The Mackey’s Say Farewell to Charlie Trotter
May 20, 2012 at 4:27 PM | Posted in Chicago, Food | 2 CommentsTags: Brendan Mackey, Charlie Trotter, Ingrid Mackey, Molly Mackey, Vanessa Mackey
Molly, Ingrid and Vanessa
When we heard the sad news that Charlie Trotter’s was closing at the end of August, we decided to go and this time we would take the family. This was to be our fifth dinner there and our first, 14 years ago, changed our conception of what a great meal could be, what great service was comprised of. Trotter’s was famous back then, rated the best restaurant in the U.S. more than once.
So, last night, NATO Saturday in Chicago, we went with my daughter Vanessa, my son Brendan and his wife Molly. It was a beautiful night and our first stop was to Vanessa’s new apartment on Lake Shore Drive. With Champagne we toasted my wife, Ingrid’s, upcoming retirement from teaching and the night ahead.
I’ve included the menu in this post and I could write about each of the dishes but the end of our meal was exhilarating and I want to jump to that.
During the meal Charlie Trotter walked by in his chef’s white jacket. Then as my wife walked back from the rest room, she came face to face with him and they talked. He asked her to come back to the kitchen for a tour when our meal was done. Now, that kitchen is famous with its table and immaculate work space. Charlie’s mother came by, she is silver-haired and elegant, to remind us to stop by.
The Grand
So, when the last plate had been licked, we had our tour given by a young chef, as other cooks bustled around us. We thought that was it but then Charlie came over and asked us what our rush was. Upon telling him that we were originally from New York he said, “greatest city in the world and the dirtiest. Why don’t they close up a day every week and clean the sidewalks for a start.” He said it in such a way that you had to laugh. He is right, of course.
Then he took us through the kitchen where he films his cooking shows for PBS. Then onto dining room setting for special events. It is here, he said, that he has groups of high school students visit three times a week for a full meal and a lesson. That lesson?
We are each our own boss, even if we work for supervisors or managers. We have to make our own way.
Farewell Charlie, you have brightened lives and left us with something to think about.
My Voice Broke
May 17, 2012 at 7:18 PM | Posted in Business, Connections | 2 CommentsTags: Plex, Plex Community, PowerPlex
I was on stage for a section of our Keynote talk at PowerPlex, our annual User Conference. My topic was the Plex Community and I was going along beautifully. I began by wishing that everyone could stand where I was, just for a moment. When you are in the audience you are looking to the speaker and it is his or her energy you feel but when you are on stage you feel the energy of the assembled and there is no comparison between the two.
As I have often done, I took the audience back to my childhood and the way things were in those days — and how I am only now beginning to understand them. I spoke of connections.
Then my voice broke - it squeaked high. In a long career with many mishaps, this has never happened. Then, as I was almost finished, I did it again. I off-handedly said, “ugh, something else to worry about” and finished my talk.
I did take some kidding from friends when I was done but I received more kudos for that short talk than I ever have before.
You just never know.
The Simplest of Dishes
May 13, 2012 at 7:24 PM | Posted in Family Life, Food | Leave a comment
There are two specific occasions when spaghetti alia-oilia is called for: it’s late and you’re hungry and you’ve had too much to drink and when you are broke. We were neither on this Mother’s Day but I wanted to carry more of the cooking load than usual.
The dish is simple: heat de-veined garlic over a low flame, throw some hot chile flakes in, when the pasta is ready put some Italian parsley in the oil and pour in the cooked pasta into the pot with the oil and garlic. At table, grate Parmigiano Reggiano to taste.
I set the table, got the water boiling, cut up the cheese, poured the wine and chopped the garlic. I did something.
The Path of Eknath Easwaran
May 12, 2012 at 4:45 PM | Posted in Meditation, Personal Development | Leave a commentTags: Eknath Easwaran, Eric Carlson
(1910-1999)
From everything I’ve read and sensed, Eknath Easwaran was a wonderful man. He came to the U.S. in 1959 on a Fulbright Scholarship after a career as a Professor on English in India. He had practiced meditation for many years, and soon began teaching it at Berkeley and in the San Francisco area. Soon he founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation.
