Broad Swath

Preamble:  That's a Youtube link at the bottom.  If I were you I'd view this post at a desktop equipped with speakers, and the volume turned up. Right about this time of year we decide it's OK to play Christmas music.  Unlike so much of our nation, we have held the holiday at bay to it's proper beginning. Music was part of the essence of Christmas when I was a kid.  We had one of those big, heavy wood stereo consoles with the built-in speakers and the lid that lifted up to reveal the turntable.  You could pile on a stack of discs and they would drop, one by one, and play for their entirety, providing hours of continuous music until it stopped and you would flip them all over and listen to the other sides.  I wish I could remember our Christmas music collection better.  My memory ends after Nat King Cole, Barbara Streisand, and Bing Crosby.  And I'm afraid I might have been insufficiently attentive when my Dad pointed to the box of vinyl and as...

Thanksgiving is coming.  It's not too early to start mapping out some light conversation topics.  It's also a good time to get your pumpkin on. I think pumpkin, baked and pureed at home, tastes a lot better than canned and worth the extra effort.  So... 1) Buy one or two of these. Regular pie pumpkins (Sugar Pie, Sugar Baby) aren't too hard to find.  Superior to canned, but get a "B" for color and flavor. Long Island Cheese - my current favorite.  Sometimes hard to find.  Found one at the farmer's market this year. Jarrahdale - It's gorgeous slate blue exterior and intense orange interior kills it in the aesthetics category.   Big flavor.  Hard to find around here. The Fairytale, or Musquee de Provence variety, looks interesting but I've never seen one around Madison.  Let me know if you find something you like. 2) Cut them in half. That's a really big L.I.C. 3) Bake them, cut side down, in a glass or ...

      A few years ago we paid a quick visit to Martha's nephew Max and his wife Jen in their cool San Francisco neighborhood as the start of a family spring break vacation.  We met Lily their boxador and they served us fresh pea soup from their Vitamix.  We had a lovely time, but Monday came and they were not on vacation.  So they directed us to a nearby breakfast place to fuel up before our drive south to Big Sur.  I can't remember the name.  It was a couple blocks away.  I poked around on a Google map but came up empty.  Maybe it's not there anymore.  Anyway...      We were seated near a table at which an African American woman I recognized was finishing her meal with a couple friends.  (Your chances of seeing someone famous are much higher in a cool San Francisco neighborhood than in Madison.)  I pointed her out, and Martha agreed she was somebody, but we couldn't agree on a name. ...

Notoriety can be a funny thing. Around our house Martha is notorious for stealing bed covers, rigorous dishwasher-loading methodology, believing that one can be a great navigator with a terrible sense of direction, and being late for everything except airplanes. But to her friends and family Martha is notorious for.... Snatching crackers from her brother. Being forced to sit at the dinner table for eternity, her cheeks stuffed with chewed, never-to-be-swallowed vegetables. Believing that a shoelace draped over her head was a reasonable facsimile of having long, straight hair. A perfectly organized sock drawer. Passing for under 12 at the Wellesley Community Playhouse. Her favorite getaway canoe was a 17' Grumman HIN. Buying a ticket to Portland but boarding a plane to San Francisco, then demanding an explanation from the flight attendant as to why they were landing in the "wrong" city. "And why are we landing in San Francisco?...

It started here... "Chinese Breakfast" is what Martha and I call it.  This is not in any way intended to be an authoritative introduction to what folks there eat for their first meal. Martha and I have traveled to China twice.  The first was in June of 2000 to meet and bring home our daughter, and oldest child, Lily.  Food memories are scarce from that trip.  The second was in June of 2014 as a family of four with son Owen in tow.  This was an organized tour whose priorities included some attention to food.  Some of our meals would have rightly been called feasts. Owen & Lily (right) feasting. The experience that changed meals at home, was breakfast. Several of the hotels we stayed at would organize breakfast buffets with a ridiculous variety of choices.  They had a Western table with pastries, cereals, an omelette station, sausage, bacon, pancakes, etc.  And then there was the Eastern region.  I suppose it could have been ...

My appetite for political news is insatiable. I want to be paying attention; to feel the tremor that brings you down when all the others failed; to witness that moment when your reputation syncs with the man you are.  I'm following you.

