“How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex?”
― Julia Child

I’ve learned a lot from Julia Child over the years.

As a young boy watching her on public television, I learned that the kitchen was a place I could work hard and find immense pleasure.

As a young man, she inspired me to tackle complex projects in support of cultivating a rich and engaging community.

So, as her 106th birthday approached I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to celebrate her life and the contributions she made to mine.

Many years ago (April 25, 2010 to be exact), I launched the “Julia Child Supper Club.” It was ostensibly a reaction to the film  “Julie & Julia.” I hated the character of Julie, but I loved her brief: master the art of French cooking, one Julia Child recipe at a time.

And so I claimed the project as my own: I’d cook through Julia’s master work, but worry less about ticking off each recipe and more about engaging an ovarian American text while immersing myself in a globally significant tradition.

At that moment in my life, I’d hardly spent any time in France. I knew little about putting together a menu. I thought cheese was an hors d’oeuvre and salad was an appetizer. . .

As I look back at the record of that first dinner (yes, we kept a log), it strikes me as rather pitiful. . . . We were just barely eight and for the price of $10 and a bottle of wine, I served store-bought salami and cheese, boeuf bourguignon with sauteed potatoes and a chocolate cake (le marquis) gussied up in the guise of my favorite spicy chocolate cookie, the ChaCha.

All sturdy, classic, and satisfying to be sure, but also rather simplistic, uninspired, and mundane. More the cooking of a leisurely Sunday supper with friends you don’t care about impressing, than an inspired, tour-de-force deep-dive into the complexities of the French culinary arts.

Regardless, over the subsequent years, I went on to debone a duck, and stuff it with pâté I’d made myself and wrap it in puff pastry I’d made myself. I created menus inspired by colors, plays, and artists. Instead of buying cheese, I made it, and I even took the Bible up on its suggestion to boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

Through it all, even when I was experimenting beyond her oeuvre, Julia was my joyful, methodical guide.

So to celebrate her birthday, I wanted not just to honor her spirit but to bear witness to the impact she has had on who I am and how I work.

For our special birthday celebration, we increased club dues to $30 plus a bottle of wine to accommodate inflation and build capacity for luxury (I still lost money on the venture). We struggled with the guest list: social media had not always been the force it is now. . . there were more than eight we’d like to invite, more than eight would like to come. . . I set out designing a menu worthy of Julia and satisfying to me. . .

Julia’s favorite upside-down martini (three parts vermouth, one part gin) should be the signature cocktail.

I thought it was important to have both a hot and cold hors d’oeuvre: classic chicken liver mousse and in honor of our shared New England home, lobster canapé.

As a starter, ouefs en gelée, that bizarre mid-century beloved of poached eggs encased in aspic, which I thought would be fun to modernize using tomato instead of beef consomme.

We’ve been talking about “that fish dish” since I first attempted filets de poissons en souffle with mousseline sabyon on July 18, 2010, so that should be our fish course.

Since we’re in the height of summer, I wanted to do a beautiful assortment of macedoines, marinated vegetable salads, like I remember having at a bbq in Villefranche-sur-Saone, taking advantage of the colors and textures on display at the farmer’s market.

Since we’re in the height of summer, I struggled with what to prepare for our main. I didn’t want anything heavy or hot. . . but meaty and flavorful. . . reading Julia’s headnotes more thoroughly, I learned daubes, a variation of beef stew, could be served cold with salad, especially popular in Provence where Julia and Paul eventually spent their Augusts. That would work.

The rest of menu would be shopping. . . cheese, chocolate, and a seasonal fruit tart, flambeed tableside.

It was all a lot, and a lot of work, and not all of it happened as to plan. . . the gelée didn’t exactly gel, the fish soufflé didn’t exactly rise, the local artisanal bakery was out of seasonal fruit tarts. . . but the tomato consomme was a revelation, the fish delicious, and in the end nobody really needed to eat a slice of pie; a pan of flaming cognac was sufficient in itself.

A lot has changed since that first Julia Child dinner: the complexity and sophistication of my cooking and the scope and commitment of my community, to name two. But perhaps more importantly, the liberation from the tyranny of replication that comes through knowledge, experience and faith.

I don’t need to tick off each recipe. I don’t even have to follow the recipe.

Jacques Pepin has described recipes as rivers. They maintain their names over years, they occupy the same general space from generation to generation. But moment to moment, one experience form another, the river is impossibly recreating itself.

Just jump in, and go with the flow. It’ll be great!

. . . as well as an annual beefsteak banquet in Salem’s Historic Derby Street Neighborhood.

I love a festive communal meal especially one with historic resonance, and all the better if I can disrupt gendered spaces in the process!

For our third annual beefsteak banquet, I cooked at my female-identified friend’s house and we invited guests of all genders to come taste our meat. We provided no utensils, but plenty of pesto butter. And in a nod to modern conventions asked guests to bring a finger-friendly veg (if they were so inclined).

