k a r e m i z u

Poaching eggs

2010-02-23T08:32:00.000-05:00

Recently we've been making a lot of poached eggs. Well, Chris makes them. He simmers a few inches of vinegared water in our biggest cast-iron pan, then slips the eggs out of their shells and into the water using a small bowl to keep them from addling too badly. A few minutes later, we have soft custardy loaves of white and yolk -- surely the best expression of egg there is.

Yesterday, I left the office in the early evening to see Phillip Gourevitch interview Mary Karr at Joe's Pub. On a low stage, they talked about memory, memoir, writing, took questions about their books, riffed on teaching, poetry, prayer. Chris and I sat on a padded bench in the dark with emptying cocktail glasses in front of us and our backs torqued towards Mary and Phillip. And at some point, in the dopey calm of one watery drink on an empty stomach, I felt like I was slipping out of a cracked shell and into an environment that might help my addled, sloppy self coalese into something rich and good.

Consider 'Consider Bardwell'

2009-12-02T20:30:00.000-05:00

The best part of my pre-work morning was learning,via Anne Saxelby's "Cutting the Curd" podcast that Consider Bardwell Farm (in West Pawlet, Vermont), was named for a man named Consider -- apparently one of several generations of Bardwell men of the same strange, beautiful first name. (He was born to a woman named Experience!) Just as I started thinking about how distant and archaic that name felt from today, the NYC Department of Health released a list of the city's most popular baby names for 2008: 26 baby boys named 'Sincere' this year (rank: 155).

Alice Doesn't Cook Here Anymore

2009-08-03T15:16:00.007-04:00

Michael Pollan's article in the New York Times Magazine revisits a familiar paradox: consumption of food programming is on the rise, while actual home cooking continues to ebb. A colleague at work reminded me of an Op-Ed that ran late last year, where cookbook author Marcella Hazan argued that the glamorization of chefs comes at the expense of the home cook. Both pieces struck a chord with me, but I don’t agree that cooking shows or chef-worship are in any way the cause of disengagement from the kitchen.

While shows like “Top Chef” and a lot of the Food Network's programming aren’t likely to teach you much about how to cook, they do beget a measure of appreciation for the skill, verve, and creativity that can be a part of kitchen work. These shows make cooking look sexy, but they're primarily entertainment. The homespun practical cooking lessons a la French Chef that Pollan morns haven't disappeared -- they've just migrated.

To the internet.

At the time of the last official Internet Instructional Cooking Material survey, there were, I believe, a gajillion such sites, ranging from Mark Bittman's restrained/simple/delicious "Bitten" blog at the Times to the crazy cavalcade of recipe blogs that Saveur is trying to corral and showcase.

But I'm partly making this up. I don't have cable at home, and only watch cooking shows when I want to be entertained -- for recipes, I run internet searches or hit my very modest cookbook collection.

Where do you turn when you want to cook?

Oh, my wagashi

2009-02-22T22:02:00.008-05:00

I wrote the "Source" column for the March, 2009 issue of Saveur about a Japanese pastry shop in New York City that my Dad frequents.

Read the piece at Saveur.com→

On Food and Cooking

2008-11-07T23:45:00.007-05:00

I'm sitting in on the Harold McGee lecture series at the French Culinary Institute. Today included eggs 15 ways (including a fool-proof Hollandaise - hallelujah! ), a reluctant dondurma, and flattened champagne, but the bottom line was learning how to learn how to think about cooking in a new light. (It's hard to shake off preconceived notions - some of the biggest breakthroughs in cooking seem to have happened entirely by accident.) Tomorrow we get into technique - the why of how best to cook things - while Sunday will touch on new food technologies.

Update: things worth keeping:

IEEE interview with Harold McGee

OBAMA

2008-11-05T07:26:00.001-05:00

OBAMA, originally uploaded by karemizu.

Went to bed happy and woke up... yep, still happy, and with my hopes for the future considerably enlarged.

Frank Bruni on Election Year 2008

2008-11-02T20:19:00.003-05:00

In today's Times, Frank Bruni, the paper's restaurant critic, weighs in on the 2008 election:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/weekinreview/02bruni.html

Actually, more than weighing in, he simply weighs.

I link to it here mostly because it's interesting to see Bruni apply his mellow evaluation to the presidential campaign rather than a restaurant, and because I enjoyed his final, qualified pronouncement:

"The 2008 presidential election stands out from so many before it, and will have repercussions for so many after it, because it’s a decision about who can guide us through the worst of times. We’re in trouble if we get it wrong. And maybe even if we get it right."

Art and Lies

2008-10-18T16:41:00.004-04:00

Another catch-up blargh post: a book review, written for The Brooklyn Rail back in August. Today is a day of catch-up, sifting through the drifts of crumpled paper on my desk, re-stocking the refrigerator, enrolling in retirement plans, setting up savings accounts, paying bills, giving the web sites I still work on (including this one!) long-overdue attention.

Steven Heller's Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State (Phaidon, 2008)
Few symbols grab and hold our attention like the swastika. The symbol has deep roots—it has been used by virtually every major civilization and dates back to at least 3000 BC. Even though the swastika is one of mankind’s oldest symbols, its grip on our imagination today is entirely due to its forceful association with the Nazi party.

In The Swastika: A Symbol Beyond Redemption?, Steven Heller wrote, “I find the swastika to be representative of how line, shape, mass, and color can be influential on popular perception when manipulated to serve an idea and promoted vociferously as a brand.” Heller writes the “Visuals” column for the New York Times Book Review where he also served as art director for almost three decades. He writes authoritatively and often on design in Print magazine and i.d. and has, in the last decade, increasingly turned his attention to the role of design in politics. In his latest book, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State, Heller reconsiders the branding of the Nazi party, as well as the iconography and propaganda of the last century’s other major totalitarian governments: the Italian Fascists, the Russian Soviets, and the Chinese Communists.

The rest: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/07/express/art-and-lies.

Give 'Em Helvetica

2008-10-16T22:29:00.003-04:00

For want of a fresh thought this evening, a link to a piece in Pop Matters that went up in August. A little meditation on typeface, ugliness, and individuality. By me.

What do American Airlines, American Apparel, The Office, Target, and the Environmental Protection Agency have in common? The unassuming typeface Helvetica, which turned 50 last year. Designed by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann in Switzerland (Helvetica means Swiss in Latin), the font became the predominant typeface for the rest of the 20th century, as Gary Hustwit’s 2007 documentary Helvetica thoroughly demonstrated.

The Museum of Modern Art also celebrated the font’s anniversary with a show, “50 Years of Helvetica”. Exhibiting the font alongside furniture and forks in the museum made the point that the typeface is a well-designed tool, like the objects nearby: a cluster of pill-shaped lamps, a lime-green helicopter. Yet because a typeface is a vehicle for language and, by extension, for thought, Helvetica begged for more scrutiny than the adjacent upholstered puzzle-chair, which merely offered a surface upon which to recline. As part of the exhibit, a dozen posters showcasing the font were hung, all from 1957 to 1967, all slowly turning an archival yellow, giving them a distant, reliquary feel. But even with the patina, it was hard not to feel the pull of the typeface. The steep slopes, generous curves, and balance of negative-to-positive space transmitted a steady calm, like so much blonde wood and brushed steel....

Read the rest here

Happenings in Hardwick

2008-10-10T07:57:00.007-04:00

Peter Johnson of Pete's Greens.
Photo by Paul O. Boisvert for The New York Times.

The October 8, 2008 issue of the New York Times has an article about the agricultural renaissance happening in Hardwick, Vermont.

"Facing a Main Street dotted with vacant stores, residents of this hardscrabble community of 3,000 are reaching into its past to secure its future, betting on farming to make Hardwick the town that was saved by food.

With the fervor of Internet pioneers, young artisans and agricultural entrepreneurs are expanding aggressively, reaching out to investors and working together to create a collective strength never before seen in this seedbed of Yankee individualism."
(Read the entire Times article here.)

Many curiosity-piquing enterprises are mentioned: Jasper Hill Farm and the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont; Claire's restaurant, a community-supported local food restaurant (the concept owes something to the Farmer's Diner in Quechee VT); and the Center for an Agricultural Economy and the the Vermont Food Venture Center.

I was happy to see a few mentions of Pete's Greens. In '03, I talked to Peter Johnson for a small piece in Seven Days. (This was back before 'locavore' was in anyone's vocabulary, and the piece clunkily frames the movement in terms of 'organic, small-scale farming.')

I'm heading up to Vermont - to Hardwick, actually - this weekend, and will try to check out Claire's and Jasper Hill Farm if at all possible.

It should be a good weekend for rambling around outdoors - I hear that the trees are on fire.

Dandelion Soup

2008-09-28T12:01:00.005-04:00

Argh. Have to sit down and write now.
While I panic and free-associate into my empty NeoOffice document (a functional but faintly depressing replacement for my lost Word progam), I am making Dandelion-Lentil Soup. At the end of about an hour and a half, I will at the very least have lunch today and an indeterminate number of non-chicken curry meals for next week.

Recipe for Dandelion-Lentil Soup

From Saveur, because that's where I found it.

1 cup lentils, picked over and rinsed
4 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed and peeled
1 small red chile, stemmed and finely chopped
1'' piece ginger, peeled and finely grated
1 large bunch dandelion greens, well washed and chopped
4 tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp. ground cumin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put lentils in a medium pot with 9 cups water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium, cover, and simmer until lentils are just tender, 20-30 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add onions, garlic, chiles, and ginger and cook, stirring often, until onions are soft, about 10 minutes.
Add onion mixture, dandelion greens, lemon juice, and cumin to lentils. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Simmer, covered, until greens are tender, about 20 minutes.

Hm. The above made for a bland, bitter soup. Added some beef stock (spoonful o'boullion) and it was better.

Recipe for Critical Profile

Articles in The New York Times Magazine and elsewhere, 1986-2008
Slow Food Nation videos, end of August, 2008, thanks to FORA.tv (note: rocks).
George Orwell on starting a garden at home

Accidents, To Avoid and Prevent

2008-06-15T21:22:00.007-04:00

In walking the streets, keep out of the line of cellars, and never look one way and walk another.
Never ride with your arm or elbow outside any vehicle.
Never alight from a steam-car while in motion.
In stepping from any wheeled vehicle while in motion, let it be from the rear, and not in front of the wheels; for then, if you fall, the wheels cannot run over you.
Never attempt to cross a road or street in a hurry, in front of a passing vehicle; for if you stumble or slip you will be run over. Make up the half minute lost in waiting until the vehicle has passed by increased diligence in some other direction.
In a run-away, it is safer, as a rule, to keep your place and hold fast than to jump out. Getting out of a carriage over the back, provided you can hold on a little while, is safer than springing out of the vehicle.
Be particularly cautious when in the vicinity of water.
During a time of lightning avoid the neighborhood of trees, or any leaden spout, iron gate, or other conductor of electricity.
Lay loaded guns in safe places, and never imitate firing a gun in jest.
Never sleep near lighted charcoal; if drowsy at any work where charcoal fires are used, take the fresh air.
Never blow out the gaslight, but turn it off, and before retiring see that none of it escapes.
When benumbed with cold beware of sleeping out of doors; exercise yourself vigorously; rub yourself, if able, with snow, and do not hastily approach the fire.
If caught in a drenching rain, or if you fall in water, keep in motion sufficiently vigorous to prevent the slightest chilly sensation until you reach the house; then change your clothing with great rapidity before a blazing fire, and drink instantly a pint of hot liquid, not spiritous.
Before entering vaults or dry wells see if a lighted candle will burn at the bottom; for if not, animal life can not exist, and the foul air in it should be replaced by pure air before entering therein.
Never leave saddle or draught horses, while in use, by themselves; nor go immediately behind a led horse, as he is apt to kick.
Ride not on footways, and walk not on carriage roads or rail-road tracks.
Be wary of children, whether they are up or in bed, and particularly when they are near the fire, and element with which they are very apt to amuse themselves.
Leave nothing poisonous open or accessible, and never omit to write the word "POISON" in large letters upon it, wherever it may be placed.
Never throw pieces of orange upon the sidewalk, or throw broken glass bottles into the streets.
Never meddle with gunpowder by candlelight.
Never trim or fill a kerosene lamp while lighted, and never light a fire with kerosene or coal oil.
Keep lucifer matches in their cases, and never let them be strewed about.
During frosty weather take extra care in walking.
Have your horses' shoes roughed directly [if] there are indications of frost.
Before retiring for the night, carefully look through the house to see that everything is as it ought to be.

From A Dictionary of Every-day Wants: Containing twenty thousand receipts in nearly every department of human effort. By A.E. Youman, M.D. Boston, GM Hyde & Company, 206 Hanover Street, 1874.

Meat of the Future

2008-05-05T20:14:00.007-04:00

I'm working on an essay about death of one of one of the installations in the Museum of Modern Art's Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit. 'Victimless Leather' -- a tiny jacket made of living tissue -- kicked the bucket last week.

[WARNING: clicking the above exhibit links may make your mind go all wobbly like the elastic in old underwear. The site is WAAAY over-designed. You've been warned.]

At the center of the installation was a Barbie-sized garment made of pink biodegradable material suspended inside a glass chamber. The chamber was small, and spherical - think Christmas at Dr. Frankenstein's. The fabric served as scaffolding for skin tissue (engineered from mouse stem cells from Columbia University) to grow upon. A peristaltic pump kept the jacket saturated with rosé nutrient-rich fluid (numnum), and also removed waste. (Cell poo? Dead cells? Not sure). The glass container kept germs away and the humidity constant, and a heat lamp held the temperature at a steady 37 degrees Celsius, whatever that means. All of this made for an environment that was maybe too hospitable. Apparently, the skin grew too fast, clogging up its environment. So the curator killed it.

I'm at the tail end of too many hours of link-clicking in the name of research. Here are some of the weirder things that I found:

Bovine Myology and Muscle Profiling. video clips of how muscles of the cow are cut into discrete "steaks."
New Harvest. Meat of the the Future.
The In-Vitro Meat Consortium. Recently held an international conference on the Meat of the Future
PETA is offering a $1 million reward to the first scientist to produce and bring in vitro meat to market. The most awesome thing about this reward is that it only kicks in after the entrant has been able to "manufacture the approved product in large enough quantities to be sold commercially, and successfully sell it at a competitive price in at least 10 U.S. states,” which pretty much guarantees that whoever wins won’t actually need the million-dollar prize by the time they are qualified to receive it.
My last item is also PETA related: Ionat Zurr, one of the "wet biology" artists behind Victimless Leather, describing reactions to Disembodied Cuisine, where she and Catts grew little frog steaks in the lab: "At that time we received an e-mail from People for Ethical Treatment of Animals.... The organisation's leader had a project proposal: that we should take a biopsy from her and grow from her tissue a steak that she would eat. The idea was to protest the eating of animals, but this would be an act of cannibalism, which we did not like, and we refused." more→

That is all.

For now.

A small bite of Saveur...

2008-04-22T21:49:00.003-04:00

I have a very modest piece in Saveur this month, on brown rice in Japan.

Digest: Google Alert - Stalin

2008-04-02T21:11:00.014-04:00

Murmurs of Soviet nostalgia in Russia - but who is feeling it? Putin certainly is reaching for the weight of the old state - in the aesthetic realm as well as the political. On March 24, the Telegraph observed that monumental Soviet architecture is making a state-sponsored comeback in the design for a national cemetery. (Wax Lenin may finally go underground... I'm loth to say "get a decent burial.") True to, er, form, the new design embodies the Soviet style, daunting the tiny beholder with (as Ryszard Kapuściński put it in his Imperium notes on the new Moscow) "triumph, power, monumentality, might, seriousness, massiveness, [and] invincibility."

The Hartford Courant just wrote that Yale University will be adding a Stalin-centered digital archive to their online Annals of of Communism. Variety reports that Montefiore's Young Stalin is being made into a movie.

In the St. Petersburg Times, a review of a compendium of Soviet propaganda. (And I've added Great Stalinist Photographic Books to my Amazon.com wish list. 1 copy, imported, presently available - for $159.)

Some veteran's groups are re-remembering Stalin - fixing up old monuments and requesting new ones.

In an unsavory twist on the post-Soviet stand-by question of how democracy would change the former empire, the BBC posits that the question to ask of Russia these days is "not how democracy has changed Russia, but how Russia - eternal, enduring, long-suffering - is changing democracy."

This website has some gorgeous photographs from the real Russian underground.

The Stalin Subway Shooter: a first person shooter set in Moscow, 1952. Gamers can look forward to:

Real Moscow locations: Moscow subway stations, Kremlin, Moscow State University
Secret locations: D6 - secret military subway under Moscow, secret laboratories, underground shelters, Stalin's bunker
Authentic weapons, including rare weapons like anti-tank rifle PTRS-41
More than 300 destructible environment objects: from furniture and cases to the ashtrays and knobs

Hell on Wheels

2008-03-13T12:29:00.005-04:00

"HELL ON WHEELS," a term applied to the temporary rails-end towns, or construction camps, of the Union Pacific Railroad. Construction westward along the 42d parallel began in 1865, laying a record-setting average of over a mile of track a day using only picks, shovels, and mules. The term reflected the rough work camps of the all-male, largely Irish laborers, who fought, drank, and caused general hell along the rail as they progressed westward over the prairie and through the mountains. (Columbia Encyclopedia of Something or Other.)

And this is my dorky recording of some people roller-dancing in Central Park. There was a tatooed guy with shredded kneepads who would skate very quickly, then fling himself on his knees and skid across the asphalt. This seemed to delight him to no end. And there was a young woman with her back to me who reminded me of a Peanut's character - she kept doing the same rabbity dance the whole time I was watching. The clip is of poor quality and without any narrative content whatsoever, but it fascinates me.

Smells like meat

2008-03-04T23:41:00.005-05:00

This was discontinued just a few years ago. Mmmm.... vegetable meat.

Comfort me with potatoes

2008-02-25T21:38:00.016-05:00

“It is easy to think of potatoes,” wrote M.F.K. Fisher, “and fortunately for men who have not much money it is easy to think of them with a certain safety.”

Indeed. A potato looks and smells like a double handful of dirt, and is almost as cheap. Lately, I am too busy to shop often, and too aware of my checkbook's bottom line to shop as expansively as I would like when I do hit the grocery store. Kitchen thrift makes me feel pinched and mean. Happily for me, when I have cooked and eaten my way to a bare refrigerator, there are usually one or two Idahos still rolling around the recesses of the vegetable bin.

There are few things that I love more than a baked potato. They have a sturdy, secure heft in the hand, like a hot stone. Under a fat pat of butter and a little salt, a baked potato tastes of simple, subtle contrasts: the muddy flavor of the rough, dusky skin against the steaming, yielding white flesh underneath.

In English, potatoes in their skins are “in their jackets.” In Italian, they are in veste da camera — ‘in their nightshirts.’ If potatoes are cooked out of their jackets, many of their vitamins and vegetables leave them. (If potatoes are not cooked at all, we cannot digest their starch.) I love the autumnal crackle of baked potato skin between my molars, and a warm jacketed potato is as instinctively comforting to me as a warm bed in winter.

When I bake potatoes, I puncture each potato’s protuberant jacketed flanks with the tines of fork so that it does not explode. (This may be superstitious — I am not sure. A scene in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farm Boy — where want of ventilation sends steaming spuds rocketing from a campfire — made me a religious piercer of potatoes at an early age.)

Letting them bake at 350F for 1 hour warms the kitchen. The smell of hot starch is primordially soothing; it sits in the hot air like the aroma of bread baking at a distance . When the potatoes are done, I split them cross-wise with a knife, push the long ends of the potato towards each other to make an origami opening, smear in a finger of butter and a pinch of salt, and eat. And while the meal is plain, it is very, very good.

* * *

The United Nations has designated 2008 International Year of the Potato. (Potatoes: For the truly hungry)
Historic Potato recipes

Snow Tang Clan

2008-02-12T21:20:00.014-05:00

I was hoping that it would snow in New York this winter. Today, it finally did. The snow was hard and granular, and crackled like Pop Rocks when it landed. The candy sound of the snow puts me in the mind of Tang. I wish I had a canister of it, the snow looks tasty.

Have you ever eaten powdered Tang* on snow**? It's the best. Every winter, my brother and sister and I used to eat heaps of the first snowfall under shovelfulls of artificial orange Instant Breakfast Drink. During the same phase of our childhood when we were eating a lot of instant ramen (and I do mean a lot — to break up the monotony of noodle soup, we took to pouring hot water over the dry noodle rafts and eating them al dente with the dehydrated broth sprinkled on top), we used to scoop up a bowl of clean snow, bring it inside, and chop powdered citrusy sugary orangeness into it with a spoon. It always made a horribly lurid puree, but it tasted sublime: icy and refreshing, piquant and tart and sweet. If you've ever dipped into a can of frozen orange juice concentrate, you've experienced the essence of Tang on snow. (Bizzarre, how both these horrible drinks are best at their most dense.)

In Vermont, syrup shacks will, for a couple of bucks, serve you warm maple-syrup and a bowl of snow, with a pickle, a donut, and a cup of coffee on the side. Although I loooove tree sap with my coffee, I'm not mad about the rest. Give me the florescence of tart astronaut orange juice any day.

Afterthoughts

*Tang was patented in 1957, first sold in supermarkets in 1959. No one really went for it, until in 1965 someone at NASA, noting that Tang Instant Breakfast Drink met all the requirements for space travel, sent Tang into orbit with the Apollo and Gemini missions. In outer space, Tang was available in additional flavors: chocolate and grapefruit, as well as the more earth-bound orange.

**It's probably not a good idea to eat snow. The last time I melted some — I think this must have been in Sighnaghi sometime when the pipes had frozen — the water from the snow was cloudy and unappetizing.

Year of the Pig, adieu!

2008-02-07T22:55:00.001-05:00

A tip of the nib to Jonathan Gold, who came to New York and sucked the skin off of a deep-fried pig's ear.

This ran on Saveur's blog (I am interning at the magazine this semester, yes indeed). If it were possible to provide you with a link to the URL of the post, I would, but that's not how Saveur.com works. (Alas.) Since it is such a short, light little thing, I am posting it here in its entirity.

* * *
I Fork New York
by Karen Shimizu

Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning restaurant critic for LA Weekly, writes his weekly restaurant column--"Counter Intelligence"--with expeditionary zeal. A thoroughly democratic eater, Gold celebrates Los Angeles's gastronomic landscape in all of its permutations, from trendy tapas bars to street-side taco shacks.

In this week's column, however, the LA critic returns to his old, er, chomping grounds (from 1999 to 2001 he wrote reviews of New York restaurants for Gourmet magazine) to salute the passing of the Year of the Pig in the Big Apple. With just a weekend to canvas the city, Gold gets busy. "I ate 30 different pig preparations in a little less than 48 hours," he writes, "and it would have been more if I'd gone with the flow."

It is the rude elements of ordinary food--chunks of bread, froufrou-free vegetables, and coarse meats--that fuel Gold's most passionate culinary reveries. He celebrates strong and simple fare in a down-home lexicon that includes words like "oozy," "leathery," "earthy," "gritty," "spare," and "oily." He is not interested in decorous eating or mannered writing; his prose is muscular and sticky-fingered, and rapture hits hardest when a meal leaves him greasy-chinned.

Readers are there by Gold's side at the Spotted Pig as he sits down to a deep-fried pig's ear, and--thanks to his arrestingly descriptive writing--can all but taste the food as it disappears down his gullet.

"You tear into an entire, freaking ear with a sharp knife and a fork, chomp through crisp bits and bony nubs, shards of skin, pockets of former gristle converted to goo. You are close to the animal, even part of the animal; you're Mike Tyson sinking sharp teeth into Evander Holyfield, a Neanderthal devouring his share of the kill," writes Gold. He goes on to rhapsodize about pig's foot at Babbo, roasted marrowbones at Blue Ribbon, cured pork belly, curried head cheese, and pork-jowl scrapple at Resto, Korean-style pork shoulder "braised into sweet, caramelized submission" at Momofuko Ssäm Bar, and the kaleidoscope of charcuterie at Bar Boulud.

While Gold usually finds fuel for his columns in LA, his latest piece carries a palpable whiff of nostalgia for New York's frank fondness for meat. For myself, I just hope that he comes back soon for another binge. Gold's unfettered cave-man hymns to the pleasures of the bone make me nod in agreement and wipe imaginary grease from my chin.

Here is New York

2007-11-08T11:44:00.002-05:00

Here is new york, remembering September 11, surprised me. From descriptions, I somehow imagined that it would be a domineering kind of exhibit – huge chunks of debris towering over the visitor like ruins of the twin towers. Actually, it is a modest, somber enterprise: attentive to lived experience.

Not Yet Dead

2007-09-06T23:09:00.000-04:00

Hello, World!

Seriously, just posting to say that I'll be filling this space with finished pieces when/as (if ever) they are done, as I complete things in the course of my graduate work in journalism at NYU this year. For the next little while things may be slow, although there are a few events in the upcoming weekends -- the NY TV Festival, two contra dances in the Village, the Buffy Sing-Along at the IFC, and Ian McKellan in "The Seagull" at BAM -- that I plan to write about here.

Bodies

2007-07-10T11:57:00.000-04:00

The most jarring thing about being back in the US has been taking in Americans.

The sudden hyper-abundance of adults in T-shirts, shorts and sneakers is shocking. Right now, everyone looks kind of child-like. Their faces are full, well-fed, untroubled, open. Their carriage is relaxed. They smile and joke a lot. They are wearing sneakers and white socks, shapeless T-shirts tucked into pleated shorts. They have their hands in their pockets and caps on their heads and are just a whole lot bigger — taller, broader in the shoulders, taking up more space — than I am used to at the moment.

But if I am having a little trouble with them, they are not having any obvious trouble with me. When a little boy in the row ahead on the airplane turns to make faces at me, it's because he's an extroverted little kid, and not because he can't stop staring at the freaky Asian lady. When I take off my sunglasses, there are no sudden double-takes, or intense sidelong stares, or elbowing of companions and speculating about the "Chinese" (actually partly Japanese) body standing near them.

I appreciate that, at least in routine transactions, differences in clothing and phenotype do not immediately preoccupy people here (in Columbus) as those differences seemed to distract people there (Tbilisi). And I am surprised at how much of my own discomfort at re-entry to the US is with those things, and how little of it has to do with, say, the radically different landscape or food.

Yesterday, I went to "BODIES: the exhibition" — a display of polymerized dissected human cadavers — and for a few hours I stopped noticing or thinking about how people style themselves on the outside.

The BODIES exhibition is surprisingly gentle on the senses — the dissected bodies are unexpectedly immaculate — jerky-like, cured, free of odor or unsettling slippery texture. (Even so, the rose-tinted muscles on the skinless poised specimens present an unfortunate corollary to a rib-eye steak I ate previous night, and that night I dream of eating ground person). Most of the full bodies on display are male. Their ghostly testes hover like vinegar-softened eggs at the end of vermicelli. Of the outer skin, only the outer rings of belly-buttons, penis glans, and labia remain. These resemble the lips of tied-off balloons, and are the color of condensed milk.

Much of the exhibit is brightly lit, with warm-colored walls and instructive blurbs on the walls. There are the most helpful docents I've ever seen — all of them medical professionals — in white lab-coats and “ASK ME!” buttons on hand to teach visitors more about the BODY. One animated sports therapist points out where the ACL has been mislabeled. A middle-school health teacher explains the function of the small and large intestine, pointing with enthusiasm at the noodley organs' crooks and curves. All of this is instructive, startling, sobering. I put a hand over my abdomen and think about how little the conscious part of my brain has been looking out for the welfare of the army of organs under its watch.

There are two rooms that invite a different sort of contemplation. The room showcasing the vascular system, and the room demonstrating fetal development, are both lit like the gem exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Washington DC. These are dark rooms where each specimen is bathed in a soft pool of bright light. The atmosphere encourages reverent, hushed contemplation. In the vascular room, the delicate framework of the body's blood vessels are suspended in water. They are brightly colored coral — red, blue, green, white — and are dazzling in their intricacy. Fragments of fragile latticework have broken and lie in barely visible drifts at the bottoms of the glass cases.

In the fetus room, translucent palm-sized babies float in crystal-clear cylinders of water. Their needle-thin bones have been injected with a red dye to illustrate skeletal development. They are beautiful, these person-shaped jellyfish with their whispers of ruby bones. There are also larger, less pretty specimens on display here: two polymerized babies with birth defects sprawl in a glass case. One has a cleft palette, the other spinal bifida. These plasticized infants look like Gerber Baby dolls that hit a manufacturing snag. It is difficult to associate them with flesh-and-blood infants.

In the last room of the exhibit, there is a skinless body in three head-to-foot slices. The cadaver is split like a peach, with the pit of the body — the internal organs — suspended between the front and back sides. The accompanying sign notes that the greatest possible genetic difference between two people is .1%.

BODIES doesn't need to make the point that we are all alike — all of the bodies on display, sans skin, look terribly like one another, however they are sliced. What seems more remarkable, in the end, is how much stock we put in that slim margin of difference — and how much work we do to exaggerate it, to distinguish ourselves and each other from “the rest.”

Pasta and Pizza / Pizza and Pasta Fantastico

2007-06-28T06:12:00.000-04:00

Pasta and Pizza
32, Barnov Str.
Tel: (995 32) 98 29 82
11:00 a.m - 10:00 p.m

Pizza and Pasta Fantastico
3a, Napareuli Str.
Tel:(995 32) 29 46 75
10:30 a.m. - 10:30 p.m.

Tucked away in an easy-to-miss courtyard in Vera, Pasta and Pizza is a supremely pleasant, unpretentious place to eat. The restaurant is set back from the street, and has a long, narrow courtyard — lined with tables with Viking-capacity benches under broad umbrellas — leading up to the entrance.

The menu here is surprising in its scope and playfulness, with a good selection of entrees running the gamut from Italian and Alsatian pizzas, pasta, quiches, Turkish dishes, and a list of meat platters and vegan items.

Italian Bread Balls (available with or without garlic) — piping hot boules of baked dough, with a dab of olive oil and seasoned minced garlic inside — make a good appetizer. The Italian–style pizzas are delicious, with a good crust and a very flavorful marinara sauce under–girding their generously applied toppings. The Capri pizza (GEL 12.80) — with field mushrooms, tomatoes, pepperoni, peppers (listed as ‘paprika’), and olives — was especially good. The Alsatian (white) pizzas are a bit under–dressed. We tried one with sour cream, onion, garlic, and bacon (GEL 6.80), and while it was good — the topping was thick with bacon, and the onions had a gentle caramel aroma —l it didn’t compare to the Italian-style pizza vying for space on the table.

The restaurant has serves pasta straight up and al forno (baked). We tried the gnocchi with pesto (GEL 5.80) and the ‘lasagna legumi’ (vegetable lasagna, GEL 12.80). The gnocchi were freshly made — so much so that they didn’t hold their form. The resulting boiled dough balls were surprisingly edible (the dough was light and airy), but the pesto was made from dried basil, and on the whole the dish would have been very disappointing as a main course. The lasagna legumi, on the other hand, was fantastic, with layers of pasta and cheese thickly interspersed with a decadent cream and vegetable filling. Mushroom lovers especially will enjoy this dish.

