The Rake Magazine

Blog

  • SuperSitters!

    If you can’t see the page below, click on the PDF (Acrobat) file at the bottom of the page to see Minnesota’s best babysitters.

  • Cover Letters I'd Like to Send

    Jann Wenner
    Publisher, Rolling Stone

    Dear Mr. Wenner,

    My name is Keith Pille. I am here to rescue you. Your magazine has become an atrocious ball of doo-doo, and I believe that nothing short of a top-to-bottom overhaul can restore it to its former glory. Please let me know a good time for me to show up at your offices and assume complete editorial control of Rolling Stone. It might be a good idea to tell your staff that whoever has been responsible for the past five years of Britney/Christina cover stories might as well start looking for other work immediately. Everyone else will greatly enhance their chances of surviving the impending purge if they clear their files of materials saying anything positive about Korn or Creed. Dashboard Confessional boosters are on thin ice as well.

    My vengeance shall be swift and severe but, in the end, all for the best.

    You should find enclosed a copy of my résumé. I look forward to working with you. Please reply at your earliest convenience.

    ***

    The Gibson Guitar Corporation
    Kalamazoo, Michigan

    To Whom It May Concern,

    You make guitars. I play guitars. We have a natural symbiotic relationship, and I feel that it is nothing less than a crime that we have not yet found a way to capitalize on this. Please let me know immediately if you are interested in retaining my services as a guy who sits around and plays guitar. Perhaps we could explore an exclusive contract wherein I would agree to use nothing but Gibson products while sitting around and playing guitar. Or, if you would like to take things a step further, I would gladly license my image for your use if you wished to show me sitting on a couch playing a Gibson while watching syndicated episodes of, say, Seinfeld with the sound turned off. Along the same lines, I would be happy to provide you with laudatory remarks that you could quote in your promotional materials (an example: “The SG Deluxe that Gibson sent me, along with $35,000, was absolutely the nicest guitar I have ever been paid to sit around and play”).

    I am told that Gibson has a flexible vacation and benefits package. I would like very much to hear more about this.

    ***

    Mr. William McManus
    Chief, Minneapolis Police Department

    Dear Chief McManus,

    I am writing to you to offer my services as a driving instructor. I feel that your department would benefit from my expertise, because I possess many skills that your officers seem, as a body, to lack. I am quite confident that we could negotiate a salary and benefits package that would leave both of us feeling satisfied.

    There are several areas in which I feel that your officers would profit immeasurably from my instruction. For example, it appears that one gap in your current training program is in the area of the turn signal. I have lived in Minneapolis for six years without once seeing a cop signal before turning. I would be delighted to explain this device to your men and women in blue, beginning with the basic nuts-and-bolts operation of a turn signal and moving on through higher turn-signal theory (why we signal, the erosion of public faith in traffic laws when they are flouted by authority figures, and so on). Other topics I would cover would include creating a “paradigm shift” in police stereotypes by, for example, not flipping on your rollers just so that you can run a red light, or refraining from parking illegally outside of South Minneapolis coffee shops. I feel obliged to point out that this could become a real win-win situation; law enforcement’s big stuff these days, and the sort of improvements that my presence would induce could result in a cushy Homeland Security position for one lucky police chief.

    ***

    The Fender Guitar Corporation
    Fullerton, California

    Dear Fender Guitar Corporation,

    As you may or may not have heard, I am currently in negotiations with your rival, Gibson, to enter into an exclusive Sitting Around and Playing Guitar contract. Before sealing the deal, however, I feel it is only fair to offer you a crack at my services.

    For a suitable sum of money, I would be willing to use nothing but Fender products while sitting around and playing guitar. (Although I have to be honest with you: I’m not very impressed with any of your acoustic models; we would have to discuss either the construction of a special one just for me, or some kind of arrangement where we took a Martin and covered up the logo with a Fender sticker.) For a more substantial compensation package, I would license my image to you for use, and/or provide you with praise-filled statements that you would be free to quote in your promotional materials (example: “This…er, Fender acoustic sure is one nice acoustic. Easily the equivalent of any high-end Martin”). Please send your bid in a sealed envelope, keeping in mind that Gibson is doing the same and the clock is ticking.

    ***

    CNN
    Atlanta, Georgia

    Dear Cable News Network,

    I have noticed that CNN has more or less ceased to be a channel that reports the news, becoming instead a constant stream of shows in which people who have no idea what they’re talking about argue about current events. I would be gratified if you would consider giving me such a show. I do a pretty good job of keeping up on current events. (I’ve heard, for example, that shark attacks are way down this year.) And I have immense experience arguing over things about which I know nothing. I realize that in order to maximize conflict, your shows tend toward a format where two adversaries share the billing. I’m not sure if anyone in your current stable would work very well as an adversary for me. For one thing, they all seem to be pretty well matched already, and I would hate to split up any of the successful partnerships. Wolf Blitzer doesn’t seem to be taken yet. Otherwise, I have several telegenic friends with at least as much experience as I have in arguing from a point of complete ignorance.

    Keith Pille is a Minneapolis writer whose work has appeared in McSweeney’s.

  • The Taste of Place

    There is a Gresham’s Law in music; bad tunes drive out good. On Sunday you hear a competent choir render a subtle and melodious anthem by Herbert Howells. You are then obliged to join in a repetitive praise chorus of the sort whose words and tune suggest that the righteous are those who have enjoyed a double lobotomy. Guess which piece you are still humming come Wednesday.

