Dec. 28, 2010: Supper at Gramercy Tavern

Lisa asked for more details about our dinner at Gramercy Tavern. It had been a long day – starting at 3:30 in the morning so that we could get to the Birmingham airport and make our connecting flight through Charlotte to get to New York. It was three days after Christmas and two days since two feet of snow had been dropped on New York, paralyzing travel. It was purely providential that we had made our plans to travel on Tuesday. Lots of folks we know who had made plans to travel on the Sunday and Monday had to deal with cancelled flights and couldn’t make it to NYC until late Thursday or Friday, which didn’t work well if you were headed to the ballgame. Anyhoo, long story short, we made it. We were very grateful. Also found our way to our nice hotel with a fabulous view of the Empire State Building with minimal difficulty. And it was barely noon.

So we set off to look at New York with the goal of visiting the Sheraton Towers, where the team was staying. We grabbed lunch at Pret a Manger, which is rather ironic as this is a London-based chain. Still, we chowed and moved on through the slush to Times Square, the official Pinstripe Bowl press conference, where we met our new BFF John Currie and finally to the lobby of the Sheraton where all we had to do was walk into the bar and find our good friends Cookie and Audrey waiting for us. It was a pleasant way to pass the cocktail hour, but then we were curious to explore the city some more.

So, I coaxed my beloved onto the subway and we got off the train at Union Square. I was in search of Gramercy Tavern, which I knew to be on 20^th Street. Of course, we initially went in the wrong direction. The area around Union Square was for some reason even messier than most that evening. I managed to lose a shoe at one point, but we recovered and yet trod ever onward. Joe was willing to stop at one point to turn around and settle for a TGIFriday’s. However, I pled for one more block and…there we were. We found Gramercy Tavern. It was after 8:00, we looked like total tourists wearing our head to toe (literally, this includes even my shoes) purple. There is a dining room, which I assume gets booked weeks in advance, and the tavern area, which has bar seating and a handful of several small tables. It was quite full when we got there and the estimated wait was 45 minutes. We gave them Joe’s name and headed for the bar.

Did I mention that we had been awake since 3:30 am? And had been doing more than our daily practice of walking. So it was a nice bar to see. We each ordered a local beer. Mine was a Stoudt’s Pilsner and Joe got a Captain Lawrence Extra Gold. While Joe’s was more bitter than I like, they were both good. We stood at the bar for a while, then retreated to the seating area by the door for the duration. Even waiting there, we met friendly folks, including one South Carolina fan who sounded like he was from Brooklyn, but still welcomed us and wished the Cats luck.

Then we got our table. It was a humble little thing, but located well away from the door, and with a good view of everything. The next question was about ordering. They have a three-course tasting menu, but it was late enough for us that dessert seemed kind of remote. We decided to split an appetizer and each have an entrée, with marital tasting privileges in place.

Hence, the appetizer: Merquez sausage with carrots, parsnips and black lentils. We each had three 2-inch links of spicy lamb sausage on a bed of lentils. There were carrots and parsnips, trimmed to match the sausage pieces in size and nicely carmelized/browned. Also, a part of the dish was a vegetable that I can only describe as a baby cauliflower that was also cooked and browed. It was lovely.

Our nice waiter then offered us a special treat of bacon cheddar biscuits. They were meltingish and heavenly. Oh, and they butter that they served with them was really good, too.

We got another round of beers while enjoying our biscuits and waiting for the entrees to arrive. Yes, I know that I should have switched to wine, but I was seriously exhausted by this point and didn’t want complications from my alcohol. I was pretty sure I could get us home but did not want to push things. So, another beer, please.

My entrée was a fillet of sea bass with on Swiss chard with pine nuts and an onion sauce. It was fabulous. Every bite was relevant and the portion size was perfect. I want to be able to describe it in more detail, but I cannot. It was discrete and lovely. The texture of the fish was complemented at every turn by green, pignoli and oniony sweetness.

Joe ordered smoked pork shoulder with sweet potato, salsify, and bacon broth. Seriously, I saw his eyes roll back into his skull when he took the first bite. Salsify? Yes, he ate salsify, and enjoyed it. Pork, bacon and sweet potatoes are fairly quick sells with the boy, but salsify? Yep. And he loved it. All.