Pasta and Pizza’s menu also features so-called “international khachapuri” (for GEL 6.80 a piece), which include French (spinach, onion, garlic, and Roquefort cheese), Turkish (minced lamb, paprika, pepperoni, garlic, onion, sheep cheese), and Dutch (pickled pork loin, onion, edamer cheese). Turkish dishes — including moussaka (GEL 12.80) — comprise a major section of the menu, and there is a respectable selection of unusual meat entrees (roasted chicken breast with spicy walnut sauce and fries) as well as vegan dishes (there are many vegetarian options throughout the menu). It’s easy to miss, but at the back of the menu fondues (cheese or chocolate) are available either as single (GEL 14-18) or double (GEL 25-35) servings.

Wine, beer (draught and bottled), spirits all available. There is usually an “open” village wine available in half liter and liter carafes — on the evening we visited, this was a honey-colored tsinandali with a moment of intense dryness on the tongue, and a mellow, creamy mouth-feel.

Our decadent dinner left us no room for dessert, unfortunately, but we will be back to try the “whipped wine foam’ and the Tiramisu. The waiters were prompt and attentive — and English-speaking — and we continued to enjoy the smells from the dishes wafting by to other tables even as we exhausted our appetites.

Menus are available in English.

Very decent pizza can also be had at Pizza and Pasta Fantastico. True to its name, this small pizzeria makes oven-fired pizza and pasta, as well as a handful of other entrees such as eggplant parmesan. The pizza here is a bit pricier than that at Pasta and Pizza, with small Pizzas for GEL 7-10, mediums for around 15-18, larges 18-22. Lots of possible toppings are available, including ham and pineapple. The small pies are quite substantial for one person, while a medium makes a good meal to share between two people. We tried one pizza with paper thin-slices of ham and layers of rich musky mushrooms, and one pizza with bell and pickled jalapeño peppers, olives, tomatoes. Both were excellent, with crisp and chewy crusts.

The eggplant parmesan is heavy on the marinara sauce and melted cheese, with thin slices of breaded baked eggplant swimming in there. Gnocchi with pesto was not a very generous serving, and the gnocchi were gummy and a little tough. The pesto was quite good, with a bright emerald color. (Perhaps pesto on another pasta would be better than on gnocchi.) At other tables plates with ravioli drenched in cream sauces seemed popular.

Lots of cocktails are available, and from the looks of it there is a serious espresso machine behind the counter. A narrow selection of Georgian wines cost around GEL 18 per bottle, no house wine is available. More extensive are the Italian and European wines can be ordered by the glass for around (GEL 7 per 200 ml). The restaurant is small, and fills up quickly. Menus are available in Italian, Georgian, English.

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Published in Georgia Today, 22 June 2007

Rustic-yet-Spiffy and Always up to the Task: Shemoikhede Genatsvale

2007-06-08T11:53:00.000-04:00

5 Marjanishvili Street – Tel: 91 00 05
25 Leselidze Street – Tel: 43 96 46

Shemoikhede Genatsvale (“Drop In, Love”) has tasty, reasonably priced Georgian food in a refined yet un-stuffy setting. The restaurant has two Tbilisi locations, one on Leselidze Street in Old Tbilisi, and one on Marjanishvili Street on the left bank of the Mtkvari.

Shemoikhede Genatsvale, which is owned by the GMC Group, manages to both provide a pleasantly rustic-yet-spiffy environment featuring exposed brick walls, Pirosmani reproductions, murals of men at supra and a powerful ventilation system to diffuse the accumulation of indoor cigarette smoke.

Both restaurants have the same menu – printed in Georgian on a rough piece of paper meant to resemble a 1920s newspaper. The Marjanishvili location is larger, with high vaulted ceilings and lots of solid, elaborately carved wooden furniture. The atmosphere here does more to evoke ‘ye olde sakhinkle,’ while the Leselidze Street location is a bit more mainstream in its tastefully appointed decor. The only major difference in the quality of the food between the two locations is that the Marjanishvili location has consistently better mtsvadi than the Old Town incarnation—Marjanishvili’s mtsvadi is a toothsome platter of juicy, succulent, piping hot grilled meat, while Leselidze’s tend to be somewhat tough and dry.

Many khinkali aficionados frequent Shemoikhede Genatsvale, and after eating there it is easy to see why. While the restaurant offers only four types of khinkali (two kinds with meat – kalakuri (meat with chopped herbs) and khevsuruli (slightly spicier meat without chopped herbs) – as well as mushroom or potato varieties), there are few other establishments whose dumplings are as light and wolfable. The khinkali are formed from dough as thin and smooth as silk, and the meat is well seasoned and of even texture (no nubbly bits). For those inclined to abuse khinkali, the lightness of the dough makes it possible to bolt quite a few. (If, however, you have any leftover, ask to have them fried. This will buy you some time to digest, and the fried dumpling is delicious. If your Georgian isn’t up to the task, pointing at the remaining dumplings and saying “shemtsvari” will do the trick. If you really want to hurt yourself, request some sour cream (arajani) on the side – though probably not traditional, this goes very well with a fried khinkali.)

Shemoikhede Genatsvale’s menu is fairly wide-ranging and inexpensive. Chebureki – large fried pastries stuffed with cheese or meat – seem to be very popular with many of the younger people who dine here. Also extremely good is the chkmeruli—chicken fried in a garlic sauce. While a bit pricey – at GEL 19, it’s one of the restaurant’s more expensive entrees – it is extremely tasty (the chicken arrives – still sizzling – in a ceramic dish, and drenched in a rich buttery garlic sauce) and comes in a very generous shareable portion – more than enough for four people, if you are ordering other dishes as well. Also excellent are the lobio nigvsit (this is a cold bean salad with walnuts, herbs, and spices), and the kababi (one restaurant connoisseur swears that the Marjanishvili location has the best kababi in town).

Nakhtaktari and Kazbegi beer is usually on tap for around GEL 2 per glass, and several varieties of wine, vodka, and cha cha are available as well.

The wait staff is brisk and friendly. While a few waiters and waitresses speak English, the menu is in Georgian only.

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Published in Georgia Today, 8 Jun 07

Alanis Ludi: Ossetian Beer and Khatchapuri Bigger than Your Head

2007-06-01T12:17:00.000-04:00

The Alanis Ludi Bar in Old Tbilisi serves an excellent house beer and decent, cheap food. It isn’t fine dining, but is a good spot to enjoy an unusual - and cheap - beer with an unusual - and cheap - khatchapuri under the beady glass glare of a taxidermied bird of prey.

As I was standing outside the entrance to Alanis Ludi, trying to decide whether “Alanian” stood for “Ossetian” (it did), a man tending the nearby parking lot assured me that the food inside was cheap and good.

“IN THERE IS IT OSSETIANS OR GEORGIAN FOOD?” I asked in rickshaw Georgian.

“A bit of both,” he replied.

Inside the bar, stuffed and mounted birds – and the occasional mammal - line the wood-paneled walls. Many birds are posed suggestively above the bar tables – we caroused under the glass glare of a hawk posed clutching a doomed pigeon in its claws.

A stuffed duck perches on the Efes cooler behind the bar, and a mountain goat with a modest rack surveys the room. Retro-looking fans are also stationed at each table – these presumably help move the air conditioning along. The bar has four dining areas for large parties; these are separated from the main eating area by saloon-style doors. The combination of effects gives the place a saloon-meets-hunting-lodge feel, which is further complicated by the inevitable flat-screen TV that partially eclipses the bar.

Most of the available food is standard Georgian restaurant/bar fare. We had (at our waiter’s suggestion) cucumber-tomato salad with walnut, eggplant with walnut, some spongy kababi and above-average mtsvadi. Our smattering of Georgian food was okay, but what sets this bar apart – and makes it worth a visit - is the house Ossetian beer and the Ossetian-style khatchapuri.

The beer at Alanis Ludi has a semi-opaque amber color and an almost fruity taste, like a Hefeweizen, and is welcome respite from the pallid Kazbegi more often on tap in Tbilisi, and far less pricey than the Germanesque microbrewery across the way. (However, you are less likely to find orange slices at the bar at Alanis Ludi than at Kaiser Brau– bring your own if you think you might want one). The Ossetian khatchapuri is thin and crispy, as big as a pizza, and filled with butter, cheese, and mashed potatoes, and is a good complement to the beer.

The bar is located on Gorgasali Square (at the very start of Gorgasali Street), a short jog away from the sulfur baths. If you are walking towards Abanotubani, the bar will be on your right (before the traffic light but after the Metechi Bridge), just after a spate of small grocery stores. A flight of stone steps leads up from the street, and large wooden panels frame the entrance.

The bar was lively on a Wednesday night; we had about a 10-minute wait for a table to open up. Bathrooms are downstairs; loo-users are expected to pay 20 tetri (honor system: pay your toilet toll to the red bucket at the top of the stairs).

There is no printed menu, and no English spoken – be prepared to make your way in Georgian, Russian or Ossetian.

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Published in Georgia Today, 1 Jun 07

Job Wanted?

2007-05-29T09:38:00.000-04:00

"The Georgian Times" is looking for a copy-editor for their English-language edition.

If you are looking for some pocket change, if you relish forcing diverse subject matter (ranging from regressive stray-dog management in Tbilisi to conspiracy theories surrounding the murder of a certain nationalist academician) through the tight sieve of proper English grammar, if you're not doing all that much with your Saturdays anyway, then this is the job for you!

You can work from home or at the GT office (located on Kikodze Street). They need someone who can start June 23.

Interested parties may contact GT Editor Keti Khachidze directly, or contact me with any questions.

You stole my kidney. Prepare to die.

2007-05-28T21:56:00.000-04:00

We lost internet due to being flaky people who never ever paid our telephone bill (though in our defense, we never received a bill, or instructions on where to go to get it or pay for it). Our phone line is in the week-long process of being reconnected, so in the meantime we are getting acquainted with Wi-Fi options in Old Tbilisi. These are, happily, numerous, though not all connections are equal. The steadiest -- and easiest to get to -- signal has been at The Hanger Bar (expat sports fan hang-out of "Our Balls Are Bigger Than Yours!" fame).

I spent all of Saturday (which happened to be May 26 - Georgia's equivalent of July 4) at The Hanger, eating potato skins, drinking beer, and editing "The Georgian Times" while clowns, mummers, and men on stilts walked by outside.

Highlights of this week's GT included an article about stray-dog management in Tbilisi (the city dog-catchers snag the dogs with a back-breaking lasso, then crush their bones with "iron pinchers," *then* kill them with "electrical appliances" before pitching them into a hole at the local landfill) as well as a run-down of "theories" surrounding the recent murder of a nationalist former politician (these included a "Lost"-like scenario in which the murderer was taking revenge for a stolen kidney!). Let me just say: the beer helped me through it. I told the paper that I'll stop working for them on June 16, and am looking forward to a short month in Georgia of free of bizzarro copy-editing.

Yesterday C and I did a short hike up the hills around Tbilisi in the hot hot hot hot sun. The hike felt really good, but I found myself wishing I could do it in shorts. Capri pants and short skirts are commonplace in town, but no shorts on men or ladies, yet. People here are too fashionable for their own good. After few hours of tromping around in the scorching sun, we returned to town to attend the supra for a friend's new baby girl. So that was 5 hours of good wine and good food. Our friend Shane stayed with us over the weekend, and when we got home he was eating a big bowl of popcorn and taking shots of vodka. (This is not typical - I can only attribute it to the lack of internets). I too maybe two ill-considered shots of cheap, cheap vodka, and spent the rest of the night wishing I hadn't.

I woke up this morning at 6, cleaned the kitchen and took out the trash (I was hung-over, and anything with any kind of meek smell attached to it was making me ill), then went back to bed and dozed until noon. Then I convinced Chris to join me back at the expat rugby bar, where we have enjoyed some coffee and wi-fi, and are presently awaiting a modest platter of fried potato-skins while the Indy-500 blares from the adjacent room.

Ah... Life is okay.

Cold Feet

2007-05-22T11:00:00.000-04:00

This fall, my husband and I are both heading to graduate school. Chris will be going to Syracuse University, while I am bound for NYU. Chris is out of town for about 48 hours right now - visiting Kutaisi with Didi John - and I'm suddenly realizing that living apart has major bummer potential. That, and everything that I've heard so far says finding a place to live in New York City is a nightmare.

My husband's apartment-mate-to-be, who is moving from Brooklyn to Syracuse, said that people posting available rooms on Craigslist often receive 100+ inquiries on the day of their post, and suggested (helpfully, I think) that I think of looking for a room as an experience analagous to auditioning for a reality-TV show.

Gulp.

Add to that this essay at Lost Writers and I find myself reconsidering whether it might better behoove me to move in with my Dad in NJ and just commute into the city and forget the whole thing.

But part of the draw of the NYU Journalism/Cultural Reporting and Criticism program was the opportunity to live in (and study in, and write about) what is arguably the greatest city in America (corny, complicated--maybe also true). Of course, that's what draws most people to New York, and why it's such a horror show to find a place to live there.

Feel Like (Halal) Chicken Tonight?

2007-05-18T03:29:00.000-04:00

Turkish-Iranian Restaurant 'Urfa Sofrasis'
76 Agmashenebeli Avenue
Tel: (995 32) 96 50 94

Urfa Sofrasis, the most recent addition to the Turkish culinary strip on Agmashenebeli Avenue, has pretty good food—and a formidable bar—in a comfortable setting.

In spite of its unique niche (Iranian and Turkish cuisine) Urfa Sofrasis makes no attempts to invoke—whether through low lighting, acres of oriental carpets, or an over-abundance of pillows—either Persia or Turkey. Rather, a two-story-high drop ceiling vaults above a sea of enormous dining tables, each of which is bracketed by long thickly-padded benches. (Somehow this combination gives the restaurant the feel of a furniture showroom.)

Rather then perusing a menu, you place your order at two glass display cases — one containing raw meat for Turkish and Iranian-style kebabs and other grillables, the other containing everything else (meze, etc.)—then take a seat and wait. While this approach allows you to eyeball your entree ahead of time—and also permits the Turkish-Iranian culinary novice to point and grunt in the absence of lexical familiarity with the dishes in question—it does not give one a good sense of each dish’s impact on your wallet. (Happily, this ends up not being too severe).

While the ‘meze-etc’ case’s contents were not as extensive as those of some of the Turkish restaurants further up Agmashenebeli Avenue, there was still a lot to choose from. There are several vegetarian options (including an inordinate amount of eggplant). Our party ordered yoghurt sauce, olive salad, hummus, fried eggplant in yogurt, meat-stuffed eggplant, and stewed green beans. From the meat case we ordered chicken and ground lamb kebabs. We also indulged in a couple of bottles of Turkish Efes beer, and a shot each of raki (anise liquor). All together, our tab came to about 15 GEL apiece.

On our visit the food was hit-or-miss. The green olive salad — comprised of sliced olives, chopped fresh tomatoes, slivers of lightly brined cucumber, and chives—was very good. The hummus hit the spot, as did the yogurt-mint sauce. Some dishes were less successful, though—the grilled eggplant in yogurt sauce was bit bitter for our taste, and the stuffed eggplant’s meat stuffing was kind of nubbly. A very few items were flat-out bad: the beans were very salty and swimming in oil, and the ground lamb kebabs were dry and immediately unpalatable—no one managed more than a small bite. We scored with the grilled chicken kebab, however, which was downright succulent, and more than made up for the odd mediocre item. The chicken meat was moist and tender on the inside, with a crisp exterior, and a grilled aroma and toothsome flavor throughout.

If you are a diner with uncomplicated cravings, Urfa Sofrasis is definitely a worthwhile stop for dinner. You may, however, wish to pass over many of the salads and meze and skip straight to the grilled chicken, which, along with some raki or a bottle of Efes, makes a satisfying simple summer dinner.

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Published in Georgia Today, 18 May 2007

A Chip Off the Old Bloc

2007-05-11T03:18:00.000-04:00

Grand Cafe CCCP
28 Kiacheli Street. Tel: 877 57 66 67

At 8:30 on a Monday night, Grand Cafe CCCP (USSR) was full of young men and women. The ratio of drinks to dishes at their tables was weighted heavily towards the former. We would have done well to follow their lead—the menu at Grand Cafe CCCP is expensive, and the quality of the food is out-of-step with the prices. A sampling of mid-range dishes (GEL 6-18) got us a transatlantic flight-grade supper.

Grand Cafe CCCP offers a loosely Russian menu with many variations (since when were Potatoes “Idaho” a Soviet standby?). On our visit at least, the restaurant’s food was better on paper than on the plate. The Uzbechka (GEL 12) — chicken fillets with honey and plums served with rice — was disappointing. The meat was dry and mostly flavorless — with only a distantly sweet glaze &mdasgh; and the rice was very bland. The “Blue Medals“ beef (GEL 18) — a minor constellation of thin steak slices in a blue cheese sauce topped with scattered tater-tots — was rich and flavorful, but the portion was very small. The side and appetizer dishes had a better price-to-food ratio, though here the descriptions on the menu were somewhat misleading. (“Stuffed tomatoes” apparently means tomato slices topped with a shredded soft cheese-dill-and-mayo combo.). The pelmeni (meat dumplings – GEL 6.50) were tasty but very modestly apportioned. A blurb on info-tbilisi.com says that the “Brezhnev’s Favorite Salmon” (salmon with sour cream and caviar) and “Mushrooms Proletariat” are good, but I was hesitant to try them, given the mediocrity of the cheaper dishes and their cost (the fish dishes inch into the GEL 30’s).

Throughout the restaurant, objects from the Soviet era — stamps, posters, banners, statuettes, busts of Lenin - are installed on shelves and in glowing recesses in the wall. The cumulative effect is (thankfully) underwhelming. Grand Cafe CCCP’s aesthetic nod to the Soviet era is ameliorated by an international play list and the owner’s decidedly restrained application of kitsch. (If you, for some reason, long to immerse yourself in Soviet-era paraphernalia, the Dry Bridge market is a better bet). In many cases, the decor is less shrine and more send-up of Soviet sensibilities - one poster reads (in English): “Your power core is under attack! Red Leader says: Defend it, fuckface!”

Grand Cafe CCCP is a better destination for drinks than for dinner. Available alcohol includes a Glenmorangie old enough to enlist in the army (from GEL 10), a range of tequilas (GEL 6), flavored vodkas (from GEL 4), imported beers, local wines, and a long list of cocktails. With cafe-style seating in the front and a lounge-style area in the back, Grand Cafe CCCP is a comfortablec — if smoky — hang-out. The lounge’s black leather couches are deep and commodious, and a tent of thin fabric overhead casts pleasantly diffused light throughout the dining room. Diners seeking good Russian fare would be advised to eat elsewhere, and then retire here for the alcohol and old shkola ambiance.
* * *
Published in Georgia Today, 11 May 2007

See where plagarism gets you?

2007-05-05T02:17:00.000-04:00

I am copy-editing the paper, as it my wont on Saturday mornings. There's always something surprising in there—an illuminating jewel amongst the wholesale plagarizing from Wikipedia, conflicted sentance structure, and page-long quotations—that makes my day.

Today's gem: an open letter to the Georgian President from one Otar Dolidze, an aggreived businessman. Dolidze describes how he was robbed of his intellectual property rights and 30 million USD worth of slag-processing machinary. He asks the government to more strenuously protect private property rights and to revise the Georgian Tax Code, which, he says, was plagarized from Germany's.

It was a big misfortune for Georgia when a new tax code was enforced in 1997. The drafter of the code was economist Temur Kopaleishvili, who noted in a personal talk with me that he "copied the law from Germany.” When I asked him whether he copied the law of Germany of 1945 year or modern Germany, he replied with pride: “certainly, from developed Germany.”

I wonder whether this is true. If it is true, how unusual or outrageous would it be for a (then) third-world economy to be modeled after a first-world one? Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is on my reading list. Perhaps I'll have more light in my head after reading it.

The Smell of Decaying Literature

2007-05-04T02:21:00.000-04:00

TSU librarians’ search for funding battles the clock as 67,000 rare and foreign books sit rotting in the library basement

When Mzia Razmadze was appointed Acting Director of the Grigol Tsereteli Scientific Library at Tbilisi State University, she discovered that the first two floors of the library were occupied by a robust forest of paper-eating fungus. In and of itself, this might not be such a tragedy, however the fungus happened to be feasting upon TSU’s 67,000-volume collection of rare and foreign books. As the library’s Acting Director, Razmadze has inherited a number of problems that are symptomatic of the higher education system overall – ailing infrastructure, chronic under-funding, obsolete methodologies—as well as problems that might be more in-line with those of a museum curator such as the restoration and preservation of objects of cultural and historical value. “We have a unique collection from the 15th and 16th centuries,” Razmadze says. “There are no other collections like this, either in Georgia or in other libraries.”

In 1987, the Grigol Tsereteli Scientific library was moved from its cramped quarters in Vake out to the “new campus” and into a 32,000 square meter concrete building.

Unfortunately the ceiling of the new building leaked from day one, and the bottom floors especially suffered from perpetual dampness which emanated from the floors, walls, and ceilings.

This was an excellent climate for fungus, but a terrible one for books. It was into these floors that the singularly fragile rare book collection was moved in 1987, and for the past 20 years water continued to seep in from all sides. Razmadze says that when she took on the position of Acting Director and went down to inspect the collection, she discovered that none of the books had ever been unpacked from their move to the library in 1987.

Shhhhhh! No Breathing!

On a recent visit, Razmadze offers a tour of the book collection. The floor of the basement level of the library is under several centimeters of dust and grit. The ceiling is low, and to get to the rare and foreign books we cross a room that is bisected by a sequence of massive vents that run the length of the building. The air is damp and clammy.

A doorway opens into a room where one is immediately flattened by an overpowering smell of mildew: book funk -the smell of decaying literature. The room is wide, deep, and filled with closely spaced metal shelves. The shelves are packed with books, many of which are bound together with twine. The entire collection is covered in a sickly yellow-white carpet of fungus.

The spectacle is quite literally breathtaking. The air burns my throat. Razmadze pulls the collar of her sweater over her nose and warns me not to get any of the book-eating fungus on my jacket. In many cases, it’s impossible to tell what the books even are under the fungal growth, and beyond that, much of the fragile leather bindings and their attendant markings have been digested.

Surveying the rather depressing spectacle of composting manuscripts, Razmadze says that she thinks that since the moisture was ambient, not direct, the hearts of the books are likely to be in better shape than their bindings. “I am an optimist by nature,” she says. “I cannot be passive about this.”

The Spoils of War Have Spoiled

Since discovering the fungus farm, Razmadze has been trying to eradicate it. After determining that the fungus was non-pathological - for people, anyway - Razmadze set about divining whether the collection would be worth the time and money it would take to repair. She sent lists of the foreign French and German titles – which she suspects were taken from German libraries during the occupation of Germany after World War II, as many were acquired through the USSR in the early 1950s - to the French and German embassies, requesting expertise and assistance in identifying their worth. The German Embassy replied to her overtures, and Razmadze was joined in the TSU basement by Olaf Hamann, a specialist from the Berlin State Library. Using the electronic catalogue of the German library system, Hamann was able to confirm that the volumes in question were missing from those libraries’ collections. Moreover, Hamann and Razmadze were able to confirm that the damaged books were worth recovering. “Each of them was quite expensive,” says Razmadze. “Each one was quite rare.”

Since then, Razmadze and other library workers have been gradually bringing the books from the basement level up to drier floors. They have been wiping the fungus off with alcohol and water, and drying them by hand. Many of the books are extremely delicate, and cannot be exposed to sunlight. Though they have managed to bring up many books, the scale of the project is sufficiently daunting so as to render their efforts meaningless if substantial financial assistance is not brought to bear on the problem. What is not clear is where that assistance might come from.

Funding: The Never Ending Quest

Razmadze has appealed to university, state, private, and foreign sources for funds to take on the problems of the library. While solutions to many of the library’s problems are well-represented in the Ministry of Education’s agenda for education reform (such as infrastructure renovation, new title acquisition, and modernization of the catalogue system and methodologies), the problems unique to the older items now in critical need of restoration have not yet been addressed.

The Ministry of Education provides financial support to university libraries for the restoration of basic infrastructure - heating and sewer systems - as well as for library modernization - new computers, books, and methodologies. “We are investing tens of millions of laris annually to help them to refurbish their facilities,” says Education Minister Kakha (Alexandre) Lomaia. Libraries can also seek direct investment from the state by applying to the Georgian National Science Foundation’s (NSF) University Library Program.

As soon as she heard about the NSF grants last November, Razmadze applied for one (“If a grant exists, I will apply for it,” she jokes), and the TSU Library received an NSF grant of 100,000 GEL. But, Razmadze says, the fund is for much-needed new titles and for the development of electronic resources – it cannot be used to work on the damaged books. And while education reform has been good to the library in many respects, it poses some challenges as well. In the last year of administrative reforms, the number of professors at TSU was reduced from 5,000 to roughly 800, and staff cuts have affected the library as well. At one time, 500 workers managed the library. Over the years this dwindled to 132, and library workers have recently been informed that the target “reformed” staff size is 30.

The Ministry of Education and Science is responsible for libraries at higher education institutions. It is not clear whether a situation such as that at the rare and foreign book collection—where the imperiled works are of both educational and cultural value - whether the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Culture, Monuments and Sports might be the proper body to appeal to for assistance.

There are precedents for cooperation between the Ministry of Culture (whose mission more precisely would seem to jibe with this problem) and the Ministry of Education. The two are cooperating, for example, in developing the National Museum as a modern ‘teaching museum,’ and the Ministry of Culture co-finances higher education institutions such as the Academy of Fine Arts. Potential cooperation on restoring cultural artifacts in university collections has not yet been explored, says Education Minister Lomaia. “Frankly, no one has applied to us with such an issue.”

In addition to seeking more support from TSU and from the Georgian government, Razmadze continues to seek funding from other sources. She has submitted an application for the United States Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation in order to repair, scan and properly archive a portion of the collection. U.S. Embassy Public Affairs Officer Rowena Cross-Najafi refrained from commenting on the pending application, but noted that the Ambassador’s Fund often acts as a stopgap, and that given the severe infrastructural woes at the library the collection likely requires a more massive and final intervention. “Ultimately, this needs to be a government job,” says Cross-Najafi. Definitive intervention will take time, she adds, “but those books don’t have time. They need to be focused on today.”

First published in Georgia Today, 4 May 2007.

Au Sans Souci: Georgian Standards with a Twist

2007-04-26T23:47:00.000-04:00

During a typical lunch hour at Au Sans Souci (also known as Ar Idardo), the air hums with the relaxed conversation and activity of people on dates, on business lunches, or sitting with their open laptop computers enjoying the free Wi-Fi along with a shot of espresso. Over one doorway there is an inscription: “Un Bon Repas Sans Vin, C’est Une Belle Femme Sans Tete” - ”a good meal without wine is a beautiful woman without a head.” There’s no excuse for a headless meal here. The wine list ranges from local Saperavis to French Bordeaux, though you can also enjoy a refreshing GEL 9.80 mojito which, with a generous portion of fresh mint leaves, also makes a nice spring dining companion.

The menu at Au Sans Souci features traditional Georgian dishes with a twist. (One of these twists is that portions are not very hearty: expect nouveau cuisine rather than supra-sized servings). Quality and attention to appearance and flavor are strong across the board – it’s hard to go wrong here.

Of Au Sans Souci’s smaller dishes, the pork on tkapli (GEL 6.80) is quite nice – cold slices of roast pork on tart slices of fruit leather – as is the leek hors d’oeuvre (GEL 3.80), which is much like the spinach-and-walnut phkali served at many Georgian restaurants, only with leek instead. The substitution is startling and delicious. Mushroom lovers should try the grilled mushrooms (wild mushrooms in lots of garlic) or the cream of mushroom soup (GEL 5.50). (Whatever you think of Cream of Mushroom soup in general, this fresh fragrant item is a far, far cry from Campbell’s). I’m not sure whether to recommend the meatball soup (or gupta – GEL 6.20), except for it’s novelty: it manages to be both rich and extremely mild and light. It consists of two baby sour plums and two meatballs in a clear golden broth that smells strongly of fresh butter. Likewise the wine pudding (GEL 2.10), while a bit granular, it is a dainty and unusual dessert. And whatever you usual beverage of choice is, be sure to try the “house lemonade.” (More of a limonati, really, it has a lemon-lime flavor with a hint of tonic, and is quite refreshing).

Though the food at Au Sans Souci is reliably very good, it’s the ambiance that make this place a real treasure. There isn’t a dull surface in the restaurant. You sit upon, and eat off of, beautifully painted furniture – the tables are adorned with playful drawings and lines of Georgian poetry and prose. The walls twinkle with colorful tile, Christmas lights, and posters from the past tours of café owner Rezo Gabriadze’s nearby marionette theater. Patrons also enjoy a view of Tbilisi that juxtaposes two extreme cultural touchstones: the 6th-century Anchiskhati Church a short hop-scotch game away from the Hanger Bar (whose motto “Our Balls Are Bigger Than Yours!” somewhat undercuts Anchiskhati’s austerity).

Au Sans Souci: 98 65 94, Shavteli 13, Tbilisi
**
Georgia Today, 27 Apr 2007.

Flatigue

2007-03-27T21:51:00.000-04:00

I work from my flat, so it is no wonder that I am sick of it.

But I am also sick of working for no pay, of my increasingly strident craving for appointment, convenience and privacy, and of reproachful stares from Georgian friends who ask how my Georgian is coming along and I would speak so much better if I just moved to my mom's house in the country and made more Georgian friends and how come I don't visit ever? I am weary — arg! arg! — of delicious twists of savory khinkali, of buying cheap and flavorful fruit from old women with solid racks of gold teeth, of emerald-green Tarragon soda, of the evocative deteriorating terraces and winding quiet cobblestone alleys in Old Tbilisi, and of feeling the city get a little warmer and more golden as Spring takes hold.

Are there birds flitting past our balcony at dusk? Bleuuugh! Lofty stone churches resonant with antique chanting? Bah! Friends gathered at supra to toast and sing and drink one another under the table? Humbug! A trip to Armenia tomorrow to stay at an off-season luxury hotel with sauna, pool and billiards in the middle of a gorgeous alpine landscape? Piffle! Pish tosh!

How convenient — no. How absolutely soul-and-sanity-saving-ly, sourpuss-smotheringly necessary — that in less than a week I fly to the US to spend almost three weeks in New Jersey with my Dad. Ah! Cafés within bookstores within shopping malls, glossy New Yorker magazines stashed in the bathroom, productive eavesdropping, men with backpacks, women in sweatpants and sneakers, front lawns, fast-food, Ben & Jerry's, dark beer, dinner dates, rude strangers, estranged neighbors, hippies, preppies, goths, yuppies, nerds, geeks, punks, freaks, ethnic and cultural hodge-podge m'godge HERE I COME!

There's 24 hours in that visit home when I will be vying for a fellowship. That 24 hours will will be difficult and sweaty-palmed and interesting - I will probably have a very looong entry about my humiliation and defeat — or triumph and glory — once it's over.

I sent in my graduate school decisions. Anyone wait-listed for IU, New School, or Syracuse will be happy to know that I'm bound for NYU's Cultural Reporting and Criticism Journalism program come September. It's by far the hardest, brainiest, most toughen-you-up-and-get-you-published-est program of the lot I was admitted to, and really I wanted to go to graduate school to shape my wet soggy brain into something steely and lethal and my tentative prose into a marketable and professional portfolio, so I'm going to go for it. Soaring student loans and the infamous NYC real estate market are in my future, so help me god. I can't wait.