    Of all the world’s annoying tunes, even worse than the song that never ends (it goes on and on, my friend), the ditty that annoys this noisy oyster most is the one about this land being my land. It’s not just the uninventive tune and bumpy rhythm, it is also the grotesquely all-embracing claim made by the words. They are as vapid as the line of Schiller made famous by being belted out at every performance of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, Diesen Küss der ganzen Welt—This Kiss to the Whole World. How could anyone, even a tenor going all out and backed by the full faith and credit of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, possibly offer osculatory satisfaction to the entire population of the planet at a single instant? I ask you.

    Love of land, like kissing, has to be specific. “Breathes there the man with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said/This is my own, my native land!” Not that it has to be one’s native land. Generations of northern Europeans have loved the Mediterranean; for every Browning that prefers British buttercups (“the little children’s dower”) to the gaudy melon-flower, there is a Goethe with an ache for the land where bloom the lemon trees (though not all anatomize their Sehnsucht with the same cloying attentiveness).

    Love of specific places, like all love, can lead to anguish. Think of Derry’s walls. Or consider the pain (for all concerned) of Serbian attachment to Kosovo, scene of their tragic defeat by the Turks in 1389. You have only to see Behind Enemy Lines (or read a decent newspaper) to know about the horrors of Srbrenica; there are websites maintained by professional Byzantine scholars that catalog the devastation recently wrought upon medieval Serbian art and architecture.

    Any human love can be distorted. But in a pure form, the essence of a place appreciated for itself, without emulation or rancor, is a thing of beauty. Wine folk have a word (French, naturally) for the unique quality of a particular place that alone can produce a specific complexity of flavor. It is terroir, the character of a particular piece of terrain, its soil and geology, its climate and micro-climates, the entire physical condition of the place.

    Nowhere is terroir more celebrated than in Burgundy, that celebrated swath of eastern France, which produces some of the most expensive wines in the world. The geology here is Jurassic limestone (the Jurassic Era was not invented by Mr. Spielberg but is named after the nearby Jura Mountains), but there are fine gradations of soil chemistry and chalkiness, not only from north to south but also up and down the broad, vine-clad hillsides.

    Generations of agricultural ingenuity, beginning with the monks of medieval Cluny and Citeaux, have married the Pinot Noir grape to this complex landscape. In more recent times the vineyards have belonged to a maze of small proprietors, a complexity reflected in the system by which their wines are named, each “grand cru” having its own characteristic terroir and taste. I shall never forget the concatenation of complexity and power issuing from a glass of Corton Les Marechauudes 1964.

    Alas, such experiences, at least for the likes of you and me, are rare. If you have not heard of a grand cru Burgundy, you cannot afford it. But there is red Burgundy of a more generic character that can also give great pleasure, especially with cheese or meat. The good and the best are not enemies. It is quite possible to enjoy a Burgundy Passetoutgrains, like the excellent example from Robert Chevillon available locally for less than $15, without insisting that place does not matter and thereby declaring war on terroir.

    Nor does it involve assenting to the old saw that “good wine needs no bush.” Burgundy Passe-toutgrains is made mostly of the Pinot Noir grape, though it is permitted to add some Gamay, the lighter-flavored grape characteristic of the Beaujolais region. Buy some, you’ll like it. Well-made wines, unlike cheap music (“extraordinary how potent cheap music is”) and bumptious politicians, do permit variety.

  • A Bead on the President

    The other day, President Bush came to town to preach to a carefully preselected choir. Democrats and other issue pushers were exiled to a station about eight lanes of traffic away from the Xcel Energy Center’s sidewalk. The lefties chanted agendas and invited passing SUVs to honk. They carried signs that said things like “Kerry,” “Health Care,” and “U.S. Out of Iraq.” Even the “Ancient Forests Traveling Road Show” was present, with monster stump in tow. A young woman wore a plain white T-shirt that declared “John Edwards is Hot.” On a little traffic island all their own stood two lone Republicans, one dressed in a flag shirt and the other holding a sign that read “Thank you Pres. Bush.”

    At the outdoor media check-in, members of the press were issued a stop-sign-shaped White House press pool pass. Security looked through my camera bag, and waved me in. The press bleachers were not overly crowded. Although there were big agencies like the Associated Press on deck, there were also accommodations for what appeared to be patriotic amateurs. A father and son’s tape recorder fell crashing to the floor and a man in sunglasses and a baseball cap asked me to pass down his consumer-level mini-DV and tripod. He said he was following the tour, and I guessed he was a professional blogger. On the floor, the mostly white, middle-class crowd held signs and red, white, and blue pom-poms. Others had fashioned their inflatable Bush “thunder-sticks” into crosses.

    I noticed the silhouettes of three snipers up in the rafters. Oddly, this had a tranquilizing effect on me, a dose of hard reality against the saccharine pith and pep on the floor. This feeling dissipated when “The Patriot” radio host Laura Ingraham took the podium. While self-deprecatingly calling herself a “recovering lawyer,” she proceeded to slam light rail (“Maybe some of you would’ve taken it but it’s slow and doesn’t come here”) and the ACLU (“You’re supposed to boo when I say that!”). My irritation became uneasy surprise when she charged the local media with being unsupportive of the incumbent, at which point the mob turned and glared directly at us. Some hissed. I pointed at them and fired off a round of frames.

