." 

And come they did. 

It's just a fact of life, the more roads you build, the more cars there will be on the road. And the more cars, well you can figure it out.

If you want to put it all into perspective, go to LA just to see what real 24-7 traffic congestion looks like. Or better yet, go 90 miles to the north, up to Milwaukee where traffic is half as bad as it is here.

Then realize they also complain about the traffic.

City sticker fees.

We gotta pay for all that Kennedy Expressway Construction you know.

 

The Bat Cave, aka Lower Wacker Drive.

Other than the weather, the thing that seems to irritate people who contributed to this list the most, is traffic. Which puzzles me about this entry because Lower Wacker Drive, if you happen to be familiar with all its ins and outs, is the fastest way to get around the Loop in a motor vehicle.

If you haven't been down there, you may know it from its appearance during the epic chase scene in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers. It's also a foreboding place with a certain no-man's-land feel to it, which makes it appealing (if you can call it that), to much of the city's homeless population.

No, it's not a place for a casual stroll, but neither is the Kennedy Expressway.      

Deep dish pizza.

More food culture here, the deep-dish pizza and its cousin, stuffed pizza, really were invented in Chicago and have become one of the things people all over the world associate with this city. It's also something folks from elsewhere take pleasure in dissing, engaging if you will in pizza snobbery, accusing it of not really being pizza. Jon Stewart got into the act back in 2013 when he threw a nationally televised shit fit about "Chicago Style Pizza." 

True Chicago style pizza, that is, the type of pizza most people in Chicago actually eat on a regular basis, also known as "tavern style", is flat, made with a thin, crisp crust and because of its larger size. is typically cut into squares rather than slices. This also doesn't pass muster with the pizza snobs simply because it is different from what they're used to. 

As I pointed out in this post, the only people who have the right to be snobbish about pizza are the Neapolitans, who invented it. By that standard, any other style of pizza, including those of Rome and New York, are simply poseurs, not worthy of being called pizza. 

Fortunately, in a city as large and diverse as Chicago, one can find the glorious Pizza Napolitana, Margherita of course, as well as virtually any style of pizza imaginable, including New York style. 

So, my advice to you if you don't like Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza is this, don't eat it.

CTA not showing up when it says it will.

I don't want to sound like your dad, (I AM a dad, but not yours), but when you think about it, we should thank our lucky stars that after the pandemic, we still have a public transit system. You see, before the shut-down, the Chicago Transit Authority was already struggling. Then COVID hit and the majority of paying customers riding it to work every day, stayed home.

Despite that, the CTA kept running, putting their employees at risk by serving scores of people deemed necessary workers, as well as other customers who paid occasionally if at all.  

After the lockdown, a lot of people stayed home to work remotely. For a system that depends largely upon revenue from fares, that's obviously devastating. It doesn't help that crime is up all over the city including on the buses and the L, also thanks to the pandemic. It also doesn't help that the reduced number of passengers going to and from work makes the pan-handlers, the drug dealers, the junkies and the homeless just looking for a place to sleep, all the more prominent. That makes some people uncomfortable riding the buses and trains and if they have the opportunity, often choose to commute by other means, meaning even fewer paying customers and of course, more cars on the road. It's a vicious cycle. 

On top of all that, like many entities, the CTA is experiencing a chronic worker shortage which is a big reason why the trains and busses are not showing up on time, if at all. 

Of course, we can always blame the management. Along with the upsurge in crime, the decline of the CTA was the major issue in last week's mayoral primary election which left the current mayor Lori Lightfoot, who apparently didn't wave her magic wand to make it all better, without a job. We'll see how the next mayor whomever that will be, addresses the issue. 

Good luck.

Everywhere you go it smells like urine.

You can add pot and things much more disgusting, especially on the CTA.

 

Getting off the Red Line and catching wind off of the lake on a 20-below day.

This reminds me of my most memorable experience on the Red Line. It was during the height of a once-in-a-decade snowstorm, and my colleagues and I foolishly decided to stay at work to finish a project, rather than go home before the blizzard started as suggested by the management. The train was packed to the gills but fortunately was being driven by the greatest motorman in CTA history, Michael Powell, who reassured the passengers that if we cooperated, we'd all get home in due time. 

When we got to the Sheridan station, a sudden gust of wind kicked up making the passengers getting off at the stop look like the doomed members of Captain Scott's ill-fated expedition to Antarctica. "Don't laugh" Michael told the giggling passengers still on the train, "pretty soon that will be you."

God, I miss him.

Cover Bands 

I didn't realize that cover bands were particularly a Chicago thing. I need to get out more.

 

People who only want to talk about ‘random’ violence and ‘gang bangers’ that typically no one ever truly encounters here.

The one and only time my half-sister from Czechia, or The Czech Republic, (at the time, Czechoslovakia) visited Chicago, she me asked in all seriousness after one week: "Where are all the gangsters?" She had succumbed to the stereotype that this city is overrun by crime and gangsters and that you couldn't help running into one just by stepping out into the street, although I'm not sure she would have known a gangster if she saw one.

The thing about stereotypes is they don't come out of thin air, more often than not there is a solid basis for them. Chicago is indeed a violent city, it always has been. It's true that the violence is generally far greater in some areas than others, but no place, including the suburbs, is immune from it. And the fact that violence occurs in areas that some of us may never visit, does not diminish its seriousness, nor the tragedy of it. 

The person who wrote this opinion apparently never encountered violence and good for him or her, I hope and pray it continues to be so. But the attitude that "typically no one ever truly encounters" violence in Chicago, underscores how divided this city is, and how blind some of us have become to the life that goes on around us that we simply choose to ignore.

It illustrates the tremendous gap in this city between what many consider to be two distinct cities, one of promise and privilege, and another of hopelessness and despair. Sadly, far too many residents of the former, have little knowledge of or interest in the latter. To them it is just a place to avoid, another world, the back of beyond.  

Having myself been a victim of crime, including violent crime, more times than I care to remember, I honestly agree with the sentiment that people sometimes get carried away with the idea of crime and that we shouldn't let ourselves be paralyzed by our fear of it. 

On the other hand, we need to realize that any act of violence committed in our city, no matter the neighborhood, is a tragedy we all must take ownership of. It's holding us all back and it's not going to go away by ignoring it and the causes of it. Because at the very least, sooner or later, it's going to catch up with all of us.

OK, that nearly wraps up the things that bother Time Out Chicago readers the most about their city. Obviously, the author intended her piece to be a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek look at some of the petty gripes, the foibles, the insignificant, unpleasant, but mostly trivial idiosyncrasies that we all put up with on a daily basis, When I began putting this post together, I intended to respond in kind. But as you can see from some of my responses, the troubling, serious, heartbreaking, existential problems of this city are never far from the surface. 

