Lift Up Your Hearts!

I know, I know, I have many more adventures to write up, but I'm starting with this one, as I think it will be more interesting to most of those for whom I write.

The first adventure of the adventure occurred the day before I left.  I suppose I should have discoverd the problem earlier, but I didn't.

Because I was bringing quantities of food, books, and educational materials with me, and knew I would be pushing the weight/size limit on my luggage allowance, I did my packing early.  That was good.  That was smart.

That wasn't enough.

Even though I knew my flight was on Lufthansa, I had carefully followed the baggage rules of USAirways, as my reservations were through them.  And anyway, aren't the rules all pretty much the same?

No.

The day before my flight, I dutifully typed the flight number into the USAirways Flight Status box, and was momentarily encouraged.  The from Charlotte, North Carolina to San Francisco, California was expected to be on time, which would have been good news had I not been expecting to fly from Orlando, Florida to Basel, Switzerland.  A bit disconcerted, I called USAirways and was informed that they had nothing to do with the flight except for making the reservations, and I'd have to talk with Lufthansa about flight status.

Uh oh.  Being the obsessive-compulsive person I am, I decided I'd better check Lufthansa's luggage rules, just to be sure.  Everyone said I'd be fine.

Everyone but Lufthansa, that is.

The USAirways weight limit for the carry-on bag is 40 pounds, or 18 kilograms.  I was feeling good about my packing, which at 38 pounds gave me a little leeway.  But the Lufthansa website said their limit was 8 kg.  Hoping that was a misprint that left off the ten's digit, I called—and they confirmed the lower number.  :(

My plans for the final day had not included repacking.  And re-repacking.  And re-re-re-packing.  But I did it!  The weight allowance for the checked bag was 23kg, and at the airport the next day it weighed in at 22.8!  Both my carry-on and my personal item were slightly over 8kg; I had a Plan B if that had been a problem, but it wasn't.  True, I didn't bring all that I wanted to with me, but I brought all that was most important, and I have to admit that it was nicer to carry 8kg than 18 on the long hike through the Frankfort airport.

The Day came.  Let me say this at the outset:  Weight restrictions aside, flying to Basel with only one change is a lot nicer than having two.  What's more, leaving at 8pm sure beats leaving in the morning.  It was great to have most of the day for last-minute chores, and in theory leaving at that hour would make it easy to sleep on the plane.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Porter was able to take me to the airport, which was a real blessing.  All went smoothly with checking baggage and going through security.  Our plane was a little late taking off, but we more than made up the time in flight.  I had an aisle seat, which normally would have been fantastic.  Not that it was bad, but if I'd known how things were going to go, I'd have asked the girl next to me if she wanted to change places.

She was a lovely child, perhaps 10 years old:  friendly, talkative, polite, and interesting.  But she was up and out of her seat a lot—I had told her not to worry about waking me up if she had to use the bathroom—which meant I was up and down as well, and I don't think she slept all night.  Consequently, my own total was less than three hours, probably more like two due to the interruptions.  Still, overall there was little to complain about, and nine hours in the plane sure beats the 14 of my last flight.

The plane landed in the wing of the airport from which my next flight was scheduled to depart, so getting from one to the other ought to have been easy.  But Frankfort is a big airport, and despite the apparent closeness, the two gates were a very long walk and a security checkpoint apart.  The latter caused an unexpected delay as well, as both I and my luggage were searched.  They didn't find anything because there was nothing to find; I have no idea what caused their suspicions.  (Later I learned that my checked luggage had been examined by the TSA, so I guess it was old-lady-with-more-books-than-clothes profiling day.)

Despite that, I made it to the Basel flight in plenty of time.  By now, the EuroAirport is looking quite familiar, so I grabbed my luggage, exchanged Swiss German greetings with the customs agent as I breezed by, and walked out the door to three generations of waiting relatives, one very pregnant.  :)

Jet lag turned out to be no problem at all.  The bigger adjustment was to a 10 p.m. sunset, hence a totally discombobulated sense of time.  But it's great for long evening walks.