We looked at the dessert menu. We may have drooled a bit, but we were just plain tired. One of these days I’ll go back in search of that Butterscotch Bread Pudding with Quince Sorbet, but that was just not the night.

We walked back to our hotel. It was 8 short NY blocks and about three of the long ones. Not a bad walk at all. And we slept well.

Merry New Year, Pt. 2

Another year, another attempt at blogging.

It has been a busy couple of weeks for someone who has been off-work. We went to New York. We got new phones. I'm tweeting. A new semester starts in a week. We've got some off-balance sheet activities going on that we can't even talk about here. Sigh. It's a lot of stuff.

Thinking positive - the trip to New York was outstanding. Really great. The first lesson of all travel, and particularly Bowl Trip travel is this: Do not let the success or failure of the trip hinge on things that are out of your control, such as a ball game. Or weather. Or the performance of airline service providers. Actually, that last item was of no issue on this particular trip. Could not have been more smooth, although folks who attempted travel one or two days before us were hosed.

Highlights in bullet point form:

• Hanging out with AD John Currie at the press conference, and meriting a mention from him.
• Running into good pals Cookie and Audrey
• Dinner at Gramercy Tavern
• The view from our room
• A visit to St. Paul's chapel across the street from Ground Zero
• Noon Eucharist at Trinity Wall Street and the homily from Fr. Bozzuti-Jones
• Not making any major subway errors in three days
• Yankee Stadium
• General Theological Seminary
• Running into K-Staters and K-State sympathizers all over the dang place

It was good. It was all truly good.

Painting the Big Apple purple!

We last we posted, the decision of the Kansas State Wildcats' bowl destination had not been made. Turns out that we were invited to the New Era Pinstripe Bowl in New York City, to be played within the friendly confines of Yankee Stadium on the afternoon of December 30.

We're going!! In ten short days, we will be in NYC hanging out with our purple homies. None of my family will be able to make the journey, but we've already heard from some friends who will be there. Plus it will give us a chance to do a preliminary exploration of New York, so that we can come back sometime when it is a little more affordable and stay a bit longer.

As mentioned in the previous post, there were some tough decisions to make regarding the financing of this trip. We've decided to dedicate this excursion to the late great Dr. Tony Jurich, a professor in the Marriage and Family Therapy department at K-State. I never took a class from Tony, but his presence loomed large in the School of Family Studies and Human Services. An avid Wildcat fan, Tony was an unmistakable presence at football and basketball games and enjoyed a lively repartee with the officials from his front row seats. After surviving complications from knee surgery, the loss of a kidney and a small stroke, Tony lost his life in October to a rogue wave off Cabo San Lucas. The loss has been profoundly felt throughout the academic community of which I will always be a part.

Oh, and Tony was a New York guy. He even played football at Fordham. So we're going!

Happy Advent!

Yes, I've been a horrendously bad blogger again, the new year of the Church has begun, so why not start in on those resolutions right now?

Along with waiting for the arrival of Baby Jesus, those of us here at the compound are waiting for the answer to a question over which we have no control whatsoever: To what bowl game will our precious Kansas State Wildcats be invited? This is not something that we have had to worry about for several years; it has been a down and rebuilding period for our team. Truthfully, our budget is rather thankful that we have not had this large expenditure for several years. And, just as truthfully, with half of the workforce only working part-time, it's not going to be easy to go this year.

But, on the other hand, we would not want to miss this. First of all, nothing is more fun than a bowl trip. Secondly, the Beloved Husband has never been on a K-State bowl trip. Thirdly, we need a little break from home. I've been to a couple of conferences this fall, but the BH has been stuck here in T-town since our beach adventure this summer. We need to get the boy out of the house for his own good.

So I'm going to fight some of my finest instincts as a financial planner and recommend that this client repurpose some long-term savings if necessary to enjoy this opportunity. There are a couple of things going on in the background that are not worthy of sharing at this time, but I will say that there were some minor health scares this fall which have me thinking of the value of time spent with friends and family with whom we share so much. Nothing really bad happened, but a couple of "Oooh, yeah, well, we'll keep an eye on that and take another look in six months" sorts of things that just make you think.

