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Stanzas to ————

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Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë

The above painting of the Brontë sisters was done by none other than their brother, Patrick Branwell Brontë. Originally, his own image appeared in the space between Emily’s and Charlotte’s portraits; but for various reasons, his image was painted over. For an interesting discussion of the original image in London’s National Portrait Gallery, click here.

I am including here a poem by Emily paying tribute to an unnamed person of mixed reputation who has died:

Stanzas to ————

Well, some may hate, and some may scorn,
And some may quite forget thy name;
But my sad heart must ever mourn
Thy ruined hopes, thy blighted fame!
‘Twas thus I thought, an hour ago,
Even weeping o’er that wretch’s woe;
One word turned back my gushing tears,
And lit my altered eye with sneers.
Then “Bless the friendly dust,” I said,
“That hides thy unlamented head!
Vain as thou wert, and weak as vain,
The slave of Falsehood, Pride, and Pain–
My heart has nought akin to thine;
Thy soul is powerless over mine.”


But these were thoughts that vanished too;
Unwise, unholy, and untrue:
Do I despise the timid deer,
Because his limbs are fleet with fear?
Or, would I mock the wolf’s death-howl,
Because his form is gaunt and foul?
Or, hear with joy the leveret’s cry,
Because it cannot bravely die?
No! Then above his memory
Let Pity’s heart as tender be;
Say, “Earth, lie lightly on that breast,
And, kind Heaven, grant that spirit rest!”

Poe-Pourri

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Scene from Roger Corman’s Masque of the Red Death (1964)

One of the most entertaining film series of the 1960s consists of the eight Edgar Allan Poe titles directed by Roger Corman and, for the most part, starring Vincent Price. In order by year, these consist of:

  • The House of Usher (1960)
  • The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
  • The Premature Burial (1962) starring Ray Milland
  • Tales of Terror (1962)
  • The Raven (1963)
  • The Haunted Palace (1963) actually based on H. P. Lovecraft
  • The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
  • The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)

All the films are very loosely based on Poe originals (except for The Haunted Pa;lace, which is very Poe-like). Last Wednesday, I sat through The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, and Masque of the Red Death on Turner Classic Movies’ tribute to Roger Corman, who died earlier this year.

Although some regard him as the ultimate schlockmeister, Corman knew how to make an entertaining film that came in on time and under budget. So what if they were not quite faithful to Poe’s (or Lovecraft’s) originals: They were fun to watch, even if we felt superior to them.

I remember some other likeable Corman classics like Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), in which the eponymous monsters looked like a crumpled old knapsack, and Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961), in which the creature looked like an overgrown stuffed animal. The first named film is one of Martine’s all-time faves, such that she obtained a signed still from Beverly Garland, the star.

And yet at least two of the titles—The Raven and Masque of the Red Death—are, to my mind, two of the best American films produced in the 1960s.

Currying Flavor

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A Vegetarian Curry

The biggest change in my diet since the Covid lockdown has been my growing preference for cooking vegetarian curries. This has dismayed Martine, as she is a confirmed avivore, especially of chicken and turkey. Before, I have been cooking various pasta and rice dishes with ground turkey; but of late, I have tended to avoid ground meat.

Although I have always like curries, my preference has always been for vegetarian curries. That could be the influence of my old friend Mohan Gopalakrishnan, a Brahmin, but I have always thought that Indian cuisine has by far the tastiest vegetarian recipes. It has gotten to the point that I disdain bland American vegetarian dishes. (There are, however, a few Hungarian vegetarian dishes that I’ve always loved.)

Today I cooked up a potato, cauliflower, tomato, and pea curry with a diced-up Serrano chile. To jack up the hotness, I added a little super-hot Indian chile powder. To cool down the dish slightly, I served it with mango chutney and some plain yogurt.

The spices used include black mustard seeds, cumin seeds, turmeric, and garam masala (which is mostly cardamom). The great thing about Indian cuisine is that you can vary the spices and consequently the flavor quite easily. Of course, it helps to have an Indian food store nearby. I usually go to India Sweets and Spices in Culver City. They also have a very decent lunch counter which I patronize regularly.

Years Evenly Divisible by Four

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That’s Right: Keep Waving That Flag

The worst thing about years evenly divisible by four is all the political activity that is conducive only to nausea. Oh, and there’s an extra day in the calendar just to rub it in even more.

I do not care what political beliefs you hold. No doubt they are very true—because they’re your beliefs and you will stick by them come hell or high water. Ho hum.

