beck talk visits Cuba!

Please stay tuned for exciting news on the food and culture of Cuba. Amnon and Gaul will be sharing their experiences as they travel the country and sample the cuisine. We can't wait to cover their adventure through photos and essays over the next two weeks.

Salad Days in Israel

One of the things I love about spending time in Tel Aviv is the diet. Every meal has salad.

Israel has one of the highest longevity rates of Western Countries, especially for men. Despite military service and the obvious stresses of living in a country that phases in and out of war and nuclear threats, Israel is right up there with Sweden, Iceland, Italy and Switzerland.

According to studies, several factors account for this long life: great national health care available to all, tight and cohesive family and community, varying migrant genetic mixes in the population, low alcohol consumption, physical activity and diet.

But I believe the daily consumption of fresh vegetables is key. The salad come as a side with every restaurant meal, and the open air markets practically beg you to buy fruits and vegetables with their abundant and beautiful displays.

And when I come back from time spent in Israel, I always start off making more fresh salads for my family. Starting off, yes, at breakfast.


Unfortunately this focus fades after a few weeks of being back, but this weekend I am trying to remind myself and reanimate our diet.



 One of my consistent sources of inspiration is my mother-in-law Shulamit's table. No matter what time of the day we pop in to say "hi," there is always a bowl of fresh fruit or some steamed artichokes or other vegetable dish just waiting to be eaten.  Here is a sample of side-dishes from a Friday night meal we had over winter break:

 Vegetables triumph! So back to the cutting board for today's dinner salad...

Vacation Reading: Harry Potter Grown-up Style

 

Before long plane rides I like to have something addictively readable downloaded on to my Kindle so that I am innoculated from all forms of travel frustration: long lines (I read in line), long flights, layovers and unexpected delays. This year's winter break travel had all these and more—but with a good book going it is all the same to me whether I am in my living room armchair or an airport. Well, almost...

Lev Grossman's Magician Trilogy did the trick (pun intended) for me this year.

The first book, The Magicians: A Novel (Magicians Trilogy)introduces us to Quentin Coldwater and his friends, whose adventures continue throughout the series.

The series is a cross between Harry Potter (there is a magic school), the Chronicles of Narnia (there is a magic land that awaits two human kings and two human queens) and a Donna Tart novel (lots of adolescent angst sex, drugs and drinking.) Imagine Harry, Ron, Herione, Peter, Susan, Lucy and Edgar in college with lots of drugs and booze, tats and attitude. And magic.

However the magic itself is wildly imaginative and goes incredible places. Some extraordinary, some dark, and some just random in a very millennial kind of way.


The second book The Magician King: A Novel (Magicians Trilogy)was such a Catcher-in-the-Rye parade of angry attitude that it got a little tiresome, but it was worth sticking it out through the third book The Magician's Land: A Novel (Magicians Trilogy),because it is not just great story telling, but a radical act of imagination.

If you like coming of age fiction you will love this. If you like fantasy you will love this. And even if you just like first class writing about serious ideas you will love this. The series got me through Cleveland Hopkins, Newark, Munich, Tel Aviv and the initial sleepless nights of jetlag!

And in the interest of transparency, if you click on the links, you can buy the books directly from Amazon under my affiliate number. And I will know someone reads my recommendations!

Tel Aviv 2014-The Malabie Days

Tel Aviv is a wildly vibrant and constantly moving environment. Every time I go, I discover something new. Malabie was my new culinary fetish from this year's holiday visit.



My first hit of malabie was while returning to Hummus Asli in Jaffo (see former blogpost).
At the end of the meal we were served malabie. It is a milk pudding, covered with radioactive sweet red sauce, rosewater, peanuts, pistachios and coconut, or some variation thereof.

After Amnon, Irad and I each had a portion, Amnon and I ordered another one. It was that good! Thomas Keller (of French Laundry and Per se fame) started a whole new food movement with the contention that after three bites of any food one exhausts the freshness/pop of the taste, so no need for more.

Not so malabie. One is not enough. Three bites is just the awakening stage.

And we discovered there is a place called the Malabi-ah right around the corner from our apartment!!! A few steps out our doorway, open seemingly 24 hours a day as we visited it after breakfast and after midnight.






It is a dumpy little third-world looking, well, to call it a storefront would be an exaggeration.  You either sit inside a little porch, or go out to the tables in the street. Many of which have chess and checker sets to keep you occupied while savoring your malabie.