Are you a writer who needs an idea for a novel?  Here's one.  It might not be enough to carry a whole book, but it could provide the framework, or a fundamental facet of the plot.  Maybe it's the spark you need to finish something you've already started.  Last week I posted an exquisite poem about a blog being like a time machine.  In Blogger you can write a post and then set it to publish on a future date.  (Maybe that feature is for intense bloggers who need a vacation.)  Here comes the pitch.  Are you sitting down?  I am. It could be a thriller - a blogger is murdered, or disappears in some mysterious way, but their posts keep appearing after they're gone.  With each new post more clues are revealed about the killer, or secrets belonging to a gigantic agrichemical company, or to that asshole of a president.  Shortly after a post appears, readers flood law enforcement with tips and theories.  Was the blogger killed by ...

I've written something I think is quite funny. It won't appear for months; December 31st to be exact. Why did I pick that date? If I posted it now it would surely be funny, but not super funny. Why do funny when you can do super-duper-funny? Trust me, it's funny. That or I'm lost when judging my own work. (Which is it?) Have a seat in my time machine by making a note on your calendar or set a reminder in your phone. Let's have a super slow party.

Good tomatoes are coming.  And sweet corn.  It won't be long now... Far and away the most common summer meal in my family was what Dad called "AGR Dinner."  It was a simple one: grilled steak, corn on the cob, and sliced tomatoes with salt and pepper; maybe some Wishbone dressing.  What it lacked in complexity was made up for with quality ingredients; it was timed with the arrival of those first good tomatoes from the garden, or farm stand.   You could say that the history of this meal began about 7,000 years ago in central Mexico when a grass, teosinte, began evolving into maize.  It makes more sense to start in Durand, Illinois in 1942.  In the summer of that year you could have found my dad holding the reins of two horses pulling him and a one-row cultivator through a field of corn.  Maybe it's the Fourth of July, and the corn is knee high.  George is 16, and in a few weeks he will leave the farm for his first year at the Universit...

Today is our silver wedding anniversary.  (Happy anniversary my love.) Twenty-five years ago Martha and I were married at Faith, Hope, and Charity catholic church.  The ceremony was followed by a reception at the Glen View Club where we were entertained by, and some of us danced to, Las Toallitas - a band from Chicago Martha and I had selected.  Doesn't every wedding need a band wearing fezzes with a woman banging on a rack of automobile brake drums?  That was the last O'Brien wedding with music chosen by the wedding couple. We had wanted Brave Combo, a polka band from Texas that we had seen a couple times in St. Louis, but they weren't going to be anywhere near Chicago.  When we asked for a recommendation they said Las Toallitas had opened for them recently and were fabulous.  In our defense we did our research, and went to a show to check them out.  Martha's brother Joe came with us.  He gave them a thumbs up.  That was perhaps a...

I am rereading Brown Dog , by Jim Harrison.  It is the collected novellas that feature the character of the same name, or B.D.  I don't often reread something.  I haven't read anything else quite like it.  It causes frequent bursts of uncontrolled laughter.  It's often a kind of startled laugh, and I think that's due to some recognition, or a kernel of fear, that there is a bit of B.D. in me. The New York Time's Sunday Book Review described B. D. this way: If Brown Dog qualifies as civilized, it’s only a part-time vocation. He is an “anti-magnet for money”; lust flares in his loins every 15 minutes; four days without a drink seems his best record. He plans to fast before going into “battle” (i.e., chucking fireworks at an ex-girlfriend), but a couple of hours later, he gets “distracted by a pail of fresh smelt” and “two cases of beer.” Running from the police, B. D. asks to stop for breakfast. He prefers to sleep outdoors because houses are too wa...

When I was a kid my mother would sometimes wash my hair at the kitchen sink.  I think the idea was, "This kid's hair is filthy and we don't have time for a bath."  You know how at a salon there's that sink with the head rest and you're tilted backwards and it's comfortable if not downright relaxing?  This wasn't like that.  I would stand on the red step stool, bent forward with my head way down.  Mom would scrub away and then use the pull out sprayer to rinse out the shampoo.  One time, with my voice reverberating down in the sink, I asked her, "Am I going to be bald like Dad?"  The question must have caught her off guard.  Her reply was something like,  "Well, Dad grew up on a farm, and... you wash your hair a lot more often."  She was a smart lady, but we all have our moments.  What mother would be prepared to say yes?  She redeemed herself somewhat by adding, "And you brush your teeth more, so you're less likely to...