Poetic License


RetroVision
With years now grown in number
My thoughts are prone to wander
Among all the harder moments
Where my life has come to rest

To view them with a softer sight
To weigh them with a wider mind
To wrap them in a warmer heart

And finally to forgive myself
For doing what I thought was best


All for One
Don’t worry that the Narcissist
Will try to steal your heart.
They’ve never known a need for one,
Beyond seductive art.

Your soul’s the prize they aim to take,
Sucked whole through a hollow kiss.
Then on they’ll prowl more tender prey
To trap in phantom bliss.


Just Because
The self-centered sot
Is angry a lot
That’s how they get their way.

So try as you might
To side-step a fight,
It will happen whatever you say.




Invisible
As a child
I could not understand
How you’d be so kind
To dogs and cats
And cry so fast for friends
Yet ignore the wife and children
Who were drowning in your drink


Faith
Perfect is not planned.
It is a happy accident
That has more chance
Of falling into place
When anything is possible.


Fairy Tale
In love with the illusion
Of a glance that speaks
A lifetime of mutual devotion,
We each become an echo
Of the story
The other wants to hear.


Mixed Emotion
Into a grog of frosty denial
Add a generous pour of guilt
And one full measure of unreasonable fear.
Stir with endless anxiety,
Then chug.


Barbs
Hook me hard
Make me Squirm
And jump
And lose the battle
To break the line.

Inside I’ll know
It wasn’t love
That reeled me in.

I took the bait
Because I lacked
The courage
To swim upstream alone.


Who’s Counting?
How many false starts
Before you’re off and running?

How many all-nighters
Before you finally see the dawn?

How many times do you dance around
Before you come full circle?


The Edge
The Magic that happens
When moving to the song in your soul,
Can easily exceed
The fragile assurance
That looks like taking control.


A Past Tense Present
Picking up the pieces
Fitting them in place
A picture once a puzzle
Forms in silent grace.

If I knew then
what I know now...
But better late than never.

I didn’t see
That sight inside
That came from
My own mother.

It took my heart
And not my head
To ken the whole
Of what she said.

And one day, son
you too may know
A heart that sees
What thoughts don't show.


Cancelling the Call
The phone call left me exhausted
Worn down and confused.
Wanting so much to trust,
Ignoring a flickering doubt,

I was slammed by the heat
Of your vented frustration.
Money, more money,
Demanded as a threat
To our infant chance at understanding.

Again the endless craving
Defends a fear
Too sharp to soften
With anything but love.


To the Child 
I love you
At depths
I cannot describe
But would not
Have known
Without the pain.


My Father’s Eyes
I look into men’s eyes
And hope to catch a glimpse of yours.
Hope to have another chance
At knowing who you were
Without the whiskey.




A Sign
I glance out the window
Wanting a sign
That everything will be ok.
But there is no window
With a more relevant view
Than the one that opens
On my own heart.


Learning to Fight 
I found my power in the written word
In stories told as they were lived
In simple language that did the work
Of remembering to listen beyond a lifetime.


Food for Thought 
Fear pours my brain into a blender
Then presses the puree button.
It kneads my gut with hot peppers
Then stuffs it up my throat.
It coats my heart with a heavy batter
Then drops it deep into a fryer.
Fear makes a feast of my innermost ingredients.


A Friend in Need 
Some people
Use other people up.
It’s a lesson I learned
When I had nothing left to give
Then realized where it went.


Note to a Not-So-Loved One 
I wish all your selves
Would get together
And decide on
A final version of my faults.


If Only
I laid by the fire and cried
For what could have been but never was
And told myself it didn’t matter.

I see you sitting on the hardwood floor
Naked and cross-legged in the Mission sun,
Lifting your head to show a smile
Saying it was the best, the most connected sex
You’d ever had.

I wanted you with me, around me and in me
And I wanted you to stay
So I waited out your other vows
Til you were called to leave this life
Before our love had found its way.


Let's Get Real
Be Authentic!
Get the Treatment
The Surgery
The Extraction
The Implant

And, of course,
The Brand

The Mark that Matters
The Silent Scream
That Says I'm Totally Sold
On Being
Completely Real


To Be Somebody
I coulda been somebody
Brando said
A line that told the secret shame
Of every soul he represented.

