Crispy Leftover Pasta

I've been trying to achieve brown crispy highlights in leftover pasta for a very long time (my inspiration is Sicilian fried ziti, another nearly-obsolete food I yearn for).

It's been frustrating. Part of the problem is that my people do not traffic in crunch. Another is that I try to eat healthy, so I really don't do pans full of oil - and it's damned hard to produce crispness without sizzling oil.

My friend Paul suggested using a wok. I bought one, and while I've managed to make some damned good beef chow fun...

...I found that I could stir-fry pasta till the cows get home, but the combination of my low-b.t.u. stove and my pesky oil aversion leads to scorching, not crisping.

As I've previously mentioned, I tried Blue Apron for a few weeks, mostly to try to break out of old cooking habits. And one of their techniques is to add an ingredient to a hot pan and leave it there a good while without fiddling with it. That's how they recommend doing shisito peppers, for example, and it does work like a charm.

So here's what I just did:

1. Rubbed a skillet lightly with an oily paper towel.
2. Heated pan to medium and waited till it was fully heated (a minute or two longer than I ordinarily wait).
3. Dumped leftover salmon pasta and spread it out evenly.
4. Left the room (something I normally never do while cooking).
5. Flipped pan contents with spatula. Then performed Frank's Water Trick (added a TBS water and quickly, tightly covered pan and reduced heat).
6. I happened to toss in some leftover chopped kale at the end. 

7. Wait 2 minutes and serve.

And look!

Here, FYI, is how I originally prepared the salmon pasta. I stir-fried slices of wild Alaskan salmon carelessly in a wok along with finely sliced garlic. Then added chopped leftover broccolini and very coarsely-chopped tomatoes (my wok's well-seasoned so the acid won't react). Finally added - big secret ingredient! - chopped pea shoots, cooking only a minute or two past that addition.

Meanwhile, I boiled Trader Joe's fancy "Gigli" pasta, saving a couple tablespoons of cooking water. I returned drained pasta to pot and added a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil (healthy oil, not degraded by cooking heat), some grated cheese, and chili flakes (I like Penzey's Aleppo Peppers). I stirred the pasta like a madman, gradually added salmon mixture, and stirred more (I kept the burner on low-medium while stirring, but cut heat immediately thereafter). Then serve. It was good.

All recipes in reverse chronological order

Sappy Shawn and Studly Steve

Sappy Shawn walks down the street, day-dreaming, as usual, about his childhood poodle, Noodles. Noodles, he firmly believes, watches over him from Puppy Heaven. Noodles cares about him in ways that no one else does. Shawn's loopy grin sometimes discomfits people. His shirt has a poodle print. And on his smartphone, Noodles is his wallpaper image. He glances at it when something upsets him.

Shawn arrives at work, where he's decided that the cubicle village in which he labors was feng-shui arranged to direct grace his way. Whenever the front door opens, a slight breeze filters through the baffles, finally wafting, barely detectably, past his desk. He lives for these moments. They soothe him. The world feels like a sweet place.

Shawn takes Flintstones vitamins, which he imagines give him super strength, and, when necessary, uses Flintstones bandaids, which remind him of the love he received from his dear-departed mother.

Even at age 42, Shawn still doesn't step on sidewalk cracks, not wanting to chance breaking backs. Also, he honestly believes he's Luke Skywalker. At any moment, the Rebels might call him up for a brave new mission. His Flintsones vitamins keep him ready.

Sappy Shawn is, we can all agree, out of his gourd; just barely functional. His sad, flimsy emotional bastions are plainly inadequate for the rigors of adult daily life. One thing seems certain: Shawn's living in a fantasy, not in the real world.

=============
Studly Steve walks down the street, reliving, yet again, the devastating final argument with his first high school girlfriend. She said terrible, awful things, and he's replayed that mental tape thousands of times. It's what he does when his mind's otherwise unoccupied. Striding down a lovely street on a beautiful day, in perfect health, well-fed, and comfortably provided for, Steve's temples throb in anger, and his gait is pugnacious and aggressive. Cortisol rages through his bloodstream from the self-inflicted stress.

This is what Steve does: he manufactures stress by dipping into his treasured collection of painful moments of humiliation or by transporting himself to future imagined outrage and disappointment. None of it is actually happening in any given moment, but he's made this his permanent reality via sheer hypnotic repetition. The world sucks.