Also, I steamed lobsters.

Despite being in mixed company we made no concessions to weaker sensibilities. We were vegans and Paleo-ites, old friends who’d lived in the neighborhood for decades and new friends who’d just moved from a foreign country. It was perhaps a self-selecting crowd, but all were more than capable of breaking into a lobster claw with their bare hands, and none afraid of getting their hands dirty.

In the past, I’d ordered fancy beef from a fancy source, but this year for whatever reason I simply picked up a couple eyes of round at the neighborhood grocer that I dry-brined overnight and found a clever sounding roasting technique (7 minutes per pound at 475 Fahrenheit, then turn off the oven but DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR for two hours).

Alas, my understanding of the relationship of surface area to heat distribution is a little fuzzy, so while our beefsteak was delicious, and quite tender especially after a dunk in jus and a dollop of pesto, it frankly resembled “the other white meat” more than boeuf. . .

[In hindsight, I should not have calculated using the total weight, but something like an average, and it probably would not have been ruinous to open the oven and take a quick internal temp mid-rest.]

For a while, I attempted to correct folks complimenting the delicious and tender “pork,” but eventually realized, “why, bother?”

Their joy and delight was the same whether the subject of the sentence was accurate or not, and the subject of their sentence had little invested in being correctly identified. Pork or beef or lobster, eaten by male or female identified, the goal’s the same: delicious delightful decadent.

We’ve broken a lot of beefsteak rules over the years, but we’ve also been militant about maintaining the integrity of the tradition.

How do we decide where to draw the line? What’s essential to the experience, worth defending? And, what’s a relic of a particular time and place, ripe for expansion and creation?

It’s a series of questions that’s relevant to much more than reinvigorating nineteenth century dining traditions. Indeed, it’s essentially the framework for civilization’s evolution, and I’m starting to think the “answers” can be found in the grammar. . .

What’s essential are not really the subjects: men, beef, pork, New York.

What’s worth defending is the spirit of the experience (verbs): camaraderie, abundance, getting your hands dirty, freedom from dependence on tools (technology).

Diving deep into the nature of experience, exploiting the potential, and expanding the invitation are, I believe, the root of expansive life affirming traditions.

How different would some of the seismic debates we’ve navigated over the years be if we spent less effort arguing over the subjects (e.g. Amendment 19, Who gets to vote?) and took more care defending the spirit of our shared experience (e.g. Amendments 18 and 21, Prohibition and its repeal)?

On the first 90 degree day of the year, two pots of water are boiling away on the stove. We’re elbow deep in steaming potatoes plunked down and kneaded right on top of the kitchen table. Children are pouting. Children are running. Strangers are introducing themselves. I’m orchestrating a complex training scheme to facilitate efficient, non-stop production. . .

Why?

Dia de Ñoquis fell on Pasta Friday!

Ever enamored by ancient craft and emerging practice, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to celebrate the Argentinian tradition of making gnocchi on the 29th day of each month merging with the Bay-area trend of inviting the neighbors for an economical pasta feast each Friday.

For some reason I got in my head that children were essential to this manifestation. Perhaps I thought their tiny fingers would be effective tools for tenderly rolling slim snakes of dough? Or that the imprint of a tradition from childhood is more alluring than the compelled practice of adults?

Regardless, children were sought and their parents secured. The child-free and the child-averse filled out our tribe.

A google sheet assured all labor was shared and our diet was balanced (antipasti, salad, a veggie sauce and a meaty sauce, plus dessert). . . I just had to figure out how to make gnocchi for 12. . .

Mercifully there are many online tutorials and the potato dumplings are essentially simple in their ingredients and technique. There are some tips: bake don’t boil the starchy not waxy potatoes, use as little flour as possible, and don’t work too hard.

Our expectations were low.

Gnocchi has a reputation for being leaden and gummy in even the best intentioned restaurants. We could surely only aspire to such mediocrity?

Inspired by a circulating kitchen vignette, I decided at the last minute to make gnocchi two ways: one, traditional potato; a second, with the addition of parsnips.

Why do just one hard thing, when two would be so much more interesting!

The texture of the parsnips was very different from the potatoes. The texture of the parsnip dough was very different from the potato dough. Would it work? Was it a disaster?

In short, yes and definitely not.

We ended up with two platters brimming with airy pillows of starch that everyone felt some ownership of. The parsnips were a revelation; their earthiness contrasting beautifully with the grassiness of a bright pesto. The traditional variation was a lesson in contrasts: delicate dumplings with a satisfying ragu blanket.

We could have prepared three times as much and still wanted more.

Will I continue to religiously observe these rituals?

No.

Nevertheless, now that I’ve learned some basic techniques trained a pool of skilled laborers, I could imagine seeing the 29th coming up on my calendar and dreaming of some alternative root veg to roast, knead with flour and transform into a feast. . .