You basically get your malabie—customized at the counter —you choose your flavor of radioactive red (classic, cinammon lemon, and two other flavors I can't recall)



















and choose your toppings—peanuts, sugared peanuts, coconut, toasted coconut and homemade cookie crumbs.

And because Tel Aviv is so hip and really not third world at all despite its grunge, grit and deterioration (the romance of decay,) there is even VEGAN malabie! And a malabie punch card so that your 10th one is free.


Needless to say our visit was punctuated with frequent refueling trips to the Malabiah.

Fun Fiction-SciFi Fix

I do a lot of "light" reading. I have always been a voracious reader—I was the kid walking to school while holding a book in front of my face— I would read anything and everything, and my first degree is in Comparative Literature. But as an adult I find myself drawn to lighter, escapist reading. That is why I am grateful for my Book Club (called the Book Club) because it pushes me to read more literary fiction and even some non-fiction and memoir.

But at heart I love a good sci-fi space opera. I think my life involves so many "little" stresses—driving kids to after school activities and doctors appointments and dog to vet appts and showing up at the school meetings and concerts, that it is nice to have a reading experience that is wholly restful and not wrenching, deeply thought provoking and life-changing—not that there is not a time and place for that kind of reading! But not in my life. Not today.

This is all a long prelude to confessing that I have spent the last few months re-reading Lois McMaster Bujold's 15 book Miles Vorkosigan series. I jumped into the series this time at book #4, The Warrior's Apprentice (Vorkosigan Saga Book 4), which is the beginning of the life and times of Miles Vorkosigan, whom I just love. He is a daring, brilliant, moody, young member of the Vor Class with all the weights and responsibilities of his high caste, and and he is tortured by physical deformities which make him a target in a mutation-phobic society. Yet he manages to take us on a non-stop thrill ride through a far future galaxy that is richly developed throughout the series.

I am not Miles' only fan. The books have garnered 6 of scifi's highest awards (Nebula, Hugo and Locus) as well as a dozen nominations in those categories. Also several listings on the New York Times Best Sellers List.


If you have the winter-blues, I recommend this escape!

Photography in Three's

photo taken from the Cleveland Museum of Art website

I've noticed that things often come in 3's...I don't know why that is nor do I stake claim to any mystical relationship with the universe, but by the time I hear of/read about/or am told something for the third time, I pay attention.

Recently I had 3 encounters with photography in my life: photography exhibit and lecture, a novel featuring a photographer, and viewing my son Amnon's new photos.

The lecture was at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), which has mounted an exhibition of surrealist and post modernist photography called, not surprisingly Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography. We were fortunate to attend the opening preview in which the collector and the curator had an on-stage discussion of the work, which helped put the collection into context for me.

The collection was donated in its entirety to the museum by David Raymond, who began collecting the works in the 1990s. Its acquisition by CMA is a major contribution to the permanent collection. The exhibit is described by the museum as, "Vertiginous camera angles, odd croppings, and exaggerated tones and perspectives are hallmarks of the two principal photographic movements of the period, surrealism and modernism. As with surrealist efforts in other media, artists making photographs also aimed to explore the irrational and the chance encounter—magic and the mundane—filtered through the unconscious defined by Sigmund Freud. Eventually, photography became a preeminent tool of surrealist visual culture."

I loved hearing the collector talk about the hunger for these arresting and strange images that possessed him. The vintage collection is all from the 1920's - 1940's. I learned to look at photography in a different way, specifically I was taken by the role of the photographic paper in the depths of the blacks and greys in the photos.



With photography on my mind the next day I cracked open the latest selection from my Book Club, Anna Quindlin's Still Life with Bread Crumbs: A Novel. I didn't know what the book was about in advance, so it was a completely coincidental juxtaposition of media around photography, that after viewing a collection, and hearing the collector impart his passion for the photos, I was reading an author's imagining of the way her heroine, a celebrity photographer in the art world, approached photography. The book is called by critics a comedy of manners, and it is a great story about finding oneself in the "second half" of life, but it is also a look at how the art world randomly elevates one artist to celebrity, almost despite herself, as well as a look at some of the questionably voyeuristic aspects of photography as an "art." When I first started it I sighed, thinking it was another one of those glib dysfunctional family novels that seem to occupy all the prize winning lists, but I was delightfully surprised by the quiet of the book, and the playfulness of its narration, and came to genuinely care about the characters.
And just to add the dessert course to my week of photography, my son Amnon shared some photos from his experiments with a twin lens reflex camera using medium format film— and I loved the results:

Akko

I don't think the universe is sending me a message about becoming a photographer, but I certainly enjoyed spending a week thinking about photography from so many perspectives.