Don't expect to find comments on or solutions to those problems here.

That said, like a shot of Malört, it's good to laugh at ourselves sometimes just to know we're still alive, which makes the last item on Emma Krupp's ghost list so appealing: 

Traffic, for sure; otherwise all expressed negativity about Chicago. Love it, warts and all.

Only Nelson Algren could say it better: "Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may find lovlier lovlies, but never a lovely so real."

 

Now if you've really been paying attention, you may have noticed that Emma Krupp included twenty items on her original list and so far, I've only covered nineteen. That's because one of them hit close to home and I decided to devote an entire post to it. 

That will be my next post, stay tuned...

Where Are You From?

The name of a mutual friend came up the other day during a conversation with a colleague on the morning ride to work. On an Instagram post, our friend wrote about her new job and added how happy she was to be "back home in Ohio." 

This got me wondering about the places where we come from, the place we identify as our home.

Our friend originates from a fairly small town, so it probably shouldn't be surprising that growing up, her day-to-day world existed beyond her own hamlet. That might be why people from small towns tend to identify at least as much with their home state as their hometown.

But I've noticed that particularly in Ohio, state identity extends beyond small towns and into decent sized cities like Toledo, Akron and Dayton, and even into the three major metropolises, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus.

Consider this post coming from a Cleveland website celebrating the "20 best things about living in Ohio." The same site also published a piece listing the 12 things to hate about living in Ohio.  Interestingly, some of the same things appear on both lists!

It's not as if you wouldn't find a Chicago publication describing the state this city happens to be in. But it would be written in much the same way as if it had it been about Wisconsin, Indiana or Michigan, in other words, close-by places to spend your free time when you want to get out of the big city. In fact, I would venture to guess that Chicagoans spend far more of their free time visiting places in those three states than destinations in their own state.

My family certainly does.

The thing is this, with the exception of writing it on our return address or during tax time, most Chicagoans hardly ever think about Illinois, let alone identify with it.

It turns out, outsiders don't always identify Chicago with Illinois either. In what has become for better or worse, the unofficial anthem of this city, here is where the song's author, the great bluesman Robert Johnson places our fair city:

Oh, Baby don't you want to go...

Oh, Baby don't you want to go...

Back to the land of California

to my sweet home, Chicago.

Don't we wish?  

Contemporary performers change the lyrics to be more geographically correct. Eric Clapton simply changed one word making the line read: "Back from the land of California." 

But the more common contemporary line is this: "back to the same ol' place.." 

How lame is that?

Anyway...

While we here in the Windy City identify more with our city than our state, our provincialism goes beyond that. Chicago is known as a city of neighborhoods and rightfully so. It is not uncommon, although much less so today than it used to be, for people to live in one neighborhood their entire life. And it goes still deeper than that. A great number of people who grew up in this city identify themselves not with the neighborhood in which they grew up, but with the Roman Catholic parish in which they lived, even if they weren't Catholic and never set foot in the parish church. 

So if you grew up on the South Side, you might say you were from St. Sabina's, Little Flower or Christ the King Parish, and folks, (South Siders that is), would immediately know where you were from. On the North Side you might say you were from Queen of Angels or St. Margaret Mary. Or on the West Side, from Our Lady of Sorrows, or Resurrection Parish which no longer exists today except in the hearts and minds of people who grew up there and still call it their place of origin. 

There is no East Side of Chicago, (that would be the lake), although there is a neighborhood called Eastside which happens to be just south of the neighborhood called South Chicago. And if you happen to be from there, you might say you were from St. Michael the Archangel Parish. Just don't confuse that with St. Michael's in Old Town, on the North Side.

That might raise a few eyebrows because Chicagoans if they identify with a parish or not, definitely identify with which side of town they're from, North Side or South Side. Then there's the West Side, a little harder to define, technically the part of the city west of the Chicago River, but in reality, it's the area west of the river that straddles the north/south border of the city, Madison Street by a few miles or so in either direction. West Siders sometimes identify themselves as either North or South Siders, unless of course like me, they don't. 

Perhaps the most tangible symbol of the two sides of Chicago are our two Major League baseball teams, the Cubs and the White Sox. Their ballparks are virtually equidistant from Madison Street. Home plate of Wrigley Field where the Cubs play, sits 36 blocks north of Madison and its counterpart at "new" Comiskey Park, (I refuse to call it by its corporate sponsor name), home of the White Sox, is 35 blocks south.

One of the first things you learn when you move to Chicago is that you can root for one team or the other, but not for both. I'd have to say White Sox fans hold more of a grudge, which is common for South Siders who often live with a chip on their shoulder. A White Sox fan will proudly tell you that his or her two favorite baseball teams are the Sox, and any team playing the Cubs. 

As I've said before in this space, it's kind of an unrequited hate. There are Cub fans who claim to feel the same about the Sox, but they really don't.

This is something people outside of Chicago just can't comprehend. I remember being in a bar in Savannah, Georgia during the baseball playoffs and quite surprisingly the Cubs were still playing ball. I struck up a conversation with a local at the joint who, knowing I was from Chicago, said I must be excited that the Cubs were in the playoffs. I told him no, not really because I'm a White Sox fan. 

The guy looked at me like I was from Mars. 

On that train ride mentioned above, my colleague theorized that states for which people have a strong affinity, are perhaps the ones with huge state universities with strong athletic programs, usually football. Ohio certainly is such as state, as is Georgia.

I had never thought of that.

Basketball is the sport Indiana University is most famous for, and in that most state-conscious of states, the nickname of their team is also the nickname of the state, and also how its people proudly refer to themselves, Hoosiers. I can't think of any other state that has adopted an official nickname as enduring or widely accepted. Theories abound but like the term Yankee, no one really has a clue exactly what a Hoosier is or where the name came from, but it's been around since the early 19th century.

A group of Hoosier fans exhibiting their state/school pride on the Chicago L.

The most famous sporting event in the state of Indiana takes place in its capital and largest city, Indianapolis. In case you were wondering how much folks in that city relate to their state, the most poignant moment during the annual Indianapolis 500 motor race is the traditional rendition of the song: Back Home Again in Indiana.

Michigan has two major state universities with sports programs to match. While in Detroit several years ago, I was listening to local sports radio and the topic of conversation was "who do you hate more, Ohio State or Michigan State?" Judging by the response, obviously Detroiters, who have teams represented in all the major professional sports leagues, also love their collegiate Wolverines who play an hour down the road in Ann Arbor, but not Michigan teams in general.

