The Stone Street Press

We are at the middle of November, and I can hardly believe it. November?

It is a beautiful time of the year in the garden. I suppose you expect that I would say that anyway, regardless of the time of year. And that is probably true. Since nature is so miraculous, and mysterious, it is I suppose always up to us to notice the unending parade of the miraculous, and the unfolding mysterious. And to be rewarded with what we discover, and that great sense of …Marvelling!

Amazingly, the 2008 growing cycle is still –clearly– in process. My tall tomato plants –some as high now as 16 feet tall– are still bearing fruit, though I am now ripening some of the bigger ones indoors, in closed plain brown paper bags, where the ethylene gas they release, helps them to ripen.

A favorite breakfast or snack of mine is a few slices of bread with a couple of slices of deep-red tomato with a sprinkling of salt. Nothing could be simpler; nothing could be better.

Also still growing are my boxes of Arugula –that food of liberals, sneered Rush Limbaugh recently– and Mustard leaf. Two excellent salad ingredients, both with that peppery tang.
Another regular salad ingredient are my dandelion leaves –they plant themselves, and have full licence to grow wherever they choose. This of course is in complete contradistinction to the average lawn, for which the dandelion with its distinctive yellow flower and puffball constitute lawn-anathema.
I gather that you can be sent packing from your own home if you have some dandelion in your lawn.

I wash my salad leaves and then shred them with my kitchen scissors into a bowl, and add some oil, balsamic and a dash of sugar to dress the shreds: there is no denying the bitterness of the dandelion.

I have quite a bit of mint growing in different areas of the garden, and now am trying to persuade it to grow and cover a 10-foot trellis section. I want all-mint there –I have recently taken to drinking Mint Tea, and make it up in large batches.
Some of my mint has already reached –almost– bush status! I’ve never seen anything like it. It grows so easily and so quickly, and apparently will grow anywhere.

Some of you know that my garden has from time to time supplied me with wonderful wild mushrooms. Last year, and in the spring of this year, I had several harvest of the delicate Volvariella Speciosa, mostly in May and October.
But other than a few individual ’shrooms, they have hardly manifested at all this fall. Mysterious! –but the mushroom is among the most mysterious of plants (if it is a plant; I’m not even sure of that.)

So –I missed my VS mushrooms. Who knows when I will see them next?
But I will be looking out.

But –amazingly– apparently the Mushroom Deities do not close one door but they open another.

And just about the time that my old VS crop would manifest, there –right over by those two Ailanthus/Tree of Heaven stumps, where we cut down two large and dangerously overgrown trees a few years ago– there was this large crop of a different mushroom, much more solid, with thicker stems and a bigger range of size, some approaching 5 or even 6 inches in diameter. The quite delicate gills (considering their size) were of a beautiful delicate pink-yellowish-orange.
Stunning. Especially how prolific they were, and the amazing way that the clumps of 5, 6 and 7 mushrooms grew out of the ground.
They did look so…edible.

Are you out of your MIND! –I hear you comment. Do you have a death-wish or what: swift and precipitate, gone just like that. Or slow and agonizing — writhing, stricken, staring, and dumb-struck.

Answer: No.

Yes I have eaten them. And yes, I am still here.

Here is my system of identifying. I have recently heard a mushroom expert interviewed by Lenny Lopate. He had just done a book on the subject of identifying North American wild mushrooms.

I found his exhaustive website with very helpful pictures, and also heard his iteration of the rules of being properly cautious.

In fairly good time I came to see that the mushrooms that I had found were not on the list of VERY POISONOUS mushrooms.
The next step was to cut a very thin small slice from the cap, and to cook it, by frying.
From this small slice, I took a very small section, and tasted it. I did NOT swallow it, but spat it out immediately after getting a quick sense of the taste.
I then began an indeterminate test period of observing myself –any odd symptoms developing, any pain, dizzyness, lapse of consciousness –that sort of thing?

Answer: No!

Just that lingering intense mushroom taste –best Portobello, of which it might have been an exotic version. Of course, all Portabello’s these days seem to be cultivated and somewhat lacking in field intensity.

In any event, I began eating my mushrooms –feeling rather blessed by their very provision. I don’t have to tell you that one of the very best ways to eat mushrooms is to eat them fried in bacon-fat with a slice or two of bacon.
With a sprinkle of chopped wild chive (also from the garden, and transplanted into several pots to see how they will do indoors over the winter.)

So good!

On Tuesday, we watched from early in the evening, as the first results came in.

With very few exceptions, it seemed that all the news coming in was…good news. Everything seemed to be unfolding in the way it was supposed to unfold, the way we wanted it.