To be somebody
Not forgotten
To be seen above the common
Who die alive without a trace

Of Immortal Grand Illusion



Rome Beyond the Ruins (on a skateboard)

Skatepark in an abandoned Fiat Factory - Rome Italy 2004

I believe that travel is the best form of education. So my son, Patrick, was destined to explore the world in whatever way I could afford, even camping outdoors at the Winter Olympics.  In 2002, he was a twelve-year-old in love with hockey. The Salt Lake Olympics was less than an eight hour drive from where we lived in Montana. We had to be there.

Tickets to hockey games in the elimination rounds were surprisingly affordable. But lodging, even within a hundred miles of downtown Salt Lake, was on exploitation overdrive. So I rented a spot with electricity at a Kampgrounds of America (KOA)in the center of the city. 

Even camping had a premium price tag but the location was perfect. Free public shuttles took us directly from our tent spot to all the downtown Olympic venues. My only regret was not getting tickets to a wider array of events because it was all so easy to access.   

Camping at the Winter Olympics demonstrated to my son that the unconventional can have unique rewards.  Aside from a few TV production RVs the only other campers were all Canadian hockey fans! He left talking about attending the 2006 Olympics in Turin (even if we had to camp). 

By 2004 I was ready to introduce him to Europe. My fantasy itinerary began with backpacking and train rides but soon scaled down to my budget and ten day timeframe. I decided his first experience would take him to the root of Western culture. We'd pretend we lived in the Eternal City of Rome. 

Patrick was enthusiastic about the trip but, as a fourteen-year-old, his sporting obsession had migrated to perfecting new skateboarding tricks. He scanned photos of Roman street scenes for boarding potential. Leaving behind his trucks and deck, even for ten days, would absorb his thoughts no matter how ancient the ruins and marvelous the art around him. So I researched skateparks in Rome and the board came with us as a carry-on. 

The decision to stay primarily in one place turned out to be fortunate because a month before our departure the Madrid Train Bombings happened and all of Europe was on the highest alert. Train travel became the same security ordeal as flying became after 9/11. 

There were no official skate parks in Rome at the time, so the recommendations took us into ordinary neighborhoods that most Americans would never visit. Through a common language of ollies, grinds and kickflips, Patrick connected with his Italian peers, who then included me as a respected elder accessory. We became honorary citizens of Rome. 

After a few hours of riding on rough cobblestone streets, our young Roman friends invited us to a skating site in a gutted Fiat factory. The location wasn’t on any of my tourist maps so they drew some instructions in my notebook and said to meet them there in the evening. 

Of course, this could have been an unfortunate set-up but instead the outcome was even better than I imagined. While planning the trip, I'd read about notorious underground communities in Rome that hosted subversive art events. Being illegal and transient, they were virtually impossible for an outsider to find.  Of course, I wanted to be there!

Arriving at the makeshift skate park made of plywood and scaffolding, Patrick was thrilled (in a teenage way) to be immersed in a gnarly scene half way around the world. While he was busy grinding and flipping, I explored the grounds outside and met a British expat my age who made sculptures from discarded car parts.

As we chatted, it dawned on me that this was one of those underground venues, a renegade Roman live/work/play space that I'd never have found on a tourist map. I was awe-struck. 

Since he wasn’t feeling skateboard deprived, Patrick engaged with the attractions of ancient Rome. He loved the Pantheon and, for a teenager, was remarkably touched by Pompeii which was our only side trip.  For both of us, though, the most enchanting experiences were the result of taking a risk.



A footnote finale:
We did not go to the 2006 Turin Olympics because I opted instead to take him to Amsterdam when he turned eighteen the following year. That is a whole other story.  In 2013, however, I was in Turin by myself and went to the main venue. Again, that is a whole other story...that brought me to deeply question and alter my perception of their value. 

Making Pasta in Bologna

Fresh Laid Italian Eggs
Fall was the season for holiday food preparation in my mother’s Italian family. Raviolis were the centerpiece. Through October and most of November we made hundreds of them. All rolled, stuffed, and closed by hand on a massive kitchen table.

In 2013, I decided to deepen my childhood ravioli memories during a trip through Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region and registered to attend an official pasta making school in Bologna, the place even Italians recognize as the source of authentic Italian cuisine.

Cooking schools are an industry in Bologna and are plentiful since just offering lunch in a home kitchen could qualify. Visitors looking for particular experiences, especially with time and money constraints, should do as much research as their satisfaction level demands.