What is particularly galling to me is that this electoral cycle started four years ago and continued in high gear with rallies and other events. Well, although I will vote in November, I have no intention of donating money to any party or candidate, taking any political surveys, following the political news on TV, engaging in political conversations with my friends, wearing any candidates’ buttons, or slapping any bumper stickers on my car.

Effective immediately, I am not playing the game. I am stepping off the merry-go-round and not caring who gets the brass ring. Whoever wins the 2024 election, my goal is simply to survive. The 24-hour news cycle can go fish.

Books I Won’t Be Reading Any Time Soon

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Dreck

On most days, I check the “Deals” section of the Amazon Kindle Store for titles I want to read and can get cheap. As I go through the list of titles, I encounter mostly dreck. I thought I would present a list of the most revolting titles from today’s deals. As they were obviously written with little attention to care, I thought it would be best not to italicize or boldface the titles. They barely even deserve upper case letters.

  • That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly [the] Lemming
  • The Perfect Marriage: A Completely Gripping Psychological Suspense [Gripping where?]
  • The Healer’s Way (Book 1): A Portal Progression Fantasy Series [Huh?]
  • Future Proof: The Time Travel Novel That Everyone’s Talking About. [I sincerely doubt that]
  • Stranded: The Bestselling Psychological Thriller with a Jaw-Dropping Twist, Perfect for Summer [of 1953?]
  • Heat of the Moment: A Billionaire Romance [Must be self love]
  • The Patriot: A Second Chance, Fake Relationship Romance [What?]
  • Forge Master: A LitRPG Adventure [When I found out that LitRPG meant literary role playing game, I yawned and thought “greasy kid stuff”]
  • The Hero She Needs by Anna [the] Hack[ett]
  • Come Back for Me: A Small Town Second Chance Romance [Jeez, that must be a whole genre]
  • Fury: A Fake Dating Workplace Romance [So, is fake dating a thing now?]
  • The Silent Wife: A Gripping Emotional Page Turner with a Twist That Will Take Your Breath Away [I’m choking already]
  • Wielder of Shadows: An Enemies to Lovers Fantasy Romance
  • This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Young Doctor [Ouch!]
  • The Awe of God: The Astounding Way a Healthy Fear of God Transforms Your Life [About the same way an unhealthy fear of everything would]

I know that most of these titles are destined for women readers; and I know that there is a male equivalent which is just as off-putting. It’s just that Amazon doesn’t feature them in their store deals page.

Chacing [Sic] Comfort

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Squirrel-in-Residence at Chace Park

As the heat continues, I occasionally seek the cool ocean breezes of Burton W. Chace Park in Marina Del Rey. I say occasionally because, on weekends, the park is being loved to death and the parking lots are all parked up. Yesterday, I sat down in the shade at the edge of the Marina while reading Paul Theroux’s The Last Train to Zona Verde (2013).

The squirrel pictured above approached me nonchalantly as I waited for my 90-minte free parking window to expire. The peninsula seems to have scores of squirrels all busily hunting nuts, seeds, insects, and food scraps.

Shade Trees at Chace Park

En route to the park, I had stopped at Ralph’s Supermarket at Mindanao Way and Admiralty, where I picked up a tasty salmon and tuna poke bowl and a can of Japanese iced green tea. I consumed it at one of the three roofed picnic pavilions seen in the distance of the above photo. Then I sat in one of the stone benches with a good view of boat traffic and relaxed while the breeze ruffled my hair.

Sailboat in the Marina

I returned home, where the temperature was about 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) warmer and cooked stuffed peppers for dinner. Afterwards, I relaxed for an evening of Roger Corman Poe films starring Vincent Price on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) channel.

“You Are Inside Me Now”

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El Jardin Botanico in the Palermo Neighborhood of Buenos Aires

Since I wrote about Buenos Aires being one of my favorite cities yesterday, I thought I would present a sonnet by Jorge Luis Borges, the poet of Buenos Aires, translated by Stephen Kessler from his collection of Borges’s sonnets:

Buenos Aires

Before, I looked for you within your limits
bounded by the sunset and the plain
and i the fenced yards holding an old-time
coolness of jasmine and of cedar shade.
In the memory of Palermo you were there,
in its mythology of a lost past
of cards and daggers and in the golden
bronze weight of the useless door knockers
with their hands and rings. I felt a sense of you
in the Southside patios and in the lengthening
shadows that ever so slowly obscured
their long right angles as the sun went down.
You are inside me now. You are my blurred
fate, all those things death will obliterate.

