Babies

Could someone explain to me why babies make people smile? There is a gentleman who works at my office. He is the surliest, most sour-looking person I have ever met. Far more surly than I am -- and that's saying something. He is not just serious or even dour -- he wears a permanent grimace of haughty disgust that by now has probably etched itself into the tissue of his face like botched plastic surgery. Until today. When another co-worker's wife stopped by the office with her one-year-old twins, the man smiled. I could not believe it -- I did not think it was possible. Am I a freak of nature for taking a groundhog or even a squirrel over a baby for cuteness any day?

NY Phil. in North Korea

The New York Philharmonic is in Pyongyang, North Korea right now, to play a concert, apparently at the invitation of the North Korean dictatorship. What could they possibly hope to accomplish by this? Evidently, the project was hatched last year, when there was a “thaw” between the US and North Korea. A handful of multi-party talks chaperoned by supposedly non-aligned governments at least one of which (China) is friendly to North Korea and is widely believed to be the only reason the Kim Jong Il dictatorship hasn't collapsed yet, taking half of Asia down with it, qualifies as a thaw? A little flexible with our definitions are we? But never mind that.

Cultural ambassadorship has a long history, some of it distinguished, or at least innocent. Exposing a foreign society, particularly a non-Western one, to Western artistic achievements is considered to be the most direct, and the least political, method of appealing directly to the general population of the target country. Classical music seems to fit the bill especially well – it is supposed to be the art form that captures humanity's highest hopes and ideals, and it does not depend on written or spoken language to deliver its message. In practice, however, these same qualities are the art form's greatest liabilities, and in the case of North Korea at least, the project will backfire.

There is a reason why Kim invited a symphony orchestra – classical music is an art form that most people in any society don't understand. It is safe, precisely because it does not depend on conventional language while wearing very convincingly the cloak of great culture. If there is anything a Stalinist dictatorship knows how to do, it is how to create an illusion of benevolence without actually granting its people anything meaningful, and the NY Phil. and its music director Lorin Maazel have played into Kim's hands by agreeing to go.

“It would have been a great mistake not to accept this invitation,” Maazel was quoted as saying. And why is that, may I ask? You can't seriously believe, Maestro, that you are actually contributing to the well-being of an average North Korean in any meaningful way, do you? I am willing to bet significant amounts of money that every single attendee at your supposedly historic concert is going to be a carefully screened party apparatchik. Yeah, they're going to show it on state television. Big deal – how much can you really communicate to a group of half-starved North Koreans, indoctrinated to automaton level, gathered around a grainy black and white set in someone's communal kitchen? It makes no difference that you're playing Gershwin's “An American in Paris.” Actually, it does make a difference – a negative one. A rousing Beethoven symphony at least has a chance of coming across on a purely emotional level – its essence of human struggle and drama is universal and timeless. Gershwin, on the other hand, will be completely lost on your North Korean audience. Heck, it's lost on most Americans.

In the meantime, you, and your entire orchestra are made to surrender your cell phones and “publishing of all kinds” at the airport. Is this the kind of government for which you want to show respect? For that is precisely what you're doing. Accepting any invitation is a show of mutual respect by both parties. Someone invites you to dinner at their house. They do this because they like you and want to do something nice for you. You accept for the same reasons. That is a show of respect. Or they do it because they want to get something out of you for their own benefit. In that case, you do not accept, unless you're too naïve or too full of yourself to recognize it. Guess which category Kim falls into, making you fall into the coresponding one? Thankfully, a Western artist cannot be compelled to do something he does not wish to do. So the responsibility for legitimizing, however apolitically, the North Korean regime, falls squarely on your shoulders, Maestro Maazel.

What do I expect you to have done instead, you ask? I expect you to have stood up and declined the invitation outright, saying that your moral standards do not allow you to accept an invitation from a government that is directly responsible for starving two million of its citizens to death.

What is equally worrisome is that apparently not a single orchestra member declined to go, citing North Korean human rights abuses as the basis for their decision. I attribute this to the tyrannical powers conductors sometimes have over their orchestras, and the musicians' pathological fear of losing their jobs. Still, this is very sad. Great artists, great conductors in particular, are known for allowing their outsize egos to disconnect them from reality. An average musician has no such excuse. Sheepishly surrendering your cell phone at customs, and allowing oneself to be bussed around for two days to performances of folk dances by girls with pasted-on plastic smiles, by a government that would not hesitate to lob a nuclear missile at Japan just because it has nothing to lose, is cowardice at best, moral decrepitude at worst.

P.S.: Evidently, even after the US-North Korea talks collapsed, Maazel was told by the Bush administration he could proceed with the visit. I suppose it is possible that he wanted to cancel, but for mysterious reasons of its own, the administration, ahem, encoraged him not to. But I am not enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe that seriously. Politicians are even worse than great conductors when it comes to disconnecting themselves from reality.