Francesca Prepares Dough
Being on a limited budget, value was a significant part of my decision mix. But I also wanted to "live" the culture of an Italian kitchen.  So I chose the Vecchia Scuola Bolognese primarily because of its very affordable five day immersion course, allowing me to spend an entire workweek absorbing the sights, sounds, and sensations I craved.

Minimum research suggestions:
  • Identify your parameters for the experience, including cost, location, and particular food interests
  • Use guide books, magazines, and a variety of Web resources in your research.
  • Pare down candidates using available reviews. Interact with reviewers whenever possible.
  • Correspond directly with the schools by email or even by phone. This can assure you that the school is still operating, will give you a sense of their customer service standards, and help you to better understand important details such as payment options.
  • Finally, as a general rule of travel, be open to making the best of whatever actually happens.

Ancient but Accurate Scale
I didn’t fully appreciate Vecchia Scuola Bolognese as a serious culinary production and training facility until I arrived. They do offer a casual half day tourist course with lunch included, but their primary students are those beginning or extending professional careers in Italian pasta and pastry making.

The five day course I took is actually considered the first step toward earning the school's three month professional culinary certification. Vecchia Scuola is also an ongoing pasta production facility supplying food establishments throughout the region. Students are expected to practice their skills creating usable product. Nothing is wasted. What may not be “beautiful” enough for sale to an outside client will certainly be used in the school's student staffed Trattoria.
Basic Riccota Filled Tortelloni

I paid for the class about six months before my trip. Arrangements such as available course times and dates were made through email in both Italian and English, using Google translate when necessary. Payment was sent and confirmed via an international wire transfer made through my bank.

My hotel in Bologna, Albergo Rossini, was a short portico covered walk from the Vecchia Scuola. Class started at 9 AM and lasted about four to five hours. The only new students on the day I started were myself and a twenty-four year old Israeli pastry chef who had just completed a four month certification in gelato making. He was planning to open his own cafe on a beach in Tel Aviv.


Alessandra Spisni (shown above in a screenshot from their website) is the unifying force of Vecchia Scuola. Though she was traveling outside of Bologna during the time I were there, signora Spisni was none the less a constant presence in the many attractive product displays throughout the school. Alessandra Spisni and her entire family are endowed with an insatiable appetite for life.

Maestro Allessandro
The signora's brother, Alessandro, casually oversees the culinary school by correcting students with warnings lightly disguised as jokes. Much of his work day was spent enjoying food, family and friends. 

Our actual teacher was an impressive twenty-seven year old Sicilian woman named Carla.  She is the real head and heart of day to day pasta instruction and production at Vecchia Scuola. Alessandro even acknowledged this fact by joking about how often he loudly called her name. (CarrrrLLA!!)

Carla Instructs a Student from Texas
Fluent in four languages with a graduate degree in Cultural Anthropology, Carla led an ever changing group of students through various levels of instruction while managing overall production (rolling sheets of perfect pasta herself), quality control, and distribution for Vecchia Scuola.

During a break, I asked Carla how she chose pasta making rather than pursuing a career in her degree. She told me that she came to Vecchia Scuola to do a cultural research project then discovered she both enjoyed the physical exercise of the work and had a natural talent for it. Signora Spisni offered her a job. Carla took it, still loves it, and sees no reason that will change.

Filei Calabresi ~ Our First Pasta
Culinary Cathedral
The Israeli pastry chef and I were given official aprons, assigned lockers, oriented to the work space, and began making pasta alongside more advanced students.

We started with a batch of Filei Calabresi, a simple pasta made with just water and flour rolled by hand into a hollow tube that embraces any sauce. Using a classic industrial scale, we weighed rather than measured all ingredients. Weight, even for liquids, makes it easy to accurately increase or decrease the size of a recipe. We got a feel for how to properly knead dough and assess its readiness for rolling.


Tortelloni in Process
The most exciting part of the process was using long wooden rolling pins or poles, called matterellos, to flatten the dough. In the video at the end of this post, Carla uses a matterello to roll a double volume of dough into a translucent gossamer sheet, closely resembling fine cloth, in less than five minutes.

Both the matterello and table must be made of wood. Marble and stainless steel are too cold for pasta making. In contrast, wood warms the dough as it is worked and the grain imparts a surface texture that better holds sauces and condiments to the pasta.

Dried Spinach Tortelloni
At the start of this post I mentioned that making ravioli was my reason for taking the class. And we did make one batch of ravioli at Vecchia Scuola. But what we produced every day in quantity was tortelloni, the much larger version of tortellini.

