Getting the Garlic

Getting the Garlic

When I was growing up, family dinners were big. Really big. Every night, ten of us crowded around the table for a big family dinner. And those dinners were loud. We enjoyed the time-honored tradition of every Italian family – arguing. 

My father headed the table and introduced topics of the day. We were expected to have and express opinions. He was expected to disagree. That man loved to argue. Even if he agreed with you, on principle, he would take the other side. 

I remember one epic argument we had when I was thirteen. The topic was “at what age should teens begin dating.” He stood firm at sixteen. I argued for a younger start (even though I had no interest in boys and could care less about dating). The topic grew more heated with my mother taking no sides and my grandmother clearing the table around us, as we zigged-zagged from dating to teen rights to women’s lib until my father ended it by asking, “And will you be burning your bra too?” Since my wardrobe did not include this item of clothing yet, it was a moot point, and we ended there. 

We loved to argue, and yet, no one ever got up from that table angry.  The table became our stage. My brothers told jokes. My sisters told stories. My father recited epic poems (“I had to learn them and I sure am going to use them.”). My mother and grandmother sang in Italian. My grandfather regaled us with a symphony of whistles. Our friends, waiting outside for us to finish, thought we were crazy.

We all had our dinner peculiarities.  The ice cubes in my glass always melted first. This enraged me. With ten diners, ice was at a premium in those old ice tray days. My five siblings blamed all the hot air surrounding my place, but I insisted that somehow they were the ice-melting culprits. I never caught them but suspect them still.

Garlic flavored our meals, perfumed our air and tickled our palates. Now, if you are not Italian, you may not know that EVERY meal includes lots of garlic and that cloves show up with every dish. Somehow, the garlic always showed up on brother Paul’s plate. Paul did not like garlic. We waited for his discovery at every meal -- watching with very innocent faces.  

Our immense cat, Kit-ten, managed to join us at every meal, sitting behind Paul (who sat at the foot of the table in the other captain’s chair) and pushing him off as the meal progressed by simply expanding his girth. Paul usually ended his meal standing at his place while we addressed all remarks to him through the cat. 

Family dinners are a thing of the past for many today. Even young children keep datebooks and juggle commitments. Moms and Dads serve dinner in the car while waiting to ferry kids from one sport, lesson, or club event to another. Sitting around a table with the whole gang seems like an impossible dream.

Every study about family meals shows that dining together lowers stress, decreases obesity rates, fosters success in school and reduces risky teen behaviors. The findings are really impressive. Just one meal a day with your family makes life better for every member. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every family could share these happy times?

The realities of life make family mealtimes hectic and infrequent. Families should make every effort to dine together regularly. Yet, we can still keep the “flavor” of family meals wherever we are. Family discussions can occur anywhere families gather. Giggle together in the car. Share family news, tell jokes, or recite silly poems. Create traditions – telling serialized stories with each family member chiming in or stopping after practice for a treat. Discuss world events or ponder matters of the heart. Families can love one another anywhere. 

Family time is great – even when your ice cubes melt. The family dinners of my youth were large and loud. We loved one another with the same passion that we argued. Make memories no matter when or where your family gathers. Like a savory meal satisfies the body, family time satisfies the soul. 

Even when you get the garlic.   

Like A Happy Man Going Home

The Present

I once took a course in meteorology with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in plain terms, the national weather bureau. Our class plotted the paths of hurricanes, took readings with sophisticated instruments, and built models of pressure systems. After six months of study, the class came to one conclusion: It is almost impossible to accurately predict the weather. If you want to know the weather, your best bet is to take a look out the window.

People love predictions. We want to know the future. We also enjoy reliving the past. Historical and personal events are revisited endlessly. Some are so busy with the past and future that they have lost sight of the present. Ebenezer Scrooge was just such a man.

In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is visited by three ghosts – Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet-To-Come. Scrooge revisits his past and is given a vision of his possible future, but Scrooge seems to be missing from the Present. 

The spirit of Christmas Present takes Scrooge into his own town. He visits Bob Cratchit’s house and his nephew’s Fred where there is talk of him – none very pleasant -- but he does not visit his own home or business. His present is absent.

