I am returning to Portugal. Neither in the body nor through an astral hyper-loop, I return through journals and photos. I had planned to share the following earlier on, but when, with the iniquitous events of late 2015, I succumbed to writer’s block, I put my intentions aside and turned to reading Fields of Blood. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the book provided a synopsis of historical events that helped me to understand the current. While I read, I continued to reflect on Portugal.
On Christmas I generally cook a goose. That I do may raise the eyebrows of some of you who know my penchant for vegan food, but I cook for non-vegans and the last thing they want, as I found out several years back, is tofurky for Christmas. In the past several years as I mentioned in a previous post, my food intake has gone from veggie to vegan to raw, to pescatarian, back to vegan with a few exceptions, eggs, goat and sheep cheeses among them. Early on in this evolution, I would moralize not necessarily vocally, but in my thoughts about the benefits of vegetarianism to the health of humans and the planet.
During a night on the desert in Egypt in 2003 a month before the Iraqi war, my internal moralizing was deeply challenged… Continue reading
This morning as I was working on my Portuguese journal, editing and getting ready to post more on my experience of this beautiful and under-the-radar country, a newsletter from Mother Nature came across my desktop. One of my favorite newsletters, I read it weekly. I am forwarding the Health Benefits of Sweet Potatoes. A good read, it should help our favorite tuber go down easily this coming Thursday.
Happy Thanksgiving
When I was introduced to orange wine I was drawn to its unusual gold color and out-on-the-farm nose. Earthiness describes my first taste. A lingering complex finish left an impression of a drink that had come from antiquity. Smitten in that first encounter, I imbibed a bit too much. The following morning in conversation with my son I revealed that the orange had loosened my tongue and as a result I waxed eloquent on expository profound truths or, to put it mildly, the gospel according to P.
My wise son had only one comment. “Mom, wine is the truth serum.” My mind had a history of playing push-pull with to imbibe or not to imbibe. The idea of a truth serum deepened my quandary.
I appreciated the enjoyment a glass of vino provides especially when properly paired with food. Its health benefits are easily available through Google. Humankind has been enjoying the pleasures and benefits of the grape for at least 7000 if not a million years. The drunken monkey hypothesis has added to our knowledge of why. None-the-less and not infrequently, a nagging voice would chastise me with such thoughts as, “an enlightened being would not imbibe alcohol even if it were a low nine per cent Riesling.”
At times I wondered if my feelings were a hangover from a past life as a Hindu. On my first trip to India in 1985 it was nearly impossible to get an alcoholic drink outside a major hotel. Of course all of that has changed since and India has developed a thriving wine region. Or, perhaps I had been a Muslim. But then some of the first wines were produced in northern Iran. In hyper-looping around Azerbaijan an Islamic culture, I was surprised to learn that it has been producing wine for centuries. So much for past life theory.
On return from Eurasia, I decided to attend a conference on Understanding Jui: The History and Culture of Alcoholic Beverages in China. As wine production began in China, I anticipated getting a great deal of useful information that would help me in countering the inner nag. The Confucius Institute at UCDavis hosted the event in the Mondavi Food and Wine Center.
Before going further I need to report that UCDavis has just been recognized for the third year in a row as having the number one agricultural school in the world, and it’s the only UC campus to be number one in anything worldwide.
The daylong included talks and a panel by prestigious experts, mainly from China. Just what I wanted. Patrick McGovern drew me to the meeting. The Scientific Director of the Bimolecular Archaeology, Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum and adjunct Professor of Anthropology at University of Pennsylvania, he has been most helpful to my partner and me on a book we are writing on the vessels mainly glass, used in making and imbibing wine.
McGovern’s research has been key to our knowledge of the use of alcoholic beverage in the ancient world. With a dual hat, he has pursued archaeological and chemical clues from ancient China and other parts of Asia to make his discoveries.
Fondly known as the “Indiana of Jones of Ancient Ales, Wines, cuisines and beverages,” his book In The Search for the Origins of Viniculture and Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer and Other Alcoholic Beverages reveals the story of humankind’s intoxicating quest for the perfect drink in ancient China is a must for anyone working in the wine industry. He describes how the analysis of early pottery from Hiahu in the Yellow River valley of China reconstructed a mixed fermented beverage of rice, hawthorn fruit, grape and honey. Analysis of bronze vessels from the Shang/Western Zhou Dynasty discovered that residue in the vessels still held liquids with millet, rice wine and beer from 3000 years back.