I had not heard of Easwaran till I received, unannounced, in 2001, a book from my former colleague and friend, Eric Carlson. It was Meditation and Eric had recently begun meditating using the principles laid down by Easwaran. I had (and have) tremendous respect for Eric and read the book avidly and began meditating. I kept it up for a few months but the style did not click with me then. Despite this, I remained struck with Easwaren and thought of him as a friend that I would surely revisit, as I have.
Easwaran’s spiritual path has 8 elements:
- Meditation
- Mantram (mantras)
- Slowing down
- One-pointed attention
- Training the senses
- Putting others first
- Spiritual Companionship
- Reading the mystics
My plan is to write in upcoming posts about each of these elements. On this path now, (however imperfectly), I find the experience profound.
When FM was our iPad
May 9, 2012 at 7:26 PM | Posted in Growing up, Music | 2 CommentsTags: Chambers Brothers, Janis Ian, Pete Fornatale, Pete Mularchuk, Richie Havens, Terry McMurray, The Blues Project, The Doors, WNEW-FM, WOR-FM
It was the sad news of the death of the great disk jockey, Pete Fornatale, that got me thinking of the days when FM radio was front and center in our lives. It began with WOR-FM in 1966 and then leapt to WNEW-FM in 1969 – broadcasting in New York. Imagine being a teen-ager then, at the birth of sex (at least in the form of “The Summer of Love”) and the invention of our iPad, which was FM radio!
Music was so important to us then. We saw Elvis as old-fashioned and Frank and Tony as our parent’s music, if they did listen to music at all. We were not afraid of our shadows, having mothers who, gratefully, did not chauffeur us throughout our childhood, and so we thought it nothing to take the train into the city and we were by no means against hitch-hiking in.
My great old friend Terry McMurray, who grew up two blocks from me, remembers those days well. He just sent me the flyer from a concert that was held in celebration of WOR’s anniversary in 1967 at the Village Theatre, later the Fillmore East. The tickets ranged from $2.50 to $4.50. Here is who played — and I’m not kidding:
- The Blues Project (the group for us in those days)
- Janis Ian
- The Doors (yes indeed)
- Richie Havens
- Chambers Brothers
Terry and his brother went as did our long-gone but not forgotten friend, Pete Mularchuk. I didn’t go and I am wracking my brain as to why. It was not because I was too busy.
‘I’m coming back. Write it down in BIG LETTERS.’
May 5, 2012 at 11:14 AM | Posted in Baseball, Great People | 1 CommentTags: David Waldstein, Derek Jeter, Jack Nicklaus, Mariano Rivera, New York Yankees, Tyler Kepner
It was said of Jack Nicklaus that he was even greater in defeat than in victory. So too now do we see an even more transcendent greatest in Mariano Rivera, a day after what some thought to be the end.
On the night he fell and his ACL torn, he cried not for the pain but because he felt that he had let his team mates down. The Captain, Derek Jeter, thought differently and predicted that his old friend would be back before the year was out. That is unlikely but that is the thinking that leads to going 4-5 and not multiplying the doom. What team will ever see the like of this pair?
“A day later, Rivera was full of cheer, laughing as he spoke with Derek Jeter and toying with reporters as he declared he would never let such an injury end his career.”
So for Mariano, so for us.
A Memory of Moose Skowron
April 28, 2012 at 1:41 PM | Posted in Baseball | 3 CommentsTags: Andy Carey, Casey Stengel, Hector Lopez, Moose Skowron, New York Yankees
Moose, who died yesterday, was not just a great player for those dominant Yankee Teams in the fifties. He was something more important – he was fundamental (like Paul O’Neill in the nineties) and he bled pinstripes.