So too with Fridays. We need not be legalistic about these things, but when opportunity and desire converge, why not boil an extra pound of spaghetti and invite a friend you haven’t met yet?

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call 

Ye to each other make; I see 

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; 

My heart is at your festival, 

My head hath its coronal, 

The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all. 

– William Wordsworth “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”

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We recognized them waiting for the elevator in Galeries Lafayette and carrying their folding tables down Boulevard Haussmann.

They were at the boucher, and the boulangerie, and would have been at the bougie maker if we could have found one, gathering supplies, imagining the future.

Their striking monochromatic ensembles gave them away standing on street corners and confusing taxi drivers crisscrossing the city of light.

They were one of us. We were one of them.

We came from Montreal and Abu Dhabi, Paris and Portland, Sydney and Salem.

United in a shared vision of the beauty we could create together, we committed to doing the work and giving up control.

Was it anarchy or authoritarianism?
Or, were we simply extending the line so far we broke the binary?

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In 1988, Francois Pasquier returned to Paris after a time away and wanted to meet-up with some old friends. There were a lot of them and they didn’t all know each other, so he told them to bring an elegant picnic to the Bois de Boulogne and wear white, so they could find each other.

Over the next thirty years, thousands have continued to gather in Paris, and later in cities all over the world including Salem, bringing with them their tables, chairs, linens, silver, crystal, and china to enjoy an elegant dinner (starter, main, cheese, and dessert, s’il vous plait) in a public place, all in white.

The city of Paris has never issued a permit for Diner en Blanc.

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I first learned about Diner en Blanc in 2011 when The New York Times wrote about it. Pasquier’s son had organized one in Montreal in 2009 and was bringing the concept to New York for the first time later that year.

So inspired was I by this pop-up gathering devoted to beauty and outside the bounds of commerce, that I, along with a devoted team of ambassadors, made manifest Salem’s first unofficial dinner in white the next year. Some 70 cities around the world have since been similarly inspired.

For five years, Salem’s dinner in white grew and expanded, from a friendly 50 in year one to a near mob of 300 in year five. Expectations increased in proportion (it seemed to me) to diminishing surprise and delight. Born an oneiric folly, it had grown into a resource-hungry institution, requiring excessive explanation, interpretation, and definition.

And so, I pulled the plug, promising to dream a new dream.

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There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 

The earth, and every common sight, 

To me did seem 

Apparelled in celestial light, 

The glory and the freshness of a dream. 

It is not now as it hath been of yore;— 

Turn wheresoe’er I may, 

By night or day. 

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

 

When the email arrived, I wasn’t exactly sure how or what it would look like, but I knew I would go. I set the intention and started giving the idea the scaffolding of language.

For the 30th anniversary of Le diner en blanc en Paris, for the first time the organizers were inviting the international community to participate.

The Paris event is a bit of an outlier in the international constellation of Diners en Blancs. You must be invited; you cannot sign-up. There is no cost to participate. If you do something gauche like wear khakis, drink to excess, or reveal location details to the media, you won’t be invited again, ever.

I received an invitation this year because I had previously signed up to receive information about Boston’s Diner en Blanc. Even though I never attended, I was given preferential access for having previously expressed desire.

Ultimately, I bought two pairs of tickets ($25 each) in the Montreal squad and a folding table and two chairs we could pick up at Galeries Lafayette the day before the event ($67).

A plus-one is mandatory for participation, and unbelievably, your plus-one historically was required to be opposite sex.

Uncharacteristically, I had an opposite-sex plus-one confirmed in advance, so the two extra spaces were an investment in surprise and delight, as well as being a thorn in the side of our well organized table captain as I couldn’t actually confirm our tablemates until hours before our ultimate rendezvous.

As we packed our white totes with candelabrum from Missouri, linens from Fabindia, and china from the personal collection of the director of the Musee des arts decoratifs, our Paris-based Salem friend confirmed she’d bring cheese and a friend-we-hadn’t-met-yet from an odd-numbered San Diego-based group said she’d pick up dessert.

At the market that Sunday morning, we’d bought some porc roti for our main and asperges blanches that I’d blanch in butter and some breton sel gris, chill and serve with Maille mayonnaise as our starter.

The hundred or so members of the Montreal squad were supposed to meet at Monument Marechal Gallieni, just south of Les Invalides at 7.45 pm sharp. From there, we didn’t know where we’d end up. We were supposed to have a Metro ticket with us.

Our francophone taxi driver driver became more and more confused as we passed thousands of others who looked like us gathering on street corners and in parks across the city, and yet we urged him on. We weren’t there yet.

For the next hour or so we participated in the mild chaos that inevitably accompanies moving 14,000 folk laden with earthly delights and stripped of the agency of knowledge.

Moses, I feel your pain.

Where are we going? How much farther? Can we just stop right here? Do they even know?

