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Ever crave a treat that tastes decadent but is a bit healthier? Get your veggies and good fats with this brownie-like moist loveliness. Khashayar infuses love into all of his vegetarian cooking…
Ingredients
2 pounds grated carrots 2 cups regular white sugar 2 cups white flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon cinnamon 1 tablespoon nutmeg 2 eggs 1/2 cup milk 4 tablespoons melted butter 1/4 cup olive oil
Topping
2 cups greek yogurt 1/4 cup honey 1/2 cup slivered almonds
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350 farenheit degrees.
2. Mix together all the dry ingredients: carrots, sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
3. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs and milk.
4. Combine all the above with the melted butter and olive oil.
5. Pour the batter into a 13″ x 9″ x 2″ baking dish.
6. Bake for an hour or until a toothpick inserted into it comes out clean.
7. Let the cake cool.
8. Stir topping ingredients together: yogurt, honey, and almonds.
9. Slice the cake and serve with a dollop of the topping. Garnish with fresh or frozen berries (frozen ones look tantalizing as they thaw, as if they’ve been powdered with sugar). It also gets a nice chewy crust when heated. If you prefer it warm, don’t add the topping until it’s out of the oven.
Want to listen to an audio version of today’s post? Click the Spotify podcast link above. And please give it a follow. Photos by da-AL
Happiness for the eyes and tummy is a platter of these easy and dramatic healthy veggie bites! Everyone, including novel writers like me, need sustenance, right? Find more of Khashayar’s lovely recipes here and here and here and here and here and here…
Eggplant Roll Ups by Khashayar Parsi
Eggplants – 2 large
Olive oil – 4 tablespoons
Soy sauce – 4 tablespoons
Persian cucumbers – 6 small
Carrots – 2 large
Walnuts – 1/4 cup
Yogurt – 2 cups
Slice each eggplant lengthwise to about 3/8” to 1/2” (or 6 to 8 slices).
Spread half the olive oil in a large oven pan over its entire surface.
Place the eggplant slices in the pan and bake in 400°F oven for 20 minutes. Turn them over and bake them for another 20 minutes or until browned on both sides, using the remaining olive oil.
Remove them from the oven and sprinkle the soy sauce evenly over the eggplants.
Set aside to cool to room temperature.
Ready to roll!
Meanwhile, julienne the cucumbers and carrots, and divide them evenly per eggplant slice.
For each eggplant, place the julienned pieces on one end and roll the piece tightly.
Eggplant rollup before it’s been cut in half.
Cut each roll in half and stand each half on its flat side.
Sprinkle with ground walnuts and serve with yogurt.
As adorable as they are yummy!
Do you have a favorite healthy recipe?
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Do you believe an afterlife exists? Today holds more than enough for me to agonize over… though sure it would be nice if my dearly departed ones dropped by now and again… if I’m going to consider that, should I dwell on how I’ll be remembered?…
Last week, when I mentioned a “dirty” (what is “dirty”?) book, Bojana (a great writer with a wonderful personal blog — maybe if you ask her nicely in the comments below, she’ll let you in?) enlightened me about James Joyce. The author is so revered that I want to read his tome called Ulysses, but even his own adoring wife wished his books were easier to get through.
Thanks to Bojana, I now see he also wrote some pretty easy-to-understand stuff. After he and his beloved wife passed away, some of his letters to her were discovered inside of the sleeve of an old coat. They were odes to loving his wife — in the context of explicit sex.
Obviously, they were meant only for her eyes.
Author James Joyce and his wife, Nora Barnacle.
Years later, the aftershocks continue of publicizing them. To name only a handful of the issues they bring up, there’s everyone sensationalizing them, the public’s far-ranging reactions, the fact that writers can and do experiment with many kinds of writing… questions like whether it’s important or mere avarice to reveal private details of people once they’re dead.. and if it’s okay to do with some, how do we differentiate?…
Or you can listen and see some photos of the clothed couple looking staid…
Today’s guest, Lori D. Marchell, is an artist of many talents and lives in Southern California. She also works in the healing arts…
Chert Dog’s Greatest Gift: Quantum Leaps of Faith, a synopsis by Lori D. Marchell
Chert Dog came into my dad’s life after the sudden passing of my mom. In his book entitled “My Father’s Greatest Gift: Life Lessons From A Black English Labrador Retriever,” he conveys his mission and purpose as to bring unconditional love and forgiveness to all he encounters with the main objective in healing my dad’s broken heart. This Black English Labrador Retriever accomplished this in his 14 years life span.
