Listening is an Act of Love

Dave Isay, ed., Listening is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the Storycorps Project.

Thanks to my mother-in-law, we received a copy of Listening is an Act of Love recently. At first blush I was unfamiliar with the book's contents and the NPR program. I don't drive often and I'm nervously connecting my ipod once I am buckled in rather than skipping around the radio pre-sets and settling on NPR. I can almost hear the gasps dripping with condescension "you don't listen to NPR and have this committed to memory?!?!" Despite that, the stories contained within Listening is an Act of Love reached my ear during the fleeting instances when I kept vigil at 90.1 FM, and I was pleasantly surprised that I had absorbed more of these vignettes than I previously thought.

The Storycorps Project is a stunning endeavor that recorded memories that run the emotional gamut from stirring to joyous to painful. Dave Isay edited a plethora of stories that range in quality and duration. He winnowed them into a tidy 270 pages based around five thematic chapters: Home and Family, Work and Dedication, Journeys, History and Struggle, Fire and Water. The book is, as the subtitle claims, a celebration of American life in all of its manifestations, be they ugly or verdant.

The subjects volunteered their time and recollections in traveling and fixed recording booths across the US that digitally captured an exchange between the subject and a facilitator or friend/loved one. The Library of Congress' American Folklife Center houses the Storycorps' recordings, along with a catalog of inestimable value and depth. Oral history, one could contend, is an example of appreciation for an oral tradition whose sinews connect us to our earliest ancestors and their transmission of history. From the WPA interviews to contemporary projects such as the Storycorps, Americans largely celebrate oral history and Listening is an Act of Love taps into this desire with aplomb. The stories are so disparate that they defy a simple review that I would compose in this space.

I walked away from Listening is an Act of Love with an improved appreciation for oral history as a methodological tool that charts the obstacles faced in every day life and the strategies employed to overcome the peaks and valleys. After wrapping up "Fire and Water," the final chapter covering 9/11 and Katrina, I reconsidered the lens by which I interpreted the first decade of this century for Americans. With the September 11 attacks, Katrina, and the colossal failure of the US' financial and economic system, the decade consisted of bookends and a meaty center where ruin was heaped on the United States with an attendant social cost that will be reckoned with for the subsequent decade or longer. Americans will persist and slog through the ruptures we face, and Listening is an Act of Love reinforces the durability of Americans and, possibly, a nebulous American spirit. After the past year, I'm sick of partisanship and empty-headed screeds warning of communism and socialism, and possibly these nuisances are the product of the shocks from '01-'09. I remain positive in spite of the apoplectic, frothing displays that the US will rebuild a foundation of rational centrist approaches to regulation and taxes, and that politicians will forsake short-term political gain to join a discussion of how to safeguard our country. I trust that a toxic political conversation abates in the near future. If the missives in Listening is an Act of Love reveal anything, it's the ability for Americans to harness renewal and hope to rebuild.

Pizzas with Chipotle Sauce

Recently, my cooking preoccupations have reoriented toward pizzas. I love pizza and it is, by far, one of my favorite meals. I've eaten fabulous sorts and some pretty disastrous pizza. For example, the disgusting specimen I was served in Abilene, Kansas was the worst pizza I've consumed--worse than the insipid pie sold from a rural Illinois gas station. If pizza is an option, no matter where I'm at in the world, I often try it if the situation permits. So there's little surprise that I enjoy whipping up a dough and firing the oven up to 500. Peaches and a few other ingredients appeared on my forays into grilled pizzas and, in actuality, my first dabbles with the dish.

I am cooking several pizzas in five weeks for a baby shower hosted at our apartment for close friends who are marrying in two and a half weeks. The exact number of guests for the baby shower is unclear, as is the total of pies and varieties. I'll run the grill and oven and will call upon Mark Bittman's easy pizza dough recipe in How to Cook Everything. In a matter of a couple of hours, the recipe produces a reliably tasty crust and base. The question is what to choose for toppings, and the suggestion window is open.

Recently, I added chipotle peppers to the sauce and boosted the tomato paste by a 1/4 of a cup, or so by eye, to boost the volume and consistency. The result has been a spicy sauce that works quite well with chicken chorizo as long as I balance the proportion of sauce and cheese. We topped the pizza with sauteed spinach last night and I was not blown away, to my disappointment. We learned, however, the longer the chipotle sits, a week in this case, the hotter the sauce. In the past, I eschewed a rolled up crust in favor of a standard flat pizza. I opted to alter my approach as the pictures demonstrate, and we've been impressed with the initial returns. I don't have a fool-proof formula and, as you can imagine, we'll experiment mightily in preparation for the baby shower parade of pizzas.

Brandon Eats a Double Down. Diarrhea Ensues.

Sometimes, to my dismay, I allow a joke to advance from flights of fancy and humor to the realm of possibility. Being snarky has its limits and then there's a time to be silly. That is the case with KFC's new sandwich, the Double Down. For those unfamiliar with this fried behemoth, the add wizards at KFC replaced a sandwich's traditional buns with fillets of original recipe fried chicken. In other words, they opted to forgo bread for maximum cholesterol. In between those golden, grease clogged slabs of chicken one finds the colonel's sauce, two slices of bacon, and slices of monterey jack and pepper jack cheese. I sipped on my A&W root beer while I waited for my name to be called and to peer at the recent darling of dietitians everywhere. The Double Down arrived hot and wrapped in paper to protect the eater from directly handling the greasy, gooey sandwich--a futile pursuit. The predominant flavor, as one would guess, is the fried chicken with hints of bacon mingled with the cheeses. All in all, as long as I neglected the nutrition facts, it was not as deplorable as I...well, envisioned. I can sum it up as anticlimactic.

Official photo

A Double Down's innards (thanks to treehugger for the image)

My brother-in-law, Dylan, visited this week and we snorted about the disgustingly tasty nature of this example of fast food run amok. I worked at a McDonalds and I still have an odd fascination with every unhealthy piece of "food" they and others advertise. For example, after watching Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, I left the theater thinking "I really want a McDonalds' cheeseburger." (No, I didn't have the same reaction after completing Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation). My family was no stranger to fast food and I partake in it when I'm at an airport from time to time. I fondly remember driving to Casey, Illinois, with my grandfather to a Kentucky Fried Chicken to feed myself and cousins. Stated another way, I don't turn my nose up at eating fast food once in a while on a lark or for expediency's sake. Some people have a knee jerk aversion toward fast food--for health and I would argue class reasons--and I won't take issue with that sentiment. From a public health stand point, I do not doubt that it is a blight in a country battling an obesity epidemic. I recognize fast food for what it is, and I don't think that a double cheese burger and coke is a gateway drug to a diet comprised solely of unidentifiable fried chicken parts laden with mysterious sauces that run down my chin as I watch re-runs of Hee Haw. Nor will it lead to a stroke tomorrow considering my diet and exercise. Regardless, Kate humored this excursion and my self-punishing side won't offer up expiation on the cheap. And, frankly, neither did my digestive track, which was not a shock.