But in the meantime, it's Advent. One of my favorite things about the Advent season is the multi-media Advent calendar produced by Trinity Wall Street Church every year. I'm going to try to imbed a link in one of the sidebars of this blog. If I can't manage that, I'll go ahead and share it with you here: http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/news/features/2010-advent-calendar This year's theme is Love Revealed. Gosh, I hope you like it.

I heard it on the radio

It has been a couple of weeks since I heard this, but I can’t get the thoughts out of my mind.

Don’t believe everything you hear on the radio. Especially if you happen to hear some jerk named Neal Bortz, or something like that. For some reason I was tuned into the station he was broadcasting on as I drove home one night, and the more I listened, the angrier I got.

If the Bush 43 tax cuts are allowed to expire, this does not mean that every small business owner will have to donate another 5% of his or her income towards taxes. This is just plain flat out wrong, but you would never realize this if you listened to Mr. Bortz.

The 5% only applies to profits earned by small businesses in excess of $250,000. It does not apply to the salaries that small business owners pay to themselves, or to their employees. Those taxation levels will stay the same as they have been. It is only the incremental profits that will see the additional 5% tax level.

I swear, I was listening to this joker while I was trying to get out of the Birmingham airport parking lot and he just about had me convinced that every dollar I paid to my corner deli or dry cleaner was going to have 5 cents chopped off the top and sent to Washington.

Few things could be further from the truth. First of all, these changes are already codified in the tax laws, and have been since the tax cuts that precipitated this country’s economic decline were enacted in 2001. Secondly, the dollars you pay to your local merchant represent total revenues, not taxable profits. In between total revenues and taxable income stand the following: Cost of Goods Sold, Selling and Administrative Expenses, General Expenses, Interest Expense, Depreciation Expense, and a host of other costs involved in doing business. Unless, of course, the owner of your local corner deli or dry cleaner has an idiot for an accountant or is still organized as a sole proprietorship rather than an LLC or other entity, in which case he or she should either get a new accountant or pull his or her head out of his or her ass.

Look, folks, this country has hit upon some rather hard times. We all need to pull together to pull ourselves out of the mess. Let the tax cuts expire. It was a failed experiment. Maybe I’ll proselytize about the injustices of income inequality and some proposed solutions on another day, but please, stop listening to apocalyptic blowhards like this Bortz fellow now. He’s wrong, and he’s trying to mislead you.

Tinker tailor soldier priest?

Last Saturday we went to Hayneville, Alabama to commemorate the feast of Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a saint recognized by the Episcopal Church. He was a seminarian and civil rights activist who did just what Jesus talked about in John 15:13 by laying down his life to save another.

After being jailed in deplorable conditions for six days in what can best be described in a dungeon in Hayneville, in August Alabama heat with limited hygiene and poor food, Daniels and three others were released. They went to a nearby store to get cold drinks. Exact details vary, but the indisputable fact is that Jon Daniels took a gunshot blast to the chest after pushing a sixteen-year-old African-American girl named Ruby Sales out of the way. The offender managed to shoot a Catholic priest in the back before heading to the courthouse where he was eventually acquitted of the crimes.

About 300 of us gathered at the courthouse square in August Alabama heat that could have been much worse, and proceeded to the jail, to the store (now an insurance office) and back to the courthouse for Eucharist to honor Daniels and all of the martyrs of Alabama.

It was indescribable to kneel on the spot where another human being died, and the experience was magnified by the manner of his death. I’m overwhelmed by the sickness inside the mind of someone who could perpetrate such a crime, but realize that this is beyond my understanding. The killer continued to live in the community until his death. I wonder if he ever realized the futility of his sin.

The life of Jonathan Daniels, while briefer, was much more interesting. Born in Keene, New Hampshire, his father was a doctor and his family Congregationalist. Daniels attended the Virginia Military Institute and graduated valedictorian. (On a side note, my oldest nephew attended VMI for one year). He then began graduate school at Harvard in English literature, but after an Easter conversion experience, enrolled at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge. He would have graduated in 1966, but took a leave of absence to work in the civil rights movement.