With Chert’s deep inspiration and connection to Spirit, he came to me in a dream three months after he crossed over and asked me to walk to watershed where the cover photograph of his book was taken. After walking around the park, as I began to leave, I heard a crying sound. When I approached the tall tree where this sound was coming from, I looked up and a yellow and white kitten was crying for help. After over an hour and a half, the kitten finally listened to me asking it to jump to a lower branch where I could reach him and that is where Jaco’s story begins.
Jaco Kitty has five toes on all four paws, with actual thumbs on his two front paws. His healing energy and leaps of faith into all areas of his life have taught me about the importance of listening to your intuition and taking on new adventures. Through his growing-up years he has taught me about standing up for myself and making new friends which brings in Tigger. About a year ago, Tigger, a brown and white tiger cat began visiting Jaco. Through a gradual bonding process, Tigger and Jaco are now best buddies. And added to this, Tigger’s family have become friends as well.
Check out my website, where you’ll find links to my father’s book and videos of Chert Dog’s and Jaco Kitty’s original piano music theme songs, along with various excerpts of their stories on my blog.
Whose life do you think is fair game for public exposure after they die?
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Longevity is on my mind as I continue recording the book I’ve yet to publish. Writing takes time and so does getting it to the public. Perhaps you’re like me, who from the time I was very young, never felt like days were long enough?
Here I present to you Fauja Singh, a.k.a. the Sikh Superman. You can read all about him in Turbaned Tornado: The oldest Marathon Runner Fauja Singh, by Khushwant Singh.
Up until he was five-years-old, he could barely walk. Later, in his early 80s, personal tragedies sank him into deep depression. At 85 he took up running. At 89 he started competing and soon ran New York City Marathon. A lifelong vegetarian, he’s even a spokesperson for PETA. Born on April 1, 1911, he continues lacing his sneakers each day.
Early on, when he encountered racist hecklers, his mission really kicked in: he’d showing the world just how amazing people like him are!
You’ll remember today’s guest, author Kathleen Rooney, from when she contributed to Happiness Between Tails here and here. Besides her historical novels, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (which features a lively octogenarian) and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, she’s a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, that publishes literary work in hybrid genres. In addition, she’s a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a band of poets who haul typewriters wherever readers gather. Then they fill orders for custom poems. Her latest collection Where Are the Snows, winner of the XJ Kennedy Prize, has just been released by Texas Review Press and her next novel, From Dust to Stardust, will be published by Lake Union Press in Fall of 2023.
Here she describes the which and why of one of her fave books, a marvelously dirty one! I just read Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying and was pretty impressed, for its time and now! What’s the last dirty book you read? (Note: Kathleen’s review first appeared in The Star Tribune.)…
Kathleen Rooney’s book review: A Tale of Five Cities and Other Memoirs, by Joyce Elbert
NONFICTION: The unjustly neglected Joyce Elbert reminiscences about being a woman novelist in a man’s world.
A contemporary of Jacqueline Susann, credited by Cosmopolitan magazine with writing “the first really great dirty book,” Joyce Elbert made a splash in 1969 with her novel “The Crazy Ladies,” a slinky, metropolitan, woman-centric romp that sold more than 4 million copies worldwide.
Yet by the time of her death from Lou Gehrig’s disease in Florida in 2009, this brash and brilliant Bronx-born author had long since sunk beneath the waves of obscurity, no longer able to garner interest in what she called her “zany, sexy, campy creations.”
Luckily for contemporary readers, the eight previously unpublished autobiographical essays gathered here in “A Tale of Five Cities and Other Memoirs” brings Elbert’s wit and earthy sophistication back to the surface.
Published by Tough Poets Press, a one-man operation dedicated to “new and rediscovered unconventional and neglected literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction,” and committed, as Publishers Weekly has put it, to “resuscitating forgotten classics,” this collection reintroduces 21st-century audiences to an underappreciated, funny and feminist talent.
With candor, toughness and an indefatigable sense of humor, Elbert regales the reader with details of her bohemian life among the likes of Mark Rothko and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as her romantic (mis)adventures with men who range from the maddeningly casual and unsupportive, to her alcoholic con-man ex-husband, to an outright physical abuser.
Yet the book is never more about them than it is about her quest to become and remain an author, an ambition so deep that after being battered by the aforementioned partner, she notes, “My only consolation was that someday I would be able to use this sordid experience in a book. Yes, even in times of despair the novelist’s brain is forever churning.”