Some tasting notes

Here are some tasting notes for a few beers that I have collected over the last several weeks and haven't had a chance to write up until now.

Green Flash Trippel
8.5% ABV. Darker than most triples, sort of peach-colored. Pours with a thick, dense, almost white and very vigirous head. Yeasty and slightly musty on the nose, with hints of perfume. Fairly creamy on the palate, with a pronounced flavor of dried fruit. Beautifully balanced, not too sweet, not too bitter, with a very long finish. Two thumbs up.

Smuttynose Barleywine
ABV not listed, not even on the brewery's website, but tastes strong as a barleywine should. My estimate is around 9-10%. Fairly dark reddish-brown color. Not much in the way of head. Quite hoppy on the nose, but with a strong fruity character, especially raisins. A little musty. Hoppy bitterness on the palate (by barleywine standards, anyway). Acquired a metallic taste when served with very sweet things (I tried dried fig). On the other hand, delicious with a washed rind cheese.

Flying Dog Imperial Porter
9.2% ABV – Imperial indeed. Almost black color. Short beige head, dissipated quickly. Rye bread and molasses on the nose. Exquisitely balanced on the palate, very long finish. Smoother than a beer of this strength ought to be.

Fiddler's Green IPA
ABV not listed, but doesn't taste that strong. My estimate is no more than 6.5%, probably less. Clear amber color. Thick head, but dissipated very quickly. Very fizzy. Slightly sweet on the nose. Pronounced honey flavor on the palate. Not nearly hoppy enough for an IPA. Pleasant, inoffensive, decent everyday quaff, but not that distinctive. Apparently, this stuff is made by F.X. Matt in Utica, NY, where Saranac and Utica Club are also made.

Phoenix, Day Three

Sunday was finally a classic Arizona day. It was still chilly in the morning, but the sky was a deep, clear blue with nary a cloud visible, and the sun was already blinding at 8:00 a.m. In the morning, we met M., the artistic director of the Downtown Chamber Series, for breakfast at Palletta, on the North-Western edge of downtown. Palletta has opened since we moved, and, according to M., is evidence of the continuing revival of the downtown area, even in the face of the sluggish economy. The restaurant was very cool. It was located in a large, old (1920s vintage) house with a big yard, and most of the tables were outdoors. The food was excellent – hearty, but far more interesting and less greasy than typical American breakfast fare. J., in particular, hit the jackpot – sweet potato pancakes with mascarpone cream. They were light, fluffy, sweet but not cloying, and absolutely delicious. The coffee was some of the best I've had in a long time, and the place is also apparently known for their large selection of organic teas served in big vintage teapots that you can sip all morning.

Being here I couldn't help contemplate the contrasts that Phoenix offers, now even more than when J. and I lived here. As spacious and comfortable as our friends' house in Chandler is (their patio in particular, tiny by Arizona standards and shockingly pool-less, is the Platonic ideal of a patio for me), I do not like the uniform sterility of the outlying parts of the area today any more than I did five years ago. Endless miles of pink stucco houses, barely six feet apart, corralled into gated communities with equally pink walls separating them from arrow-straight six-lane thoroughfares, each major intersection dominated by four standard-issue strip malls. The areas surrounding downtown, however, is a completely different story. It has always been full of old houses (built in the teens and twenties, mostly) with amazing amounts of character, each one unique, and most of them small enough to be manageable even for a die-hard apartment dweller like me. A handful of random highrises look completely out of place but only add to the mosaic-like character of the neighborhoods. The problem, even as recently as five years ago, was that that's all there was. There was no street life to speak of. You had to get in the car to buy a quart of milk, and unless you were willing to drive a fair distance, you ended up buying the milk at a rather frightening-looking convenience store in a dilapidated gas station. In may areas, the houses were separated by large, empty, wind-blown lots that were beyond creepy at night. A few apartment complexes downtown, built when downtown still had a trace of a pulse, remained, their residents not inspiring confidence, to put it mildly.

All this started to change, very slowly, right around 2002-2003 as Phoenix was reluctantly swept into the reurbanization/gentrification movement that an increasing number of American cities was embracing. A few condo complexes started to go up along Central Ave., intrepid non-conformists like M. bought and restored some old houses, and a few trailblazing businesses like Portland's started to make a cautious foray into the wasteland surrounding downtown. Happily, the momentum continued. Phoenix is still a far cry from a truly vibrant, walkable city, and to be honest, I have my doubts that something like that can be created effectively from scratch, but I must admit I feel chastened – the areas surrounding downtown Phoenix seem like a very attractive place to live today, and hopefully, with the opening of the light rail and more construction, will continue to improve.