    Randy Kelly gave his “best leadership in a time of crisis knows no party line” reasoning. Then we were led in prayer, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance—with a distinct, cheerleaderish emphasis on the embattled words “under God.” Then a fervent vet, retired Lt. Col. Joe Repya, placed bobbleheads of Kerry and Bush on the podium. Despite his passionate speech recapping the desert wars, no Rockem Sockem robot action ensued. When it was time for the Republican representatives and senators to hold forth, Rep. Gil Gutknecht stepped up to the dais and immediately got rid of the Kerry bobblehead. The Bush bobblehead remained on the podium through two more Republicans. Sen. Norm Coleman, however, decided the stage was not big enough for the both of them.

    Finally President Bush arrived. BTO’s “Takin’ Care of Business” was cranked, and two “Bush/Cheney Heart and Soul Moving America Forward” buses pulled into the arena. There was a four-minute standing ovation, and BTO’s song came dangerously close to its shamelessly liberal refrain, “I love to work at nothin’ all day.” As the mayor tried to quiet the crowd, the president paraded onstage sporting the executive Home Depot look: rolled up denim-blue shirt and dark pleated slacks. The speech began and I went to work, unable to concentrate on the rhetoric but impressed by the man’s flow of confident poses and rapport. Similarities to Alfred E. Neuman and Zippy came to mind, but the overall effect and stance was more Michael Landon cross-faded with an Opie of the masses.

    Was there a kill shot and a soul to steal? When Bush gestured as if holding the world in his hands like some preacher mimicking God, it seemed like an unfiltered fusion of church, state, and demagogue. Maybe. While squeezing the trigger, I wasn’t really listening. —Alex Balthazaar

  • Surprise!

    I’ve been to a few weddings this summer, and it’s interesting. It seems that most of my generation waited until our late twenties, even our thirties, to get married. Then we’re waiting another ten years to have kids—right when a woman is up against the wall, biologically speaking. Forty is when doctors really start to worry about pregnancy—and start requiring large needles and invasive tests. Maybe more important, insurance companies lose their cool at forty, and every procedure starts costing big bucks.

    As a result, many of us have had about fifteen years of experience with birth control. Just the other day, my single friend Alan, who is thirty this year, was complaining that his new girlfriend wouldn’t go on the pill. A kind of funny anachronistic conversation followed regarding the relative merits of condoms, diaphragms, sponges (remember sponges?), and so on. My precious and I haven’t discussed birth control for years. She went off the pill ten years ago, and we’ve relied on good timing ever since. Apparently, Alan and his new girlfriend were enjoying so much loving that they weren’t capable of holding off for the seven days a month when she might get pregnant. After you’ve been married for five years, this is not a problem. We didn’t discuss abstinence. Does anyone over the age of eighteen or under the age of sixty discuss abstinence? Seriously, I mean?

    Can you imagine waiting until age thirty to have sex? It may be the crowd I run with, but I doubt whether many of my marrying friends ever bought into “the new chastity” the way many twenty-somethings have supposedly done. But one thing married (or otherwise committed) couples forget is the unholy terror of an unplanned pregnancy. I think we should all be honest that fear of pregnancy is the only selling point to abstinence as birth control, and it’s a big one. The other reasons, also fear-based, are unconvincing. Avoiding disease is, to me, kind of a non-starter. If that were a compelling reason not to have sex at all, then we should also abstain from hand-shaking and using public restrooms. (I mean as an alternative to protected sex. Condoms can be nearly as effective in stopping the spread of disease—without the negative side-effect of never having sex.) Every religious reason I’ve ever heard is plainly insane; if God had intended sex only for procreation, He would have made it significantly less fun. Abstaining from what every fiber in your body wants to do is just plain masochistic.

    When it comes to birth control, married couples who eventually want kids are a lot less neurotic than other couples. How do I know? Because we’re pregnant! My precious and I weren’t really planning it. In fact, now isn’t a great time, because we’ve both started new jobs. But the truth of the matter is that we’re both very happy, and if the insurance companies let this blessed event happen, the world will surely be a better place with another baby who is loved, wanted, supported, and raised with world-changing values.

    I’ve heard from some of my friends with kids that my life is about to go completely upside down, and frankly, I’m ready for it. I think there is a point where you decide whether you’re going to go on with your life in a somewhat self-centered way, pretty much just looking out for number one, or whether you want a dramatic shift in your world, one that involves making sacrifices to a living legacy—your kids.

    I have to say that my friend Steve is a really nice, interesting guy with tons of cool hobbies and the time and money to enjoy them. But there are few people I know who are as selfish. Steve and his wife Suzy are among those slightly annoying people who are always complaining that our society favors adults who choose to have children. Steve complains that his coworkers are constantly getting passes on personal days to attend to family business. He complains that he pays a higher premium on health insurance to subsidize coworkers with family coverage. Steve and Suzy are certainly free to not have children, and I say God bless them. But if everybody thought as selfishly as they do, the species wouldn’t get very far.

    On the other hand, Pete believes that once you become a parent you join a worldwide club. One of the tenets of that club is that the world is full of bad people, because the world is filled with bad parents—people who resent their own kids, for a wide variety of reasons. I can’t think of anything sadder than that. If you don’t want kids, for God’s sake, don’t have them. If that means abstaining from sex until you’re thirty, so be it. Let your own masochism be the end of the cycle of pain and fear.