Outside of the Motor City though, I've found that Michiganders, yes that's what they're called, are also very attached to their state, even to the big city. The words, "the corner of Trumbull and Michigan in Corktown" or shortened to just "The Corner", have a magic ring to any person from Michigan above a certain age as they evoke memories of the late, great Tiger Stadium which stood at that intersection in that neighborhood of Detroit. 

Ask someone from Michigan where he or she is from in the state, and I'll bet my first born they'll hold out their right palm, fingers closed together, which is roughly the same shape as the state of Michigan, (excluding the Upper Peninsula), and point on their hand where their town is located. 

Where's Kalamazoo you ask? Why it's right on the lifeline, toward the bottom of the hand. 

How about Traverse City? Around the point where the tip of the pinky meets the ring finger. 

Saginaw? Just below the base of the thumb.

And so on. 

Unlike Michiganders, Illinoisans outside of Chicago (known by us as "downstaters"), don't show much interest in their state's only metropolis but rather, return Chicago's indifference to them in spades. You're just as if not more likely to find St. Louis Cardinal fans in places like Springfield and Carbondale, than Cubs fans. Unfortunately, the territory of White Sox fandom doesn't extend far beyond the southern fringes of the Chicago metropolitan area, which could be one of the reasons Sox fans are perpetually crabby. By contrast, rooting for an out-of-state team in Ohio would practically be grounds for excommunication from membership in the state. 

Illinois is a reliably blue state, ONLY because of Chicago and its dominance over the state's population. Divorce the city from the state and a Democrat wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell to get elected to a statewide office in a Chicago-less Illinois. Obviously, the exact opposite is true up here where Republicans don't even bother to run for local offices. 

Sadly, in these days of extreme polarization in the realm of American politics, the rift between Chicago and Downstate Illinois grows by the minute.

Then there are the states that if independent from the U.S., would rate by themselves as sizable countries. I'm talking of course about Texas and California, places that have such a strong identity of their own that you couldn't help identifying with them, even if you're from a megalopolis like LA or Houston.

I won't even attempt to crack that egg.

Perhaps the most familiar image of state identification in popular culture is when Dorothy and her dog Toto travel from their completely black and white world and arrive in the magical Technicolor Land of Oz. As they step out of their time and space travel machine, otherwise known as their house, Dorothy famously says: "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." 

It's a great line, one I use all the time to describe any out-of-the ordinary situation.

Frank Baum, the author of the novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which inspired the movie, paints a much bleaker image of Kansas and especially of Dorothy's caretaker aunt and uncle than the movie does, so much so, you wonder why on earth the girl is so anxious to get back home. 

Incidentally at the time he wrote the book, Baum called the neighborhood of Logan Square on the West Side of Chicago, just a stone's throw from Humboldt Park and in the parish of St. Sylvester, home.

Just as I did, sixty years later. 

My original home is where I'll wrap this thing up. The truth is, I identify with all those places just mentioned.

Whether you come from a small town, a big city neighborhood or an entire state, whether it's the local parish or a point on the palm of your hand you most identify with, there's still no place like home, even if you can't go there again.

So, where are you from?

Putin's War

We are talking about a radical, complete transformation of education to mobilize Russian youth for war, Right now education has two functions—propaganda and basic military training.

This is the ominous warning of Russian sociologist, political scientist and newly minted dissident, Grigory Yudin. One year ago, Yudin predicted that Russia, specifically its dictator Vladimir Putin was "about to start the most senseless war in history."

Indeed he did.

I distinctly remember the discussion last February during the massive buildup of Russian forces along its border with Ukraine, that there was no way Putin would be foolish enough to invade a sovereign nation. I agreed. True, with the "mighty" Russian military behind him I thought, he might be able to overtake Ukraine fairly quickly with a minimum of bloodshed, but winning the peace would be infinitely more difficult.

Boy were we wrong, we in the West that is, at least with the first two points. The people in the East, closer to the action, namely in the countries formerly under the iron fist of the USSR, knew better.

Today, February 24, 2023, marks the first anniversary of yet another day of infamy, the day Russia invaded Ukraine marking the beginning of the most senseless war in history.

It's hard to get into the head of a sociopathic dictator but I think it is safe to assume that Putin could not have imagined last February that one year later he would still be fighting his war, continuing to send tens of thousands of his nation's young people to their deaths in his futile (at least up until now) attempt to occupy Ukraine. That doesn't even mention the murder, rape and plunder that his military is inflicting upon the innocent people of that sovereign nation.  It's certainly not what he was telling his subjects a year ago, back when you could get thrown in jail for calling Putin's incursion a war rather than simply a "military operation". I'm guessing that still is true. 

There seems to be a majority of Russians who continue to support Putin's war but of course, conducting an accurate poll in Russia is about as unlikely as the proverbial herding of cats. Despite Grigory Yudin's words at the top of this post, it's a little hard for me, to imagine the Russian people, at least intelligent Russians with any sense of history, being swayed by attempts to indoctrinate them into going along with Putin's nonsense about the "de-nazification of a region that is and has always been in every way, an integral part of Russia."

On the other hand as we've been seeing in our own country over the last several years, there is no shortage of people who have no problem going along with anyone who tells them what they want to hear, facts be damned. 

Vladimir Putin, as has been laid bare for the world to see, leads a paper tiger of a military, fraught with massive corruption that goes all the way to the top. Its soldiers are mal-treated, ill-prepared, and above all at least in this case, have been lied to about the purpose of their mission. They are fighting against people many of whom share a similar language, culture, faith, and even ancestry. In short, there is little incentive for Russian soldiers to fight this war, other than the fear of punishment from their superiors. This is what necessitates all the nonsense propaganda about fighting Nazis. 

Consequently, up until now, the Russian military has been no match for the Ukrainians who have the support of the wealth and weaponry if not soldiers, from NATO members and other countries. What's more, they are hands down winning the battle in the court of public opinion all over the world. Far greater powers than Russia have learned from time immemorial that fighting against a well-funded, highly motivated army with international support, defending their home, in their home, is a very tall order at best, and more often than not, doomed to failure. 

But Putin has two things on his side right now, numbers, and his own depravity. As someone who has proven time and again that he believes the only life in Russia worth protecting is his own, Putin has no qualms about sending his country's children to their slaughter in order to fight his war.  Russia has a lot of children of fighting age. If this war drags on for years as many in Russia's military brass predict, every year will see more children become fighting age, able to go to Ukraine and die for Putin as well. 

