Cameroon?

I'm always a little hesitant to start telling Africa stories -- I'm afraid I'll sound like Higgins in the old "Magnum P.I." TV show.  Remember him?  "There I was in the Congo, surrounded by savages, my only weapon a grapefruit spoon..."

But they're good stories, most of which I can tell in mixed company, so I'll share a few here.

I had "co-op"ed through college with Procter and Gamble, a total of four semesters -- three in Cincinnati and one outside of Dallas.  I worked on coffee -- P&G makes Folger's, and there's all sorts of chemical engineering involved in coffee processing, especially decaffeination.  I enjoyed the work and liked Cincinnati, but by my senior year I felt a strong urge to do something a little different before settling down into my career.  Maybe a little adventure...

I also had a desire to give something back to the world, recognizing I'd been pretty fortunate in life.  At Detroit there was a modest push on campus for people to consider the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, where you spend a year post-graduation working in inner-city USA.  After 5 years in Detroit I'd had my fill of inner-city USA, but the idea of adventure plus volunteer service led me to check out the Peace Corps.

The surprising part of the application process was how competitive it was, as only about 1 in 3 Peace Corps applicants get in.  The more specific you were about what you wanted, the harder it was to get in.  I applied to teach math/science, and asked to be sent someplace where French or Spanish was spoken.  (I had studied Spanish before, and didn't think learning Nepali or Urdu or something would be too useful later.)  Other than that, I was up for anything.

The not-surprising part was how drawn-out the whole process was, as the Corps is indeed part of the federal government.  Lengthy paper applications, then interviews, then stacks of forms, etc.  But in the spring of my senior year I was told I had been accepted, and would be teaching math/science in Cameroon.

Cameroon?

I found it on a map at the library, and found some basics facts: Next to Nigeria, French- and English-speaking, variety of climates, etc.  I read as much as I could find, which wasn't very much.  When I told people what I was doing after graduation I got a variety of reactions as well, from slight disbelief ("I mean, I knew Pat was a little weird...") to envy/admiration.  That was true at home, as well, where the parent who had been in the Navy totally got it, while the parent who had nursed and nurtured me spent the next 2-1/2 years worrying.

In June it was off to Philadelphia for 3 days of initial "training" for our Cameroon math/science group, but the main purpose of this short stay was essentially to ask everyone: Are you sure you want to do this?  And we did have someone drop out (girlfriend reasons, as I recall), saving the taxpayers considerable airfare and hassle.  For the rest (20) of us our collective naivete and optimism could have powered a small town; throw in our collective enthusiasm, and you'd power a city.

Our itinerary was the typical Philadelphia-to-New York-to-Paris-to-Douala-to-Yaounde route that everyone knows so well.  I remember showing that to the skycap at the airport and asking him if we could check our bags all the way through, or if we'd have to get them somewhere along the way.  He said a little indignantly, "We can check 'em through to Hell if you're flying there!"  (He turned out to be right, as ultimately 39 of our 40 bags made it.)

I was too excited to sleep on the overnight flight from New York to Paris, and then we ran around Paris all day before our connecting flight at midnight to Douala.  I couldn't sleep on that leg, either, so I was really running on fumes when we landed the next morning.  When the plane's door opened and we walked down the jetway we were amazed at the early-morning heat and humidity; it was like trying to breathe pudding, and everyone started sweating.

We had our final short connecting flight to Yaounde, then a 1 hour bus ride to our training site in Mbalmayo -- at a Catholic girls' school that had let out for the summer, where we'd learn some French, get some cross-cultural and health training, and generally get acclimated.

In my slightly-weakened state I caught some kind of digestive bug in that first week, and it really knocked me out.  I distinctly remember being in the bathroom for what must have been the eighth time one day, hoping I wasn't going to see internal organs starting to come out, and saying out loud to myself, "Pat, what the hell are you doing in Africa?"

It got better after that.

