So THAT's what freelancing is like?

I recently posted a little ditty (aka: true story) on MediaBistro's user-generated-content blog We the 'Bistro. In addition to said ditty, you might find there some other entertaining tales of woe, intrigue and, of course, feasting. Or maybe just some tips on how to avoid the first (the woe), enjoy the second (intrigue), and arrive at the third (the feasting). Might just be a blog you should check out in all your spare surfing time.

Until then, enjoy the tale of Where's the Nearest Fire Extinguisher?

To whet your appetite (though I'm confident you actually began salivating when I mentioned the word feasting), here are the opening lines of said ditty:

This afternoon I rushed into the small film production office somewhat late even though the gig’s short hours are very flexible. Currently this particular gig involves mailing out daily orders (calling it “fulfillment” makes it sound more impressive), and the Fed-Ex man who dictates my afternoon deadline was due in about 15 minutes.

“Sorry I’m late,” I explained as I stepped inside. “I was putting out fires.” 

“How do you have fires to put out? You’re a writer,” Ian, the production manager guy, quipped a little seriously. 

to be continued here

It's All About Family in NOLA

finally...the last of the New Orleans posts from my July visit there

To meet Chef Leah Chase is to love her. To eat her food is to know she loves those she cooks for.

We first met Leah on Thursday night at a gala in her honor. The Southern Food & Beverage Museum was naming its main gallery after her. As we were each introduced to her, I leaned in to say hello over the sound of the nearby band. Surprising me, she greeted me in grandmotherly fashion with, “You look like a work of art.” It felt like the kind of exchange that could have been followed with her calling some young man over and then shooing us off together, saying, “You kids go have a good time.”

This same gentle yet no-nonsense, welcome-into-the-family quality emanated from her as she welcomed us into the kitchen at Dooky Chase’s on Saturday, greeting us with hugs and kisses before pausing to sign cookbooks for some other guests. Even at 86 and with her 26-year-old grandson, Edgar “Dooky” Chase IV, taking on some of the chef duties, she is clearly the one running the place, as she has been since the ‘40s.

In the steamy kitchen, Dooky, with important input from Grandma Leah (he added more butter to make her happy), prepared shrimp clemenceau, one of the restaurant’s specialty dishes. Though Leah was never classically trained, the current generation is. Dooky recently returned from studying at France’s Le Cordon Bleu. When he added garnish to the finished dish, Leah said that was the Cordon Bleu coming out, improving presentation without changing the traditional food.

After the demonstration we made our way through the buffet that’s used only on especially busy weekends. Of the fare we chowed on while sitting beneath Leah’s saved-from-Katrina art collection (but that’s another story), my favorites were the savory, buttery, perfectly-textured Southern-style mac ‘n cheese; the jambalaya with its spicy tomato flavor; and the fried chicken. It was Creole cuisine at its comfortable, family-flecked best.

Dooky Chase's Shrimp Clemenceau

1 stick butter
2 medium potatoes (peeled and diced small)
2 lb small shrimp (peeled and deveined)
2 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
1/2 cup button mushrooms
1 cup green peas
1/4 tsp chopped fresh parsley
1/3 cup white wine
salt and pepper

Melt butter in 2-quart saucepan. Add potatoes. Cook 5 minutes
Add shrimp, garlic and mushrooms. Cook until shrimp are tender.
Add peas, parsley and wine. Salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 5 minutes.

Yield: 4 servings.

For your further New Orleans pleasure, here are links to some of the other stories produced by our little troupe of journalists:

Soaking Up the Big Easy by Seanan Forbes
Tales from a Culinary Adventure in the Big Easy by Jeanette Valentine
Where the Eating is Easy by Sonia Alleyne
Heritage and History as the Secret Ingredient by Denise A. Campbell
tour photos by Zave Smith

Voting for Pork Chops

a retro-post from my New Orleans tour

Willie Mae’s Scotch House is best known for its secret recipe fried chicken but its pork chops might be the real food gem of this Sixth Ward neighborhood restaurant.

