GUM CHEWING: the ugly side

                                    by James Channing Shaw

            Try this experiment. Walk up Broadway in New York or any big city street. Watch people chewing gum. Do you think they look good? Sexy, manly, feminine, smart, whatever? If so, I probably can't help you. 

NEW YORK CITY

            Now try this: Look down at the sidewalk in New York or any city of five million or more. For miles and miles, each and every concrete slab of sidewalk is polka-dotted with hundreds of splats of stepped-on gum, mostly black, no matter how pink or sparkly or blue they started out. And—talk about disgusting—try stepping on a soft wad that sticks to your heel in a really long string and gets picked up by the wind and wraps around your pants. But I don’t care that much about your pants, or the polka-dot sidewalks. It’s the chewing that gets me. 

PARIS

            My guess is that the majority of people who regularly chew gum do it more for the image than the taste. For those who are about image, I wish you luck. For those who chew gum for the taste, or your breath, there still is hope for you.

            

Here’s the concept: Quietness is a great beautifier.^* Picture the inside of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris at closing time; a grove of giant Sequoias at dusk with rays of sun peeking through; an empty stage with a nine-foot grand piano. Quietness beautifies your face as well. Rippling jaw muscles are off-putting, tense. Blow bubbles and you have just labeled yourself a junior high school punk or a Valley Girl from the eighties. Chew with an open mouth and you become a caricature of a gangster, a pimp, or some other low life form. Yeah, you're tough all right. Just need a few tattoos.

            Let’s face it. Gum chewing and charm are as incongruous as oysters with chocolate sauce, or a Republican with a social conscience. They simply don’t go together.

            I can accept it when it’s a celebrity doing the chewing, especially when it serves a purpose. John Lennon, I admit, looks pretty good chewing gum in the studio recording of “All You Need Is Love”, but he has to keep the saliva flowing. He has a job to do. Or the final scene of Last Tango in Paris in which wounded Marlon Brando slows his jaw, furrows his brow, takes the gum out of his mouth and sticks it to the underside of the balcony railing before he collapses, dead. It is hard to deny that gum chewing carries with it some cachet in the arts. At least for Brando and Lennon.

            But what famous role models have chewed gum over the years? Queen Elizabeth? Winston Churchill? Fred Astaire? Audrey Hepburn? Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis? The President of the United States?  Of course not. None of them. In public, at least. The gum-chewers would be the Donald Trumps of the world, televangelists, professional wrestlers, the Charlie Sheens of the world, low-level politicians, maybe ex-governors of Alaska. You get the gist. In what career could it possibly be advantageous to interview for a job with gum in your mouth? Induction into the Mafia, perhaps.

            There is one major exception to all this:  professional baseball players. To their credit, they figured out that the manly wad of tobacco they used to squirrel into the sides of their cheeks caused mouth cancer, so now it's a gooshy wad of pink bubblegum. It looks so juvenile, so demeaning, compared with the tobacco, but they deserve a break. And they have important work to do, as do soldiers, whom I would totally forgive for chewing gum. Maybe, though, the ball players could consider not blowing bubbles during televised games, at least while at bat.

 * quote from Robertson Davies

HEMINGWAY'S PANTS

In early 1917, with the United States still having not formally declared war on Germany, my grandfather, Emmett H. Shaw, an upperclassman at Harvard at the time, decided to join the American Field Service to drive an ambulance for the French army fighting at the Italian Front. He was promised a full degree from Harvard by joining the war effort when he did. First day on the job was April 21, 1917, only fifteen days after the U.S. declared war.

It so happened that at approximately the same time, Ernest Hemingway was also driving ambulance at the Italian Front. He had enlisted with the American Red Cross in early 1918 and had joined regional Italian units. The paths of my grandfather and Hemingway crossed at ambulance headquarters shared by the American Field Service units and the American Red Cross. “We were acquaintances. I never got to know him well,” Emmett explained. In Carlos Baker’s biography Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, the name Emmett Shaw receives two lines and an entry in the index.

It was Emmett’s custom to tell his war stories around our family kitchen table prior to dinner. The one I remember best was the story of Emmett driving along a winding dirt road at the end of a long valley when suddenly the left front tire of his ambulance blew out. Emmett and his co-driver had just started changing the tire when a shell exploded twenty yards off the road a few hundred yards behind them. “It sounded like a howitzer, more firepower than they needed.” Frantically they raced for time as the next shell hit directly on the road one hundred yards closer. The final shell, with its whine before impact, hit directly on the road just as they finished with the tire change. They felt the percussion wave and dust on their skin before speeding away. So the story goes.

On July 8, 1918, Ernest Hemingway got injured by enemy mortar fire at the Front. After receiving stabilizing surgery at a field unit, he was transferred to the Red Cross Hospital in Milan. Back at ambulance headquarters, no one thought Hemingway would be able to drive again. He had received serious shrapnel wounds to both legs. Rumors were that he would be lucky to walk.