And then we turned the corner, and with Le Tour Eiffel in the background we laid eyes on our promised land. Stretching from Le Grand Palais to Les Invalides, the esplanade was overcome by our co-created beauty.

Each squad had its place, and each table its number. We efficiently set-up, waved our napkins to signal completion, toasted, and sat to sup.

There was an EDM dj and an elegant chanteuse. Extraordinary hats and creative tablescapes. At our table, even a marriage proposal.

And at midnight, when we lit 14,000 sparklers in sync with the Eiffel Tower’s hourly sparkling, I think I glimpsed a new dream.

What’s the most important and costly conversation Americans aren’t having?

According to a group of medical and wellness leaders, it’s how we want to die.

If 75% of Americans say they want to die at home, why do only 25% of them do?

As a consequence of the United States’ unique profit-first health care, religious taboos associated with death and the afterlife, and, I would contend, a general culture that shuns any sign of vulnerability, most of us aren’t prepared mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally or financially for our inevitable deaths.

[And, of course, Americans aren’t unique in their struggle to come to terms with death and dying, but as I live in the United States and these are the complexities and realities I and my community are navigating, I think it’s worth specifying.]

Enter: “Death over Dinner”

It all started with a 2013 University of Washington graduate course called “Let’s Have Dinner and Talk About Death.” Since that first course, they’ve facilitated and tracked over 500 Death Dinners in 20 countries. . . including one last Sunday in Salem.

Ever a sucker for highly organized experimental gatherings incorporating food, drink, and big ideas, I couldn’t resist the urge to start a shared google sheet and send an invitation to have dinner and talk about death. . .

Our evening would span essentially three parts.

Part I

We’d gather under the pergola to get to know each other. Of our twelve, some were family and some were strangers. All of our bodies were in different states of deterioration. Some of us were in the midst of loss, others could only imagine. Essentially we shared nothing, except our humanity.

One of our twelve signed up to bring a cocktail. I had suggested Painkillers, created on the island of Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands, an odd assortment of Pusser’s rum, pineapple, orange and cream of coconut. Another brought oysters we taught each other to shuck in situ, finding joy and sustenance in the sharing of knowledge and bearing witness to the window between life and death bivalves offer the industrious and adventurous.

On the kitchen island were arrayed an assortment of images related to death and dying. From Blake and Goya to the outsider artist Gregory Warmack and the Buddhist Wheel of Existence, we each selected one that spoke to us in some way, and then used that image as an invitation to introduce ourselves and our relationship to the evening’s topic.

Part II

We then moved into the darkened dining room, where our image cards also served as our place cards, arbitrarily but decidedly assigning each her place (oddly, we ended up segregated by gender).

Once settled, we were invited to remember those we love but see no more by lighting a candle in their honor. As the room grew brighter with the memory of family and friends, mentors we never met and beloveds we hardly knew, our host led us in the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.

In the kitchen, a buffet feast awaited: fresh spring vegetables bursting with life and a play on oyakodon, a traditional Japanese dish, literally parent and child, featuring chicken and eggs. Our version was a fricasee of young, organic, free-range chicken stained with turmeric, saffron and chili, served with hard boiled eggs marinated in a cilantro chimichurri, as well as a whole black sea bass served with caviar. Which came first. . . in life we are in death. . .

Back at the table, our cards had yet one more purpose. On the back of each was an invitation to ask a question, or pick a “Death” or “Life” reading.

Our questions came largely from the Death over Dinner folks: “Name the three person committee you would want consulted on any decisions about whether to continue life-prolonging treatments, like mechanical ventilation. Who would you want to chair that committee? Have you informed these people and put it in writing? If not, what’s stopping you?” and “If you could design your funeral, wake, or memorial, what it would be like?”

Our readings came from everywhere: The New Zealand Book of Common Prayer, the poetry of Rumi, scientific reports about cellular death and journalistic reports about trends in the funeral industry.

Be assured: we finalized no answers, drew no conclusions; we did not conquer death. . .

For one, our time was short.

Nevertheless, we did launch a conversation, identified tools to come back to, and broke through the fear that nearly all of us had identified at the beginning, not just of death itself but of talking about it.

Part III

We closed with a toast of eau de vie, the water of life, and broke into free-form conversation spilling into different rooms following different conversational threads. . .

The next day I circulated a workbook that offered practical guidance and resources for end of life decision making.

And yes, I’ve already started a google sheet collecting ideas for next time. . .

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

The plan was to have a fairly traditional (for me) observance of the Easter Triduum, the three day period between Maundy Thursday and Easter that recalls the passion, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus as recorded in the canonical gospels. Nothing too disruptive. . .

Nevertheless, true to form, I didn’t exactly stick to plan.