Ben on a Bench

Cafe Tel Aviv

Another Dance Night in Cleveland

We saw an unbelievable dance company last night, once again thanks to DanceCleveland.


 photo by Uri Nevo from http://www.kcdc.co.il/en/photos/ifatall.html#galMenu

This was the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company  (KCDC) from, you guessed it, a kibbutz in Israel.

The dance was what I am dubbing a "long form" dance - a novella as opposed to the usual collection of short stories. It was an hour and a quarter long and was the entire program.

It is extraordinary how each dance company we see has their own lexicon of movements and their own personality. The variations in repertoire in today's modern dance world are infinite and an endless channel for creativity. This company was started by Holocaust Survivors and its legacy is continued by the child of survivors, Rami Be'er, who directs the company and plans every detail: sets, music, costumes, lighting. The result is a very cohesive whole.

The piece we saw "If At All" (אמבכלל) is described on their website as "A moving theatrical event in figurative and abstract circles, from the closed form to the open structure. Physical space in motion whose essence is a chain of events of diverse and ever-changing interpersonal relationships."

 I would describe it as "post-narrative" - there is a story-like feel but there is no clear story line - just emotion, action and power. The long form creates a hypnotic immersion experience that pulls the viewer into a lengthy descent into the world of the dancers. The dancers are technically amazing, full of power and fluidity— explosive action and lyrical retreat. Many relationships seem to unfold; circles, duets, solos, groups move to ever changing music. The piece transforms itself as it moves from dark to light, costumes and lighting and music changing throughout, yet part of a unified whole.
 

The video (which is excellent) gives a taste of the experience. Watching the video makes me want to go back and see it again—it is one of those pieces that would continue to work on repeated viewings.

In the Q and A afterward the director, and two of the dancers, spoke overtly of not over-determining the interpretation for the audience but keeping it open, so that the viewer brings their own interpretation to it.

DanceCleveland, as usual, adds their own additional fabulous features to the experience, like buttons and chocolate kisses on the tables afterward and little post-its on each program to fill out and to put up on the wall after the performance in which viewers list three take-aways or their general impression: survival, celebration, athleticism. There is also a twitter gallery in the balcony. The organization is a model for hybrid audience engagement!

Somehow KCDC created a story of survival, love and life through dance—and today it continues to echo within me.

Quote of the Day

I don't really do a quote of the day, this is more the Quote of the Year:

Last year at family camp (our annual tradition) someone mentioned to me, in one of those conversations that unfold sitting around the porch, that it is impossible to be kind when you are in a hurry.

I've thought about this many times over the past year - it is SO true. And I am always in a hurry - rushing off to pick up a kid, getting to the pool before it closes, trying to get out of the grocery store in time for a conference call, driving madly to yoga class (which should be a contradiction in terms right there.) And yes, it is impossible to be kind when you are late.

So today as I was checking out of the grocery store, a shopping trip for my son's pool party (which he told me about only this morning) that I managed to wedge in between making it to the morning lap swim (which only goes from 9-10:45 am) and getting on to my 11 am conference call for work, after getting off a plane last night and having my first full night's sleep in a week...and the cashier started inspecting the granola I was buying to ask if it had any nuts, since it looked good and she is allergic. I was already annoyed because she had prolonged the transaction before me by having a conversation with the woman ahead of me about her twins, and I was about to put on my annoyed city slicker face when I remembered the Quote of the Year. Would it really make a difference to engage in a 30 second conversation with this woman about my granola? Of course, not. So I remembered to be kind.

One of the outcomes of our lifestyle is that we are always in a hurry. And always running late. At least I am.  It is so wearing and it has a cost not just on our own nervous systems and hormonal responses, but on others around us.

I am going to try and opt more for kindness and less for timeliness.

Tommy's

 Veggie Burger-Not Your Grandmother's Burger

I love Tommy's. I have been going there since I was 14 years old, the first time my friend Jackie and I got on bikes and were old enough to go all the way to Coventry.

A few weeks ago I described a day spent with my daughter walking around Coventry on this blog. Tommy's was mentioned only in its absence from the itinerary. Today I went for lunch with my son, Aryeh.

The menu has been the same for all these years, with a few additions. I can walk in at any stage of my life and order a Lynne with bananas, a Dale, a Quincy, an MR 4, or a Jackson with Loui on the side and know what I am getting. Sandwiches are named after their orginators: "When the same people would make up sandwiches and order the same things every time, it was easier to just write thier names or initials down. That is how our menu was created. Each item is named after its creator. These lovely people represent the history of Coventry and now make their homes all over the world." (from Tommy's website.)