My nag listened intently to McGovern along with the several others who discussed how the story of alcohol has been foundational in every aspect of culture, not only in China, but others as well. Michele Yeh, the Department Chair of East Asian Languages and Culture at UCDavis for example, related that, in China by the third century, jiu became associated with poets so much so that, if someone claimed to be a poet but did not drink jiu, others questioned whether they could truly call themselves poets.
In China we find a history of formalized consumption as exemplified in state rituals, in ancestry worship, and in the rise of cult drinking in the third century when the meaning of drinking evolved. Social, political and intellectual factors contributed to the development of the rituals. Appropriate imbibing based on Confucian ideals also holds true. Drinking is not just about fallen down drunken stupidity.
Not only is the history of alcohol use in America short-lived in contrast to China, it has been frowned upon. One need only consider Prohibition as an example. Nor does it have the kind of formalized ritual around the use of jiu that is found in China. Wedding and New Years Eve toasts are two exceptions; the use of wine at Mass in the Catholic Church another.
If McGovern was the perfect keynote, Cecilia Chiang former owner of The Mandarin in San Francisco was the perfect close. Cecilia opened her talk on a personal note: “I am ninety five years old.” She described her life in China as the daughter of a wealthy, French champagne drinking family who fled during the Communist revolutions and moved to San Francisco in 1960. Opening a restaurant she offered many Northern Chinese dishes for the first time. Among other chefs she taught Alice Waters how to prepare excellent Chinese food. She spoke of introducing Mondavi fume blanc at her restaurant. She spoke of how Robert Mondavi with a bevy of wine knowledgeable guests often frequented her restaurant. With her inspiring talk, my inner nag begin to wither on the vine.
On an entirely separate venture from the above, I had gone to Colorado to attend a retreat to be given by an esteemed Tibetan monk. The day before the retreat a friend and I were crawling down a dirt road exploring the local environs. When we passed a monk walking along my intuition stopped the car and inquired, “Are you giving a retreat?” After his affirmative answered we spent a several moments engaging in a delightful conversation. WhenI ran into him again that evening while registering for the retreat we resumed our conversation. I felt the beginnings of a budding friendship.
Following our karmic meeting, I drove to the only restaurant in the small town where I ordered a glass of cabernet to pair with a mushroom entre. While sipping and waiting for mushrooms the monk showed up. He passed my table and smiled. Chagrined, I felt like I had been caught engaging in crime, minor of course. Had I seen him enter, I would have hidden my glass. So much for budding friendship!
Moments later the he gave me a teaching. A server glided across the restaurant with a glass of wine and presented it to the monk. He turned and raised his glass in my direction.
Further chagrined, but, I breathed a sigh of relief to know that even some enlightened beings imbibe.
I’ve had enough of the nag. I’m giving him up. In his ignorance, he simply does not know what he’s talking about!
As I begin this post the rain goddess along with Father Christmas is responding to our chanting and drumming. We had four inches of rain in Davis in one day, not counting what came after dark. In forty years I have never seen so much accumulate in twenty four hours. Other areas such as up in the Sierra foothills, were blessed with eight. Lake Shasta climbed five inches. Perhaps the worst California drought in 1200 years is meeting its demise as the weatherman predicts that more rain is on its way.
I cannot remember how or when I became a devoted tree hugger. When my batteries need recharging I throw my arms around one of my favorite trees. Not only do trees energize me, they are great conduits through which I receive love from Mother Earth. Some of my best friends are trees. I find it no wonder that they have played a significant role in the lives of humans throughout history.
It’s that time of year when we focus on their importance. We beautify them with ornaments and lights, and give them a special place in our home.
The annual ritual with the Christmas tree derives from ever so many ancient customs. Pre-dating the tree is an old belief in the magical powers of evergreens. The Druids (the educated and sometimes religious Celtic Gauls among others) for example, held that the leaves of holly were signs that the sun would never desert them. In ancient Rome greens graced the houses for the festival of Saturn, the god of agriculture as protection against evil spirits.