Bologna is known for its tortelloni, pasta with a big stuffed "belly" that brings to mind the city's Medieval nickname, "La Grassa" (The Fat).  Of course tortelloni is much more popular than ravioli in Bologna!

One fundamental variation between types of stuffed pasta is the thickness of the dough. Tortelloni requires pasta that is as thin as possible because of its many layered folds.  On the other hand, ravioli doesn't have any folds and needs to be slightly thicker to hold stuffing in place with just crimping around the edges. I may not have made many ravioli at Vecchia Scuola, but I did gain a deep reverence for the skill and talent of handcrafting this seemingly simple food.

For those wanting to experiment for themselves, we used the basic recipe below for all variations of stuffed and flat pasta. A large wooden rolling pin can sufficiently flatten the dough but it's actually the length of the mattarello that makes it fun (and an art) to use.

There are no handles on a mattarello.  It moves with pressure applied from the palm of your hands, pushing and pulling like a massage as they move back and forth across the entire length of the pin. Yes. It is sensual. Lacking a real mattarello, a two inch diameter dowling, thirty-six inches long, sanded and bleached, will work.

Have fun making pasta! Even the mistakes are edible.

Basic Filled Pasta Recipe for +/- 100 Tortelloni

Ingredients are measured by weight so the recipe can easily be scaled for quantity.
Pasta
Filling
Ingredient Ratio:
100 grams of "00" Flour
per 50 grams of liquid.

Liquid can be water, egg, broth, or a cooked vegetable such as spinach or mushroom.

One shelled egg = 50 grams
(Should be weighed if very large or small)

50 grams of cooked spinach = one egg.

 The following mixtures allow for additional
50 grams of flour during kneading.

Plain Pasta
6 eggs and 550 g flour

Spinach Pasta
6 eggs, 50 g cooked spinach, 650 g flour

 To Mix
Form the flour into a bowl shape on the table.  
Place liquids in the center of the flour.
Gently blend flour into liquid.
Knead until dough forms and stickiness is gone.
Add flour as necessary.
 Wrap kneaded dough in plastic.
Let dough rest at least one hour before rolling.
Quantity Ratio:
 Filling Weight = Dough Weight

1.5 kilos Ricotta (cow)

200 grams grated Parmesan cheese

20 grams salt (to taste)

 1 Egg

Nutmeg to taste
Roll dough into a sheet carefully but quickly to avoid drying.
Cut rolled sheet into one inch squares.
Place a dollop of filling into the center of each square.
Fold dough corner to corner into a triangle over the filling.
Squeeze the bottom tips of the triangle together to form a tortelloni shape.
Practice often and eat your work!

Public Opinion - Extracts: The Making of a Common Will

Walter Lippmann published Public Opinion in 1922. Following is a short extract describing the role of leadership in creating public acceptance. The entire book is available online for free through Project Gutenburg.

The established leaders of any organization have great natural advantages. They are believed to have better sources of information. The books and papers are in their offices. They took part in the important conferences. They met the important people. They have responsibility. It is, therefore, easier for them to secure attention and to speak in a convincing tone. But also they have a very great deal of control over the access to the facts.
Every official is in some degree a censor. And since no one can suppress information, either by concealing it or forgetting to mention it, without some notion of what he wishes the public to know, every leader is in some degree a propagandist. 

Strategically placed, and compelled often to choose even at the best between the equally cogent though conflicting ideals of safety for the institution, and candor to his public, the official finds himself deciding more and more consciously what facts, in what setting, in what guise he shall permit the public to know. 

That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough. 

The creation of consent is not a new art. It is a very old one which was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy. But it has not died out. 

It has, in fact, improved enormously in technic, because it is now based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. And so, as a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power. 

Within the life of the generation now in control of affairs, persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government. None of us begins to understand the consequences, but it is no daring prophecy to say that the knowledge of how to create consent will alter every political calculation and modify every political premise. 

Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables. It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. 

It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach.

Public Opinion - Extracts: The Enlisting of Interest

Walter Lippmann published Public Opinion in 1922. Following is a short extract describing how to engage and hold public attention. The entire book is available online for free through Project Gutenburg.

When public affairs are popularized in speeches, headlines, plays, moving pictures, cartoons, novels, statues or paintings, their transformation into a human interest requires first abstraction from the original, and then animation of what has been abstracted.
 