Lesson one learned from my first solo transatlantic flight:  If I speak English, I can get along just fine.  If I try to speak German, I provoke a stream of German in response, of which I understand not one word, and my own brain, struggling with German, forgets to be competent in English.  Note to self:  leave playing with other languages to non-critical situations.

Click to enlarge.

I wrote about xylitol when I discovered it in Japan four years ago, and that remains one of my most popular posts.  Although I did not experiment further with xylitol as a sugar substitute, I continued to use it as a dental rinse, swishing a small spoonful around in my mouth after brushing my teeth at night.

Until I started worrying about the fact that the xylitol I had was made in China, that is.  Chinese manufacturers were caught substituting poisonous substances for more expensive, safe ingredients in toothpaste and children's toys, as I wrote about in 2007, and later in baby formula, candy, and other products containing milk.  I wrote to the manufacturer of my xylitol, seeking reassurance, but received no answer.

So I got lazy, and simply eliminated the xylitol rinse from my tooth-cleaning routine.  That was a year ago, and six months later the dental hygienist wondered what was going on:  my gums, which had been healthy for years, were now a mess.

The only change in my routine had been that I was no longer using the xylitol.  Chastened, I decided to assume diligence and responsibility on the part of the manufacturer, and resumed my nighttime rinsing.

This week I returned to the dentist and the hygienist was wowed by the positive changes and return to health of my gums.

Did xylitol make the difference?  It's hard not to come to that conclusion.^*  At any rate, I don't intend to repeat the experiment if I can help it, even though it still feels strange to rinse my mouth with something sweet, especially without brushing my teeth afterwards!

Some of my favorite flags:

Visit Stephan's blog to enter your guesses about Little One Stücklin's arrival details.  Here's a teaser to help you guess:

Barefoot, (very) pregnant, but that's not their kitchen.

The Rest of the Story.  The true revolution behind Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution television show was based in Connecticut and played out quietly, behind the scenes, in West Virginia.  Oliver still deserves much of the credit—it was his idea and he funded it.  We the People deserve less, for preferring a confrontational and hyped-up TV version to the more inspirational true story.  (Hat tip to DSTB.)

It's 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and chef John Turenne is where he feels most at home: a school cafeteria. What's unusual is that it's a school cafeteria not far from his home in Wallingford, where's he's making pizza for second-graders using all local, healthy ingredients.  For the past nine months, you'd be far likelier to find Turenne in the school cafeterias of Cabell County, W.V.  Sound familiar? That's the county that international celebrity chef Jamie Oliver ran roughshod over in a TV series earlier this year.

When Turenne's assistant gave him the message that Jamie Oliver's office called, "I said, 'You're joking'," Turenne laughs.  She wasn't. Oliver wanted to hire Turenne's company, Sustainable Food Systems, to be the unseen force that reconstituted the food in all 26 schools in Cabell County, patiently, methodically and anonymously, as opposed to Oliver's style of bang-them-over-the-head.

"A big piece of it is empathy and being in their shoes," he says, noting Oliver's high-voltage demeanor and the chaos of TV cameras. "We'd come in and try to be the medics and patch the egos and bring people back up again and say, 'It's OK, they're gone. Now let's talk about this. Here's what we're trying to do. You've been here for a long time; help us figure this out'."  And they did, much better in most everyone's estimation than the show let on.

[Turenne] says his biggest frustration over the nine months — aside from being away from his family for huge chunks of time — was what he called the lunch program's "perverted guidelines."  "When the system says it's OK to serve frozen pizza with 17 separate ingredients, or canned fruit loaded with high-fructose corn syrup, yet demands to know the science behind a fresh vegetable stir-fry, it's time to say, 'snap out of it!' " he says.  "Our biggest challenge was not the cooks, was not the people on the front lines," he says. "It ended up being some administration and state USDA people in my mind feeling, 'Oh God, how is this going to make us look?' "

The entire Hartford Courant article is worth reading.

For reasons obscure (who needs a reason, anyway?) I was looking up mathematician/musician Tom Lehrer and came upon this.  Enjoy!