 Lynne with Bananas

I tell my kids the Becky is named after me. Becky: A wheat spinach pie stuffed with tofu salad and cheese. $8.95

 Black Raspberry Chip Yogurt Shake

Let's not even get started on the yogurt shakes. One Tommy's tradition (maybe it is just me) is to order the shake first and eat it with the meal. Nowhere else do you get dessert first.

Even the Fries are Great

In all the different places I have lived and in all my travels I have never seen a menu like this. Tofu and tempeh salad sandwiches, spinach pies in every shape, size and color. They know where to apply the baba ghanouj, the sesame seeds and the bananas. In short, it is hippy food at its finest. And has proved ageless-been around since I was 10 years old.

When I had an apartment in the Coventry area my roomie Lauren and I came here regularly. In the years I lived outside of Cleveland coming to Tommy's was a fixed item on my itinerary. It was a part of the feeling of home and it was always grounding to be able to eat the same sandwich in the same place. Now my oldest son lives in the Coventry area and it is his hang-out, wait-staffed by his friends. To be a Clevelander, at least an east sider, one SHOULD know the difference between an MR 3 and an MR 4.

Hitting 50 and Beyond: Women Reinventing Themselves

Several women in my life have completely re-invented themselves in their 50's. I find this decade a fascinating and generative period of life, though of course when I was younger I would have thought that 50's was the end of the line, or at least the beginning of the end. It actually feels like the beginning of many things. As soon as I passed the birthday, I was infused with excitement about this coming decade.

During my doctoral studies I learned that though we have done a lot of work mapping the developmental stages of babies, children and adolescents, once we reach adulthood most people see it as one undifferentiated stage. The reality is that adulthood, too, has various stages, and I was palpably aware of the beginning of a new stage.

In Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life by Gail Sheehy, a book I picked up a couple of years ago when I was preparing for my 50th birthday, Sheehy breaks it down decade by decade. She carefully maps the stages of adulthood using anecdotal interviews and building on the work of various theoriest and psychologists. The book looks like and markets as a pop psychology book, but is rigorous, grounded and well written. She writes about women post-child raising who suddenly have new zest for life, who are able to tap "secondary interests...that can blossom into a serious life interest." Earlier in the book she uses another horticultural metaphor to speak of a woman who successfully "repots" herself in new soil.

So let me tell you about some of the women I know and what they have done:

A friend and neighbor went back to art school, got a masters in print making, and now does her own art, has built a career as an exhibit curator, and adjucates art shows. She did a massive renovation of her home to create a new master suite and beautiful patio which she designed.

Another friend and neighbor and book club member completed a 500 level yoga teacher training at Kent State University (equivalent to a PhD) and just recently passed her first Iyengar teacher assessment—an extremely rigorous and demanding training protocol. She also renovated her backyard shed into a beautiful yoga studio.

My childhood best friend moved from a life in the journalism and publishing industries to become an independent filmmaker, and creating a successful documentary about Jews in San Francisco, American Jerusalem, that is currently featured on PBS and many major film festivals.

Another friend, rabbinic colleague and book clubber, entered an intense chaplaincy training program at the Cleveland Clinic and now is the Director of Spiritual Care at Hillcrest Hospital.

Another friend and book clubber re-licensed herself as an RN and is now working doing hospice care at a local senior citizen home.

I notice as I wrote it up that many of them went back to school to retrain and retool. All of these women find their current new professions wholly engaging and inspiring. And I also recognize that I am fortunate to be surrounded by such erudite company!

This week I engaged in a coaching process with another friend and master coach, Leni Wildflower, the woman who taught my coaching certification program while I was a doctoral student at Fielding Graduate University, to plot my next trajectory. We had our first session and began the process and I am excited about where it will take me.
 
I remarked to her that I have or have had six different careers, none of which feel finished and all of which still call to me in some way.
1. Writer (science fiction writer)
2. Cantor (clergy, pulpit and substitute pulpit work)
3. Singer/Performer (Jewish music, chamber music, opera and classical recitals)
4. Mother and Spouse (on-going, obviously)
5. Organizational Development Professional (my current position with the Cantors Assembly)
6. Angel Investor in real estate and technology start-ups
7. TV watcher, book reader, leisure traveler and general lazy bum. I wish :)

Our work is to figure out which one(s) calls the loudest so that I can concentrate my goals and energies around it for this next stretch of living.