M. caught us up on his frenzied life. The Chamber Series was a major topic of discussion, and while it is demanding tons of his energy, it seems to be going really well. He lectured a bit on the importance of keeping it small and simple, and of having realistic expectations for its success. I found his discussion of the challenges of attracting audiences interesting. He is, of course, enthused about the revival of the downtown area, but concerned that as more money is being poured in, and more luxurious housing gets built, its denizens will not necessarily increase his pool of potential concert attendees. “Condo people,” in his words, “do not go to classical concerts. They've been raised on U2. They watch DVDs on their fancy entertainment systems. They might go see the Nutcracker at Christmas time.” I thought that he was being a little too simplistic by saying that, and that he was falling victim to the demographic compartmentalization in which the marketers he claims to dislike so much routinely engage. More generally, though M. is one of the most optimistic, energetic and positive-thinking people I know, I got a sense that he was feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. Between his regular job playing for the Phoenix Symphony, the Chamber Series, which he still does mostly single-handedly, and raising two kids with his wife who works only occasionally, he feels chronically short on both time and money.

Our plans for the rest of the day called for hiking in the Supersition Mountains. When we got back to C.&S.'s house, however, S. informed us that there was a marathon taking place in the very area where we were going to hike, so we had to resort to Plan B – Camelback Mountain. Camelback is right in the middle of Phoenix and features two trails to the top, both relatively challenging. It is perpetually crowded, but it does offer Southwestern hiking in microcosm without having to drive far, and as beautiful as true Arizona wilderness is, the views of Phoenix (and, unfortunately, its smog) from the top are something to behold, too. S. stayed behind as she still wasn't feeling well, and the three of us set out for the mountain. By the time we got there, the morning crowd had come and gone, and while there was still a lot of people, it was manageable. The weather held beautifully. The whole trail is only about five miles round-trip, but with a 2700-foot elevation change, the last third of it scrambling up some serious boulders, it's more fun than most five-mile trails offer. There is little point in describing the hike mile by mile, suffice it to say we loved every second of it. The hike also offerred the only meaningful wildlife sighting of the entire trip – two adorable desert hares, unfazed by groups of noisy hikers, munching on fresh grass at the foot of the mountain.

Photo courtesy of C.

Back at the house and cleaned up, we whiled away a couple of hours on the patio over a beer before heading to dinner. It was great to have some of the local beers again. You would think that in this day and age, in a consumerist furnace that is the US, every product would be available everywhere. Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to microbrewed beers. Antiquated liquor laws and an arcane system of distributors makes many excellent beers unavailable in many parts of the country. Add to that truly local breweries that do not produce enough to sell outside their immediate surroundings, and every city of any size has its own little world of artisan beers, some of them amazingly delicious and utterly unique. In the event, C. had two of my favorites in his fridge – 1554 Black Ale from New Belgium Brewing Company in Ft. Collins, CO, and the Kilt Lifter from Phoenix's own Four Peaks Brewery. Neither is available East of the Mississippi. The 1554 stuff, in particular, is fantastic – nominally Belgian-style (Belgian yeast and secondary fermentation in the bottle), it is actually a style onto itself – pitch-black, yeasty like a good Belgian but with a heady all-American dose of hops. The Kilt Lifter is less intimidating but no less delicious – ostensibly a Scottish-style ale, it is lighter and more refreshing than classics like Bellhaven or McEwan's – perfect for sitting on C.&S.'s patio, listening to their burbling fountain and soaking up the last warm rays of the Arizona winter sun.

Our main motivation for coming to Phoenix was, of course, to see friends. But of all the things on this trip not directly related to people, our dinner on Sunday has to take the cake (though no cake was actually consumed). We went to Richardson's, a New Mexico-style Southwestern restaurant off of 16^th Street that is hands-down our favorite restaurant in the entire Phoenix area. New Mexico, Santa Fe in particular, has a distinctive style of Southwestern cuisine – superficially similar to Tex-Mex, it is actually utterly unique once you get to know it. Most of the dishes rely heavily on fresh chiles grown near Deming and Hatch, NM. It is the only regional cuisine that I have not been able to find outside of its native habitat – in fact, Arizona is about as far from Santa Fe as it gets. When done well, as it is at Richardson's, it is ridiculously good.

