Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

You may already have received this, but it is important. I am passing it on. Quincy Jones has started a petition to ask President-Elect Obama to appoint a Secretary of the Arts. While many other countries have had Ministers of Art or Culture for centuries, The United States has never created such a position. We, in the arts, need this and the country needs the arts--now more than ever. Please take a moment to sign this important petition and then pass it on to your friends and colleagues.

And I would just like to remind you all to stop by Bonita Two for in Forte Green some inaugural tacos and music. The choral ensemble will be performing at Bonita around 2pm! Happy day.

Petition Online

Quincy Jones image plucked from Gene Pendon - HVW8.

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New York Times: January, 19 2009

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Part Two: Dear Anna,

I told dad to answer his email I hope he did. He has a new kid he's tutoring and has had to teach himself algebra all over again. I have been thinking about your request for food stories and remembered the one my mother always told about how she outwitted me.

I would never eat cream cheese because I didn't like the name. So she tricked me into eating a cheesecake she used to make by telling me the filling was made of vanilla pudding. I remember the time when you were 3 or 4 when we had to remove you screaming and hitting from Shop and Save because we wouldn't buy you Captain Crunch.Your grandparents had no doubt been feeding it to you by the boxful.

My mother was famous for being a good cook and took a lot of pride in it, but she was equally as interested in the impression she made and how things looked, as she was in what tasted good. The thought of whether it was good for you really wasn't a concern in those days. We believed in wonder bread.

It was my father who actually taught me about good food even though I never saw him cook anything. When I was little the breadman and the milkman would come to the back door every week with a delivery. We bought something called bond bread and the delivery man was a chubby guy with curly black hair who always had a kind word for me. I loved that bread for years, probably because of the delivery man.

I remember my father, when I was a teenager, taking a slice of it and rolling it in his palms until it turned back into a ball of dough, (rather quickly actually). He had to do it over and over on several occasions until I saw the light. That's when I started to eat Pepperidge Farm or Arnold, or good bread from bakeries. He did the same to break me of the habit of watching soap operas after school as my friends did in Jr. High. He would sit and watch it with me and make such wicked fun of it that I couldn't continue doing it.

He taught me about good cheese too and frequently brought good ones home from his travels. He was a traveling salesman. Gouda or gruyere or emmanthatler. And he taught me how much better loose tea brewed was than teabags. I think he learned a lot of this on his travels to Canada. So it's funny while my mother was the famous cook, he was really the gourmet.

Anyway, all this rumination, forgive the pun, made me realize how much food and lies are intertwined. Our parents may be lying to us about what is good or bad for us, though they may mean well. The Tv and ads are always lying to us about what we should eat and why, and worse we are always lying to ourselves about why we should or shouldn't be eating or drinking something. Where does this all start?

I remember when you and Hugh were little and I was just starting being a doctor, reading a study done with toddlers, kids who were too young to have developed too many food prejudices yet. The researchers put out all types of food and let the little ones play and graze all day. They found that the toddlers actually ate a balanced diet when allowed to choose for themselves what and when they wanted to eat with out any prompting.

So how do we fall from grace to greed and compulsion and obsession, to equating everything we put in our mouths with some sort of salvation or damnation? It's too easy to blame our capitalist society for seducing our tastes. You figure it out. You write a book called "Food, Lies and Desire". You'll make a million and support me in my dotage.

Love,
Mom

(for part one please consult the winter Diner Journal)

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The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives

On Tuesday, January 20, 2009 please come celebrate with us at Bonita Two in Fort Greene the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. We will be serving special Tacos Al Pastor with a shot of tequila and blood orange juice for $12.00. And I also have heard rumors of a roving choral and jazz ensemble from Middle School 113 so as to facilitate DANCING IN THE STREET!

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Who is this Josh character anyway?

Excerpt and image from Bread and Butter Press:

Anyway, the little amber bottles that Josh sold in the store really did look like they had fallen off the wagon of some traveling doctor in the 19th century. Or else they were straight out The Phantom Tollbooth, the hubbub tonic of "Kakophonous A. Dischord, DOCTOR OF DISSONANCE." Do you remember the amazing drawing on that page? And Milo and company ask, what does the A. stand for? And the doctor replies, "AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE." Yes, yes, and yes. Somewhere in-between the hard facts of science and the mirages of con-men, there was a medicine of crossed lines and clattering voids. I, too, was "suffering from a severe lack of noise," I thought. Bitters would cure me. I wanted to make my own.

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