Steve arrives at work, where he sees his cubicle as puny and beneath the dignity of a 42 year old with his talent. He settles into his chair, registering once again its cheap uncomfortableness, and submits to the burdensome aggravations of work. He doesn't hate his job - is "just ok" with it - but it's a far cry from his dreams of glory. And that rankles. Steve's seething disappointment - at reality's failure to match fantasized expectation - is diligently fed. Countless daily trivialities funnel into this narrative, even as he makes good money doing non-back-breaking work for a solid company with mostly friendly coworkers; even as he generally enjoys a life utterly free of bona fide problems.

=============
Steve, like Shawn, lives in mental reverie, oblivious to the reality of moment-by-moment circumstances. He distorts his outlook via such a multitude of mental obsessions that he's entirely unhinged from reality - from the "raw feed" of it all. Yet Steve, unlike Shawn, seems absolutely normal. Steve is all of us....while Shawn is a nutty Pollyanna.

As I've written several times (originally in my discussion of the film Marwencol):

Human beings spend their lives in conflict with imaginary people: mentally rearguing old arguments, worrying about faceless attackers and detractors, reliving bygone humiliations, and generally using our imaginations to make our lives a living hell.

That's considered "normal", but using the same faculty in positive ways to help us cope seems, for some bizarre reason, childish and loopy.

Perpetually festering in imaginary pain is completely normal. Same for spending every waking moment obsessed with What's Missing. But we're disgusted and alarmed by those who use the same imaginative faculties to conjure up happier landscapes. There is only one conclusion to draw: we prefer it the other way.

We like the grind, the stress, the festering, the pain. We enjoy the murders and fires and wars and kids dying of cancer (or, at least, we enjoy bitterly gnashing our teeth over those things). The prevalence of such reports on the News is not random. It's played up because we yearn for it (we slow down to peer at accidents, not at art or sunsets or children playing). If we're not generating sufficient poison in our own lives, we look to our entertainments to top us off, so to speak - to ballast our happiness. Whatever it takes to stave off becoming a sappy, deluded Shawn, who strikes us as broken. I explored this more deeply in my "Why God Lets Bad Things Happen" posting. Spoiler: He lets it 'cuz we like it that way.

But there's another level. Studly Steve creates gnarly friction and drama for himself, as we all do. So what's Sappy Shawn doing, exactly? Is he making lemonade from lemons? No. His lemons are delusional in the first place. We conjure them from memory or imagination.

Shawn isn't dodging the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, which are extremely few and far between. He's mostly just recoiling fearfully from his inner Steve; his obsessive inclination to replay memories of pain and loss and to toss every petty disappointment into his lifelong narrative of woe. Shawn has created shielding to block damage from his own Steve-ish instincts. It's a tightly-packed vicious circle.

Shawn assumes the world persecutes him, when, day in and day out, it's just his inner Steve feeding him a salad of unnecessarily harsh interpretations of what's happening, recycled memories of previous harsh interpretations, and anxieties about harsh future happenings. His countermeasure is to cover that salad with a thick, gloppy dressing of sentimental puppy memories, nostalgia, and cinematic projection, hoping to stave off The Monster that is his own obsession.

That's one way of handling it. The other is to just stop Steveing. Drop the whole thing, and immerse in the raw feed. Literally come back to your senses - to what's actually happening right here right now.

The Bigger Picture with North Korea

I said on Facebook last week that:

(Quotes lightly edited for style and brevity)

The South, petrified Trump would provoke or initiate war, had no other choice but to push ahead hard toward conciliation.

I must admit that in this one case, my Trump-supporting friends may have been correct that the "something new", dice-shaking approach may actually have been what's needed (though we'll see what ensues). However I don't for a second imagine that Trump saw this outcome coming.

My bet, fwiw, is that he and Bolton never envisioned the upcoming USA/DPRK "summit" as anything but an excuse to storm from the negotiating table (reporting "Hey, we tried!) followed by some military action. But now that's all beside the point. And we'll see what S Korea gives up. I suspect it will be big; the scope not fully revealed until later....maybe much later.

Finally, it seems very non-coincidental that Kim Jong-un recently had his first sit down with the Chinese.

A friend replied:

What possibly can the South give up? If (and when) there's reunification, the South will foot the bill for everything. Kind of like East and West Germany but even more so! What more is there?

I replied:

Less American presence and influence. More Chinese presence and influence. And less democracy. This could, in final estimation, be seen as "The North finally won the war".

It's little understood that kookie North Korean-style racial/genetic notions, etc. actually have considerable support in the south. Much as we falsely imagine most Chinese citizens hate their government and yearn to be free, it's also mistaken to assume that South Korean citizens all see the north as repellently whacky as we do.