Elbert also chronicles her own later-in-life descent into alcoholism and struggle for sobriety, concluding that, “Like many mind-altering drugs, alcohol had shown me where I needed to go, but alcohol couldn’t get me there.”
The title essay — or really five separate-but-linked essays — globe-trots from Acapulco to Paris to Campello to London to Martha’s Vineyard, but New York and its bygone midcentury milieu remain the most indelible in Elbert’s memory. The book opens with “Movies: 1934,” about attending screenings at “our local movie palace, The Allerton … a ten-minute walk from where we lived in a remote section of the Northeast Bronx” with her mother, of whom she writes, “Nothing in her life had emotionally prepared her for marriage or motherhood and yet there she was, trapped, with no hope in sight.”
Elbert manages, often with daffy panache, to evade those traps. In the confident and unapologetic yet self-aware vein of her fellow writer of glamour and excess Eve Babitz, Elbert documents her own desires and drives against a vivid backdrop of long-gone social settings.
At the end of her life, Elbert left behind at least seven unpublished novels, as well as several novellas and short stories. If the essays in “A Tale of Five Cities” are any indication of their quality, one can only hope that those will be resuscitated soon.
What’s the last dirty book you read?
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A dear friend recently complimented me on my hair and requested I do a blog post on hair coloring for men. I’m not a man and my husband doesn’t die his hair, but hair is hair, right? And after all, any novelist (here’s more about the books I’m working on) worth their salt can imagine, no?
In my late teens, I hated my straight hair so much that I permed it. When my hair turned into something that looked like a cheap wig, I spent the next 10 years trying to fix it with chemical treatments that all looked like hell, hell, and more hell.
Enter color! It took a while to get the hang of, but when at long last I did, my hair became something other than either limp and greasy or fried and broken. Henna in particular gives it body and shine, and nourishes the hair and scalp.
Regardless of the type of hair, the way to avoid breakage and dullness is to steer clear of toxic chemicals (I try not to put anything on my scalp and skin that would kill me if I ate it) and heat. That means keeping to a minimum stuff like hairdryers and products with strong chemicals (the scalp takes in whatever we put on it almost as readily as our mouth membrane), including ammonia, peroxide, and alcohol. Sprays of any kind are iffy because they usually include alcohol. Moreover, they’re not so great for the lungs.
Buyer beware: “natural” doesn’t always mean what it should, so read the ingredients. This beauty site lists a bunch of places where you can analyze beauty products. Products don’t have to be pricey to be healthy.
Scalp and root care are as important as hair care. Our scalps easily absorb whatever we apply. Don’t over-stress follicles with excessive massaging and brushing.
Hair is weakest and stretchiest when it’s wet, so gently comb it with a wide-toothed comb. If it’s too tangly to manage, detangling sprays can help.
Warm to cool water, not hot, helps immensely. Think fluffy wintry cats and dogs, versus short haired ones that live in hotter climes.
Many men, of course at all, have shorter hair. If one ruins short hair, it grows out relatively quickly. Keep in mind that the longer one’s hair is, the more pummeling it gets when mistreated.
Hair Repair: Olive Oil
Lots of oils and conditioners are out there, but olive oil works wonders for me. Once a week or so, first thing in the morning, I don grubby clothes that I don’t mind getting stained, slather it on, then I go about my business (as long as it’s not the kind of business where I need to look presentable) for a couple of hours. It soaks in while I eat breakfast, write, clean my house, and talk on the phone. Then I shampoo it out.
Conditioner is also great for mending hair and can be used in place of shampoo.
Dyes in General
What color to choose if you want to stay close to natural and are only covering grays or roots? To avoid looking artificial, first try a shade slightly lighter than your darkest strands. It’s easier and gentler to hair to darker over a mistakes than it is to go lighter, which is quite involved and can be damaging.
Everything requires gloves. Get any on your fingernails and be prepared to have to grow that tint out. Try to keep as much of them off your hairline so you don’t stain your face (some dyes stain worse than others). Many people apply a thick oil like vaseline to prevent their foreheads from getting marked.
I’ve dabbled with semi-permanent and permanent dyes. Again, read their ingredients or you’ll wind up with awful hair. Application for both is the usually same, always marked on their boxes: in a nutshell, leave it on for roughly 20 minutes, then wash it out.