  • Gourmet a Go-Go

    What price a good meal? The question posed in the preface of The American Home Cookbook of 1932 is readily answered by its publishers: “Barring the obvious cost of materials, there is that priceless ingredient—interest.” Oh, those sage prophets of cookery books replete with gems like deviled sardines and jellied venison. They had no idea how “interest” (to put it mildly) in a good meal would come to be a defining characteristic of the latter half of their century. The simple idea of paying attention to one’s food, seemingly radical for that generation, was destined to evolve into a burning curiosity—even an outright obsession—that would fuel a number of industries, usher in the era of the celebrity chef, set off a paradigm shift in farming, and ignite an American food revolution. And it was all started by a sassy, 6’2″ coed who used to sneak into speakeasies.

    Julia Child, who passed away this August, is clearly the mother of the revolution. For every morsel of foie gras, every slice of flourless chocolate torte, we owe her. During a time when the American cuisine meant hot dogs, frozen dinners, and Velveeta, Julia coaxed us to embrace the leek and demand it from our grocer. For those whose nonna didn’t teach them how to cook, she was a comforting mother figure to count on in a weekly timeslot. She not only demystified the process of cooking, but with her easy, convivial ways she educated a generation in the art of good eating. It’s not about slapping a protein, a starch, and a veg on the plate and eating in front of the TV. It’s about appreciating what every ingredient has to contribute, about the joy of the perfect bite in which a host of flavors commingle symphonically, about the complex passion of creativity and the simple delight of sharing meals with others.

    As the interest in fresh and exciting food developed, the focus turned from eating in to dining out. The eighties’ money glut, which spawned the desire for luxury versions and designer brands of everything, caused a surge in high-end restaurants. More people had more cash and they wanted a slice of the good life accompanied with good food. Dining became an event in itself and chic eateries tried to outdo each other with extravagant wine lists, daring menus, and funky concepts that would lead to the sometimes scary world of “eatertainment.” Well-heeled investors threw money into restaurants that they could show off to their friends. The Young Turks in the kitchen began stacking food into elaborate towers, melding French creations with Asian dishes in a flurry of fusion, debuting exotic ingredients flown in from all corners of the globe (enoki mushrooms, huitlacoche, eel skin). All of a sudden, food had a pedigree, and so did those who prepared it.

    Much credit for chefs’ elevation to celebrity status has to go to a short Austrian cook who became one of the most recognizable names in America. It helps that Wolfgang Puck rose to fame in Los Angeles, the locus for the cult of personality, where he turned the idea of fine dining on its ear by opening Spago. The glitterati expected a typically elitist, uptight gourmet restaurant; he gave them patio furniture, familiar but ultra-fresh ingredients, and, most shocking, an open kitchen that allowed diners to experience the sights and smells of the food being prepared. He gave them what they didn’t know they wanted, which is clearly one way to become an icon.

    With the rise of other chefs—Charlie Trotter in Chicago, Daniel Boulud in New York, Todd English in Boston—people began to define food and cooking not by country of origin but by vision of chef. No longer held as chain-smoking misanthropes with scowling demeanors to be hidden behind the line, chefs have risen to the station of “artist.” This transition is easily understood when you consider that theirs is an accessible art. Few people have money to spend on fine art, and many wouldn’t know what to buy if they did. Sculpting or composing music is not a daily activity for most of us. We do regularly eat and cook, though, and virtually anyone can get a reservation at Babbo in New York and sample Mario Batali’s silky, vibrant puttanesca, which is cause for a moment of reverence—a work of art in its own right. It’s this unique intimacy and accessibility that makes us keenly appreciative of those who can turn out culinary creations beyond our own capabilities.

    For true food zealots, the chef is a shaman, a guide on the path to finding the divine in the daily details of life. On a more worldly level, we want the food to bestow upon us not only flavor, but sophistication and the superior sense of being in-the-know. Stylish food and smart restaurants carry a pedigree that reflects on us; name-dropping (“this is a Jamie Oliver recipe”) wins you kudos and credibility. In the era of the Food Network, what you eat says as much about you as your clothes or your car.

    We like to think that our children’s pop stars are disposable, and that our allegiance to a celebrity chef is as unwavering as his line of frozen soups. But is it? The world of food now produces a steady stream of media sensations. Last October, the venerable Gourmet notoriously posed a quintet of chefs as rock stars on its cover—and then offered a feature story not on their expertise but on the photo shoot. Julia’s humble public television show has evolved into the Food Network, an essential element in creating buzz and cultivating “foodies.” Emeril, the network’s early poster boy, now plugs Crest toothpaste. There are book deals, cookware lines, movie cameos, talk show appearances, and other amazing opportunities for the chefs-of-the-moment. As long as they don’t mind spending much less time in the kitchen.

    With all this exposure, chef has become a dream job, right up there with NBA superstar, although seemingly much more attainable. Countless cooking schools have opened across the country, and competition to get into the most venerable institution, the Culinary Institute of America, has reached Ivy League levels. As accountants and teachers chuck their former lives to follow their “passion” for food, many find that the actual work—hours on their feet peeling dozens of shrimp and chopping hundreds of onions—is far more grueling than throwing a dinner party; as a result the dropout rate for culinary schools is also higher than ever.