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour

Thanks to Netflix, we're reprising the 1960's.  Just a little.  Contrary to popular, romantic belief, the 60's and 70's were a difficult and painful time for our country, and while there was some progress made in important arenas, I see those times as watershed years, in which our society turned rapidly for the worse in many ways.  I never did like Forrestt Gump; it cuts too close to the bone.  Nonetheless, while searching for some clean comic relief, I chose to look backwards, at some "best of" takes on two shows that made me laugh in my high school days.

My memory was confirmed that of the two the Smothers Brothers show was by far the better.  I've removed from our queue the remaining Laugh-In disks in the series, but kept two more of the Smothers Brothers.  They make me laugh still.  Only now, I cry as well.

It's hard to imagine calling anything from the 1960's "innocent," but in comparison to today's show, that's the proper adjective.  Yet the seeds of today's hard-edged, cynical depravity were clearly there for those with eyes to see.  Even now it stings to realize that the cautionary words of our old-fashioned elders were right, and our insistence that it was all harmless fun was wrong.

Don't misunderstand me:  there was a lot of harmless fun in the shows, and even some important social commentary.  But in attitude and innuendo there was the beginning of a darker trend, a crack in the foundation as it were, which has now widened into a breach.

One thing I like about the Smothers Brothers show is all the music, especially when Tom plays his acoustic guitar and Dick his string bass.  They both had beautiful singing voices, and frequently sang lovely old folk songs.  Also interesting is seeing the beginnings of later-famous groups, such as future country star Kenny Rogers singing psychedelic rock with the First Edition.  Less amusing was an early performance by the Who, who smashed not only their own instruments but (unexpectedly) Tommy's guitar as well.  Tommy did an amazing job of staying cool about it, though that may have been because all were reeling from the explosion of a cannon in the drum set.  It had unintentionally been loaded with a triple charge and literally blew the set apart, injuring the drummer with shrapnel and causing permanent hearing loss in one of the guitarists.  In the spirit of "the show must go on," it's not obvious to the viewer that all didn't go as planned.

I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this resolution, and I really have no business adding another when I haven't made much progress on the others yet.  But it's the 8th of the month, and this one intrigues me.

Fear and worst-case-scenario thinking has too much influence in our lives.  It's natural:  One phone call with really bad news can make one jumpy every time the telephone rings, even though the ratio of bad to good (or at least neutral) calls is very small.  It's natural, but it's not right.

I haven't thought much beyond that yet, but I know that two passages are going to play a large role in the outworking of this resolution.  The first is three lines from one of my favorite choir anthems, And the Father Will Dance^* by Mark Hayes:

Cast away fear for you have been restored!
Put on the garment of praise as on a festival day.
Join with the Father in glorious, jubilant song.

The second is one of my favorite Bible verses, Philippians 4:4-7.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!  Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.  Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 

It remains to be seen how this all plays out, and whether it merits its own number or should be considered part of Resolution #3 (Learn to Relax).  But this is a beginning. 

And now, the part of the post wherein I am forced to admit my lack of progress:

#1  Read More Books  Yech.  Only two books read in May, and one ridiculously short.  That's partly due to still plowing my way through the The History of the Ancient World and The Chronological Guide to the Bible, and partly to having more distractions in May than usual, but mostly I must admit I haven't been making reading a priority, which is exactly where I was when I made this resolution in the first place.

#2  Rediscover Feasting  Nothing much to report, although we have been consistent in keeping Wednesday as a weekly fast day, which both of us have found beneficial, mentally and physically.

#3  Learn to Relax  I haven't made any more effort to find an Alexander Technique teacher here, though I am hoping to have some time with Janet's teacher when I go to Switzerland.  My doctor told me that I am hard-wired as a "hot reactor," which merits a blog post of its own at some point.  I find most of the symptoms way off base for me, but some are spot-on.  In any case, I'm determined to prove him wrong about the hard-wired part (being convinced of my own neuroplasticity), so I need to give this higher priority.