My clearest memory, though, is not of his Dodger-crushing home runs in the World Series but of an all too human down moment. Moose was troubled with a bad back and he had been out for a number of games in that forgettable 1959 Season. His first game back, a ground ball was hit to Hector Lopez at third. Lopez was no Andy Carey and his throw sailed way inside to the home plate side of first base. Moose reached for it and strained his back. As he bent over, Casey Stengel came out of the dugout. As he reached Moose, old Casey looked over to Lopez and waved his arm at him in complete disgust. I had not seen a manager do that before or since. At the time, I was 60 years younger than Stengel but I felt exactly the same way.
Moose Skowron played on 9 Pennant Winners and 5 World Series Champions in those long ago, golden days.
The world is an emptier place without #14.
Evgeny Kissin from the Stage
April 23, 2012 at 8:23 PM | Posted in Music, Piano | Leave a commentTags: Beethoven, Chopin, Evgeny Kissin, Orchestra Hall
By the time I got around to getting tickets for the great Russian pianist, Evgeny Kissin, they were sold out. But then, stage seat became available and I jumped. They are more expensive than regular tickets and a mixed bag. Due to phenomenal traffic on a Sunday and a logistics issue, I did not succeed in getting to the seats early. These are the only seats at Orchestra Hall that are not reserved. Get in early and you can see every knuckle move, get in later, say 15 minutes before the performance and, unless you are a refuge from the Netherlands, you can’t see much, though Kissin was only a few yards away.
It was a wonderful performance of the type that critics often criticize: the music was familiar. Kissin began with the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven and there is not a piano piece more familiar than that. Even if you think you don’t know it, you do — at least the first movement. Then, in the second half, Chopin, and we swoon.
As great as this performance was, it was matched by looking up and seeing what a full, absolutely packed house looks like to the performer. It was awe-inspiring and would make one want to practice very hard, and never retire. And they don’t.
Levon Helm
April 20, 2012 at 8:39 PM | Posted in Music, The World of Yesterday | 2 CommentsTags: Black Hawks, Bob Dylan, Doors, Garth Hudson, Jim Morrison, Levon Helm, Richard Manual, Rick Danco, Robbie Robertson, The Band
How do you live the rest of you life when, in your first major foray, you’ve shook the world? Jim Morrison couldn’t.
1968 - what a year!
When Music from Big Pink from The Band came out, we were stunned as we were with the Doors first album . The Beatles and Stones came to us in singles and we could, though enraptured, digest them. But not when Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm showed up. No, that album, unmatched, was a cataclysm.
The Band didn’t play much and I only saw them in their time as the Black Hawks and backing Dylan. Back in those days I saw everyone except the Beatles. My memory is a personal one. I remember being in the living room of a good friend of mine, Danny Gaffney, a friend who I’ve lost touch with, and arguing over which song was the greatest, The Weight, or my choice: I Shall be Released. I was right but what would I give to have a beer with him now as we did in the old days.
Levon Helm, as I’m sure you know, just died.
Clear Your Reading Decks …
April 17, 2012 at 7:45 PM | Posted in Books | 3 CommentsTags: NY Times Magazine, Robert Caro, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Charles McGrath
On May 1st the long and incredibly awaited 4th Volume to Robert Caro’s “The Years of Lyndon Johnson”, The Passage of Power, will be released. If you’ve read the first three volumes then you’ve been tapping your fingers for 10 years. If all this is new to you, then your life has just gotten brighter and you won’t be bored for months if not years, on end.
Caro began writing his Gibbonsian masterpiece in 1976 and now he is himself 76 and, hooray, spry for he is not done. This new volume was to be the last, taking Johnson to his death (shocking that he died at only 64 – he looked so old and beaten down.) But Caro’s 736 pages takes us from 1958, as LBJ plotted his Presidential strategy to just after the Kennedy assassination in 1963. There is a hell of a lot more hell to come.
Charles McGrath, writer and editor for the New Yorker has written a wonderful lead article for last Sunday’s NY Times Magazine Robert Caro is a dinosaur … And thank God for that and I now assign it to you for mandatory preparatory reading.
Class dismissed.
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