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Weekend Butler for Memorial Day 2022: How bright a light there must be to cast so dark a shadow.
Published: May 25, 2022
Category:
Weekend
If you are so fortunate as to have no reason to visit a soldier’s grave on Memorial Day, you’re among the millions of Americans who can enjoy a long weekend that marks the official start of summer. No cares. Sand between your toes. Fire up the grill.
Good luck with that.
This Memorial Day feels different, and you know why: Our children are now foot-soldiers in an insane war that sends them to early graves. This weekend there will be 19 new graves in Texas. It’s almost too banal to say it: they won’t be the last.
A kid can buy two AR-15 assault rifles on his 18th birthday. Did you know that in 1988 the federal government banned metal-tipped lawn darts because three children died from them while playing outside? (It’s true.) No wonder the intelligent reaction that follows shock and grief after 19 kids and two teachers are killed isn’t “thoughts and prayers” but pretty much what Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors, said in his pregame remarks.
On day one, I was with Kerr: boiling over with rage and anger. On day two, as I read more, I felt impotent rage and anger. The National Rifle Association is holding its annual meeting this weekend in Houston, with Ted Cruz — who now favors cops permanently stationed at school entrances — and Donald Trump as featured speakers. The Supreme Court is poised to expand gun rights. And Republicans in Congress are committed to murder as usual.
You see that news coming across your screen, and it’s tempting to feel the complete loss of what is politely called “agency.” Translation: we’re no longer citizens, we’re spectators. History happens, and all we can do is watch. Guns, abortions, trans-rights, interracial marriage — backwards turns the clock. I’ve now heard two friends compare USA 2022 to Germany 1933. Another texted: “There is world class healthcare in Puerto Vallarta, international airport and Costco.” Others have quoted Shakespeare: Act 4, Scene 3 of “Macbeth.”
Alas, poor country!
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be call’d our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy; the dead man’s knell
Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken.
Ann Lamott republished a piece about Sandy Hook on Facebook that was mostly rhetoric, but she dug in at the end:
The world is much wilder, sweeter, heartbreaking, weirder, richer, more insane, awful, beautiful and profound than we were prepared for as children or that I am comfortable with. The paradox is that in the face of this, we discover that in the smallest moments of taking in beauty, in actively being people of goodness and mercy and outreach, we are saved.
As day three dawns, that’s where I find myself: impotent on the national level, increasingly committed to do something positive right where I am. My daughter’s got two jobs this summer; she’s thinking about also volunteering at a cat adoption service. I have hard deadlines; I’ve volunteered to tutor a high school student or two in a PEN program.
I am, as I’ve written here, the son of a woman who said, “There’s always something more you can do.” My DNA is to refuse defeat. Against a lot of evidence, I think: How bright a light there must be to cast so dark a shadow.
JOSH RITTER ON TWITTER
The singer-songwriter is way out of his lane on Twitter — he’s angry, agitated, and eloquent. I suggest you follow him.
READER MAIL ON NUTRITIONAL YEAST
While I don’t care for the taste plain, I do enjoy it as Nooch (a Parmesan cheese alternative) which I simulated after reading the label at a health food store:
Nutritional yeast
Ground raw cashews
Garlic powder
Sea salt
I put everything in a food processor and keep it in the fridge. Some recipes call for oregano and red pepper, but I like it as listed. Try it!
I take a lot of vitamin B-12 and B-6. What I worry about: how to stockpile enough pills to kill me when I don’t remember what keys are for. Or why people kiss.
Vegans love this to enhance that cheesy flavor. I use it in blended salad dressings (e.g. that viral Tik Tok green goddess salad), sprinkle it on scrambled eggs, or baked into bread. Trader Joe’s and Bob’s Mill have their own brands if you don’t wish to further enrich Mr. Bezos.
START STOCKPILING DIJON MUSTARD
From the The Guardian:
French mustard producers said seed production in 2021 was down 50% after poor harvests, which they said had been brought on by the changing climate in France’s Burgundy region and Canada, the second largest mustard seed producer in the world.
David Martin, the chief executive of Condimentum, a UK-based company which processes the bulk of UK mustard see, predicted that 2023 would be the year to watch, with uncertainty over whether Canadian farmers would stick with the crop or opt for something less risky.“I suspect the global shortage in the short to medium term will just get worse and I think there will be some outages in terms of supermarket shelf availability,” he said.
WHAT BEETHOVEN ENDURED BEFORE HE WROTE THE “ODE TO JOY”
From The Marginalian:
When Napoleon’s armies invaded and occupied Vienna — where Beethoven had moved at twenty-one to study with his great musical hero, Haydn — most of the wealthy fled to the country. He took refuge with his brother, sister-in-law, and young nephew in the city. Thirty-nine and almost entirely deaf, Beethoven found himself “suffering misery in a most concentrated form” — misery that “affected both body and soul” so profoundly that he produced “very little coherent work.”
The next six years were an unremitting heartache. His love went unreturned. He grew estranged from one of his brothers, who married a woman Beethoven disliked. His other brother died. He entered an endless legal combat over guardianship of his young nephew. He spent a year bedridden with a mysterious illness he called “an inflammatory fever,” riddled with skull-splitting headaches. His hearing almost completely deteriorated.
And then he wrote the “Ode to Joy,” his crowning achievement — the choral finale of his ninth and final symphony. It would distill the transcendent torment of his creative life: how to integrate rage and redemption, the solace of poetry with the drama of music; how to channel his own poetic fury as a force of beauty, of vitality, of meaning; how to turn the human darkness he had witnessed and suffered into something incandescent, something superhuman.
To hear it, click here.
TWO EASY VEGETABLE RECIPES
From V Is for Vegetables: Inspired Recipes & Techniques for Home Cooks — from Artichokes to Zucchini
Braised Radishes with Honey & Black Pepper
Braising is a great way to soften radish roots and remove their spicy rawness. Without losing the character of the radish, this braise enhances it with the sweetness of honey, the aromatic quality of the black pepper, and the browned edges of the radish itself. This is an entirely different way to love radishes.
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound radishes, halved
1 clove garlic, smashed
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon coarsely cracked black pepper
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
Salt
Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add half the radishes and all the garlic and cook until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add the honey and pepper and let the honey caramelize, about a minute. Add the vinegar, the remaining radishes, and salt and cook until all the radishes are just warmed but not cooked soft.
String Beans with Sesame Sauce
In Japan, sesame sauce is often served with beans and other fresh vegetables at room temperature. This simple preparation appears often in bento boxes as well as on the menus of small, casual neighborhood restaurants in Japan.
2 tablespoons toasted white sesame seeds
1 tablespoon mirin (sweet rice wine)
2 teaspoons white soy sauce or shiro dashi
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon sugar
1 pound string beans, tips trimmed and blanched until crisp-tender
3 scallions (green parts), thinly sliced
Crush the sesame seeds in a mortar and pestle. (Don’t worry about grinding every last seed.) Add the mirin, white soy sauce or shiro dashi, sesame oil, lemon juice, sugar and a teaspoon of water. Stir until combined. The sauce should be the consistency of loose peanut butter. thin with a little water if needed. Put the string beans in a bowl, drizzle with the sauce, and top with the scallions.