Richardson's menu is extensive, and they always feature several specials on the large chalkboards. Those tend to be the more creative, “gourmet” entrees – nut-crusted fish and such – but there is really no reason to go beyond the basics, printed right on the paper placemats. One of our favorites has always been posole – a pork and hominy stew that has its origins as a celebration dish in the Southern parts of Mexico. Richardson's version is perfect. It is clearly done the way it should be – stewed slowly for many hours, with no shortcuts. The pork is amazingly tender, and the thick, rich sauce of red chile and tomato has the perfect amount of heat and smokiness to it. J. ordered a bowl on Sunday – it was as good as we remembered it. I almost went for a bowl of posole myself, but opted for the chiles rellenos – two large roasted green chiles, stuffed with cheese and deliciously tender pork similar to that in the posole. I remember seeing the chiles being roasted in New Mexico years ago – it is usually done in large steel mesh drums with mesquite fires underneath. I don't know if Richardson's has one of those in the back, but my chiles tasted authentic – tender but firm enough to retain their shape, with a deep, smoky, peppery flavor. The cheese used for the stuffing was excellent as well. Even the best Tex-Mex restaurants can't seem to avoid gloppy, rubbery cheese, but Richardson's does it somehow – my cheese was perfectly white and oozed out of the chiles as a thick liquid, not clumps. The whole assembly was served with the classic New Mexico red chile sauce – thick, flavorful and quite hot – and a side of pinto beans that were actually good, not the refried gunk that passes for beans in so many restaurants. C. opted for a more “modern” dish – stuffed chicken breast – that he gave high marks. It came with one of Richardson's signature sides – green chile potatoes. They look like regular mashed potatoes, but they do taste strongly of green chile. Quite good. S., being a somewhat picky eater, played it safe with a chicken quesadilla, but I'm sure that even something as prosaic as that was delicious in the hands of Richardson's chefs. The wine list was actually quite extensive and interesting, but this was beer cuisine through and through, and we went with Anchor Steam that Richardson's had on draft.

From here, it was, unfortunately, time to wind down the trip. The following morning, C. and S. went to work while J. and I drove to the airport, returned the car, and flew home on another amazingly on-schedule, trouble-free flight.

Phoenix, Day Two

Saturday morning found us somewhat rested and refreshed, but disappointed that though the rain had stopped, it was 48 degrees and overcast. Determined to take advantage of Arizona weather even though there wasn't much to take advantage of, I spent an hour or so on our friends' patio, wearing a fleece vest, my hands wrapped around a mug of hot coffee, reading. Eventually, everyone else got themselves out of bed and we headed to breakfast at Great Harvest Bread Company in Tempe.

Like Pita Jungle, Great Harvest has a bit of a latter-day California counterculture vibe, makes a lot of whole-grain and fruit breads, and is known for its community involvement. Their crowning achievement, however, and the main reason we found ourselves there Saturday morning, is the Savannah Bar – a soft, chewy, cookie-like whole wheat crust topped with tons of fresh fruit, nuts, oats, and heaven knows what else. It sounds more “good-for-you” than “good” on paper, but it is actually the best of both worlds – sweet and rich-tasting, yet nutritious enough to fuel you for a few hours. I should have asked if Great Harvest was willing to share the recipe.

The sun had made a brief appearance while we were on our way to breakfast, but now it had become cloudy again. Sunday's forecast, for what little it was worth, was more promising, so we postponed our original plan – a hike in the Superstition Mountains – and headed instead to the Desert Botanical Garden. The Garden is a far cry from faceless rows of plants annotated with plaques in cryptic Latin. Instead, it is a stretch of Sonoran Desert, full of many varieties of cactus, ocotillo, palo verde and other plants native to the Southwest US and most of Mexico. Surprisingly green for a desert ecosystem, it was made even more lush by the recent rains. The succulents were plump and the tiny desert grasses that normally lie dormant until they get enough water to sprout covered the ground underneath with a vibrant, deep emerald green. Although technically we had a month of winter left, a few impatient ocotillos were showing the beginnings of their flowers. We walked around, chatting a bit, taking in the landscape and enjoying the air that, thanks to the rains, was spectacularly clean (normally the smog in Phoenix is frightening). The only disappointment was the lack of wildlife. In the past, we had seen lizards of every size and color at the Garden, including, once, a three-footer that hissed and changed colors at passers-by, but evidently it was still too cool and damp for them, so we had to content ourselves with a flock of fat Gambel's Quails hanging out by the snack bar.

By the time we left the Garden, the sun came out for good and we finally felt like we were in Arizona. We headed to Old Town Scottsdale, a tourist trap par excellence redeemed by its performing arts center and a beautiful park. J. wanted to see the Old Adobe Mission – a church, not old in the grand scheme of things (built 1933), that most recently served as rehearsal space for the Scottsdale Symphony Orchestra, of which J. was a member. Good thing we did – turns out that shortly after we moved, a group of volunteers started a major restoration project for the Mission. It is nowhere close to completion, but according to J. (I had never seen the interior in its former guise), it already looks vastly different than it used to. The most interesting part was the stained glass windows (PDF). They are the 1933 originals that for several decades have been languishing in the garage or a rapidly aging local gentleman. Had a few more years passed, they may have been lost forever. As it is, they have been cleaned and installed in their original locations. They are quite beautiful in an understated way – the designs mostly blue and yellow, befitting their desert environment, but even without the deep greens and reds of traditional Gothic styles, they stand out against the stark white of the walls.