Sunoko Desu

2007-03-26T07:44:00.000-04:00

Sushi roller
Originally uploaded by Junk Girl (not me!).

In the bottom drawer of the dark cherry wardrobe that stands in my mother's kitchen, nestled between sweet-smelling beeswax candles and soft cloth napkins, lies a nine-by-nine-inch square of wood, air, and dull white cotton thread. This plain bamboo mat is my mother's sushi-roller. Sixty-eight cylindrical staves of smooth bamboo lie side by side in neat rows, orderly as a plowed field. White cotton string winds around each stick in a soft chain, biding them all together at the neck, chest, waist, knee, and ankle. The thread holds the sticks together, and holds them apart; the sushi-roller is a smile of gaps and teeth. Though tightly bound, the mat is supple, and may be laid flat or rolled, like wrapping paper. A few dry, translucent flecks of rice, left from the last time my mother made sushi, cling stubbornly to the flanks of the bamboo. The bleached cotton thread shines against the blonde wood like white teeth in a tanned face.

Antique crockery dwells in the higher regions of the wardrobe. I know where each stack of dishes and each cluster of glassware comes from. The thin china plates and crystal wine glasses were given to my parents when they married. My grandmother won the blue-velvet box of tarnished silverware on The Price is Right. My mother's great-aunt made the lace tablecloths. I do not know where the sushi-roller is from. I know that it belongs to my mother, but am reluctant to inquire any further. I feel as though asking after the origin of the sushi-roller might suggest that it does not belong where I find it.

Posted in full at LostWriters.net >>

Green Tea Will Save Us

2007-03-24T02:55:00.001-04:00

I was copy-editing this morning, when I came across a curious spiel about the health benefits of Green Tea. After extolling Green Tea's promise as an anti-cancer agent (evidence: "Japanese and American scientists say"), a weight-loss aid (evidence: few fatties in China and Japan), and its potential to vivify the Georgian economy, the writer got to his point:

"The time has come to state the purpose of this letter: it is to promote the development of a tea growing rehabilitation program in Georgia, and to request that the government of the USA invest in its implementation and purchase the final green tea products for the prevention and treatment of weight gain for their corpulent population."

This made me inexplicably happy.

To Batumi and Back Again

2007-03-19T08:58:00.000-04:00

C and I took an overnight train to the Black Sea coast this weekend to spend our 1-year anniversary walking around Batumi—an off-season resort town with a very strong post-Soviet flavor.

Our train pulled in shortly before 7 AM, and we had the first few hours of the day to ourselves. We left the new Batumi train station (which is a very modern construction made mostly of glass and brushed stainless steel, and, like the new Tbilisi airport, there are pools of water on the floor from the leaking roof) and took a 50-tetri marshrutka to downtown Batumi.

We found one barely opened café, took in a little Turkish coffee and some pastries. Walked the boulevard. Got a hotel (the Hotel Montpelier, which had piping hot water and a very big suite for $80 - hooray for off-season rates).

There is a reason why it's hard to find information on Batumi online. There isn't a lot there. Not that I minded. With the sad aquarium, budding theme-park, and nearby Roman fortress all closed, and the weather patently inappropriate for sunbathing, I didn't feel at all bad about spending most of the day walking slowly up and down Batumi's sea-side public boulevard (est. 1881 or 1884, depending on whether you believe the LP or the sign banning livestock and unmuzzled dogs from the park).

Later in the day, there was a minor gauntlet of gypsies begging by the entrance to the boulevard, and lots of long-lashed teens making out on the public benches, but when C and I were walking at first in the morning, the only people out were people patently out for their sea-side constitutionals: people exercising in public (!), which I haven't seen much of on the main streets of Tbilisi. There are benches all over the place. The metalwork on these is in an art nouveau style, but many of them include www.batumiboulevard.com among their tendrils of weathered-looking metal, betraying somewhat more modern origins. (Interestingly, there is no active website at that address. Strange that the city managed to turn out several hundreds of benches, but no website).

The sky was grey and the sea was grey, too, but there were lots of palm trees and the weather was balmy. Our marshrutka ride back was unexpectedly harrowing, but we made it. And now we are back. And it is still cold.

Brrr.

The Only Indian Restaurant in Tbilisi

2007-03-16T08:46:00.000-04:00

Rumor and hearsay told of a magical, mobile Indian restaurant that, over the past decade, has flitted, Brigadoon-like, through such diverse locations as Sololaki, Vake, and Saburtalo. This transient establishment – which had a tendency to shut down and reopen without warning or explanation – was called the New Delhi.

Buzz around the New Delhi was promising. A gourmand friend in the Peace Corps reported that it was dressed down, but tasty and authentic, and pointed out its approximate location on my woefully inadequate purple plastic Tbilisi city map. People referred to it as “the” Indian restaurant, and as recently as the autumn of 2006, “the” Indian restaurant was spotted in Saburtalo.

I was saving my trek to Saburtalo for a rainy day. Unfortunately, my rainy day fell after the New Delhi had pulled up its roots once again. After hours of beating the pavement and ducking in and out of patently Georgian restaurants on Gamrekeli Street – where the New Delhi last opened its doors—I was forced to accept that I’d missed it. The New Delhi had moved on.

My quest for the New Delhi had made me a bit myopic about this week’s column. It had to be about Indian food. Had to. And so I headed to what I believe is now the only Indian restaurant in Tbilisi: Maharaja.

It was with slumped and defeated shoulders that I entered Maharaja. I despondently took in its muted Asiatic wood-and-fabric decor ordered a mango “lassy.”

The lassi was pert and refreshing, and promised a good consolation meal. I called for backup. When backup arrived, we checked out the menu, which to our surprise was only in English. This seemed a bad sign, but we went ahead and ordered vegetable samosas, “palak panel,” keema (ground mutton) curry, and chicken masala.

The vegetable samosas (GEL 3) were served with a side of ketchup – another bad sign—and a small dish of watery mint chutney. The samosas themselves were filled with a texturally adventuresome mix that seemed to include chickpeas, potatoes, raisins, walnuts, peas, walnuts and cilantro. They were certainly nourishing, but a bit on the heavy side. The “palak panel” (GEL 8), known elsewhere as palak paneer, featured plump cubes of soft white cheese swimming in emerald-green spinach sauce; this was a pretty dish with good mouth-feel, but it was a little bland. The chunky chicken masala had a decent kick of spices to it, but the chicken was tough – a far cry from the creamy, tender meat I was hoping for. The keema curry was quite a bit like a meat chili, but perhaps it was supposed to be that way.

Maharaja is a very pleasant and cozy restaurant. Though their dishes – at least the ones we tried – fell short of scrumptious, and the service was a little cold, the restaurant interior is sumptuous and intimate, with low lighting and rich textiles providing a nice dining environment. Main dishes (GEL 12-20) come in modest portions – definitely order a side of bread or plenty of rice to make this a substantial meal.

And if anyone knows where the New Delhi has gone – or if it is coming back – please spread the word. Email info@georgiatoday.ge with “New Delhi” in the subject line.

Indian Restaurant “Maharajah”
24 Akhvlediani (aka Perovskaya), Tbilisi
Tel: 99 97 99
Published in Georgia Today, 16 Mar 2007.

Mtsvadi en plein air

2007-03-11T11:37:00.000-04:00

In February, C and I went to Gori, Imereti and Kakheti with Imedi TV to participate in a segment on Georgian hospitality for their Droeba program. The gist of our participation was this: we would, one by one, knock on the doors of strangers and ask for water. We would gage their hospitality by

Whether they gave us water;
Whether they invited us to stay for wine or a supra;
How persistent they were about item 2.

C wrote a very funny essay for Lost Writers about our trip; read that if you want to know more about it. I want to write about the MEAT.

After we'd gone through the "Knock Knock" routine in Kakheti, our mark, a 70-year old kind-faced man named Gurami, made a fire in his yard from dry grapevines. The flames licked the air in six-foot flames, then dwindled to a bed of coals. Just as the fire subsided, seven skewers of meat were set on an iron rack that held the pork a few inches above the shimmering coals. When the meat was pronounced "done," it was put in a bowl, sprinkled with coarse salt, and tossed with rings of raw red onion. We sat at a table in the yard, filled our glasses, drank a toast to hospitality, and dug in.

There may have been silverware on the table, but we ate the mtsvadi with our hands. The grilled meat, fresh off the fire, was warm and slick in my fingers. The thick ropes of fat striating the flesh had turned buttery over the fire. I reached for a piece and a very organic smear of something white and soft from somewhere between bone and tendon—a shmear of hot marrow?—glazed my knuckles. I considered a moment, then licked my fingers.

I've eaten mtsvadi in many restaurants in Tbilisi—they've been best at the Marjanishvili Shemoikhede Genatsvale, and Championebi on Tamarashvili street reportedly has good grilled meat—but nothing so far has come close to equaling melting hot meat fresh off the fire, piled in a huge heaping bowl, eaten en plein air.

Man cannot live off of mtsvadi alone. I realized this in an, er, visceral sense when, in 2003, I went on a camping trip where our guides fed us mtsvadi all weekend. The meat traveled in a vinegar marinade (making it technically basturma, not mtsvadi) and when it came off the fire, our friend Sergo would impress us all by manfully crushing pomegranate seeds over the steaming meat with his bare hands. By the end of our trip, one young woman was sick from eating so much pork (she's a vegetarian now, thanks to that experience) and the rest of us were constipated for a week.

But after Gurami's supra, more grape vines were added to the purple-orange-white bed of coals to freshen the fire for another round of mtsvadi. This round was for Gurami's family, some of whom had missed the first supra. As the camera crew packed away their equipment, my head full of raw white wine, I extended my cold hands towards the quick, dry column of fire, wishing we could stay.

* * * * *
A recipe for mtsvadi, which seems to have been cribbed rather shamelessly from Darra Goldstein's book The Georgian Feast, is available at About Georgia.

Perambulation therapy

2007-03-05T21:49:00.000-05:00

After too many days of feeling a little blue, a little homesick, a little tired of the apartment and each other, C and I went for a four-hour walk around Tbilisi.

I put on my Dad's old Levi's jacket, my army-green carpenter pants, and my black-rimmed geek glasses and left the apartment looking maybe a *little* like a squat Asian freak among the statuesque (or somehow statuesque-seeming) Caucasians of Tbilisi, but comfortable and determined to cover some ground.

The walk took us up Rustaveli Avenue, up through Vake, and eventually into Saburtalo. On our way, we went through Vake Park (a 558 acre public park), 40% of which seems to be taken up by a huge fountain/memorial that includes a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a 1976, 92-foot tall "Statue of Victory," and a dramatically tiered (though currently scuzzy and still) fountain. On the way down, C counted 335 steps from top to bottom.

A young man was playing with his Pitbull in Vake Park. There was a branch about 5 feet off the ground, with a short length of rope dangling down. The dog kept jumping up and chomping down on the rope. When it did this, it was suspended in the air, and would sometimes swing back and forth like the pendulum of a clock, or would describe rapid acrobatic parabolas (think chopper blade) in the air. There was a small amusement park with some very old, and some very new rides. We saw a cat napping in the sun by one of the older, closed kiddie-rides.

A busy but pedestrian-accommodating street connects Vake with Saburtalo. On the way there, we passed "Championebi's," reportedly a very good place to come for mtsvadi. There was also a hand-written sign, advertising "khashi dilas 7-saatistan" (Khashi mornings from 7 AM). Khashi is a Georgian hangover remedy that, according to one source, consists of "a thick bouillon made from cow’s hooves and offal that have been rubbed in corn flour and boiled for 12 hours over low heat. The dish is served steaming hot with lavash bread and a carafe of vodka." (Needless to say, C and I will be checking in for khashi early one of these mornings.)

Got lost trying to find an Indian restaurant that may or may not still exist. Our friend Shane gave us good directions, but that was way back in September, and the avenues are wider in Saburtalo & the buildings taller and more generic than in our end of town, plus the street names are unfamiliar. After an hour of fruitless wandering, C and I split a candy-bar (misleadingly labled "nuts" -- it was basically a snickers bar with NO nuts inside - Boo!) and hopped a metro home.

Now my feet hurt, but I don't have depression any more.

Tbilisi's World of Khinkali

2007-03-03T05:22:00.000-05:00

If you aren’t yet sick of khinkali – the super-ubiquitous Caucasian boiled dumpling – Khinklis Samqaro (“Khinkali World”) should be next on your list of places to eat some.

How many varieties of khinkali are there in Tbilisi? I’ve counted 11 so far – 10 of which are available at Khinklis Samqaro.* Of the 10 khinkali varieties on the menu, about half are various combinations of meat and spices named for different Georgian regions or towns. Of these, the best is indisputably the khinkali sapirmo, the dumpling de la maison (50 tetri per), whose juicy meat filling is mixed with onions, spices and chopped tarragon. The tbilisuri, another city-style dumpling with chopped herbs mixed with the meat (40 tetri each) is also quite good.

Vegetarians won’t have to sit on the sidelines at this sakhinkle. The restaurant offers four varieties of meatless dumpling. There is a creamy khinkali khachoti with fresh milk curds (40 tetri each) that is intermittently available (sometimes the kitchen runs out of khacho). On a good night, these have a fluffy filling somewhat like a cottage cheese-cream cheese hybrid. (Some friends reportedly had some khachoti on an off night, when the filling was a bit sour). Also good are the qvelit with cheese (50 tetri each), which come with sour cream. Fasting friends may also enjoy a platter of turbaned khinkali sokoti (with mushroom filling—40 tetri each) or kartopilit (potato filling—30 tetri each) served with a side of margarine.

All of the dumplings are freshly made, and well-formed (some to the point of appearing almost sculptural – the khinkali qvelit in particular are dramatically molded, and cluster on the plate like exotic seashells).

For those seeking refuge from khinkali (there is such a thing as too many), Khinklis Samqaro has a wide-ranging menu that extends far beyond dumpling territory.

If you’re a meat-eater, don’t miss the khbos chashushuli (stewed veal – GEL 4.50), which comes, still bubbling, in a hot ceramic dish. Subtly flavored in a lovely thick tomato-based sauce, the meat is tender and melts in your mouth. You’ll want to eat basins of it. The badrijani nigvsit (aubergine with walnuts – GEL 3) is also superb. These are lightly fried, then rolled into bite-sized wraps with a spread of herbed garlic and walnut paste. Other items worth a try are the gebjalia (GEL 2), pillows of soft sulguni cheese in a sumptuous spiced mint, cheese and cream sauce. The aromatic and addictive sokos ketze sulgunit (sulguni cheese-stuffed mushrooms caps broiled on a hot plate) is served piping hot, sizzling in its own juices. The mushrooms, at GEL 10, are at the high end of the menu – most of the other plates are less than GEL 5 each. (The jigari – an offal plate – is reportedly excellent, but I haven’t had the, ummm, guts to try it yet.)

Khinklis Samqaro is on Dadianis street off of Tavisuplebis Moedani. The restaurant, which you descend to from street-level, is usually not very busy on weeknights, but fills up on weekends. The dining environment is casual. There’s beer on tap, good wine available, and the usual bottled beverages for sale.

Menu in Georgian. No English spoken; be prepared to make your way in Georgian or Russian.

* The remaining sulguni variant is at Chilikas Bichis Dukani.

Khinklis Samqaro
Dadianis 12 (Off of Tavisuplebis Moedani). Tel: 893 27 44 12
Published in Georgia Today 2 Mar 2007.

Old Town Studios

2007-02-23T00:34:00.000-05:00

A Grassroots Art Gallery opens in Sighnaghi

Sighnaghi, usually a sleepy town, is currently one big construction zone. An army of construction vehicles has shattered both the pristine quiet and cobblestone streets of this fortified hill-town. Workers from all over the region commute into Sighnaghi. They are taking the city apart to put it back together – new sewage and waterways, electrical and phone lines are being laid, town center buildings are being gutted and rebuilt, and multiple main streets are being restored to an ideal vision of Sighnaghi’s antiquated self.

On one of the streets presently under heavy renovation, a different kind of cultural restoration project is underway. A collective of Sighnaghi-based artists have joined forces to open Old Town Studios, a sort of grassroots art gallery. The gallery aims to provide a place where visitors can view some of the artwork produced by Sighnaghi’s ever-growing community of artists, which in recent years has come to include artisan wood-carvers, painters, musicians, carpet- and kilim-weavers, and winemakers.

At the moment, the pitch of Baratashvili Street is a slurry of mud. A trench deep enough to swallow a man runs the length of the street. At 18 Baratashvili Street, the trench is spanned by a narrow footbridge, which leads the visitor through a white metal gate and into the courtyard of Old Town Studios.

Spearheading the collaborative effort is American painter John Henry Wurdeman, who has lived and painted in Sighnaghi for the past decade. He speaks engagingly, and his blue eyes sparkle with enthusiasm. He is wearing a pair of fuzzy brown slippers to spare the carpets and freshly-scrubbed floors. As he describes the genesis of Old Town Studios, he sits by a fire in one of the gallery hearths and pokes at burning logs with a pair of iron tongs.

During his time in Sighnaghi, Wurdeman has befriended numerous artists and musicians, many of whom found reasons to move to Sighnaghi over the years. Among the transplants to Sighnaghi are carpet-weaver David Beraia, who moved from Tbilisi, and artisan wood-carver Shergil Pirtskhelani, originally of Svaneti. Both established their own studios in Sighnaghi.

“The whole idea of the place happened very organically,” Wurdeman says. The three men were all friends, and one of the things that connected them was their shared interest in Georgia’s traditional arts. When friends came to town, they often would want to see Wurdeman’s paintings, Beraia’s carpets, Pirtskhelani’s instruments and furniture. And while their works have all been on display or for sale, at one time or another, in Tbilisi, there was nowhere in their adopted hometown where they could show and share their work.

Old Town Studios was built by the participating artists and their friends. There are plans for a finished courtyard outdoors, but for now the main attractions are all indoors, in the two finished gallery spaces, painting and weaving studios, and wine cellar.

The painting gallery displays a teasingly small array of works clearly meant to arouse, not overwhelm, the visual palette. The selection of paintings currently on display are all bound for exhibits in the United States, but those interested in rooting around for paintings to purchase can visit Wurdeman’s painting studio itself, with its much larger collection paintings, on the second floor.

Wurdeman’s painting pedigree is unusual—after enrolling at the Maryland Institute College of Art, he transferred to the Surikov Institute of Art in Moscow, where he studied under Vyacheslav Nikolaivic Zabelin. His painting career eventually led him to Sighnaghi, Georgia, where he fell in love with the landscape and culture, as well as with his future wife, musician Ketevan Mindorashvili.

The room where Wurdeman’s paintings hang is a pleasant wash of summer after the mud and snow outside. The cream-colored walls are hung with evocative impressionistic landscapes, portraits and still-lifes painted in Sighnaghi. The paintings bloom with the greens and yellows of a landscape in full flower. There are panoramas of the gardens at Bodbe monastery under a wide sky, thick canopies of trees pierced by steeples, the sunny streets and wooden balconies of Sighnaghi’s town center.

The room adjoining the painting gallery has exposed brick walls, and is hung with vivid Georgian carpets. A few representative pieces of carved wooden furniture are also on display.

The furniture is chiefly by Shergil Pirtskhelani, originally of Latali, Svaneti. Pirtskhelani is from a family of musicians and wood-carvers – he and his six brothers and one sister were all taught by their father, Romeo Pirtskhelani, who has been recognized by Georgian Orthodox Church and the Georgian government for his cultural contributions.

At the age of 17, Shergil Pirtskhelani moved to Tbilisi, where he studied art history, painting, and Georgian folk art. During an exhibition of the Pirtskhelani family’s woodwork in Tbilisi (the whole family is renowned for their wood-carving and signing), he met the John Wurdeman and Ketevan Mindorashvili, who recruited him (as well as his sister Teah and brother Shmagi) to sing in Mindorashvili’s chorus, Zedashe Ensemble. In 2002, after a US-tour with Zedashe, Pirtskhelani moved to Sighnaghi, where he has since continued to sing and make artisan furniture and traditional instruments such as chongi and chuniri. His brothers, who are wood-carvers in their own rights, often collaborate with him in his studio.

There is not a lot of woodwork on display at the moment – each piece takes a lot of time to produce, and Pirtskhelani works largely on commission. But there is an ornamented makhvshi’s throne, as well as a large, caramel-colored bed-frame with a linear ornamental design carved into it. At the center of headboard is a disc carved with sunflower-like lines curving in one direction from its heart. This disc motif—variously thought to represent the sun, the galaxy, or kindness – is an emblem common in Svanetian wood ornaments.

The traditional arts room of Old Town Studios is decidedly dominated by carpets, which represent the tip of an enormous enterprise directed by David Beraia.

Beraia worked for years as a carpet- and kilim-dealer. In recent years, he has dedicated himself to researching and reviving traditional carpet-weaving in Georgia. Beraia employs about 30 women of all ages in the greater Sighnaghi area who now make carpets in the traditional style, and he is helping to establish a center for carpet-weaving at Shuamta (near Telavi).

Beraia, a middle-aged man with a dark beard, warm expression, and intense brown eyes, describes his work with great seriousness. Resurrecting traditional carpet weaving, and reestablishing the preeminence of Georgian carpet-weaving is Beraia’s own expression of patriotism.

Georgian carpets have long been considered among the finest in the world. After World War I, many Georgian carpets came to be labeled Armenian or Azeri. “Everyone wants to claim the best as their own,” Beraia says. He adds that, while carpet-weaving was certainly a trans-caucasian phenomenon, “Georgian carpets are very different from Azeri or Armenian carpets.”

Beraia traveled to Iran, Armenia, Turkey, and around Central Asia to gather information—and carpets. And while there may be others in Georgia with a collection to rival his (though surely, he says, not many), he knows of no one else documenting the history and working on the revival of authentically Georgian carpet-weaving.

The carpets on display at Old Town Studios are vivid and bright, and Beraia’s extensive knowledge of the history and origins of his carpets make the experience of carpet-shopping pleasant and interesting for a novice. He patiently deconstructs one large carpet in Old Town Studios, pointing out how the seemingly abstract geometric shapes describe boats, the passage of time, and an elaborate sheep-skin – telling, in effect, the story of Jason and the Argonauts. Another, smaller carpet has a blood-red heart, against which background a small white hen has laid a small white egg. Before marriage, Beraia explains, a bride-to-be would make one of these small “demo” carpets in order to demonstrate her handiness, dedication, and integrity. (The hen-and-egg pattern proclaims her fertility.)

All of the carpets from Beraia’s weaving school are made using traditional materials, and all of the yarn (which mostly comes from Tusheti) is dyed using traditional methods and materials, and cost USD $300-$1,500, depending on materials, complexity and size.

Visitors to Old Town Studios may purchase one of the carpets on display or commission a carpet woven with their own choice of patterns and colors. Those interested can also arrange to take weaving lessons.

In addition to the paintings, carpets, and furniture on display, Old Town Studios has renovated the 250-year-old marani (wine cellar) beneath the gallery space. Visitors can taste Saperavi and Rikatsiteli wine from this past fall that has been made by traditional Georgian methods. The white wine has been fermented with the grape stems and skins, (rather than stripped of these tannin-producing elements as European white wines are), which yields a distinctively dark honey-colored white wine.

Gela Patalishvili, a vintner and farmer from Bodbis khevi, is the architect of Old Town Studio’s marani. He hopes to establish a solid reputation for excellent local wine, and to eventually offer agricultural tours for people interested in traditional Georgian wine-making.

The New Tourism

For many years, Sighnaghi has been something of a backpacker’s destination. Though the town, when not under heavy construction, was already picturesque and rich in history, it was lacking more upscale accommodations and places to eat. After the massive renovation project, the town will likely attract broader array of tourists – both those roughing it, and those who prefer down pillows under their heads.

And Old Town Studios is not the only bettor on Sighnaghi’s future as a tourism and cultural center. MGroup is opening the Hotel Sighnaghi in the former digs of the Intourist Hotel. In addition to khinkali and kababi cafes, Sighnaghi has two nice restaurants – Pancho Villa (Mexican - 8255 3 15 11 or 899 19 23 56) on Queen Tamar street, and an excellent Georgian restaurant overlooking the Alazani Valley (name unknown, but it’s just through the archway in the city wall on the road downhill to Tsnori), and a five-star restaurant is reportedly in the works.

“We’re taking a risk in doing this,” Wurdeman says of the grassroots art gallery, “but five years ago, we would have been insane.”

Old Town Studios will open March 3 2007.

Old Town Studios is located at 18 Baratashvili Street in Sighnaghi.
Call John Wurdeman (899 53 44 84) or Shergil Pirtskhelani (899 79 53 60). English, Georgian, and Russian spoken.

When to Visit

Old Town Studio’s inaugural weekend is March 3-4, 2007, and the studio will be open both days from 12 pm – 5 pm. There will be wine-tasting, and the artists will be on hand to talk about their work and offer studio tours.

After their opening weekend, Old Town Studios is open Fridays and Saturdays 11 am – 5 pm, and Sundays 1 pm – 5 pm, and by appointment. Large parties or those wishing to ensure a studio tours should call ahead. Call John Wurdeman (899 53 44 84) or Shergil Pirtskhelani (899 79 53 60). Both speak English and Georgian, and Wurdeman speaks Russian as well.

How to Get there

Marshrutkas run between Tbilisi and Sighnaghi several times a day. Tbilisi-Sighnaghi Marshrutkas leave from the Samgori metro station parking lot at: 9:00; 11:00; 1:00; 3:00; 6:00. Sighnaghi-Tbilisi leave from in front of the Sighnaghi post office at: 7:00; 9:00; 11:00; 1:00; 4:00; 6:00. In Sighnaghi, buy your ticket at the ticket window (inside the red brick building that abuts the parking lot) or in the parking-lot if the ticket-window is still under construction. The trips cost 5 GEL each way. Arrive early – marshrutkas leave as soon as they are full.

Sighnaghi may be on its way to having well-paved roads and broad sidewalks, but for now the streets are muddy and dominated by construction vehicles. Sturdy footwear recommended.

Where to Stay

Until the new hotel is finally open (latest reports say it will start receiving guests in April), visitors may also arrange to stay at Nana’s Family Hotel, which is located at 2 Saradjishvili Street in Sighnaghi’s city center. Call Nana Kokiashvili at 8255 3 18 29 (hotel) or 899 79 50 93 (mobile), or email her at Kkshvl@yahoo.com. Nana speaks some English, and the hotel (run from her home) is spacious, with hot water and clean, modern bathroom facilities. She can also arrange excursions to local sites of interest, including Bodbe Monastery (where St. Nino is buried) and Davit Gareji.

Published in Georgia Today, 23 Feb 2007.

a-smile-ation

2007-02-19T07:28:00.000-05:00

I never embraced the idea of American exceptionalism. And many ways I still don’t. But living in Georgia, and thinking and writing about what's going on here as best as I can, I’ve noticed that there are, actually, some major ways in which the New World is different from the Old.

Time and again, I find myself explaining how, in spite of the fact that my father was born in Japan, I myself (born and raised in the States) am American, not Japanese. And that actually my father naturalized a few years ago, and is now American, too. (I'm not so naive as to think that no one in America would contest my American-ness, but I don't take them very seriously, and America's most optimistic view of itself is still as melting-pot/tossed salad. And so.)

But then, in spite of my painstaking and painful Georgian elucidation of this simple construct, my conversation partner, who is perhaps selling cabbages, turns to his friend and says. "See, she's Japanese. I told you so!"

For my part, I struggle to understand how people of Georgian descent who have been living in Iran for 400 years can still consider themselves Georgians. (They've been petitioning for assistance in returning to Georgia for quite some time now). The seeming aversion to—or impossibility of—cultural assimilation here is jarring. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it. Is it even so?

That is all.

Tbilisi Laundry Ban

2007-02-18T01:39:00.000-05:00

I'm copy-editing The Georgian Times. It's Sunday morning. I'm still in my pajamas, but I would like to bring the following article to your attention:

Tbilisi residents prohibited from hanging laundry on balconies
Tbilisi residents who hang laundry out on balconies overlooking central streets will now face a $285 fine, the Tbilisi city hall told the Novosti Georgia agency on Friday.

A law to that effect came into force February 15.

Fines must be paid within 20 days, and will be tripled for repeat violations. Tbilisi's city hall said it will distribute drying boards to poor families whose balconies overlook central streets. All others will have to pay for their own.

Guys, I make $250 a month, and that is decent chunk of change here. It lets us pay our electricity, gas, and water bills, with a lot left over for bottles of wine and dinners out.

People who dry their laundry on their balconies don't have driers. (Heck, we don't have one either). Clothes take a long time to dry indoors away from the light and the stir of air outdoors. I've been kind of happy about the downtown beautification project -- many of the old buildings are having their rotting facades re-plastered, and it's nice to see this pretty city get off its knees and apply some fresh makeup or whatever. But barring people from using what's theirs to do something as necessary as drying their laundry - purely in the interest of what? making passers-by forget that there are people without driers in the world? - seems petty and ridiculous.

And just what the heck is a drying board, anyway?

Sakhinklis Riqe: more than meats the eye

2007-02-17T01:56:00.000-05:00

Update: 30 April 2007 This restaurant - as well as its neighbors - no longer exists, having been bulldozed as part of the Georgian government's nationalization project. Read more about it here: Rike Falls to the Bulldozer in Controversial New Privatization Flurry.

From the street, Sakhinklis Riqe looks like nothing so much as a storage shed for the much larger restaurant that stands beside it, but this unassuming little eatery serves what may be the best kababi in town.

Sakhinklis Riqe is located in Riqe Place, amidst a cluster of other restaurants on the left embankment of the Mtkvari River (between the Metekhi and Baratashvili bridges, but closer to the latter). Don’t be confused by the bright lights and comely exteriors of the big restaurants - look for the squat white structure with no windows sitting cheek-by-jowl beside the restaurant with red “Sameba” letters on its roof.

Inside, you’ll find a surprisingly spacious dining area. The air might be a bit hazy with cigarette smoke, but the warm wooden shine of the large tables and chairs - the owners are clearly privy to the bochka/beer barrel aesthetic – and the friendly demeanor of the wait staff make this a cozy place to dine.

Sakhinklis Riqe doesn’t have a printed menu, but it doesn’t need one - you can count their offerings on one hand. They serve kababi, khinkali, mtsvadi and kombosto mzhave - the house pickled cabbage.

Of all of the items on the menu, the best is unquestionably the kababi.

For the most part, kababi in Tbilisi tend to be pretty predictable - heavy, spiced sausages in flatbread - without a great deal of variation from restaurant to restaurant. But the kababi at Sakhinklis Riqe, like the restaurant itself, is more than “meats” the eye.

Served without fanfare in sheets of thin lavash flatbread, the kababi are of average length and girth. An exploratory poke with a fork reveals lightly sautéed onions and cilantro with a subtle red pepper paste sprinkled beneath the lavash. But it is only upon digging in that one properly appreciates this kababi’s best qualities: the meat is moist and yielding, almost melting in your mouth, and is subtly spiced with minced onion, garlic and herbs.