While the evergreen fir tree has been used in pagan and Christian rituals for over a thousand years, no one quite knows for sure when it was first used as a Christmas tree. The first documented case was in the town square of Riga the capital of Latvia in 1510. A plaque commemorates the tree in eight languages as the first New Year tree.
Miracle Plays performed outside churches in medieval times may have had a relationship to the Christmas tree. December 24 was the feast of Adam and Eve in the Church calendar. Paradise trees representing the Garden of Eden were paraded around town before the play. About the same time the production of passion plays that presented the Cross-as the tree of life spread from Germany throughout Europe. When the plays died out the tradition of the tree continued in a wider context and the Christmas tree custom, as we know it began to take shape
In the late 1800’s my grandfather immigrated from England to America. He had quite a surprise on the first Christmas he spent with his in-laws. When he went to the Western Pennsylvania farm of his new bride’s parents for the holidays he was amazed to see that a tree played such a major role in the Christmas festivities. I am told that he referred to it as “the German toy”.
In his homeland outside of court circles, the tree did not make much of an appearance until 1922, and then mainly in the homes of German merchants residing around Manchester. Charles Dickens wrote a glowing account of a Christmas tree he had seen for a magazine article he wrote in 1850. From then on his fellow British including my grandfather referred to the tree as the “German toy.”
“I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high…It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers…sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls hiding behind green leaves…real watches (with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from innumerable twigs. French polished tables…and other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made of tin) perched among boughs…jolly, broad-faced little men…their heads took off, and showed them to be full of sugarplums; there were fiddles…trinkets for the elder girls…baskets and pin cushions…guns and swords…witches…to tell fortunes;…tee totems, humming tops, pen wipers, smelling bottles, conversation cards, bouquet holders, real fruit made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, walnuts crammed with surprises; in short as a pretty child delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, “There was everything, and more.”
“…some of the diamond eyes admiring it” Dickens continues, “set me thinking how all the trees that grow and all the things that come into existence on the earth, have their wild adornments at that well remembered time.”
While the practice of honoring and decorating trees traverses many traditions, it is through the German immigrants to Pennsylvania that the Christmas tree custom took root in America. By the time Grandpa arrived in America the Christmas tree having made faster progress than in England was well on it’s way to becoming the very core of the Christmas celebration, not only in Pennsylvania, but throughout the country as well. By 1900 one in five American families had a Christmas tree and by 1910 nearly all children had a tree at home. Only in small, isolated towns in the South and West were trees somewhat scarce until after 1915. But even then, community-hall or church trees were common.
The lighting of the community Christmas trees in downtowns across the country follow a tradition first established in 1909 in Pasadena, California when a decorated a tree with outdoor lights was placed in the center of town. A community tree appeared in Madison Square Park in 1912 and in Philadelphia the next year with a tree in Independence Square. President Calvin Coolidge established the national tree-lighting ceremony in 1923.
Before my grandfather arrived on the scene my great grandparents had been quick to take on the custom of the Christmas tree from their German immigrant neighbors. Great-Grandpa staked out his tree in the late Fall while walnut-ting then chopped it down a few days before Christmas. My father who spent his childhood Christmases on the farm recounted that the tree set up in the middle of the parlor, was loaded with popcorn balls, candies, nuts and fruits-such as oranges from California, small toys and a dollar bill nestled in the boughs for each of the children.
If Dickens were observing Christmas 2014, he would note the same sparkling, diamond eyed children, young and old gathered round a tree likely set up in the great room where a vaulted ceiling can accommodate at least ten feet of height. Brilliantly lit with indoor lights, it is covered with an amazing array of ornaments from stores such as Target, and Macy’s. At its base are gifts many of which were still in the mind of the universe at the time Dickens described the German toy. Wrapped in colorful boxes we find computers, cell phones, television wrist watches, I-pads, gift certificates from Nordie’s or foodie restaurants, Legos, Coravins, and maybe a bike.
As the little rosy-cheeked child remarked in Dickens’ experience, “There will be everything and more,” around the Christmas tree. So, tis the time, to turn our attention from torture, immigration issues, money scandals, polarizing politics and with the children turn our attention to fantasy, magic, wonder, to the other side of the human condition, and celebrate the winter festival.
