Befriending Tchaikovsky

Artist Jane Mackay's representation of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet

At some age in my youth, probably around fourteen when I first took music appreciation in school, I decided it was cool to hate Tchaikovsky (and Beethoven, Schubert, etc. etc.). I thought that the best music was plainly baroque in origins, with exceptions for Mozart. Formally elegant, intellectual pieces seemed to me far better than music that was overly emotional or “pretty.” I listened to a great deal of Bach.

This is not to say that I shunned everything after Mozart. I had a grudging little love affair with Debussy that I couldn't shake. But for a good fifteen years, that's more or less what I would have said had anyone questioned me on issues of classical music.

But recently, I've begun befriending musicians I once dubbed uncool. Schubert may have been the first because I wanted to listen to some lieder. And then it was the Tchaikovsky. Seriously, can you name another classical musician who's had such a hold on the mental “ear” of the public? (Okay, Beethoven, pipe down.) At least a dozen of his melodies are instantly recognizable to any adult and most children, from the Nutcracker Suite to the Sleeping Beauty Waltz.

This music isn't “just” for ballets and stage-work. It's dreamy, disciplined work that sounds positively opulent to the ear. It's a genuine pleasure to listen to the swelling strings he uses. And really, if I'm going to make any pretensions at all to coolness, I don't want it to be through rejecting something beautiful.

Outstanding and Outdated: Beef Tea

1900 Bovril advertisement, per the Victoria and Albert Museum

This post represents what I hope will be an ongoing series called Outstanding and Outdated, an idiosyncratic history of drinks. Please feel free to suggest drinks you'd like to hear about!

Upon eating some delicious beef stew tonight, I was recalled to some experiments I had once made in preparing beef tea. The ubiquitous Victorian food of invalids had long piqued my curiosity. So I bravely took lots of beef and double-boiled it and found it fairly bland and uninspiring.

In terms of cook books, beef tea seems to first appear in 1861's Book of Household Management. There Mrs. Beeton explains that the tea is “to be administered to those invalid to whom flavoring and seasonings are not allowed” (unlucky people!).

In 1870, Napoleon III ordered beef to feed his troops, and a Scotsman created Johnston's Fluid Beef, later called Bovril. This was and is the most popular commercial beef tea in production and it remains an iconic part of British culinary heritage today.

The New York Times in 1880 apparently had so many inquiries that related to beef tea that they decided to devote a special column to the matter. There we read that beef tea is entirely composed of gelatine and that humans cannot derive sustenance from gelatine. The author instead recommended taking some commercial beef tea and then adding to it meat and water to make...homemade beef tea.

Beef tea, which is nowadays pretty much exclusively Bovril, has strong associations with British football culture, as a beverage for fans to enjoy on a cold morning in the stands. It has mainly lost its early associations with invalidism and is nowadays made at home only by anachronistic food enthusiasts like myself.

You can find Mrs Beeton's recipe here.

Snow Day Reading

I realize this post is fairly unseasonable for most readers, but here in the mountains, we've had snow coming down hard for a night and a day now, which inspired me to pick out the perfect books for a snow day.

Let me be very clear—snow day reading is all about comfort. For this reason, about half of my choices are basically children's literature. These are the easy-to-reread favorites that are easily picked up with a cup of tea and put down for a long nap under a quilt. 

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder--Laura and her family may be barely surviving a hard winter, but you're cuddled up with a cup of cocoa! Enjoy the vicarious hardship.

Deathless by Catherynne Valente--An exquisite novel that reimagines Russian folk tales in the era of Communism. Warning: may cause beet-cravings.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis--The archetypal snow day book. Look out your window and imagine that every snow-covered lamp post is magical.

The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen--This fairy tale is immensely influential and strangely underappreciated. Anderson is the master of the literary fairy tale, and this is one of his best.

Three Blind Mice by Agatha Christie--If you'd like a literary frisson, enjoy this gripping murder mystery that unfolds in a house completely cut off by snow.  You say cliche, I say classic.

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan--I had to have one literary fiction selection, and I chose this over The Shipping News primarily because I've read it more recently. As a Red Lobster closes its doors forever, snow falls and falls and its manager tries to reconcile himself to both the past and the future.

Men, Women, and Silver-Screen Style

"Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other.  Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then."  --Katherine Hepburn

When a woman is perpetually single, into her thirties, she gains, or has thrust upon her, a good deal of appetite for her own way.  There's no slow lesson of compromise and consideration, only the independence that sometimes being lonely will reward.