Scrooge’s life has gone dormant. He enjoys nothing; he helps no one. He hoards his gold, relishing future profits from the excessive interest on the money he lends. With the Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge sees the poorest of men celebrating the day. Miners gather around a cheerful fire singing old carols. Sailors riding out a gale share holiday stories over a cup of grog (every man on board having a kinder word for another on that day). In every almshouse, hospital, and jail, people rejoice --everyone but Ebenezer Scrooge.

Scrooge’s present lays dormant –waiting to be awakened by the joy of today. When he awakens after the Ghosts’ visits, he is amazed that it is still Christmas Day. He laughs, he cries, he whoops, he sings. He opens his heart to the joys of the present. He no longer fears the future because he knows that his todays will make it pleasurable and full. 

Scrooge begins that very moment to live large. He sends the biggest turkey to the Cratchits. He gives a grand donation to the poor. He dresses in his very best. He patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down in to the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows; and he found that everything could yield him pleasure. Now, in his very present present, he finds great joy. 

One of the best stories about Charles Dickens revolves around a stage production of A Christmas Carol. Every night on stage, the Cratchits enjoyed a real cooked goose. One of the actors noticed that the girl playing Tiny Tim took huge portions but remained pale and thin. He found out that the child saved her portion and passed it along to a sister waiting offstage so that her whole family could benefit. The actor reported this thievery to Mr. Dickens. Dickens smiled a little sadly and told him, “Ah, you ought to have given her the whole goose.” 

Dickens lived large and in the present. His friend, Thomas Carlyle, remembered him as “the good, the gentle, the high-spirited, ever-friendly, noble Dickens.” He was beloved by many. He died prematurely, having exhausted himself with traveling and readings from his books. His loss was felt most by those he hoped to help most -- children and the poor. A laborer in Birmingham said it best: "Charles Dickens is dead. We have lost our best friend.”

Why did Dickens name this story a “carol”? Because, as G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The story sings from end to end, like a happy man going home.” Today, take a look out the window. Enjoy the weather you have. Live in the now. Live large. Sing like a happy man going home.

The Inheritance

The Inheritance

In politics, they call it “The Blame Game.” Each party blames the other for all of the woes which beset America. Who is responsible for getting us involved in the wars in Asia? Who caused the stock market to rise or crash? Who ruined our schools, debased our traditions, and cost America its vision of being “a city on a hill” unblemished, virtuous, and the leader of the free world? We ultimately lay the blame at the feet at whichever president we oppose.

Nowhere is this truer than in the political legacy of John Adams. Joseph Ellis, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, describes the political travails of Adams, America’s second president, as “the classic example of the historical truism that inherited circumstances define the parameters within which the presidential leadership takes place, that history shapes presidents, rather than vice versa.” 

To put it simply, Adams was “probably doomed to failure” because his presidency followed that of the “demigod” George Washington.

Any move Adams made was compared to Washington’s. Washington’s style of governing was majestic. Adams style, as Ellis describes it, was that of “enlightened perversity.” In short, he loved to argue. 

As a lawyer, he defended the British soldiers accused of firing on the crowd in what we call “The Boston Massacre” -- a choice which could have destroyed his law practice. As delegate to the Continental Congress, he proposed independence from England a full year before it was generally considered and argued tirelessly until it was adopted. But his revolutionary credentials did not rescue him from uncomplimentary comparisons to Washington.  His presidency was largely considered a failure. 

Adams inherited a struggling nation, still recovering from the Revolution, an undeclared war with French privateers in the Atlantic and Caribbean and a Congress at war with itself. Many presidents have inherited troubled times. Franklin Roosevelt inherited the Great Depression. Harry Truman inherited the atomic bomb. Andrew Johnson inherited Reconstruction after the Civil War and Lyndon Johnson inherited the war in Vietnam. Barack Obama inherited two wars in Asia and an age of terrorism.  

Logically, we should not judge our presidents on the events which were thrust upon them but on how each dealt with them. Our judgement is also tinged by our own political beliefs and visions. Some people feel that Roosevelt’s policies lifted the nation from depression, while others feel that he left behind a welfare nation. Johnson was both praised for proposing ground-breaking legislation on civil rights and blamed for sending thousands of young men to unnecessary deaths in an unwinnable war. 