Pat

Chores

Tolstoy's opening line to Anna Karenina is famous: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."  Based on my observations my corollary to that is: "Hard-working kids are all alike; every lazy kid is lazy in his own way."

Growing up my brothers and I were given a steady supply of chores.  (By the time my sister Maura was old enough to do work around the house it wasn't needed, somehow, so she was spoiled rotten, and she knows it.)  My dad, the ex-Navy guy, organized our household work on a "Watch, Quarter, and Station Chart" that was kept on the fridge.  Although we didn't have to stand watch very often, and our quarters were always our own rooms, and there was more vacuuming than one would do aboard ship, I imagine.  There were a few things each of us had to do each day, and they got done, or there would be consequences.

Maybe that's the problem now -- I have yet to come up with consequences (either positive or negative) that really motivate, or I'm not consistent enough in applying them.  Whatever the case, trying to get chores done is really, well, a chore.

Fiona is very agreeable when it comes to work -- she simply says "OK" when assigned.  But then (more often than not) she doesn't do anything.  It seems "OK" means "I recognize that words are coming out of your mouth; please stop."  This is true not only for chores, but for instructions like "Bedtime, Fi -- lights out."

When there's work to be done, or in progress, Emmet has the uncanny ability (like Jeeves in the P. G. Wodehouse stories) to sort of shimmer and disappear.  We'll all be out raking leaves, and I'll be looking right at him, and then suddenly the rake is on the ground, and he's inside watching TV.  It's eerie.

And then there's Conor.  He has a two-step approach to chores:

1.  Argue and negotiate as long as possible.

2.  Do such a half-assed job that he won't be assigned again.

If I drag him back to re-do or finish something, his approach is "Repeat Steps 1 and 2."  Example: Around Christmas he had left some paper scraps on the kitchen floor; when I was later doing some cleaning I had the trash can out, and told him to throw his scraps away.  After a brief argument he picked up the papers and dropped them in the direction of the trash can, where they hit the edge and fell back out on the floor, and he started to walk away.  I told him again to throw them away, and he said (I kid you not) "I did."

Amazingly this incident didn't end in violence, and he's gradually learning that I'm every bit as stubborn as he is.  But he's raised half-assed work to an art form.

So it's a simple picture: my brothers and I were hard workers when we were young, and my kids are as lazy as could be.  Simple pictures offer the clearest lessons, of course, so we don't need any "revisionist historians" telling more nuanced versions of how things were way back when.  (That means you, Dad.)

Pat

The Stars, Like Dust

Regarding hobbies, I'm not dedicated -- I'm a dabbler.  An example is the dog show thing, which came and went in about 9 months, which was fine with me.

Our house on Grant Street had a single-story family room at the back with a flat roof.  Our bedroom opened up onto this roof, so we eventually built a deck on top.  This provided a much better view of the night sky, which piqued my interest in astronomy, which led me to get a couple of books, which ultimately got me a telescope as a Father's Day present one year.

Looking up at the night sky can take your thoughts in a number of different directions, including "I'm seeing the same thing that people have seen at night for thousands of years...."  The ancients connected the stars to their mythologies, of course, and these varied from place to place.  A favorite trivia tidbit of mine is that the star cluster we call the Pleiades was associated by the Greeks with the "Seven Sisters", the seven daughters of Atlas; various Indian tribes had other stories about maidens or orphans, while the Japanese called this grouping of stars "unity", which in Japanese is "Subaru".   Think of that the next time you see the logo for that car company...

The other thing that got me into astronomy was our place in Lake Geneva.  Here in Evanston you can always tell which way Chicago is at night by the glow in the sky.  That's great for knowing directions, but not great ("light pollution") for stargazing.  The clear, dark Wisconsin sky gives awesome detail; the Milky Way is easily seen, a band of thousands of visible stars stretched across the sky from east to west.  It wasn't too long after getting my telescope that I took it up to Lake Geneva, and I've kept it there since.

