Category Archives: Arts & Culture

New World Latkes

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Our Thanksgivings will never be the same. I suspect this might be true for many American families who experienced the rare and fortuitous cooking collision of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving this year. What a feast! The Thanksgiving potluck we enjoyed included Latkes, the traditional Ashkenazi Jewish potato pancakes. While the turkey roasted, we savored hot fried Latkes smothered in sour cream and apple sauce.

Latkes strike me as the perfect Thanksgiving appetizer. You can eat them with your fingers, they’re delicious, and they symbolize a profound horticultural circle between the “New World” and the “Old World”. I find potato history fascinating, but in case you don’t share that peculiar passion, here’s the saga in brief.

Spanish explorers show up in South America and find everyone eating these weird starchy tubers. The Spaniards acquire a taste for spuds out of necessity and stock up on potatoes for their long return voyage. They introduce the folks back home to the lowly potato which gradually gains favor. The new tuber becomes a staple crop in Eastern Europe where the Ashkenazi Jewish people incorporate it into their recipes. Since frying potatoes transforms them into highly addictive substances, the confluence of Hanukkah — a holiday celebrated by frying foods — and potatoes was a match made in heaven! Latkes were born and eventually came to America with the Jewish people.

Of course, Jews aren’t the only folks who love potato pancakes but their version of the dish might be the most well-known in America, for good reason. The sweetness of the apple sauce, the sour of the cream, and the salty fried potatoes create a synergy of flavors that resonate, and make my taste buds deeply thankful.

God’s Magpie

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 Between
Your eye and this page
I am standing …

Bump
Into me
More.

~ Hafiz

I’ve heard it said that our eternal life intersects our mortal experience every moment. We’re seldom aware of it but every now and then we’re offered a glimpse of this expanded dimension. It’s possible to come around a bend and … surprise! Your eternal nature greets you — your forever friend. Something like this happened to me when I met Hafiz for the first time.

Hafiz lived in the garden city of Shiraz in ancient Persia. He left his earthly body in 1389 AD but his physical departure hasn’t stopped him from scattering his crazy, funny, spiritually sane ideas over the earth like a continuous meteorite shower for the past six hundred years. Why hadn’t I encountered this luminous outpouring before? I must have been ripening toward an appreciation of Hafiz’s shoot-the-lights-out approach to celebrating the Divine.

Why
Just show you God’s menu?
Hell, we are all
Starving —
Let’s
Eat!

~ Hafiz

Hafiz and I met unexpectedly — of course. He wouldn’t have it any other way. On a summer road trip from Northern Nevada to Colorado Springs, I stopped at a Trappist monastery outside of Old Snowmass in the Colorado Rockies. Saint Benedict’s is both a working ranch and a retreat center. The monastery cultivates hay, contemplative prayer, and silence. They also have a small bookstore which is where my rational mind said it was going. (I’ve always been a fan of Thomas Merton — a Trappist monk — so I figured I’d buy one of his books.) My heart, however, suspected this rationale was  a bunch of hooey. My real reason for visiting was a fascination with the monk’s commitment to keep conversation to a minimum. Writers tend to cherish places where silence has the upper hand.

I followed the gravel road to a cluster of buildings sheltered in a grove of fluttering aspens and gregarious magpies. No one else was around. Walking up the path, I followed signs to the bookstore and opened a heavy door. Peering in, I saw light from a wall of tall windows washing over shelves and tables loaded with books — my heaven.

Thomas Merton made a good showing among the metaphysical titles, but so did Mother Theresa, the Dali Lama, and Rumi. The Catholic monks of St. Benedict’s had eclectic taste. It was a contemplative’s candy store. So many points of view! So many prospective guides! I told my mind to shut up — and my heart to speak up. I was honing in on something …

Next to Rumi lay a mustard yellow paperback with frilly Victorian-style graphics. This? It looked a little stuffy and academic. I was skeptical. 

I almost judged the book by its cover but something compelled me to look inside. After reading a smattering of poems, I fell under Hafiz’s spell. He made me laugh. He made me think. He showed me the hidden world in plain view. Here was my beloved in a future life; a brother from before we were born; a companion I’d always sensed but never known.

I put the money for the book in a small wooden box the monks had left for that purpose and hurried outside. I needed a place to land. A few wooden camp chairs waited beneath the aspens. A magpie alighted on the back of one and then took off. I nestled into that chair. It looked across the high mountain valley toward Mount Sopris. Taking a deep breath, I opened the book and dove in …

 I am
A hole in a flute
That the Christ’s breath moves through —
Listen to this
Music.

 *
Why complain about life
If you are looking for good fish
And have followed some idiot
Into the middle of the copper market?

*

The
Great religions are the
Ships,

 Poets the life
Boats.

 Every sane person I know has jumped
Overboard.

 That is good for business
Isn’t it
Hafiz?