After seeing the mission, we walked around a bit, had a snack at the Grapevine, an old Scottsdale institution with a giant rooftop patio, then headed back. We had plans to meet our friend Jane (not her real name) and her husband for dinner at Portland's – another old favorite – downtown. Originally, it was going to be all of us – I was eager to have Jane meet C. as they are both graphics designers by trade. Unfortunately, S. was feeling under the weather, so she and C. stayed behind while J. and I headed downtown.

I have fond memories associated with Portland's – I remember when it first opened, and J. and I became semi-regulars quickly. Downtown Phoenix was just beginning to rouse itself from a forty-year slumber, and aside from generic chain hotels, Portland's was the only place where you could eat and drink after concerts and plays at downtown theatres. It was run by the trio of Michelle, who worked the front of the house, her husband in the kitchen, and her younger brother Rick at the bar. Rick was a consummate wine and beer geek and a hell of a nice guy. He knew he had a captive audience and every time we showed up he not only had a story about some exciting new wine he had discovered, but usually had a sample for us to taste. He left around the time we moved, but Michelle (and presumably her husband) is still there. On Saturday, she met us with a vague “you look familiar” expression on her face and we reintroduced ourselves.

When it first opened, Portland's hit on a successful balance of creative, New American cuisine, and staples that a non-foodie wouldn't turn down. On this occasion, Jane, her husband, and J. all went for the latter (pizza and pasta), but I couldn't resist the ostrich tenderloin. It became briefly fashionable to ranch ostriches in Arizona some years ago, and apparently enough are still grown to supply local restaurants. This one was delicious – the meat was fairly dry, but extremely tender, and had a distinctive flavor that wasn't similar to anything else I know. It definitely did not taste like chicken. Portland's served it over polenta, finished with a cherry-red-wine sauce. The polenta was a bit gloppy, but otherwise everything was delicious, including the gulf shrimp appetizer we started with. The only disappointment, ironically, was the wine. Jane insisted on having some Pure Evil cab from Australia just because of the name, and even though it was available by the glass, we figured what the hell, and ordered a bottle for the table. It wasn't bad in an objective sense, but was more than a little thin and astringent for my taste, with not nearly enough fruit. A pity – wines are Portland's forte, and I am sure something much better was lurking on their list.

During dinner, Jane caught us up on the goings-on in their life, and in Phoenix in general. They talked about their house in Mesa, which they affectionately call their money pit, the biker bar parking lot it abuts and the things that go on there on Saturday nights, and how the Mesa police department is underfunded because Mesa is the only major city in the US without a property tax. Jane is full of dry sarcasm that I love in people, and hearing her and her husband talk about these things was quite amusing, but a part of me couldn't help wondering why they chose to live it every day. Surely there must be something about their neighborhood that attracted them there besides their 1981 cinder-block ranch with leaking pipes in the bathroom and revving Harleys next door. Jane's husband gave us an update on Arizona State, where he teaches on an adjunct basis in addition to his job at the Arizona Republic. The short of it is it's growing like a weed. In addition to the main campus in Tempe, which is growing steadily Eastward (we saw several large new buildings and even an entirely new street on our way to Chandler the day before), it is all but taking over downtown Phoenix. Several major new buildings have gone up along Central Ave., and apparently work is in progress to turn a couple of old hotels into dorms.

Inevitably, the conversation turned to the largest project Phoenix has experienced in decades – the light rail. There were rumors of it back in 2003 when we still lived there, but Phoenix seemed so opposed to mass transit at its very core that my reaction at the time was “I'll believe when I see it.” Well, I saw it. It is almost done, and it's scheduled to open in December of this year. It consists of a single long line that runs from the Mesa/Tempe border in the East, through ASU, downtown Tempe, West on Washington Street, past the airport, into downtown Phoenix, north on Central Ave. to Camelback Rd., then West again to Crisstown Mall. About 25 miles to start. There are vague plans for additional lines in the future. I am somewhat skeptical that Phoenix as a whole will embrace it – even Phoenicians who believe in mass transit in the abstract are too attached to their cars in practice, I think – but just the fact that it is happening it great. Smog and traffic will choke Phoenix if water shortages don't, even with the rail in place, but just having an alternative to driving, especially for ASU students having to travel between campuses, is going to go a long way towards making Phoenix a more livable city.

After dinner, we lingered over coffee, discussed Jane and her husband's upcoming trip to China, and made some very vague plans to have them come visit us in DC. J. and I then drove back to Chandler.

Phoenix, Day One

It has been a long time since J. and I traveled anywhere together just to travel and get a change of scenery, so shortly after Christmas I booked two tickets to Phoenix, AZ, our old stomping ground (we had lived there on a couple of occasions, most recently from July 2001 until August 2003). The timing proved to be serendipitous as J. just came back from a three-week business trip to Watertown, NY – a god-forsaken, ice-bound town thirty miles from the Canadian border with nothing but an army base and a couple of old motels that would be infested with bugs if the bugs weren't all in hibernation. So at an ungodly early hour last Friday, we climbed into a cab and rode to National Airport to get on a plane to Phoenix.