We cannot be much interested in, or much moved by, the things we do not see. Of public affairs each of us sees very little, and therefore, they remain dull and unappetizing, until somebody, with the makings of an artist, has translated them into a moving picture. Thus the abstraction, imposed upon our knowledge of reality by all the limitations of our access and of our prejudices, is compensated. 

Not being omnipresent and omniscient we cannot see much of what we have to think and talk about. Being flesh and blood we will not feed on words and names and gray theory. Being artists of a sort we paint pictures, stage dramas and draw cartoons out of the abstractions.
...

A “clear” thinker is almost always a good visualizer. But for that same reason, because he is “cinematographic,” he is often by that much external and insensitive. 

For the people who have intuition, which is probably another name for musical or muscular perception, often appreciate the quality of an event and the inwardness of an act far better than the visualizer. They have more understanding when the crucial element is a desire that is never crudely overt, and appears on the surface only in a veiled gesture, or in a rhythm of speech. 
...

Nevertheless, though they have often a peculiar justice, intuitions remain highly private and largely incommunicable. But social intercourse depends on communication, and while a person can often steer his own life with the utmost grace by virtue of his intuitions, he usually has great difficulty in making them real to others. When he talks about them they sound like a sheaf of mist. For while intuition does give a fairer perception of human feeling, the reason with its spatial and tactile prejudice can do little with that perception. 

Therefore, where action depends on whether a number of people are of one mind, it is probably true that in the first instance no idea is lucid for practical decision until it has visual or tactile value. But it is also true, that no visual idea is significant to us until it has enveloped some stress of our own personality. Until it releases or resists, depresses or enhances, some craving of our own, it remains one of the objects which do not matter. 


Pictures have always been the surest way of conveying an idea, and next in order, words that call up pictures in memory. But the idea conveyed is not fully our own until we have identified ourselves with some aspect of the picture. The identification, or what Vernon Lee has called empathy, may be almost infinitely subtle and symbolic. The mimicry may be performed without our being aware of it, and sometimes in a way that would horrify those sections of our personality which support our self-respect.

In sophisticated people the participation may not be in the fate of the hero, but in the fate of the whole idea to which both hero and villain are essential. But these are refinements. In popular representation the handles for identification are almost always marked. You know who the hero is at once. And no work promises to be easily popular where the marking is not definite and the choice clear. But that is not enough. 

The audience must have something to do, and the contemplation of the true, the good and the beautiful is not something to do. In order not to sit inertly in the presence of the picture, and this applies as much to newspaper stories as to fiction and the cinema, the audience must be exercised by the image. 

Now there are two forms of exercise which far transcend all others, both as to ease with which they are aroused, and eagerness with which stimuli for them are sought. They are sexual passion and fighting, and the two have so many associations with each other, blend into each other so intimately, that a fight about sex outranks every other theme in the breadth of its appeal. There is none so engrossing or so careless of all distinctions of culture and frontiers. 

The sexual motif figures hardly at all in American political imagery. Except in certain minor ecstasies of war, in an occasional scandal,...to speak of it at all would seem far-fetched...But the fighting motif appears at every turn. Politics is interesting when there is a fight, or as we say, an issue. And in order to make politics popular, issues have to be found, even when in truth and justice, there are none,--none, in the sense that the differences of judgment, or principle, or fact, do not call for the enlistment of pugnacity. 

[Footnote: Cf. Frances Taylor Patterson, Cinema Craftsmanship, pp. 31-32. “III. If the plot lacks suspense: 1. Add an antagonist, 2. Add an obstacle, 3. Add a problem, 4. Emphasize one of the questions in the minds of the spectator.,..”]

But where pugnacity is not enlisted, those of us who are not directly involved find it hard to keep up our interest. For those who are involved the absorption may be real enough to hold them even when no issue is involved. They may be exercised by sheer joy in activity, or by subtle rivalry or invention. 

But for those to whom the whole problem is external and distant, these other faculties do not easily come into play. In order that the faint image of the affair shall mean something to them, they must be allowed to exercise the love of struggle, suspense, and victory. 
...

In order then that the distant situation shall not be a gray flicker on the edge of attention, it should be capable of translation into pictures in which the opportunity for identification is recognizable. Unless that happens it will interest only a few for a little while. It will belong to the sights seen but not felt, to the sensations that beat on our sense organs, and are not acknowledged. 

We have to take sides. We have to be able to take sides. In the recesses of our being we must step out of the audience on to the stage, and wrestle as the hero for the victory of good over evil. We must breathe into the allegory the breath of our life. 

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