Willie Mae Seaton, the restaurant’s founder, still lives next door but finally retired two years ago—at the young age of 92—when the restaurant re-opened post-Katrina. She handed over the reins and the secret recipes to her great-granddaughter, Chef Kerry Seaton, who grew up doing a little bit of everything around the restaurant. Kerry, 29, appears to have inherited some savvy-businesswoman genes in addition to the culinary ones. She’s been confidently improving some of her great-grandma’s business practices, adding to the menu, and dreaming of expanding the restaurant.

We arrived as the lunch crowd was departing (Willie Mae’s only serves lunch), and Kerry invited us to crowd into the small kitchen while she revealed a few tricks of her trade: the secret to good catfish is the cast iron skillet it’s cooked in. After the catfish was done, the rest of the media crew followed the food to the home-spun charm of the dining room, but I hung back in the kitchen while Kerry made more catfish for her grandpa (it’s his favorite).

Tall, slightly-stooped Grandpa Charles Seaton helps out in the kitchen and had been hovering quietly in the background while we all crowded around Kerry. Once the frenzy was gone, he became more vocal, easily confessing that Kerry’s his favorite grandkid and he doesn’t try to hide that.

Once I finally made it to the dining room, I discovered that my favorite is the pork chops. They’re just regular fried pork chops flavored with salt, pepper and Cajun seasoning, but they were delicious. My pork chop meal was rounded out with red beans and rice, green beans, and bread pudding for dessert. It’s a meal that begs me to return to New Orleans again as soon as possible.

Stay tuned for another post from a must-visit New Orleans restaurant.

And while you're waiting, check out my other New Orleans write-ups:
Dinner at Rambla (Nashville Scene, Bites blog, July 9)
Breakfast at Li'l Dizzy's (Bites blog, July 15)
Two Sisters Kitchen's Shrimp & Okra (Bites blog, July 17)
Funk and Flambé at Brennan's Restaurant (Bites blog, July 22)

Meeting with our Congressman

Last week two friends and I met with our congressman, Jim Cooper, to discuss some questions about the healthcare bills before Congress. He's a nice man, and we were glad to have met him. It was a pleasant experience, but as we walked out of his office, I found myself commenting, "Is it just me or was that thoroughly disappointing?"

You see, I think on one hand we so didn't want to be lumped in with all of the vitriolic voices arguing over this issue that we went too soft. Additionally, we were only notified a day ahead of time that the congressman had an open spot in his schedule, so we didn't have much time to do enough research to be fully prepared.

Most disappointing for me was that I had hoped that by speaking in person we could have a discussion, a conversation, that would shed light on it all in ways that most of the media reports do not. I wasn't there to get soundbites. I can get that from the news. But I also got that in my congressman's office. I got generalities and pleasantries but very little real information. And, maybe he's already listened to a lot of people as he's formed his stance on this issue (maybe he's listened out?), but I didn't really get the impression that he was trying to listen to us in a deep, really listening kind of way.

All that said, the fault isn't only his. It's partly ours. We allowed the conversation to veer off track and struggled to bring it back to the reason we'd taken the time to come to his office in the first place. We weren't prepared with as many specific, direct questions as we should have been. Ben, one of the friends at the meeting, wrote this blog post summarizing some of what we learned about having an effective meeting with an elected official.

Additionally, we learned that Congressman Cooper isn't in favor of the healthcare bill we've heard the most about in the media. Instead, he favors The Healthy Americans Act, HR 1321. He says this bill solves the problem the Democrats say must be solved (providing all Americans with health insurance) the way Republicans say it must be done (via a free market solution). It also does this without all the debt that accompanies HR 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act. However, he says the media hasn't covered this or other alternative bills much. The media person in me finds myself asking why his communications person just now added a section on this bill to the congressman's website, as we were told in our meeting that that portion had just gone live. This issue has been so huge that I'm wondering why they waited until the end of recess to put that up on his website. But that's really neither here nor there.