The Electoral Map was on the screen. Already, “The Blue” was spreading faster than “The Red”. I had been studying that map pretty closely for quite some time, and watching how the polls were moving along from day to day. Two months ago I was at a Barack fundraiser in the Lower Eastside –everybody there was nervous; it was that period when everybody –myself included– was saying “Barack has to “come out”….he has to respond more forcefully…”

It has since become clear to me that Barack had indeed been “responding” all the time –he had showed his self-confidence, his intelligence and his power and his class at every turn, and let it stand there for everyone to compare with…how John McCain chose to present himself.

[In a campaign that was heavy on lip-stuck pigs and light on back-and-forth serious debate, it was perhaps inevitable that it was the different ways the two candidates presented themselves on-stage, on-debate, and in news-events --such as McCain's "suspension" of his
campaign-- that the nation used to compare them and weigh them up. It's quite possible that John McCain simply was unaware that his "negative body-language" in this was so telling.]

This simple comparison was, I believe, essentially what won Barack Obama the Election.

John McCain –for example– drew extraordinary attention to himself when he announced that he was halting his campaign and postponing the Debate, to go to Washington to TAKE CARE of the financial crisis, and then SAID NOTHING at the big meeting when he got there.

The gimmickyness of McCain’s move emerged over the next days.

Meanwhile the cool, serious, intelligent style of Barack was on display to all, especially those who still hadn’t come to a decision. They were finding out a lot about these two men.

That Lower Eastside fundraiser that I attended in September had probably been the lowpoint, the most-nervous point, for the Barack camp. But I could see from all the information that was coming in even then, that there was a good basis for a quiet confidence –a growing confidence– that Barack was indeed going to pull it off.

[There was of course, one last dread for Dems --Dirty Tricks! But the Poverty of Ideation that plagued the Republicans even more so this campaign seemed especially to strike down the possibility of them coming-up with a Toxically-October-surprising, Rovean-Atwaterian-SwiftBoatian Illegitimate Baby to throw at Barack. (Back to the Drawing(water)board, guys.)]

So, yes, there was that period where we wanted Barack to strike back. Then it seemed to evaporate: perhaps his own confidence in himself was radiating out to us all, subliminally, but more and more each day….

Whenever I told my friends of my own “quiet confidence” in Barack’s campaign, they tried to shut me up, told me either that they didn’t believe me, or to shut up and not jinx it.
They made THE JINX sound more powerful than any of the many positive indications that we were getting.

***** ***** ***** *****

And now, here we were –our group of about 15 or so over at Westbeth in the West Village– watching the mounting BLUE evidence of a Barack victory in progress.

Cheering. Applauding. But still shaking our heads in disbelief.

The significant stages approached –those difficult, all-important states.

Florida was big (I had done a lot of “work” on Florida, shoring up the spirits of my friend Joe the Philosophy Prof. who was going down to Florida, and updating him several times a week on favorable developments for “Our Side”. Joe’s condo was full of retired, comfortable old Jews –like Joe himself, except that all the rest of them were McCain supporters, fearful and misinformed of Barack’s ideas about Israel, and apparently not open to any change….
But Joe had gone to work on them –those “sour-pusses” as he had termed them.
We didn’t need to change all their minds. A few would do…

And when I looked at the beautiful NYT Election Map of the County-by-County vote counts the next day, I derived enormous (and probably shamelessly inflated) satisfaction from noticing that Broward County –Joe’s county– had indeed….gone BLUE.

Well-done, Joe! We pulled it off. (Well, OK, maybe Sara Silverman played a part in it…)

So –back to our gathering. Florida was looking good; Barack was ahead. Florida (27 votes) was a BIG BIG Tossup state, and now it had come over for Barack.
So was Virginia looking good….

And as the evening wore on, and the wave of poll-closings swept slowly across the nation, our spirits rose.

A Barack Victory was approaching, would soon be upon us. As the tossup states fell one by one –almost all for Barack– I came to realize that I and a few others of our group had reached and passed, without really realizing it, an indefinable “Its all over bar the shouting” stage.

There is, somewhere on the 2008 Electoral Map, a Meridian –my own personal “Malachi” Meridien– which is my “Its all over bar the shouting” meridien.

We relaxed, poured ourselves another glass of wine, grabbed a slice of cheese or an olive. But the nervous ones were still glued to the TV screen, biting their collective lower lip…

Now there began to be more and more shots on the TV of the expectant crowd at Grants Field. Their murmur became a hum. The hum increased in pitch, became more animated. As the crowd itself became more animated, more expectant.

Now, people were coming out intermittently on the stage and performing little stage-preparatory tasks, and scurrying off again…..

Then –that proverbial hush descended….

And then, finally, there he was.

Barack, striding out across the stage, with Michelle and the lovely girls. And the others. Barack raises his arm, waves….

The Very First Thing that takes my attention is –the complete absence of Triumphalism. In this land of high-five and “USA! USA!”, Barack’s wave, full but brief, was quickly over. Anything more would –I guessed– be too much for our new man, Barack Obama.

A brief wave. A glowing smile. But, the man was still quiet.