    The “Almost-Famous Chef Competition” is simply the next logical step in this conflation of media and celebrity and food. Lucky finalists from various national cooking schools are sent to celebrity-chef boot camp, where they spend a weekend with renowned chefs and media wranglers who offer culinary newbies valuable advice on creating buzz, working it for the camera, and dealing with agents. Students are also judged on their success in creating a stunning dish in record time—but it’s the chef’s “star potential” that is worth twenty percent of the total evaluation.

    It’s only fitting that the competition is held in Las Vegas, which, in its most recent reincarnation has styled itself as a paradise for gourmands, built on the foundation of celebrity chefs. Wooed by hotels like the Bellagio, big names throughout the country have opened outposts in Sin City. With Tom Collichio down the corridor from Todd English and across the street from Jean-Georges Vongerichten, it’s like a chef’s shopping mall. While some have flourished in the desert heat, others, like Charlie Trotter’s, have already closed. Critics have described the trend as a bait-and-switch deal: Once the restaurant is open, the renowned chef jets back to his landmark establishment, abandoning the Vegas joint to management by support staff and using it as a cash cow to fund other ventures. Is this where the food revolution is headed? Is its future in the hands of media darlings who believe their own press and feel free to slap their names on any old burger to keep the masses on the hook?

    There are, of course, larger lurking questions: Who is really
    cooking your food? Bobby Flay is ubiquitous on the Food Network and Iron Chef, but can you ever glimpse him in his kitchen at Mesa Grill? Are those paying top dollar for the name of a celebrity chef getting their money’s worth? Those questions are especially germane right now with regard to the buzz surrounding Thomas Keller. As head of the French Laundry in Napa Valley, Keller became known for controlling the entire experience of his restaurant, from the linens to the lingonberries, and creating a cult-like following among patrons and employees alike. One critic even deemed the French Laundry the Best Restaurant in the World. Then Keller opened Per Se last spring in the vaunted Time Warner complex in Manhattan, leaving his Bay Area following befuddled: How could he adjust the garnish on their truffled duck confit from three thousand miles away? It’s more than a certain bitterness in having to share their signature Keller salmon cones with New Yorkers—there’s a fear that the artist has sold out to fame and fortune and that his art will suffer. But the best chefs know that strong leadership and inspiration are the keys to running a great kitchen, whether they are present or not. Keller, and others like him, can flourish in multiple locations as long as people believe more in the food on the plate than the name behind the line.

    As always, a true revolution is rooted with the people. While the splashy side gets played out on TV and in top-dollar restaurants, the real change comes from millions of eaters buying the books, watching the shows, and upgrading their kitchens at Williams-Sonoma. A generation of latchkey kids with working mothers who didn’t have time to cook makes for a beautifully blank slate, eager to try new foods and cuisines. Leaders like Alice Waters and Tom Douglas have promoted the values of organic, locally produced ingredients, and the information age has furthered our interest in food beyond its flavors and textures. We want to know its nutritional value, where and how it was grown, which farming methods were used, for whom it was named, and what role it played in history. So another question may be: Are we consuming or are we being consumed?

    The local version of this national drama includes small-scale but nationally recognized artisans, such as B.T. McElrath Chocolates, and processed-food legends like Pillsbury. Some chefs find stardom here—Tim McKee of Solera is one of Food & Wine’s “Rising Stars,” and it’s looking like David Fhima is almost our own Rocco DiSpirito—and yet we allowed the cutting-edge Aquavit to close. The Oceanaire Seafood Room, Campiello, Caribou Coffee, and Buca di Beppo, now recognized across the country, started right here at home. In the recent documentary Eat This New York, two Minnesota boys go through the hell of opening their own little bistro in New York. In a way, they embody the ever-striving, hard-working Minnesota ethos that has helped shape our food scene. We are always dreaming of being a part of the big time, but it’s often the smaller starts that shine brightest.

    The key to living the good life, however, comes back to a lesson Julia taught us: All things in moderation. Man cannot live on béarnaise sauce alone; burritos and M&M’s still have a rightful place in many a food lover’s diet. But for those who happily claim to be clinically food-obsessed, there is no better time than now. The term “new American” refers not to T.G.I. Friday’s, but to restaurants that are turning out fearless food with remarkable flavors that challenge the eater’s expectations. Our cuisine is ever-evolving, much like our obsession with fame, new and shinier icons, and the search for the best of everything. Who knows what’s next, celebrity auto mechanics?

    Stephanie March is The Rake’s food columnist.

  • Looking for Mr. Goodbook

    I joined a book club. Okay, that’s not all. I joined not one but three book clubs—and left each as quickly as the last. I am a twenty-something female, and I love literature, I really do. It’s just that book clubs… I can’t make them work.
    My first was a summer fling, hosted by my neighborhood public library. I thought it would, you know, give me some stability, maybe ground me in the community. I ran away from that and quickly got involved in something that seemed better, a club organized through a local bookstore. That one got me through the harsh snows of my first Minnesota winter, but by spring I was ready for something new. I hooked up with some friends for a third. They say never to do that, and they are right. It lasted just a few fleeting months.