My Cities: Buenos Aires

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Plaza de Mayo with Jacarandas

In my mind, Buenos Aires is forever associated with Jorge Luis Borges. It is my love of the author’s works which led me to Argentina three times: in 2006, 2011, and 2015. God knows, I would welcome a fourth visit. It’s a huge city (17 million population in the metropolitan area); it’s difficult to get around in; but I love it nonetheless.

What does one say to a city whose biggest tourist attraction is a cemetery? Each time, I visited the Recoleta Cemetery and viewed the crypt where Evita Peron is buried. Yet, poor Borges is buried in Geneva, Switzerland.

Funerary Monuments at Recoleta Cemetery

Borges taught me that Buenos Aires is a city of neighborhoods, of which my favorite is Palermo. At Borges 2135 in Palermo is where Jorge Luis spent his boyhood.

Palermo is also home to some of the loveliest parks in the city, including the Botanical Garden and the zoo where he visited the tigers that appeared in so many of his poems and stories.

Palermo’s Jardin Botanico

One thing that impressed me was the large stray cat population of the Jardin Botanico. While I was there, a local resident came and fed them. He then folded up his bag and walked toward the exit.

I think I would probably choose to stay in Palermo the next time I visit.

Going Vegetarian With Style

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You Start by Fire-Roasting Hatch or Ancho Chiles…

I think that if you are seriously interested in going vegetarian, you should avoid bland vegetarian dishes altogether. That’s why I think that most American vegetarian recipes are yuck.

Of late, I have been working on a Spanish rice recipe that is inspired by three sources:

  • Rice-a-Roni Spanish Rice, combining rice with vermicelli
  • Mexican dishes based on fire-roasted chiles
  • My Mom’s unbearably hot home Hungarian lecso, or tomato and pepper stew (unbearable because I was only a kid at the time)

Here are the steps to making my Spanish Rice recipe:

  1. Get two or more Hatch or Ancho or California or Pueblo chiles. They are about six inches long. Fire roast them until the skin is black and blistered, as in the above photo. Lay them aside to cool.
  2. Toss a half handful of vermicelli or fideo noodles in a pan with olive oil and heat until they turn dark brown. Lay them aside. Pieces should be 1/2 to 3/4 inches in length.
  3. In a large pot with cover, add about a quarter cup of olive oil and begin to heat (medium).
  4. Peel and chop one Spanish onion and add.
  5. Using a small sharp knife, trim the blistered skin from the chiles you have fire roasted. Chop them and add to the onions.
  6. Crush six (yes, six!) cloves of garlic and add to the onions and chile.
  7. Add one cup of long grain rice (I use Trader Joe’s Jasmine Rice) to the mixture and stir for a couple of minutes.
  8. Chop up a pound of ripe, fresh tomatoes and add to the rice. I like Campari Tomatoes for this.
  9. Add the browned vermicelli noodles at this point.
  10. Add salt and pepper to taste.
  11. Add one can of chicken (or vegetable) stock and about 3/4 cup of water.
  12. Lower heat and cover.
  13. When most of the liquid has been absorbed, chop one can of pitted black olives roughly and add to the rice mix. Stir to prevent burning from the bottom.

And that’s pretty much it. The fire-roasted chiles give this dish a nice background burn. If you’re a real chile-head, you can also add a Jalapeño or Serrano chile for an added foreground burn. Yow!

I’m still playing with this recipe, so you may hear more from me about this.

Dog Halloween

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Fireworks Galore, But Does Anyone Care What They’re Celebrating?

As I write this blog, I hear the spluttering of fireworks near and far. What I do not hear is the barking of dogs. No doubt they are cowering under beds and couches while their super-sensitive ears are assailed by the endless sound of explosions.

I used to attend fireworks shows, until I used to dislike parking miles away and joining a large crowd of people for a show that lasted all of fifteen or twenty minutes. Hell, I even set off some illegally purchased firecrackers myself—and I still have all ten fingers and toes! Eventually, I just decided that here was another holiday which didn’t really mean much to anybody.

Which holidays have any meaning any more?

  • Halloween, because it’s still fun and everyone likes candy
  • Thanksgiving, so you discover who in your family is demented enough to vote for Trump
  • Christmas, so you can spend $$$ on what you don’t need and your friends and relatives don’t want

Independence Day has become a kind of Dog Halloween. It results in scaring your dogs and cats half to death. At least, Roxie, the little lapdog downstairs, hasn’t barked once today. It would be too much to hope that her silence will continue, as she still, after more than a year, regards me as little more than a bindlestiff.