Which is fine with him. 

His latest exercise in sociopathic behavior is conscripting prisoners, offering them deals of a get-out-of-jail-free card in exchange for serving in his war. As people in jail are of even less value to Putin than ordinary soldiers, with a minimum of training, ex-cons have been put on the front lines to serve as cannon fodder, while more experienced professional solders behind them, wait for the enemy to exhaust their ammunition as they slaughter the first waves of troops. 

With the vast number of "expendable" young Russians available to Putin, and many more to come, this senseless war could drag on for years. 

So what could put an end to it?

Total victory for one side or the other:

For Russia that would mean completely occupying Ukraine, even if it means doing what they did in Chechnya, nearly annihilate the country. That is probably what it would take for the Ukrainians to surrender as there would be nothing left to defend. 

Total victory for Ukraine would mean a complete withdrawal of Russia from their country, preferably followed by stiff reparations and Nuremburg style war crime tribunals leading all the way up to Putin. In order for that to happen, in the words of one military analyst I heard over the weekend: "Ukraine would have to take Moscow." Not a likely scenario. 

A negotiated peace:

Russia coming to the table would mean concessions from the Ukrainians who would almost certainly be forced to give up territory in the east such as the Donbass, in exchange for peace. The Ukrainians are unlikely to go for that as they have no interest in seeing their country torn apart but mostly because there would no guarantee there would be no more invasions in the future. 

Putin drops dead.

That would certainly be the most appealing scenario, although as an old Russian friend who lived there during the time of the Soviet Union always told me, "There will always be someone waiting to replace him..." Then in classic Russian fatalism he would add, "...probably someone worse."

In other words, be careful what you wish for.

For Putin's part, this past Tuesday he delivered a rambling speech to his country, the Russian version of the State of the Union Address. He brought up the usual same ol' same ol', about how the West is the real aggressor in this conflict, how we started the war, how our "liberal totalitarianism" is really the culprit, yadda yadda yadda. Then he brought up another evil that I wasn't aware of: how the Church of England is now advocating for... are you ready for this?... a gender-neutral God.

 

Shocking.

 

More importantly, Putin made it abundantly clear that all these things are worth fighting against and being the valiant culture warrior he is, he has no intention of giving up before he is finished ridding his nation of all those nasty threats and influences. 

Now I don't know much about the gender of gods but apparently Putin's god has a penis.

I would beg to differ about the other stuff however. As Joe Biden correctly said in a speech from Poland, just hours after Putin delivered his speech, the West has no intention, nor did it ever, of invading Russia. That would certainly be foolhardy. 

Perhaps the best summation of Putin's war is the following, found on a poster in Ukraine and recently repeated by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at a meeting of the UN Security Council last September:

If Russia stops fighting, there will be no war.

If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine. 

There you have it; that's why the Ukrainians fight, and that's why we support them.

 

It doesn't get much simpler than that.

How Low Can We Go?

My heart sank the other day after I saw a meme re-posted on social media by a friend, someone whom I like and admire, well at least thought I did.

Like much of the rhetoric coming from the far right today, the meme is a troll to promote the culture wars, all the fashion it seems, by pissing off a large portion of the populace or as they like to say: "sticking it to the Libs". Well it certainly worked on this lib, by their definition of a lib anyway (that is to say anyone to the left of Attila the Hun); as it made my hair stand on end.

This particular troll employs a logical fallacy by expressing an opinion that while not altogether incorrect, (I'll get to that in a minute), was nonetheless outrageous because of its comparison of two disparate events taking place on opposite sides of the planet. 

This particular fallacy, one I didn't cover per se in my post last year on the subject, is called a "false equivalence fallacy". 

And boy is it ever.

In case you missed the post, you can read it here.

The meme presented a sentiment that to me anyway, expresses either remarkable ignorance, unconscionable indifference, or both.

Verbatim, broken up by some comments of mine in parenthesis, this is what the meme said:

If 10 thousand Russians (a number underestimated by about twenty-fold) crossing the Ukranian border is called an invasion, then why isn't the 2 million people crossing the American southern border not (sic) called an invasion?

My friend's only comment to the post were three "thinking face" emojis, as if to say: "hmmm... maybe this person has a point."

No, the person does not have a point. As any half-way intelligent five year old could point out, there is a world of difference between soldiers armed to the gills, entering a country in armored vehicles, tanks, fighter jets and other vehicles of war, with the intent of, in the words of Merriam Websters' first definition of the word invasion, "conquest or plunder", and individuals entering a country carrying little more than the clothes on their backs, with the sole intention of hopefully improving their lives. 

On the other hand, there is another definition of the word "invasion" that goes something like this:

An incursion by a large number of people or things into a place or sphere of activity.

By that definition, the two million (an only slightly exaggerated number) people crossing the U.S. southern border could in fact be called an "invasion."

So what?

If you're old enough to remember, so too was the phenomenon in the sixties of musical acts from Great Britain becoming famous upon these shores appropriately referred to tongue and cheek as the "British Invasion." 

Well that invasion had exactly as much in common with Vladimir Putin's degenerate war as does the current situation on our southern border.  

So what exactly is the point of that moronic comment?

Besides propagating the culture wars, it conveniently ties together two of the MAGA crowd's favorite talking points, opposition to immigration and opposition to this country's support of Ukraine in their ongoing battle for the survival of their nation. 

There are legitimate arguments one can make on both sides of the immigration issue, less so on the issue of Ukraine, but comparing the two is not legitimate. The one thing that unites the two issues is human rights, an issue that at least in my opinion, trumps all others. In the case of immigration, the current situation is untenable and while we must do our best to look out for our own interests, it is at least as important if not more to be compassionate to the struggles of our brothers and sisters, whatever country they come from. That said, solving the immigration issue is certainly not an easy task with a simple solution. 

To my mind anyway, the situation in Ukraine is far less complicated. Putin's war is illegitimate, there is no valid argument a sane person can make for it that could not be refuted by that same half-way intelligent five year old.

Lumping Russian soldiers and soldiers of fortune from other parts of the former Soviet Union sent by Putin to plunder, pillage, rape and murder innocent civilians in Ukraine together with immigrants crossing the U.S. border is beyond belief. And making the comparison between the Ukrainian victims of Putin's war to the "victims" of the immigration issue, i.e.: the American people, is heartless, cruel and downright stupid. 

Which shouldn't be surprising as this is what we have come to expect from these MAGA folks.

Have a nice day.

Whiplash

Here's another one for the day late and dollar short file.