Unexpectedly, after six months of rehab, Hemingway did return, walking with a cane. He came to visit the boys, say his goodbyes and gather his belongings before returning to the United States. A ceasefire had been negotiated November 11^th but many drivers remained at the Front, having not yet been redeployed. Emmett told it this way: “Hemingway came back to an empty locker: his locker had been cleaned out and he was hopping mad about it! I ran into him that afternoon. All he said, looking down at my khakis, was “Shaw, those are my pants.”

“All I could say was, “Yes, sir, they are.” I apologized and returned the pants the next day, freshly laundered. That’s the last time I saw Ernest Hemingway. No handshake. Nothing. C'est la vie. C’est la guerre.” And so the story goes.

There is something about Paris.

At the intersection of Rue de Seine and Rue Jacques-Callot in the 6^th arrondissement sits one of the most pleasant cafes in the entire world. The name of the place is La Palette. Last week, just after Halloween, having walked past this cafe several times with its tangle of blooming pink rose vines above the entrance, we finally got the chance to sit and have a drink on our way home from art gallery browsing. When we arrived, every outside seat on the terrace was taken except two lonely tables with ‘reserved’ signs. We eventually squeezed through the double front door to a small room with  two empty tables open to the air, also reserved. The maître-d’ intercepted us, and before we could explain our intentions, he opened his arms to the reserved tables. Easy. Lucky.

La Palette has none of the affectations that a 2011 food writer might rave about in, say, The Globe and Mail or The New York Times. There is no meat market feel: people, mostly young, all wearing scarves around their necks, come here to talk and sip on an aperitif, some stay on into dinner. There is no throbbing hip-hop with a subwoofer that throws out your sacro-iliac joint. In fact, there is no music at all—one listens instead to the friendly sound of the occasional clink of a wine glass, intermittent “bonsoir” or “merci” between patrons and bustling, black-vested, long white-aproned servers; strangely, one conducts a conversation here without even raising one’s voice. There is no television, no neon: the venerable café is paneled with warm old wood walls and covered with paint-smeared palettes from not-so-famous painters, perhaps famous ones as well, since Picasso and Cezanne, among others, were known to frequent the place. Outside, in fading light, a crowd enjoys the soft air of an Indian Summer. Inside, a long zinc or copper bar with the same warm wood plus marble paneling extends along one entire wall, clearly the command center of the café. We had time for one beer, a delicious Belgian Grimbergen, then back into the balmy Paris night.

There definitely is something special about Paris. This particular bar/café is merely one small taste. At La Palette, we carved out a few minutes of that special je ne sais quoi, that unique brand of social networking that does not require a computer, a culture of civilized intercourse that is found nowhere in the world but Paris. 

EVERYMAN ESPRESSO, NYC

Just spent a few days in New York in a flat on Second Avenue near NYU and discovered a wonderful little coffee shop on East 13^th Street. 

It’s 7:30 am. I’ve just dropped off laundry at one of many dry cleaning/laundry shops that do laundry by the pound, this one run by a gentle Korean man who says my linen jacket will be done by tomorrow morning (I’m wearing it to lunch tomorrow—turned out it wasn’t done in time). I’m sensing the earliest brain tingle of caffeine withdrawal headache but am determined not to stand in line at Starbucks. One block west, I stumble onto Everyman Espresso, on 13^th, east of Fourth Avenue. This has potential, I'm thinking. The room is spare, minimalist, about five tables, two customers, one gorgeous NYU coed, one hipster, both deep into their laptops. Posters on the wall of plays, Shakespeare and otherwise, performed in the theater in the back. Coffee makings are in the corner: Sam, well groomed, woolen Irish cap, close-cropped beard, precise, surrounded by coffee paraphernalia and a few pastries. Delightful morning music by Jonsi floats in the air (solo album from the lead guitar for Sigur Ros).

Lots of shops make excellent coffee these days, thank goodness, but Sam made me the best cappuccino I’ve ever had outside of Rome, maybe even including Rome. Whole milk, of course (see skim milk for cappuccino posting in this blog). He also had the equipage for making French press, single drips, you name it. Everyman Espresso became my morning fix (for coffee, coeds, and local energy) during my short stay in New York. Wonderful. Thank you Sam, and the other guy. I'll be back someday.

SUN PROTECTION: Myths and truths

                   

             Summer is here, and despite growing familiarity with the concept of sun protection over recent years, misconceptions abound concerning sun safety and how best to protect yourself from the damaging effects of the sun. The causative role of the sun is indisputable in skin cancer and premature aging of the skin. Even melanoma, the most rapidly increasing cancer in white populations, is strongly associated with intermittent sun exposure.

            Here are six of the most commonly held myths surrounding sun protection.

            Myth #1: All skin types require sunscreens.

            The truth: Individuals with very fair skin (red hair, freckles, sunburn always) and fair skin (blue to hazel eyes, light skin, sunburn easily) benefit most from regular use of sunscreens. Natural pigment (i.e. melanin in the skin) is by far the most effective sunscreen. The darker a person’s skin, the greater the innate protection. Individuals with olive-colored (tan easily, rarely burn) or darker skin (never burn) have very little risk of developing the types of skin cancer that arise on sun-damaged skin. Sunscreens can help prevent further darkening after exposure to the sun, but skin cancer prevention and photo-aging is much less of an issue for individuals of color.