Coloring: Root Touchups
These are meant more for covering what shows, i.e. temples and where you part your hair. They wash out immediately and come in many forms: sprays, crayons, powders, and mascaras. Check customer reviews so you don’t wind up one that rubs off onto hands and pillow cases.
Spray: A dear one recently mentioned they were wearing a spray. Even after they showed me, I couldn’t tell at all!
Semi-Permanent Dye
These are less likely to include harsh ingredients like ammonia, though read the ingredients. Depending on brand, color, and frequency used, they wash out in anywhere from a week to a couple of months. As a result, it’s easier to go back to natural, if that’s what you want. They fade gradually, as opposed to needing to be grown out, and the contrast between dyed hair and undyed roots is lessened.
By the way, semi-permanent tints also come as “coloring shampoos.” For the sake of this post, I tried two. Neither deposited any color I could see, though maybe it was just the type of hair I have? Worse, though, the one supposedly for men and with added conditioner made my scalp burn. When I shampooed the following day, after doing my best the following morning to make up for the abuse by applying olive oil and letting it sink in for several hours, there were quite a few more hairs than usual in my drain.
** NOTE: anything that results in hair loss and/or the sensation of burning and/or itching are to be avoided at all costs. Remember, scalp health is paramount.
Permanent Dyes
These last longer, but depending on the brand (read the ingredients), they’re harder on the hair. Also, growing them out involves sporting the zebra look.
Natural Dyes: What I Use
Basic henna is what I use. Henna, a.k.a. lawsonia inermis, is powdered tree leaves. It’s cheap and I have yet to find that one brand is superior to another, so don’t be fooled by the expensive varieties. You can buy it by the box at most Indian and International grocery stores, or online in bigger bags, like I do.
If the package of henna doesn’t say only “natural henna” and lists a variety of colors, it has other stuff added to it. Beware that often those are as chemical-laden as commercial dyes.
Basic henna (which Wiki defines here) is a greenish powder that dyes coppery and translucent, meaning it shows the color of the hair beneath it, same as water colors reveal the color of papers they’re applied to. They stain coppery orange, as you can see at this site. The lighter the hair, the brighter the result. To tone down the orangy red, I continually experiment with adding stuff to it, which I’ll get to later.
The more frequently henna is applied, the richer and more permanent the color deepens. Hairdressers often warn against using it, because it can’t be bleached out if you don’t like it, though you can apply a darker dye over it.
Henna powder is green but dyes reddish orange.
The night before, I mix henna powder with olive oil (or inexpensive natural conditioner) and water. For my length of hair, I use four ounces of henna, one cup of cool (not hot) water, and roughly 2 tablespoons of olive oil. (From what I’ve read, unrefrigerated henna keeps its dying strength up to 12 hours.)
The trick is to stir in whatever liquid incrementally, so you can add enough that it’s not overly thick and stop before it’s too runny. You’ll be leaving it on your hair for a couple of hours, so you don’t want it driving you crazy by running down your neck and spilling into your eyes. Conversely, you don’t want it so pasty that you can’t spread it down to your roots.
Cover it and let it sit overnight. The dye is said to be “released,” when it turns extra dark in places. The next morning, scrape the sides of whatever container you use and give everything an extra stir.
Henna gets darker in an iron pot.
Using an iron pot darkens henna, which is why I use this one intended for Korean cookery. The plastic shower cap I later use on my head protects the charming wooden lid, even though I use this pot only for henna.
Reusable gloves, plastic wrap, clothes pins, and tape come in handy.
Henna Add-Ins
To help it take better hold, I stir in a bit of acid, like lemon juice vinegar, or cream of tartar, which I buy in bulk at a fraction of the cost of small grocery store shakers.
Cream of tartar added into henna helps the color to grab into hair.
Eucalyptus oil is said to stimulate hair growth. So are rosemary and thyme.
To offset the orange color, sometimes I add a couple tablespoons of cheap instant coffee granules (no need to waste the good stuff).
I haven’t tried it, but some people dye their hair simply by mixing instant coffee granules with conditioner, no henna, and letting that sink in.
Indigo
This greenish powder from indigo, that Wiki defines here, leaves dyes blue-black. It was used to color the first jeans. It’s great for dampening the reddish hue of henna.
Indigo powder dyes blue-black.
Indigo requires 10-20 minutes to get wet, but if you wait a lot longer, it loses its coloring ability.