What? — not more? An intense and endless and twisting-turning, up- and-down Two Year Campaign. An extraordinary intensity, that we all felt and shared in. And before that, the Unannounced Part of his campaign –however many years that was. And before that, the years of local politics in Chicago; and before that, the years of rigorous application at Columbia and Harvard. The hard but loving years before that with his….odd collection of wonderful individuals who made up his loving family that played such a powerful part in preparing this person who now has become our President Elect, and presenting him to us….

All of that was packed into that walk across the stage at Grant’s Field.

And that full but brief wave.

I can tell you –this man is different. But you already had discovered that in your own way.

We are now in a different time, entering a new phase.

Our gathering watched his speech. I noticed how many lines of that speech were lines of poetry. This is an elegant man, a man without pretence, a man of lightness-but-seriousness, and the words in his lines of poetry reflect the thought he already has invested in his observations and musings, and the discriminate choice of words.

I apologize for bringing in our current president in here –its just for a brief comparison.

On the one hand, there is Barack –from single-parented, food-stamped beginnings to Harvard and now The White House.
On the other hand, there is Bush. Ah yes, The Cigarette Boats of Kennebunkport! One family could hardly have more privilege…

In our land of opportunity, the one follows on the heels of the other.

Is this not a parable for the ages!

***** ***** ***** *****

It was all over. As Barack spoke, from that Chicage stage, we sat fixated. We all responded to him and to the extraordinary moment in our lives, with tears –those slow unselfconscious tears of realization and reflection and deep gratitude, that manifest themselves on momentous occasions such as Tuesday night –but, surely, very very few times in a lifetime.

I have no doubt that Barack Obama will achieve great things in his Presidency. But I do doubt –very much– that he will give us anything that matches the extraordinary, transforming gift that he has already given us, given the nation, that he gave on Tuesday night.

Frank Rich has a wonderful piece today about Barack Obama and “The Man who came to Dinner” movie of 1967, which I think you might enjoy, if you haven’t already seen it.

I had just one disagreement with him, which I commented on, as follows:

“Dear Frank Rich,

Thank you yet again. Among pundits –and, hey, let’s throw in those punDINTS as well– you are the best, our NE PLUS ULTRA.

The one who, week after week, picks out the over-riding theme or point for his Sunday Sermon, that emerged from the week’s business, the real as well as all the “straining at gnats”, lip-stuck (lip-stuck?) pig-swill ephemera.

All of it, by the way, information, clearly, that was available to all your fellow-pundits. But only you got it.

(My FRANK RICH theory is –it’s all those thousands of plays you reviewed before you ever even picked up a political pen. I imagine you saw good plays and bad, and fine as well as execrable performances.

And developed a fine ear for “how this play is going to turn out?”

Well, I’m prepared to bet that not even you ever saw a play like this one, the Final Curtain of which comes down on Tuesday. Or should we call that just The First Act?. (Not to mention the performances of all those actors –the one stellar, the others often skirting execrable. Even the totally different plays that the candidates thought they were in, etc.etc)

So — let’s hear it for Frank Rich –Scourge-of-Bloviators, Authoritative, insightful, hard-edge, metaphor-spotting, poetic, mythic. If I have to pick only one adjective, it would have to be Unrelenting. Just like Barack.

Frank Rich, Unrelenting!

But I do disagree about your Joe Biden point. Strongly. I believe you are wrong on this. And my first clue is that you, too, used the media-created Biden-related cliche: I refer of course to “Gaffe”, in the sense of labelling Biden as “gaffe-prone”.

Who did not make gaffes, both meaningful and slip-of-tongue? Bitter-clinging? Or a certain Alaskan moose-skinner who just yesterday “only” joked about being President herself in, oh, 8 years?

When Joe Biden referred to Barack Obama as “clean” and “articulate” he was speaking of MAINSTREAM candidates, candidates who by the lights of 2008, had a reasonable, not a fringe, shot at getting elected.

Why, to show us what he meant, Biden even put the word “mainstream” before all the other words.

To make my point: Nobody who knows the meaning of the word “articulate”, and who is in their right mind, would accuse Al Sharpton of being “inarticulate”.

But –Al Sharpton is not MAINSTREAM! (Sorry about that, Al. You are more worthwhile –dare I say even more ‘colorful’?– than many of the pathetic pols out there. And I love that James Brown dance you do. But.)

Or, Jesse Jackson. Jesse may have been a fine candidate. Jesse,in the opinion of many, was superior to quite a few of the mainstream nebbishes who have showed up over the years –goodness knows, we had our fair share of them this year.

But Jesse was not “mainstream”.

Nor, by the way, was Ron Paul –good and refreshing as he was. Or Ralph Nader. Or Bob Barr. Or Ross Perot.

Oh dear –now I’m going to have to mention all their names…

— Malachi McCormick, Staten Island ”