What is here and there is that it's important to keep trying to engage these issues in ways that are about cooperation instead of anger. At least we succeeded on that point.

blogging fiend

I get a tiny breather in my writing schedule and apparently turn into a blogging fiend. Not only here but also over on my travel blog. Click here for a beginning conversation on how to tell stories and take photos in developing countries without exploiting the subjects of those stories and photos. I'd be glad to hear your thoughts on this! (That means comments are welcome!)

Here's a teaser:
Sure, writing has limits too. There's never space to tell everything. And some photographers do an amazing job telling stories through their lenses. But though a picture may be worth 1000 words, as the saying goes, there are 1000 other words the picture misses. And I think it's those words, composed thoughtfully, that protect a photo subject's humanity and ward off exploitation of the poor people the world loves to photograph.

Join the discussion today! ;-)

On Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl and other things

another retro-post is finally making its way to the big screen

August 1, 2009

It's a good sign if a book's preface is inspirational, as this one is, in the makes-me-want-to-play-with-words version of inspiration. There's energy in this preface. That's a very good thing as books go. This is clearly the work of a good writer. If the preface is this good, what wonders can the rest of the book hold?

I sort of won this book. Which is a novel (almost-pun is, of course, fully intended) event in its own right. I'm not one of those people who win things, so doing so merits a blog entry to celebrate. More novel is that I sort-of-won the book via Twitter. That tips my I'm-not-sure-I-love-Twitter meter in the direction of love. Because I do love books and anything that gets me free books claims a rather large corner of my heart.

So, anyway, getting to the real point, the book is called Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl. Good work on the title, Mr. Author (and/or publishing committee). Points for you. Interesting cover. Good work, Graphic Designer/Marketing/Editor People. More points and we haven't even opened the book yet. But now we have: Engaging preface that makes me mostly want to keep reading (except that I'm in the middle--or first fourth, truth be told--of The Count of Monte Cristo, and Dantes has just started treasure hunting on the Isle of Monte Cristo, and I must keep going with him while the momentum is there). More points for Tilt-A-Whirl author guy. So good so far, Mr. N.D. Wilson. You've made me want to read the rest of what you have to say.

Mr. Thomas Nelson CEO (that would be Michael Hyatt) tweeted about how great this author is, how funny he is, and how he compares to Donald Miller. First, to you, Donald Miller, good work for becoming an author who has written something novel enough that people are now compared to you. That's something one could feel smug about if one chose. But you don't seem too smug so you, too, can have some points. Second, alas, it's the whole comparison thing that makes me unsure I want to keep reading past the Tilt-A-Whirl preface, even once Dantes finds his treasure and ties up all his big vengeful loose ends.

The hesitation has nothing to do with Donald Miller and everything to do with the whole find-the-next-Christian-celebrity thing we Christians do. I don't like it. It makes me uneasy and even sometimes angry because it's no good. Pedestals are not helpful for anyone, from the people on them to the people gazing at the people on them. People stop thinking and start admiring when pedestals come into play. Bleck. It's a recipe for downfall for someone or everyone. Or at the very least a recipe for food poisoning or something equally sinister.

The whole celebrity thing is one of those symptoms of human nature, the ones that remind us that the church is peopled by fallen humans just like outside-the-church is. But as true as that is, do we really have to do the celebrity thing? Alas, the necessity of selling products and the current culture of branding and marketing and so on almost certainly require a yes, but perhaps we can do it differently?

As it stands, it seems like we're always looking for the next person who will make us feel less uncool, who will help us feel confident as we walk into a world that supposedly doesn't like us, who will help our still-living-in-insecure-adolescence selves tell ourselves that we're better than all the cool kids say we are. This all begs the question: Is Christian celebrity really about Jesus at all? or just about how we feel about ourselves?