Today for the first time, I am turning my blog over to a friend. She sent me this note this morning and it is well worth reading. Not only is it a good chuckle, but talk about “food” for thought as we prepare food for the holidays! Some of you know her…she has a small farm just east of Sacramento, California.
Here is my Thanksgiving story that you might think worthy of a column, at my expense.
For this Thanksgiving dinner, twelve of us gathered at the wonderfully restored adobe home of great friends here in Sacramento. The owners, Laurie and Jacek, are outstanding architects who have created a magical miracle out of some old adobe bricks. They have a son Stefan, who is Zane’s age, and we have been friends now since the boys were toddlers. Both young men came to the Thanksgiving dinner in fine form.
Laurie and Jacek are serious foodies to boot, so the bar is high, but the rewards are great.
My assignment for the dinner was pear chutney and Humboldt Fog cheese, and Crostini.
I begged to be let off the hook, because my Sonoma farm partner foodies make a wonderful cranberry fig chutney that would surely work.
But Laurie would have none of it, and so I was left to fulfill my assignment with honor but no dignity, as I was without the required culinary skills.
For two weeks, I had scoured specialty stores throughout my California centric travels, looking for a pear chutney that I could take out of the jar, and put into mason jars to give off the appearance of home made. But that strategy proved fruitless.
So I then tried the bait and switch approach with a simpler recipe, but Laurie was clear about her sense of order would be awry without the prescribed pear chutney and Humboldt Fog Cheese.
So by last Monday, panic was beginning to set in, and now no time for ordering anything on line, I was resigned to having to actually gather all of the ingredients. So, the great scavenger hunt was on! But then I was immediately stumped by the call for pear cognac. Yikes. So I spent another day in search of pear cognac. Finally resigned myself to having to go to Corti Brothers, a famous specialty grocery store in Sacramento, with everything, including pear cognac. The recipe called for 1/4 cup. The bottle was $50, French of course. Then on to get a quarter wheel of Humboldt Fog cheese at $34 and the cheese paper that was a requisite for such wonderful cheese, if there should be any left over (there was, but not much). I did not have cinnamon sticks in my cupboard, so went off to my neighbors to find that all of his cinnamon sticks were in cardboard boxes with no expiration dates, but had to have been at least 30 years old. So the new cinnamon sticks were in class jars, set to last about 30 years, along with the bay leaves which are not grown in my garden, but clearly I need to plant, given the prices. Next were the oranges and lemons. There were two choices for the oranges, naval, or canna (which turned out to be a cross between an orange and a grapefruit. The grocery clerk and I taste tested the lot to pick out the best, and the canna won hands down. Next I was on to the shallots and unfortunately my shallots are still in the ground, growing away, albeit slowly now that ‘winter’ has set it. Finally, the recipe called for butter, and so topped off the day with some special hand churned butter from France. All in hopes that great ingredients will can make up for the errors and omissions of the cook.
My exit toll out of Corti Brothers stood tall at $135.
Of course, the pears came from the local organic farmers market, and cost $5.00.
Such are the wayward ways of your friends from California who have much to be thankful for and much bounty to celebrate with, but with more reckless abandon then sense. What would the pilgrims say to $140 pear chutney?
To supplement or not to supplement with white bean paste?
Recently, I received an email from an old friend. No personal message, just a link to a weight loss product Forskolin, made from white beans. It included a video of Dr. Oz promoting the product. White bean paste sounded like a winner especially with Oprah on a sidebar giving it a thumbs up. According to the info I received, white bean paste can help a girl to get rid of excess belly fat. The hidden persuaders tempting, I went online to purchase a round.
Just as I was about to click on the add-to-your-cart button a pop-up of my father appeared in my mind’s eye. When I was a child, he was fond of asking me if I lived to eat or ate to live? I thought of his question as his humorous way of making me conscious of how much food I was consuming. I never gave him an answer; I knew he didn’t expect one, but as he sat there in my mind’s eye, smiling no less, I finally responded. One cannot be separated from the other; the act of eating is both necessary to life as well as part of why we live.
Several decades back, I began to reflect on the kind of vehicle with which I had been blessed to carry me through this lifetime. I noticed early on that in spite of my mother’s well rounded healthy cooking my body gained weight rather easily. By the time I was in high school I frequently went on grapefruit and hardboiled egg diets so popular at the time, to help maintain my girlish figure. I had friends with the opposite issue; they drank lots of milkshakes.