            Myth #2: If you use appropriate sunscreens, sun exposure is safe.

            The truth: Sunscreens mostly protect against burning rays (ultraviolet B, or UVB). Deep penetrating tanning rays (UVA) still get through to the dermis where they contribute to aging and skin cancer. The absence of sunburn with sunscreen gives a false sense of security and often translates to spending more time in direct sun. This is a potentially harmful practice, one that explains, in part, the increased incidence of melanoma that has been reported in sunscreen users.

            The correct approach, then, for preventing skin cancer and photo-damage is to use sunscreens regularly as one part of a lifestyle of sun avoidance behavior (hats, long sleeves, long pants, shade). Daily sunscreens are especially important on the face, ears, neck and hands where coverage with clothing is difficult. If your goal is getting a tan or a dose of Vitamin D, it is safer to spend short amounts of time in the sun without sunscreen, then cover up or seek an umbrella.

            Myth #3: If SPF-30 is good, SPF-60 must be twice as good.

            False. Two points are crucial here. First, SPF-4 or SPF-8 sunscreens deliver inadequate protection, but once you get to SPF-15, you achieve more than ninety-two percent protection. Increasing to SPF-30 or SPF-60 merely takes it to ninety-four or ninety-five percent. The amount and frequency of application become the important issues, as long as you are using SPF-15 or higher.

            Second, SPF grades only UVB protection (the burning rays). There is no equivalent grading system for UVA protection. One must rely on the ‘broad spectrum’ labeling to indicate UVA protection, and it is often inaccurate. The best UVA blockers are zinc oxide and titanium dioxide.

            Myth #4: You don’t need sunscreens on a cloudy day.

            The truth: Ultraviolet light intensity is not reduced on cloudy days. The rays get jumbled in the clouds, but the intensity hitting a person’s skin at ground level is the same as on a clear day. Cooler temperatures with clouds give a false sense of security which often means that people spend more time exposed without protection. Also, with ultraviolet intensity being greatest on June 21^st every year in the Northern hemisphere, UV intensity in May can be the same as July, April can be the same as August, and March the same as September. Sunscreens should be used at least from March through September.

            Myth #5: Sunscreens must be applied thirty minutes before going in the sun.

            The truth: This is totally false. The chemicals and blocking agents in sunscreens are fully effective right out of the tube. In fact, the sun-blocking effects of sunscreens have been shown to be the strongest immediately after applying to the skin, and gradually fall off in strength over several hours.

            Myth #6: Only specialty clothing provides good sun protection.

            The truth: All types of clothing, when dry, protect from the skin from both UVB and UVA radiation. Of course, the tighter the weave, the better the protection. Specialty clothing manufacturers have designed excellent sun-protective clothing and have confirmed high SPF equivalency values, but the real benefits lie more in the comfort and lightness of their fabrics, not the sun protection per se.

            The exception to this rule happens when fabrics get wet. Most standard clothes, t-shirts for instance, become worthless as sun barriers when they get wet. Specialty sun-protective garments maintain their SPF when wet, and highly protective swimwear is available for children and others spending hours in the water.

And this just in: As of June 14, 2011, the FDA announced changes in labeling of sunscreens that pass FDA tests for protection against UVA and UVB. Consumers will hopefully benefit from the more reliable labeling.

            

Vitamin E and THE SKIN, PART II: ANTI-OXIDANT EFFECTS

Does supplemental Vitamin E (orally or topically on the skin) deliver real health benefits?

Go to: It's Your Skin: treat it well!

http://itsyourskintreatitwell.blogspot.com/ 

PORTIFICATION© of red wine


Red wine lovers! Try these two unconventional approaches to preserving your wine. Purists, don't scoff just yet. These methods, I admit, are heretical. But your palate does not lie. If you detect good flavors where once there were bad ones, that’s the name of the game.

1. Portification. How many times have you opened a not-so-inexpensive bottle of red and been disappointed? You wouldn’t serve it to guests, but are reluctant to pour it down the drain. And how many times have you wished you could resurrect a two-day-old bottle of Bordeaux that has lost its mojo?

There is hope. PORTIFY© your wine. Add Port to a glass of wine, about ¼ Port, ¾ wine. It makes all the difference in the world. Cheap $10 Port is fine for the job. Ruby Port is better than Tawny Port. Works best with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, Malbec and Italian wines, and less well with Pinot Noir.

2. Refrigeration. The second approach is a no-brainer. Personally, I’ve been disappointed with the air evacuation method of preservation, but white wine can sit around in the refrigerator for days until the bottle is gone. Refrigeration slows all the oxidation processes. It turns out that red wine is the same: put leftover red wine in the fridge; when you pour a glass, microwave it for about twelve seconds and, Voila!, you are back in business with a surprisingly good reconstitution. Red wine can last for several days that way.

Enjoy.

visit Kitchen Jam at http://kitchenjam.blogspot.com/ for food and wine tips.