It's one thing to respect a person's use of the giftedness God's wired them with and to appreciate the things they teach or do or create. It's another unhealthier thing to do what we do: pedestalize them and find some shoring up of our identity as we hang on their every word.

Anyway, I hope Mr. N.D. Wilson proves to have written a book that lives up to its preface and all the points I've already given him, whether or not he ever becomes another of our Christian celebrities. And don't hold it against him that his book and the events surrounding my acquiring it just happened to give opportunity for expressing one of my concerns about how we "do" Christianity. Rather, perhaps I'm actually agreeing with what the book's all about. Once Dantes exacts his revenge (instead of letting God do it for him ;-) ) I'm looking forward to jumping past Wilson's entertaining preface and riding the rest of the Tilt-A-Whirl.

switching things up on you

from June 14, 2009, Flag Day (not that Flag Day has anything to do with this, but details are details), written on the white edges of a GapCard ad that emerged from my friend's purse when I asked if anyone had any paper; after all, art is about improvising, right?


It's a 3rd & Lindsley Night

I'm searching for a metaphor
or maybe it's a simile
whichever way you state your case
some way for rendering a roaring river
a rushing wind
some fleeting moments
of this day's end.
I'm searching for an eddy by the rushing river's edge
searching for a balmy breeze that breaks off from the wind
searching for a way to cling to fleeting flashbulb moments.
Tonight my mind screens images from
another poem another continent another summer.
Briefly was I there
even momentarily
but now I'm here
not there
at 3rd & Lindsley
now only remembering
Kenya
and Haiti
and Italy
and Ghana
and London.
I was there
but now I'm here
searching for an eddy
searching for a simile.

Yum!

So I'm trying to cook more. I have been for a little while now, inspired by receiving food from kitchens around the world (hmmm, Around the World in 40 Kitchens?). Maybe I've written about that before. Who knows. Either way I'm writing about it now. My real dream is to some day have the time, space, and commitment available for growing a garden, or at least a few edible living things in pots (I've decided fresh basil is at the top of the list since it's ridiculously expensive to buy fresh at grocery stores). Until that day arrives, I'm preparing for it by trying to cook with fresh vegetables more often, trying to cook things I've never cooked before, and learning exactly what words like "mince" mean.

Among the barriers to my current attempts are the realities that I don't go through food very quickly and my schedule is very unpredictable. Last Sunday (not yesterday but the one before) when I made an overdue trip to the local grocery story I decided that my new plan would be to buy ingredients for two healthy, wholesome, fresh-vegetable-using meals per week. Then I would eat leftovers or easy things for the rest of my meals. Sounds good, right? Alas, my grand plan had an ill-timed launch. Last week was a week of deadlines and busyness with supper prep and consumption squashed in between 6 and 6:30 before I dashed out the door again, meaning there was no time for trying out a new recipe (I'm not speedy when it comes to cooking or eating...or nearly anything else in life) or cooking anything that required thought.

In my attempts to manage fresh food purchases, I didn't succeed so well last week. My strawberries started growing mold after only two strawberry, spinach, and walnut salads had been eaten. Bummer. I hate throwing food away.

But things were better yesterday. My green onions were still fine, as was my garlic, and my yellow summer squash. I embarked on a nice little recipe that had caught my eye weeks ago from its perch on the side of the angel hair pasta box (Kroger brand, in case you're curious). It's called something pretty straight-forward like "Tomato-Basil-Angel Hair Pasta" or something like that.

Among the firsts for me with this recipe was using fresh garlic. I've never done that before, though I like garlic, so I'm quite sure that a huge wide world of recipes will be open to me now that I've learned something very important related to garlic. The recipe called for two cloves of fresh garlic, minced. I was about to put two heads of garlic into this recipe when my housemate stopped me. I mean, I thought it seemed like a lot of garlic, but it said to put in two and I had no reason not to trust it. I learned, in the nick of time, mind you, that garlic HEADS are composed of numerous CLOVES. And two CLOVES was just the right amount for creating a very satisfyingly tasty little lunch dish yesterday. Why does no one tell you these important little details when you exit the womb?