There has been no shortage of press coverage for the supposed horrors of contemporary air travel, so in a direct expression of the “time is money” principle, we splurged on a non-stop flight from our luxurious little National that normally caters to lobbyists and consultants. Despite being a 7:00 a.m. non-stop flight, its stated on-time performance was a laughable 50% (is there a law that requires airlines to post this information? I cannot imagine any other business boasting that their performance is satisfactory only half the time), but on that day, reality was in our favor – we left and arrived exactly on time, and the flight was uneventful. I even fell asleep for a while – getting older does have its advantages – and dreamed, I kid you not, of an airplane hitting a building. The building looked like a warehouse, and there was no fire or explosion; the plane simply disappeared into the wall. The two rescue helicopters that showed up a minute later had US Airways logos on them.

Weather in Phoenix was uncharacteristically cloudy when we landed, and by the time we drove out of the monstrous car rental compound that some bozo committee decided to build a full four miles from the nearest terminal, it was drizzling. The car rental experience was the only glitch in our travels, if it can even be called that. Happy that we were getting the class of car that we actually booked (last time, the rental agent was intent on putting me in an eight-cylinder gas guzzler when I booked a compact, and was bewildered when I kept resisting even after she uttered the supposedly magic words “no extra charge”), we arrived at the designated space to find a filthy, mud-splattered Corolla with Louisiana plates and aftermarket hubcaps that looked like it was driven two-thirds of the way across the country five minutes ago. “Oh well, just transportation,” we thought, until we climbed inside and discovered that the entire interior was splattered with sticky stuff that looked like spilled coffee. At least we hoped it was. There was no reason to put up with this when the lot was chock-full of cars, so I headed back to the counter. To their credit, the Hertz agents had us in a brand-new and, more importantly, squeaky-clean Hyundai Sonata in five minutes. Would that all businesses had that kind of customer service.

Since my own car is receding further from modernity every day, this one bears mentioning. It was fantastic. It felt immense – far larger than anything I would want to drive on a daily basis – but it was also luxurious and very refined. Smooth, quiet, with adequate power from what I assume was its four-cylinder engine and a transmission that seemed tuned to get the most from it. I had no trouble finding a comfortable driving position, the visibility was good, and the sunroof would prove to be a welcome bonus once the rain stopped. This Hyundai was a far cry from a high-school friend's first-generation Excel I remember riding in back in the day. I cannot imagine a family of three or four, let alone a childless couple, needing anything larger or better equipped for daily transportation.

Driving around the streets of Phoenix again dredged up memories. As much as I believe that the darker side of human nature is the more fascinating one, even the crankiest among us can be amazingly positive creatures. When you leave a place permanently, you tend to retain the good experiences and confine the negative and the unpleasant to distant corners of your mind's attic, hopefully never to be retrieved again. I hate to say it, but I was feeling nostalgic for the good times and good places that J. and I experienced in Phoenix, even in the darkest hours of our life there. I also couldn't help reflecting, as I frequently have in recent years, how easy it is to blame a place for problems that in reality have nothing to do with it, and how guilty I was of doing that my entire time in Arizona. To be sure, a city can be objectively better or worse than another city. Transportation, weather, availability of activities you enjoy, ease of reaching other places where you want to go. Ultimately, however, a city is passive. It does nothing to you on its own; it requires you to form a relationship to it on your terms. When other important things in your life – social and romantic relationships, job, health, money – are in good working order, you can live almost anywhere, within reason. When they are not, however, it is often easier to move than to confront the problems. You think you're making a change, when in reality you're just running away, away from things than more often than not will catch up with you regardless of where you go. I would be far happier living in Phoenix – the very city I used to despise five years go – today.

By the time we were on the road, it was lunchtime, so we headed to an old favorite -- My Florist Cafe, which we were happy to discover was still in business. It was as good as we remembered it – freshly-made salads and sandwiches centered around the bread made at Willo Bakery next door. Willo bread, back in the day at least, was the best in Phoenix by a long shot, and some of the best I've had anywhere.

After a lunch of salad, antipasto and a glass of white wine to unwind after the flight (Grüner Veltliner for J., Albariño for me), we bought a few pastries to bring as an offering to C.&S., with whom we were staying and, fanning the flames of nostalgia, headed to another old favorite, Lux Coffee Bar on Central Ave. It was a complete anomaly when it first opened – D., visiting from New York in 2004, marveled that it could give SoHo coffeehouses a run for their money. I spent many an afternoon at Lux back in the day, slacking off when I should have been working, reading and chatting with the owner. It was quiet then, the empty lots around it just beginning to be built up with condos, the pawn shop across the side street conspicuously devoid of customers, and I worried that the place wouldn't stay afloat. It did, though the ownership changed and the prices rose a bit, and was now packed with students and hip twenty-somethings. The space was more cramped – the new owner added more furniture to accommodate the crowds, thankfully keeping to the mid-century modernist look of the original – and the local art on the walls, once carefully chosen and arranged, now sprawled from floor to ceiling and varied greatly in quality. It's not that the vibe was fundamentally different than it was five years ago, there was simply more vibe. Our cappuccinos, made by the surliest barista I've ever seen, were as good as we remembered them.