This is not to say that such a woman cannot find her perfect partner at any age, but it suggests that when love enters after three decades, it can be harder to adjust to.

I was watching Mary, Queen of Scots with Katherine Hepburn last night, and it occurred to me how iconic she became not just as a strong modern woman, but also as an actress who portrayed women of powerful self-will.  One of the greatest roles she ever played may have been Eleanor of Aquitane, another indomitable female.

Those phrases are still a little uncomfortable, aren't they?  "Appetite for her own way." "Self-will."  "Indomitable."  Yet these are phrases that have historically connoted admirable strength and determination--in persons of either gender.

And so I return to the Hepburn quote above.  I love the off-the-cuff wit and elegance it displays--but also the radical rethinking of what romantic relationships are meant to be.  If "women of a certain age," like myself, are going to be won over to the side of domestic felicity, it's going to be a felicity on our own terms, where we don't have to share a bathroom

Flying Solo on Valentine's Day

As one who is perennially single, I like to think I've achieved a certain level of aplomb and savoir faire about flying solo. There is one time of the year, however, universally acknowledged to be a big fuck-you to the large and ever-growing singles community: Valentine's Day.

You may be perfectly fine with sitting at home watching Downton Abbey any other night of the year, but Valentine's is supposed to be the day that someone surprises you with flowers, diamonds hewed from the blood of African workers, and, of course, mediocre-quality chocolates vulgarly adorned.

Now, I will say nothing against flowers any day of the year, and indeed I think there need to be a lot more flowers in all of our lives. But do you really want the rest of that? Complete with some mouth-breather to be your significant other? I think not.

So here are some few suggestions for the holiday for those of us who have chosen to eschew the mouth-breathers.

1. Party up. My most recent, and best-loved, Valentine's Day was spent in the company of two dear friends watching Shakespeare and wearing a faaabulous dress. Gently feel out your single friends for plans and then do something fun. Sound pretty simple? It is.
2. Pick up a bottle of prosecco. There is something depressing about buying chocolates for one's self at this time of year, but buying booze is just like buying toilet paper, isn't it? For an elegant, depraved touch, enjoy your bubbly in the am rather than pm. It was good enough for Noel Coward, after all; when asked why he took champagne for breakfast, his careless reply was, “Doesn't everyone?”
   
   
   
3. Buy yourself a plant. Not flowers, a real, breathing plant (though something with flowers would be lovely). Perhaps this is the time to take up the luxury of raising orchids, or the day to put a little flowering chive by your front stoop. Spending time with green things is one of the most cheerful things I know, and long after the vulgar long-stems of others are in the trash can, your plant will be rewarding your care and attention.
4. Dress up and cook yourself a swell dinner. Wait, you thought this was the evening for yoga pants and a pint of Haagen Dasz? For shame! Dressing nicely makes any occasion feel festive. Add a pretty ruffly apron and work that domestic magic. Recommendations include vibrant shrimp soft tacos; eggplant lasagne; crab pasta; a huge dinner salad with, perhaps, fresh artichoke, heart of palm, and anything else you fancy; and a basil lime sorbet.
5. Put on some swinging music. Good mood music for the day includes Cole Porter, Lady Gaga, Bellowhead, or Les Chauds Lapins.
6. Make a valentine for someone or anyone. No, don't make one for yourself, the whole concept there will just depress you. A major part of the frustration with Valentine's Day is not having a recipient for our affections. But what about your mom, your sister, your best friend? Hell, if you're strapped for people to love, drop a tiny homemade valentine in the tip jar at your coffee shop. The barista is a very important person in our lives!
7. Masturbate. I really can't fathom how many prissy guides out there leave this out. They'll give advice like “pamper yourself” or “buy yourself a present,” but it all has to be above the waist? Retire to bed early with a naughty novel and some lavender oil.  I'd recommend Michelle Slung's Slow Hand: Women Writing Erotica.
   
   
   
   

Happy Birthday, John Ruskin!

Anyone who knows me very well knows my peculiar fondness for John Ruskin. My first dissertation chapter didn't really come alive until I found The Ethics of the Dust
, and for that alone, I will always be grateful to him.

Recently, I've been trying to learn to draw decently, and, naturally enough, I turned to Ruskin, whose Elements of Drawing
is available on Amazon for the Kindle quite cheaply (or you can read it for free at Project Gutenberg). To begin with, there is some of the usual pontificating. As I quite enjoy Victorian pontificating, that did not deter me in the least. At length, I began the first exercise.