I also added to my tasty little meal a side of sauteed yellow summer squash, in an effort to confirm a lesson from a few weeks ago when I sauteed squash and zucchini for the first time. I like it when I've eaten it at other people's houses but had never embarked into squash-cooking-land myself. In an effort to be really adventurous last time (which was also when I belatedly learned that zucchini is a kind of squash), I hit up the trusty internet to find out what kind of spices are good with squash. I found this nice little resource, and of the spices it suggested the ones on hand in the house were parsley, rosemary and cumin. I had plenty of squash and zucchini so I got REALLY adventurous and created a taste test for myself, cooking a third of my squash/zucchini with each spice. I decided I liked parsley and cumin the best. So yesterday I excitedly acted on my taste test results and went for the parsley, figuring it was a better fit with the spices in the angel hair dish (it just makes me feel like I know something to say that).

Perhaps later today I'll add a photo of the resulting dish, until then, enjoy this little episode in "How Kami Learned to Cook Before It Was Too Late." Learning about cooking and this whole world of things that compliment each other is turning into another little outlet for the artist side of my self. Don't worry, though, I still have no plans for really fancy things like de-boning ducks, a la Julie & Julia.

finding medical care when you're the working poor

I've told a number of people that this year I've felt like a teenager who grew up poor but never really knew the family was poor because she had enough to eat and clothes to wear and somewhere dry to sleep. And tin cans and cardboard boxes to play with. Then at about age 13 the revelation hits.

This spring I've begun to realize exactly how fiscally poor I am. When most people talk about not making much money, they are usually describing an income that's at least two times what I make. That said, my life is good overall. Assuming I don't get sick or my car doesn't need repairs, I get by. Sometimes my parents help a little, by sending a bit of money for a haircut or an oil change; sometimes a friend treats me to lunch. I pray a lot, and by God's grace it mostly works. I'm doing work I enjoy and living the starving artist life without the starving part.

But I'm also in the category of Americans that isn't heard from much but is in the news all the time these days: the ones without insurance. Not the middle class ones without insurance. That's not my peer group. I'm in the "working poor" category of the insuranceless.

I used to have insurance, but then I quit working for Starbucks two years ago. There went that. Last year I found a good policy through an organization for media types. The sales guy assured me that it covered pre-existing conditions as long as you haven't had surgery in the past five years. Good. My thyroid surgery was 16 years ago. I just take some meds and get the hormone level checked every six months. I should be good, right?

Alas, sales guy probably just wanted to make a sale. The policy was a good one and was reasonably priced, and I have no beef with the insurance company. However, it turns out you have to wait a year before pre-existing conditions are covered. I had to drop the policy because I couldn't come anywhere close to affording the monthly premium and still paying full price for my thyroid doc visits for a year.

Back I went to the ranks of the uninsured. But my situation has become much less bleak since this spring. I became a patient at Siloam Family Health Center here in Nashville, and I'm forever indebted to the donors, volunteers and staff who keep that place running. I pay a little for my visits, but I qualified at the lowest payment level on their sliding scale. I'm also now a patient at Interfaith Dental Clinic, which works similarly.

Based on my experience with these clinics, I'm inclined to say that such community-based solutions to the healthcare crisis are much more trustworthy than some of the proposed solutions in the bills before Congress. But in all the NPR-listening and article reading I've done, I don't think I've heard any interviews with people like me, the working poor, about their experience at these clinics. Everyone's talking about what to do about the problem without doing much talking to the people whose problems are supposedly being solved.