If you need to round out your meal, the khinkali and mtsvadi will do. The khinkali are pedestrian - just your basic buttoned meat dumpling - but tasty, and the grilled pork mtsvadi likewise is flavorful, if a little on the dry side.

The kombosto mzhave, while simple, is quite excellent. The fermented red cabbage is a pleasing bright fuchsia, and is pickled with red pepper, which lends the dish a little kick. Be sure to order the kombosto if you’re going all-out with the meat menu. The lactic acid in the fermented cabbage will give your digestive system a much-needed boost, and the dish is also a refreshing change of pace for your taste buds.

There’s Kazbegi beer on tap, and Gomi vodka and other standard beverages (Borjomi, Limonati, etc) are also available.

In our reverie of meat, beer, and pickled cabbage my party never learned how much each item cost, but we ordered some of everything, left barely able to walk, and spent about GEL 10 each.

Georgian and Russian spoken. No English, but none is needed, so long as you master the following vocabulary: Kababi, kombosto, ludi (beer).

Sakhinklis Riqe: Riqe Place, 747020
Published in Georgia Today, 16 Feb 07

No Starbucks in Tbilisi?

2007-02-09T04:26:00.000-05:00

It’s true that, for better and for worse, there are no Starbucks in Tbilisi. Yet. But those who long for a coffee-and-pastry pick-me-up on the way to work, or for a comfortable cafe in which to mega-dose espresso and type their novel, need not despair. At Coffee and Donut and the Donut Stop your pre-caffeinated self will swear – if you only squint a little – that you’re at a South Caucasian Starbucks/Krispy Kreme joint venture.

A variety of fresh pastries are available at both donut depots for GEL 0.20, 1.10 and 1.20. Plump sugar-dusted jelly-filled confections and crispy chocolate-glazed cream-filled morsels jostle for primacy at the counter. It doesn’t really seem possible to be able to go wrong with any of these – deep-fried dough and sugar can’t help but nail a hole-in-one – but I will say that the chocolate-icing crust is tooth-achingly familiar, and the fruit-jelly-filled pastries are especially worth a try; the fruit filling has a tart kick to it that makes these a much more toothsome treat than their overwhelmingly saccharine state-side jelly-bellied counterparts.

The GEL 2.50-and-under coffee menu at both donut shops includes various members of the -ccino family (cappuccino, mochaccino) as well as regular coffees. Authentic Starbucks blends (Yukon Blend, Breakfast Blend, etc) of questionable provenance (which country have they been smuggled in from?) while not on-tap at the time of writing, are intermittently available as well.

The Donut Stop on Kekelidze Street is best suited for those who prefer their coffee and pastry to go. A few years ago, when trademark anarchy reigned supreme, patrons of the Donut Stop might have been lured into the shop by a Starbucks logo painted on the wall outside the café. No longer. Whether due to the need for a new splash of paint, or in provident response to the proliferation of trademark lawsuits against blatant knock-offs in countries where Starbucks is expanding (which now include India, Egypt, Brazil and Russia), the mermaid has been covered up, somewhat diminishing the Donut Stop’s genuine faux-Starbucks aspirations.

Which is not to say it doesn’t try to evoke some atmosphere. The shelves behind the counter boast a number of namdvili (if purely decorative) Starbucks coffee bags, while Starbucks stickers adorn the front counter. The walls of the café display a waist-high band of that distinct ‘Starbucks Green’ paint, and are festooned with green-painted pictures – some of which include the word “Starbucks” swirling around in the pigment. There are a handful of tables should you choose to eat-in, but the atmosphere is a little on the silent-and-deadly side.

On Abashidze Street, Donut and Coffee provides all the ambiance of a neighborhood Starbucks without the “wannabe” vibe of its first location (although its sign – a green circle around the Donut and Coffee logo – does distantly resemble the insignia of its Seattle-based spiritual mentor). Inside, the cafe is spacious and bright. Large windows look out onto the street. Tables for four are set discretely apart from one another, evoking the ambiance of a street café and a feeling of privacy. Patrons have the rare luxury of being able to choose between discrete smoking and non-smoking sections, and one room has a stack of periodicals for your perusal. Come early however if you want to enjoy peace, quiet and fresh air as the dining room fills up with cigarette smoking students in the afternoon.

If nursing a -ccino and nibbling a donut for hours isn’t satisfactory, Donut and Coffee also offers more substantial fare, including salads (GEL 4-8), pasta (GEL 7-9), sandwiches (GEL 3-5), and the strange and misguided “flat burger,” – a hole-less donut with odd fillings such as crab salad (GEL 3).

Donut and Coffee: 10/12 Abashidze Street, Tel: (32) 25 14 66
The Donut Stop: 16 Kekelidze Street, Tel: (32) 25 39 85
Menus in Georgian and English.

Published in Georgia Today, 9 Feb 2007.

We could be assholes...

2007-02-08T21:40:00.000-05:00

...just for one day, though.

Tuesday, C received a sudden flurry of email and phone-call from the US Embassy in Tbilisi.

My heart soared. Were our passports, which we'd submitted for visa processing WAY back before Christmas ("real" Christmas), finally ready? Might we finally take our long-anticipated holiday to Istanbul or Yerevan to catch some quick respite from Tbilisi? Were we, at long last, going to be able to flaunt our citizenship and multiple-entry-capabilities to underpaid border-guards at each cardinal crossing?

Alas, no.

Instead, we'd been offered up to a TV Station seeking Americans willing to participate in a short segment of Imedi TV's weekly "Droebea" ('the times'), one of the country's most popular TV programs. Okay! We thought. Cool. Critical to the pitch, though, was the notion that this was a "One Day Event." And where would we be heading? Where else? Gori - best known for it's apples, and Stalin!

We arranged to meet the journalist and his crew at 12, which ended up being 12:45. No problem. We crammed into a Niva and rocketed across town to the TV station. We made some small-talk.

Had we brought a map?
Of Gori?
Yes, of course!
Um, no.

And so on.

We changed cars at the TV station, then burned rubber to Gori, where the programmers were anticipating a bristly, less-than hospitable from the locals -- apparently not renowned for their big-heartedness. (This impression might be partly due to the hyper-proliferation of Stalin memorabilia -- towering statues, streets, temples, museums -- that dominate the otherwise modest city.)

C was miced, and after getting out of the car, and getting out of the car again, and again, and one more time please get out of the car, but this time don't look at the camera please, we set to work hassling the unsuspecting pedestrians of Gori for directions to museums, churches, and cheap eateries.

Everyone was disappointingly (for the purposes of the program) friendly. One older lady patted my cheek and called me "dearie" when she heard we were visiting Gori from the United States. Virtually everyone we approached offered to walk us to the museum/church/eatery we so desperately sought, which was awkward for us, because we weren't actually supposed to go anywhere.

When we shifted gears and started haranguing people in their own homes, the reception was likewise warm. We approached a cluster of men overseeing some illegal rewiring of TV cable-wires in the street, and the promising crowd all-but-vanished by the time we got there. One man in his 70's or 80's walking with a severe limp and a cane was still there, though, and when we asked where we might find water to drink he immediately waved us inside his home. He made his slow, shuffling way to a small kitchen, produced a clean glass, filled it with water, and gave it to us. We drank it as he beamed at us.

We left his home thanking him profusely over our shoulders, and practically ran into the TV car, which had driven right up the the front door. We got in the car and drove away. As he watched us leave, his face clouded over with a perplexed and suspicious expression. I felt dirty and kind of ashamed, as did C. We were both relieved when the next people we approached waved us towards a watering hole near the old church, and all we had left to do for the day was to be fed. (In the interest of further research for my food column, I'd been dropping leaden hints that I wanted to try some good Kartlian food).

The TV guys took us out to dinner at a restaurant with a modest canal-and-willow garden and etchings of Venice on the walls. The dining area was a high-ceilinged ski-lodgey wood-beamed hall. The restaurant served traditional Kartlian fare (which it turns out we were familiar with -- good old meat-on-a-stick and local red wine), and was called "Venetsia" ("Venice") ((of course)).

Somewhere along the way, the TV crew made it clear that they were expecting us to make a repeat performance the following day -- only this time, we were heading to Telavi, 2 hours east of Tbilisi. Now, it's not like C and I have a great many commitments that we absolutely have to meet day-to-day. But we are -- how shall I say? -- extremely jealous of our time, clutching our unstructured days to our collective bosom with clammy, fretful hands.

The trip to Gori, 45 minutes from Tbilisi, had taken about 8 hours. Telavi, with the two-hour-each-way commute, plus the expectation of more elaborate hospitality, promised to gobble up another fair day that might otherwise be spent more fruitfully (translating poems, writing about donuts, blogging, yada yada). This morning we both woke up grumpy and reluctant to participate any further in the inadequately prenegotiated TV thingy.

Thankfully, I received in my email a reminder about an Idealist.org meeting that I'd signed up for. I legitimately don't want to miss it -- it's part of a larger world-wide initiative that I think I will want to write about here -- and there's no way that we'd be back from Telavi in time for me to attend. So C called the TV people, and while they made "O dear" noises, we promised to be available tomorrow if they need us, and that will have to be good enough for everyone.

And now, I must go investigate the quality of donuts at a local pastry shop. (It's easy to pooh-pooh "where's the water?" programming, but I'm unkindly blowing that off in order to write about fried dough and international grassroots social organizing. Wait... that's kind of cool, though -- isn't it?).

Chinese Commodities

2007-02-08T11:05:00.000-05:00

Our friend Shane H, a Peace Corps Volunteer based in Gurjaani, Georgia, knows where to find the good food and the cool things. He's a former chef. He has shot many hoofed creatures, and once had much of the skin on his face replaced after an accident with an explosive toy rocket. He shares a love of burning Christmas trees, fast internets, and good cheap food.

Last he was in Tbilisi, he mentioned a new indoor shopping mall—one entirely comprised of stores selling stuff Made in China. One afternoon, in Shane's hardy company, we struck out to find said China Mall.

It was, in the end, hard to miss. Directly across from the big central food bazaar, there is a brand-new, cinder-block-and-cement behemoth building with a used-car-lot's worth of flags gracing its grim elephant-gray exterior.

Tbilisi has many "China Shops" throughout its variously winding and cobbled streets. They are places where one can buy the kind of affordable and sometimes poorly-made miscellany that has "Made in China" stamped on it -- everything from knock-off Adidas sneakers and women's scarfs to alarm clocks and steak knives. These shops seem to be staffed by multilingual Chinese and Georgians, and the shops are pretty popular. Many of the things for sale are of poor quality, but they're priced accordingly.

Anyway, some unknown power had this very substantial, hastily assembled (and still being finished) building erected opposite the food bazaar near Vagzlis Moedani. And they had it filled with "China Shops," where you can now get *all* of your Made In China-ware for (so Shane says) less than the street-side China shops are selling (the exact same stuff) for.

And so: direct from the sweatshops of China -- mops! flatware! forks! aprons! women's underwear! clock radios! irons! minor household appliances! and many more things!

There's also a casino (if you want to give your money to management directly without burdening yourself with material goods), and a very cheap Georgian & Chinese buffet-style fast-food joint, where, as in the rest of the mall, you get what you pay for.

Off the (B)eaten Path: Left Bank (possibly Armenian) Grilled Goodies

2007-02-02T03:10:00.000-05:00

“Chilikas Bichis Dukani,” in the old Armenian neighborhood near the Isani metro station, is a good place to go if you are experiencing a hankering for grilled food in a low-key setting.

I was directed to the restaurant by a vegetarian friend who had waxed rhapsodic about their grilled mushrooms (sokos mtsvadi) and sulguni cheese khinkhali. “It’s a no-frills kind of place,” he added. “No lacy tablecloths or anything.”

Indeed, the restaurant really has no frills whatsoever, even an external indicator – like a sign – that it exists.

Finding the place, while uncomplicated, takes some elaborate directions in the absence of discernable area street signs. Chilikas Bichis Dukani (“Chilika’s sons’ café”) is located uphill, behind the Isani Metro station (on Ketevan Tsamebuli Avenue). If one is facing the metro station with Ketevan Tsamebuli Street to one’s back, walk up the street to the right of the metro station, towards the highway. At the end of a long block of money exchange windows, clothing stalls, and khatchapuri windows, take your first left. There is a gas station on the left, and across from that, on the right side of the street is a beige building with a long red Coca-Cola awning and two chimneys. A small sign reading “khinkhali, kababi, mtsvadi,” marks the entrance-point to Chilikas Bichis Dukani.

Once inside, there are nine tables, each seating four people or so. The décor is sparse and a little shabby – only a few token light bulbs work – but the tables and flatware are spotless. There are no printed menus, but a dry-erase board on the wall lists some of the more popular items. There is also a glass case where one can peruse the many kinds of grillable foodstuff – vegetables, meat, sausage – on long metal skewers.

Grilled things are definitely the way to go here. The meat mtsvadi, which comes in a variety of styles and shapes – including sausage with lemon on a stick – ranges from 6 to 10 lari (the latter are quite large), and is quite good. Also good are the grilled potatoes – sliced into medallions and roasted over coals – which are 2 lari per potato (about 5 medallions). Be sure to order at least one skewer of the sumptuous grilled mushrooms (sokos mtsvadi). They come 5 to a skewer, and cost 6 lari. A skewer of whole grilled badrijani, pepper and tomato costs 3 lari, and is pleasantly smoky, though wanting a little in the way of additional seasoning. The kababi, which come wrapped in a paper-thin lavash with onion and chopped chives, is average – which is to say, very tasty if you like that sort of thing.

Throughout the lunch hour, waitresses delivered platters of steaming khinkhali to the tables around us. Khinkhali are clearly another strong suit of Chilikas Bichis Dukani. Regular meat khinkhali are 50 tetri a piece; the sulguni khinkhali are 1 lari per. These latter are definitely worth trying; when the khinkhali are eaten hot, the melted sulguni cheese filling drips in gooey, buttery, mozzarella-like strands.

Given the location of the restaurant, and its reputation as an Armenian restaurant, we decided to try some kyufta. We had the option of ordering it fried or in some other fashion (we didn’t quite understand, speaking very limited Georgian and no Russian) and opted for the more mysterious process. This was perhaps a mistake. The kyufta arrived soft and gray – blanched, steamed or boiled –in a pool of melting butter. It was not bad – warm, buttery, and folded discretely in a paper-thin lavash – but was sufficiently mysterious as to be a little off-putting.

It’s not the cheapest dinner in town, but it’s a nice change of pace for a pretty low cost. Sharing food among three people on two occasions, my fellow foodies and I dropped about 10 GEL per person and left pleasantly full. The wait staff is very friendly. No English spoken, though, so be ready to make your way in Georgian or Russian.

Chilikas Bichis Dukani, adgilze mitanit. Tel: 899 53 74 36

Published 2 Feb 07 at Georgia Today

An Unexpected Travel Lesson

2007-02-02T02:53:00.000-05:00

“Well,” my husband said. “If Tbilisi is ever overrun by zombies, the man with the semi-automatic pistol will protect us.”

I looked at him blankly. What man? (The other question—what Tbilisi zombies?—seemed beside the point.)

My husband looked at me in disbelief. “You didn’t see him? He walked right past us!”

Apparently, a man bearing a gun and a large canvas sack of cash had just left Vulkani—one of Tbilisi’s numerous casinos—and passed us on the sidewalk. He had put the cash sack into an armored car—also on the sidewalk—and driven away. All this happened without my noticing, though I’d been a scant three feet away.

My husband and I have been living in Tbilisi, a city of approximately 1.5 million people (estimates vary, and no solid census seems to be available) in the Republic of Georgia for four months. This has been the longest period of time I’ve spent in a foreign country. And now, at the four-month mark, prompted by the gun-toting zombie-killer, I’m newly aware of an unfamiliar travel-hazard: ennui. Unlike the other challenges of living here (communication challenges, intestinal woes), this is not something that I can laugh about or regale friends with, and it threatens to drain my remaining time here of color.

The first few weeks of living in Georgia seemed saturated with interesting experiences, and my memories are accordingly vivid. I remember my hands rough and sticky, chapped and juice-stained from harvesting grapes in a muddy vineyard; a quiet hour of walking along a mountain valley road near the Chechen border, how the air smelled of autumn leaves baking in the sunshine, and how my walking companion produced a bar of dark chocolate that we ate atop a blue heap of shale while watching some skinny cows graze on a riverbank; the surreality of waking up one morning to discover a rain of sewage-soaked concrete pattering onto our kitchen countertop from the floor above.

Now I’m suddenly aware of how often I shrug at Tbilisi’s idiosyncrasies, of the stretches of time I spend staring into the middle-distance, at the cat in heat, at the dishes in the sink. I worry about not seeing the zombie-killer, and wonder what else have I missed because my eyes were tired of looking.

***

I like how traveling gives you a bigger sense of the world; how, wherever you head, you bring back a brain enlarged with landscapes, people, food, traditions, that weren’t part of your awareness before. Traveling beyond the perimeters of what you know—into a new country, culture, context—is in many ways a trip to perimeters of yourself. When the basic requirements of living—food, communication, shelter—require renegotiated in a foreign tongue and under different rules, your needs, limitations, and capabilities acquire an urgency and palpability that they don’t have when the living is easy—which is to say familiar.

But living in a foreign country is different than traveling. Where traveling in bursts contains its own kind of momentum—you have your itinerary, your return ticket, your list of sites to see, an end date for your experience—living abroad is less propulsive.

At first, your new environment is stimulating, it gives you something to brace yourself against, to lean on and lean into. There’s the intoxication of making your way through an exotic landscape. (This is how people shop/travel/eat/drink/dress here? My, my, my.)

But then you adjust; the difficulty of mere negotiation in a new world lessens. After a few months, your life has the same routine quality as it did in, say, Ohio, even if the routines are different. There is the corner store in old town where you buy rdze (milk), fresh matsone (yoghurt) and Pringles. There is the bus (number 71) that you ride to your Georgian lesson. There is the cup of coffee that you drink in the morning and the shit you take shortly thereafter. And you discover that it is possible to lose patience with the rhythms of life here: the way no one waits their turn (the melee in the subway car, the grocery checkout counter, the ATM); the chatty strangers who marvel at your inept Georgian (how well you speak!), their litany of questions – Are you Chinese? (No). Are you married? (Yes). To a Georgian man? (No.) Do you have children? (No); the stale smells of unwashed bodies on the bus and the heaviness of your hair from showering in hard water.

Eventually, time and experiences lose their urgency—spill over the edges of the horizon like loose papers on a desk – scattered, unsorted, careless. You wonder how you can possibly be bored with so much at your fingertips. You wonder how you can afford to let waste the luxury of boundless time in a foreign city. You are learning that here, as elsewhere, you need to figure out how to make today, and the next day, meaningful, and to relearn how to look at things as if they are interesting to make them so.

***

Before moving to the Republic of Georgia, I lived for two years in a sleepy small town in southwestern Ohio. I worked as a web-developer and a managing editor while my husband got his master’s degree. I moved to the Midwest unintentionally, and from the get-go didn’t get involved in anything that would challenge my assumption that there was nothing of interest for me there. I cultivated disinterest in my surroundings; a studied boredom that I now realize didn’t actually improve my quality of life at all. But after two years of this, a year in the Republic of Georgia glimmered on the horizon, promising oases of novel and challenging experiences that would make me worldly and well-traveled, and a culture that would continuously pique my interest: the antithesis of the previous two years.

At first, this was true—but less because of the quintessentially exotic character of the Georgian cultural landscape than because of how I initially viewed my time here. As long as I was actively noticing and seeking out experiences—trekking to the mountains or plunging into supras—my life here was, well, lively.

Allow yourself to stop being curious about your environment, and even Tbilisi becomes drab in no time. What makes the difference is not where you, but how. How difficult or character-building your life has less to do with where experiences occur, and more to do with how you live wherever you are.

It’s difficult, once routine has settled on your life, to remember how much you don’t know yet, how much should still startle and surprise. But I’m trying, now, to break the habit of being bored. It’s easier by far to shrug off the world than to look at it with active interest. This is one lesson I didn’t expect to learn through travel, but unlike the other, Tbilisi-specific skills I’ve acquired—how to order food at a restaurant, how to negotiate a good deal for mandarins at the bazaar—this is one that will help me make sense, and meaning, out of anywhere.

Published 1 Feb 07 at Lost Writers

Anchiskhati meets khinkhali

2007-01-30T14:00:00.000-05:00

Wow,

Just had an unexpectedly fabulous evening.

C and I took our friend Pam out to our favorite restaurant near City Hall in Tbilisi. We were coming from a Fulbright hob-nob session in Saburtalo. It had been fun, and we'd left pretty happy, looking forward to visiting an Armenian restaurant near the Isani Metro station that I was planning on writing about for GT this week.

Our bus was a long time coming. By the time we were in the neighborhood of Old Tbilisi, the further journey to Isani Metro seemed less appealing, so we opted for our (name as yet unknown!) khinkhali place up the hill from Tabisuplebis Moedani.

We were greeted by this very friendly man, Temo, who is invariably seating people at this restaurant. He waved us into one spacious room dotted with rectangular tables. We sat, checked out the menu, ordered some delicious kebabs, melty khbos shashapuli (?), badrijani nigvsit, pomidoris salati, and kartolpili pri (shemsvari).

A few minutes after we'd ordered, the room filled with music -- Georgian folk songs, sung by an expert choir. I looked around to see if anyone was seeing, and the source of the sound seemed to be a speaker mounted on the wall above a curtained window. I figured that the restaurant must have put on a CD of an old recording of a professional folk choir. Cool, I thought -- nice and atmospheric.

C, however, was pretty sure that beyond the curtained window there was a room of people singing. After a little while, it was clear that he was right -- the curtains stirred, and parted briefly, and I could see the besweatered torsos of presumably Georgian men at supra.

As the night went on, they kept singing. I thought about asking Nana, our waitress, who the "jgoopee" behind the curtain was, but then decided that she probably wouldn't know. C speculated, "Could it be Anchiskhati?"

The Anchiskhati choir kicks ass. They're a group of a dozen or so virtuoso vocalists, all of whom have marvelously warm hearts and lovely senses of humor. They are friends with my mother, who helped host them on a tour they did of the US, and who has sung with them in other contexts as well. This fall, when my mom was in Georgia, C and I accompanied her to a "thank you" supra that the choir and their friend, L, hosted It was a really good supra, with incredible music, food, expressions of friendship. C and I sat opposite Dato, who beamed his extroverted, sunny, and extraordinarily kind smile at us all night.

Anchiskhati has visited my house in Vermont, and played drums with my brother, Kei, who did Beatles jam sessions with some of their bass singers. C and I saw them in Bloomington when they toured the US with our friend, John Graham. We'd just been speaking of their director, Malhaz. This weekend I copy-edited an article about Anchiskhati's collaboration with a French composer, who iss making new compositions based on Georgian traditional folk and sacred music styles and techniques. I'd just added their new songbook to the Village Harmony online store.

So no, it couldn't be Anchiskhati, could it? That would be too much of a coincidence.

And then Dato stuck his head through the curtains, spotted us, and came over with his 1000-watt smile and warm bear hugs. We were invited to join their supra.

Weee! I still have a bit of a warm buzz going from the two (or so) glasses of wine I had, and so will maybe write about this in more detail tomorrow, but basically, it was a great evening.

Anchiskhati was hosting a French composer and a French chef, who were in Tbilisi to study Georgian music and food, respectively. There were two Georgian women, translating between Georgian and French. And there was music to down in.

We joined the table, nibbled on some khinkhali, and basically basked in the music and company until the supra wound down. It was nice. It was very nice.

And Malkhaz picked up our bill -- even though we'd eaten before we even sat down with them--
and I tottered home full of much better feeling than I had for a little while.

Dato made a toast to the effect of, "This was not a chance meeting -- this was not God's mistake." I certainly hope not. It pulled tight quite a few threads of the last several months, and I think I am going to approach Malhaz to see whether I can finagle an interview with him about his work.

Anyway,

Aba he!

Five of Six

2007-01-02T07:57:00.000-05:00

Wooosh.

I've been working on application essays since before Christmas, and I am finally, almost, very nearly finished. So far I've written and submitted essays for Columbia and The New School's MFA programs, for NYU's mouth-watering Cultural Reporting and Criticism journalism MA program, and for the dual MA in journalism and folklore at Indiana University (which required two separate applications). The only one left to finish is the application to Syracuse University's Arts Journalism program, but that isn't due until Feb 1.

Man, it's a good thing no one came to visit over Xmas break - I was a sad, stressed-out sack. But now it is a day and a half into 2007, and I'm DONE FOR NOW! and overdue for a little rest and respite. Tomorrow I'm going to Sighnaghi, where C and I will stay through Georgian Xmas (Jan 7) and a ways beyond that.

Jess, who is living at the Sighnaghi house right now, tells us that the water pipes (ingeneously routed outside the house, and not insulated) have frozen, so no running water for the downstairs half of the building -- which happens to be where C and I stay, and where the washing machine and warmer kitchen and bathroom are.

Oh, well. We'll be dirty, mostly, and our clothes will be dirty too. But at least my atrophying limbs will have a yard to work in (however frozen - I can still rake leaves and chop wood!). And I'll get to spend a solid week far from the unchallenging, warm, internetted confines of the apartment, which I've scarcely left since I dug into the aforementioned application essays.

A whole bunch of people are going to use our apartment while we're out of town. Loma, and his girlfriend Ash, have been vacationing in Turkey right how; Loma asked if he could use our place as a B&B for a week in exchange for some cash. I'm cool with it, as long as he doesn't eat any more beets in bed! We only have one fitted sheet - no more beet juice thereon, SVP! Jess' dad and sister are also in town, and they'll be heading into Tbilisi as we go to Sighnaghi. They've been in Sighnaghi, though, and are way overdue for a hot cozy shower and whatnot.

How to celebrate the start of vacation? C wants to go out to dinner; I want to empty the fridge. Who will win?

Happy New Year

2007-01-01T14:43:00.000-05:00

We rang in 2007 by going with our introvert instincts.

We bailed on attending Jake's Xmas-in-Tbilisi party. Chris is slightly under the weather, and besides, we don't know Jake all that well. And,we reasoned, we'd want to bail uncomfortably early anyway, so why haul ass across town just to drink champagne with strangers at midnight? Better to lounge on our own old balcony, split the Bagrationi bubbly two ways, and skip the introductions and apologies phase of the evening.

We did leave the house, though. I had been working, with ever-decreasing enthusiasm, on my application essays for Columbia. Once I was ready to abandon the endeavor for the evening, we headed out on an exploratory amble up the Mtkvari river over to "Europe Square." There, the masses were congregating with their fireworks. It was fun to wander through the crowd at first, but soon the constant too-proximate BANG! BANGBANGBANG! CRACK KSHHH! of new year's explosives—both underfoot and overhead—got on my nerves, and we left.

We walked up to Tavisuplebis Moedani (aka Freedom Square, nee Lenin Square), where there was an even bigger thronging throng of new year's celabrents, and an even more-constant rattle of random BANG!s and CRACK!KSHH!s. As the midnight hour approached, we headed back to our apartment to watch the Tavisuplebis Moedani festivities on TV from the less precussive environs of our apartment.

Chris, with his dashing good looks and curvy feet, was our first-footer for the year. He darted out the door at 11:55:30 PM and reentered at 12:00:30 bearing good tidings and Tabasco sauce, a wrist-watch, salt and a good pen. Then we went out on the balcony, where drank our bottle of champagne while watching the city fireworks display blossom over the roofs of Old Tbilisi.

Then we watched some more TV and went happily to bed.

Now it's January 1st. I'm finishing up my Columbia application, and may be able to send off my Indiana applications as well.

Happy New Year!

Pancho Villa: Latin Spice Comes to Kakheti

2006-12-15T05:27:00.000-05:00

The Mexican restaurant Pancho Villa comes as a complete surprise. It’s a warm and intimate hole-in-the-wall eatery with a wide-ranging menu and very decent prices. Except for the dishes made with avocado and the drinks containing tequila or Kahlua, all the food is made fresh with local produce. The proprietor is also the head chef. But perhaps the most surprising thing about Pancho Villa is its location – it’s not on Shardeni, it’s not on Perovskaya… rather, this gem of a Mexican restaurant is way off the beaten path in the medieval town of Sighnaghi, in the Kakheti region.

Shalva Mindorashvili, 31, is the owner and head chef at Pancho Villa. At first glance, Mindorashvili possesses a certain Ichabod Crane-like austerity. He is tall and spare, with a strong profile and an expression that is somber when his face is at rest. But this severe first impression is shattered as soon as he breaks into his patented face-splitting grin – something which he tends to do spontaneously and often.

I get the feeling that I’m onto something good when the first thing Mindorashvili wants to talk about is chocolate. In addition to the desserts already on the menu – including homemade coconut ice cream, Aztec oranges and flan – Pancho Villa is planning a weeklong chocolate festival for the winter holidays. Mindorashvili and his two formidable assistant chefs (Lia Mindorashvili – Shalva’s mother – and Eka Taralashvili) are in the midst of testing recipes to see which ones will make the grade. So far, they’ve identified chocolate-praline brulees, chocolate crepes with lime butter, profiteroles with chocolate sauce, chocolate peppermint sticks, and dark mocha roulades as possibilities. Two mocha roulades sit on a platter in the restaurant. They are each as long as my forearm, and are fetchingly dusted with powdered sugar. If the rapturous tone used by Mindorashvili as he describes the desserts is any indication, the recipe testing has been going very well.

Saperavi and Tapas: the new world order

Pancho Villa offers a spectrum of Mexican and Spanish entrees that range from the familiar (guacamole, burritos, cheese soup) to the moderately esoteric (migas, MichoacÑqn beef soup). Most dishes are under GEL 5 – the most notable exceptions being dishes made with avocados (around GEL 10) and the fish in cilantro (GEL 8). (Most of the GEL 5-and-under dishes come as Georgian-style moderate portions – and two dishes make for a very satisfying meal). Beverages include a fine local Saperavi wine for 50 tetri a glass, or a finer local Saperavi for GEL 1. Beverages made with imported alcohol are more expensive: margaritas cost GEL 9, and Coronas are GEL 6 a pop. By far the best deal in the house is the Tapas, which cost a mere 90 tetri per plate, and come in very generous portions.

But once the food arrives, the visitor realizes that Pancho Villa’s main draw isn’t the price – it’s definitely the food. The burritos come encased in a fresh, crepe-like tortilla. The potato omelet from the Tapas menu is a savory cloud of fluffy egg dotted with crispy potato morsels. The chicken in green chili is a pool of green spicy sauce thick with seared shredded chicken. The margarita is mostly tequila, but the sangria, made with local Saperavi wine, is not to be missed. The house chips are a bit on the thick side. Ask to have them heated, and you won’t be disappointed. And do not leave Pancho Villa without trying a hot chocolate. It comes in espresso-sized portions, and is terribly decadent – less of a liquid and more of a warm, richly spiced chocolate pudding with a hint of brandy. Wuff.

Everything in the restaurant – from the paint on the walls to the food on the plates – reflects Mindorashvili’s tastes and passions. Having selected everything on the menu, he says he doesn’t have a favorite dish. “I can’t say that I like one more or less. All have a place in my heart. Each delights me in a different way.”