First thing the following morning, I heap a couple of mounded tablespoons of indigo into a separate container. Sometimes I just stir it directly into the henna, but I think it stains better with this extra step. Dyes stain, so using plastic containers, like clean empties from yogurt, is a great way to recycle.
Indigo paste mixed with olive oil takes 10-20 minutes to set.
Applying the Henna Treatment
Wear something dark enough to not show stains and grubby enough to not bother you if it does stain.
In the bathroom, where I have enough mirrors to see the back of my head, I clothespin old bedsheets that I use as drop-cloths to prevent staining walls and floors. (Any messes that happen anyway are easily removed with a couple of drops of bleach.)
Old sheets make great drop cloths.
Dampening hair beforehand (I spray mine with a conditioning detangler) enables the henna to slide on easier and more thoroughly down the the roots.
Gloves on, I massage the henna into my scalp and through my hair. Then I cover it with the cheapest shower cap I can purchase in bulk. Wrapping keeps the henna moist and prevents brown smears on every wall I pass. For good measure, I tightly wrap a length of plastic wrap around my hairline and tape down the end to keep it from unraveling. With the protective film on, I continue to press the henna down to ensure it nourishes my scalp as it works.
Two hours or more later (I hear some people keep on henna overnight, though I haven’t tried it), after I’ve eaten breakfast, cleaned the house, done some writing, texted friends, etc., I’m ready to wash it out.
Rather than shampoo, I use conditioner, working it in and rinsing it twice, similar to how I use shampoo. For the sake of conditioning, though, I let the second application soak for several minutes. Then I rinse it in cool water until the water runs clear.
Use a darker towel to dry your hair, so you don’t have to worry about stains.
If you can help it, don’t shampoo for at least a couple of days, for the color to intensify over time.
Comment or leave a question and I’ll use it to update this blog post.
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Photo of Menendez brothers with their father, Jose, whom they murdered.
Justice — trials, how our system works, lawyers, juries… all these topics have been on my mind since I recently completed doing jury duty. Since the week before I started it (here are Part 1 and Part 2 about it), I’ve wondered about the Mendez brothers. You know, those rich guys who killed their parents back in the late 1980s. This video I checked out from my happy place, a.k.a. any public library, explains their story.
The brothers somewhat physically resemble my two older brothers, plus we three were raised “tennis-y.” Our household wasn’t hellish in the way of Lyle and Eric’s, but controlling and cruelty and looking the other way existed.
Please don’t get me wrong: a) my brothers aren’t killers and they’re nothing like the Menendez — and b) I believe murder is despicable.
Unlike the Menendezes, we didn’t suffer rich-people burdens. Here’s one man’s take on growing up “in tennis” for some players at the nosebleed rungs. Our dad wasn’t a powerful movie mogul, and we weren’t indoctrinated to keep up with the Beverly Hills set. There are benefits to being an apartment-dwelling plebeian. Tennis earned my brothers college scholarships. As for me, I set out on my own the moment I graduated high school, determined to sooner resort to prostitution than go back.
As a writer, I began as a journalist, then later attended a course on fiction. A classmate, Vonda Pelto, wanted to learn story telling for a recount of her former career as a psychiatrist at the downtown Los Angeles jail. Her primary function was to prevent serial killers from dying by suicide. How’s that for irony? (Here’s an enlightening article about discussing suicide.) Her patients ranged from Charles Manson and porn star John Holmes, to “Hillside Strangler” Ken Bianchi and “Freeway Killer” William Bonin.
Clearly, those killers fall into a different category than the Menendez brothers.
Almost every day in Los Angeles is sky perfection.
Back to jury duty…
For a thumbnail of what I posted about jury duty so far, picture “Car Problems” as my middle name. Was it mere coincidence that the morning my mom lent me her car, in front of the courthouse was a man in a t-shirt with a “check engine” logo?
Every trip to and from downtown was a winding tour of Siri workarounds to Los Angeles traffic. Siri kindly even warned me of traffic cameras. The Spring Street Courthouse is snuggled among the Toy District, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Union Station, Grand Central Market, the Bradbury Building of “Bladerunner” movie renown, and more. Slogging along freeways to get there and back would have been unbearable without my beloved audiobooks.
It’s years since I’ve visited the area. Sadly, the number of people who live on the sidewalks has exploded. Flimsy domed homes shelter people along corners, alleys, freeway overpasses and underpasses. I don’t know an end-all remedy, only that “them” is “us.” Whenever I left my juror chair, I kept my little backpack near. How is anyone mobile enough to find a job, see a doctor, take a leak, do anything, when their worldly goods are housed within a nylon tent parked in the middle of a city?