    Three book clubs in less than a year. Aren’t they supposed to be fun? Why can’t I stick with something so seemingly easy and informal? Book clubs have become the modern person’s coffeehouse or salon—and also a form of continuing education for new graduates and a ratings gimmick for morning news shows, afternoon talk shows, art museums, and public radio programs. [Even this magazine sponsors a book club—but it’s a good one, honest!—Eds.] Maybe that’s part of the problem. Whereas only the most voracious young readers once sought out book clubs, now book-clubbing is so commonplace that we take it for granted. We forget that each club, and each reader, is unique.

    I couldn’t stick with any one club because my stated expectations were masking unspoken needs. When I joined each club, I thought I had only the best, most literal intentions: I simply wanted to read and discuss books. In truth, what I yearned for was much bigger than that. I joined the library’s club to meet new people, the bookstore’s to learn more about regional issues. With my friends, I hoped to catch up on their lives. This discord stirred up an illogical but very real guilt problem. But after talking with fellow book-club dropouts—all female, city-dwelling professionals in their mid-twenties to early thirties—I realized I am not alone.

    “I blame nobody but myself,” Elena told me when I broached the subject of her unsuccessful attempts at clubbing. She is a veteran of three clubs and one “book club idea,” a fantasy that remained out of reach.

    Christy stuck it out in her book club for about eighteen months. She tried to leave after seven, but “they guilted me back in,” she told me in hindsight. Then she fell into a passive-aggressive behavior pattern. She stopped reading the books (“no one else was really reading them anyway”), she deliberately skipped meetings, but nothing worked. She finally had to issue a definitive

    “I QUIT!” Her club still meets, and one member asked recently if they were ever going to get
    her back. “The guilt… it continues to eat me,” Christy said.

    Like me, Julie learned more about herself than she did about the characters in the books she read. “I finally realized that I don’t have the right kind of personality to be in a book club,” she said. Both Elena and Julie were looking for an intimacy that they found lacking in club discussions. “I was sometimes too shy to offer my thoughts,” said Elena, while Julie discovered that “when discussing ideas, I really do better in groups of two or three people.”

    Among book-club dropouts there are those, of course, who were looking strictly for literary talk, nothing more. Michele is one of them, but she couldn’t find a straight-up discussion at any of the three clubs she belonged to over the years. Other things kept interfering with her desires.

    “All of these women had an ‘egg dish’ to make,” she said. “I am not old enough to have my own egg-dish recipe. It is questionable whether I will ever have one. We’d meet and spend approximately fifteen minutes on the book.…The rest of the time it was all about people’s engagements and wedding plans, pregnancies, child care.” And their respective egg dishes.

    Elena, too, truly enjoyed hard talk about narrative arc, characters as metaphors, and prose style. In fact, she wanted to go nuts with a sort of postmodern exegesis. “I love to gossip about characters in books,” she said. But she came to realize her motivation for clubbing had nothing to do with literature. “The real reason I joined a club… I wanted to keep in touch with friends. It was strange, really, because I would get frustrated if we didn’t talk about the books, even though that wasn’t my real motivation for joining.” The books were an excuse to talk to people. But since the groups are called book clubs and not people clubs, Elena felt a conflict over purpose. 

    What adds poignancy to Elena’s curious statement is the fact that she didn’t even like a lot of the books her clubs read. She coped by convincing herself not to read the book too far in advance of the meeting, because she would forget the plot; then, with the meeting looming, she would tell herself she couldn’t possibly finish the book in time. “I always made it so difficult for myself!” she said.

    Julie and Christy found that there were moral and religious obstacles that prevented them from fully enjoying their clubs’ selections. Julie said that she’s “sensitive to ‘adult subject matter,’” and therefore unwilling to join a club unless she’s assured that her interests would match other members’. Christy did not want to discuss books centered on religion. When her club chose to read a book from the Left Behind series, which is rather zealously fundamentalist, she read it “out of sick curiosity.” When that choice was followed by a similar book, she decided it was time to bail.

    I faced the opposite problem, and I learned that too much compatibility can lead to what amounts to literary indigestion. In my “friends” club, we chose books like children choose between Brussels sprouts and lima beans: We felt compelled to read this classic or that political tome, but we didn’t really want to. Book clubs attracted Michele because they “seemed like a great way to maintain an intellectual pursuit after college,” she said. But the one group she started ended after a single meeting because “we couldn’t make it through Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot.”

    Guilt. Frustration. Disorganization. Disagreements. This is the dysfunctional drama I, and others like me, have acted out over and over again in our attempts to find fulfillment in book clubs.

    Elena claims that when she’s ready to limit herself strictly to book discussions, she would join a club again. But when she’s seeking friendship, she will meet for coffee. She’s learned the difference the hard way. Of course, there’s the ever-present possibility that she could join a club whose members have different priorities. In an attempt to avoid this, Michele formed a book club of her own, establishing a firm set of rules before the first meeting:

    (1) Book discussion must last for at least forty-five minutes.
    (2) Any discussion of marriage, babies, jobs, etc. must occur after the book discussion.
    (3) Club meetings must occur at a public place (preferably a bar) within Minneapolis
    city limits.
    (4) Egg dishes are prohibited.
    (5) If someone doesn’t like (1) through (4), she can start her own book club.

    Christy’s solution is even simpler: “If you read a good book, loan it to a friend and hope that others will do the same for you.”

    Kristin Thiel is a local writer.