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In the past, I’ve gone in to Boston on Wednesday of Holy Week for an old-school service of Tenebrae. Latin for “darkness,” the ancient ceremony involves slowly extinguishing candles until the church is completely dark at which point a book is slammed shut symbolizing the earthquake that followed Christ’s death, and alerting the assembled to depart.

This year, Wednesday of Holy Week fell on the night my experimental contemplation group was scheduled to meet, so we decided to organize a service of Tenebrae for ourselves.

We gathered in the upper room of one of our own, surrounded by candles, and supported by a YouTube playlist of sacred music featuring performers as diverse as Mahalia Jackson and The St. Olaf College choir.

We each took turns reading. Together we entered into darkness and welcomed the stillness, until I dropped a big, heavy book shattering our calm and shocking our bodies and souls, in anticipation of the journey before us.

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Maundy Thursday has most recently been for me the most powerful of these highly symbolic Holy Week ceremonies.

While there’s much debate about what the word Maundy actually means and where it comes from, the ritual generally reanimates the Last Supper, where Jesus broke bread with his disciples, washed their feet, and gave a new commandment: “to love one another, as I have loved you.”

After touring the digital imaging studios of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, I joined the Maundy Thursday service I’m accustomed to attending.

All was as it has been – beautiful and studied and appropriate – but I couldn’t help desiring a little disruption, especially considering the events being recounted are among the most disruptive in history.

Perhaps those at a different place in their journey would feel differently?

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Since facilitating a Passover seder for a hundred or so Southern Baptists in Florida some years ago, I’ve cultivated a tradition of hosting a Good Friday seder for a dozen or so adventurous seekers in Salem each year.

My version is more humanistic and overtly queer than that first “Jews for Jesus” version. While the Baptists took pains to locate the radical rabbi of Nazareth as the meaning and purpose of each symbol of the seder, we look instead to the order established to commemorate the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt as an opportunity to explore stories of liberation and exile in our own lives and time.

While we acknowledge that there’s virtually no historical evidence to suggest the Hebrews were ever in Egypt, we can’t escape the reality that just as the Jewish people have throughout their history been called out from oppression under prophetic leadership, we too find ourselves in various cycles of bondage, exile and liberation.

We remember the atrocities of the holocaust, and assent that never again will we allow fear of each other to give rise to despotic leadership. We recognize the wandering of the Rohingya as a modern analog of the Israelites’ wandering in the desert and take responsibility for giving voice to their movement and existence. We remember that many American slaves had to cross the Ohio River to find their freedom in the North, just as Moses led the Hebrew people across the Red Sea to their promised land. And we put an orange on our seder plate, because legend suggests a prominent rabbi once proclaimed “a woman has much of a place in Jewish leadership as an orange on the seder plate.”

We find spitting out the seeds of homophobia, racism and misogyny to be very appropriate indeed to our observance of Passover. Thanks for the suggestion, Rabbi!

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For Easter, I had kindly been invited to join a fancy lunch reservation, but it didn’t feel quite right to me. . .

I understood why, when I got an email from Vinland, the controversial, hyper-local restaurant in Portland, Maine, I’d been wanting to try (check out their manifesto), advertising a seder on the third day of Passover (coincidentally Easter Sunday).

My plan was to head in to Cambridge on Holy Saturday for a Soulelujah! dance party and then wander through the night until arriving at the 4:30 am Easter Vigil at the Society of Saint John the Evangelist just outside Harvard Square.

(Un)fortunately, I thought it would be smart to take a nap Saturday evening and didn’t wake up until after the last train had departed Salem. . . so, no Easter for me this year. . .

Instead, Easter morning, I was on a Greyhound to Portland where I ate and drank my way through that foodie haven until Seder time.

Vinland uses only locally sourced ingredients – meaning no olive oil, no citrus, no pepper. . .

Our matzah was made in-house. We dipped our karpas (local mache) into vinegar instead of salt water (a sephardic tradition). There was one seating and a flat fee including table wine.

The Vinland Haggadah used much of the same source material my own did. I sat next to a young Thai family who had simply made dinner reservations not knowing what a seder was and a couple of siblings fairly new to the area, one Jewish, one not really.

Our table of fourteen was communal and friendly, despite being comprised of strangers who had vastly different relationships with the tradition.

We laughed and we sang. We lessened our joy by removing wine from our glasses for each of the ten plagues and we opened more bottles of wine as more plates of food came from the kitchen.

We exchanged cards, with intent to come back soon. . . if not Jerusalem, Vinland?

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But what of resurrection? Of new life and light? Would all my ritualized darkness and wandering have opportunity to be miraculously transformed?

Thank God for schism!

A quirk in church history means there are at least two Easters. Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter on a different calendar than many western Christians and this year Orthodox Easter would follow the week after my own tradition.

I’m blessed with a Russian Orthodox church in the neighborhood, complete with blue onion domes, but am embarrassed to admit that in the decade or so I’ve lived nearby I’ve only been inside once, to a lecture.

This year would be different.

