A Twist of Lemon

Have you ever had a cocktail? I remember when I was younger being curious about the mystery of mixing drinks, and watching and learning from my father. Cocktails were these magic elixirs, complex, mysterious, alluring. Cooking held little interest for me, but making the right twist of lemon was an art I delighted in learning.

My father enjoyed a martini and took pleasure in the details. The right glass, the balance of tastes, the brand, crushing the ice in his hand with a spoon to get the right size slivers, the perfect chill, the right additions. Everything had impact. Everything mattered. And when I would taste the drink, I had to acknowledge that indeed, it did.

As I recall, we were a lemon twist family. I don't think I learned of olives or onions until some much later date, though limes and even an occasional mint sprig would find its way into a seasonal libation.

But the lemon twist was what made the average drink exceptional.

It started with finding a firm, fresh lemon, with unblemished substantial skin. Not for us those thin-skinned lime-look-alikes. A small, sharp knife was needed and a lengthwise strip would be cut from stem to stern. A bit of white was acceptable, but you were looking to get a nice 1/4 inch (finger wide) ribbon of the yellow top coat, covered with tiny pores.

You'd take that ribbon and squeeze it over the surface of your completed cocktail, white inside toward you, the outer skin facing the drink like—my father would gleefully explain—you were squeezing blackheads. And oil did indeed emerge from the peel squeezing, creating a film of lemon essence, an oil slick on the surface of the drink.

You would then gently sweep the perimeter of the glass with the outside of the peel and drop it into the drink (twisting the peel would deliver similar oil-inducing pressure, but is less thorough, in my opinion). As my father noted, one didn't really taste much after the first sip of a drink. The chill, the alcohol, would often take over, so the fact the oil essence didn't last much beyond that initial sip didn't matter. What mattered was that first sip was exquisite, sparkling, aromatic, heady.

However my experience with almost all ordered cocktails is dreadfully disappointing in this area. Most bartenders take the words "with a twist" at face value, and some variety of a curlicue of lemon appears, extracted by an assortment of designer bar implements and it sits decoratively on the edge of your drink. Useless as teats on a bull.

The whole point of a twist of lemon is to add a touch of fresh lemon oil to your drink, for reasons of taste. Not solely to stick a piece of lemon rind in your drink! But almost everyone misses the point. They make a living doing this, and they still don't have their eye on the donut, the key deliverable, the "beef" and not the bun.

Missing—or just not understanding—the point is not a new issue.  It can be a problem for aspiring writers too, who may dutifully following the letter Vs the spirit of instructions. Doing something without really understanding why it needs to be done, what value it offers, can lead you astray. It's often why editorial instructions, tip sheets, etc. can sometimes be non-existent, minimalist or vague—because the requesters know that some information can mislead instead of inform.

In fact, information can distract you from focusing on the point.  As an adviser, you really want the creator to understand that it's all about achieving the goal: creating the feeling, having the impact, making the experience happen for the recipient. Not (necessarily) about taking each step correctly, following rules, or delivering on the surface requirements, but not the substance. Instructions or information can be helpful, but when it comes down to it, the question will always be: is it delicious? Do I want to keep drinking (or reading, or whatever).

So if you're having trouble making your text behave, now at least now you'll know what to add to that beverage you're going to be fixing yourself!

Do it with a twist.

The lessons of Rudolf, the red-nosed reindeer

Some years ago I did a post on Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer. It's a song that always troubled me, as it seemed so out of keeping with the general aspiration holiday cheer.

Rudolf, the Red-nosed Reindeer is such a straightforward statement that if you are or look different, others will ridicule, shun, humiliate and reject you. As you may recall, the other reindeers "laugh and call him names/They never let poor Rudolph/join in any reindeer games."

That is his life until everyone suddenly discovers that the very thing that made him different will in fact deliver a unique and crucial skill that will overcome what had been an insurmountable obstacle. Of course, "Then all the reindeer loved him/as they shouted out with glee,/Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer,/you'll go down in history!"

Clearly, for some people, anyone that is different is seen as a threat.

Perhaps some people assume if something is different it must be an enemy (?)

Perhaps some people think that, since they are perfect, anyone that doesn't resemble them is less than perfect, and must be elimnated (?)

Perhaps some people think they are perfect, thus everyone else must also think they are perfect, so their differences are in conflict, and are an alarming threat to some people's own belief system, sense of self-satisfaction and comfort (?)

But some people appreciate differences in others.