After high school graduation I joined a western monastic community where we were served three squares a day prepared by professional chefs. Between meals, we had coffee breaks peppered with pastries and cookies. A year after joining my knees began to bother me. Our horarium included several daily rounds of prayers – knees to kneeler! When I approached my director about my knee issue, she told me I was overweight and suggested a diet. So, while my fellow classmates ate the fabulous dinners prepared by the chefs, I hightailed it over to a special dietary kitchen to pick up my perfectly balanced, oil and butter free, low carb diet. And coffee breaks became just that: coffee breaks sans cookies! The diet worked and in a short time, as I took off ten pounds, the knees went pain-free! Goal accomplished, I returned to a normal diet but minus desserts. However, my fat loving body had its own plans and the weight slowly inched up. How I longed for grapefruit and eggs.
I had a slew of relatives with adipose tissue issues, far worse than mine. As I observed their plump bodies I knew the genes had it in for me as well. From high school on through the years in the monastery, and long after leaving it I returned time after time to a “diet.” Not binge, but just to what helped to prevent bulge. Not only was I prompted by vanity, but also the desire to be healthy. I rotated through low carb, no fat, juice, all veggie, two annual ten-day water fasts and Weight Watchers. They worked. I cleared the toxins, slimmed down, but after awhile I would have to return to a more rigid disciplined way of eating.
On another note and while living in India in the nineties, I was introduced to the 5000-year-old Ayurveda health system. In what has been called the oldest holistic health system in the world. I learned about the three body types and the appropriate diet for each type or dosha as they are called. Kapha, pitta and vata refer to the elements earth, fire and water. Each body, it is said has a predominance of one or two and is called accordingly.
Wouldn’t you know it? I am heavy on kapha-earth with just enough pitta-fire to keep the fat under control. It is recommended that kaphas abstain from wheat and dairy.
After I returned from India the blood type diet became the rage. According to its guidelines, Type O’s such as myself should avoid dairy and wheat! It was beginning to sound like a conspiracy!
From a yoga regimen in India I went on to Tai Chi and became interested in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) where herbals instead of chemicals are used to overcome negative body conditions as well as to cleanse and energize. In general, nine body types are described; we have physiological, structural, and psychological elements that create our unique bodies. TCM looks at the person’s constitution for clinical treatment, to promote health and to balance the yin-yang in one’s body. Once again, I found myself confronting foods that I should avoid or in this case, add to my diet.
As I made my way through the various traditions and paths of eating, not to mention my interest in farm to fork and Slow Food, fortunately, I began to listen to my body. At one point it told me to stop eating meat. I did, not for any moral or spiritual reason, but only because my body said, “don’t eat meat.” I agreed. In recent years it said, “don’t eat wheat.” OK, I said. Every time it speaks I find its message generally in alignment with the information I had garnered from my studies. I think that’s what’s called body wisdom.
I have learned that I need to make food choices according to my genetics, doshas, blood type, common sense and perhaps most important, body wisdom. How I carry them out depends on whether the body and spirit are willing.
We eat to live, but what we eat has an impact on how we live. We also live to eat but how we live is determined by what we eat. In its Greek origin, the word diet means a way of life. According to the above mentioned ancient health systems, the intake of food is advised according to the body type. If one follows what is suggested and listens to the body as well, diet does become a way of life.
In my growing age I finally reached a point where I had everything with my diet nicely settled. And then I receive the email about bean paste. Here’s the upshot. An active ingredient in white kidney bean extract, phaseolus vulgaris blocks the enzyme necessary for starch digestion. Theoretically, the starch will pass through the digestive tract without being broken down into simple sugars and later stored as fat. At last, with this miracle supplement I can eat pizza, pasta, bread, in a nutshell. all the carbs I want.
Tell me, what’s a girl to do?
Fascination with caves: take a look at this. Published today in NYT.
Explorer: Into a Lava-Lined Underworld Near Albuquerque
A blanket of grey May covered the skies for a few days, but then the heavens opened, the sun reappeared and given perfect weather, I decided to head for the beach. With book underarm I jumped into the Prius, drove down the canyon to Laguna and settled on a warm patch of soft sand. A day so lucid the limestone colored rock cliffs on the south end of Catalina Island, stood clearly delineated against the horizon. Beyond: unbounded space.