On Holy-Saturday-Take-Two, I organized a house reading of the play “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail,” depicting what’s reported to be the first act of American civil disobedience. Then, had a long, leisurely dinner, and post-dinner coffee, before wandering over to St. Nicholas’s for the 11:30 pm Easter Vigil.

The church was dark and full. There were babies and babushkas. Chanting and prostrating.

We stood and we sang and sang and stood and stood. Soon people started putting their coats on. . . but we hadn’t even lit our candles! We were still in darkness. . . it couldn’t be over yet?

Little did I know the service would continue until 3 in the morning (and we’d stand the whole time). We’d light our candles and process around the block chanting ancient hymns, accompanied by icons. Back at the church, the priest would knock on the closed doors, and they’d be opened to us, revealing a resplendent sanctuary bathed in light and incense.

Finally, Easter!

I was amazed that I’d been oblivious to all this glory for as long as I’d lived in the neighborhood, and then realized I’d been oblivious to it for as long as I’d been alive.

Easter at St. Nicholas reminded me that there is a promised land just on the other side, if I get up and go.

There is a light to illumine the darkness, if I stand at the door and knock.

That there is glory all around, if I’m not too oblivious to notice.

After a lifetime of not observing Purim, I made hamantaschen twice this year!

Purim is a Jewish holiday that commemorates Queen Esther’s saving of the Jewish people from Haman, who was planning to kill all the Jews. The story is recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther, with contemporary overtones I can’t help but notice.

Briefly I’ve paraphrased the story for folks more familiar with American politics than Jewish history:

Steve Bannon [Haman] said to President Trump [King Xerxes], “There is a certain people dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom whose customs are different from ours. . . it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them. If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued to ban them. . .”

When Mordecai learned of this plot he said to his cousin Melania [Esther], “Do not think that because you are in the palace you alone will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your position for such a time as this?”

So Melania said, “I will go to him, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”

And Melania went to the President and said, “If I have found favor with you, Your Majesty, and if it pleases you, grant me my life—this is my petition. And spare my people—this is my request. For though I have hid it from you, I am one of them and you have sold me and my people to be destroyed.”

And because President Trump’s love for Melania was so great he chose to use his power to save an entire people instead of destroy them.

And so it’s been since 500 BCE, Jews and Jewish adjacent folk have been dressing up, drinking wine, and eating hamantaschen (i.e. triangular cookies said to resemble the tri-cornered hat worn by the evil Haman) to celebrate the time a beauty queen risked her life to save an entire people.

When I realized Purim this year fell on dia de noquis, I couldn’t resist throwing an impromptu fete honoring both Esther’s banquet and the Argentinian tradition of eating gnocchi on the 29th of each month, historically the day before payday.

I sent out last minute invitations by text, as the potatoes for the gnocchi went in the oven and the lamb for a fruity ragu went in the slow cooker.

The research regimen was intense: I reread Esther’s story, researched gnocchi recipes, and explored techniques for shaping hamantaschen.

The headcount was spotty; one “no” transformed into an invitation to do the same later in the week at theirs, with hours to spare I hadn’t heard from others, but in the end, we found a minyan of sorts, risking a Wednesday night to try something new.

 

“You hate nothing you have made.”

Since 1549, Thomas Cranmer in the opening line of his [modernized] Collect for Lent in the Book of Common Prayer has been reminding us that the act of creation is actually a labor of love.

Serendipitously for my ongoing project of disrupting holidays, Ash Wednesday, the first day of the penitential season of Lent, fell this year on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day.

I find both observances awkward: Ash Wednesday for all its talk of the morbidity of dirt and Valentine’s for its apotheosis of coupling (whether homo- or hetero-).

I prefer to find in the imposition of ashes a sprinkling of cosmic star dust and in Valentine’s an invitation to connect with the Other.

Consequently, I aligned my disruptive observance of a holy Lent with the two year old movement of Glitter + Ash.

Instead of showing up at a church to have a priest remind me that “I am dust, and to dust I shall return,” I invited my extended community to a cocktail party: raising a toast to love that dares to speak, and marking ourselves with a sign of gratuitous liberation.

I realize the theology here is murky and I’ll let the theologians tustle over those fine points.

But for us, playing with glitter eye make-up purchased with much confusion and uncertainty from a local drugstore, was an opportunity to enliven in new and surprising ways two traditions that have shaped our lives.

Which reminds me of the Peabody Essex Museum’s latest exhibition, “PlayTime,” on view through May 6, 2018.

Reportedly, the first major thematic exhibition celebrating the role of play in contemporary art and culture, I found the exhibition challenging me to consider whether “art” should always finds its meet modifier in “fine;” whether the serious connoisseur is always superior to the provocative amateur (where amateur leans more on the Latin meaning of “lover” than the modern meaning of “unpaid”).