The telescope is about 3 feet long and 6 inches in diameter, mounted on a tripod.  The lens-and-mirror setup lets you observe through an eyepiece that's perpendicular to the body.  It also has a couple of small motors and a computer of sorts that allows you (theoretically) to select the star you want to view and have it find and point automatically.  I've never gotten that working right, and gave up years ago, since relying on just moving it manually.

On a summer night up north I'll set up on the lawn right outside the condo, not too close to the golf course (to avoid the sprinklers).  If the kids (ours or anyone else's) want to see I'll set a plastic lawn chair next to the telescope for them to stand on.  The rule is that they have to hold their hands behind their backs and then look down through the eyepiece; otherwise they tend to bump it and lose whatever we were trying to see.  Sometimes I'll have a line of 5 or more waiting their turn.  I have to re-adjust between kids, as the field of view keeps moving (Earth's rotation and all that.)

My favorite things to look at are the Moon and the planets Jupiter and Saturn.  In general I find that a star that appears to the naked eye like a dot of light looks, with the telescope, like... a bigger dot of light.  But those three closer objects are really something, even with my amateur tools and skill.  Here are some pictures I found online that are pretty representative of what you can see:

Moon

Jupiter

Saturn

With Jupiter you can also see several dots of light nearby (not shown in the picture above); those are the Galilean moons, the four biggest of Jupiter's dozens of moons, discovered by Galileo way back when.  These move around Jupiter quickly, so they'll be in different positions from night to night.

The adults will do a little gazing, too.  The typical adult response to seeing the detail in Jupiter or Saturn is "That's SO COOL!"  (Of course, on a summer night in Lake Geneva at Telescope Time the typical adult has already had a few cocktails.)

Early on I had memorized a couple of dozen constellations and stars, but I've forgotten quite a few since.  Maybe I'll get back into it this summer, and see what else is up there worth looking at.

Then again, maybe not.  As I said, I'm a dabbler.

Pat

The Carbonara Story

I learned how to cook a few things in college, as most guys do.  I could make a very good spaghetti sauce, and also knew how to stir-fry.  I like cooking, and I'm pretty adventurous with spices.  I also recognize that that kind of cooking is different from "make-some-food-fast-because-we-have-so-many-other-things-to-do-and-we're-already-late", which is more common and a lot less fun.

Here at home I've typically done about 10% of the dinner cooking, if that -- for years I've gotten home too late from work to make dinner in time for everyone.  I always did the kitchen cleanup and the dishes, which isn't a totally fair trade, but it's what I could do.

One dish I did pick up along the way was Spaghetti Carbonara.  I got the recipe from a cookbook, adapted it a little, made it a few times, and it got to be a house favorite -- it's really good, and kinda fun to cook.  Until recently it was the only dish the kids thought I could make.  I'm sure by now I've made it 50 times, but somehow it's never exactly the same twice.

One time early on (Carbonara batch #10?) Rach was on her way home, Kathy and Sheila were coming over, and I was doing my thing in the kitchen, when I saw we were out of crushed garlic -- a key ingredient.  I did find some fresh garlic, which I'd never cooked with before, but I was sure I could figure it out.  The recipe called for one clove, so I took one of the hunks of fresh garlic, opened it up, peeled all the little pieces, crushed them in the garlic press, and mixed it in.  It seemed like a lot, but then maybe the crushed garlic in a jar was more concentrated somehow.

It turns out, of course, that a hunk of garlic is called a "head", and each of those little pieces is a "clove".  Who knew?  I mean, besides everyone else?  So the batch must have had 10-12 cloves in it.  We tried to eat it, but couldn't really get much down.  And even from what we did eat we had that garlic odor coming out our pores for at least a day.  We laughed about it then, and still do.