Cosmopolitan culture outside of the capital

Mindorashvili also did the renovation and redesign work for Pancho Villa. When I asked what I thought was a simple question – how he chose the bright kiwi and adobe color scheme for his restaurant’s interior – he startled me by beginning his response with “Let’s start with the Soviet era…”

“Our people were discouraged from thinking about the world outside of the U.S.S.R. People were oppressed not just physically, but psychologically as well,” says Mindorashvili, describing a sort of box around himself with his hands. “So people withdrew into a kind of shell. Life lost meaning. Everyone was living just to survive.”

Mindorashvili shakes his head. “It’s just so boring just getting by,” he says. “Why live at all, if you’re just trying to survive? Where is the meaning in that? What’s the point? Something must keep you interested in life. If you’re not doing what your heart wants, why bother?”

In 2001, Mindorashvili traveled to the United States. He says that traveling helped open him to a sense of possibility and of other ways of thinking – and helped him to break out of the tunnel-vision that had made the world seem so closed off. He’d always felt a strong affinity for the warmth and color of the Latin world, and decided that he wanted to make it a bigger part of his life – and to share it with other people – by opening a restaurant.

A nation and a person have similar needs, Mindorashvili says. “We need to know about the world – about other foods, other traditions. We need to be worldly.” This is why he opened his restaurant. For Mindorashvili, Pancho Villa is about more than simply making a living. “I want to nourish people, to give them a place to go for warmth, good music, and interesting food. I want to make their lives more interesting – even if only for a couple of hours.”

As to why he chose to open the restaurant in Sighnaghi – rather than in a larger city, such as Tbilisi – Mindorashvili explains: “The country can’t be developed if the only culture is in the capital. When you create such things only in the city, the city becomes tavkombali [top heavy, like a tadpole]. Tbilisi has become bloated, unrecognizable.” There is a commercial reason as well: here in Sighnaghi there is little competition, and thus Pancho Villa burns more brightly than it would in Tbilisi.

Mindorashvili is but one of several artisans who chosen to do their work in Sighnaghi in order to demonstrate to other Georgians that “It is possible to stay in the villages and also to have culture and good society.” The choir Ensemble Zedashe, the folk dance ensemble Jleha, and a cadre of carpet-weavers, musicians and painters are but a few of the artisans who have put down roots in Sighnaghi.

When asked how his restaurant fits into this artistic milieu, Mindorashvili, replies, “All roads lead to Rome. If you can see what people enjoy in life, the first thing is good food. I want to get Tbilisi people to come to Sighnaghi for the food. And I want for Georgians to be more open, to be more lavish with their feelings. Consider that life is too short to stay reclusive and boring. Now is the time to open up and start living differently.”

When and How to Visit

Open 2 pm-10 pm Tuesday through Sunday. Closed Mondays, although it is possible to arrange to dine on Mondays by appointment. Contact Shalva Mindorashvili: 8255 3 15 11 (Restaurant) or 899 19 23 56 (mobile). (Shalva speaks english).

Marshrutkas run between Tbilisi and Sighnaghi several times day. Tbilisi-Sighnaghi Marshrutkas leave from the Samgori metro station parking lot at: 9:00; 11:00; 1:00; 3:00; 6:00. Sighnaghi-Tbilisi leave from in front of the Sighnaghi post office at: 7:00; 9:00; 11:00; 1:00; 3:00; 6:00. In Sighnaghi, buy your ticket at the ticket window (inside the red brick building that abuts the parking lot). One-way trips cost 5 GEL. Arrive early – marshrutkas leave as soon as they are full.

Pancho Villa is at 9 Queen Tamar Street. To get there from the marshrutka drop-off point in Sighnaghi, walk uphill to Hotel Sighnaghi – formerly the Hotel Nugo. (This hotel, not yet open, says it will begin receiving guests on Janary 1 2007). The main road downhill and to the right of Hotel Sighnaghi leads directly to the door of Pancho Villa.

Where to Stay

Guest accommodations (home-stays) can be arranged through Pancho Villa (please call ahead). Home-stays range in price from 10-15 GEL (lodging only) to 25-30 GEL (room and board) per person.

Visitors may also arrange to stay at Nana’s Family Hotel, which is located at 2 Saradjishvili Street in Sighnaghi’s picturesque city center. Call Nana Kokiashvili at 8255 3 18 29 (hotel) or 899 79 50 93 (mobile), or email her at Kkshvl@yahoo.com. Nana speaks some English, and the hotel (run from her home) is spacious, with hot water and clean, modern bathroom facilities. She can also arrange excursions to local sites of interest, including Bodbe Monastery (where St. Nino is buried) and Davit Gareji.

Published 15 Dec 06 in Georgia Today

You shall have bear!

2006-12-03T21:39:00.000-05:00

Though I'm a little miffed to still be receiving articles 12 hours after my so-called deadline, I was quite happy to come across the following exchange in an interview with the "Minister of Direction of the Legitimate Abkhaz Government in Exile."

Q: You must have bear meat as well!

A: Not yet. Bears are only just starting to come out of the forests. They are quite fat.

Beggars, beggars, everywhere...

2006-12-01T21:37:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, as C and I were on our way home from our Georgian lesson, we stopped at a khachapuri window for some street food. As I was preoccupied with my not-terribly-tasty meat-and-onion-stuffed dessicated bread thing, I ran into (and almost ran over) the Polyglot Begging Woman.

I remember the PBW from when C and I were in Tbilisi in 2003. She cornered us and asked us, in Russian, then English, then Georgian, then German, for money. She noticed I was Asian and tried out some Japanese. C tried to fend her off in French, but she slipped right into it and started upbraiding him in that language. She's persistent, loud, and shrill, and always walks and talks in a relentless, rapid-fire staccato - like a wind-up toy that's been wound allllll the way up. And she always heads, torpedo-like, for foreigners.

Though I fear being on the receiving end of her needling demands, I like her attitude. She's pushy and direct and unapologetic — unlike, say, the sad black-clad grannies who crouch by the underpasses with their palms mutely extended for alms, or the wheedling children who worry pedestrians on Tbilisi's main avenues. (I don't know the story with the old ladies — they look terribly forlorn, and a lot of Georgians give to them — but the children are often on the street because their parents or some other handlers are using them to earn money. Yuck.)

Anyway, I found myself nose-to-nose with the PBW, and just as she opened her mouth to ask for money, I held out my sad little lunch and, through a dry mouthful of bread mumbled, "Ginda?" (You Want?)

Momentarily flummoxed, she paused, then gave a half-polite, half-comic half-shrug (Why not?) and delicately tore off a small piece with her thumb and forefinger, saying, "Okay, but just a little bit."

Then she wheeled away and continued up the street.

*

The other day at the Goodwill Hypermarket, I picked up two bags of chocolate coins (the chocolates are wrapped in silver & gold foil with euro markings on them) for Christmas. One of them is for JW's kids in Sighnaghi, and I think that I'll hazard giving the other bag to the beggar kids. I am partly afraid that I'll end up on the receiving end of a hail of retributive rejected chocolate euro-missiles (Darn you foreign lady, give us the good stuff!) but fuck that. There are worse things than an angry rain of chocolate, and kids should get presents at Christmas. (Or fake Xmas anyway - Georgians celebrate on January 7th, which corresponds to December 25th on the Julian Calender. (Or something.))

That is all.

The house at poo corner

2006-11-15T21:35:00.000-05:00

Hey ho, tomorrow I take the GRE. My prolongued vocabulary cram session has left my brain feeling, as Spike would have said (when he was a wiener of a poet) "effulgent."

C and I have had further adventures with our apartment. Last Sunday, after, oh, five years of touch-and-go troubles and a weekend of heavy use by guests with unsteady bowels, the plumbing in our upstairs bathroom kicked the bucket. Long-accumulating wads of toilet paper and human waste finally occluded the passage of water & waste from the toilet down to the nether network of Tbilisi's sewer system.

We were unaware of this development until the toilet was inadvertently left running overnight. The clogged pipe burst (right above our kitchen, go figure) and saturated the surrounding structural elements (namely -- well, no, exclusively -- concrete) with foul smelly water, and by the early hours of the following morning, all manner of effluvia was raining into our kitchen, bringing with it tiny turds of The People's Building Material.

We waited for a sane hour, then called our Georgian friend, Nino. She called our landlady. Our landlady called her man-friend. He called a plumber. They all came over and poked at the toilet, concluded that the floor needed to torn up, and left. About a week later (after a few false alarms), the plumber returned, and did just that. He removed a functionless (but pretty) concrete-and-tile facade that was unhelpfully encasing the leaky, blocked pipe, and replaced it with a new pipe. He gave us all of the salvaged tile to keep (in case we want to make a bathroom mosaic, I guess), and left. He is supposedly returning this weekend to outfit this new working pipe with a fresh casing of concrete and tile.(!).

Until the new plumbing 'takes,' we have directed our needs (and those of our guests) to the seemingly dependable downstairs facilities. Yesterday, after a month free of noissome odors, that bathroom was suddenly possessed of a rank and unmistakable stink: eau de merde.

C and I tried our usual tricks to expell the smell. Matches, deoderizers, obsessive-compulsive multiple flushing -- all to no avail. Finally, I happened to glance down at the floor during one of my conservation-be-damned marathon toilet-flushing sessions, and saw, through the cute, tear-drop eyelets in the drain on the floor, a flicker of movement.

What the...?

C removed the drain cover, and we found ourselves face-to-feces with the backed-up sewage from our supposedly staid, obedient toilet. YUCK!

A bottle of bleach and a gallon of hot water, plus some aggressive work with a plunger, forced the foul matter to retreat a ways and somewhat obviated the GAAAAH! and reflexive gagging that I was reduced to in the face of the fecal sneak-attack.

Unfortunately, out of sight does not equal out of scent. I ended up tearing off a piece of plastic shopping bag and using that to seal the floor-drain. Voila! No more bad smell. And only a scintilla of doubt: if the plumbing on this floor backs up, will it rupture and flood the apartment below? But like I said, only a scintilla. After all, I'd rather our plumbing rain hell on the people living below us than make another diluvial delivery at our doorstep. (Does that make me a bad neighbor? Ah, well...).

Now our downstairs bathroom smells as it should -- not like roses, exactly, but not like a shit-monster, either -- and we are able to go about our business blithely unbothered by the stew of sewage potentially amassing under our pretty tile floor. Hooray!

*

Well, it's 10 PM. Time for me to give up on last-minute Analytic Writing strategizing and put my stuffed head to bed. I dread the stupid GRE writing sections. I'm inappropriately excited for the Verbal bits and Math Be Damned.

Nighty night, all. Wish me luck.

Touring Khevsureti: The hills are alive…

2006-11-03T05:14:00.000-05:00

This past Friday, I found myself in the middle of a high altitude, musical supra in the village of Barisakho, Khevsureti. Anchoring one end of the heavily laden table was a quintet of Khevsuretian women singers, dressed in smart denim and black, with a striking complement of traditional bushy white wool hats on their heads. Perched at the other end were members of the Sighnaghi, Kakheti-based ensemble Zedashe and in-between sat 20 participants of the Village Harmony music camp.

We were at the end of a week of high-altitude, high-spirited traveling through the peaks and valleys of Khevsureti – Georgia’s remote and mountainous region along the border with Chechnya.

Tour organizer Mindia Tsiklauri arranged our trip. Tsiklauri, 33, is originally from Arkhoti, Khevsureti, but now lives in Tbilisi. Between June and September, Tsiklauri organizes trips into Kazbegi, Tusheti, and Khevsureti for a number of companies, including Georgica Travel and Wild Georgia. (During the rather extended off-season, he is a lecturer on tourist agency management at Ilia Chavchavadze University in Tbilisi). This trip marks his first collaboration with Village Harmony.

Village Harmony is a Vermont, USA-based non-profit that organizes summer camps which take place each year between May and October in many countries, including Georgia. A group of un-auditioned (but tuition-paying) teenagers and adults learn music together for a week and then perform a series of concerts. Some camps tour for two weeks; others have a more modest smattering of two or three performances. All learn world music at the hands of folk musicians teaching their native repertoire.

This camp was based in Sighnaghi, where participants learned a repertoire of Georgian songs from Kakheti, Svaneti, and Mingrelia as taught by Zedashe (an ensemble of young singers based in Sighnaghi, led by Ketevan Mindorashvili). At the end of their Sighnaghi residency and performances, a few intrepid (and flexible) souls stayed on to travel together into the highlands and on a rainy day in late October, we hit the road to Khevsureti together.

Off the grid in long johns

October is late in the year to be heading into the highlands. The safe season for travel in Khevsureti lasts a scant four months: June to September is when the weather and roads are the most pleasant. Even then, at the higher altitudes, the temperature can range from +25C during the day to below 0C at night making Khevsureti long john country virtually year-round.

The reason for long johns becomes obvious as soon as we leave the Georgian Military Highway and begin gaining some serious altitude – the temperature drops, and the landscape outside the car windows turns autumnal. The mountains are both severe and pastoral – on the hills leading up to high snowy peaks there are gold and red apples in the trees, beehives in backyards, and warm fiery colors in the hills where the leaves are turning in the crisp, quiet, cold air.

Unlike its neighbor Tusheti, Khevsureti is not yet set up for the solo traveler. Of all of the towns in Khevsureti, only one – Shatili – has a formal guesthouse. Cell-phone service is non-existent, and only a few towns can receive satellite phone service (where the cost of a call – GEL 9 per minute – is somewhat prohibitive). At each overnight stop on our itinerary – Roshka, Shatili, and Barisakho – we stay with Tsiklauri’s friends and relatives. Our drivers are likewise friends who have taken the better part of a week to drive our gaggle of 20 musicians into the Khevsuretian highlands. Tsiklauri did much of the organizing for this trip in person, driving up to Khevsureti from Tbilisi to make arrangements with hosts where there was no cell service.

The ungrateful dead

A city car can do the drive from Tbilisi to Barisakho. (There is, apparently, a marshrutka from Tbilisi to Barisakho, but no further). After Barisakho, though, you’d better be in a Niva or a similarly rugged vehicle. The hearty road-line on the map is, in fact, a narrow, rock-riddled, serpentine squiggle that demands both judicious and courageous driving.

At Barisakho, we get out of the marshrutka and have a hearty lunch of khatchapuri, bread, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs and – most memorably – vodka, which we drank copiously to fend of the chill in the air. After this, while we are waiting for the Nivas, someone produces a panduri, and we sing. A young woman from Maine brings out her fiddle and calls a short contra dance.

A few minutes into our warming activities, our host cautions us that a next-door neighbor has died recently. In Khevsureti, custom dictates that no revelry take in the village until a year has gone by. Muted, we put away our fiddles, panduris, and songs, and wait for our rides.

Our next stop is Roshka, the second highest continuously populated village in Georgia (after Ushguli, Svaneti).

The drive up to Roshka is slow, with the Nivas in low gear, winding slowly up the steep, narrow roads. It is a day of gray, heavy clouds. They hide the higher parts of the mountains, but the slopes that we can see are luminous with the red, orange and yellow of autumn.

Roshka is small, with only a handful of households. The roads are all unpaved and muddy, with an impressive top layer of cow manure. Electric lines run up the mountain to the village, but the electricity did not work while we were there. After dark, the otherwise silent night fills with the boom and roar of a generator, started up for our benefit, which powers the solitary bare light bulb over our dinner table.

We have dinner at the home of Shota Tsiklauri, whose house I, and seven others, are staying at for the night. With 20 descending for dinner, the other guests and I deem it considerate to stay out of the way, and so we sit on the second-story porch outside, where dinner will be, and experience a gradual, alarming drop in body temperature.

At dinner we are all cold. Supra a plein air in October in the mountains is a new and bracing experience for many of us. But here again, there is vodka on the table, and we partake of a few hearty toasts to make the cold recede a bit. And the food is good. A few of us go especially bonkers for cups of the thick raw local honey, which is sublime, especially with the tart mountain apples on the table.

And because this is a supra, and because we are singers, we all sing some more: big exuberant American shape-note songs, gospel and Georgian folk music. And then, through the noise we are making, there is a piercing, and, even for those of us whose Georgian is non-existent, unmistakably angry scream from the ground below our supra. The next-door neighbor’s brother has died recently. We have once more managed to break the Khevsuretian ban on singing in the wake of a funeral.

The supra fizzles out abruptly as, horrified, the participants head to their host’s houses to sleep.

Avoid the boulders and stop

before Chechnya

The next morning comes in a blaze. The sun is out, and the white peaks of the Caucasus gleam tantalizingly over the fiery patchwork of leaves in the hills. This is a glorious time to be up here. Frost tips the grass, and enormous gray boulders dot the landscape. The hills that bracket Roshka are covered in haystacks that pepper the landscape like gumdrops or rabbit droppings.

With careful planning, it is possible to do a day trip up to Roshka from Tbilisi. There are three lakes that one can hike to from Roshka – the Abudelauri lakes – which are three strikingly different colors. One, which is shallow, is a bright green color (from plants that grow at the bottom of the lake). Another is very deep, and dark blue. The third is white, “like milk,” according to Tsiklauri, from ice and fine glacial debris in the water. All are within 1.5 kilometers of one another, and can be accessed in a day-hike from Roshka.

Sadly, we do not have time for this hike. Instead, I go for a short, easy amble in the nearby hills. On my way back to the house for breakfast, I am waylaid by an old woman who leaves her herd of cows to herd me into her house and sell me a pair of scratchy wool socks. The floors of her house are covered with small red potatoes. She waves at these and grins.

After breakfast we drive to Shatili, near the border with Chechnya. The road to Shatili is somehow even more narrow and perilous than the road to Roshka. We pause periodically to clear the road of unacceptably large rocks from recent landslides. Black-blue slate slips down in slow cascades on all sides; the road here seems singularly impermanent.

We come to Shatili by way of the Datvis Jvari Pass (2677m). This is the part of the trip that shortens the tourist season. The pass, in late October, is already only intermittently passable. As we near the pass, the landscape turns abruptly from autumn to winter. Wet, heavy snow blankets the road. The snow-and-slate shoulders of the surrounding mountains are stark and stunning. We skid slowly along the road. Part sleigh-ride, part prayer tent, our Niva muscles through. After a brief heart-in-the-throat hurdle over the pass, we continue our slow way down into Shatili.

All along the watchtower: the birth of a tourist industry

At the heart of old Shatili there is a village of recently restored square stone towers, built upon an outcrop of stone in the mountain valley. The towers are connected to each other by a warren of walls, roofs, stairs and ladders, and climbing though the old stone village is like climbing through an MC Escher print. Many of the restored towers offer access to wide wooden balconies that look out over the valley. Each step through the nexus of towers offers a strikingly different view of the whole complex, and the valley below.

Shatili is slowly warming to tourism. Across from an old plot of slate square tomb, there is a landing-pad for helicopters. And one of the old towers is now a bed-and-breakfast, with a kitchen and bathroom (with plumbing) on the ground floor, beds on the floors above.

For our night in Shatili, half of our party stays at the bed-and-breakfast tower, where there are 10 beds in a single large room. The other half – including myself – stays at a guesthouse belonging to Mzia Chincharauli, where several women are working hard to lay out a supra spread. Dinner that night includes some fabulous khinkhali (both potato and meat varieties), wild mushrooms that some of our party harvested from the slate side of the mountain, badrijani (eggplant), fresh cheese, potatoes, and copious amounts of wine.

The next morning, we walk from Shatili to Mutso – a tower town perched high on a mountain southeast of Shatili.

On the way to Mutso, we walk through a valley whose walls are thick with fantastic icing-like drippy formations, as well as through gentle wooded areas which, when the upper peaks of the Caucasus are hidden by clouds, look like landscapes in northern New England. Occasional outposts of border guards peering down at us through binoculars remind us that we are near the border with Chechnya. We are careful to avoid it.

Mutso, 300 years old, is severe and imposing. It is apparently slated for renovation, but for now its decaying profile still stares darkly across the valley from its perch high on a mountainside. The climb up to the old tower town is sheer and narrow. Many of the buildings have collapsed and look like nothing more than the wild slate landslides that we have driven across to get here. Where there are no roofs, the tops of the standing walls, when viewed from above, look like cuneiform letters. A few tight structures still stand. Mutso, we hear, was inhabited until the 1950s, when Stalin forcibly relocated its inhabitants.

That will bring us back to Do …

The final day of our trip is spent back in Barisakho, where we are treated to one very full day of hiking, a horse race, a concert, a spontaneous football match (Khevsureti vs. Kakheti/USA, which happily ended in a 1-to-1 tie), and a supra.

Many people will attest that it is a pleasure to be a guest in Georgia. One hears stories of hikers being chased by persistent, would-be hosts bearing cha cha – and to be a guest at a good, earnest supra can produce an epiphany of new friendships. The Village Harmony campers have the additional advantage of being able to burst into song at the table – an act that is almost invariably greeted with delight… and more toasts.

In Khevsureti, the region’s traditions and customs are still strictly observed. We experience this in the lavishness of the hospitality that we receive, the enthusiasm with which our concert singing (and the Khevsuretian and Zedashe’s performances) is applauded - but also in the anger with which our inopportune singing is condemned. In this context, traveling as musicians present singular opportunities for communication and cultural exchange - and this cuts two ways.

At our final supra however, the singing ban is temporarily lifted.

Sitting at a table almost invisible under the burden of delicious dishes, singing mravaljamier at the top of one’s lungs, cheeks red and hot with wine, and belly full of fresh khinkhali, chicken stew, and fried fish, is an unbeatable way to spend a Friday night. And as a singer, there’s a feeling that you get as you plunge your voice into the stream of song and it blends with those of the other supra participants that you are somehow, at least for a moment, less of a tourist and more of a participant.

Visiting Khevsureti: Silver white winters that melt into springs

The season for traveling into Khevsureti is effectively over for the year. As winter settles in, and the prospect of more trouble with Russia looms, I fervently hope that by June 2007, the meteorological and political climate will make further trips into Khevsureti possible for all intrepid explorers – but especially for those with a song in their heart.

USEFUL NAMES AND NUMBERS

Tour Organizer
Mindia Tsiklauri (Tbilisi), 893 14 46 44
Languages: Georgian, Russian and English

Published in Georgia Today, 3 Nov 06

Made in Japan

2006-10-27T21:34:00.000-04:00

Major breakthrough yesterday: figured out how to use the first washing machine I've encountered that is older than I am.

It's a little tiny thing - smaller than the suitcase that I brought with me to Tbilisi. It has two grocery-bag-sized compartments. One you fill with water, soap, and clothes (you have to to monitor the water - no automatic shut off or anything), and then turn a switch, which causes the compartment to jiggle and swirl the clothes. The switch is basically just a timer, and when the time is up, and your clothes seem sufficiently agitated, you have to manually drain the gray, dirty water our of the jiggle compartment.

There's a skinny duct-tape-patched hose from the bottom of the machine that leads to... nowhere. There's a drain in the floor that we opened and stuck the hose in to drain off the laundry drizzle, but we can as easily put the hose in the toilet, bathtub, or the Dread Open Sewer Pipe (the smells coming from the DOSP aren't worth it, though).

After all the gray water is gone, you repeat the process, only without soap, as many times as is necessary to make you feel as though your clothing has been rinsed.

The second, small compartment contains the spinner. Barely larger than a salad spinner, this little dooder spins at such a high velocity that clothes are practically dry when you take them out. I mean, if you didn't mind momentary claminess, you could put them on right away, and skip the balcony-based air-drying portion of the laundry cycle.

The efficacy of the machine was a nice surprise, given that most things from the Soviet era (with the possible exception for the Lada Niva) work poorly, when they work at all. Of course, when I finally read the fine print on the face of this tiny but powerful gadget, I could retreat back to my original opinion of Soviet goods. My little laundromatic was made in Japan.

*

Yesterday, the VH brochure gobbled up most of my day. At around three, tired and grumpy from sitting all day at my computer, I stepped out onto to buy some street food (oily fried bread with fillin' - "hotdogi" for C, "soqo" (mushroom) for me) and a tomato for lunch.

Every time I've gone out and bought single vegetables, storekeepers have laughed (kindly, I think) at me. I assumed they were responding to my over-punctuated requests ("HELLO! ONE TOMATOES! IF IT IS POSSIBLE!") but Revi, a new Georgian friend, explained that *no one* buys food this way. You are supposed to ask for things by weight - half kilo, whole kilo, etc.

Other things I know now, after a few hours drinking at "Didi" (Big) John's birthday party across the table from Revi:

The funicular is broken. Has been since a crowd of Japanese tourists tried to ride it up Mtatsminda a few years ago.
At the bazroba, never accept the first asking price that people quote you. Say 'tsvili a... gaukeli! (or was it gaukedi?).' ("It's expensive... make it less!"). It's not necessary to quote an alternate price, though - and C and my way of halving the price and proposing that as our preferred payment is, apparently, ludicrous.

Here at Last!

2006-10-03T21:30:00.000-04:00

This morning sucked. Woke up with the alarm at 7 which had been set with the full, hot-headed intent to get up early and do laundry.

Did neither. Slept another half hour, and when laundry was attempted at closer to 8 AM it was discovered that the Christian Science ladies had beat us to the basket.

Chris left our laundry on the second floor. I stripped the beds, began making experimental piles of black T-shirts and grey underthings for the trip to Sighnaghi, then gave up. Too early/grumpy. Tromped downstairs for a cup of (finally ineffective) Nescafé. Boiled eggs. Ate matzone with Kellog's (German) DayVita! mixed in, egg with mayo applied with a knife.

Don and Dana quietly sparred by the kitchen sink. They and the CS Ladies had a muted (political?) discussion in the far room. Chris, Emily and I sat at the kitchen table, Chris and Emily conversing, I chiming in with occasional (apparent) non-sequiteurs.

This did nothing to improve my mood.

Duties for the morning: to meet with Nino, who had spent 12 hours searching for an apartment for us, so we could pay her. We had originally agreed to 4 lari an hour (which is a measly $2.40/hr) which I then, in a fit of (relative) expansiveness/guilt, upgraded to $8/hr - a livable wage in some low-rent cities. And while Nino did not actually find *the apartment* that we will be moving into later this month, she did make it possible for us to commit to that particular place.

The other apartments were variously flawed: sketchy neighborhood, lack of hot water, lack of heat, lack of vertical clearance. This one we will move into will, I think, be very nice. Its only shortcomings (lack of working plumbing) are repairable.

Our other errand for the morning was to fulfill a request from my mother -- singing in Sighnaghi, two hours east, where we were headed -- for an electric stabilizer. Vague feelings of dread around this one. Um, where is the closest Best Buy?

We set out early, still undercaffeinated, thinking we might use the morning to search for the stabilizer. And lo, none of the shops downtown open before 10. Ah. Well then, we can go to Prospero's and bask in the cozy warm glow of their internet connection. And lo, Prospero's, too, is closed to us.

It was drizzling. Grey. The streets thick with busses, taxis, automobiles - 6-to-8 lanes of traffic on the four-lane road, pedestrians from the swollen sidewalks occasionally dashing across the thoroughfare. In Georgia, drivers beep as they pass other vehicles. Apparently people don't depend on their mirrors -- or delineated lanes -- when they drive. The resulting caccaphony - multiplied by a thousand, added to the din of rough engines and the occasional diesel roar - are persistent and, when a person is short of temper, terribly, terribly aggravating.

We stood opposite the locked gate to Prospero's, in the rain. I smoked an angry, vengeful cigarette. As soon as the gate was opened, we scurried inside - much to the bemusement (mild irritation?) of the Prospero's staff. I promptly requested a computer and did some theraputic email-checking. And lo, the single Americano. And a bit better mood.

Nino was to arrive at 11. 11 came. And went. I received a frantic, apologetic call - she would be 10 minutes late. At 11:40, Nino arrived: frazzled, apologizing, nervy. (We like her). Paid her 175 GEL and wooshed off to try and find a stabilizer.

We walked a while, tried one shop, was redirected to another, discovered that the stabilizer (sold by in a store prominently labled "Computer Technology" up Pushkin street from the Phillips Center store) was 185 GEL.

Nothing deepens my bad, mad mood like spending hundreds of dollars in a day.

I called my mother. Do you still want this? Yes, she said. Please.

I stalked uphill to an ATM. No sooner had two crisp, unspendable 100 GEL bills tongued out of the machine than Mom called back. A techie teen said that laptop computers do not need stabilizers -- their little boxes on the power cords mediate the incoming power. But could I pick up some extension cords?

Sorry, no. I said. Bad morning. Okay! she said. I'll make it up to you with some really good wine this evening. Okay! I said. See you soon.

We hopped a bus to 300 Aragveli and fast-walked back to the house. We missed out 1PM marshutka, but had about 45 minutes to pack for the next one.

Grabbed some lunch. Changed. Packed. Left a thank-you note in a crude scrawl on a found envelope and walked out of the house into a fat rain.

The marshutkas leave from the train station at Samguri in Tbilisi. The parking lot where they congregate is very full (of marshutkas). Each has a sign in the (invariably cracked) windshield. It was raining, and we were in the wrong half of the lot to begin with (local marshutkas bunch in one part of the lot - the out-of-towners are in a lot on the other side of a building that looked like a waiting area -- roof, chairs inside), but we found it and climbed in happily.

Sighnaghi? Asked the diver, diplomatically allowing that we might have boarded the wrong bus. "Ho!" I said. Something like, "YEAH!". More polite forms of "Yes:" "'Ki," "Diagh," are less easy to pronounce. So I come off a bit hickish. Oh, well.

Fellow passengers: 2 Georgian women - dyed redhead and peroxide blonde - two Israelis, and about 10 bolts of white linen. Chatted with the Israelis. Apparently, Sighnaghi is one of the stops on a fairly well-worn tourist circuit for Israeli tourists in Georgia. Huh.

Nearing Sighnaghi, noticed that the marshutka was getting a little ripe. Starting to notice the grease on the headrests. The fermenting breath smell of moist humans. And then, here we are - 2 hours later, doors open, we spill out into a square, rain everywhere. We pay the diver, and head up a familiar hill towards the house.

And here is the part that I like. We are walking up hill, but quickly. Happy to be back. Here, in the rain. Cannot see any mountains - can see very little beyond the buildings and yards we are walking by - for the cloudy misty weather.

We finish our climb, begin our descent, down a road more un- than paved. Fractured asphalt and loose cobblestones shift and slide underfoot in the wet. The road narrows and worsens as we near the house. And then, in the alleyway that the road has become, I see Andrea, who I know from a tour with Northern Harmony in England, 2004. Unexpected, but a happy meeting.

Chris and Emily and I enter cautiously. We run into some people who we don't know, who give us an uncurious once-over and go about their business. But this is *great.* Home!

And up comes Shergil - from Svaneti, instrument-maker, painter, musician - who gives us all big hugs and promises to join us for Mexican food (more on that later) later this week. He, and others, are dashing out the door to attend a rehearsal of the local dance troup, led by Zaza, our former dance instructor. (Also formerly of the Georgian national dance troupe. More on this later also). Things are as they were - palm tree in the autumnal cold, persimmons yellow on the tree, the house, spacious and tidy, welcoming. Mom is putting the finishing touches on the room where Chris and I will stay.

Things look great. Lights are on. Shuki! The upstairs has sitting nooks and a table with benches and kilims on the floor. Downstairs, the bare brick singing room has been (curiously) shelacked. A gorgeous, ornately carved bench (more like a throne) occupies one wall of the room. Through this room, into the lower half of the house, where we lived and studied our brains out in partial darkness in the late autumn of '03.