At my daughter's suggestion, we watched a movie I could have sworn was only a year or two old. Wasn't it just recently that I saw J.K. Simmons accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the abusive (to put it mildly), music teacher in the film Whiplash? No, my wife said having looked it up, the movie was made in 2014. So either the pandemic is really messing with my sense of time, or it's my age. Probably both.

Anyway, Whiplash has received many accolades as being a contemporary classic. On this site it is ranked as the 298th best movie of all time. You can take that or leave it. Judging by the list's top twenty two movies which includes zero movies NOT made in Hollywood, and top thirty six films which were NOT made in this century, I prefer to leave it. But the film must have been very well received critically to rate so highly on a list of the best movies ever made since the year 1900!

Does it deserve all the praise? 

Whiplash is a tightly directed (by Damien Chazelle who also wrote the screenplay) and edited (by Tom Cross) psychological thriller featuring two outstanding performances by Simmons and Miles Teller in the lead role as Andrew Neyman, a talented young musician enrolled in a fictional New York music academy.

The premise is this: Andrew, a drummer, becomes involved in the school's premier jazz band led by the Simmons character, the notorious Terrence Fletcher. Fletcher is mean to everybody, but really seems to have it in for drummers, especially Andrew. But Andrew is fiercely driven to be the next Buddy Rich, (yes Buddy Rich) and willingly puts up with the abuse, accepting it exists only for the purpose of teaching him to be the best drummer he can possibly be.

Given that setup, you can probably fill in the rest of the plot and get it about ninety percent right, as it has been a formula for countless stories told over the ages.. 

It's the remaining ten percent that makes the film worth watching.

If by chance you haven't yet seen this eight, check that, nine-year-old movie and still plan to see it, you may want to stop reading now as much of what I have to say from here on contains serious spoiler material.

OK GOT THAT? 

Don't say I didn't warn you. 

My first criterion for what makes a good movie is that I think about it long after the closing credits. One way of doing that is being left with more questions than answers. Whiplash is open ended, it doesn't leave you with a sense of resolution at the end, even though it has a closing scene for the ages.

Films with premises such as this one, at least American ones, usually end in one of two ways. Either the Andrew character despite all the heartbreak, struggle, and fits and starts along the way, triumphs over adversity and in the end, sometime later, thanks his mentor for all the "tough love" making him what he is today. Or he triumphs despite the mentor who gets his comeuppance in the end. In both cases, the Andrew character gets the girl, and they live together happily ever after, at least until the sequel.

Does any of this happen in Whiplash? Well, with the exception of what happens with the girl, we don't know, it's up to us to decide.

Just like real life. 

It turns out, I seem to have a much different take on the story than many folks, including my family. After having digested the movie for a day or so, I asked my wife, daughter and son if they thought the movie had a happy ending. To a person they said yes.

I said no, I didn't think so. 

OK, HERE"S YOUR LAST SPOILER ALERT.

If you're still reading this, I'm assuming you've either seen the film or don't care. So this is how the movie ends, last chance, here goes:

With a band directed by Terrence Fletcher, Andrew performs a prolonged, no-holds-barred drum solo at Carnegie Hall which leaves everyone, including Fletcher, in awe. When he finishes, Fletcher gives the band it's cue for the closing chord, then the screen fades to black.

Andrew wins, he has proven to his abusive mentor that he's truly got what it takes, he has earned his rightful place in the pantheon of musicians, and presumably what he expressed a desire for earlier in the film, a shot at being remembered long after he's gone. More important perhaps as many have pointed out in reviews, in the end Andrew proves that he is the equal of Fletcher. 

On that last point I agree.

But what did he have to give up getting to that point and in reality, in which direction did he have to go to get there?

My view is that Andrew did not climb the heights in order to achieve equal status with Fletcher but rather, sank deeper and deeper into the depths to get there. In other words, in my view Whiplash is a modern-day Faust story, where the protagonist sells his soul to get something he desperately wants. 

So, if Andrew is Faust in this updated version, does that make Fletcher the Devil? 

It isn't until the last reel (so to speak) of the movie that you realize Fletcher is truly an evil character. Up until that point he is simply an asshole who despite sociopathic tendencies, may actually give a rat's ass about his students. He does show a trace of humanity in a scene where he expresses what seems to be genuine grief after the tragic death of a former student. And outside of class he displays a bit of charm at times.

After their student-teacher relationship ends, Andrew runs into Fletcher as he's playing a gig at a New York jazz club. After his set, Fletcher explains to Andrew that there should be no hard feelings because he uses his controversial techniques only to achieve perfection in his students' work, pushing them to places they never expected to go. Despite having just finished playing what to my ears anyway, was an insipid set of music, Fletcher explains to Andrew that the real enemy is mediocrity. The most memorable line in the movie comes at this point when Fletcher justifies his methods by telling Andrew:

There are no two words in the English language more harmful than "good job."

Fletcher then invites Andrew to join him and his new band at the aforementioned Carnegie Hall gig.

Before going on stage, Fletcher tells his band that this could well be the make-or-break performance of their careers. The man's true nature becomes apparent the next scene when on stage, Andrew discovers that Fletcher has intentionally tripped him up by giving him the wrong score. Just before the band begins the number that Andrew didn't rehearse, on stage Fletcher reveals he knew all along it was Andrew who anonymously testified at a hearing against his former teacher, thereby costing him his job at the academy.

Does that make Fletcher evil?

Looking at his actions toward Andrew before that final scene, I'd say yes. Not a man of many layers, in my opinion, Fletcher is not a particularly complicated character. 

Fletcher recognizes Andrew's talent because upon hearing him play for the first time, he invites the new student to sit in with his elite band, when one would assume that normally, prospective band members would come to him. Before the first rehearsal, Fletcher acts as if he's taking the new member under his wing by expressing interest in Andrew's family, information he would soon use to humiliate Andrew. Fletcher learns that Andrew was brought up by his single father, a writer whose day job is high school literature teacher.  His mom left the family shortly after her son was born. Fletcher concludes the scene by telling the young man to take it easy and most of all, to "have fun." 

The easy-going manner continues briefly during the rehearsal, even after the first few times Fletcher stops the band, noting that Andrew is messing up the tempo. As Andrew continues to be not quite up to Fletcher's impossibly rigorous standards, the tide turns quickly and after about five starts and stops, Fletcher hurls a chair at Andrew's head. He then gets in Andrew's face, berates him, slaps him, and brings up for all to hear, the boy's family history, claiming his mother left her husband because he was a loser. 