Perhaps they respond to the fact that evolutionary theory rewards those species that have variety, as it gives them more options for species survival to respond more effectively to a changing world. If a species becomes too uniform, then one problem can wipe out the entire species, because all are equally vulnerable (?)

Perhaps they realize that variety enhances survival because not everyone wants the same thing at the same time, diminishing competition and allowing peacefull coexistance (?)

Perhaps they have internalized the Rudolf lesson, that the very things that make someone different will offer key skills to the team, and make the sum far greater than each individual part—a central theme in romances (?)

And clearly, the trial by fire that so many live through in environments that penalize differences can forge powerful, creative and remarkable human beings.

But it is hard on the young. For the lessons we learn in Kindergarten are not pretty and many live their whole lives trying to overcome or find forgiveness for what happened then.

In an effort to prevent teen suicides among kids with gender and sexuality issues there are resources. It gets better.org or The Trevor Project are two.

The focus there is gender, but the basic issue is the same. Being different may not be an easy road, but it gets better—even for Rudolf. And adults have only to pause for an instant to think of all the people who were "different" that have transformed their lives and the world around them and value and support the gift of being different.

Here's hoping that the coming season gives us all things to be thankful for—the gift of accepting—indeed of celebrating our differences.  For therein lies our strength.

Isabel Swift

How thankful are you? Thoughts on talking turkey...

Thank you notes—the lack of them—was one of the key complaints about children in a recent conversation with a remarkably varied series of mothers I'd been speaking to.

Mommie Dearest aside, you don't have to be an abusive parent to expect a child (or anyone) to respond to a gift with appreciation.  I wasn't allowed to go out and play if I hadn't finished my thank you notes for Christmas presents by the first week in January. While it was tedious, I really didn't see it as an inappropriate expectation of my parents.  Now I send my thank you notes as Valentine cards—a little late, but decorative!

And when I got old enough to actually send presents, it became very clear how nice getting a note was—if only to reassure you that your gift was actually received!  With no response, one can spend months vacillating between resentment toward the recipient, concern that the package had been lost, and angst about whether one should contact the person & ask the embarrassing question:  

"Did you get the present I sent months ago?" 

"Oh, yeah.  Sorry!  I guess I should have said something..."  

Yeah.  That would have been nice.

Even as one mother was complaining of the effort she made to find her nephews and nieces things she thought they'd like and how ungrateful they were and unthanked she was, I was thinking of the presents I'd given her children for which I'd never gotten any thanks or acknowledgment. Funny how easy it is to notice failures in others and not in yourself, isn't it? 

I asked her if she'd written thank you notes herself as a child.  She'd written some, but mentioned that her godmother used to give her beautiful treasures that she still cherished, but had never thanked her for.

Suddenly, after complaining about others, she realized she'd been just as guilty. She wondered if the statute of limitations had expired, but in my opinion thanks have no expiration date. You can send a thank you years later, and it will still be fresh—and possibly even more appreciated. Go for it. And she did.

In these days of endless communication options, there's no excuse, but remarkably little activity.  And really, not much is required:  "Just got your lovely gift—thank you so much for thinking of me!" is really all that is needed.  Yes, it would be nice to reference the actual object & mention why it will be enjoyed (if indeed it is).  But details are not required, and neither are falsehoods.  

I believe in telling the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth.  So if you hate the gift for whatever reason, all you need to do is thank the giver for the kind thought.  Note, postcard, email, voice mail (hey, you can even call when you know they won't be there!). 

It was interesting to note that this issue of lack of acknowledgement has been the subject of articles with business interviews as well.  

So just as we may wish for Christmas cheer to last beyond the holidays, it is worth asking...can you be thankful all year long?

Did you have to write thank you notes? Do you write them now? Did you raise your children to write thank you notes?

- Summer Reading

I was listening to my itunes podcast from The New Yorker...

(Side note: many free podcasts can be downloaded and enjoyed @ iTunes. I just add it to my iPod, but if you have a smartphone with MP3 player, think you can download them there. All kinds of free content--learn about music, cooking, manners, philosophy, comedy, news, whatever).

...and one of the stories was about this out-of-work kid who told everyone that he was reading great books over the summer & was delighted to find everyone was very impressed. No, he wasn't actually reading any, but I decided this was a worthy goal and I should start filling in the chinks and read stuff I had never gotten around to reading.

I thought I'd start with one classic, one recent literary type bestseller. My first toe in the water: PORTRAIT OF A LADY/Henry James & A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS/Dave Eggers.

My rules are that you can have an opinion about a book you've read, but can't have an opinion about the author unless you've read at least 3 of their books. It seems fair.