  • Let Them Bleed

    Somewhere between West River Road and Summit Avenue, blood will begin to seep through the shirts of a good many Twin Cities Marathon runners. It will seep from a particular part of the anatomy—their nipples—which makes this a delicate subject. It doesn’t happen spontaneously, as many non-runners might think. “This is caused by the abrasion of cloth on skin,” explained Dr. William Roberts, the medical director for the Twin Cities Marathon. One might think that a loose cotton T-shirt would be a comfort, but it so happens that such a shirt grates against the skin while a runner bounces perkily along the 26.2-mile journey. Over time, this will wear down anything that might stand out on a person’s chest.

    Minneapolis runner Jason Butler had his first encounter with bloody nipples during a ten-mile training run. Afterward, despite an odd outpouring of general condolences from pals in his marathon-training group, he was oblivious until somebody shouted indelicately, “Dude, look at your shirt!”

    “I looked down and there were these peach-sized spheroids of blood where my nipples had bled and bled,” he said. Not yet schooled in the indignities of long-distance running, Butler had left himself unprotected beneath a cotton shirt that became increasingly abrasive as it soaked up sweat. Being a relatively heavy-set runner with full-bodied pectorals, Butler is particularly susceptible to a recurrence. But the painful experience of showering his mangled nipples inspired vigilance: “I wear cotton only if I’m going five miles or less,” he said. “If I’m going really long, I use tape.”

    Butler is lucky. Bloody nipples happened early in his running career, long before he strode down Summit Avenue, a spectacle in front of thousands of fans lining the Twin Cities Marathon course. While Butler expects to finish this year’s race with nipples fully intact, many of his peers will be less fortunate. Most are vaguely familiar with the
    dangers long-distance running poses to their most beloved body parts, yet many fall prey to misapplied lubricant or they have trained with prudish running mentors who never broached the impolite subject of chafing. “It does not spare any gender, nor is it relegated to the back of the pack,” cautioned Dr. Roberts.

    Occasionally, the ax does fall on women (they are mostly safe in sports bras, though) or on the pros. “I have a picture of the London Marathon male winner with a blood spot in the correct anatomical position,” he bragged. From time to time, the same unlucky circumstance has plagued champions of our own humble marathon. Most recently, Oregon-based elite runner Dan Browne broke tape at the 2002 Twin Cities Marathon with two dripping bullet holes on the front of him.

    According to Dr. Roberts, few runners report the condition to medical personnel at the finish, thus the exact incidence is unknown. “It’s such a funny injury,” said Butler, affirming the doctor’s hunch that some runners are too ashamed to present with the condition. “My nipples chafed and bled,” he quipped with a whining tone. “How pathetic is that?” He favored a manlier affliction—say, a broken collarbone or a ruptured spleen.

    Officially, Dr. Roberts recommends runners buy a runner-friendly synthetic shirt before race day. If they want insurance against nipple misfires: “Duct tape or anti-blister pads work, as do adhesive bandages,” he said. Or, they could follow the lead of one veteran marathoner at Grandma’s in Duluth earlier this running season, who cut two holes in his shirt, exposing the circumference of both pectorals. Fans along the course may have winced at the sight of his pasty white flesh bouncing in the sunlight, but surely they appreciated his efforts at self-preservation. His nipples looked fabulous!
    —Christy DeSmith

  • Organics, Continued

    WAR VS. DIPLOMACY
    In defining “deep-organic” agriculture, Eliot Coleman sharply demarcates his position, but ultimately, and unfortunately, isolates himself in contradictions [“Can Organics Save the Family Farm?,” September]. He notes how metaphors of war and conflict have distorted farming, but then he falls into the same trap himself, seeing the conventional agriculture establishment as an implacable enemy with whom no dialogue or compromise is possible. He observes the harm done by an economy built upon conspicuous consumption, but then salutes “astute consumers” and their “demand for exceptional food.” His call to focus on the underlying causes of problems is naive: Political arguments exist precisely because there is disagreement about what the root causes really are. Stop-gap measures aimed at symptoms are often the best that can be done because they enjoy the widest base of support. In order that the “organic family farm can save the world,” the energy and concern of Coleman and others must not be dissipated in just growing boutique produce for niche markets. Rather, the connections between farms and communities need to be strengthened; the linkages between the problems of society and agriculture must be seen as more than metaphors. Ultimately, it is because Coleman’s case must be made, that I believe his case must be made better.

    Chuck McCallum
    Osceola, WI

    WILL AMERICA EVOLVE?
    I wanted to write to thank you for giving this subject the attention it deserves. Eliot Coleman’s article on organic farming is an excellent tribute to the selfless family farmers. The idea that a governing body can’t touch the inarguably righteous deep-organic farmer never occurred to me. The way Eliot describes the family farmer’s striving for the very best foods as being the reason they would never resort to shallow-organic farming techniques simply to profit gives me a renewed hope for our country. I recently read an article about the pressure being put on France by the WTO to drop the subsidies they pay to their organic farmers so they’ll lose their farms or conform to WTO standards. The French are very proud of their good quality food and are resisting. The article, as good as it was, wrote our country off. It pretty much said that Americans were set in ways that don’t accommodate quality over quantity. I wrote the editor and assured her that there are a growing number of us Americans who would like to see us begin supporting quality foods from conscientious farmers. Eliot’s mention of raw milk was a huge bonus for me because I too consume raw milk.