Beyond the horrifying way in which the teacher hazes the pupil, it's a brilliant scene. As Fletcher picks up on mistakes in the band that are imperceptible at least to untrained ears, it gives the viewer the idea that while his methods may be way out of line, the guy sure knows his stuff, and that his perfectionism may in some way, justify his actions.

It's not until after the credits roll, when you realize that's nonsense. Well at least, in my opinion.

Putting everything together with a bit of dime store psychoanalysis, Fletcher is all about power, manipulation, control, and nothing else. From the outset Fletcher sees three things in Andrew that he could use to his own ends: his talent, immense drive, and perhaps most important of all, his vulnerability.

As we would learn later, Fletcher himself is no great shakes as a musician. Knowing that, in retrospect his comments on Andrew's father being a failure were really a reflection on himself. It's not a stretch to imagine that he despised Andrew because he knew form the start that his student had far more potential than he did. 

So, the extra "attention" he gave Andrew would result in one of two things, it would either turn the young man into a successful musician, which would look great on Fletcher's resume, or it would destroy him. Either way, Fletcher wins.

It's worth pointing out here that the student whose death inspired some human emotion from Fletcher, turned out before his death, to be a success story, a member of Wynton Marsalis's band, "first chair" no less. In retrospect, it's hard to imagine a less successful student eliciting that kind of response from Fletcher. It's also worth pointing out that the former student did not die in a car accident as stated by Fletcher, but rather took his own life, which some attributed to his experience with the monstrous teacher. 

In an interview, writer/director Chazelle, admitted that his character Fletcher had no redeeming qualities. 

Indeed.

Andrew's character is more complex, which also becomes apparent as the movie progresses. His vulnerability is on display early on when we see him work up the nerve to ask Nicole, the girl behind the movie theater concession stand, played by Melissa Benoist, out for a date. After he falls deeper and deeper into the clutches of Fletcher, he coldly dumps Nicole when he realizes his obsession, which at one point in the film nearly costs him his life, trumps everything else. 

In another telling scene, Andrew makes some snarky comments to his cousins at the dinner table, which seem out-of-line with the character we met at the opening of the film before he falls under Fletcher's spell.

Superficially, neither of these scenes make Andrew appear likable, no doubt, the influence of Fletcher. But like everything else in Whiplash, there is another side. As my wife pointed out, the comments to the family members, nasty as they may have been, were not undeserved. And as my daughter pointed out, beyond the obvious differences in their approach to life, there was little chemistry from the get-go between Andrew and Nicole. Come to think of it, he was doing her a great service by breaking up with her right to her face, rather than simply ignoring her, which I'm afraid is what most guys would do.

So in a sense, Fletcher's influence on the young man was not altogether negative.

No, it wasn't those two scenes that defined Andrew losing his soul as I thought at first. It was that damned drum solo at the end of the movie.

When Andrew is humiliated for the last time by Fletcher, he leaves the Carnegie Hall stage and runs into the arms of his father waiting for him in the wings. He then summons up the courage to return to the stage to take over the performance. "Follow me now" he says to the band which they willingly do, much to Fletcher's wrath.  

He then goes on to give a performance filled with bluster, death-defying velocity, theatrics, and pyrotechnics. In short, he does everything humanly possible on a drum kit except play with the sticks between his toes while standing on his head.

Maybe I'm tipping my hand here but to me, the only thing worse than a one-minute drum solo, is a two-minute drum solo. And the only thing worse than a two-minute drum solo is... well you get the idea. I have no idea what the running time of the last scene of the movie was, but it seemed to go on forever. In that sense, it was a fitting and even brilliant depiction of the conflict between the two main characters. 

But was it good music?

Well...

It probably doesn't matter as Whiplash isn't about music at all, as countless YouTube videos of real-life musicians commenting on the film testify. So it probably doesn't matter that any teacher no matter the discipline in the 21st Century using Terrence Fletcher's methods of humiliation, degradation, and emotional and physical abuse bordering on violence, wouldn't last a week in an academic setting, not even the great Wynton Marsalis himself.

And it probably doesn't matter that that kind of teaching style wouldn't produce the intended results anyway. Maybe that was the point. Fletcher's anecdote about (Chicago) Joe Jones throwing his cymbal at Charlie Parker's head, nearly decapitating him, is bullshit. What really happened was during a jam session with members of the Count Basie Band in the thirties, to express his dissatisfaction with a solo performed by the then very young Bird, Jones dropped a cymbal to the floor. Did that humiliation make Charlie Parker, Charlie Parker as Fletcher implied? 

I doubt it. 

That's not to say there isn't a tremendous amount of hard work, dedication and sacrifice that goes into becoming a successful musician. And yes, there is blood shed at times, usually from popped blisters, not the copious amounts the film would have us believe.

What I missed in a movie that is ostensibly about making music, is the real motivation behind all the hard work and sacrifice of musicians: the love and pure joy of making music. You see it in the faces of nearly all decent musicians as they perform, from the humblest to the most accomplished, from pop to the avant guarde, and everything in between.

It isn't until the end of Whiplash that you see that look on Andrew's face. But the way the film is cut, it's obvious that his satisfaction comes not from the music he's making, but the fact that he has finally gained the favor and acceptance of the monster whose spell he is under. And the look on the monster's face at that very moment says he's satisfied, having gained another victim. 

At the dinner table scene mentioned above, Andrew reveals his true motivation by recalling the Charlie Parker anecdote to his family. His father, beautifully underplayed by Paul Reiser, points out that Parker, a heroin addict, died at 34. He said that wasn't exactly his definition of success, but what do fathers know? It didn't matter to Andrew who claimed defiantly that he'd rather die young and be remembered than live to a ripe old age and be forgotten. 

What that comment brought to my mind was the fact that nearly 60 years after his death, the name Lee Harvey Oswald is more remembered today than that of practically every jazz musician, living or dead. It might have been a good comeback line for the dad if only he had thought of it in time.

But I digress.

Like I said, Whiplash is not at all about music but it does hint to what's important in life. What really made an impression upon me having thought about it for quite a while was that Terrence Fletcher's idea of success, (which would also become Andrew's), is fleeting and superficial.

We are left at the end of the move, with the two of them, Fletcher and Andrew, being one, hardly a happy ending, for me at least. 

Whatever happens after the final chord, one can only guess. Perhaps Andrew follows the path of Fletcher's other student who makes it big only to hang himself. Perhaps Andrew gets Fletcher's old job at the music academy and picks up where his mentor left off, beating the crap out of new, vulnerable students. Or perhaps Andrew and Fletcher, now BFFs, team up to take their maniacal act on the road.   