So I found AHWOSG a bit tedious--perhaps colored by having seen Eggers on panels at conferences. And Henry James, who I had never read (yes, watched Wings of the Dove, though my enjoyment was colored by the uncanny resemblance of Daniel Day Lewis in that role to my older brother). Portrait seemed a good start--one of his more well known novels, and the heroine's name was Isabel. Can't get more relevant than that!

OMG. It was a fairly hard slog. Then I realized I couldn't complain about Henry James because I hadn't read my requisite 3 books. Back to the Library. Wings of the Dove was just too long, and I wasn't sure I wanted to sit through that story again. So I went with Washington Square--short, but as the introduction notes, not one of his more popular stories. And for good reason. I was one book away from an opinion. Luckily, there was Turn of the Screw--famous (I'd even seen the opera) and a novella! They even had to toss in a couple of short stories to fill the book out.

I was off an running. Well, if you've ever read James (I can now say that) "running" is not a word one would associate with his prose!

Despite some very active ghosts, TOTS (cute, eh?) was fairly tough going. But I needed to be able to have an author opinion! I even read the short stories. Also a good bit of the various scholarly preambles. Holy Toledo, if they don't turn you off reading the book, nothing will. In fairness, I actually really like getting a sense of context, a quick cliff notes on the writer, the history, the critical thought. But obviously, there's a similarity between the writer's style and his or her academic fans, so prefaces were a bit of a slog too.

OK, here's my assessment. After really not getting it for 3 novels (what is the big deal with this guy, etc.), the penny finally dropped thanks to the very last short story I read, "The Jolly Corner." Whew! I could have an opinion that wasn't just HUH?

So what's the big deal? I haven't done research beyond the above fairly pathetic efforts, but here are my insights.

First, he seems to be one of the first writers to deeply explore a sense of the character's conscious, their emotional makeup and the psychological causes behind their actions. Freud was born 13 year after James & lived over 20 years longer, but there's a strong connection with the birth of psychology. That seems pretty big as a new writing vision.

He also straddled the 19th and 20th centuries and offers a well rendered vision of the sense of past graciousness, limitations and social norms and proprieties that were being broken down, but still were powerful forces in an aristocratic or wealthy life. "The Jolly Corner" really presents a vivid metaphor of a man caught between two worlds, trying to find himself. Finishing it, I actually felt warmly towards James, though he definitely read as being a bit mysongenistic, which can be irritating.

So now that I've explained James, what's on your summer reading list?

- The Hyperbolic Coral Reef

You may, perhaps, be wondering just what the Hyperbolic Coral Reef is?

So glad you asked!

It's a project started in Australia by two crocheting sisters seeking to call attention to the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.  

Interestingly, there's a mathematical angle to all this.  I will likely not get this entirely right, but basically for some time mathematicians denied there was a hyperbolic function until Mr Vincenzo Riccati and Johann Heinrich Lambert came up with it in 1760.  This despite the fact that many coral grow hyperbolically, so there were examples right under their nose (or toes).

And you can crochet a hyperbolic function by simply creating a chain and doubling it for every stitch--example below:

It starts to look like brain coral, doesn't it?  And the pattern can be modified to create other coral (and mathematical) functions.

It was a powerful visual and experience to remind me you can start with something very simple--a single chain stitch.  Then do something very simple--double it.  And if you continue to add these simple building blocks, you can create something of amazing complexity--perhaps even beauty.  Just think about the single cell dividing and dividing and what remarkable organism it can come up with! 

I remember reading that Balzac (king of the door stopper novels) would start each one with a single page.  Then he'd keep adding bits and expanding bits, and thousands of pages later, you'd get Lost Illusions.

So the longest journey does indeed begin with the first step.  And whatever complex project you may have in mind that feels overwhelming, just make a single slip knot.  Add another.  You'll be surprised how it can grow!

Isabel Swift

For those who want to learn more, I've grabbed a relevant paragraph from The Smithsonian Community Reef project:

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE HYPERBOLIC CROCHET CORAL REEF PROJECT AND THE SMITHSONIAN COMMUNITY REEF:

 
The Smithsonian Community Reef is a satellite of the worldwide Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project created by Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring in Los Angeles.  It was made possible through the support of the Quiksilver Foundation, the Embassy of Australia, and the Coral Reef Alliance.  Find out more about Margaret and Christine Wertheim and the Institute For Figuring in Los Angeles here, and their Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Project here.  Find out more about the upcoming exhibition of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef and Smithsonian Community Reef at the National Museum of Natural History on the Museum's Smithsonian Community Reef Temporary Exhibitions Page.  To be included on this e-mail circulation list (or removed from it) please contact sicommunityreef@yahoo.com.