Your reward for following along is Pat's Excellent Carbonara Recipe -- be careful with the garlic:

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. pasta (I prefer linguine; any will do)
  
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
  
• Salt, pepper
  
• 1 large onion, chopped
  
• 1/2 lb. bacon
  
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
  
• 4 eggs
  
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  
• 1 large clove garlic, crushed
  
• 1 tablespoon chopped basil (fresh is best)
  

1.  Cook and chop the bacon.  Drain the grease from the pan, but no need to clean the pan yet.

2.  Cook the pasta per the "al dente" instructions, with 1 tablespoon olive oil.  Meanwhile...

3.  Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in the bacon pan, add the chopped onion and fry gently for 4 minutes or so.

4.  Add the chopped bacon and fry for an additional minute or two.

5.  Add the white wine, and boil until most (but not all) of the liquid is gone.  (The onions should be tender but not mushy, having absorbed much of the wine.)  Meanwhile...

6.  Beat the eggs with the cheese, garlic, and basil, and add salt and pepper to taste.  (I use about a tsp. each.)

7.  Drain the cooked pasta and quickly stir in the egg mixture and the bacon/onion mixture so that the heat from the pasta lightly cooks the egg.  Serve immediately.

It may take you a few tries to get the bacon/onion mixture just right, and have it finish exactly when the pasta finishes, ideally.  Let's hear a review from one of you after trying it!

And a future post will tell the "Weed Pesto" story.

Pat

Rock And Roll Part Two

What's Wrong With Kids and Music These Days, a.k.a. The Death of the Album

By Me, A Grumpy Old Man Shaking His Fist in the Air

I mentioned earlier that I'm getting a kick out of seeing the kids enjoy some classic rock via the game Rock Band.  That doesn't obviate the fact that they're missing out on a major pop music form, the album, aided and abetted by the playlists on their iPods.  Just because you can play a bunch of songs in random order doesn't mean you should...

Bands used to make a musical statement with each album -- at least some bands, some of the time.  (Some bands still do, I suppose -- Radiohead comes to mind.)  These hung together thematically, and hearing one song plucked from the album and not in sequence with the other songs seemed...wrong, or at least a little unfulfilling.  Some completely subjective examples:

• Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" captured the band's thoughts on insanity, colored by the fact that founder and former bandmate Syd Barrett was crazy.  The songs flow together beautifully.
• U2's "The Joshua Tree" was a completely new sound for them, and came from their tours of the western U.S. and Central America.
• The Clash's "London Calling" -- I don't know where to start, except that I'll always remember where I was when I first heard it in 1980, thinking "Wow -- what's that?"
• Los Lobos' "Kiko" really showed them branching out from the pure Tex-Mex sound they were known for.
• Almost anything by Bruce Springsteen.  His "Tunnel of Love" is about, well, love, and loss.  His 9/11 album "The Rising" really hangs together as well.
• Ditto for the last 5 Beatles albums or so.

I could go on and on, but I hope that gives you the idea.

And I don't think I'm being inconsistent in citing one of my favorite collections, the complete recordings from Stax Records in Memphis.  This is a 9-CD set, with every single recorded by this label, in order, from 1957-1968.  It's a lot of different artists, but the same Memphis Soul sound throughout -- Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Booker T and the MG's, etc.  It's all I listened to for a while in the early '90's.

Back to those children of mine: It probably makes sense to just buy a single song from an artist via iTunes if it's the only good song on the album, but then, who cares about an artist like that?  When there's so much else to choose from?  If you do own the whole album, you're missing a lot by shuffling it up with the rest of your music.  I fear that this is a trend, not a phase, and not just my gang, which is why it's worth ranting about.

And don't get me started on the lack of patience/short attention span that causes someone to not even be able to finish a song before switching to the next one...

There -- I feel better.  Now you kids get off of my lawn!

Pat

The Ring

My office had a fun overnight social event this weekend in downtown Chicago -- drinks and dinner on Saturday night, organized to allow some family time on Saturday afternoon and again at Sunday morning brunch.  The kids and I went down in the early afternoon to the Field Museum (it was pretty empty, due to the weather), then checked in to the hotel.  They got to order room service for dinner, and stay in to watch a movie while I went out for our office dinner.