Our next stop was J.'s old office, where she shocked her former colleagues by showing up unannounced and spent some time chatting with a few of them. By then, it was time to head to C.&S.'s house in Chandler, in the extreme south-east of the sprawl that is Greater Phoenix. To give ourselves a tour, we forewent the highway in favor of surface streets. Much has changed. Downtown Tempe acquired some new buildings, but lost some old ones – the local institution Long Wong's, which we knew had closed, and our old favorite Caffe Boa, which we didn't. The park around Tempe Town Lake (a dammed up and artificially filled stretch of Rio Salado) was larger. The most obvious change, however, as we swung east on Apache Blvd., was the light rail line, which looked fully-baked here, with stations already named. More on the light rail later. We arrived at C.&S.'s house around 6:00, just beating C. himself.

We had befriended C.&S. towards the end of our stay in Phoenix in 2003 – J. worked with S. then. We didn't even had time to get to know one another all that well before J. and I moved. C. and I hit it off, however, and kept in touch. When I made a quick trip to Phoenix last year to connect with the artistic director of the Downtown Chamber Series, for whom I do some volunteer work, C. invited me to stay with him and S., and with some reluctance I accepted. I need not have worried – C.&S. are some of the most generous, welcoming and easy-going people we know. I felt instantly at ease at their house last year, and and grew more comfortable as C. and I got to know each other better over that weekend. It was even better now, with J. accompanying me. We caught up a bit, waiting for S. to get home from a meeting across town, then went to have dinner at Pita Jungle, another old favorite. Pita Jungle serves what I've come to think of a “gourmet hippie” food – mostly, but not entirely, vegetarian, some middle-eastern and some Mediterranean overtones, and lots of beans and brown rice. It's a distinctly West Coast cuisine, and it can be repulsive in the wrong hands, but Pita Jungle pulls it off beautifully, helped by a decidedly non-hippie wine and beer list. They also know not to mess with a good thing – the menu was exactly the same as it was five years ago. We loved every bite.

Back at C.&S.'s house, we caught up a bit more over a beer, then turned in, citing jet lag – we had been awake for 23 hours by then.

Elliott Smith

One part of G.&N.'s excessively generous Christmas present to me was a copy of Elliott Smith's Either/Or. It was they who turned me onto Smith in the first place, several years ago, by including the gorgeous "Between the Bars on" a mix. Eventually, I acquired a copy of his later XO and have been listening to it ever since. It has become one of my favorite albums. Even as I sang the praises of XO, however, G.&N., especially N., kept saying that Either/Or was better. Finally, I could compare them, and at the risk of violating the gift horse principle I had to conclude that I didn't like Either/Or nearly as much. There are several reasons for this, most of them not entirely good, I suspect.

First of all, G.&N. have talked up Either/Or so much over the years and raised my expectations so unreasonably that no record could meet them, in all likelihood. Second, I have been listening to XO frequently for over a year, and in music, rock and pop music in particular, familiarity doesn't breed contempt – quite the opposite, in fact. So any newcomer had to challenge a well-entrenched incumbent. Finally, and I am a little embarrassed even to be taking this into account, XO sounds better. Either/Or sounds like the self-produced album recorded in Smith's basement that it is. The dynamic range is compressed, the mix is muddy, and the nuances in both vocal and instrumental parts are lost more often than not. XO, on the other hand, is a polished, professionally engineered studio job. So on some level I am comparing apples to oranges, but the net result is unavoidable – XO is simply more pleasant to listen to.

From a purely musical perspective, Either/Or is good, but XO is excellent. It has everything – great melodies, killer arrangements, and solid playing. It is not original, but nothing in rock music is, and the models Smith imitates on XO – mostly post-Sgt. Pepper Beatles – are nothing to scoff at. By that measure, one could argue that Either/Or is more original, but as we all know, originality alone does not a quality record make (cf. Cecil Taylor, John Cage, and countless others). The melodies, to my ears, are not as strong, the songs are more monotonous, the arrangements simplistic.