Unification would absolutely NOT be ala Germany. That's not the model here. Much more balanced, or (due to aforementioned pressures), somewhat north-favoring. Watch.

Full disclosure: I'm a food critic, not a North Korean expert. However, I've been very careful and a little lucky in having come across smart sources for overall understanding. It turns out that the North Korea experts we see on TV, and, in many cases employed at top of US Gov, are shockingly ignorant. Many don't even speak Korean. If curious, start here, chase down some links, and enjoy the rabbit hole. This is also real interesting.

For instance, the whole "juche" thing (N. Korea's predominant "idealogy") turns out to be a red herring. It's only spelled out in English language docs, which is why non-Korean-speaking "experts" fall for it (some have even made juche scholarship their life's work). Somewhere in the above rabbit hole you'll read about the bona fide expert who travelled to N Korea, took a tour, and grilled his handler on juche. She didn't know a damned thing about it, it turned out!

We are, in other words, so shockingly ignorant on this stuff - even most of our experts - that a food critic, by having read the right people, can maybe get a half-decent handle on it. Or....I could be totally wrong. Who knows.

Another friend interjected:

I’m dubious. North Korea would be insane to give up its nukes. This is a familiar NK tactic, play nice, stall, make promises, etc. As Trump is about to demonstrate yet again, the US doesn’t stick to its promises. So why should they trust us anymore than the world trusts them. Still I’m happy we might have a few years of less belligerent NK behavior.

My reply:

Nukes are strategic, not cherished playthings. If the North can use them to get what they need - Americans out, South Koreans conciliating on more or less their terms, and China and Russia falling over each other to curry favor and fill the American vacuum, that's certainly a greater strategic objective. That's potentially the long play, but we won't see any of that for at least a year or five.

Right now, the short play is for the S Koreans to stave off the charade of Bolton and Trump pretending to negotiate this phoney summit with complete uncertainty as to true intentions with all these mortars and chem/bio weapons pointing at their heads. They have LOST (this isn't peace after the long-ago war, it's surrender) and are negotiating from utter weakness. Which is still way better for them than 100M dead, and better for us than ICBMs pointed at Chicago and NYC. But it sure ain't the glorious unification of Germany, at least not from the perspective of freedom, democracy, and American interests.

And it's not a familiar NK tactic, because absolutely every aspect of this situation is new and unique and potentially apocalyptic for the South.

But wait and see.

Today a stink bomb was fired into whatever peaceful results (however coerced) might be flowering. The despicable John Bolton said this morning on Face The Nation that "We are looking at the Libya model" for nuclear disarmament for North Korea.

Undestand what this means. Libya's leader, Qaddafi, played ball with us. He gave up his nukes, and, having lost all leverage, we invaded his country and slaughtered him. That's the Libya model.

The "Libya model", perhaps Obama's worst move, set a precedent that will forever discourage countries from giving up their nuclear leverage (the "Iran model" will strongly reinforce the precedent if/when we break the agreement despite Macron's clever behind-scenes efforts).

This is, in other words, Bolton 1. trying to break up the inter-Korean lovefest, and 2. rattling Kim Jong-un out of any notion of serious negotiation with Trump. Trump himself, and his advisory circle of misfit toys, will likely not understand the sabotage Bolton's just committed.

Gender Hopefulness

It's discouraging that so many people don't want to see a female president, but writing it off to sexism alone is an unhelpful oversimplification. Yes, it's about sexism — but it's also about authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, & other system-justifying ideologies. 1/ pic.twitter.com/Twb0m4ouBk

— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) April 27, 2018

As I tweeted back (here's my Twitter feed, which mostly retweets insightful stuff I stumble upon, and also announces new Slog postings):

More than anything else, it's a poorly constructed polling question. E.g. I do not "hope to see a female president". I do hope to see an honest, competent president. I have no preference whatsoever as to gender.

Permitted To Freely Split Infinitives

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint". - Hesiod, 8th century BC.


When I was a teenager, I loved to quote, to people of my parent's generation, ancient Greeks griping about the lazy, disrespectful new generation. Since similar observations have been made for 30 centuries straight, it would follow that either our race has 1. devolved, by this point, to invertebrate slime, or else 2. this was, all along, empty pique from crusty twits rigidly intolerant toward inevitable change.

Similarly, every language has been seen by academics as having been ruined ("bastardized", in the original meaning of the term...which has, itself, fittingly, been bastardized) in every era. It would follow that by this point we must be grunting at each other like apes, or else such observations were empty pique from crusty twits rigidly intolerant toward inevitable change.

