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Weekend Butler: The Secret of Life. Bill Nighy in a music video? Mary Oliver’s summer poem. A simple way to wake up roast chicken. Bob Dylan, 80, sings “Happy Birthday” to Brian Wilson, 80. And more….
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Published: Jun 22, 2022
Category:
Weekend
I watched the hearings, and my heart hurt for Shaye Moss and Lady Ruby, but the weather was ideal here, and the sky was outrageously blue, and I couldn’t avoid the healing power of beauty and people. Words filled screens, and a sentence about lovers committing to one another — getting “to the far side of yes” — will survive every revision. I added jogging to my daily walk. I bought a drawing (above) from my daughter that she made when she was 7 and taking an art class at the Met. And wise women shared knowledge…
THE SECRET OF LIFE #1
When you put a hamburger patty in a frying pan or on a grill, press your thumb in the center. Why: the center of the meat will expand uniformly with the edges, the patty’s surface will come out flat, not puffed up, and the meat will cook more evenly, so you’re not left with a rare middle and medium or well-done edges. (Thank you, KC.)
THE SECRET OF LIFE #2
A man is driving. His wife is trying to find a radio station on the car radio. She clicks through all of them, can’t find what they both might like. She’s slightly agitated. He says, “I’m fine with whatever.” She continues to search. He says, “Whatever makes you happy, makes me happy.” Magic words. He made her happiness his happiness.
THE SECRET OF LIFE #3
“I believe it’s essential, especially with what’s going on now, to embrace every tiny molecule of goodness and light, and to share that energy with as many people as possible. Stay at the party and dance.” (Thank you, KM)
SONG OF THE WEEK: FLORENCE & THE MACHINE… AND BILL NIGHY?
‘Cause I hear music, I feel the beat
And for a moment, when I’m dancing
I am free, I am free
I am free, I am free
MARY OLIVER: “JUST AS THE CALENDAR BEGAN TO SAY SUMMER”
went out of the schoolhouse fast
and through the gardens and to the woods,
and spent all summer forgetting what I’d been taught —
two times two, and diligence, and so forth,
how to be modest and useful, and how to succeed and so forth,
machines and oil and plastic and money and so forth.
By fall I had healed somewhat, but was summoned back
to the chalky rooms and the desks, to sit and remember
the way the river kept rolling its pebbles,
the way the wild wrens sang though they hadn’t a penny in the
bank,
the way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light.
LIFE-AFFIRMING STORY OF THE WEEK
from CNN
A Southern California woman made a startling discovery after bringing home a set of sofas she found on Craigslist: more than $36,000 in cash hidden inside one of the cushions.
Vicky Umodu said she was never tempted to keep what she found. She said she immediately gave the money back to the family who gave her the furniture.
“God has been kind to me and my children, they’re all alive and well, I have three beautiful grandchildren, so what can I ever ask from God?”
It all started when Umodo started looking through online ads for furniture for her new home. “I scrolled down and saw free items,” said Umodu. “So, I clicked on it, and the first thing I came up with was this family that wanted to give a sofa, and everything in their bedroom set… I said, ‘Maybe it’s a gimmick,’ so I called them.”
It was no gimmick. The family that was giving away the furniture explained that a loved one had recently died, and they were liquidating everything on the property. Umodu said the two sofas and chair they gave her work perfectly in her new home. “I just moved in, and I don’t have anything in my house. I was so excited, so we picked it up and brought it in.”
But when she got home and was examining the sofas more closely, she discovered something strange: an unknown item inside one of the cushions. “I thought it was a heat pad,” said Umodu, who immediately discounted that theory because there was no electrical cord. When she unzipped the cushion and looked inside, she discovered several envelopes filled with thousands of dollars in cash. “I was telling my son, come, come, come! I was screaming, this is money! I need to call the guy.”
Umodu said when she returned the money, the family told her they had actually discovered other cash hidden throughout the rest of the house, but only a few hundred dollars. They’re not sure why the deceased man may have hidden so much money inside his couch. But as a way of saying thank you, they agreed to pay for a new refrigerator for Vicky Umodu and gave her $2,200.”I was not expecting a dime from him, I was not.”
BOB MARLEY’S LAST SONG
From Chris Blackwell’s memoir, The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond, this is his account of Marley’s recording of “Redemption Song,” his final testament as he succumbed to cancer:
He was terribly ill and not sleeping much, cognizant that his time was coming to an end. His writing and thinking were taking on an intensely contemplative tone.