How does a young man go from a relatively privileged life in New England to a military institution in Virginia, where he was evidently very successful in his studies? How does someone who trained brilliantly as a soldier become a seminary student? And how does this person transfer these experiences and skills into revolution through peaceful civil disobedience? There is a dichotomy there that I do not quite understand, but it fills me with awe, respect and admiration.

While contemplating this, I wandered over to Padre Mickey’s website and saw what he posted on Jonathan Daniels and Maximilian Kolbe. I first learned about Kolbe when my dear cousin Ellen had a son named Max; I wanted to learn about his patron saint and discovered that there were choices. Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest who had at one time trained for the military, but chose to pursue the priesthood instead. He became a Franciscan and was active in the Franciscan movement in Japan before returning to Poland to open a monastery. Then, the Germans invaded. Kolbe sheltered refuges, including Jews, and ran a printing press. Eventually, he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. While there, Kolbe literally gave his life for a fellow prisoner; he was murdered by the Nazis by injection of carbolic acid after being denied food and water for 10 days. Think about that. Jeez.

After my visit to Padre Mickey, and thinking about Daniels and Kolbe, my thoughts turned to another soldier and priest, Father Emil Kapaun. When I was a kid in Wichita, Kansas, the exclusive Catholic boy’s school in my part of town was a Jesuit preparatory school known as Kapaun. I remember when the Jesuits decided to pull out of Wichita (and that is how I recall the phrasing; as if the most revolutionary missionary movement in the history of the Roman Catholic Church had determined either that Wichita had been saved to the utmost possible degree, or that we were beyond salvation), Kapaun merged with the East Side girl’s Catholic school to become Kapaun-Mt.Carmel. In spite of their small size, they were able to recruit some real football talent and under the leadership of storied coach Ernie Kriewel, managed to kick a lot of public school ass in the 1970’s and 1980’s. But I digress. The point is that the name “Kapaun,” pronounced “kay’-pun” for those non-Wichitans who may be tuning in, became part of my childhood and youthful vernacular. It was the name of the Catholic school. They may have been good in football and golf, but their band sucked, they had no orchestra, and their musical productions were rather junior-high worthy. But what was behind this word Kapaun that rolled off my Wichita tongue as readily as “Nu-way” or “King’s X”?

It turns out that Emil Kapaun was born to Czech immigrant parents in Marion County, Kansas. He went to the local high school and then to seminary in St. Louis. He first became a chaplain when a WWII-only air base was established near his hometown. He became a full-time chaplain for the duration of the war, was discharged, went to graduate school, and then re-enlisted in 1949. He was sent to Korea when that conflict broke out in 1950, and was captured in November of that year, after being awarded the Bronze Star. He died six months later in a Chinese prison camp. He had pneumonia, gangrene and a variety of the other types of ailments one suffers under such conditions. Then his order opened a school named in his honor near his hometown and it is still a school today.

The Roman Catholic church has a long and involved process to make a person a saint. Father Kapaun has been proposed for sainthood and his life is being debated somewhere in the labyrinthine Vatican bureaucracy. We Episcopalians more or less just vote on saints during General Convention. If it were up to me, Emil Kapaun would be a saint in any church; he did what Jesus said to do. ‘Nuff said.

Still, I’m left with the soldier/server dichotomy.

These three stories are of men functioning under different circumstances and in different ways, but all in the 20^th century and with the same result. How many stories of men and women who have juxtaposed the two positions are lost to history? How many will there be in the future? How many more are active today?

Well, it's about time

OK, so I have neglected this thing for over two months. Oops! Not my intention. Things just got kind of busy with the end of the semester, the final squeak through to get my dissertation all done with the requisite i's dotted and t's crossed and s's properly curved and all of the other hoops I had to jump through. Then there was the round trip between Tuscaloosa and Manhattan, a side trip to Clay Center, my niece Madeline's graduation party, the denouement from graduation, the first summer as a faculty person and our anniversary trip to the beach. Not to mention that I am about to commence upon my 51st (blech, it hurts to type it) trip around the sun as an occupant of the 3rd rock.

So as Crash Davis once noted in the great movie "Bull Durham", we've been dealing with a lot of, um, stuff lately. Hopefully I will be able to make some sense of it all fairly soon. Long story short: it's going pretty well and it's up to me to keep it that way.

Peace, out.