There's no such thing as "bad" cultural change, because culture is change. By the time culture - even good culture! - congeals into tradition, it's ready for hospice care. For example, I can hardly listen to a note of jazz today. And compare the current crop of stiff, desiccated classical musicians to the lithe freshness of a Michal Hambourg.

Bad news for crusty twits: The Economist has finally ruled split infinitves to be ok. Those of us who have, all along, used language not to conform but to express can, I suppose, rejoice or whatever.


More on language pedantry:

A delightful video from Stephen Fry, reformed language pedant.

My original posting on the issue, including a link to a little-remembered but influential-at-the-time article by lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower.

Spirituality in 333 Words

When I'm immersed in a movie, I don't bring me with me. I "lose myself" as they say, which is literally correct. My body's not experienced, nor are my memories or opinions. I'm identifying with a character utterly unlike me. So who, exactly, is immersing and identifying? Awareness, of course!

Same for my dreams. I'm the dreamer, but I don't bring my body or persona. And the same when I lose myself in work or action or tequila. Awareness loves to pretend to get lost in bits of action and role-playing. And the story of this Jim Leff guy is just more of that.

In fact, none of us spends more than a few minutes per day identifying as our worldly persona. When we do, it's experienced as hypnotism. We remind ourselves - repeatedly! - of what our story has been, what we need, and what we're dissatisfied with. Awareness really drills it in. The human persona is Awareness' big project!

We've all seen folks knotted up in First World Problems, ginning up drama for kicks because there's little at stake in their comfortable lives. That's Awareness to a tee! Thirsty for drama, things like video games, sad songs, and reveries of fantasy and worry are sought out to identify with. I'd call it a human tendency, but since the human doesn't come along, it's obviously Awareness. So the human persona's just another role!

In meditation, we may experience the between-roles state, where Awareness is unattached to pretending. It feels empty, because we've not yet popped in a storyline. There's only pregnant expectation.

There's nothing wrong with any of this. It's a feature, not a bug, to absorb in rich stories. We only get it wrong in assuming it's our persona doing this role-playing. Awareness underlies all the roles. By reframing perspective, Awareness chooses channels. But sometimes, when drama's particularly galvanizing, it overcommits to a role, forgetting that it's just catchy drama. It feels stuck. And that's the whole problem with everything.

tl;dr

==================
Many people will tell you how to get "enlightened" - to unstick perspective and realize you've had infinite freedom all along. But no one's ever offered a reasonable explanation for how we got unenlightened in the first place. Or who, exactly, gets enlightened, given that it involves the loss of sense of separate identity (answer: no one. Awareness simply remembers its natural pliancy. Like awakening from a dream).

Our problem is that we always tell the tale from the point of view of our Persona - a collection of ever-changing atoms, thoughts, memories, and plot points (as opposed to the part that's always been constant - the deepest me - aka Awareness). By explaining it from the point of view of Awareness (the only part that could possibly even have a perspective, being the only subject for a multiverse of objects), it's nothing crazy or paradoxical or profound. Just a bit counterintuitive.

It's all just a matter of perceptual framing. Jim Leff doesn't do that framing. He's just a story. He's a frame, not the framer. The framing is done by the awareness that peers out of Jim Leff's eyes. The me at the heart of me. The part that's always been there, while everything else changes. Longer, more involved version - also linking this into cosmology - here, plus linked follow-ups therein. Theological big picture here.

Finally, if this sounds like mad gibberish, I completely understand. Nobody understood why I was so "obsessed" with food in the early 90's; people thought I was crazy then, as well. I've always been a bit ahead of the curve (a whine, not a boast, as it's made me a perennial misfit). With this, I'm a bit more ahead than usual.

If you'd like to catch up, do this twice-daily meditation, browse this (very slowly and repetitively, until it begins to unlock), and bookmark this post for later. And don't make this any kind of holy thing. It's simple. Just a mere flip of perspective framing. The deepest feeling of "you" is the part that's always been there while all else changes. It's Awareness, and it's not yours. Rather, you're its.

You know Awareness intimately, it's not a mystery. But awareness doesn't have legs or hair or SAT scores or history. It just is.

The Heart of the Problem

I think I've figured it out. The underlying mental quirk behind the deprecation of expertise, the unearned superiority, the "my-gut-beats-your-book-learning", the snark impulse, the do-it-yourself reality and the all-American assumption that each of us is the measure of all that is true and right can be traced to two adolescent assumptions, both epidemic and both unconscious:

1. Spotting stupidity makes me superior.

2. My agreement makes me your equal. Resonance with any chunk of the thinking of, say, a Gandhi or an Einstein confirms that I'm firmly on their level.