It was a square. Not a cube, just a square, shaded evenly. In the second lesson, however, Ruskin, admitting that such work is “tiresome,” suggested that I turn to botanical prints to copy them. He recommends Baxter's 1834 illustrations, and I therefore dutifully looked them up. Unfortunately, Ruskin advices using a pencil first, then going over the whole with ink. As I am in possession of some India ink and a dip pen, I promptly drowned the whole with black on account of accidentally using a too-thickly cut pen. Not precisely a success.


Ruskin is a big fan of copying: in his introduction he suggests that children should be given books with illustrations by Cruikshank to copy. Personally I think suggesting Cruikshank is absolutely cracked—but Rackham would be a wonderful substitute, as he does a lot with very little color and works creatively with lines.

The Rackham Original

My clumsy copy

Not daunted by my first failure, I decided to learn more about the book itself. In this way, I stumbled across something very special—the Ashmolean's Elements of Drawing site. Here I discovered videos of drawing lessons all taken from Ruskin's teaching methods. Stephen Farthing, who presents these lessons, does not, thank heavens, start with the shaded squares, but rather with the outline of a leaf. This exercise is heavily Ruskinian, suggesting you use tracing paper to compare and correct your drawing. The idea is not, as so many modern instructors might suggest, to give your “interpretation” of a leaf, but rather to convey, as accurately as possible, the actual leaf.

I find this helpful and interesting simply because modern instruction has taken a path away from copying, tracing, and sheer draftsman's accuracy to convey a more liberal aim for drawing. At the same time, our desire remains the same: to convey an idea visually. I don't mean, you must understand, to suggest that basic representation is the primary function of drawing. But I do believe that is a part of our experience and ought, probably, to be part of our training.

Is this a boring way to learn to draw? Absolutely! But drawing (or the kind of drawing of which Ruskin approves) is a skill just like speaking another language or playing a musical instrument. These are the verbs to be recited, the scales to be repeated. Eventually, it pays off. I think. I hope.

Meatless Monday; or, Watch Out, Cucumber!

I found myself feeling decidedly in the mood for something lighter over the weekend, and while some turkey lettuce wraps were good for an evening, it made me suspect that I needed an overall change in my nutrition. Not a dramatic change—I'll still be eating lumps of homemade pecan fudge—but a nudge in the right direction.

What I decided on was Meatless Monday. One day of abstinence weekly to help pep up my digestive system and get in a few nutrients I might otherwise zoom by on my way to the meat.

So I started out my Monday filled with anticipation. I had rye flakes for porridge, and, along with banana, blueberries, milk, maple syrup, and a few hazelnuts, they made a sumptuous breakfast.

Many people think a hot cereal is too much trouble in the morning, but I'm pretty sure they just haven't worked out the lazy girl way to do it. What I do is put quite a lot of water and a fairly generous helping of oats into a pan (for those who need ratios, a minimum of 3 to 1—lots of this water is going to cook off), put on low heat, then go and drink my coffee and smoke about fifty cigarettes. As long as the heat is low enough, the oatmeal/rye/wheatberries don't burn, and you don't have any trouble getting a good hearty breakfast!

Over the weekend, I definitely had pickles on my mind. Not the kind that have been languishing in a jar forever, but fresh pickles. They seemed to be popping up everywhere, including over at Make Grow Gather. With excitement, I brined up a bowl of fresh carrots that have been getting tangier and more delicious every day since. As you can see, I didn't really peel them, just scraped them a bit and washed them well.

Finding a basic brine recipe isn't hard, but here's mine:

1 c. cider (or rice wine, or even white) vinegar
½ c. water
1 generous tsp. sea salt
2 tsp. peppercorns, juniper berries, and perhaps a bay leaf (feel free to experiment here)
A small handful of complimentary herbs like dill or thyme
2 tsp. sugar
1 c. vegetable of choice

Heating the brine first is a good idea because it helps the salt and sugar dissolve and makes the spices more pungent. So combine everything but the vegetables and herbs in a saucepan, bring to a rapid boil, then allow to cool slightly. Arrange your vegetables and herbs in a glass jar/stoneware crock/non-metallic bowl/old butter tub, then pour the brine to cover. Refrigerate for at least one hour. Eat within three days.