Relaxed in the comforting presence of negative ions I opened a book that had been gathering dust on my cookbook shelf for several years.
The American Woman’s Cookbook first published in 1938, seven years later than the first Joy of Cooking was my mother’s first cookbook. I held her 1942 edition in my hands, the one that most influenced the meals that made their way to our family dining table.
The introduction listed the Butterick Co. as the publisher with credit paid to The Carnation Company the producer of Irradiated Carnation Milk for being
“among the first to present pictorially in full, natural color of many of the appealing dishes, which grace our dinner tables… The development of printing reproduction in full color of difficult food subjects is a fascinating story. The color pages in the book required not only skillful preparation of the dishes to be photographed, but also an advanced photographic technique which makes possible the brilliant colors and superb craftsmanship of modern photoengraving. The beautiful pages which have been included in this volume effectively vitalize the recipes and add inspiration to the occupation of cooking.”
Cookbooks provide recipes, but they also give an account of the transformational process of American life. With The American Woman…I realized how cookbooks reflect social concerns, national mores and cultural bias. In 1942 for example, a woman’s occupation stated indirectly in the above, was definitely in the kitchen.
The opening pages offer sage advice.
“To become a good cook requires more than the blind following of a recipe. This is frequently illustrated when several women again note, “women” living in the same community, all using the same recipe, obtain widely differing results. It is the reason so many cooks say, ‘I had good luck with my cake to-day,’ or ‘I had bad luck with my bread yesterday.’ Happily, luck causes neither the success nor the failure of a product. To become a good cook means to gain knowledge of foods, and how they behave, and skill in manipulating them. The recipe by itself, helpful as it is, will not produce a good product; the human being using the recipe must interpret it and must have skill in handling the material it prescribes.”
Clearly, there is a distinction between good cooking and following a recipe. How often have I heard, “I can’t cook, but I can follow a recipe,” from the mouths of some of my close friends.
Useful facts about food anticipate the recipes.
Methods of cooking for example, are defined as: boiling, simmering, stewing, steam, pressure cooking, broiling, baking, poaching, roasting, sautéing, frying, braising, fricasseeing and fireless cooking! Methods of mixing food follow: stirring, beating, folding in, cutting in, creaming, kneading and larding. Temperature is important: cooking by exact temperature is recommended and therefore an oven thermometer is needed…
Extended information on several key ingredients is revealing. Starch is a headliner with points to be observed in cooking starch-rich foods, the thickening power of flour or cornstarch and methods of combining flour or cornstarch with liquids. The same is done for sugar, the use of fats, shortening, milk and eggs.
Michele Obama would love the four pages that are devoted to school lunches.
“As much care is needed in selecting and preparing food for the child’s lunch at school as for the other meals served to the child. If the lunch is inadequate or lacking in food essential throughout the school year, the child’s whole nutrition will be seriously affected and “his”, parentheses are mine, work at school will suffer.”
It is recommended that the lunch “possess the following characteristics.” Abundance, regard for the nutritive needs of the child in relation to the whole day’s food, and be “clean, appetizing, wholesome and attractive”.
One menu suggestion among several:
Cream of Spinach Soup (in vacuum container)
Crackers
Raisin and Nut Bread and Butter Sandwiches
Apple Sauce
Perhaps this book is more hip than meets the eye. Since the first publication, have we evolved or regressed?
Need to know how to set a table? Check this out.
The joy of perusing turned up recipes for grouse, opossum, reindeer, squirrel and venison. Intriguing. I doubt that they will make their way into my kitchen, but some of the following just may.
About to make another trip through the world of modern medicine I left home at 6:00 AM and wove my way through a maze of OC freeways. The ride on the toll road through low-lying rolling green hills soothed my anxieties over the oncoming procedure to which I was headed.
I rarely see an ordinary doctor, you know, one of those family practitioners. I am more likely to be found in office of an acupuncturist, herbalist or traditional healer. But I must admit otolaryngologists and their audiologists, dermatologists and dentists are among some of my best friends. They’re the parts that have to be attended to.
