PAULA'S DIET TIP

Ya gotta love Paula Deen.  Sure, the food celeb's recipes have induced thousands of heart attacks but oh, that smile!  She continued to push triple-patty peanut butter burgers for years after she learned she was diabetic but who can not love her "How y'all doin?" personality?

Last year Paula Inc. took a new direction.  Ms. Deen admitted that her recipes were slowly killing us and urged her fans to eat healthier and eat less.   Her new books and TV series show us how to do this but there's an easier way.
Paula was interviewed by the Miami Herald when she visited South Florida last week. 
She says she still eats fattening food but only half of what's on her plate.  How does she pass on the remainder?  Ms. Deen confided in the article, "I spit on it". 
If that doesn't work she pours black pepper on what's left.

 Let's hope her leftovers don't make it to food banks.


 Chicago's Fountain of Spit

RICHARD BLANCO, A HOMECOMING

   Tomorrow night the Arsht Center will present a "homecoming performance" of the acclaimed Cuban-America poet, Richard Blanco.  The free event will take place in the Knight Concert Hall at 7:30.   He'll read a collection of his works including "One Today", the poem he read at the inauguration last month.
Blanco came here as a kid from Cuba in 1961.  He now lives in Maine.  For more information go to the Center's website, arshtcenter.org .  While the event is free, they suggest you print your tickets beforehand.

BUMPER CAR

   Last weekend, we saw a peacock parade on our garden wall.  

Afterwards, went over to the University of Miami where a U.S. Congressman meditating.   Tim Ryan of Ohio gave a speech about how "mindfulness" had changed his life. He's hoping the rest of us will join in. 

  At one point he had all of us meditating, focusing on our breathing.  It was a  
 l  o  n  g   two minutes.  After his talk we hung out with him a bit.  Tim was thoughtful, funny, and articulate.  Too bad there aren't more like him in Washington.

    On Sunday after church, I was telling two older women about last month's trip to the inauguration.  Virginia McNaughton asked, "Did you see my foster son?  He was there too". 

   When I raised my eyebrows she added that her boy was Rev. Luis Leon,  the President's minister and that  had given the inaugural benediction.  
"Yes" I added, "We saw him and he was great!"

   In 1961, as a twelve-year-old, Rev. Leon left his family and Cuba in "Operation Pedro Pan".  Ms. McNaughton and her huband took in the "precious skinny boy" until he could be reunited with his family.  Now the former Miamian heads St. John's Episcopal Church, a few blocks from the White House. It is known as "The Church of the Presidents".

  

On Sunday afternoon, we went to the grocery store.  As I doing my usual grousing about the parked police cars and fire trucks ("Why do they food shop on our dime?") we noticed something strange. 

   The Coral Gables cop car had a huge front bumper extension.  Francesca asked, "Is that for ramming cars?"  As I assured her that cops aren't allowed to do stuff like that anymore,  a police officer approached.  

I asked him about the bumper thing, "Is that for pushing cars out of the road?".  He smiled and said, "We use it to chase cars.  If you snag the corner just right you can make them spin out!".  

So much for the wisdom of Glenn.

VENETIAN DREAM

 

Venice is the real Disneyland.  A fairy tale made true by thousands of Italian artists, builders, and craftsmen working hundreds of years.

  You know this by being there and last July, we were.

The dream begins when you step off the plane and on to a water bus.  You either walk or boat in this island city.  There are no cars, trucks, or bicycles.

 

  

As you might expect,  the gondoliers are everywhere. They will row you from here-to-there for a hundred bucks.  For another $200 they will throw in an accordionist and opera singer. 

  

As we stepped off our "bus" I was quickly impressed with the street vendors and beggars.  

Both are illegal in posh Venice.  

As a vendor, when a cop heads your way, you bundle up you tripods and run!

   I will write a whole blog about Venetian beggars later.  They are the very best of their unfortunate profession.

    Every block is an island connecting to the next one with a bridge.  All four hundred of them (as above) have stairs.  We lugged our suitcases up and down many to get to our apartment's street "Calle Vechia".

This lady hanging out her underwear told us our building was next to her's.  

 

It was the one with the intercom that looked like a  surprised robot.

 

I loved the way everyone hung out their laundry in this town.  

 


 The towels, tops, and sheets seemed like welcoming flags.   

 

 

There were churches all over the place.  The most popular ones had long lines and entry fees. 

 We opted for the small ones like this, places where a person could take a knee and admire the light, the quiet, and strange little dolls.

 

 These signs were posted on the entries of many Italian churches.  They reminded us not to go to church in our underwear.

 I used to think of myself as a mask maker.

 

It is such a high art form in Venice, I am now a mere creator of minor facial coverings.

 

Besides artful masks, I love things that float.  Imagine rounding a corner to see this,

..then glancing to your right to see the costumed boatmen sharing salami.

 

In the maritime museum we saw one possible reason why the Italian Navy didn't fare so well in WW II.  Their torpedoes required two frogmen to drive them into their target.

 

 There are boats for every purpose.  

Here is a floating produce market.

An American couple in their rent-a-kayak

 

 A Venetian water taxi

 Mailmen

UPS

And a grocery deliveryman passing a garbage boat. 

We also saw floating cop cars and ambulances.

  

In this exciting city almost everyone seemed to be happy.  The only exception that  was this police officer but who could blame him?