Changes: Chris and my bedroom is now a very comfortable study/eating room. The kitchen walls sprout iron hangers (from Vermont) from which dangle cast-iron pans and well-seasoned woks. Out on the kitchen porch there is a pot-washing sink under a high roof, as well as an area for drying dishes. There is a sheltered area across the yard, by the fig tree, where the compost is discretely composting.

There is a modern electric kettle. The bathroom has been painted egg-yolk yellow. And everywhere, there are lights on. It is indescribably cozy and familiar.

Chris makes Turkish coffee. We are joined by Mom, and we sit and drink coffee and talk about things - the house, the group, the plans for the week. I am invited to join the camp session. (Well, more like, "I told everyone that you were joining the singing camp."). Well, hooray.

At 7, we go to dinner, and it is here -- in the room at Shalva's house where we used to have classes -- as I am taking in a spoonful of aromatic soup that I felt like I'd finally arrived.

And then! Chris, Emily, Mom and I headed up the hill for flan at Shalva's restaurant.

And the restaurant is really pretty good. We have a flan that is unexpectedly dense -- like pound cake -- but delicious. There are "Aztec oranges" - orange slices with home-made citrus liquor, tequila, and sugar. And the menu looks great. The walls of what was once John's painting studio are sunset-on-red-rock pink. Azure curtains and a shrine of poncho, sombrero, and strings of dried peppers (and a few less readily identifiable fruits) occupy one recess in the wall. There's a photograph of Shalva in cowboy hat, striped shirt, and leather vest, posing behind two young Georgian women who are enjoying an encitrussed beverage (possibly the house margarita?), outside of the restaurant in the street.

I don't quite know where Shalva's Southwestern fetish comes from, but I'm going to find out.

The building exterior has a fresh coat of paint, and a jaunty line of flags fluttering from the roof.

The name of the restaurant: Pancho Villa.

Shalva has always felt a close connection with Chris. He joins us at the table and they begin to converse in what looks like it will become an exclusive and probing conversation. I butt in early - "Er, Emily and I are going to join the group rehearsal at eight," and away we go.

Down the narrow cobble scuttle, in the dark, towards the house. I am glad I wore my hiking boots but sorry I forgot to bring a flash light. We passed a lot of dog shit here when there was still daylight. Oh, well!

Into the downstairs half of the house, where the singing/eating room is packed with the 26 singing camp participants, plus two young men from Svaneti who I don't know but who are sitting in the bass section, smiling gamely.

I take a seat in a corner, where I can see most of the room, and grab a handful of music. Most of it I have sung before. This part of the day is for American and Balkan music. We start with one I know, "Walpole," and no sooner do we launch into it than I can feel my body start to melt. Man, I love singing this music. Or maybe I just love singing. What happens here? Deep, regular breathing. Vibration of the larynx, throat, whole body? Anyway, I make a big loud noise in harmony with 30 other people in a small brick room. The walls are practically resonating, and the air certainly is. When we pause between songs I notice that my heart is beating harder and faster than it was when I entered the room, and that I feel very calm, very alert, and extremely, unexpectedly, happy.

Finding a flat

2006-10-01T21:27:00.000-04:00

So, yesterday I woke up determined to not spend another 24 hours moping about being homeless. After all, I'm in mother flipping Georgia. It's beautiful here, I've been eating extremely well, I have cheap and delicious wine coming out of my ears and I don't have to work.

We got up, fared our towlets, bolted our customary cups of instant Nescafe (two weeks here and still no Turkish coffee -- what gives?) and headed for the hills around Tbilisi. We walked out of the alternately crumbling and shiny neighborhood of Aragveli and headed down "Wine Rise" to cross the Mkvari river near the Old Town (Sololaki). We walked by the old bath houses. We walked through a recently redone section of town that is hopping with cafes and someliers. This wasn't here three years ago. Tbilisi no longer feels like a third-world city.

I like the changes, but they are startling. I guess if you're the kind of person who really enjoys feeling like you're roughing it or living a strange, whacko life, Tbilisi mmmm maybe doesn't force that on you so much. It's working at becoming a EU type city.

We looked at three apartments. We were able to eliminate two out of hand. While both were in good locations and were nice in most respects, one had no hot water in the kitchen, and the other had no heating.

This was all a little depressing. But we had a back-up plan, which we are falling back on now.

A friend of ours, "Singing John," was living in Tbilisi on a Fulbright for most of last year. When he returned to the states this summer, he left behind a gorgeous, two-story flat (Europeanism for apartment) in Old Tbilisi. We checked it out when we first arrived here. It has:

3 bedrooms
1 living room
1 European-style bathroom
1 bathroom with a low, sloping ceiling, huge ceramic bathtub and tiny soviet-era washing machine
1 ample kitchen
1 balcony.

add to this hard-wood floors, high ceilings, and lots of windows.

Rent for this palatial apartment? $400 USD/mo.

Um, hell yes please?

Catch? Not available until mid-October. When I regretfully dismissed the possibility of renting this apartment, it was because I thought that we'd have a place within the week -- not a month after we left Columbus. But! It's October 1st, and the places we looked at yesterday were going to take a week to clean up and refinish anyway. So, if we wait one more week, we get this super nice place.

So, we're waiting until mid-October, and we'll have a nice place, and until then we can stop looking and move into Sighnaghi for a few weeks. Hooray!

Two days in

2006-09-22T21:24:00.000-04:00

The last two days have seen Chris and I riding the Tbilisi Metro compulsively. Tokens - teeny tiny plastic checker pieces - cost 20 tetri (about 10 cents). The subways run way, WAY underground. The escalators are vertiginous. (Photos pending).

We've spent a lot of time trying to get C's cell phone to work and waiting for people (like our apartment-broker) to get in touch with us. (This was stymied somewhat by the dysfunctional phone).

It's really, really nice to be here. The weather is hot and dry, and we haven't had any of the highly anticipated muggings or pick-pocketings that the State Department orientations tend to emphasize. The only episodes of foreigner-harrasment that I've noticed have been getting overcharged for a pair of sunglasses, and a little tiny kid running up to me and pawing the mouthpiece of my Fanta soda. I think that he was trying to gross me out so I would give him the Fanta. (He was begging.). Little did he know of my eating habits. I eat food off of the floor. And I live with a boy, full-time. Cooties don't scare me!

And I didn't buy the sunglasses, so that doesn't really count.

Tomorrow we are leaving for a two-day trip (organized by the US Embassy, not specifically for Fulbrighters - more of a US-oriented cultural field trip) into Kakheti, to help harvest grapes, tour a wine factory, do a wine tasting, watch traditional bread-making, and eat a whole lot of good food. The trip is going to set us back about $100, but we'll be getting a hotel room, a bus ride into the countryside, two lunches and a big supra dinner, and all the other fun stuff in there. Plus, it seems we'll be on a bus with a crowd of other ex-pats for 6 hours. (Networking opportunity! Booya!)

No luck so far in locating an apartment. We were able to reach our apartment-broker today, she has indicated that she might have a few leads in the old part of Tbilisi. (This area has a lot of charm, a lot of decrepit buildings (charming decrepit buildings), and relatively few foreigners). The ex-pat-intensive areas are, apparently, crime-ridden (theft, mostly) as well as out of our price range. We are also hiring the friend of a friend to comb the Georgian classifieds for us to look for apartments that might not be on our apt-broker's radar. We also looked into a friend's old apartment. It is entirely charming, but the two toilets are mostly broken, and the shower base of the downstairs bathroom is cracked and leaking into neighboring apartments. It was a gorgeous place otherwise, and pretty cheap -- the current tenants are paying $350 a month!

Tonight we spend our second night at the home of a family affiliated with the US Embassy. The mother works on energy issues with the US Embassy, and the father is working part-time, as well as doing a lot of the legwork of raising their 10-year old daughter. The family is being very generous with their 3-floor, multi-bedroomed house. They have offered full-reign of their kitchen/fridge (whoooo!), and occasional use of their driver. Chris and I have a room with twin beds. Two Peace Corps Volunteers are here this evening - they are sleeping in the living room and in a spare bed. On Monday, some Village Harmony singers will join the mix -- my Mom among them, I think. (Small world).

The whole process of locating and starting rent on an apartment has taken a little longer than we had imagined. I mean, it's only Friday, and sure, we arrived on Thursday at 4 AM, but I was kind of hoping to have something by the end of the weekend. Of course, the reason why we won't have anything before Monday is largely due to my really, really wanting to go on this weekend excursion. (And why not? Our hosts have offered to put us up until we find a good apartment, and when else will we be able to go into the Georgian countryside for 48 hours of harvesting, vinting, wining and dining?).

I think it will be worth putting off the apartment for a little while. We are really, *really* lucky to have a place to stay for free. I am trying not to wear out my welcome, but I can't resist this little tangent into the countryside while our agent looks for places for us to rent.

Viva la Revolution

2006-08-19T21:08:00.000-04:00

At 11 o'clock at night on November 22nd of 2003, I was stuck in the back of a Russian jeep - something with a vaguely mercenary name like "Lada," "Niva" or "Uzi"- in the middle of a very cold, very empty desert near the Georgian-Armenian border. The Uzi was sitting still - had been for an hour - because the driver had taken it on a joyous drunken drive through a nature preserve the night before, and no one had remembered to pack extra gasoline.

There were three cars that had been caravaning through the desert. Only one car (belonging to a Peruvian-American) had not participated in the ravaging of the nature preserve, and thus still had gas in its tank.

A driver was dispatched to find a village and, if possible, gasoline. (And if not gasoline, then a vehicle with a full tank and enough seats to retrieve three Uzis of stranded Americans).

After an hour or so of sitting in the dark, waiting for something to happen, the man riding shotgun got a call from his daughter in Tbilisi. A street protest that had been going on for weeks had just turned into a bloodless coup. Protesters had stormed parliament with roses in their hands and routed the sitting government.

For the next couple of weeks, the evening news showed party people dancing and drinking in the streets of Tbilisi. Young men took turns trying to shimmy up the flagpole in front of the capitol building. News vans, trapped in the city-wide party, ended up with speakers on their roofs next to their satellites, and the song that seemed to be on constant rotation was this simultaneously catchy and kitchy pumped-up Georgian folk song, with heroic male voices and a war-like dance track.

I *love* this song. It makes me feel drunk and goofy, and whenever I hear it I whirl around my apartment high-kicking the shit out of the air and pumping my arms like Seiji Ozawa, if Seiji Ozawa was having a seizure.

And now, three years after the Rose Revolution and one hour after some heavy Googling, I finally know what the song's name is: Samaïa. What's more, there's a music video that aired on VHUn or whatever in France. And what's *even* more - and what made me sit down and write this lengthy (for me) and (not atypically) gushy journal post - some geeky French georgiaphile has posted the Samaïa music video on YouTube.

And so this is where Chris and I are bound: the land of flying Tartars. Enjoy.

Yes, awesome beyond words. Yes, Georgians can defy gravity for minutes at a time. Yes, I have posted the soundtrack to the Rose Revolution here for you to download.

Samaïa

Bread-worthy books

2006-04-28T21:32:00.000-04:00

Nourishing and substantial books read recently: The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

These are both memoirs by women of ferocious intelligence and lucid, brilliant prose. Both women write about losing their bearing - Didion when her husband of 40 years dies suddenly while their only child is comatose, Harrison when, in her 20s, she is seduced by her estranged father.

ReadingThe Kiss was a bit like reading Bastard out of Carolina, only a little harder, since I knew it was a memoir. I'm not quite sure what to say - it was such a raw read. Raw but artful. Harrison like a dentist carving away the rotten part of a molar with a slim silver sicle.

The Year of Magical Thinking is the third book of Didion's that I've read. I'm in awe of her essays - Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album make me realize how adolescent my own writing still is. The Year is good writing, but I read it for what it shared about what it feels like to lose a partner/friend/husband. Close deaths and mourning have not yet intruded closely on my life, but they will, someday. That much is certain.

Thank You (grandma)

2006-04-28T21:30:00.000-04:00

Thank You (grandma)
Originally uploaded by karemizu.

Made this today, for Grandma C in Albuquerque. She sent a lovely card and also a honeymoon contribution before the wedding.

Mystery Collage

2006-04-27T22:23:00.000-04:00

mystery_collage
Originally uploaded by karemizu.

A few weeks ago, a box arrived in the mail, return address: no name, Portland, OR. Inside the box was an intricately carved wooden vessel. No card, no explanation.I learned from M.Fish that this was from her mother, who, upon learning that Chris & I'd just married, decided to send us a present.

This is a scan of the thank-you card I made her.

I made quite a few thank-you cards for wedding guests. I did not scan any of those, but I'll be archiving future efforts here for shultz and gurgles.

We're goin' to Georgia

2006-04-25T12:08:00.000-04:00

Yesterday the official letter from Syracuse arrived, as did the official letter from the Fulbright people. Both were adressed to Chris, but he asked me to open the one, so I opened them both. I fried fish for fish/rice/arugula burritos, and as all of the parts of the burrito assembly line were ready, I burried both letters under ceramic dishes and corn tortillas.

I had two helpful coversations, one with Mom, who assured me that either decision was going to be a good one, and one with Mary, who asked me, all other considerations aside, what did I want to do?

Chris came home, we ate, talked, drank wine, smoked cigarettes, wept, weighed the benefits of both experiences for both of us. Tried on "We're goin' to Georgia" for size and it fit a lot better than when we substituted "Syracuse."

And so.

We go! More ltr.

People in Syracuse don't seem to be bummed that they aren't in Seattle

2006-04-18T21:08:00.000-04:00

Well, here is how things are, and how they will go.

If Chris gets a Fulbright, I think we will go to Georgia. If not, we will go to Syracuse.

Syracuse ended up being a good city to spend time in. Much smaller than, o, say, Seattle, but infinitely larger and more real-feeling than Oxford, it felt pretty good after 2 days of variously driving aimlessly and being shown around.

We started out at an awkward B&B in the neighborhood of "Little Italy," and from there went to poke around in the pleasant, but isolated-feeling pocket of Armory Square, where a walkable portion of Syracuse's downtown has been economically resucitated. There are good restaurants and some bars there. The store-fronts of designer shoes and menus priced in whole-dollar amounts made me feel bleak and poor. I couldn't imagine living there, I felt slightly under seige as I do in Oxford. (Me=jerk?) It was the Saturday before Easter, and few people were out & about. We had dinner at Ambrosia, where the Sushi & Italian menu made my eyes water. (The food was *really* good, though).

We also walked out of Armory Square and north a bit, into a part of downtown by Clinton Square (Clinton Park?), where there were large windy spaces and tall, ornate bank buildings. Lots more restaurants, closed. Streets sunny, empty.

Drove east on James street into Eastwood, walked into the Palace Theater and looked into the repeating reflection of selves in round mirrors on opposite walls. Noted the walkable downtown initiative. http://walkeastwood.org/ (Cool).

Went back to the B&B, discovered this very, very interesting website: http://www.syracusethenandnow.net/ put out by the Preservation Association of Central New York. ((Huh!))

On Sunday, we met with one of the CW Professors, B.Smith, who gave us the nickel tour of SU. The Creative Writing program sounds really, really good, and many of the things that the University is doing -- trying to influence downtown redevelopment & such -- piqued my interest. Oh, and there is an alt-weekly -- one of the oldest independent (er, alternative) papers in the nation, apparently. The New Times.

Visited a few neighborhoods where a lot of students and grad students live, all happily less, well, intense than Oxford OH off-campus student haunts. I think Chris and I both have a tiny crush on Westcott, and will probably try to find an apartment there if we can.

contra diction

2006-03-27T23:28:00.001-05:00

Just back from the Cincinnati contra-dance. Weee! It was fun. I had forgotten how fast dances really go -- the last "real" dance we were at was over the summer, and the dance at the wedding was a lovely, both fun and slow set, with lots of circle dances and things.

C & I went to a few of the CCDs last year. The last one was in October of 04 (!), when Nils called. Our impression then was that the group was mostly older (middle-aged) people. We got a lot of attention. Tonight, there was more of a mix of ages & experience on the floor. Quite a few new-comers, though far more veteran dancers. And then, there was Chris and me -- people who'd danced, but not in Cincinnati.

Most-repeated observation of the evening: "You've contradanced before!."

Most intriguing statement of the evening: "I don't go to every dance. I mean, contradancing is optional."

I'd forgotten how fast I have to think in order to not get lost in the dance, and how much spinning you do, and how much the spinning and circling and do-si-doing makes my head spin. A dance or two into the evening and my body & brain were working hard! Sweat and dizziness!

I feel great now. Last week was recuperative, but this morning at work I was feeling the dregs of too much time inside/at home. Monday nights at the Cin-city dance is definitely going to be a regular thing from here out, I think.

Rabbit, rabbit

2006-02-01T15:58:00.000-05:00

Hello, February,

New year's resolution for the year -- a drawing every day -- I have kept better than other resolutions, like regular writing & exercise.

Book of Hours: an open-ended project. Make drawings (etc) focused on one subject for one hour. So far I have just done of of these: zeroing in on Sofi, my devil-cat. These are from last year, but they are already in my computer, and so I am posting them in advance of more recent work.

Enticed by Orchids

2004-04-27T16:33:00.000-04:00

How a flower can grow on its owner

The sexiest plant I have ever seen is perched on a filing cabinet, reproductive parts unabashedly exposed, rouged flesh bedewed with thick, sticky, come-hither nectar. Its petals are waxen to the touch and have the delicate, maroon-to-yellow blush of a Gala apple. This Cypripedium, or Lady’s-slipper orchid, is one of more than 300 orchid plants in residence at the Calais Town Clerk’s office. Behind the photocopier, an open door leads to a small greenhouse, where the limpid green leaves and thick blossoms of orchids stacked floor-to-ceiling nearly block out the sun.

Eva Morse, 65, has run the Town Clerk’s Office from her home for 40 years. Calais recently started construction on an office that will operate independently of Morse’s residence. But for now, citizens in search of voter-registration forms and other bureaucratic paperwork are bathed in the perfume of Morse’s orchids. What is it about these flowers that provokes such passion? “They’re so chiseled and so perfect,” Morse sighs. “You almost don’t believe they’re real.”

Morse isn’t alone in her “orchidelirium”; societies have sprung up all over the country for the flower, and there are enough orchidists in Vermont to support three far-flung clubs. The Twin State Orchid Society in Norwich, the Green Mountain Orchid Society in Warren and the one Morse belongs to: the Gardener’s Supply Orchid Club in Burlington, where orchidists meet monthly to discuss flower families such as Dendrobia and Cattleyas, and trade tips for growing orchids. At their April meeting this week, orchid-expert Steve Frowine talks about “Growing Orchids without a Greenhouse.”

Orchids have enraptured people for thousands of years: The ancient Greeks ate the bulbous roots of the orchis (meaning “testicle”) plant to improve their sexual prowess; Chinese emperors and poets saw the orchid as a symbol of nobility and purity — Confucius called the orchid “the king of fragrant plants.” Eighteenth-century Englishmen spent fortunes hunting and collecting wild orchids.

In 1838 the floral fad hit the United States. Until the 20th century, orchid hobbyists were usually wealthy; in 1800 a single plant could cost the modern equivalent of $1000. Reliable artificial germination (introduced in 1917 by Lewis Knudson) and cloning from tissue cultures (1960, Georges Morel) turned orchid growing into a relatively affordable hobby. Today, the price of a single plant hovers between $10 and $40.

No single gateway leads to the orchid habit. Some orchidophiles receive their first flowers as gifts. Others read about the flower in a magazine or attend an orchid show. After their initial orchid experience, aficionados’ stories begin to sound the same. One or two plants on the windowsill leads to 20 or 30 under artificial lights, which is replaced by a greenhouse addition accommodating hundreds of plants. No one seems quite able to account for the escalation.

Hope Riehle, 71, of South Burlington bought her first orchid when her son was 2 years old. That son now has children of his own, and Riehle has more than 200 orchids. “When I’m in the greenhouse, I completely lose myself,” she admits. Her collection has waxed and waned in the past 30 years — sometimes dramatically, as when her son shipped 150 plants to her from Thailand — but more often in plant-by-plant increments. “You can’t just buy one; you’re hooked,” she says. “It’s really a disease.”

Darrin Norton, 38, owns Mountain Orchids in Ludlow. He describes his current occupation as “a hobby that has gone basically nuts.” Norton went into the business to support his own orchid habit. He has been collecting the flowers for 24 years, and breeding and selling them for a decade.

As an orchid wholesaler, Norton is familiar with the variety of orchid hobbyists. People can spend a lifetime pursuing certain shades of pink, he says, or search out orchids that fit their home décor just so, or are of just one species. “You’ll have someone after a gigantic plant right next to someone who’s fallen for a little twig of a thing an inch-and-a-half tall,” he says.

Whatever people’s initial reasons for growing orchids, their first success jump-starts a “life-long passion,” Norton notes. “Orchids have a deep persona that the public recognizes one way or another. People with very little plant knowledge still recognize orchids. They may not know why, but somewhere in their psyche, they know.”

When asked to estimate how many orchids are in his own greenhouse, Norton pauses for a long moment, then offers a rough estimate of 20,000. Orchids are “sort of like potato chips,” he says. “You can’t have just one, you have to have two. Before you know it, the bag’s empty and you’re addicted.”

Morse started her first orchids on her windowsill, but soon moved them to her porch during the day and brought them into her living room in the evenings. Her porch started out enclosed by screens, which were replaced by plastic, then by glass, until the structure was finally expanded and finished as a 32-by-8-foot greenhouse. Orchids may intimidate growers, Morse observes, but their apparent fragility is misleading. “They’re fighters. They’re survivors… They seem to thrive on less care rather than more. If I had three I might kill them with kindness. Instead I have 300 and I get to them when I can.”

With more than 30,000 species, Orchidacae is the world’s largest, oldest and most varied plant family. In the wild they thrive in virtually every imaginable climate: at sea level and 1400 feet above it, underground and in the teeth of 60-mile-per-hour winds. There are orchids in Peru that will only grow on cactuses. Some grow in the ground, but many grow on trees with their roots in the air, absorbing moisture from the ether. Orchidists insist that, despite popular misconception, orchids are neither parasites nor carnivorous. But this is patently untrue: Orchids grow on and consume orchidists.

There is no 12-step program for orchid addicts, but botanical societies let them meet with their fellow sufferers. Horticulturist Anita Nadeau founded the Gardener’ Supply Orchid Club in Burlington 14 months ago. Already the GSOC has more than 100 members, many of whom have been collecting for years.

Orchids approach sexual maturity unhurriedly, Nadeau explains. It takes seven years for a plant to blossom for the first time, and thereafter, many bloom just once a year — some only for a day. It is difficult to imagine doting on a plant for such meager rewards, but these late bloomers’ fecundity is fantastic; one orchid seedpod might contain 3 million seeds. And as with sex, anticipation can be a big part of the allure.

To demonstrate the captivating properties of orchids, Nadeau points out one particularly sensuous plant. A Phalaenopsis, or Moth Orchid, is popular with beginners; it does well on windowsills and is not terribly demanding. It is also quite striking, with long sequences of large blossoms on a single spike. This particular plant has eight teacup-sized blossoms dangling from a whip-like stem. Their complexions are porcelain, and with their thick, pouting pink lips, they resemble a gaggle of geisha. Each blossom is full and fleshy, with thick, taut petals begging for a caress. Peering into the brazen heart of these flowers, one starts to get a glimpse of their sway over people.

Most orchids are hermaphrodites, with their male and female procreating parts fused into a single, all-purpose column at the crux of their blossoms. Beyond this physical sexual duality, orchids are powerfully sensual, and flirt heavily with both ends of the sexual spectrum. Some, like the cattleyas, have meaty, fleshy folds. These captivated painter Georgia O’Keeffe, whose canvasses brim with vulvaic botany. Others, like the Lady’s-slipper orchid, have pendulous, unlady-like pouches, immortalized in Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs of their dark, muscular blossoms. Orchids also have lips — a single distinct petal — whose aim is to attract pollinating insects, and whose aesthetic affect is often breathtaking. They are an orchid’s most ornamental feature, and may have crests, tails, horns, fans or teeth.

The greatest display of the breadth and depth of the orchid family takes place annually at the New York International Orchid Show. With 10,000 orchids on display and attendance figures hovering around 200,000, it offers the grandest display of orchids within reasonable driving distance of Vermont.

Under a tent on the skating rink at Rockefeller Plaza earlier this month, there were orchids with yellow tongues perched on their lips; orchids with velvety petals of deep, stunning fuchsia; orchids whose complex buttery blossoms had shockingly maroon lips; orchids with petals like birthday ribbons. There were orchids with wingspans of a foot and some the size of a Tic-Tac. Some looked like trumpets; some resembled rabbits with bishop hats; some suggested jellyfish; others posed as pinwheels; or looked like beds of butterflies, like sea cucumbers, like bunches of grapes.

The Moth Orchids on display were crisp and luminous, like little moons. Minute Dendrobia with molten blossoms smoldered like beds of coal. Some orchids sparkled like crystals of sugar, while others had the complexion of 40-pound paper or glowed like hot blown glass.

One flower’s foliage suggested the coiffure of a monstrous Rapunzel, with thick leaves drooping languidly 5 feet out of its pot. Its blossom was a shapeless, brick-red mess. The crotch of this blossom smelled like fetid meat with a hint of sauerkraut.

The room had a haunting, spicy perfume — some flowers smelled like cinnamon or lemon-cake, others had no smell at all — and everyone at the show was bumbling around like drunken bees. It was easy to see how the orchid addiction can escalate. How could you stand to take home just three? Much easier to leave with 300.
* * *
Published in Seven Days 28 April 2004

Making Waves

2003-09-24T02:05:00.000-04:00

The host of "Democracy Now!" turns up the volume in Burlington

IMAGE: CHET GORDON

Early in the evening of Friday, September 19, as the trees whipped to and fro in the fringe winds of Hurricane Isabel, Hurricane Amy — a.k.a. Amy Goodman — blew into Burlington. For her appearance at the University of Vermont, the journalist and host of "Democracy Now!" brought along a scouring critique of the national political climate, filling the sails of Vermont media activists and fans of the radio program. She drew a full house at UVM's Billings Theater and got a standing ovation even before her talk, "Amy Goodman vs. the Mainstream Media," began. The event, hosted by the American Friends Service Committee, was a fundraiser for WGDR Plainfield and the upcoming "Another World Is Possible" conference at Goddard College.

"Democracy Now!" is an independent, nonprofit organization whose news program reaches more than 160 stations nationwide. Goodman's reach in Vermont, however, is decidedly abbreviated — confined to the airwaves of WGDR, community-access TV stations and a handful of unlicensed low-power FM stations. But over the past year, a number of listeners have been trying to get her show on Vermont Public Radio.

Goodman can usually be found in the garret of a 19th-century firehouse incongruously nestled among tall, boxy buildings in New York City's Chinatown. There she puts out her program with co-host Juan Gonzales — president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and a New York News columnist — and a cadre of producers whose credentials range from Fox News to Z Magazine. The show features news and voices the mainstream media typically overlook or ignore.

In the past week alone, for example, Goodman interviewed reporter Craig Unger, who broke the story that some 140 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were flown out of the country in the days after September 11, 2001, when all other flights were grounded; invited Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting senior analyst Steve Randall to debunk the characterization of former General Wesley Clark as an "antiwar warrior"; and hosted a debate among activists, farmers, U.S. and Third World WTO representatives on the collapse of the Cancun talks.

The last item Goodman broadcast before coming to Vermont revealed that JetBlue — which flies between JFK and Burlington airports — provided five million passenger itineraries to a defense contractor in September 2002 for a database project. In the wake of a three-way on-air discussion between Wired.com contributing writer Ryan Singel (who broke the story), JetBlue Airways spokesperson Garreth Edmondson-Jones and Dontspyon.us founder Bill Scannell (who has launched an anti-JetBlue campaign), Goodman joked that she'd be driving to Vermont.

None of this makes for easy listening. But as WGDR General Manager Amanda Gustafson observes, the controversy attracts listeners, most of whom would rather hear what's going on even if it does raise their blood pressure. "Over and over and over again we hear from people how much they like [‘Democracy Now!']," Gustafson says. "They hear news on that program that they don't hear anywhere else."

The show is unapologetically pro-human rights, pro-civil liberties and anti-war — though not anti-soldier; a recent guest was the first homeless veteran of the Iraq conflict. It has earned Goodman a solid following among liberals and progressives. And "Democracy Now!" outreach coordinator Denis Moynihan notes that the show also has received appreciative feedback from self-described conservatives and Republicans. Michael Powell, reporter for the typically reserved Washington Post, observed, "In this age of corporate media conglomeration, when National Public Radio sounds as safe as a glass of warm milk, ‘Democracy Now!' retains a jagged and intriguing edge."

Liz Blum, with the Strafford, Vermont-based Upper Valley Peace and Justice Group, is coordinating a petition effort to bring that edge to VPR. She says the group has gathered more than 2000 signatures. David Goodman — Amy's Waterbury-dwelling brother and a contributing writer for Mother Jones — says that many VPR listeners have independently requested the program during fundraising drives, albeit in a scattered fashion. It's not clear whether lobbying the station — however coordinated the effort may be — will have any effect; VPR doesn't want the show.

Members of the Community Advisory Board (CAB), who serve as the station's programming focus group, generally concur that the show is an "advocacy-type program." As Mimi Clark, secretary and former chair of the CAB explains, VPR "strives for journalistic neutrality. It doesn't want to come across as advocating one side over another. It just tries to present all sides."

VPR has heard criticisms of its news coverage — particularly during the build-up to the Iraq invasion — from listeners who were both hawks and doves. "The station feels that if they get comments from both sides, then they're doing a pretty good job of presenting all sides. If everybody's complaining, then that's a good sign," says Clark.

VPR President and General Manager Mark Vogelzang — who is also on the Board of Directors of National Public Radio — has the final say in programming decisions at the station. He expresses a firm disinterest in airing the show. Noting that 180,000 listeners count on the station to "provide them with the programming they've come to expect," Vogelzang describes VPR's criteria for evaluating potential programs: "Does it meet the broad mission of service to the community? Is it a program that has the kind of quality and accuracy and fills the role of a program that would match "All Things Considered," "Morning Edition" or "Performance Today"?... We try to hold up that standard for every program that we carry — and I'm not sure that [we found that] in our hard look at ‘Democracy Now!'"

David Goodman, who has been a guest on NPR's "Fresh Air" and "Talk of the Nation," disagrees with VPR's appraisal of his sister's show. Noting that VPR hosts frequently editorialize ("Weekend Edition" host Scott Simon, for example, aired his support for the Iraq war on NPR and in the Wall Street Journal), Goodman explains, "We don't say that Scott Simon should be pulled off the air because he supports the Iraq war, we just note that he comes to his job with a strong viewpoint. Why is his acceptable and that of Amy Goodman is not acceptable? There's a simple answer: Scott Simon, when he speaks in favor of the war, is echoing the government line. When you speak out in any way that disagrees with the government, that's called advocacy."

Amy Goodman notes that dozens of NPR affiliates already carry the show. "When ‘Democracy Now!' comes to an NPR station, what we have found across the country... is that in terms of fundraising, it beats ‘Morning Edition' and ‘All Things Considered' hands down … and it brings in audiences that they don't traditionally reach."