John Adams believed that history was messy. As Ellis explains it, Adams felt that there is “a distinction between history as experienced and history as remembered.” Events experienced are more “tangled and incoherent” than can be related to and judged by those viewing them from a distance. In other words, unless you are in the middle of the fray, unless you are the president dealing with both inherited and current circumstances, you cannot accurately judge his actions.

More than two hundred years later, historians generally agree that many of Adams’s positions were correct. He was, in his own words, obnoxious and disliked, but his arguments concerning American independence and governance were visionary. Sitting in judgement is an amusing parlor game, but running the country is a deadly serious business. 

Let us pray that the actions of our current and future presidents fulfill the hope of John Adams after he moved into the newly-built White House that “None but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” His wife Abigail surely added, "Or women." 

(All quotations from Joseph Ellis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Founding Brothers.)

From Yuck to Yum!

Grandpa Scotto with a banner crop of tomatoes!

From Yuck to Yum

I’ve always said, “Garlic is mother’s milk to me.” Let me explain. When I was growing up, almost every dish my mother made contained garlic. All my recipes start with “Sauté garlic in olive oil.” It’s a good thing I do not bake!

My taste for garlic is rooted in science. Bee Wilson, in her book First Bite: How We Learn to Eat, notes that babies develop flavor preferences while in their mother’s womb. Mary Roach in Gulp: Adventures in the Alimentary Canal, writes “Breast milk and amniotic fluid carry the flavor of the mother’s foods, and studies consistently show that babies grow to be more accepting of flavors they’ve sampled while in the womb or breastfeeding.” Studies proved that babies whose mother’s ate garlic preferred garlic-scented milk. My Italian mother ate a lot of garlic. Yum!

So the key to having children who like what you like is to eat it before they are born. But what about those little darlings sitting at your table now turning up their noses at Brussel sprouts or stuffed peppers? Yuck! Is it too late to change their “Yuck” to “Yum”?

Taste preferences are generally set by the age of two. Before two, children are more open to new foods. After two, mouths clamp shut and mothers despair. Is there any way to get kids to try new foods?

Bee Wilson offers a strategy called “tiny tastes” developed by researcher Dr. Lucy Cooke. Parents sit down with kids, outside of meal times, and offer kids “microbites” to sample. Moms and dads taste too. Kids take part in choosing the foods to try. These tiny tastings help kids add to their accepted tastes and encourage them to open their minds and mouths to new foods. Tiny tasting becomes a fun new game.

Preschools in Finland tried this strategy. Instead of lecturing students on what foods are good for them, they provided these foods during play time. Kids played “dinner” or “restaurant” and tried the new foods. Before long, they were asking for them at home. Parents tried the new foods too and before long, the entire nation had moved toward healthier eating. 

Another suggestion for getting kids to try new foods comes from food scientist Paul Rozin: “Normally disgusting substances … that are associated with admired persons… cease to be disgusting and may become pleasant.” In other words, when an admired person likes it, children are more likely to try it. That’s why, in my day, kids who liked Popeye ate spinach. Kids ate the cereals sports stars did. Unfortunately, many of today’s celebrities tout unhealthy food (and other) choices, so it is very important for parents and grandparents to step into the hero role and lead children toward healthy eating.

So the key to turning kid’s “Yuck” to “Yum” is offering new foods in a fun way and being willing to try them yourself. Parents are “gate-keepers” for their children, letting in good choices and locking out bad. Share your adventures in eating with your children. 

About twenty years ago, my husband, in an overly-enthusiastic gardening moment, planted twenty tomato plants. Tomatoes almost marched out of the garden and banged on the back door. Growing up, I loved tomato sauce but hated tomatoes. I gamely processed tons of tomatoes into sauce and foisted dozens on friends until I finally gave in and decided that if we were going to have so many tomatoes, I had better learn to like them.

I did and I do. 

They taste great with garlic. Yum!

Why Do We Have to Learn This?

Why Do We Have to Learn This?

Before I began teaching in elementary school, I did a stint as a substitute in the local vocational-technical school. This was really a stretch for me, not only because my knowledge of the technical and practical arts is very limited (Bricklaying? Carpentry? Engines?) but also because I was teaching high school courses and not what I had been trained to do. 