This is the ultimate outcome of late-stage consumerism. While consumerism isn't quite synonymous with narcissism, it definitely leans that way once it fully metastasizes.

"Cornered Rat" Report #19

Monday, April 23, 2018: The phrase "cornered rat" finds 89,100 Google search results, just slightly below last time's 90,600.


All "Cornered Rat" postings in reverse chronological order

Call Me Methuselah

Everybody knows getting older is all about the increasing sense that everything's being shot to hell, and important traditions are being lost. (Digression management note: my new shtick is to put digressions in block quotes...)

Here's why old people get all dried up and curmudgeonly: they stop chowhounding. Once you stop actively replenishing your bag of treasured restaurants, musicians, people, ideas, etc., the old ones inevitably start winking out of existence (or pertinence) one by one until you find yourself on a wind-swept desolate plain in a world devoid of all color and vitality. Really, the problem is just that you haven't kept up with all the new treasure springing up!

It's a cliché for people in their 30s to say they no longer seem to keep up with new good bands. That's the origin point for the dry desolation they'll experience in their 50s and 60s.

But I'm experiencing some weird much higher-level version of this. I've seen whole cultures crumble. I'm only 55, but I might as well be 5000. Call me Methuselah.

The other day, I had to explain to a not-so-young Puerto Rican youth - living in a Puerto Rican neighborhood and carrying himself with evident "keepin'-it-real" Puerto Rican deportment - about one of the mainstays of Puerto Rican culture, which he'd never even heard of. "Maví" is a drink made from medicinal herbs and tree sap and molasses, traditionally left out in the sun so it ferments a bit. It's super healthy as well as the cheapest possible buzz ("Officer, I had no idea the cheap medicinal drink I'm selling would turn alcoholic; I must have left the clear gallon containers on top of my car roof too long!").

My understanding is that maví, which is delicious and quite unlike anything else, is one of the few artifacts of the long-gone Taíno, the island's original inhabitants. It is hard to find it down in Puerto Rico, but a few maví guys in NYC continue the tradition, selling gallons of the stuff, along with sugarcane and coconut juice and papayas, from vans that have parked in the same outer boroughs locations for decades.

The Amish in Pennsylvania preserve long-extinct German language and culture from centuries past. And there was once a Neapolitan restaurant in Brooklyn that cooked dishes unavailable in Naples for decades, based on salt pork, which preceded the more recent incursion of olive oil to the region. Diaspora's a complicated thing; immigrants both dilute and preserve their parent culture. The melting pot is also a time capsule.

10-20 years ago, Puerto Ricans would tell me they'd heard of maví but never tried it. Now this guy had never even heard the word. And his eyes barely focused as I told him about it, and how he could still find some around town. I might as well have been talking about petticoats and harpsichords.

Same with my favorite Punjabi dish, palakwala (proteins - often chicken - in a sauce of spinach, tomato, ginger, and cumin). I remember when palakwala was widely-known, and then when it was "that dish my parents used to talk about", and now...nothing. It's gone. Waiters assume I must be asking for a samosa or whatever.

Same for aloo bujia, a Pakistani dish of potatoes stewed for hours (no relation to the current trendy french fry dish called aloo bhajiya). Somewhere in Karachi there exists a wizened, foggy old Pakistani gentleman who remembers this from his youth. He and I are the last of the aloo bujia eaters.

Just more of that magical realism, baby....

Yesterday, I ate at Havana Cafe in the Bronx. A mere six years ago, I waxed on about how Cuban food has a vibe, a profile, a soul that was completely different from other Caribbean cuisines. I didn't mention it in that posting (cool photos, though, plus a hot airport chow tip), but a lot of it stems from cumin - much like how the soul of Alentejan food - from the south of Portugal - is cilantro.

I don't normally like to say things like that, because they're misunderstood. Foodies put facts like these in their hoppers and figure they've got it all neatly figured out (Cuba = cumin; Alentejo = coriander). But you can sprinkle cumin in your rice and beans - or stir chopped cilantro into your cataplana - all you'd like, and it's not going to taste the least bit Cuban or Portuguese. It's not the ingredient, it's the touch - the undefinable, uncapturable, irreplicable way that a flavor flavors.