The trial I worked on involved an RV park, privately run yet publicly owned, endeavoring to evict a couple.
On one hand, one of the two renters had recorded park employees, those not wearing mandated Covid19-preventative masks. They used the evidence to report them to the health department. On the other hand, staff accused the renters of impeding their work and bothering fellow tenants by failing to consistently leash their dog.
Sculpture of “Young Lincoln” by James Hansen, 1939, located at Los Angeles Spring Street Courthouse.
Management had a slicker lawyer and employees willing to smooth over their sloppy record keeping. The tenants brought neighbors (via an extremely problematic videoconferencing setup) who stated they loved the dog and the couple.
Ah, the dog! Mike was old, pudgy, and wore a vest that suggested he was an emotional service provider (any dog is, no?). I first noticed him when he snored from the opposite end of the vast courtroom. Basically, he slept and sometimes slurped water.
Hearing testimonies is nothing akin to dynamic TV shows and high drama movies. Questions get reframed in endless ways so lawyers can reveal details otherwise not allowed. Did I say it was boring? Many jurors were there only because they heard rumors that not showing up can result in a $1,500 fine.
This case ran four days, not counting the Friday of jury selection. Monday was a holiday. Tuesday through Thursday were for evidence disclosure, a process rendered mind-numbingly. The last Friday morning was for the lawyers’s closing speeches. Here again, imagine what money buys in terms of lawyers.
Management’s was organized and smooth.
The residents’s insisted on using an overhead projector that blinked his pages onto the screen so annoyingly that I half-closed my eyes. To his credit, he opened with a salient point; each side had recorded, antagonized, and vilified each other. Amen.
Then it was time for a shortened lunch. Then deciding whether the tenants ought to be evicted.
Hand on any religious tome you prefer I swear on, I had every intention to review evidence and turn over every rock.
Sculpture of “Law” by Archibald Garner, 1939, located at Los Angeles Spring Street Courthouse.
Twelve jurors: roughly fifteen questions to vote on. The list was one of those affairs of, “if you vote this, answer this or skip this…” Each question required only nine votes to pass.
Within some questions, the word “substantial” was used. Was the residents’s rule-breaking and annoying of neighbors “substantial”? Four months earlier, after they were served a seven-day notice to clean up their acts, did they? Substantially? Definitely, but fellow jurors noted that management had spied near-catatonic Mike off-leash once or twice.
A juror reminded us that the residents bothered neighbors over the past year when twice they called the cops. First, when one renter was assaulted by a stranger, then later when she spotted the assaulter lurking.
I asked the juror, “If a sick neighbor needed to summon an ambulance twice over the last year, would you evict them?”
She nodded her head.
Except for mine, the votes were unanimous. They voted so quickly, and with so little discussion and consideration of evidence, as if they’d made snap judgements, I wonder if justice was truly served.
So very many people in Los Angeles live in tents or in cardboard boxes.
I’m told the renters can appeal and it was their choice whether to have their trial judged by a judge or a jury. It was an honor to serve, and I learned a lot, though not what I’d expected.
Maybe in the end, like with the Menendez brothers, it boiled down to looking into faces and choosing whether they deserved another chance. TV’s Columbo only needed to solve crimes, not decide whether they were redeemable…
What do you think of our trial system? Would you choose a jury or a judge to decide your case? Do you think the Menendez brothers have served long enough?
Me, leaving the courthouse.
Wait — a non-jury thing — I’ve already converted several blog posts into podcasts via the WordPress-to-Anchor function. Once Apple’s podcast app accepts them into its feed, you’ll be the first to know!
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(Note: an audio/podcast version of this blog post is H-E-R-E.)
“Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, ‘God, this is fascinating!’” — Ernest Hemingway
Noé Socha is a musician who’s life is absolutely not falling apart due to his being blind — and goddesses, his life is fascinating!
Got writing blues? Covid blues? The “when will the world learn that fear and hate aren’t the answers” blues? A couple of minutes with Noé’s guitar and harmonica will color them into rainbows.
CBS New York news interviewed him a couple of weeks ago.
I first learned of Noé thanks to Kenya Greaves, a friend I met through her work as an online writing tutor. She’s a great help with editing my novels. Watch Noé’s video below (one of many at his YouTube Blind Selfie channel) for Kenya’s appearance as a backup dancer.