#4  Like More Things  Spinach:  I've liked it raw, in salads, for along time, but spinach is actually better for you if it's cooked a bit, and I've detested cooked spinach ever since I discovered that—contrary to what I saw in the Popeye cartoons of the early 1960's—it was green, not black, and didn't give me super strength.  I still don't care for spinach plain, but now I love mixing a handful of spinach leaves with other vegetables on pizza, or in an omelet or quesadilla.  So that's a victory.  On the other hand, I bought a can of sardines planning to force myself to eat a small bit:  they're so good for you, but the thought and smell turn my stomach.  I backed out at the last minute and let Porter enjoy all of them.

#5  Pay Attention  At least I can say that I've been paying attention to paying attention, and trying—albeit with limited success—to bring my mind to focus on the moment instead of always being in three places at once.

What could be more American than hot dogs?

Lawsuits, apparently.

I bought a package of hot dogs yesterday.  I'm probably a little behind the times—we don't eat hot dogs very often—but since when did they come with warning labels?  Not the kind of warning I might expect, e.g. "this product is full of fat and dangerous additives, and is made from parts of the animal you don't want to know about," but the following:

Come again? You must be six years old to eat a hot dog?  I remember the day when hot dog-shaped meat sticks were a staple toddler "first finger food" in the baby food section of the grocery store.  Not that we ever bought them:  they were disgusting.  But there they were.  Clearly, somebody sued somebody over a hot dog incident, and now we get warning labels.

The chief problem with such inanities is that they lead to a cavalier attitude towards all warning labels.  In between "children under six must have their hot dogs cut into tiny pieces" and "remove plastic from pizza before putting into oven," someone's going to miss "poison—do not drink."

Check out our^* Steph Shaw on a very early morning TV gig in New York today.  The guy out front who keeps hogging the camera?  That's Swedish singer Anders ("the Sting of Stockholm") Holst. Okay, so he's the star and she's the backup.  Some folks need to get their priorities straight.

Here's the link.  (I can't embed the video.)

Meet Feudal Effort, the latest addition to the comics list on my Sursum Corda page:

 I find it fun.  Sometimes there's a bit of mildly objectionable language, but nothing the nephews can't handle, and I don't think the grandkids are reading my comic list yet.  :)

You can get to know the characters here.

Mutton dressed as lamb.

I can and do text, finding it quite useful at times, mostly because not all phones send and receive e-mails, and because our overseas friends can receive texts for free...

...but I just don't get why anyone who knows how to type would prefer texting.  And although in extremity I will do it, I have a deep aversion to abbreviating words, omitting capitalization, and leaving out punctuation.

You will often see me with headphones on and mp3 player in my pocket...

...but today's Zits is me!

Our Memorial Day celebration concluded with a lovely dinner at at a friend's house, to which we brought wine and dessert.  This friend is one of those on whom I am not hesitatant to inflict culinary experiments, and this cake was one.  I began with a simple vanilla cake base from my Boston Cream Pie recipe (credit my friend LCS).  It is a single-layer cake, which I sliced in two horizontally with a serrated bread knife.  I heated passionfruit jam a bit to make it thinner, and mixed it well to make it smooth.  This I spread generously on the first layer.  After adding the second layer, I used a pastry brush to glaze it and the sides with the thinned jam.  Then I added the fruit:  fresh strawberry halves and whole blueberries, canned apricot halves and peach slices.  Using the brush again, I glazed the fruit with the jam.

I must say we were all very happy with it!  Apricot or currant jams are more traditional for this sort of dessert, but I think the passion fruit flavor made this cake the success it was. 

What I plan to do differently next time (and there will be a next time):

• Use a higher percentage of whole wheat flour in the cake.  (This time I used a 50/50 mixture of white whole wheat and all-purpose flours).
• Use less sugar in the cake (the recipe calls for 1 cup, but I think less would work well—the jam makes it sweet enough).
• Possibly make the inner layer of jam thinner.
• Use fresh fruit exclusively if I can't find firmer canned fruit; the apricots and peaches were rather mushy—though that did make cutting the cake easier than firm fruit would have.

One of the reasons I like Mallard Fillmore is that he can always be counted on to remember:

This Memorial Day I also want to honor a living veteran, who served as a WAVE in World War II, and who is

90 years old today!

(Not that she's likely to see this...but I honor her anyway.)