On the other hand, maybe Andrew leaves music altogether and follows the lead of another of the talented Mr. Simmons' many characters, the avuncular insurance salesman in those Farmers adds. 

Considering the other options, THAT would be a happy ending.

Food Culture: USA

If you google "lists of great food cultures of the world", the same countries keep coming up. It should come as no surprise that France, China, India and Japan are found on nearly every such list. As I pointed out in an earlier post, if the food cultures of all those countries rate as tens on a scale of one to ten, one country would have to rate as an eleven. Naturally Italy usually comes in at or near the top of all these lists.

And why not? Food is such an integral part of Italian culture that their language has two words for table. "Tavolo", refers to a piece of furniture, the physical table made of wood, metal, plastic or whatever. Its feminine counterpart, "tavola", refers to the conceptual table, the place where people (most often family members) come together to share a meal, and truly much more. It is similar to the way the English language differentiates the words "house" and "home", something that many languages do not. 

Countries with lesser-known food cultures such as Indonesia and Turkey, almost always show up on these lists. One country I would put at or near the top of my own list of great food cultures, but only occasionally makes the public ones, is Mexico. I think that Mexican food culture is perhaps the most underappreciated in the world, even by many people of Mexican origin whose associations of Mexican cuisine are based upon the type of food they ate at home which often is limited to a particular region of that country. In reality, Mexican cuisine is as diverse as the cuisine of India and can be as complex in flavor and technique as anything you'll find coming out of a French kitchen. 

In this wonderful 2015 interview held at the 92nd Street Y in New York, (which I highly recommend viewing), the late Anthony Bourdain asked the renowned French/American chef Jacques Pépin this hypothetical question: if he were forced to limit the remaining meals of his life to the cuisine of one country (excluding France or the US), which country would that be? Pépin without hesitation said Mexico.

With the exception of Morocco, these culinary lists generally exclude the entire continent of Africa. You'll also find a large swath of Europe routinely excluded: namely Central Europe, including Germany, Austria, The Czech Republic (Czechia if you prefer), and Poland to name a few. Exclusions such as these lead me to believe that the selections made for these lists are based more upon current trends and the personal taste of the authors, rather than any objective criteria regarding what constitutes a great food culture. My guess is that the food cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa are still off the radar of many list compilers, although that's rapidly changing, and the off-the-chart, high-caloric levels of much Central European cuisine, once all the rage 'round these parts, is now as out of style as 8-track tapes and Oldsmobiles. Simply put, the glorious Wiener Schnitzel, just isn't hip anymore. 

To put more food cultures on the radar, if not to ignore fashion trends, every year, UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, updates its "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" list, part of which is devoted to food culture. Their food culture list largely consists of specific dishes of specific nations, including two in Sub-Saharan Africa: Ceebu Jën the national dish of Senegal, and  Nsima, a thick porridge, of Malawi, and, it turns out, many other African nations. The list does get more general at times, including "The Regional Mexican Cuisine in Mexico", "The Gastronomic Meal of the French in France", and sometimes really general with "The Mediterranean Diet in (where else?), the Mediterranean Region."

Being the United Nations, I suppose there have to be great number of political considerations involved to compile such a list in order to spread around the wealth. Because of that I find it somewhat peculiar that of thirty entries, over one third of them come from a select part of the world, the region surrounding the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains of Western Asia. By contrast, the Americas in their entirety are only represented by three entries, one each from Haiti, Mexico and Paraguay. 

Once again, Central Europe is shut out entirely although there is a nod a little to the East. This year UNESCO added Ukrainian (not Russian, nor for that matter Polish) Borscht to its list. You don't think politics could be involved in that decision, do you?  

So where does the food culture of the U.S. fit in to all this? 

What food culture you may ask, hamburgers, hot dogs, spaghetti and meatballs?

I was expecting that.

It may come as a surprise to some that the good ol' USA does make at least some of the lists of countries with great food cultures, as it should I might add. The problem is, United States food culture is so diverse, it's hard to pin down. The American cuisine of the United States is at least as diverse as those of India and Mexico combined, and then some.

The American image of the Italian chef.

The problem in categorizing American food is that most of what we eat here has origins in other places, so it's hard to define what exactly is American cuisine. In reality however, the same is true for every cuisine on the planet except for those of indigenous cultures with no contact with the outside world. From the post I linked above, I brought up the national dish of Spain, paella, whose essential ingredients, rice and saffron, were brought to the country by the Arabs who conquered the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century CE. 

Everyone knows that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy, which he actually didn't. That staple of Italian cuisine had been around at least since the days of ancient Rome. But another essential ingredient in Italian cooking, the tomato, was not known in Europe until well after the voyages of Columbus. 

Then there are the Japanese who are famous for adapting all sorts of things found in other cultures and making them their own, including their cuisine. 

We do that here in the States as well, although we have a propensity to give our dishes foreign sounding names to give them street cred, even if they are American inventions.

Take the hamburger. While there are dishes made of ground up meat found all over the world, there is only a tenuous connection between arguably the food most associated with this country, and the city for which it's named. Despite its name, the hamburger is American through and through. 

Our second most famous dish, the hot dog, also bore the name of a major German city, Frankfurt. This makes sense because frankfurter refers to the type of German sausage which is the heart of the sandwich. But a frankfurter doesn't become a hot dog until somebody puts it inside a sausage shaped bun, an American invention, although no one agrees exactly where in this country that took place. On this site, you'll find all, and perhaps more than you've ever wanted to know about the history of the hot dog. 

What is common knowledge is that the name frankfurter went out of fashion during World War I when anti-German sentiment ran high in this country, and people began referring to them with names that already existed such as red hots and hot dogs. The same happened to the hamburger which for a brief time became referred to as "Salisbury Steak", named I just learned not after the town in England, but after the American guy who invented it. During WWII, hamburgers took on another name, "liberty sandwiches". 

Thank God those spite-filled names didn't stick, otherwise we'd be ordering my one-time favorite meal by asking for a liberty sandwich with freedom fries. 

In this country, you can almost be assured that a food named for a particular country, almost certainly has little or no connection to that country, and probably was invented by an American. 

Here are some examples:

• French and Russian Dressing
• English Muffins
• Italian Beef, born, bred, and flourishing right here in Chicago
• Swiss Steak
• German Chocolate Cake
• The French Dip Sandwich
• The Cuban Sandwich
• Chinese Chicken Salad

I'd list French Fries here as well, but my Flemish friends would take offense, pointing out that they are in fact Belgian, although they don't refer to them as such. Obviously, neither do the French. 