Noé grew up in Carpi, Italy (a lovely place, which like my Los Angeles, knows earthquakes). Now he’s based out of Brooklyn, New York, where Covid first walloped the United States.
Even Mastercard has added him and his music to their “Something Priceless” roster.
Read on for his thoughts in his words about living creatively through Covid…
My Experience as a Blind Musician During Covid by Noé Socha
The beginning of Covid was very strange for me. I’m from Italy, so I saw all my friends going in full lockdown a couple of weeks before the states, but I still had performances every day until March 15. It was hard to stay focused, knowing how everything would have changed in a very short matter of time. I was questioning myself; I felt selfish taking all these chances, but I also felt like I couldn’t do any different.
I came back to NYC from PA on Monday, March 16, and I’ll never forget the feeling of seeing Times Square deserted at 9 PM. It didn’t seem real.
The next month or so was very challenging for me, I didn’t have any inspiration to play, people were dying and getting sick, it felt wrong to post music. All my musician friends were doing online streams, but nobody was making any money from them. Teaching guitar online was hard, I don’t feel I can help people very much without being able to touch their hands, and I can’t have close-up shots of myself. I also live alone, so I would go thirty plus days without seeing anyone.
I decided to start posting again when I realized I was losing my chops on the instruments, I couldn’t let all the work I put into it go to waste, and I needed something to look forward to artistically. I take selfies with my phone. The shots may not be very good, but I thought it would be interesting and different to have a blind person videotaping himself. George Floyd’s homicide and all the people that spoke out and told their stories after that gave me even more motivation to use my artistry to stand in solidarity and support.
In the summer, the gigs came back, sort of. I was playing outside bars, on the sidewalks, for tips. It was very nice to see how eager people were for live music, but it was also stressful trying to respect social distancing. I found myself hesitating when I needed help getting places; I wasn’t sure how to get people’s attention without getting close to them, and I didn’t want to make anybody uncomfortable. I am fortunate to be able to use Access-A-Ride, so I didn’t have to take public transportation.
Now we’re back in lockdown, and it feels like we’re in March again. I keep posting my videos, hoping to increase my followers and inspire people. I’ve realized that it’s important to have something to keep us motivated, even if we don’t see many results. Persistence is key. If I get somewhere with the videos, I want to show that all the work and struggle we’re going through will be rewarded someday, in ways we didn’t necessarily predict.
Has Covid impacted your creativity?
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Thank goodness COVID-19 hasn’t affected my ability to write and read, aside from the days it weakened my sight and energy. We’re much better, wake each morning slightly less raggedy than the one before in terms of feeling totally human.
It has a week since I’ve been able to smell and taste. If I hold my nose to a jar of cinnamon powder or a bottle of lavender oil, absolutely nothing registers. Taste is down to an occasional three notes of flavor. They’re subtle and offer no complexity. If something is super salty, ultra sweet, or blazing hot, they’ll call like old friends from a place so distant I can hardly hear them.
I tried sniffing a bottle of bleach… nearer = nothing… nearer = nothing… short of sticking my nostril right over the spout, a revelation terrified me. How easily I could accidentally truly damage myself without these two senses. How easily anyone could! My heart goes out to all who suffer this.
I try to rev my appetite by conning it that texture and temperature are flavors. My clothes haven’t gotten too baggy yet. I try not to stress over whether things will always be this way.
Ah, yes! There is indeed another note of taste I neglected to tell you about! It’s the most important one; the love Khashayar infuses into all of his vegetarian cooking rings loud and clear…
Ingredients
2 pounds grated carrots
2 cups regular white sugar
2 cups white flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon nutmeg
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
4 tablespoons melted butter
1/4 cup olive oil
Topping
2 cups greek yogurt
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup slivered almonds
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350 farenheit degrees.
2. Mix together all the dry ingredients: carrots, sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
3. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs and milk.
4. Combine all the above with the melted butter and olive oil.
5. Pour the batter into a 13″ x 9″ x 2″ baking dish.
6. Bake for an hour or until a toothpick inserted into it comes out clean.
7. Let the cake cool.
8. Stir topping ingredients together: yogurt, honey, and almonds.
9. Slice the cake and serve with a dollop of the topping. Garnish with fresh or frozen berries (frozen ones look tantalizing as they thaw, as if they’ve been powdered with sugar). It also gets a nice chewy crust when heated. If you prefer it warm, don’t add the topping until it’s out of the oven.