Exhibition curator and PEM’s Curator of the Present Tense Trevor Smith notes, “Play is a catalyst for creativity, where we make up the rules and learn how to negotiate and resolve conflict.”

Play involves a level of vulnerability and letting go of preconceived notions or boundaries.

Indeed, Martin Creed’s, Work No. 329, a room filled with bubble gum pink balloons, which opens the exhibition, disrupts the casual visitor’s assumption of just how much glee one should experience in a serious art museum, (or maybe even as an adult?) though the rules governing who can enter and how remain as draconian as ever.

I was especially struck by the seven pairs of car wash brushes displayed in the Museum’s most historic East India Marine Hall. The juxtaposition is provocative. The colors are fun. The air is charged with the brushes’ sound and breeze. But, we’re not allowed to touch. And, I was troubled, first, by the awkward placement of the brushes in the room feeling both temporary and just off somehow. . . then, by the displacement of both function and labor. Is Marx whispering as loudly in your ear as he is in mine?

There is as much darkness and disgust in this examination of play, as there is fun and games; as many rules, as invitations. The sugar rush is as intense as the inevitable crash.

For, what every serious player comes to understand is that it takes a lot of work to understand the rules so well you can manipulate them. . . and then you realize just how much you’ve been being manipulated all along.

All play assumes some level of consent, even if simply the assumption that we’re all here for the love of the game.

With apologies to Cranmer [and other serious connoisseurs of theology] for playing with his prose, I can’t help but imagine a new Lenten Collect for PlayTime with Glitter + Ash. Think of it as a labor of love?

Always and Everlasting , who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost welcome all those who come: Create and make in us new hearts, that we worthily lamenting our limitations, and acknowledging our selfishness, may find in thee perfect freedom and liberation. Amen.

 

 

Finally, reclining on my luxury Mexican coach en route direct to Ciudad de Mexico, I’m feeling much better about how this little pet project is playing out.

After what I hope will be the saddest Christmas Eve of my life (completely self-inflicted I completely realize), everything’s been looking up, since those three Alabama state troopers joined me in the Montgomery bus station to arrest a passenger getting off the bus I alone was getting on.

I finally arrive in New Orleans at 6 in the morning Christmas Day and head straight to my hotel. I had called the day before to let them know about my schedule, and make sure it would still be ok to check in. . . the next morning. . .

Perhaps among the reasons the Old No 77 was recently named one of the best new city hotels in America, is they were most accommodating of my irregularity (and didn’t ask too many questions). The day staff had communicated with the night staff, so I hardly even had to introduce myself. Was given late check out and a first floor room. . .  where I quickly fell to enjoy the best four hours of sleep on this trip so far.

Christmas lunch beckoned!

While the Old No 77’s nationally acclaimed Caribbean creole restaurant Compere Lapin was another reason for choosing it as a homebase, I wouldn’t have opportunity to enjoy on this trip, as a Salem friend’s New Orleans’ family invited me to join them for Christmas lunch uptown.

Over roast beef and yorkshire pudding (salad after the main, cheese and fruit before dessert), I shared some of the peculiarities of my journey with my kind and curious hosts: so many questions! And me, so few answers. . .

A couple thoughts though are coming into focus:

1. It’s not so much busses I like, but being chauffeured (and why I’m coming around to positive prospects of driverless cars).
2. I know absolutely nothing about racism, except that I am afflicted by it.
3. Choosing the hard and difficult thing is not superior to the pleasant and nice thing just because it’s hard and difficult.

The highilght of lunch, though? Cafe Brulot! A traditional New Orleans after dinner coffee, flambeed tableside.

A festive end to a festive Christmas, made especially so, by the deprivation of the nights before.

I get a ride to the station a little early to check out its mid-century murals depicting highligts of Louisiana history.

Then on to Houston, San Antonio, Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, where I had a little run-in (not serious at all) with border control I’ll write about tomorrow. . . but now I rest, basking in the plush leather of my luxury coach as the Mexican landscape passes by. . .

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

“This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Our driver to Atlanta, Yvette, perkily greets us leaving Charlotte at 3.30 in the morning of Christmas Eve Day. And, as she begins to describe our itinerary I begin to really question what I’m up to with this whole project.

Traffic into Atlanta will likely be light, Yvette tells us, as most people have hopefully already made it to where they need or want to be this Christmas Eve. . . which raises the question of why we’re on this bus? Where do we need or want to be and why aren’t we there already?

In some sense, it is exactly the bus where I want to be: in motion, with intention, plenty of time and space, getting “there” regardless of what or where there is.

But I’m tired and worn at this particular moment. I don’t really need to be going anywhere at all, and what I really want is to simply be snug.

Nevertheless, I do feel like the Greyhound is the modern equivalent of Mary and Joseph’s donkey. If they were heading to Bethlehem today, I’m pretty sure they’d be here with me on the floor of the Montgomery bus station.