Dr. Huang, a dermatologist determined that my mole was a five on a scale of one – ten with ten being bad, should be removed. When I agreed to submit, she promptly packed me off to Dr. Hung, a plastic surgeon, to make sure that scarring would be minimalized.
A similar look and feel to Urgent Care, I felt right at home as I drove up to the medical center that housed the surgeon’s office. Scruffy around the edges, bland, sterile colors in the lobby I made my way up to the second floor on an elevator that had seen better days. With the waiting room full of retirees and one zippy young woman in a navy blue business suit and tan pumps I knew I was in for the long haul, but hey, I had a good book: Unbounded Wholeness: Authenticity, the same I had taken to Viet Nam.
Surprisingly, shortly, a technician called me to the inner sanctum. She led me to a room continuous in the same bland colors as the outer waiting area. A gray chair like that of a dentist rested in the middle of the room. With due diligence she prepared me for the task at hand. Questions about allergies, blood pressure, she assured me that mine was good, followed a request that I partially disrobe. The issue was a large, brown blot on my left thigh.
Next she prepared the chair-table. A metal grounding device to rest under my leg was hooked up, a sheet spread on which to sit and one to cover my bare legs. I wore my black socks with gold threads to take off the chill. After making sure that I was comfortable she left me to my own devices. I was grateful that the routine did not include getting on the scale.
A flotilla of palms representative of all SoCal varieties flooded the view from the windows, beautifully silhouetted against the early rosy sky. No telling how long I would be waiting considering the number of patients in the outer office. I decided to read. I reached from my perch to the chair where I had left my book. Too wide I slipped off, forgetting that in preparation for the surgery, the aide had raised the chair to the doctor’s work level. Down we went, sheets, grounding device, purse, cell phone, and book. To my chagrin, the grounding device began to beep. Fortunately, I managed to get back up on the chair smooth things out a bit before anyone noticed.
Dr Hung someone of a rare bird in my experience, totally engaged me in chitchat. He seemed genuinely interested in who I was as he plied me with questions. Turned out both of us had grown up in SoCal. Then he went on to Stanford and UC San Francisco. As for my story, well, his only response: “conventional.”
Curiously, he even asked me where I went to high school. We were really getting down to the nitty-gritty.
“Mater Dei.”
“Why, that’s so conventional. I would never put you there. That must have been several lifetimes, ago.”
I swear this is exactly what he said to me. He was so struck that I had gone to what he considered “such a conventional high school.” I’ve always been proud of my status as an alumna of MD. The school has had athletic and scholastic fame since its founding back in the sixties, but the plastic surgeon took a little air out of my fame balloon.
Two hours later the removal itself took only three minutes, having completed his work Dr. Hung turned to my records on the desk.
“Penelope Shackelford, that’s a very conventional name, but you are not conventional. You live in Davis. Hm. That’s a very conventional place. But you are not conventional.”
Was there no end to his analysis? During the procedure we had had a lovely conversation about music, travel and health, but what was it that gave him such insight? I mind tripped back through our talk.
I had offered a critique of the office music. The Beethoven recordings playing on the sound system were not helpful. He accused me of not liking Beethoven, but I assured him not so. Too complex and too conceptual I explained. They made me feel I like I was at a parade. Choppy, staccato and big bass drums are not the best sounds for patients undergoing medical procedures. Told him I had long worked with sound healing and offered to find something more appropriate for him, something along Native American flute music or Indian sitar.
We also talked of yoga. “Do you do yoga?
When I answered affirmatively, he responded, “none this week.”
“None? Hatha, of course not, but surely I can do some, pranayama or raja perhaps?”
“Raja?”
I explained that raja as found in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is the practice of cultivation of the mind through meditation and contemplation, hopefully eventually leading to enlightenment.
I had been offered a prescription for an antibiotic to prevent infection, but I turned it down in favor of Chinese herbs. He made a note of this as he scanned the record.
I had said nothing unusual, still, not only did Dr. Hung insist that I was unconventional he did it with all-knowing gravitas.
With the numbers waiting he did not tarry. We shook hands and he departed. I dressed, gathered my belongings and slowly lumbered, careful of the mole wound, down the long hall to the elevator—wondering why Dr. Hung had insisted that I was unconventional.
Maybe the yogis in India were right when they told me that the world is a reflection of ourselves.
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