To be fair, Either/Or does have its moments. The aforementioned "Between the Bars" is a masterpiece – melancholy, wistful, the sparse accompaniment beautifully supporting Smith's brooding lyrics. I really wish it sounded better. I suppose no remastering will help if the original tape is poor, and Smith, being dead, is not readily available to re-record it. "Alameda" hits the bull's eye with its Beatlesque refrain, and prefigures later tunes like "Bottle Up and Explode." "Punch and Judy" gets points for its general seventies' vibe. But as a whole, XO remains undeposed. I hear all of Smith's official albums are available on vinyl as of last fall. I'm planning to check out Figure Eight, reportedly his lushest and most orchestral, in the near future.

Spanish class

Spanish class number four last night. Going pretty well in general, though this one was a bit of a slog. Like French, Spanish has three basic kinds of regular verbs, and we learned how to conjugate one of them. Memorizing the endings is the easy part. It's the concept of conjugation that about half the people in the class -- I'd wager it was the half that have not been exposed to any foreign language at all until now -- had trouble with. Trying to figure out, on the fly, what person and number the sentence they are trying to say is in, and remembering the proper ending. This is where my French helped tremendously, so I was bored trough about half the class. This, by the way, I think is evidence for my highly unscientific idea that foreign languages should be taught "situationally" rather than analytically. Having read, and said, enough phrases with enough occurrences of pagamos, viajamos and cocinamos, most people will make an intuitive connection when to use llamamos and tocamos, and will use them correctly, without having to reason through the fact that this is first person plural and therefore must end on an ...amos.

More generally, a curious pattern is emerging among students. Some people just don't get it. They can't put together the simplest phrase or answer the simplest question. Some people sound so awful when they talk, and their accent is so hopelessly American, that even I, who doesn't know the language yet, cringe. The two sets of people, however, are almost completely disjoint. A certain young blonde whom I mentioned in a previous post speaks with an accent that screams not just "American" but "Valley girl," yet she makes very few mistakes, answers questions with minimal hesitation, and absorbs most of the vocabulary on the fly. Examples in the opposite direction are less striking (people who can't put together a sentence rarely have really good pronunciation), but still, on a couple of occasions, once the instructor walked them through the answer word by word, they sounded somewhat convincing. Evidence that analytical and auditory information are processed by different parts of the brain?

State-controlled bullies masquerading as big business, Round II

I am not usually in the habit of just posting a link without making at least some comment about what it links to -- those who are interested can perfectly well find the information themselves. This, however, is such a succinct yet comprehensive summary of what will happen after Russia's upcoming "elections" in March that I have nothing to add.

Spanish class

Third Spanish class last night. Going well, for the most part, but I have to tell you – Washington, DC is the worst place to ask people for their profession. It's bad enough in English, never mind in a foreign language. I, with some plausibility, could claim to be an engineer (ingeniero). There is a lawyer in the class (abocado). Everyone else, however, was impossible. Policy analyst? Human resources coordinator? Web producer? Congressional staffer? Complete disaster. No one should learn how to say “non-profit organization” in an introductory foreign language class.

Christopher Hitchens

I finished Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything this weekend. I must say that even though I agree with him pretty much 100%, I was underwhelmed. Whom is Hitchens writing for, and what is he trying to accomplish? Anyone who is likely to read this book doesn't really need to have it explained to them that the crusades, the Inquisition, and sharia have caused immeasurable suffering to countless people because they are based on dogmatic faith rather than rational principles. The vast majority of people with even a modicum of Western education would not find it in the least surprising that the Bible, or any scriptural text, for that matter, is a collection of fables written by many individuals, over the course of decades or even centuries, and are meant to instruct through allegories and analogies. And those who do view their chosen scripture as literal truth, whether in the Gaza Strip or in Springfield, MO, are not likely to run to their local bookstore for a copy of Hitchens. Even his observation that ostensibly secular totalitarian systems on the Stalinist model in fact replace, rather then negate, religions, while important and correct, is not really original.

On the other hand, Hitchens conspicuously ignores the one question that does have relevance to our understanding of human behavior. Namely, what continues to make religious practice attractive to otherwise modern, educated, tolerant and rational people? People who fully accept Darwin and the scientific method. People who advocate free inquiry and reject dogma. Is it the comforting nature of ritual in a world full of uncertainty? Is it a desire for moral guidance they feel is unavailable elsewhere? A lack of intellectual sophistication to understand the world to a sufficient degree in purely rational, scientific terms? And what of inner spirituality, unconnected to a specific form of organized religion? Is that even faith as he defines it? These are all fascinating questions, and an attempt to answer or at least suggest some approaches, would go a long way towards understanding human behavior. Yet Hitchens does not do this.

Perhaps this book was a pet project. In the Acknowledgments section, he even says that he has been writing this book his entire life, and will continue to do so. Fine. I guess we can allow this indulgence to someone who risked his freedom reporting from North Korea, and his life in Bosnia. For my money, however, I would remain perfectly happy if he stuck to topics on which he has something meaningful to say.

Thank you to C.S. for lending me the book.