Denis Moynihan of "Democracy Now!" points to the show's many professional accolades, among them the George Polk Award -- one of America's most coveted and respected journalism honors -- and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton. "Those awards don't go to ‘advocacy journalists,'" he says. "They go to the real journalists."

You get a sense of what real journalism means to Amy Goodman when she delivers her speech. In a low-pitched but bitingly clear voice, she speaks urgently of the new Federal Communications Commission rules ("unprecedented in giving the few media moguls unbridled power"), of George W. Bush's "28-page gap" in the September 11th investigative report, and of the sanitized coverage of the war in Iraq. And she returns repeatedly to the galling unwillingness of the mainstream media to criticize or question the powers that be.

"You've got a government and an establishment that does very well protecting itself," Goodman says. "We've got a fourth estate — a media — that's supposed to be there as a watchdog for civil society. And we [the media] have a responsibility to go to where the silence is, and to investigate these stories."

Goodman has seen little from the mainstream media to make her think they have the public interest at heart. But she also has anecdotes that suggest the media do play — and can continue to play — a vital role in society. Goodman cut her journalistic teeth on Pacifica Radio (which launched "Democracy Now!" in 1996) at WBAI in New York. In 1970, Pacifica's station KPFT was blown up by the Ku Klux Klan.

"When the Exalted Cyclops went on trial, he said it was his proudest act," Goodman relates. "Why? Because he understood how dangerous Pacifica Radio is. Dangerous because it is a forum for people to speak for themselves, and when you hear someone speaking about their own experience, it breaks down racism and bigotry, caricatures and stereotypes."

Despite having witnessed and experienced some of humanity's most disheartening episodes (she once survived a massacre in East Timor in which 250 Timorese were killed around her by Indonesian soldiers wielding U.S.-furnished weaponry), Goodman is somehow not bitter. She was present in East Timor as the country achieved independence in 2002, and this gives her hope.

"As we move into election year in this country, it really is a global election. People all over the world deeply care about who will lead, or mislead, this country," she says. "And it's up to us to decide what we want to present to the world; the sword or the shield."

As Goodman wrapped up her talk in Burlington, her voice frayed at the edges — she'd been speaking for more than two hours. A clutch of listeners kept her corralled at the podium another half hour before the events' organizers finally shooed them away. Even without the broadcasting range of VPR, Goodman clearly is reaching a lot people — now.
* * *
Published in Seven Days 24 Sept 2003.
More information at the Democracy Now website.

Hide and Sleek

2003-08-13T01:52:00.000-04:00

Champlain Leather's Jeremy Bond gives the clothes horse some skin

IMAGE: JORDAN SILVERMAN

The red leather jacket in the window of Champlain Leather is impossible to resist. Slipping into the store — and the fine leather coat — is an experience quite different from pulling on the variously spun garments you're likely to have sitting at home. This coat is heavier, for one thing. Tauter. Tighter. It fits like a second skin — which, of course, it is. The leather at the elbows gives a soft, creaky sigh reminiscent of saddle leather, James Dean and sex. The material itself is redolent not only of the tannery, but also adventure and glamour.

Jeremy Bond, the master craftsman behind this and many other jackets, doesn't notice the aroma of the leather anymore, he says. The materials' possibilities are what keep him in business. "It has such an incredible variety of uses," says Bond. "It's been used for thousands of years. I like to joke that [leathersmithing] is the world's second-oldest profession."

Bond began pursuing the craft when he was 19. A roommate who was working at a leather shop would bring home what he'd made. "I decided to try doing that until I got sick of it," Bond says. "It hasn't happened yet."

In 1975, when he was 26, Bond and his wife Nancy Kirby opened Champlain Leather on Cherry Street in Burlington. Twenty-eight years later, Bond is 54 and divorced. The couple still works together, though — she handles retail, he manufactures and repairs and does "everything else." The store has outlived other leather shops in town.

Bond had no formal apprenticeship or training as a leathersmith. For several years, he says, he got to know people "here and there" who worked with leather and he asked them a lot of questions. "My employees get more detailed tutelage," he comments. "I did things on my own, kind of hit or miss." Looking around the store, you can't help but conclude that Bond has turned out a definite "hit."

The store is small but capacious. A few leather-upholstered furnishings beacon from the corners, but the merchandise is overwhelmingly geared towards wearables. Racks of meticulously stitched leather garments, thick, heavy and sumptuous, line the walls. Walking around the store, it's hard to keep from petting the goods and marveling at their creamy, buttery textures.

"Leather is a very unique material," Bond notes. "It comes in so many shapes and sizes, you can have two skins from the same kind of animal, from the same tannery, and each will have unique characteristics." He finds manmade materials, with their uniform textures and patterns, a bit boring.

The atmosphere inside Champlain Leather sits comfortably somewhere between classy and casual. Bond himself wears fading jeans and sneakers, his Hawaiian shirt fluttering as he walks at a brisk clip among his creations. The store is more personalized than many retail spaces; conversation pieces abound, from the high-quality clothing itself to a collection of memorabilia. On one shelf, a photograph shows a fantastically Xenafied man sporting an award-winning costume that Bond co-created. Behind the counter is a snapshot taken beneath the awning of Champlain Leather of a group that includes Bond, Kirby, Colin Bennet — former bell-bottom jeans designer — and Lyle Lovett. A list of satisfied customers runs the gamut, from members of Phish to IBMers.

One headless dummy sports a chocolate-colored coat with a downy feel that fingers love. On the higher shelves are bags in dusky suede shades of silver-gray and light caramel. Soft leather caps mushroom among the luggage. Glass cabinets hold gloves whose dark fingers sit like thick beds of fronds. Stacks of wallets and hand-cobbled sandals occupy odd nooks. Rugged, brass-buckled belts pack a spinning rack. Two thick rows of coal-black biker jackets line one side of the store; they're unexpectedly plain, but in a sexy, black-leathery kind of way. Although a few accessories are made elsewhere, all the clothing in the store is crafted on site, and everything you see in the store — or don't see — can be custom-ordered.

One couple came in, having heard about the store from a biker who had a jacket custom-designed there. A jacket can be custom-made in two weeks, Bond told them, but the work can also be done more quickly; he once turned one out in 24 hours for Lyle Lovett's mother. The jackets start at $375 and cost the same whether they're bought off the rack or made to order.

"There are very few people who do what I do," Bond explains. Most leather stores are run by buy-and-sell retailers, who do little or no leatherwork themselves.

"A lot of our biker-jacket customers are thankful that our jackets don't have all the bells and whistles," Bond comments. "They like the simplicity." Most of the items in the shop are, in Bond's words, "not overly designed." The easy, classic spareness calls attention to the subtle textures and rich colors of the leather.

Leather is a deliciously dichotomous material, potentially tough — as in a rough-edged belt — or soft, as in feathered, melting suede — lending itself equally well to the boardroom and the bedroom.

The texture and color of leather is determined by the tannery that supplies Bond's materials. "In garments, chrome-tanned leather is soft and flexible, as opposed to stuff like belts, which use vegetable-tanned leather." To demonstrate the varieties, Bond leads the way to his upstairs workshop, where a riot of leather seems to explode from row upon row of tightly packed shelves.

Thick rolls of leather scroll off the shelves, some embossed, some plain. Most of the hide comes from cows — byproducts of the beef industry — but here and there is a buttery length of deerskin, lamb, python, an orange alligator skin brittle with age, and a downy chamois. Fat, heavy rolls of Crayola-colored leather sit on the shelves like giant Fruit Roll-Ups. When Bond turns out the lights, a folded square of what looks like white leather gives off a phosphorescent green glow.

"On the universal scale, I only have a small percentage of the variety of leather," Bond says. But even so, "[These] racks and racks of leftovers and of various textures and thicknesses and colors are invaluable when I get these custom odds-and-ends projects — it's rare that I don't find what I need in my workroom."

The versatility of his material ensures that Bond is rarely tired of his work. "It's impossible to get bored," he says. "A large part of what we do is a really wide variety of custom work." He's made butterfly chairs and backpacks for Dollywood, large leather signs for Utah skiing resorts and an array of custom clothing, from leather underwear to suede wedding dresses.

Working with and for fellow leather aficionados, he says, is part of what keeps the work fun. "A lot of [craftsmen] don't want to be bothered with the public, but I really enjoy meeting hundreds and hundreds of people a year," Bond insists. "It adds to the already interesting flavor that's born of doing the work."
* * *
Published in Seven Days 13 Aug 2003.
Champlain Leather website.

Growth Industry

2003-07-23T01:40:00.000-04:00

Small Farmers bring new life to the Green Mountain State

IMAGE: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

It's 5 a.m. on a recent summer day and the sky is a crisp, pale, predawn blue. At a gourmet organic produce farm in Greensboro, four young people are squatting and shuffling, razors and white plastic buckets in hand, among beds of ankle-high plants. The pungent aroma of shorn arugula drifts in their wake. Compared to waist-high fields of wheat or towering stalks of corn, this crop seems Lilliputian. The beds of greens are about the width of a city sidewalk; the plants, on average, six inches tall.

Directing the foursome is a young man in brown Carhartt pants whose rumpled blonde hair spikes up like a tattered sunflower. He's Peter Johnson, 31, namesake and proprietor of Pete's Greens. Johnson's minute mesclun greens point to possibilities beyond their petite, picturesque plot. Even as Vermont's dairy farms have been shutting down at an unprecedented rate — 77 in 2002 alone — the number of small farms in the state has been rising over the past decade. According to Lindsey Ketchel of the Vermont Fresh Network, 97.6 percent of Vermont's agricultural enterprises are classified as "small farms." Pete's Greens illustrates the viability of small-scale farming. His business is booming — in each of the last six years its gross income has grown by 50 percent.

Johnson's family moved to Vermont when he was 12, and his "homesteader-type" parents grew much of their own food, he says. "I pretty much always knew I was going to be a farmer." He got an early start. When he was 9, Johnson grew and sold pumpkins, with his mother's help, under the name Pete's Pumpkins. "My mom was really into me doing this kind of stuff," he recalls, "and I just happened to really like it."

Green thumbs run in the family — Johnson's two sisters also oversee garden-oriented businesses. Anners landscapes and is becoming a partner in Pete's Greens, and Danika sells fresh flowers for weddings through her one-woman company Blomma Flicka ("Flower Girl"), also in Greensboro.

While a senior at Middlebury College, Johnson built a solar greenhouse and sold the vegetables he grew to fellow students, who dubbed the produce "Pete's greens." He liked the name, and the occupation, enough to stick with both after graduating.

Pete's Greens was started literally from scratch on a miserly acre of soil Johnson carved out of the forest on his parents' Greensboro property. After liberal applications of cow manure and silage, the same turf is now "phenomenal," he says. Johnson uses no artificial pesticides or fertilizers to keep his kale hale and his harvest hearty. Preventative methods like crop rotation keep down bugs and weeds, he explains; he hasn't had to use even organic pesticides for several years.

"Around here, 'organic' still has a bit of a hippie connotation," Johnson says. A few other local farmers have expressed reservations about chemical-free agriculture. When giving vegetables to one skeptic, he jokes, "I could spray it with Roundup if it'd make you feel better."

But, occasional misgivings aside, his neighbors have been largely supportive, selling bags of mesclun and arugula in their stores and lending him equipment. "I like to point out that 'organic' is not this weird, new thing," says Johnson. "This is how their grandfathers and fathers did things."

Organic is far more than a farming fad; these days it's the fastest-growing sector in the food industry. According to a 2002 USDA report, the market for organic has increased 20 percent each year since 1990. Pete's has more than kept up with organic trends nationwide: Now in its sixth year, Pete's has expanded from a one-man, one-acre seasonal enterprise to a year-round farm on 11 acres. The farm grows an array of produce, from standard head lettuce to the more exotic French mâche. Pete's sells a minimum of 600 pounds of greens weekly during the summer to an expanding customer base, including Burlington's City Market, Montpelier's Hunger Mountain Co-op and restaurants around the state.

A florid mix of Pete's braising greens turns up, lightly sauteed with pork, at Smokejacks in Burlington. Chef Maura O'Sullivan is supplied by about 10 farmers, many in Burlington's Intervale, but added Pete's for the specialty items. "His stuff is beautiful," she says. "It's obvious that there's a lot of care involved."

Chef-owner Carl Huber of Tanglewood's in Waterbury agrees. A self-professed "potato freak," he rattles off the spuds he gets from Pete's. "By the time stuff gets here from California, it's often a little ragged," Huber says. "Pete's produce is slightly more expensive, but there's less waste and a better chance to use it before it spoils. With Pete, what I order today comes out of the ground tonight, and I'll have here tomorrow."

Pete's Greens are also dished up as far as Boston — at No. 9 Park Street Restaurant in Beacon Hill and Casablanca in Cambridge — and at the new Joe Allen Restaurant in Ogunquit, Maine. The far-flung chefs order gourmet greens but do not like pansies in their mesclun, says Johnson, explaining, "Down there they think flowers in salads is totally '80s."

Though many premier chefs serve his produce, Johnson himself cooks rarely, and then only primitively, he says. "My idea of preparing a meal, which I do several times a day, is grabbing a handful of whatever from the walk-in cooler and eating it." Though not a vegetarian, he subsists mostly on his mesclun. "It's the single biggest perk of this work," he vows.

As he leaps from row to row in his field, Johnson identifies some of the less familiar greens to a curious observer. A bed of neon frills is golden endive. It has a sharp taste. "Bitter is in," he says. The tall, vermillion amaranth variant is wheat whose heart-shaped leaves jazz up the mesclun mix. Wild purslane has salty, aloe-like leaves with the largest amount of good-for-your-heart Omega 3 fatty acids in the vegetable kingdom.

The mâche grows in delicate, deep-green rosettes. It has a nutty flavor with a hint of lavender soap. Wrinkled cress looks like parsley and tastes like horseradish. Johnson fills a bucket with tightly furled, butter-yellow zucchini blossoms. "[The chefs] serve these fried and stuffed with cheese, I think," he offers.

Johnson grows 11 varieties of lettuce. His carrots come in five colors, including red and purple; his beets come in four. He harvests a full spectrum of round and fingerling potatoes -- so-called because they are long and narrow. These include banana and rose gold (yellow), Tom Thumb (pink-fleshed), Swedish Peanut ("a little, brown, funny-looking thing"), blue and cranberry, and purple Peruvians.

Johnson and his workers shear, pluck and uproot various vegetables with an eye towards consistency. Size matters in this market; the baby beets must only be so large, and mesclun greens cannot grow beyond certain dimensions. "You can never relax and say, 'I've got it made,'" says Johnson. "With biology, everything's always changing. The field conditions change, the environment changes, climatic conditions change... It poses a constant challenge."

Still, Johnson says, he wouldn't trade the work for anything, and that's not just lip service. Until recently, he was slated to run the farms for the Rockefeller Stone Barns Project -- an agricultural and education center with a world-class restaurant run by Blue Hill of Manhattan in Pocantico Hills, New York. When none of his workers were interested in shouldering Pete's Greens — even at a reduced scale — he decided to turn down the job offer.

Johnson is committed to his greens, and to the Greensboro area, for the long haul. He just bought 160 acres more farmland and is planning a trip to Europe this fall to explore more efficient organic farming methods. His central goal for the near future is to mechanize much of the cultivation that is now done by hand. Most of Johnson's workers are seasonal, and he's feeling some strain as the business grows. Increasing his profits will enable him to pay for "good, quality, long-term help" and continue to expand.

But getting bigger won't mean relocating to gentler climes, John-son promises. "I think I'd get really bored of anything predictable. In farming, there's always something there to surprise or astound you — especially in Vermont. It's endlessly fascinating how things change."

The proliferation of small-scale agriculture here is also a reason to stay. Though it means Pete's Greens has more competition, Johnson says, "It's really kind of neat. It seems like Vermont has something big going on with small alternative ventures. I see it as a real movement."

Farming is hardly a cushy occupation, Johnson concedes, but it suits him. "What I like best, I think, is that at the end of the day I've produced something good."
* * *
Published in Seven Days 23 July 2003.
More information at the Pete's Greens website.

The Kindest Cut

2003-05-21T01:09:00.000-04:00

How John O’Brien shepherded Nosey Parker to the screen

IMAGE BY JACK ROWELL

Tunbridge, Vermont, is home to 1200 people, 13 active dairy farms, 0 traffic lights and one film trilogy. Since the early 1990s, resident director John O’Brien has turned out a series of fresh, genre-bending movies that are unjaundiced portrayals of small-town Vermont. With Vermont Is For Lovers (1993), A Man With a Plan (1996) and the recently relased Nosey Parker, O’Brien has become to Tunbridge what Peter Jackson is to Middle-Earth. But unlike the Lord of the Rings characters, O’Brien’s actors are neither heavily made up, costumed nor scripted; for the most part, they’re real people ad-libbing as fictionalized versions of themselves.

Vermont Is for Lovers follows a New York couple around Tunbridge as they seek out seasoned advice from long-married locals on the eve of their wedding. In A Man With a Plan, Fred Tuttle, a charismatic, septuagenarian dairy farmer with a 10th-grade education and a bad hip, assumed the role of, well, Fred Tuttle, a charismatic septuagenarian dairy farmer… who decides to run for Congress to pay his bills. A Man With a Plan made a national splash in 1998 when, in a twist of life imitating art, Tuttle beat out “carpetbagger” candidate Jack McMullen to become the Republican opponent of Senator Patrick Leahy.

In Nosey Parker, professional actors play a wealthy couple from New York settling into a million-dollar hillside home in pastoral Tunbridge. But the real star of the film is the late George Lyford, O’Brien’s farmer-neighbor and poker buddy. As in A Man With a Plan, it offers more than a touch of social commentary. But unlike the earlier film, which is largely structured around Tuttle’s political high jinks, Nosey Parker explores a complex personal relationship that embodies changing physical and social landscapes in Vermont. In the end, as O’Brien likes to say, it is “a love story about friendship.”

Following its premiere this spring at Montpelier’s Green Mountain Film Festival, Nosey Parker opens at the new Roxy — the former Nickelodeon Theater — in Burlington on May 30.

*

A visit to the Tunbridge headquarters of Bellwether Films — O’Brien’s home-based production company — starts with a steep sequence of serpentine dirt roads and ends in a shallow scratch of driveway before a yellow farmhouse. Here fat, tufted sheep mill about in a pasture hemmed with split-rail fencing, and a white dog the size of a young polar bear amicably noses a visitor’s crotch. A sliding glass door bangs shut and John O’Brien ambles outside.

The filmmaker wears 40 lightly. He has the gently masculine visage of a Renaissance David, and a crown of fluffy, dark-brown hair not unlike that sported by his Romney sheep. He has a subtle, wholesome effervescence about him and he smiles openly and often. You get the feeling that O’Brien would clean up nicely, but doesn’t bother. On the day of the visit, he’s wearing a dirty white T-shirt, lentil-colored pants and rubber boots. Even those unacquainted with fashion’s cutting edge in Hollywood can guess that O’Brien’s attire is not industry-standard. But then, neither is he.

“He’s not unaware of his own strengths, but he’s an anti-star,” says Ed Koren, a Brookfield-based cartoonist for The New Yorker who has been friends with O’Brien for years. “He could be a star, but he’s taking great pains to be a part of the landscape where he lives, where the people also don’t have an inflated sense of their own importance.”

Koren has a deep admiration for O’Brien’s films — especially Nosey Parker, which he deems the deepest and richest of the trilogy. “John uses experience and weaves it into a wonderfully complex and complete vision of the very deep feeling he has about [Tunbridge],” says Koren.
“It’s interesting, being a first-generation Vermonter,” O’Brien notes. “Not many my age have grown up here. I have a foot in both the native and the new camps. I know it takes about seven generations before you can call yourself a native — and it takes more than just paying taxes before you’re accepted.”

*

O’Brien’s abiding affection for Tunbridge is obvious to anyone who has seen his films. According to Rick Winston, co-owner of Montpelier’s Savoy Theater, where Nosey debuted in March, such warmth is unusual in independent filmmaking. “Apart from being a truly independent filmmaker, the kinds of films [O’Brien] makes are against the grain,” says Winston. “There are a lot of young filmmakers today who want to make their mark as dark, ‘edgy’ directors. We call them ‘Tarenteenies.’ John definitely is not interested in making the next Reservoir Dogs.”At the same time, O’Brien’s direction is far from saccharine. “Audiences are interested in seeing their lives up there — a recognizable way of life that’s treated with some respect,” Winston says. “Usually, in American films, the rural life is a source of fun or condescension.”

The filmmaker’s approach to rural life is nuanced, as well it should be. After all, he grew up on the farm where he lives today, milked a Holstein through high school, and, during his four years of college at Harvard, came home every other weekend to help out on the farm. These days, in addition to working on film and farm, O’Brien is involved in Tunbridge’s civic and cultural life as a Justice of the Peace and a debate coach for the nearby Chelsea high school.
Roberta Henault, librarian at the Tunbridge Library, says O’Brien is “really great at showing how people are here — not backwards, but laid-back and close to the earth.”

Kay Jorgensen of the Tunbridge Historical Society notes that one of O’Brien’s strengths is his attentiveness to the stories ordinary people have to tell. “Everybody has a story. John knows that,” she says. “You could go to any farmhouse in Tunbridge and get a good story.”

O’Brien’s story is no exception. After inviting his visitor inside, O’Brien pauses to check his answering machine. He does almost all of his business by phone, so this takes some time. Between calls to investors and filming arrangements for the Nosey Parker trailer, he dashes outside to pour Guinness down the throat of an ailing ewe — the beer is good for getting calories into a listless sheep — and to move some new lambs into the barn. It’s a good opportunity for the visitor to be a nosey parker herself and snoop around the first floor of the house where O’Brien has lived his entire life.

The rooms of on the ground floor of the house are light, spacious, and strewn with creative clutter. Plants crowd the kitchen. Innumerable books, records, periodicals and a foot-tall stack of unopened DVDs eddy around the furniture in the living room. Guides and encyclopedias solidly pack one windowsill. A thin, balding, black-and-white cat, sprawls on the couch, all but submerged in a thick sheep skin.

O’Brien’s attachment to hands-on craftsmanship, to doing things well and beautifully, manifests itself in curious ways. The entries in his Rolodex are meticulously inscribed and illustrated. For lunch, he puts out a ceramic bowl of couscous, broccoli, cilantro, lemon juice and tomato. Chives and slices of pear fringe the dish. A pin by the kitchen sink — “Beat the System: Unplug a Computer” — speaks not to a Luddite’s knee-jerk abhorrance of technology, but to an artist’s aesthetic aversion to digital media.

O’Brien jokes. “I really must have been born in the wrong century.” For personal correspondence he shuns email, which he feels circumvents the creative potential of the pen and fosters degraded grammar. Instead, he sends his friends postcards, which he illustrates and inscribes in a whimsical fashion. Koren, one recipient of these paper missives, comments, “Now there is an art form in which John excels, where his wit and artistic talent can be seen on a daily basis.”

When it comes to filmmaking, O’Brien is definitely not a Luddite. He is more than a little in love with the technical aspects of filmmaking.

Off to one side of his house, a hulking editing table dotted with large metal spools squats in the center of a dim, curtained room. The table is a Steenbeck 2000, built in Hamburg in 1976. It’s a good machine, but, says O’Brien ruefully, “Pretty soon this is going to be in a museum.”

Two reels of 16-mm film, one for sound and the other image, snake about the board at 24 frames per second. They hiss and rattle when in motion. Strips of film dangle from a metal rack in bunches, like drying beans. As O’Brien works with the skeins of film, he shortens and lengthens shots by cutting film out and pasting it in. When the blade slices through the film in a miniature guillotine, the celluloid makes a light snick! A spool of clear tape — perforated at the same intervals as the film — adheres shots together.

One shot seems to linger too long. Snick! One shot might be better than another. Snick! O’Brien’s hands move quickly. As film is excised and patched in, a narrative emerges, along with a sense of rhythm and flow. The process is laborious but, even considering the fleet feats that editing software enables, O’Brien is committed to celluloid. “There’s something about light shining through the film that gives us a physiological pleasure,” he insists. Also, digital editing makes filmmaking too easy. “It makes a lot of non-creative people think they can make good films.”

Since O’Brien has his characters invent their own dialogue, he’s never sure what he will have to work with when shooting is done. “It’s a funny process,” he says. “I’m constantly rooting around for truffles.”

*

Editing is a critical phase in film production, but it was an especially laborious and defining stage for Nosey Parker. Originally, the story was about the redemption of old-timer George Lyford’s character: At first a grossly unethical “nosey parker,” he eventually becomes a mediator between the Newmans — the wealthy newcomers to the community — and the Tunbridge natives. Nary a whiff of that scenario remains in the final version.

Shooting for Nosey Parker was almost entirely finished by the end of 1997. O’Brien likes to joke that the reason for the delayed release is that “It took us five years to cut the plot out.” But that’s not the whole story. Part of the reason for the long wait, he explains, was that in 1997, A Man With a Plan was airing on PBS. Underwriters were needed and it was up to O’Brien to find them. (Ultimately, Ben & Jerry’s funded the film’s network appearance).

Then, in 1998, Fred Tuttle ran for Senate, and O’Brien was his handler. The footage for Nosey languished during election season. But most significantly, during that same year George Lyford — Nosey’s star — got cancer. The contrast between the healthy, vivacious character on film and the ailing friend in real life was impossible to reconcile, and the near-sociopath Lyford played now seemed false. O’Brien says it was “somehow a violation of how George Lyford really is.”

The project was further delayed by the media frenzy surrounding the Zantop murders in Hanover, New Hampshire. One of the killers — Robert Tulloch — was a member of the debate team O’Brien coached at Chelsea High School.

For a time, work on Nosey Parker was stymied.

*

After Lyford passed away, O’Brien discovered that some shots he had initially dismissed revealed the vibrant, real relationship that had developed between Lyford and costar Natalie Picoe. The New York-based actress says she expected major changes in the editing. “The plot just didn’t work. I remember thinking, there is just no way this is going to work. It wasn’t going anywhere.”

The most authentic scenes, where things really “clicked,” Picoe says, were those in which she was improvising conversation with Lyford. O’Brien ultimately decided to reorient the film, shaping it around this budding friendship rather than “plot stuff.”

The result is by far the most mature of O’Brien’s films. Elegiac and complex, it best embodies “cinema in which real American lives breathe through the pores of the narrative,” as Wall Street Journal drama critic Donald Lyons described O’Brien’s filmmaking.

In one scene towards the end of the film, Lyford stands outside in the sunlight playing a lively harmonica tune. In the context of the film it’s a cinematic non-sequitur; a segue away from what plot there is so the camera can linger on the play of sunlight on the instrument and Lyford’s craggy, smiling face. Remembering the scene, O’Brien he says, “that was the last day he went outside.”

*

Now that Nosey Parker is complete, O’Brien is working hard “to get the most out of it.” Local farmers have cooperatives that help them distribute their products, but there are few equivalents for independent filmmakers.

“This movie is made regionally, but we have to compete against the best —and the worst — cinema in the world,” says O’Brien. When he was trying to get A Man With a Plan into theaters, for example, the film was vying with such well-financed films as Sense and Sensibility and Leaving Las Vegas. “We barely got into Burlington,” he admits. “The film took off, but it was an uphill battle.”

Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven, whose latest works are In Jest (1999) and The Year That Trembled (2002), says it is increasingly difficult for independent filmmakers to break into the national — or even regional — consciousness.

“The overwhelming impact of hyper-commercialism in the industry makes it incredibly difficult for independent filmmakers to have a voice, ” says Craven. “That’s especially true for those working in a rural place, or with any regional sensibility.”

Thanks in part to the success of A Man With a Plan, O’Brien has been able to find some theater owners eager to show his new film — the Savoy was angling for Nosey Parker for three years before O’Brien was ready to show it.

Usually, it’s an uphill battle to place the film in commercial theatrical venues. Outside Vermont, O’Brien plans to focus on “semi-theatrical” venues such as museums for showing Nosey Parker. In the meantime, O’Brien is putting up posters for the film, booking with theaters, and trying to get the trailer out.

So what’s the film man’s next plan? After Nosey Parker has made the rounds, O’Brien wants to make a comedy about the “green” movement. “Like everybody else, I’m interested in what a model life would be, because we’re all living, to some extent, lives of contradiction,” he says. Whatever our intentions, none of us lives as purely as we like to imagine we do. “Somewhere in it all is a film about figuring out a design for living that isn’t preachy or polemical, but gets people talking and thinking.”

O’Brien plans to set this film in Vermont as well, though not necessarily in Tunbridge. “Think globally, act locally is the focus here,” he says. “I want to get at the universal through the particular.” As is his wont, the film will pair trained actors with real people playing themselves. “Some will be great, and some will make fools of themselves.”

At 40, O’Brien calls himself “a late bloomer. I’m at an embryonic stage. I hope to get better.” He looks forward to making films for the rest of his life. “There’s always a new story to tell; there are so many great subjects out there that no one’s making films of, and I’d like to make those films.”

Just don’t expect anything ordinary from O’Brien. Making Nosey Parker has crystallized his commitment to unorthodox filmmaking. “From now on, I don’t want to do anything by the book,” he says. “If I have complete artistic freedom, I might as well use it.”
* * *
Published in Seven Days, 21 Mar 2003
More from John O'Brien at Bellwether Films

Contra Diction

2003-05-07T00:57:00.000-04:00

A first-time do-si-soes some old dance moves

IMAGE: JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

I had noticed the terse and mysterious blurb last Wednesday: Montpelier Contradance: Move your feet to live piano, fiddle, mandolin and clarinet. Capitol City Grange, Montpelier, 8 p.m. $7. It was not the first time a contradance was listed in the paper -- it seems there's at least one every weekend -- but it was the first time I mustered the guts to actually attend one.

Friends and family who contradance assured me that lack of experience would earn me no black marks at the Grange. That's the only reason I was going, since I can dance about as well as I can fly. Though the directive in the calendar was simple enough, I suspected there would be more to the evening than "move your feet" suggested.

With the sun setting on Route 12 last Saturday, civilization seemed to ebb away as soon as the capitol dropped out of sight. The H&P Grange is easy to miss; the only indicator of its existence is a weathered wooden sign in the shadow of an I-89 overpass. The faded lettering on the peeling placard is barely legible from the road. If a veteran contradancer hadn't given me directions, I probably would have missed the turn. As it was, I successfully steered my decrepit Honda up the Grange's narrow dirt driveway and parked. And got out of the car. And blinked.

A big crowd had turned out. The windows of the Grange blazed with light and flickered with the silhouettes of careening dancers. The parking lot was packed and on my way inside, I noticed tags from Rhode Island and Massachusetts among their green-and-white Vermont brethren. A red Subaru sported a "Brattleboro Dawn Dance" bumper sticker. I've heard of the Dawn Dances -- they last from eight at night until eight in the morning. I swallowed, hard, as a kernel of apprehension formed in my stomach. These people were serious. Was this any place for a novice?

At the entrance to the Grange, a hand-painted notice politely spelled out the house rule: Clean shoes only on the dance floor. The kernel of apprehension became a peach pit: I hadn't brought any spare shoes with me, and the ones I was wearing had trekked through a section of yard my cats used as a toilet.