See what I mean? No piety here, but an infectious honesty whose cackling irreverence reveals the sincere reverence of a true pilgrim. That summer afternoon, I wandered in these heady poems for hours as thunderheads billowed above me unnoticed — until it started pouring.

The rain reminded me that I needed to continue my journey but I left that remote valley far richer than when I arrived. I’d spent the better part of a day touring eternity with my new friend Hafiz, the Sufi magpie. What an eye-opener.

Listen: this world is the lunatic’s sphere,
Don’t always agree it’s real,

Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door

 My address is somewhere else.

 ~ Hafiz

(Some critics claim Daniel Ladinsky’s English translations are more Daniel than Hafiz. For me, it doesn’t matter. I admire the teamwork between the 14th century mystic and the 20th century craftsman. Together, they rock.)

Fiddle Reincarnation

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In my next life, I want to come back as Michael Doucet’s fiddle. What could be better? We’d have the perfect relationship. Laugh together. Cry together. Ça c’est tres bon!

I know it’s a crazy idea but Cajun fiddle music does something to me. My family’s not Louisiana French. I’ve never been east of Cheyenne, Wyoming, (let alone Lafayette,) and I don’t know how to Two-step — yet. But Doucet’s music rearranges my stiff modern psyche into something deliciously malleable. I love surrendering to the ancient conversation between Creative Source and human hands. I’ll do almost anything to follow that musical trajectory.

I used to think the solution was to marry a fiddle player. Immerse myself in the music. But I realized, sooner or later, I’d grow jealous of the fiddle. Why just listen to those melodies? I want to make them.

So let me be the fiddle — poised between the impulse and the note — singing that sweet, soulful song.

 

(Photograph of Michael Doucet courtesy of the Rosebud Agency.)

Yellow Willow River

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The willow are waking up along Camas Creek in the Warner Range. On a windy spring day their glowing stems undulate down the drainage, a yellow flowing river.

The willow are the first to talk about the coming of spring. Sometimes their stems color up before the snow is gone. They’re thinking about catkins and leaves. They’re thinking about trailing their roots in the thawed creek and the yellow-headed blackbird tickling their upper branches with its song. They’re thinking of the Paiute basketmakers harvesting their straight stems before the leaf nodes swell. Will the elders come with their sharp knifes and old ways?

Buckaroo Style

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If Winnemucca isn’t prime Buckaroo habitat, it’s pretty darn close — especially during Ranch Hand Rodeo. Town fills up with big trucks, big hats, big mustaches, and big fun on the first weekend in March.

Part of the fun is the shopping. Western trade items line the upstairs balconies and front aisle of the cavernous Winnemucca Events Center. Outside, it’s still Nevada winter — gray skies, hard-used snow, and brown dirt — but inside it’s another story.

Check out this booth selling wild rags. (For the uninitiated, these are the generous, billowy, silky scarfs worn by Buckaroos and Buckarettes — and you thought they just wore plain old blue bandanas?!?)  If you lived in a landscape of monotones all winter, by early March, you’d be after color — any color. And patterns? Wild is where it’s at. Don’t worry if the colors clash. This is no time to be subtle.

For you Fashionistas, here’s how you put the style together. This upstart Buckaroo may not have won the kid’s roping contest this year but he sure looked good swinging a loop in his square-toed fancy-stitched orangey-colored boots, plaid sweater, and polka dot wild rag. And looking good is a lot of what being a Buckaroo is about. Although, if your team can win the Calcutta while you’re at it, so much the better.

Passing the Bota

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Have you ever tried drinking out of a bota bag? The Basques make it look easy, but believe me, it’s harder than it looks. My brother and I had botas when we were kids. They weren’t the “real” ones made of goat skin sealed with pitch but a modern version with a plastic liner. We mostly used them to carry water on hikes but sometimes Mom would let us fill them up with grape juice and practice drinking Basque style. There were rules, though. We had to wear our worn out clothes and take the botas outside — yeah, we got grape juice stains everywhere.

This weathered painting on the side of the famous (or infamous) Winnemucca Hotel shows the basic technique for drinking from a bota. At arm’s length, you squeeze wine from the bag into your mouth without spilling. With wine, there probably comes a point where the longer you practice, the harder it gets!

Once you master drinking from a bota, you can attend any traditional Basque affair with confidence. In case you haven’t experienced one firsthand, Basques really know how to party. There’ll be eating, drinking, and dancing with gusto. And everyone is super friendly. It might be helpful to know a few Basque phrases, like Zer moduz? (How are you?), or Zatoa pasatzen? (Can I have a pull off your bota bag?) With practice and luck, you’ll fit right in. And if someone tells you, Nire amumak zuk baino mila aldiz hobeto dantzatzen du, (My grandma could dance you under the table,) don’t take it as an insult. Considering the Basque grandmas I know, it would just be a statement of fact.