And for those of you may be wondering how this relates to hyperbole?  I figure it's whatever it is, just double it!

More is not always better...

Here is my story (you've already read the moral of the tale in the headline!).

One of my towels got strange bleached out marks on it & looked weird (orange marks on a brown towel).  I couldn't figure out how they got there & assumed I had stupidly put one of my brown towels in with a white wash & bleach had marked it.

So I folded it carefully so the orange didn't show & kept using it, vowing NEVER to forget and put my colored towels in a white wash or foolishly think of bleaching them in any way.

The mystery deepens: more bits of orange kept appearing on my towel (not on the hand towels, not on my husband's towel, just on my bath towel).  It finally dawned on me that I could no longer fold my towel to hide the marks.  They were on both sides in all quadrants--and I know I hadn't bleached them.

I was clueless & did a search and read one tiny comment that explained everything: some hair products can bleach or discolor fabric/towels.

OMG, that explained everything.  Now I don't actually do anything significantly weird to my hair, but I do condition it occasionally (my husband does not, thus no impact on his towel).  I use different hotel conditioners picked up on travels.

I took some of the conditioners & glopped them on the towel & though it was not transformative, I could see some faint orange emerging on the sites.  Mystery solved.  And I knew I shouldn't try to replace that towel brand--it would only happen again.  Note this had never happened to me on any of my other towels, all colored.  I'm sure with these they used "natural" dyes or something!

Midterm moral:  Don't let your assumptions (e.g. bleach) blind you from the information.  Sherlock Holmes would have been able to deduce the answer from the clues without the internet.  I could have figured it out too.

So I decide I get to buy new towels.  I love the big turkish bath sheets & after obsessing about colors, cotton thread counts, etc. I get lovely thick towels.

Only to realize that extra big and extra thick means quite heavy to lift (over your head, say, to towel your hair).  And thick towels don't wrap around you as easily to dry off the nooks and crannies.

Note to self: next time, large size, less thick.  More in all directions is not always better.

More is not always better...

It reminded me of creating book covers & wanting each element--the title, art, typeface, headline, back cover copy--to shout "Buy Me!"

And then realizing that if they all were shouting, no one would get heard!

So the challenge was to determine what was the most powerful call to attention, then work on effectively leading readers to the next step, and the next, until they are hooked and immersed in the conversation.

- Cherry Blossoms...

The cherry blossoms around the tidal basin in Washington, D.C. were a gift from Japan. Cherry blossoms symbolize the beauty and the fragility of life.  This shot combines a pine tree, which symbolizes long life, cherry and holly.  Holly symbolizes protection, so it all kind of makes sense....?

Some romance novels that have characters tied up in knots and unable to break free often have a crisis that challenges them to rethink their priorities, to realize that life is too short to hold back.  They, like the cherry blossoms, serve to remind us to remember to appreciate what we have before we lose it.

Some might feel that this should be contemplated solo, but really, it's a valuable message for all, something worth sharing and appreciating  with others.

Some said the blossoms were "past their prime" but that just meant we walked on a carpet of petals.

The tidal basin edge was quite amazing looking, like a work of modern art:

There were buds, blossoms and new shoots not just from the twigs and branches, but emerging from the gnarled trunks.  Life popping out everywhere.





One of my favorite images--petals in the mud.  With the right eyes, no matter where you looked, beauty was everywhere.

OK, yes, these are NOT cherry trees, though they are lovely.  These formed the edge of the George Mason monument.  Who knew he was such an amazing guy?  Who knew he had a really lovely statue and garden? A treat.  And an example of why D.C. is so lovely in the spring--so many flowering trees.

This is just a glimpse of the WWII Memorial, in case you haven't seen.  The Lincoln Monument you should be familiar with!

This was a special D.C. moment.  Total logjam with both car and foot traffic confused us until we realized someone more important than us (I know, hard to believe) was passing by.  Yes, that's the presidentialmobil.  Obama was coming back from NYC.

That same day we went to the Smithsonian museum of American Art and saw an amazing show of drawings from Christo's running fence.  Running fence existed for two weeks in September of 1975.  As you may know, the pieces are only up briefly, though they have taken years to make happen.

Christo's work is truly a statement that despite--or perhaps because of--the challenges, we make the effort to make the time that we have something to treasure.

Overly philosophical?  Perhaps.  But true....