You need to taste that unique touch over time with a receptive palate and heart. You need to feel it, love it, hanker for it when it's not there. You need to build up some frickin' nostalgia! Only then will you be privy to the soul of the thing (which still doesn't mean you'll be able to evoke it in your cooking; that's a whole other level). It's about way more than the mere presence of some ingredient.

There wasn't a single grain of cumin in the food. And they used - it pains me to even type this - red beans everywhere, even in the moros. Cuba is black beans.

Which is not to say Cubans don't make red beans, but that's like confirming that New Orleanians make tuna casserole or Poles cook spaghetti.

I also asked for some "mojo", the oily garlic sauce that's the very underpinning of the cuisine. It's the edible version of "clave", the underlying pulse of all Cuban music. I should not have needed to ask for mojo, and was put off that I needed to do so. The mojo should have sat in a thick glass jar right on the counter, in front of the salt and pepper. But the waiter poked around the kitchen and finally brought me out a small plastic urine cup full of some watery substance, vaguely salad dressing-like, smelling weakly of garlic. To paraphrase the great Don Martin, brrrrehhhhhhhhhtch.

The restaurant was filled with Cubans (mostly under age 40), all of whom seemed to be enjoying it....while I, Methuselah, silently disapproved.

Look, I totally expected restaurants to close and bands to break up. I expected things that were once vital to fade and ossify. It's cool; I'm replacing stuff all the time! Talk to me about craft beer or yoga or Safari extensions! But whole cultures are not supposed to disintegrate this quickly. And, as they do, I'm not supposed to be the only damn person who notices.

Michal Hambourg

I wrote here about one of the greatest musicians I've ever known, the late Michal Hambourg. It was part of a long list of favorite recordings, and I'll replay the part about her below:

"The Hambourg Legacy"
Mark Hambourg, a peasant virtuoso from Eastern Europe who'd relocated to England, was the real deal. He was an early-recorded connection to the time when all this musty classical stuff was new and fresh and punk. Very well known in the early 20th century, Hambourg married in to Scottish nobility, and had a daughter, Michal - a prodigy who, in my opinion, was even better than him.

Michal was poised for stardom, but WWII interfered, and she never regained any career whatsoever. Rescued from obscurity in her 90's(!!) by Arbiter Records' Allan Evans, who'd recorded her on her home piano, with Liszt's walking stick mounted just above, on the wall. Arthritis cramped her technique some, but even if classical piano's not your thing, you'll instantly feel this is something else (listen to a free sample of her playing some Chopin that will make you cry). She sounds like she's IMPROVISING. No stiff, stodgy, polite, show-off piano this. Anyway, this record includes father, father + (young) daughter, and some modern recordings of just the daughter.

"The Hambourg Legacy" is out of print, but you can buy it on iTunes here.

Half Scottish nobility, half Eastern-European peasant Jew, Michal had all the majesty and all the soul; the roast pheasant as well as the chicken fat. Her pedigree traced directly to the great masters of 19th century music and she kept that flame alive for decade after decade, albeit in the most absolute obscurity. The essential loss of this necessary link and mammoth talent for a full half-century was a tragedy for her and for us, but Michal, naturally, found ways to contribute, working with gifted children and helping found the World Wildlife Fund, among other good works. Very late in life, she was rediscovered, but it was too late. There would be no concerts; no wider recognition.

But you, lucky ones, get to view the following. Here's the same Chopin from the second link above, along with video! Also with some wonderful Liszt and Mozart. This, for me, is what music aspires to be. Hardly anything comes close, even though, at age 78, Michal was far from her prime, her fingers arthritic and her energy diminished (see if you think it matters!).

I was lucky enough to spend an afternoon in Michal's living room, myself, a few years after this was recorded, and heard her play that same piano. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, you can visit Michal's living room, too. Do not miss this:



I managed to unearth the fan letter I'd written her, back in 2003 (just a bit before the events described here) which had earned me the lunch invitation (she cooked nearly as well as she played; again, half Scottish nobility and half Jewish peasant is sort of the ideal human amalgam):

Dear Ms. Hambourg,

It's not been the best year for me, but I just listened to your recording of Chopin's Etude in A-flat, and it makes me feel that life has richness and value. Your playing is too great to be measured by its therapeutic effect, of course, so please just accept this as my small personal testimonial!

I'm by no means a fitting messenger to deliver the following, but sometimes messages come from strange sources (plumbers, drug addicts, food critics, etc.). The message is: you are incredibly important for the world and you'll be remembered more than you imagine.

It can be helpful to tell people what they are.