Gentle and cruel, personal and universal — writer/novelist/artist/actor/personality Truman Capote captured the holiday season to a “T”-ruman in his “A Christmas Memory.”
A lifelong bestie of another of my beloved authors, Harper Lee of “To Kill a Mockingbird” renown, Truman grew up queer during times when that wasn’t allowed. Hell, it’s still not allowed, not really despite the two-steps-forward/one-step-back strides that humanity has been making lately.
Truman Capote at 23, thanks to Wikipedia.
I happened upon Truman’s “A Christmas Memory” by chance. It’s part of his book, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s: a Short Novel and Three Short Stories,” the whole volume of which is mind-blowing. His print version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is nothing less than enchanting for how it captures the heartbreaking nuances of love and friendship, particularly between a gay man and a straight woman. (Incidentally, another book I adore along those same lines is “The Object of My Affection,” by Stephen McCauley. That novel as well is much more profound in print than in the film.)
Poster for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” from Wikipedia.
Please don’t judge “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by its movie version. It’s stunning because of Audrey Hepburn, her iconic dress by Hubert de Givenchy in the movie poster above, and so forth — but its racism toward Asians is deplorable. Moreover, it’s nowhere near as deep as the fabulous book. Unfortunately, Truman seems to have actively prostituted his masterpiece novella to Hollywood. Why? Was it due to his tragic and increasingly alcoholic life?
Truman Capote, four years before he passed away. Thank you Wikipedia.
The story in its p.r.i.n.t.e.d. form reminds me of how this whole pandemic situation has upended our holiday season, yet in some ways “righted” them. This year I’m extra thrilled that my dear ones are in good health. I’m happier for the smaller gestures. Living “sheltered-in-place,” I’m reminded that even though we can feel alone, we never really are.
No matter how poorly we feel and badly we are treated, one kindred face can make all the difference. Here in this vintage video, Truman doesn’t tell us this — his story enables us to feel it…
How are your holidays unique this year?
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A festive bowl of Khashayar’s Butternut Squash and Cod Soup!
More time to write my novels, for my husband to cook marvelous meals — of course I hate the devastation of Covid-19, yet those are two ways I’ve benefitted from it. (More about the unexpected bonuses of sheltering-at-home here and here and here and a guest’s exert advice on how to deal with anxiety here.)
Soups are like smoothies on steroids — they can be cooling or warming, super nutritious or totally indulgent.
Every day since the pandemic began, each night is a culinary adventure. (More of Khashayar’s recipes here and here and here and here and here and here.)
Recently he made a massive pot of this — yum!!!!
Butternut Squash and Cod Soup by Khashayar Parsi
Ingredients
1 small butternut squash
1 medium onion
4 Tbs coconut oil
4 Tbs unsalted butter
1 Tbs turmeric
2 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground saffron
1 Tbs of white sugar
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp ground chili pepper
1 quart almond milk
1 quart water
1 cup Chardonnay wine
¾ cup of white rice
16 oz cod filet (or similar)
Split the Squash lengthwise and bake the halves in a 400∞F oven for about 45 minutes or until they are softened but not browned. Let them cool just enough that you can handle them. Spoon out the seeds and peel them. Cut the butternut squash into smaller chunks and set aside.
Chop the onion and sauté in coconut oil for about 7 to 8 minutes on medium heat until lightly golden. You can use a large pot so that you can finish the soup in the same pot. Add butternut squash, butter, and all the spices. Mix well and cook for another 5 minutes.
Add rice, almond milk, and water. Bring to boil on high heat, and then let simmer on low for half an hour. Stir the pot a few times to avoid any burns. Add cod and wine and cook for another 10 minutes.
Puree the soup, adjust the seasoning, and serve in a bowl.
Garnish
Oven roast 4 cloves of garlic with skin. Peal and mix with 1 Tbs of minced ginger. Add them to ½ cup of balsamic vinegar, 1/8 cup of soy sauce, and 1 Tbs of brown sugar, and cook in a saucepan on medium heat until it thickens to the consistency of molasses.
Drizzle over the soup and add some green peas. Don’t stir in the garnish; that way, there’s an extra burst of delightful flavor and texture in each bite!
Our dear doggie is quite an enthusiastic kitchen mate, always eager to help with pre-wash.
What’s your most satisfying food for this season?
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Happiness Between Tails by da-AL 