And, granted, healthcare isn't only a problem for those of us on the lowest rungs of the income ladder. Middle and even higher income folks are all affected by this. And it's true that even with insurance, healthcare costs can be excessively prohibitive. However, I tend to come down on the side of finding more locally-based solutions than jumping into a behemoth that will be directed from afar and unable to respond to the nuances of people's particular situations. Rates I've seen for the government health insurance option are still prohibitive for the lowest income among us.

weighing in on healthcare

A couple weeks ago I received a call from the National Association of Professional Women. I'd received a letter from them in the mail describing the great privilege being bestowed upon me with approval of my membership in their organization. I'd agreed to be listed in their directory because it was free and I'm trying to discover new channels of business networking. I had no plans to go any further than that with them.

But then they called. They interviewed me to confirm that I fit whatever criteria it was they were looking for. Then they fed my ego, telling me how wonderful I was and how I would be recommended to the board to be a spotlighted person in one of their newsletters. By now I was guessing that this was going to cost something. Surely this wasn't included in the free listing in the directory that I'd been promised.

Finally 15 minutes or more into the call, after describing all of the amazing benefits of this organization, the woman described the cost for the two membership levels: "six ninety-eight" or "four ninety-eight." Though it sounded like she was describing a cost of $6.98 or $4.98, I was guessing that's not what she meant. "Do you mean six hundred ninety-eight dollars?" I asked. She said yes.

I told her I cannot make that kind of purchase without planning. My business and my income are very, very small. She proceeded to repeat all she'd said about the benefits already. I told her I couldn't do it. She began offering lower rates and repeating all the benefits again. By this time I was standing outside Wendy's where I was meeting my parents for a brief visit (as in less than an hour long) while they passed through town. I told the woman that I had to go. Could she send me information by email as I don't make these kind of decisions over the phone? Oh, no, she said. They're so busy and there are so many people that want in, that they don't have time to call people back and they don't have any marketing materials they can send out.

I'd been smelling scam for a while, but this confirmed it. As did the fact that I told her numerous times that I had to go because I needed to visit with my parents. She never apologized for taking up my time and, 20-30 minutes from the beginning of the call, weakly acquiesced to letting me off the phone.

Now for the point I'm really trying to make.

I've been trying to follow the health care whirlwind that's consuming our attention these days. Of course it's difficult, since, well, people who have all day to commit to understanding it are having trouble staying up to speed. I don't have all day.

But, first, I do agree that some things need to change. And it's human nature to be afraid of change. It's challenging to discern the thoughtful critics of the current proposals from the people who are just afraid of anything new, the same ones who wail and tear their clothes and gnash their teeth when Facebook changes its layout.

Second, my travels abroad have raised my consciousness about how big our country is. This health care question looks different in countries that have much smaller populations than ours. We can consider what works in other countries but must also consider the vastness of our population. A government-run healthcare system in America must necessarily be an even bigger bureaucracy than it is in the U.K., for example. Is that really a good idea?

Third, I've come to realize that President Obama's desire to push this through Congress before their recess deserves some consideration. Akin to my phone call from the National Association of Professional Women, it's troubling. I can fully buy into the desire not to let this problem linger forever and into the mantra that action and change is needed. But what I find more troubling the more I consider it is: why the rush? Something this big and this potentially dramatic in effect on so many people deserves unrushed consideration. I suppose some might say that we've been talking about healthcare change forever, so it's had plenty of time for consideration. But the bills are now written, and they weren't before. They've got to be mulled over. This almost disdainful attitude of "just trust us" is troubling. That's how people get bullied into things. That's what the woman on the phone did to me.

Post-phone call I did some searching and discovered that my instinctual red flags were doing their job: warning me of something that was a real danger. The National Association of Professional Women, according to trustworthy web reports and eye witness accounts, may sort of be a legitimate business but it operates like a scam--misleading people (um, that whole "six ninety-eight" sounding like $6.98 was pretty definitely intentional), not giving refunds, not delivering on the benefits promised.

And, well, the similarities between that phone call and the actions surrounding pushing this huge bill through are disconcerting to say the least.