    Tony Rust
    Minneapolis

    DEFENDING THE FAMILY FARM
    You must be commended on a wonderful and thoughtful article, Eliot! It is rare when the press sticks up for the family farms, especially those that are organic and are providing food direct to the consumer. You mentioned that you are choosy about your eggs and that you get your milk directly from the farm—how wonderful! This is something that we, as organic farmers have seen a great deal of in the past two years. More and more people are driving great distances to the farm to get food that they know the source of. Keep up the good work Eliot. Family-run organic farmers everywhere should read your story; it’s a blessing!

    Janet Brunner
    Midvalleyvu Farms, Arkansaw, WI

    PROPERTY RIGHTS, CONTINUED
    I am offended by Ms. Erdrich’s letter [Letters, August]. As she so clearly states, Mr. Lazor and his family have the right to build on their own property as they wish. Why would she think that a family building their home on a lot that stood empty and overgrown with weeds for years hurts anyone? When it comes to planting, clearly Ms. Erdrich is in the enviable position of never living through a remodeling or construction project. Typically, most people add plants and landscaping after all the major construction is over and its accompanying equipment has gone. (Nor would I presume to advise anyone, neighbor or not, to plant Virginia Creeper or any other plant in their garden.) Lastly, why is Ms. Erdrich singling out this new house which is fairly modest in size for the Kenilworth area—how about some of the behemoths around the lakes that cover entire lot lines, leaving no room for greenscape whatsoever?

    Lori Ott, St. Louis Park

  • The Hollow Victory

    Labor Day weekend marked the end of Wack the Iraq, a boardwalk game in the seaside town of Wildwood, New Jersey. (Its inventors must have assumed that customers untroubled by the game’s objective would also be unlikely to bristle at the gross grammatical insult of its name.) The game involved players shooting paintballs at live human targets posing as Iraqis—that is, people in ridiculous dark plastic suits, trudging half-heartedly around a pen while getting splattered with paint. My family watched this spectacle with our own eyes this summer and found ourselves recoiling as a five-year-old girl took aim at a pretend Saddam. We weren’t the only ones disturbed; an outcry from antidiscrimination activists led to the game’s early closing (the rest of the boardwalk arcade remains open until mid-October).

    It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year and a half since combat began. I remember vividly the evening of those first Baghdad bombings. I was feeling sad and frantic about the news, and I walked into the living room to be near my kids—who, it turned out, were setting up a friendly game of Risk. I stopped cold. They stared back with a collective “What?”

    “Please,” I said, “put that away.”

    “Oh, right,” they said in a flurry, as if they’d momentarily forgotten all about the impending bloodshed on the other side of the globe. They argued mildly among themselves until they settled on Pictionary as a more suitable game to play.

    Now, more than one thousand American soldiers have died in the “campaign.” All but one hundred and forty of the U.S. deaths have come since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations under a “Mission Accomplished” banner.

    One thousand American deaths are terrible indeed, but I can’t fully process an isolated American statistic when it is estimated unofficially that between ten thousand and thirty thousand Iraqis have been killed since the United States invaded their country. There are no official figures for the number of Iraqi civilians killed, but Iraq Body Count, a group organized by British and U.S. researchers, believes the number exceeds 11,000.

    An organization called Project on Defense Alternatives maintains a website with more detailed accounts of the losses, including press excerpts, such as this April 2003 account by Peter Beaumont in the London-based Observer: “Hanaan no longer has much of a face to speak of. This slim 17-year-old girl has burns that cover her whole body….Ali, his parents say, had been a curious boy and was playing with unexploded ordnance when he was injured….Surgeons give him a 50 per cent chance of survival—not because of his injuries…but because of the risk of infection in a ward terribly short of antibiotics….One of the US Marine guards outside the Medical City Complex…recalls a boy brought in with all of his face except his lower jaw shot away. The child had been traveling in a car with his parents that had approached a US checkpoint too fast for the soldiers’ taste. So they drilled it with heavy machine-gun fire. Radaad Latif Jassan al Obeidi stands by the bed of his son Saadeq, 22. He says he was injured in his stomach by the same bomb that landed near their home….Saadeq’s leg has been amputated at the thigh.”

    War is hell. But this war is worse, because its justification was based on falsehoods. As the election approaches, I want John Kerry to take a stronger stand. With Minnesota as a toss-up state, there is no way can I risk helping Bush by voting for Ralph Nader. Why won’t Kerry heed the advice doled out recently by feisty columnist Helen Thomas, who said that the Democratic candidate could stand to “learn something from two previous wartime Republican presidential candidates who had a better take on the public pulse and won the White House.”

    Thomas recalled that in 1952, during the Korean War, Dwight D. Eisenhower promised that he would “go to Korea” and end the bloodshed. Once in office, he kept his promise and went to Korea. The war ended with a ceasefire standoff months after his inauguration. Then in 1968, Richard Nixon assured voters that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. Forced in part by Congress, Nixon did reduce the troop commitment to Vietnam. U.S. forces were still there in 1974 when Nixon was forced to resign, but the war ended the following year. “These were not triumphal solutions,” wrote Thomas, “but they did give Americans some hope of eventual escape from the two quagmires.”

    Somebody, please, get us out of this quagmire. Kerry, where are you?