His job was to keep people from touching "Naked Boy with Frog".  

  Every now and then a tourist would reach out to see of the 7-foot boy was real.  The officer would quickly respond with something that sounded vaguely like,
"No toucha bambino!".

-More on Venice later-

PIGEON HEARTS

    We bought a basket of tomatoes in Paris last July.  Because of their small, unique shape the French call these delicacies "Pigeon Hearts".  After we ate them a few of their seeds managed to follow us home and bury themselves in our garden.   Here's a picture our first "homegrown heart".
   It didn't last long.  While waiting for it to ripen perfectly our plumber ate it.

    Europe was much more than exotic tomatoes.  I will be writing about the second half of our trip next week.

TEACHERS ARE ALRIGHT

The teaching profession is under attack by those who blame teachers for conditions beyond their control.  They want to take away their professionalism and turn them into testing technicians. 

  If they take away teachers' rights to bargain collectively, they silence their voices.  They eliminate the one force who can stop them. 

  That leaves a path clear for them to cut funding.  To turn more public schools over to non-union charter chains.  To introduce for-profit online charter schools.  To double class sizes. And to implement policies that hurt children and reduce the quality of education.  We must not let them do it!

-Diane Ravitch-  activist, professor, and former Assistant Secretary of Education.  Speaking at a teachers' union convention last year

INAUGURATION DAY (Part 3)

Inauguration Day got a spectacular start in Washington, DC  last Monday.  The city's skies  were filled with a sunrise that seemed like God's version of the American Flag.

   I smiled, I stared, and my mind sang, "Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light".   Corny but true, it was hard not to feel patriotic.

    The hundreds of  people rushing past our Capitol Hill apartment paid no mind.  They moved quickly through the darkness and thirty-five degree weather to claim places to see the 57th Presidential Inauguration.

     Francesca and I had never been to one.   We were there because Travelocity had sent us a "price alert" two months ago that said, "Washington, DC $159 RT".   Her son, Ruy, offered us a place to stay.   We had to go, to take this victory lap with the diversified coalition who had helped re-elect Obama.

     We had it easy.  We met many who had spent twenty hours riding buses to get there. All we had to do was to bundle up and join the pilgrimage.

     Truth be told, it wasn't that easy.  Imagine getting on a plane with 800,000 other people.  That many bodies had to walk this way, that way, and ease their way through metal detecting security to see the Big Moment. 

  The guards did not check for shoe bombs but curiously, they did confiscate all apples and oranges.  They couldn't say why.    

      
 It was a heck of a hike, no place for the old or faint-of-heart. Our tickets allowed us to stand in a huge, fenced-in square, with 10,000 others, on the Capitol Mall.  There were plastic squares beneath us to protect the grass.
  If you had no ticket, you headed for a much bigger area, just behind us, that stretched a mile back.   To have more room we stayed in the back of our corral.  Some had enough room to sleep.  

Workers passed out thousands of little flags but they ran out by the time they got to us.  We waved arms instead.

     At 10 am the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir began revving up in the distance.  The  mega-speakers and huge TVs ("Jumbotrons") let us know what we were looking at.  At 11, members of Congress were introduced with the partisan crowd cheering or booing at the appropriate moments.

     You probably were as thrilled as we were when Mr. and Ms. Obama finally made their entrance.  100,000 Super Bowl fans make quite a roar.  Multiply that by eight.

      A few minutes before noon the Chief Justice finally got around to administering the oath.  We were relived that he did not screw up this time.

    We loved the President's inauguration address.  He dramatically invoked the beginning of a new era, one that included the diverse group that was surrounding us. Even the sleepers were standing now. We stood together in a sea of happiness. We cheered our president's promise to take us in a new, progressive direction.

     Yes, we also heard songs sung by James Taylor,  Kelly Clarkson and Beyonce, but Barack Obama was the star. We were proud of him, the things he said, and proud to be citizens of the country celebrating this new beginning.

   The choir closing with "Battle Hymn of the Republic" gave us goosebumps.  So did the falling temperatures.  As we disbursed hundreds of us headed to the closest warm place, the Smithsonian's National Gallery of Art.

   As guards yelled, "No flags allowed!" and we streamed in, they quickly piled up by the door. 

Inside tired people were already asleep killing the three hours before the Inauguration Parade.

  You had to go through security for that too but this time they let us keep our apples.

     At 3:30 pm the first bands and military units marched by.  

Minutes later a roar of excitement began rolling up Pennsylvania Avenue.  As it approached us we craned our necks, trying to see past the thick crowd between us and the procession. 
  Moments later we could the parade's stars between a sea of secret service agents, cops and cameramen.  The President and his wife were walking briskly, waving, and smiling at the crowd. 

 

 What a thrill it was to see them pass by. 

 A few minutes later Joe and Jill Biden did the same. 

     

After these four had passed, half of the crowd went home. They had seen enough.  

  We were on the first row for the remainder of the procession.  

  

  We tried to keep the parade's spirit going when we returned to Coconut Grove the next morning.  Unfortunately, the only roar we heard was from our cat.  And it was more of a yawn.

                    ____________________

See those guys in the tower in front of the President?

Just to the left (and above) are Francesca and I.  We are wearing grey and orange hats.
 At a half-mile away, we were still closer than most of the people attending.