Fortunately, a staircase to the right descended to the basement, bathrooms, water fountain and "official shoe-cleaning station" -- a cardboard box of hard-bristle brushes and screwdrivers. I headed down and set to work dislodging pebbles and gum from my sneakers. The dancehall was directly overhead, and the basement ceiling rocked and creaked under the syncopated tread of hundreds of dancers. Muffled strains of lively music drifted downstairs, giving my shoe-cleaning efforts a sense of urgency.

As I brushed and picked at the stubborn sediment in my soles, a steady stream of new arrivals trickled down the stairs, with spare shoes in hand and no need for the cleaning equipment. They quickly changed and darted up to the dance floor. As soon as I could, I slipped back into my freshly flossed footware and huffed back upstairs to check out the action.

The Capitol City Grange was chartered in 1871. The walls were festooned with crumbling certificates and black-and-white photographs of 19th-century men with somber mustaches and regal sashes. They seemed to regard the evening's proceedings with approval. Contradancing is an old tradition in this area, and the monochrome men on the walls likely participated in a dance or two in their time.

On a stage at the far end of the hall, caller Susan Kevra stood by an eclectic acoustic scratch band that was churning out a roiling, Irish-influenced dance tune. At first I stood at the periphery, where I planned to watch and learn. But I had trouble divining the steps. My eyes were beguiled by the swirl of skirts and loose hair, the snappy sashays and spins of contradance regulars and the freewheeling turns and awkward allemandes of first-timers. Dazzled by the kaleidoscopic currents of motion on the floor, I soon realized that it was impossible to learn a dance without being in the thick of it.

I don't dance often, or well. I get self-conscious bobbing and shuffling at DJ dances, and, because I'm a control freak, I don't do well in couples dances where my partner is supposed to "lead." But contradancing moves too quickly for a person to remain self-conscious or inhibited for long. And based on what I could see from the sidelines, there seemed to be very little leading involved. In any event, I hadn't come all this way just to sit and watch other people cut a rug. When the dancers dissolved into new sets for the next number, I moved onto the floor.

Each dance was explained step-by-step. Some moves, like "do-si-do," I remembered from middle-school square dances, but most were alien to me. Ladies' chain? Balance and swing? Ripped and snort? Fortunately, most of my neighboring dancers knew what they were about, and helped me navigate the caller's instructions.

A gap-toothed, grinning old man in a blue T-shirt helped me perfect my allemande, showing me the appropriate grip and tension to apply. Several people gave me spinning pointers -- one said gently, "It helps if you don't jump up and down." Some steps no one knew, like "ripped and snort," in which one couple forms an archway and six other dancers thread between them hand-in-hand. Mostly, though, I just watched other people and picked up the steps as the dances repeated themselves.

Even so, I did get hopelessly dizzy during a few dances and more than a little lost during most. The dances are rapid, with one step bleeding into the next in a fluid weave of movement. But as disoriented as I sometimes got, I never stopped having fun; the music was wild and vibrant, it felt good to be moving and my more accomplished dance partners were always forgiving -- even when I trampled their feet.

Towards the end of the evening, I took a break to speak with Todd Taska, who organizes the Montpelier contradance. In a voice raised to carry over the band, he affirmed my sink-or-swim approach: "The way people learn is by doing." Taska added that it's important for new dancers to be flexible about who they dance with, even if they come with a date. Partner-swapping is de rigueur in contradancing, and you're unlikely to learn much if you only dance with fellow beginners. (And you never know what might happen in the arms of a stranger; Taska met his wife at a contradance.)

Because of the rapid exchange of partners in a single dance, contradancing isn't just a social icebreaker -- it's an ice pulverizer. As Henry Rich, a young man from Connecticut, pointed out, "you might dance with 20 strangers in 10 minutes." Some might find this therapeutic; for others it's a great way to meet people. For most, it's a bit of both.

Contradancing is aerobic, social, cerebral and cooperative. Though the prospect of learning and memorizing steps, executing them with grace, keeping in time with the music and keeping track of your partner may initially daunt newcomers, the support of advanced dancers makes the challenges surmountable. As long-time contradancer Anna Seeger put it, "It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing -- everyone helps you out."

One might be tempted to view contradancing as an archaic, Old World holdover, a dinosaur dance. This Montpelier contradance is 20 years old, but the activity -- derived from dance traditions that predate the "discovery" of the New World -- has a long history. For the last several hundred years, contradancing percolated in New England, where it has achieved a distinctly American flavor that sets it apart from its earlier incarnations. It has persisted in the face of societal sea changes and has recently begun to catch on in the Pacific Northwest. If the potpourri of people at last Saturday's event is any indication, contradancing is alive and literally kicking here in Vermont.

As the Grange dance wound down, I sat on one of the benches lining the hall and tried to take stock of the folks on the dance floor. A surprising cross-section of society was dancing to the same beat. Among the faces that surfaced and submerged in the froth of the dance, I spotted a woman with an eye patch and a girl with piercings in her cheeks. Graying men and women joined hands with flush-faced teens; well-groomed yuppies promenaded with colorfully attired college students. It was impossible to generalize about the crowd, except that they were all dancing and seemed to be having a hell of a time.

Now that I'm a seasoned contradancer myself, I can offer sage advice to anyone who has yet to try it out: Be flexible, not shy. Bring clean, soft-soled shoes. And don't be fooled by that simple calendrical direction, "Move your feet." It really does mean a whole lot more.
* * *
Published in Seven Days 7 May 2003

‘Chord Values

2003-03-12T00:25:00.000-05:00

A Lincoln harpsichord builder keys in on an old idea

An inventory of just some of a harpsichord’s parts suggests the instrument is part animal, part vegetable, part building and part junk drawer. What are we to make of something that’s made up of spine, belly, balance rail, bridge, tail, bridge, cheek, compass, damper, frame, nut, rose, pins, skunktail sharps, split keys, short octaves, and jacks — and whose jacks themselves have slides and tongues, and might be doglegged?

I’ve been reading about harpsichords to prepare for an interview with Robert Hicks, who builds them in South Lincoln. When I called him to set it up, I admitted that I didn’t know my jacks from my elbow. He gruffly let me know I’d better bone up. Now I’m feeling anxious on two fronts — both the ancient instrument and the recalcitrant builder seem prickly and unapproachable.

After several miles on icy dirt roads, I reach Hicks’ cedar-sided house, its blue roof just barely visible from the road. Hicks lives and works on the outskirts of South Lincoln, a stone’s throw from the Green Mountain National Forest. His workshop, which he built with the help of a neighbor, is attached to his house. He can look in on his harpsichords-in-progress through his bedroom window.

When I first spot Robert Hicks in the doorway of his workshop, his blue corduroy pants and plaid shirt all but fade into the dim interior.

He waves me inside, and promptly launches into a lengthy monologue about harpsichord-building. He speaks in a soft, low-pitched voice, making quick, gentle gestures as he describes his work. After a brief tour of his workshop, I realize that what I took for gruffness over the phone is something more like shyness. Hicks is modest and meticulous about his work, and doesn’t like "talking down" to a harpsichord ignoramus.

The most common misconception about the harpsichord is that it’s like a piano. Though both have keyboards and strings, that’s as far as the resemblance goes. A piano hammers, a harpsichord plucks. Pianos must be heavyset to sustain the complex machinery that translates a touch on the keyboard to a plow on the string. Harpsichords call for a light, responsive frame capable of communicating the subtle vibrations of a gently plucked string. A modern grand piano is under about 38,000 pounds of tension while a modern harpsichord sustains a mere 6000.

Harpsichord enthusiasts are touchy about associating their instrument with the piano. When the piano eclipsed the harpsichord in the early 1800s — after the latter had enjoyed 400 years of popularity — harpsichords seized from the Paris aristocracy were burned for firewood. The instrument wasn’t made, played or much missed until a handful of 20th-century piano-makers revived it, creating heavy-framed hybrids whose pathetic sound bore little resemblance to that of a true harpsichord.

It wasn’t until the 1940s that light-bodied, historically derived harpsichords were built. Hicks’ instruments are all copies — but not slavish ones —of extant antique harpsichords. "I try to preserve the virtues of the instruments, but without duplicating their faults," he explains.

*

When Hicks talks about his harpsichords, he refers to them by the name of their original maker. Hempsch. Taskin. Right now, he’s taking his cues from a French harpsichord built in 1760 by Benoist Stehlin. To illustrate why this particular instrument caught his eye, Hicks produces a photograph in Wolfgang Zuckerman’s The Modern Harpsichord. With long, tapered fingers, he points out the elements that first attracted him: the larger-than-usual soundboard area; the deep plucking point; the straight nut — all attributes that promised a rich, full sound. But he needed more than a photograph to actually build a new Stehlin. Fortunately, the instrument in question was housed at the Smithsonian Institution and Hicks was able to obtain a drawing showing every inch of it in exact proportion.

Unrolled, the full-size blueprint of the Stehlin — at least 12 feet long — spills over the edges of Hicks’ long drafting table. Clean black lines unfurl in all directions. If I concentrate, I can almost see a harpsichord among the various lines, arrows and labels. Hicks, of course, has no trouble divining the instrument. He points out where the blueprint confirmed his initial impressions of the Stehlin, and more: "As I pored over the drawing," he says, "I began noticing things I didn’t like." After a careful appraisal, he visited the Stehlin in person, and played it. As he had expected, it had a sweet, full tone. With a smile, he says, "I really fell for it."

On a table in Hicks’ workshop, an unfinished Stehlin lies on its side like a great wing. It’s a rainbow of different woods: Sitka spruce, Douglass fir, poplar, and ash. "It’s going to be one of my best instruments," Hicks says. "I don’t care if it’s five different colors." As he identifies the different parts of the frame, his knuckles graze the soundboard. Though he barely touches it, it lets out a low, drum-like moan. The Stehlin’s soundboard is made from Sitka spruce – a rare, highly resonant wood from Alaska.

To see where Hicks stores his soundboards, we head up to the attic. It is cool and dark; exposed insulation buffers the low, pitched ceiling. Long, thin boards lie in a heap. Hicks sifts through the pile, lifts a piece to his ear and raps it with his knuckles. The first piece emits a dull thud, and he tosses it aside. "Englemann." The next piece let out a dim ring. "Sitka Spruce." He puts that one back in the pile. Another piece surprises him. "Swiss Pine, from Zurich. Not bad!" Last of all, he tries a piece of cedar clapboard left over from when he re-sided his house. He gives it a rap. It rings like a bell.

A finished Stehlin sits in Hicks’ living room. It’s the first one he ever built and he has no plans to sell it. As I scribble notes about the floral paintings on the soundboard, Hicks puts the Stehlin through its paces with a series of chord progressions. I put down my pen. Rich, golden notes roll out of the harpsichord. Each note is piquant, exquisite, with a harp’s deep resonance and a cascading liveliness like a handful of pennies flung down a flight of stairs.

The Stehlin is a double-manual, with a two-tiered keyboard. Hicks couples and uncouples it to switch and combine octaves, but I’m too lost in the sound to keep track of the transitions. The air glitters with rich, roiling notes, and I feel as if I’m being drenched in sound.

I am startled when Hicks reaches into the harpsichord’s maw and pulled out a long, narrow wooden tooth: a jack. The small, thorn-like thing jutting out from one side is the plectrum — the harpsichord’s plucking mechanism. Plectra are hand carved, traditionally from crow, raven, and goose quill, though most modern makers substitute plastic, which is more durable, and affordable.

Hicks uses both. To get his feathers, he heads over to the Addison Wildlife Preserve during hunting season and loiters by the game warden’s office, where hunters must check in with their booty. After getting the hunters’ approval, Hicks personally pulls the primary flight feathers from the dead geese; a process that he does not enjoy. "It’s kind of awkward," he says."I’m vegetarian."

*

In spite of the robust Early Music scene in the United States and the resurgence of interest in the harpsichord in recent years, the market for the instrument is slow-moving: Hicks builds and sells about one instrument each year. Though he has a modest Web site to advertise his instruments, he makes most sales through instrument exhibitions and the occasional convention. He goes to the Boston Early Music Festival to exhibit his harpsichords. Usually someone will buy an instrument there. Once someone bought one on the spot, though harpsichords are rarely an impulse-buy. Though Hicks prefers to retain some modesty about his work, he admits that in 1995, his debut at the festival, he "stole the show."

Harpsichord rentals have provided "a lot of bread and butter” in recent years. "When I buy a new car, I run around with a tape measure," he says. “The car’s got to be 104 inches from dash to tail on the diagonal, and it has to be five-speed — I don’t care about anything else." The Lane Series and the Vermont Mozart Festival regularly rent Hick’s harpsichords. If you’re at a harpsichord performance, you might spot him darting out to do a spot of touch-up tuning during intermissions.

Hicks builds all of his instruments "on speculation" rather than to-order; he hasn’t built any instruments on commission for 20 years. "Not building on commission means I don’t have a future," he says. But he’s willing to sacrifice security for the freedom to build according to his own curiosity and passion. As he writes on his Web site, "I suspect that the driving force behind a great instrument is a curiosity, an engaged perplexity which keeps a maker learning throughout his career."

* * *

Published in Seven Days 12 Mar 2003
Visit Robert Hicks' Harpsichords for more information.

Walking The Talk: Vermonters march on Manhattan

2003-02-19T11:16:00.000-05:00

Lots of people
Originally uploaded by Leo Tilt.

Gutterson Field House, UVM: It is 3:30 a.m., Saturday, February 15. I am wearing wool-lined boot and mittens, two layers of socks, long underwear, blue jeans, five shirts, a wool sweater, a down jacket, a hat and scarf. Similarly bundled figures – too densely wrapped to make out features or gender – pile on the New York City-bound bus. “Peace and Justice!” yells the driver, as if he’s hawking hot dogs. “Peace and justice!”

My bus – a standard yellow school bus – is one of four leaving at this ungodly hour, sponsored by the Burlington-based Peace & Justice Center. The American Friends Service Committee, United Electrical Workers, and other organizations are transporting Vermonters to today’s peace rally near the United Nations – one of dozens of antiwar gatherings being staged in cities around the world.

The bus is full. Ahead of me, most people are trying to sleep. Behind me, it sounds like a party. Students from UVM – some drunk, some stoned, some giddy in anticipation of the demonstration – talk eagerly amongst themselves. A blonde, tin-voiced girl scoots into the seat behind me and confides to her neighbor, “I might not make much sense; I’m tripping on LSD.”

A girl in a green wool hat is pensively reading a printout of public bathrooms in midtown Manhattan – the NYPD has decided that Port-o-Potties would pose a “security risk.” A woman across the aisle announces the contents of her satchel. She has three apples and Kool-aid. The tripping girl asks her, “Did you bring anything to drink?”

“Yeah, I have some Kool-Aid.”

“No, I mean, like alcohol?”

“Oh. No.”

We get started. I try to sleep. The walls of the bus are cold. Condensation builds and freezes on the windows.

*

Five hours later, we stop for gas somewhere in New York. It’s warmer now, and I can see who else in on the bus. A blue-haired boy shares a seat behind the driver with his mother. A young woman with a plume of red and brown dreadlocks and a blue tattoo by her right eye dangles an arm over the back of her seat. A salt-and-pepper coifed woman sips from a silver thermos. An older lady with a white mohair hat has the wool collar of her jacket pulled up to her nose. I’m hungry. In my backpack I have crackers, a wedge of white cheddar cheese, a Fig Newton and a darkening banana. I eat some cheese.

As we move closer to the city, Vermonters look out the windows and make disparaging remarks about the flat suburban landscape. Hard-edged office buildings read above the highway: Daewoo. AGFA. Fleet. From a distance, the city skyline is an opaque blue-gray. As we move closer, it deepens and sharpens into a complex nexus of streets, buildings, taxicabs, New Yorkers.

The driver is talking on two cell-phones at once. People laugh nervously and speculate about the possibility of an accident. We head into Manhattan. As we spill out onto 34th street, disoriented and overdressed, I hear someone mutter, “I feel like the country mouse going to the city.”

I head toward the New York Public Library, where people are gathering to walk en masse to the demonstration on First Avenue. Along the way, I pass 15 police vans parked bumper-to-bumper, all filled with policemen in riot gear. In Times Square, under towering commercial signs, a skinny white guy with a beard is stopped by two policemen. They take his Bush-bashing sign, tear it in two and hand it back to him. They break the wooden stick to which the sign was affixed. No sticks allowed.

The walls of the Public Library bear an epigraph deeply etched in stone: “But above all things truth beareth away the victory.” Today, more transient slogans flutter below on fabric and paper: “Go Solar, Not Ballistic,” “Power to the Peaceful,” “Foreplay Not Warplay,” “Duct and Cover.” A group hands out free signs printed on recycled paper in vegetable-based inks by a union shop – sponsored by Working Assets. Graying men in military garb rally under a maroon banner: Veterans against the War. They face police officers across a narrowing swath of sidewalk.

Nearby, middle-aged men and women hold photographs of their sons and daughters in uniform. Military Families for Peace. I see people in jackets that read “United Steelworkers.” I stand beside a woman with a broad smile and dreadlocks reaching her ankles. GLAMericans For Peace, swathed in stylish faux fur, stand under a sign reading, “Peace—It’s the New Black.” Here and there, the odd spray of plastic beads – courtesy of the Mardis Gras Carnival Bloc – glitters in the sunshine. The crowd is diverse, and slogans and expressions vary, but they share a single message: No War.

As the crowd at the library swells, police line up along the streets to keep folks off the asphalt. An officer with a bullhorn directs people to move towards First Ave. People ignore him. They’ll move in their own time. The crowd gets bigger. Police in riot gear – helmets, batons, guns – arrive on the scene. They walk back and forth, ostentatious plastic handcuffs dangling from their belts. I cross the street and stand on the corner. From here I can see that the library steps are packed. The crowd stretches from the doors of the library down the curb and spans the city block.

Around noon, the crowd starts moving, oozing like a mountain of molasses from the library steps towards First Avenue. I tag along in the shadow of the GLAMericans to the sound of chanting: “La Peace, C’est Chic.” A sign dripping with blue tassels proclaims, “Peace is Not a Fringe Movement.” Police dart alongside the procession, jogging in the gutter. We pass people trapped under the awnings of Bloomingdale’s and Godiva chocolatiers. Some smile and wave. Many seem confused. One strangely stationary sign further adown the sidewalk catches my eye. It looks incongruous in the midst of all the moving signs, and the crowd splits around it. When I get close enough I c see that it reads, “Sample Shoe Sale.”

At Third Avenue, the city’s refusal to issue a march permit abruptly becomes irrelevant. The crowd has outgrown the sidewalk and spilled out into the street, filling it. The walk becomes a massive, slow-moving march. We inch forward, shuffling, squeezing. Some people carry radios tuned to WBAI, which is covering the demonstration. We hear that Third Avenue is full from 52nd Street to 72nd, and that a similar crowd is moving down Second Avenue. Cars waiting for the light to turn are trapped in the crowd like flies in amber; the people inside them look aggravated and uncomfortable. People are drumming. Syncopated chants of “Peace… Now!” thunder up and down the avenue.

Police prevent us from moving towards the demonstration on First Avenue. Every cross street has an aluminum barricade, and behind every barricade are officers persistently waving us north. Behind the police officers, we can see that the crowds on Second Avenue are surging southward. The handfuls of people leaving the rally are allowed to cross unimpeded.

“Where can we cross over? We want to go to the demonstration.”

“You can cross over at 52nd.”

At 52nd, another blockade. “Where can we cross over? They said we could use 52nd.”

“You can use 68th.”

At 68th, more of the same. “You can use 72nd.”

At 69th, the crowd plows through the barricades and begins a torturously slow walk south in search of a place to cross over to First. Again, the barricades block us at every corner. The police erect barricades across the Avenue, bringing the march to a temporary halt before protesters muster sufficient oomph to break through. In spite of the inevitable chanting that erupts at every whiff of confrontation with the NYPD, people are by and large reluctant to disrupt the arbitrarily erected barriers. Even so, discarded metal frames and blue wooden planks litter the open intersections, marking where the crowd, however recalcitrant, broke through.

At about 4 p.m., we finally arrive at First Avenue, but even though we are now within the rally’s officially “permitted” area, police are still erecting barricades. After crossing one intersection, I hear a scraping of metal on asphalt and turn around. Police are blockading First Avenue. I can’t believe it. “Isn’t there a permit for a rally on this Avenue?” I ask one officer.

“I only know what they tell me.”

When I pose the same question to a female officer, she’s a little more eloquent. “Do you want to negotiate with me?

“No, I’m just wondering – isn’t the rally permit for First? Why are you cutting us off?”

“It’s to keep mass chaos from breaking out,” she snarls. “ You have a problem with that? It’s so you don’t get trampled. You want to know what this is for? Wait until the ambulance can’t come for your bloody body. This is for your own safety.”

Finally, after a full day of marching, I arrive at the rally. The organizers are congratulating everyone on their participation. The demonstration is over.

Turning to leave, I’m surprised to see the end of the march. Litter is strewn everywhere. As I walk towards Grand Central Station, taking care not to jaywalk, my feelings are mixed. The experience overall has been encouraging. I’ve seen concerned citizens coalesce from all over the country to demonstrate their opposition to war. I have marched with the largest, most diverse group of people I’ve ever seen rally around one cause. But encouraging as it has been to march for peace, marching really isn’t enough.

One of the chants that I’ve heard throughout the day is, “This is what democracy looks like!” The earnestness of the voices raised in these choruses makes me wonder whether too many of us confuse marching with civic participation. Demonstrations are dramatic and make you feel good. But they dissipate quickly. We need to find more lasting forms of activism, more effective ways to register dissent. At the end of the day, I find myself asking: What else could democracy look like?

* * *
Published in Seven Days 19 February 2003

Food Fetish

2003-02-05T10:54:00.000-05:00

Area chefs pay lip service to eroticism

On the Half Shell
Originally uploaded by Maxed (not me!).

My boyfriend and I sit at a small table, waiting for eggs benedict, sautéed vegetables and sourdough toast. Our breakfast arrives. He spears a red pepper and holds it out for me to eat. When I lean forward to nip the pepper off his fork, I do so furtively, blushing, as if the act of eating were somehow illicit.

In my mouth, the sliver of sautéed red pepper is soft, almost silken. When I gently bite down on it, it has the same gradual, fleshy give as my lower lip. I chew slowly, relishing the pepper’s smoky flavor and its slippery texture on my tongue. I swallow, and the aftertaste — and the look I’m getting from across the table — leaves me feeling a few degrees warmer. And hungrier. My mouth is wet with saliva, my appetite whetted for the next mouthful.

Valentine’s Day isn’t just about bad chocolate and pink hearts from the pharmacy. It can be an occasion for extraordinary dining. Whatever — or whomever — you eat on Valentine’s Day, the experience should make your toes curl with pleasure.

Food is sexy. The reverse — sex is foody — can also be true. But while chocolate body-paint or peach-flavored lubricants may taste good, they’re just dressing, not a full course. Food foreplay doesn’t have to be confined to the bedroom; you may be surprised at what a slow sit-down dinner can do for your libido.

For gastronomic guidance on the subject of sexy food, I looked to the experts: the chefs. What do these pros, who are so intimate with food, have to say about dining on aphrodisiacs? What entrées are especially erotic? What spices arouse the senses? What flavors suggest sex? Whether you plan on dining out or in, here's what some Vermont chefs suggest as a prelude to a kiss:

Sean Connory on a Plate

Bill Tecosky, Rainbow Sweets, Marshfield
Bill and his wife, Patricia Halloran, have developed a dessert that's something of a local legend. "We bake pastry balls and inject them with still-hot French pastry cream. Then we deftly dip them in hot caramel, so they are hard and crunchy on the outside like a crème brulée." Two of these one-inch balls, called profiteroles, sit atop a layered concoction of confections: a layer of puffed pastry, a layer of éclair pastry and a layer of "whippéd" cream. "You can't believe how many of these we have to make to avoid civil unrest.

"I stand behind these things all day, and when women come in, I see looks in their eyes that their men don't see. I see jaws hit chests."

The name of this fabulous confection? Officially, it's the Saint Honoré, but Bill defers to his "double-X-chomosome customers" who have dubbed the dessert "Sean Connory on a plate." For younger indulgers, he says, "It could be Edward Norton. It's in the mind of the beholder. For older guys like me, it might be Brigitte Bardot.

"I have a 1-900 number where I describe pastries. It's 1-900-TALK-PASTRIES."

Amuse Bouche

Steve Schimoler, The Mist Grill, Waterbury
"Let's face it — great sex doesn't happen in five minutes. It should take an extended period of time. Foreplay is essential to great sex." Accordingly, The Mist Grill's wide-ranging Valentine's menu offers sustained stimulation for an extended — and playful — prelude to a hot night at home. Schimoler serves up a kaleidoscope of classical aphrodisiacs in novel and suggestive arrangements. "It’s about imitation, about having great food that parodies the sex act."

Menu highlights: butter-soft salmon "with a texture of silk-panties." Duck Confit with Ibarra Chocolate and Chipotle Mole — to elicit "that bead of sweat on your brow for the main act." For vegetarians, there’s a luscious mushroom dish finished with white truffle oil, whose musky scent "smells like sex." And for the Sweet Finish, a tartlet for two: Adam and Eve's Apple Gallette with Warm Cinnamon Caramel. The smell of cinnamon and baking apples has been proven to get people in the mood, and the warm caramel’s texture is "like body paint."

And the white silky cream?

"That’s for whatever anyone wants to think it is."

Ooh, La La!

Carole Fisher, Mes Amis, Stowe
"The trick is to give an oral orgasm. You know that you've succeeded as a chef when you hear people going Oh... Mmmm! We want that to last through the entire meal."

At Mes Amis, sumptuous offerings are a matter of course. Or courses, if you're hungry enough. "We’re very sensual to begin with — we go through a lot of oysters here." Briney, satiny and decidedly feminine, oysters are a noted aphrodisiac. And, Carole adds, "Having the animal in your mouth makes some people a little wild."

A rack of lamb also might excite: "It's something you can eat with your fingers. It's a very tactile, basic, Raaarh! Red meat! kind of thing. It brings out the caveman — or woman — for the evening."

Yin-Yang

Steve Bogart, A Single Pebble, Burlington
Contrast and balance are key concepts in Steve Bogart's culinary philosophy; he talks about the Yin and Yang of the food. "Everything on the menu is balanced, so no matter what you order, it is going to go well with everything else."

A Single Pebble's most erotic dish, by Steve’s estimation, is also its most popular: mock eel. Bogart developed his version from a traditional Buddhist recipe, featuring strands of wok-fried shiitake mushroom in a salty, sweet seasoning. "With the crispiness of the outside, and the soft, almost velvetiness of the shiitake mushrooms on the inside, and the saltiness that is almost instantly counteracted by sweetness — I've had customers come up and tell me it's like eating sex."

Play With Your Food

Dale Conoscenti, Conoscenti, Montpelier
Dale Conoscenti identifies his "free-form lobster ravioli" — which incudes a lobster tail and claw slow-cooked with butter and drizzled with truffle oil — as his sexiest dish. Good sex, and good food, indulge sight, smell, and touch for a full sensory experience. "Whether we like it or not, we play with our food."

A mental flirtation with the subject never hurts, either. "There's a mystique around lobster. Here's this large, red, hard-shelled thing, and it's all mine... and I know what's under that shell: rich, sumptuous mouthfuls of delicate white meat." Plus, you get to eat it with your bare
hands.

"Food for me is about passion. A sexual relationship — if it’s a good one — is also about passion." And eating with the person you love? "That's double passion."

Acheiving O

Fleury Mahoney, O Restaurant, Burlington
"For a romantic dinner, I would choose something really beautiful. We serve it on big white plates. . . in a bare-bones kind of way, so the food is very erotic in its nakedness."

Mahoney recommends plump, fresh, flown-in, eco-friendly oysters, spiced and on the half-shell, resting on a bed of sea salt evocative of the beach, "so it looks like they've just washed up on the shore." Oysters may be consumed with several house sauces, and with caviar. For sensual food, "caviar with oysters is about as decadent as you can get."

Love, Italian-Style

Tom Delia, Trattoria Delia, Burlington
"Eat like the Italians do — 'cause they're the best lovers!"

Delia’s menu offers an eclectic — and authentic — Italian menu, with regional specialties. Anything with an especially erotic in the mix? "Wild mushrooms." A.k.a. funghi selvaggi.

How do the Italians eat? "In small courses, always sharing. You share the antipasta, the pasta, the main course, and, of course, a bottle of wine. Instead of a good dining experience, with the right wine, you have a great one."

Food Science

Tara Vaughan-Hughes, Eat Good Food, Vergennes
For food that get you in the mood, Tara Vaugahn-Hughes cites culinary critic M.F.K Fisher: "If you give someone a steak and a glass of wine, watch for when their earlobes turn red: that's the time to ask them for a favor. Or ask them to sleep with you. Because that's when they're in the best mood."

Of course, there's always "the old standby" of chocolate. The body responds to chocolate with the same chemical it produces when in love. And Eat Good Food has an "amazing" chocolate cake — layered, with dense, dark chocolate and almonds. "It's just chocolate, chocolate, chocolate! And served warm, it's just amazing. It has a nice give in your mouth, a silken feel."

Anything to avoid on Valentine's day? "Oh God — no beans!"

Share, Cherie

Gay Truax, Tully and Marie’s, Middlebury
"I like to mix textures so the desserts are exciting to eat. We have a midnight chocolate mousse, for example, that we serve with a star and a moon shortbread cookie, which is both crisp and soft." Also texturally tantalizing is the crème brulee, whose "hot, crispy sugary crust sits atop a mound of cool, creamy custard."

For visual stimulation, Tully and Marie’s midnight mousse is served "up," in a martini glass, and a V-Day special is in the works for a "very pretty" heart-shaped dessert for two.

Since sharing food is definitely sexy, T&M's is planning a chocolate and chambord fondue for two, with cubed coconut pound cake and fresh fruit, which "you can eat on your own, or feed to each other."

How to Chow

Jeff Brogan, Chow! Bella, St. Albans
"I would definitely suggest strawberries — either as an entree or to finish
with. And champagne."
* * *
Published in Seven Days 5 February 2003

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Pasta and Pizza / Pizza and Pasta Fantastico

Pasta and Pizza32, Barnov Str.Tel: (995 32) 98 29 8211:00 a.m - 10:00 p.mPizza and Pasta Fantastico3a, Napareuli Str.Tel:(995 32) 29 46 7510:30 a.m. - 10:30 p.m.

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5 Marjanishvili Street – Tel: 91 00 0525 Leselidze Street – Tel: 43 96 46

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Turkish-Iranian Restaurant 'Urfa Sofrasis'76 Agmashenebeli AvenueTel: (995 32) 96 50 94

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Pasta and Pizza
32, Barnov Str.
Tel: (995 32) 98 29 82
11:00 a.m - 10:00 p.m

Pizza and Pasta Fantastico
3a, Napareuli Str.
Tel:(995 32) 29 46 75
10:30 a.m. - 10:30 p.m.

5 Marjanishvili Street – Tel: 91 00 05
25 Leselidze Street – Tel: 43 96 46

Turkish-Iranian Restaurant 'Urfa Sofrasis'
76 Agmashenebeli Avenue
Tel: (995 32) 96 50 94

Grand Cafe CCCP
28 Kiacheli Street. Tel: 877 57 66 67