THE PARTY OF WORK

David Brooks (The Party of Work, NYTimes Nov 8) correctly points out important reasons why Republican emphasis on individualism failed to attract voters. Hard working Asians and Hispanics don’t buy into rugged individualism, a concept as old as the Mayflower. They recognize the benefit of having some security through government.

What Brooks left out, as everyone is afraid to include, is the role of fundamental Christian beliefs in Republicans losing the election. It is Christian beliefs that hijack the education of our children away from science, reduce their future competitiveness and obstruct medical innovations such as stem cell research. It is Christianity (as well as orthodox Judaism and fundamentalist Islam) that supports male-dominant societies that treat women as property or conduits for progeny and strive to remove their having any control over their own bodies. Christian beliefs are usually the main justification for resisting civil rights of gays. The list goes on. It’s all in the Bible, sometimes between the lines, and it was rejected by voters last Tuesday.

Brooks also omits a more insidious force in Republican camps: classism, which runs deep in old money. The rich wish to preserve class differences as long as they can. They couch it in terms of job creation or trickle down benefits if taxes are kept low, but it really is class warfare. They don’t want expanding middle classes or waves of immigrants to upset their own apple carts. Other people’s poverty doesn’t seem to bother them much. It’s a story as old as the Bible. It’s what caused the French revolution.

But back to individualism. In early U.S. history, the least functional of these libertarian types just moved further into the frontier, as Brooks pointed out. Now, we’ve run out of frontier. And sadly, there are no far-off lands toward which Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and several tall blond rabid Republican women commentators might set sail. Looks like they’ll just have to learn how to get along.

The Republican loss is a move in the right direction. Who knows, maybe in a decade or two the country can take on hand guns, or eliminate the teaching of Creationism in public schools.

November 10, 2012

https://www.jameschanningshaw.com

ROOM FOR EXAMINATION

For all of James's blogposts, books, and more, visit https://www.jameschanningshaw.com

My blog has been rather silent for a while. I'm sure you've been heartbroken. The reason is that I've been working on my new book, the title shown below. It finally went live on Kindle this week and is available through the Kindle store. If you do not own a Kindle, the Kindle app is free for ipads and iphones, possibly other computers.

This is an account of my career as doctor and dermatologist; the training, the patients, doctors, the practice in both private and academic settings. 

Here's an excerpt from the first chapter:

One Friday, Mrs. Berenson, a woman in her late fifties, was hospitalized for severe psoriasis. Hers was much worse than most. I took a history and examined her. We ordered some standard treatments and I left for the weekend. Over the years she had become familiar with the hospitalization routine.

When I arrived Monday morning, Dr. Raugi broke the terrible news. Early Saturday morning Mrs. Berenson climbed out her tenth floor window without being noticed by nurses, and jumped to her death.

        As soon as I could, I went alone to her room. It smelled of disinfectant. I closed the door, muffling the voices that came from the corridor. What had we missed? We must have missed something. This wasn't the psych ward; this was dermatology. I could hear a siren in the distance. I put my head against the glass to look down at the flat roof of the service entrance ten floors below. A shiver crossed my shoulders. Dermatology patients don't commit suicide. Had there been clues? Morning sun shimmered on the river and bridges below in the city. Admittedly, her diagnosis was a severe form of psoriasis, the pustular type of psoriasis, the von Zumbusch type that covers the entire body, and she had struggled with it for years. I pulled open the window, letting in traffic noise, and pushed it closed again. There had been prior hospitalizations. Maybe Mrs. Berenson had had enough of the repeated admissions and poor results. Did we make the mistake of directing all our attention to her skin disease while overlooking a profoundly depressed, suicidal woman? I looked around the room. Housekeeping had already made up her bed. More likely, we missed something much larger. We, Medicine, the profession of medicine, had failed her.

I hope you get a chance to read the book!

James Channing Shaw 

GNOCCHI in creamy tomato sauce: 

           Prep time: 10 minutes

           Cooking time: 30-40 minutes

           Serves 2 to 4

Gnocchi must be one of the ultimate comfort foods of all time: soft, sexy little bite-sized potato puff dumplings, firm enough to resist in your mouth, bland enough to absorb whatever sauce you put with them. Gnocchi are wonderful as a starter, side dish or main entrée.

Try this easy recipe. You won’t be sorry. It’s pronounced approximately: “Nyoki”

MUSIC: Listen to the song Calgary from the Bon Iver album called BON IVER, and then listen to the rest of the album. Gorgeous. It’s pronounced approximately French: ‘Bone Yverre’.

HERE’S ALL YOU NEED:

           

•             Gnocchi: one package 500g, vacuum packed or fresh
•             Shallots or yellow onion, finely chopped, ¼ Cup
•             Garlic, ½ to 1 medium clove, finely chopped
•             Grape or cherry tomatoes: approx 300 grams (10 oz) or about 30 tomatoes
•             White wine: (vermouth, dry white, or sweet white), 1/3 to ½   Cup
•             Heavy cream (from 18% to 35% fat), ½ Cup to 1 Cup
•             Salt, pepper
•             Pinch of sugar
•             Olive oil: 3 TBSP
•             Thyme (optional) small pinch
•             Slivered basil leaves for garnish
•             Parmesan cheese, grated, for garnish

HERE’S WHAT TO DO:

·        sautee tomatoes in olive oil for five minutes in a covered shallow sauce pan

·        add shallots, garlic, salt, thyme, pepper, sugar and cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until tomatoes are soft or broken and release some liquid.

·        While tomatoes cook, bring pot of water to boil for the gnocchi

·        Add wine to tomatoes and reduce, uncovered, to about 1/3 liquid

·        Salt the pot of water and add gnocchi: stir occasionally to prevent sticking on the bottom. Gnocchi are done when they float, about 2 to 5 minutes

·        Add cream to tomato mixture and bring to a medium boil.

·        Add more salt and pepper to taste

·        When gnocchi are done ladle them into the tomato mixture through a slotted spoon and reheat.

·        Mix gently and serve

·        Garnish with slivered fresh basil and parmesan cheese.

 

WINE: This dish goes well with a red or white. White Burgundy, Chablis or Chardonnay, or a Chianti or Rioja would do nicely. Avoid a really heavy red like a Shiraz. I would accept a nice red Bordeaux, especially if the gnocchi are served with an accent of rare rib eye on the side.

            

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