This morning we joined everyone for breakfast, then went up to my old parish, St. Clement's in Lincoln Park, for 11:15am Mass.  I was a little distracted all weekend, I think, as today was my anniversary -- Rach and I were married 17 years ago at St. Clement's, on January 11th, 1992.

Unlike this weekend, that one was crisp and clear, about the best weather you can hope for from Chicago in January.  After the Saturday afternoon wedding we had our reception at Cairo, a funky bar/restaurant on Wells (no longer in business), and wound up that evening still in full wedding regalia at the Burwood Tap, still very much in business.  The next day it was off to the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean, while a snowstorm hit Chicago -- that's one treat to having a January wedding...

Something I'm sure people have wondered, but no one has asked, is: How long is Pat going to keep wearing his wedding ring?  I've been thinking about this for a little while myself.  What does it mean to keep wearing it?  What does it mean to stop?  What would I do with it?  It's just a little piece of gold, so why do these seem like momentous questions?

As I knew this anniversary weekend was coming up I mulled it all over, and made a decision.  At Mass at St. Clement's today I took my ring off and put it in an envelope in the collection along with a note to the pastor, giving him a little bit of the story and asking him to make the best use of it as he saw fit.

The symmetry of the whole thing was too compelling.  I left St. Clement's 17 years ago with that ring on my finger, and it served me wonderfully as a symbol, a reminder -- maybe a talisman?  (Good word, that.)  Now it's been returned, completing another circle, to serve some new purpose (I wish it were worth more) while I journey on.

It's been four months since Rachel's passing.  The saying "Life goes on" would have seemed trite, and maybe even cold or cruel, on September 9th, but now seems to fit -- it's an observation, not a slogan.  What removing my ring doesn't mean is that I've stopped mourning or missing Rach, or that I'm ready to start something new.  It was just...the right thing at the right time, and another small step toward closure (whatever that means).  I suppose on the list of Who I Am, "Widower" has been moved down a notch, and "Single Dad" has moved up.

I don't want this to be just an "Oh Poor Pat" post, so let me assign a little homework to you married folks out there: What does your ring mean to you?  More importantly, what does your marriage mean to you?  And what are you doing about it?

A little heavy, I know -- I promise a return to frivolity next week.

Pat

(Inscription: "R.J.H. to P.J.H. 1/11/92")

Rock and Roll Part One

We joined the video game generation this fall, setting up a Sony PS3 and a new TV in our newly-finished basement.  I had resisted this for a long time, as I'd rather have the kids doing something more active, playing outside, etc.  But playing video games is certainly more engaging than sitting passively and watching TV, which was their tendency.  That engagement is especially true with multi-player games.

So far the biggest hit is the game "Rock Band", where you play fake instruments (guitar, drums, bass) or sing along with various songs.  The levels for each instrument are Easy, Medium, Hard, or Expert, with the differences being how fast the notes come and how many different notes you have to play.  The game comes pre-loaded with about 50 songs, from new music to punk to heavy metal to classic rock.

Conor's primarily our drummer, since he's a drummer in the school band, and he's ventured up past Medium into Hard on occasion.  The rest of us usually play at the Easy level, to keep from missing so many notes that we get booed off the virtual stage (really!).  My goal is to get good enough to generally keep up with the kids, but stay bad enough that they can still make fun of me, which is their favorite pasttime.

When we're listening to music elsewhere they reject my choices automatically, even though I'm pretty open to new music (Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, etc.) myself.  So it's been fun to see them get an appreciation through Rock Band for some classic rock, including Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper", David Bowie's "Suffragette City", and others.  They've even bought some of the Rock Band songs on iTunes so they can listen to them on their iPods.  Maybe someday they'll appreciate that a lot of good music came out of the '60's-'90's, and that I know my stuff -- "Dad, tell us more about the Rolling Stones and U2..."  I can dream, can't I?

We hosted Christmas this year, and after dinner we all ventured down to the basement to play a little while.  The award for "Best New Rocker" was a tie between Rachel's sister Marilyn and her mom Gert -- see below...

Pat