One week, I was sent to sub in the geometry class. I had a real belly-laugh about this before I even started. Geometry had been my worst class in high school. I remembered little more than what I had learned in my own elementary school years. I thought I could get by, because the teacher had left good plans and answers for all of the problems. 

During the first class, after I had answered all the questions about who I was and what I was doing teaching their class, one student asked a real stumper, "Why do we have to learn this anyway? What is geometry good for?” 

I was surprised. This class was made up of students who would one day build houses and design machines. Didn’t they realize how useful geometry would be in their future careers? I attempted to explain, giving an example about designing a roof so that the slope would shed rain and snow, but they weren’t buying it. Somehow they could not make the connection between what they were learning in school and real life. 

Tom and Ray Magliottzi, AKA the Car Talk guys, pondered this question many times on their radio show. Both brothers earned degrees from MIT and were well-grounded in math. They often asked callers if they continued to use the math they had learned in school in daily life. Trigonometry? Calculus? Most answered that beyond the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) the math classes they took were just dim memories.

In high school, I took lots of math classes too -- two algebras, geometry, trigonometry and calculus. I took more in college. I did pretty well in all (except the aforementioned geometry). Most of the everyday math I use today involves the four basics, decimals and calculating percents. These cover toting up the bill and adding a tip. 

But I don’t regret taking the classes. Even though I don’t remember a lot, I am proud that I was able to hold my own in these difficult courses. And I don’t think they should be subtracted from the curriculum for children today. Who knows which future engineers and scientists may awaken to new possibilities when introduced to higher math? 

For that matter, every course we are exposed to holds the possibility of opening our eyes to something beyond the small worlds we inhabit. Math can lead to music, medicine, or rocket science. Languages lead to travel and a better understanding of the greater world. English and history expose us to the thoughts of the great thinkers of the past and present. Philosophy, psychology, biology, chemistry, physics etc. introduce us to new ideas. Opening children’s minds opens their lives to new worlds. 

In the more than twenty years I taught elementary school, I heard the question often – “Why do we have to learn this anyway?”

“Why,” I would answer, “to be a better you.” 

History or His Story?

History or His Story?

My brother Joseph and I are very close in age. We have many fond memories of our shared childhood. The funny thing is that these memories don’t always match. We were in the same place at the same time but often remember things completely differently. 

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson shared many of our nation’s founding moments. They served together in the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia; collaborated on the writing of the Declaration of Independence (John thought he should be congratulated for choosing Tom to write it. Adams fine-tuned a bit); worked together in France; and traveled together in England. Both served under George Washington and took consecutive terms as president. They had “been there” but could never agree about what “there” had been. 

John Adams believed that history was messy. During the Revolution, nothing was “clear, inevitable, or even comprehensible” to either those serving in the Continental Congress or on the field of battle. As Adams remembered it, “all the critical questions about men and measures from 1774 to 1778” were part of a “patched and piebald policy” which was improvised, turbulent, confused and riddled with failures. The major players were making it up as they went along and constantly skating on the edge of catastrophe. 

Out of this chaos, Jefferson rose as a literary phoenix. His masterful expression of the inalienable rights of men, as detailed in the Declaration, and his vast correspondence on philosophical issues of the day suggest that America was predestined to win the war against England, establish a republican government, and take its place as a beacon of democracy for the world. Jefferson’s “felicitous abilities” with a pen made his version of history rise out of the ashes which was the reality of the times. 

This drove Adams mad. He struggled for decades to write his history of the Revolution and the forming of America. Unfortunately, his writing style, which Joseph Ellis called “enlightened perversity” in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers, got in the way of his story. His writings are punctuated with circular arguments and angry interruptions. Worst of all, Adams feared that his own contributions to the American nation would be forgotten in favor of Jefferson’s more fluid version of their shared history. 

Adams realized that there is a difference between “history as experienced and history as remembered.” Transforming the events of the Revolutionary period into history would involve fitting events into a “dramatic formula” which could be understood by posterity. Adams lacked this capacity.  In the words of Ellis, “Jefferson seemed predestined to tell the people what they wanted to hear. Adams… to tell them what they needed to know.” 