And my Mary and Joseph experiences are increasingly troubling.

+++

If the NY Port Authority was all organized chaos clearly consequent of holiday travel, the bus station in Richmond, VA, was just plain chaos.

We arrived wildly off-schedule – something like two hours, with the official Greyhound bus tracker showing arrival in Atlanta 4+ hours late. Our driver told us to leave our things on the bus as we’d be returning to the same. The attendant on the ground said we needed to collect our things as we were transferring to a new bus. . . yet another official suggested we could leave our things for now, but would have to collect them at some point in the future, and of course Greyhound was not responsible for any valuables. All this information was conveyed person to person, telephone style. No general announcements deemed worthy enough for all to hear. . .

According to the official schedule, we were supposed to have a two hour layover in Richmond, the beloved Capital of the Confederacy, a break which would have given me time to grab some award-winning bbq I’d sourced in the neighborhood and then cross the tracks to perambulate a portion of recently-in-the-news Monument Ave and contemplate the value of Civil War monuments.

But none of that was now possible as I had absolutely no idea how long we were staying in Richmond. Would they try to get us out as soon as possible to make up time? Were they contractually obligated to have a break of a specific duration? Were we waiting on a bus or driver to arrive? How far away were they?

Amidst all this chaos, I guiltily sought an assuring alliance with an obvious peer. While there had been no real displays of wealth or prestige amongst those of us boarding in New York, there did seem to be a variety of folks making the journey together: old and young, families of various shapes, humans of many colors. In Richmond, however, I distinctly felt my whiteness and my expectation of its privileges.  

We ran from one end of the station to the other as announcements were made about travelers not going to Raleigh and then travelers only going to Raleigh. At one point the announcement sounded more like “Riley,” which is different? But conflated our understanding of who was leaving from which gate. . . had something changed? Or did they just mispeak?

Seated in the station, re-arranging my bags, I bumped into a woman looking remarkably like Taystee from Orange is the New Black. I immediately apologized, though she defiantly held my gaze for an awkwardly long time before condescending to  excuse me, which I gratefully thanked her for. . .

Some two hours after arriving in Richmond, and a good twenty minutes after the Raleigh-only bus had boarded but not yet left, we fought through a bottleneck to board the bus heading to Atlanta. It was nearly full. . . I took the first seat I could find as there didn’t seem to be many more. . . someone mentioned there was one in the middle of the back row? Is that where the infamous decapitation happened? My ally went to investigate. . . there was indeed a seat in the middle of the back row but it was currently being occupied by a pitbull. . . J. would take another bus. . .

I’m sure there are lovely places in Charlotte, NC, aka the Queen City, but the bus station at three in the morning is not among them. The pitbull owner and I bonded over this.

A group from our cohort sought assistance from the info desk. . . anticipating that we were soon going to be asked to show documentation that we as a group were not in possession of, our thinking was the powers that be should have this information, so they could start making a plan. . .

But as the info desk officer continued to explain that our driver should have given us a reboarding pass when we got off, I frustratingly interrupted to again say that that was indeed our problem: we had asked our driver for reboarding passes and he said he did not have any to give us, and that indeed, we did not need any.

His response: “If you’d listen to me, I’m giving you some good information.”
Mine: “Unfortunately, it’s not useful.”
In turn: He turns away from our entire group, and asks someone in line next to us what their question is.

With all these delays and confusions I couldn’t but think of the Japanese train company that recently apologized for departing 20 seconds yearly and causing great inconvenience to many. Why can’t we have nice things like that in America? Our corporations don’t have enough cash?

In the end, we all just got back on the bus without showing any documentation at all, but not without much kerfuffle.

And arrived in Atlanta two hours late, requiring me and at least a dozen others to remake our Christmas plans.
+++

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

Instead of Christmas Eve in New Orleans, a cozy bed in a boutique hotel, Christmas cabaret at the Ace, and midnight mass in the Garden Distric, I’m sitting on the floor of the Montgomery, AL, bus station.

[Reminder to research Montgomery bus riots.]

I will mention that I briefly entertained the thought of going ahead and flying this leg of the journey. . . for $200 I could get to New Orleans, through Charlotte, in time to do everything I had planned, but that just felt like cheating.

Instead, I was offered very, very many drugs in Atlanta, had a lovely conversation with a young actor from Montgomery (who thought I was 25!), and now find myself sitting on the grungy floor of the Montgomery bus station, laptop plugged into a wall socket. Except for a young Greyhound employee and a 19 year old mother of two trying to get back to them in Chicago, we are alone.

I had tried to find a church near the bus station here in Montgomery to go to Christmas Eve services, but such a prospect proved elusive on this desolate stretch of regional highway. As resourceful as I am, the Greyhound has brought me so low, I can’t even find a church in Alabama.

Echoing Christina Rossetti’s bleak winter, a bus station floor will have to suffice this muggy Alabama Christmas Eve.