He had been working on ‘Redemption Song’ for months, trying it out in various styles, touching on all the varieties of Jamaican music he had been part of, from upbeat ska to hypnotic reggae. He’d taken some of the song’s lyrics from a speech delivered in 1934 by Marcus Garvey, one of the major influences on the Rastafari movement: ‘We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind.’
Bob really wanted to get the song right. When he played the various versions for me, I liked them but didn’t really love them. Something was missing. Then it hit me. Because the lyrics were so obviously important and deep, the song would work best presented as simply as possible, with just Bob and an acoustic guitar. Bob took some persuading to try it this way, but he listened patiently to my reasoning and then agreed to record an acoustic take.
Eyes shut, lost in the words, he sang a spare version to me as an audience of one. It sounded hymnal and hypnotic. The understatement of his performance made the song seem so much more dramatic. I thought it would be amazing if everyone heard ‘Redemption Song’ the same way, as if it were sung directly to them, just you and Bob in the room.
In its simplicity, the song transcended genre, so that it wasn’t reggae, folk, pop or rock. It was Bob Marley.
BOB DYLAN, 80, SINGS “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” TO BRIAN WILSON, 80
TOMATO BUTTER FOR ROAST CHICKEN
From Canal House: Cook Something: Recipes to Rely On
Roast chicken… again? This tomato butter adds a new dimension. When you’re ready to use it, don’t warm it up, just slather it on the roasted chicken and let it melt.
serves 4-6
2 lemons
2 anchovy filets packed in oil, drained and finely chopped
6 sprigs fresh thyme
¾ cup dry sherry
2 big tablespoons tomato paste
8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold butter, cut into 8 pieces
Put the anchovies, thyme and sherry in as heavy medium saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Strain the sherry through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl. Discard the solids. Return the sherry to the pan. Boil over medium-high heat until the sherry has reduced to ¼ cup. Whisk in the tomato paste. Add the butter one piece at a time, whisking until it has melted before adding the next piece. Whisk until all the butter has melted and the sauce is smooth. Remove the pan from the head and cover to keep the tomato butter warm.
“A CHAZERAI” — A SHORT STORY BY ELISSA ALTMAN
Me: Hi. Did you get the Fresh Direct order I sent you—
Rita: How was the cemetery?
Me: What—-
Rita: You were at the CEMETERY—-
Me: What cemetery?
Rita: You went to visit your FATHER.
Me: We went for a drive.
Rita: —to the cemetery.
Me: No, we didn’t.
Rita: — ’cause it’s FATHER’s DAY.
Me: We had an errand to run.
Rita: To the CEMETERY.
Me: it’s two-and-a-half hours away from me.
Rita: So what.
Me: You’re a nightmare.
Rita: I watched ‘Mildred Pierce.’ It’s so good. (Silence) How are you, honey?
I am so exhausted.
Elissa Altman is the author of memoirs “Motherland,: “Treyf,” and “Poor Man’s Feast.” Find her at ElissaAltman.com and PoorMansFeast.Substack.com.
PUT A RAT IN A CAGE AND GIVE IT 2 WATER BOTTLES. ONE IS JUST WATER AND ONE IS WATER LACED WITH HEROIN OR COCAINE.
from a conversation with Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream:
Put a rat in a cage and give it 2 water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with heroin or cocaine. The rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself in a couple of weeks. That is our theory of addiction.
Bruce Alexander comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It has nothing to do. Let’s try this a bit differently.” So he built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything a rat could want is in Rat Park. Lovely food. Lots of sex. Other rats to befriend. Colored balls. Plus both water bottles, one with water and one with drugged water. But here’s what’s fascinating: In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use it. None of them overdose. None of them use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction.
What Bruce did shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. The right-wing theory is that it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is that it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment.
Now, we created a society where significant numbers of us can’t bear to be present in our lives without being on something, drink, drugs, sex, shopping… We’ve created a hyper-consumerist, hyper-individualist, isolated world that is, for many of us, more like the first cage than the bonded, connected cages we need.
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of it, is geared toward making us connect with things not people. You are not a good consumer citizen if you spend your time bonding with the people around you and not stuff. In fact, we are trained from a young age to focus our hopes, dreams, and ambitions on things to buy and consume. Drug addiction is a subset of that.