Joseph Ellis called Adams and Jefferson the “words and music” of the Revolution. The music of Jefferson’s prose outshines the rhetoric of Adams’ arguments. The melodies of his history are easier to recall than Adams’ lyrics. Adams feared that Jefferson’s version would prevail.

Many peoples have made up the history of the United States. How do the Native Americans write the story? How would the Africans brought here in chains write it? Would each immigrant group (“your tired, your poor, yearning to breathe free” as welcomed by the Statue of Liberty) write a different story? What do we know about their “American histories”?  Which stories prevail?

Whose history will prevail after we are gone? Adams warned that the future of America would be written “on the brightest or blackest page according to the use or abuse of its political institutions.” His future is our present. Our present is our children’s future. Which page will they see and remember?

After arguing with Jefferson for decades over the correct version of history, John Adams got the final word. In an almost unbelievable coincidence, both Adams and Jefferson died on the same day – July 4, 1826 --fifty years to the day after the date on the Declaration. Communication was slow in those days, so Adams didn’t know that Jefferson had passed earlier in the day when he spoke his final words, “Jefferson still lives.” The history of that time is largely remembered as the one Jefferson favored. 

Whose history will be remembered in our future? Let’s take great care as we write it today. 

(All quotations from Joseph Ellis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Founding Brothers.)

Turn Your Heart Toward Home

Turn Your Heart Toward Home

In 2002, Bob and I toured Ground Zero in New York City with my cousin Stephen an eyewitness to the event that has so changed our world. As we circled the hole where the Twin Towers once soared above the city, Stephen recalled the terror and chaos he’d experienced that day. As we walked with him, I remembered too.

The sky dawned blue and clear and the day began as any other day. At school, we teachers stood in the hallway and sang our good mornings as the students filed in. We greeted them with smiles like any other day.  

About 9:30, the whispering began. Something had happened. A plane had flown into one of the Twin Towers. We shivered but continued teaching. The teachers whispered to each other so the children wouldn’t hear, so we wouldn’t frighten them.  

As I listened to Stephen’s story, I pictured him as he rushed about, trying to locate co-workers, and urging them to vacate their workplace, which adjoined the Towers. Many didn’t realize the danger. Since their building did not seem in immediate peril, several wanted to continue working. Then the second plane hit.

At school, the whispering continued. Two planes had hit; then came word of a third, no -- a fourth. We continued teaching for the sake of the children. We read books and sang songs, added and divided, spelled and played games. We took the kids to recess and watched them run in the sunshine.  

Outside the Towers, everyone was running. Sirens wailed. The clear skies filled with smoke. Police officers shouted “Run!”. Firefighters rushed in. Streams of people flowed away from the danger. Stephen ran. 

Slowly, streams of cars flowed into our school parking lot. Parents were arriving.  On any other day, school was a safe enough place. Today, parents wanted their children home. Teachers called their own children too. We stood in line to use the school phone, wanting to hear the reassuring tones of our loved ones’ voices.  

Those running from the towers turned toward home also. Stephen told me that even in the turmoil, everyone headed in the direction of wherever they lived.  Stephen ran uptown toward his home. Those living in New Jersey rushed to the ferries, which were scooping up travelers and casting off from the docks at record speed. People called home too. The cell phone towers burned as thousands attempted to assure loved ones that they were OK; that they would be coming home.

Fifteen years have passed. Memorials to the victims at the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania remind us of those who did not come home that day. All were frightened. Many were heroes. None are forgotten.  

We have all changed since that day. We have lost the sense of security that allowed us to look up into the clear blue sky and fear nothing but clouds. We hear news of wars in faraway lands and tremble. Terror is no longer a foreign concept.  

But there is one way we have not changed. No matter who we are, no matter where we are or what is happening, we all long for home. All over the world, parents love their children, spouses cling to one another, family groups of all types fill their homes with a love that beckons.     

The world is a dangerous place filled with many people with different beliefs and different goals. But if we can agree that we all love our families and all long for home, perhaps we can work together to make our collective home, the planet we all inhabit, a safer place for us all. 

Look up and see the stars, not the clouds, and aim for a better world.