The last two dishes on the above list do have connections to the country they are named for as they were both invented by chefs from those countries who immigrated to the United States. 

The same can be said for the following dishes with foreign, i.e.: non-English sounding names, which while invented in the States, do have a connection to the places we assume they come from. 

From the U.S. via China:

• Chop Suey, perhaps the granddaddy of dishes invented by immigrant chefs in an attempt to conform to the American palate.
• Egg Foo Young.
• General Tso's Chicken.
• Kung Pao Chicken.
• Sesame Chicken, starting to see a pattern here?
• Fortune Cookies, who woulda thunk?

From the U.S. via France:

• Vichyssoise.

From the U.S. via Italy:

• Veal Parmigiana, a dish invented by Italian/Americans that has found its way back to the old country. Ironically, some Americans mistakenly believe that Eggplant Parmigiana is an American vegetarian alternative to "authentic" veal and chicken parmigiana, but in fact, it's the other way around.
• Fettucine Alfredo.
• Pepperoni Pizza. Pepperoni, (a name made up in the U.S.)  is actually a type of salami which you will find on occasion on pizza in Italy, just not in the form we are accustomed to in the States.
• Spaghetti and Meatballs. In Italy you will find spaghetti, and you will find meatballs, but never together on the same plate.

From the U.S.  via Mexico:

• Chimichangas.
• Fajitas. I'm kind of cheating here because these two dishes come from just north-of-the-border.
• Hard shell tacos.
• Nachos.
• Margaritas, which while probably not invented in Mexico, can certainly be found there, especially in tourist destinations.

The list goes on and on...

All of these things are quintessentially American, specifically because they reflect back upon our cultural origins, that is to say, all over the world. 

That's not to say that there aren't thousands of American dishes that have no pretensions of being anything other than American. 

Here are just a few of them in no particular order, lifted in part from yet another internet list, CNN's "American Food: The 50 Greatest Dishes" along with some of my own picks that didn't make the list:

• Key Lime, Apple and Pecan Pie,
• Delmonaco Steak.
• Jambalaya.
• San Francisco Sourdough Bread.
• Wild Alaska Salmon.
• Fried Chicken.
• Pot Roast.
• New England and Manhattan Clam Chowder.
• Cornbread.
• Meatloaf. 
• The Po' Boy.
• Oysters Rockefeller.
• Rocky Mountain Oysters.
• Spam.
• California Roll. 
• Indian (Native American) Frybread.
• Scrapple.
• Oreo Cookies.
• Grits.
• Maryland Crab Cakes.
• Baked Beans.
• BBQ Ribs

Unless you're the pickiest eater imaginable, there is probably something on this list that appeals to you. It ranges from high cuisine to junk food such as Twinkees, which were included on CNN's list, with stops everywhere in between.

The mention of some of these foods will probably make your mouth water, while others may be more likely to turn your stomach. Some of the items on the list you might eat, but would never admit to in public, unless you happen to be Jacques Pépin, (watch the video).

The list is so diverse it probably makes sense to divide U.S. cuisine into its component parts defined by region. The East Coast, The South, The Southwest, The Midwest, and the West Coast all have distinct food cultures. All of these regions can be further divided by cultures from specific states, cities, and even neighborhoods.

Then there is the vast array of foods specific to the groups of people who make up this country, starting with Indigenous Americans and working its way through every group that has found their way here, by whatever means. 

So what is the quintessential American dish? 

Well, number one on CNN's list of great food found in the USA is the Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner.

This is a holiday that almost everyone in this country celebrates, despite its troubling provenance in our day and age. More than any holiday in this country, Thanksgiving centers around the meal. As a ritual it is to Americans much as Seder is to the Jews, the Tea Ceremony is to the Japanese, and Sunday dinner is to the Italians.

One of the beautiful things about Thanksgiving Dinner in the US (I don't know much about its Canadian equivalent) is that every culture living here brings something of its own to the meal to add on to the center of attraction, naturally the roasted turkey. It's common to find kielbasa at a Polish American family's Thanksgiving table, cornbread dressing and collard greens at a Black American family's table, and pasta at an Italian American family's table, to name just three examples. It wouldn't be Thanksgiving in my own family with its Irish-American roots, without a bowl of turnips (that's what we call them, they're actually mashed rutabagas) at our table. 

Of course, Thanksgiving Dinner comes around only once a year and symbolic as it is, the same goes for the dishes featured at the meal. As much as I adore the rutabagas, the green bean casserole and especially the dressing, less so the turkey, once a year is plenty for me. 

Since it doesn't live outside of its context, I wouldn't use T-giving dinner to present to the rest of the world as the quintessential American dish. 

So, what would I pick? That's pretty easy. 

If I had to pick favorite food culture in this country, like many, I'd have to go with the Creole/Cajun culture of Louisiana, whose culinary if not political capital is New Orleans. 

A microcosm of the United States, but unique in so many ways, New Orleans like most major American cities, is a mix of people from all over the world. Specifically. the Crescent City is a mix of European, African, Latin, Carribean and Indigenous American cultures, with a little Asian thrown in for good measure.

And Gumbo is the dish that represents all the cultures found in Louisiana. As anyone who has made it knows, the heart and soul of Gumbo is the roux, a mixture of flour and fat that originated as its name implies, from France. From there the dish is thickened either with okra, a vegetable cultivated in Africa, or file (pronounced "FEE lay"), ground sassafrass leaves, introduced by Native Americans. The hot seasoning comes from the settlers from the Spanish Canary Islands, and the andouille sausage from the Cajuns, via the French-speaking part of Canada. 

Like Paella, Gumbo originated as a peasant stew, infinitely adaptable to whatever ingredients its maker has lying around the kitchen. 

Also like Paella, everyone has his or her own recipe. As such, Gumbo has made its way onto the tables of homes and restaurants of Louisiana from the humblest to the swankiest.

And Gumbo has found its way to tables all over the United States, especially in the past several decades with the growing popularity of Creole/Cajun cooking thanks in part to the two Julia Childs of Louisiana cuisine, celebrity chefs Paul Prudhomme and Justin Wilson.

Like America, coming from humble beginnings, Gumbo is infinitely diverse, and like Americans, it can be whatever it wants to be, good, bad, and everything in between. 

As long as you don't forget the roux.

So would Gumbo be my pick for THE quintessential American food AND the national dish of the USA?

Yup, you betcha I gawr-on-tee.

December 31

For the last post of the year 2022, I want to wish you all a very happy, healthy and fulfilling new year,

Most of all I wish you and the world peace, an end to this terrible war, and all war.

З Новим роком