My first task was to write up scenarios for each one of these as if it is what I am doing and see how it looks and feels. I wrote them up on the plane to San Francisco, on the way to joining Irad and Yuval who have been working there much of this month. I will continue to report on how this work moves me forward.

But I also would like to hear from other people who have experienced this kind of personal re-invention in their 50s.

More San Francisco

 Leaving San Francisco by ferry

We took the ferry to Sausalito for the 4th of July. We ran to catch the very last ferry of the day at 6:45 pm. Things always feel better when you work for them!

It was a beautiful evening and we could see the entire skyline as we moved across the water, along with the fog rolling over the city. But it was perfectly clear on the water.

Angel Island State Park seen from Ferry

Sails at Play

The Ferry Look

Arriving in Sausalito

I had never been to Sausalito before and it was picturesque and charming.  In an interesting blurb on  this colorful area I read about a local history that encompasses, "dons, extravagant fiestas... Portuguese boat builders, Italian fishermen, Chinese shopkeepers, rail yard workers, ferry crewmen, and dairy ranchers,...Out-of-town rumrunners, local police, basement speakeasies, backyard stills...painters, sculptors, dancers, writers, musicians, mask makers, bohemians, hippies and houseboaters." You know. Colorful.

We had a lovely dinner at Sushi Ran,
one of SF's great sushi restaurants. They were amazingly creative with their vegetable appetizers and did a stunning vegan sushi selection for Irad. Again too dark for good pics.

We used Uber to get back. We pretty much Uber-ed to get everywhere and it was an amazing convenience. As they promised, "With just the push of a button, Uber will connect you with the closest available driver in town, ready to pick you up in minutes. You’ll see a photo of your driver, the car they are driving, and even watch them on the app as they drive toward you." It was like having our own (interchangeable) private driver wherever we went, and several of the drivers were really warm and friendly. Some of them added personal touches like stocking their backseats with mints or packages of gum. Since we are hip deep in a tech company, we constantly interviewed the drivers about their experience with Uber, marveled at the business model and success of the company. Beyond global village, it is the new networked village.

On Saturday morning I returned to the Ferry Building to meet Jackie for walking brunch. The Farmers' Market was amazing!

  

We could go to a restaurant, a stand or just cruise through samples!

Lots of samples

Fresh produce, baked goods, prepared foods and flowers galore. I have never seen so many beautiful and unusual flowers available in one place, and so reasonably. I got myself a small bouquet of sweet pea flowers for our hotel room, and some large bunches of dahlia and some flowers I had never heard of that I can't remember now for Jackie to bring home.

Jackie's Bouquet Finds a Home

Fortunately I don't live in SF or I'd be back obsessively every Saturday for more of these giant oreos (Can't remember name of bakery farm-stand. Jackie?)

In the afternoon Yuval and I went on a little shopping museum spree. The standout shopping store was Flight 001,

a store dedicated to travel technology, luggage and gadgets. I turned Yuval on to compression packing, which subject I will save for another blog. I consider myself mildly expert in packing.

 de Young Museum designed by Herzog & de Meuron

We went to the de Young museum in Golden Gate park for a remarkable museum experience. Yuval, who was an architect in a past life and a fan of Herzog & de Meuron, gave me an impassioned tour of the building, its special construction, views and approaches.

 detail of facade, constructed in Kansas City, perforated so that no two panels are alike, in homage to the digital age of pixels

He is very good at communicating his knowledge and love of things he cares about and makes an amazing travel companion. Everyone should have the experience of being introduced to this museum by Yuval. 

We spent some time up in the Hamon Tower appreciating the incredible city views, park views, ocean views, and Marin county views, in this city of views.

I loved the African and Art of the Americas galleries, where everything was set in the dark, in a bath of warm wood floors, walls, and ceiling, with spotlighting that made it all sparkle. It really felt like entering a mysterious and magical world of exotic art. I find that when I visit a museum I get more out of slowly taking in one or two areas than trying to see everything and just brain-blurring.

We sat in the  in the cafe, soaking up the atmosphere. It was closing but they gave us a cup of tea on the house so that we could enjoy the last few minutes. I find that sitting in a cafe after taking in a lot of amazing art is a great way to percolate the dream machine. Leads to great conversation. Walked out to Uber back to the hotel.

Sunday before our flight we were back at Blue Bottle for breakfast. I would be there every morning if I lived in SF!

 Eggs baked in toast

 The great windows and light

 Fabulous Coffee Making Apparatus

 A Bit of Mad Coffee Science

And that's the wrap. See you again soon, San Francisco.