A Little-Less-Labor Day

I’m going to rant a little. But there’s booze at the end of it. I promise.

As we head toward Labor Day, I dream of a leisurely transition in which we stretch, take a deep breath of sunblock and bug spray, slowly pull ourselves from lawn chair, beach chair or hammock, and ease back into our work lives, having spent a quiet month because our career workload slows down in August.

But that’s hardly true for anybody anymore.

I read business-page stories now and then about how American productivity has stalled. In them, I rarely find consideration of the number of workers who are already doing the job of three and they just might be tapped out.

We have people who dread vacations because when they return to the office, they’ll have to put in more miserable hours catching up on the work that didn’t get done while they were gone because there isn’t enough staff to do it.


Some companies talk about their commitment to creating a balance between career and personal lives, but for most, it’s largely lip service. I was thinking about that even before I read the New York Times article about Amazon. At least Amazon appears to be upfront: Forget your personal life; if you come to work here, you belong to us 24/7.

And then there’s Walmart’s approach to labor. They recently blamed lowered earnings projections on the increase they made in employee salaries, even though the company hasn’t strayed very far from their old business model, the one where their employees were more like lightly reimbursed volunteers.

If you work in the Consumer sector, don’t even think about getting Labor Day off (or most holidays, come to that). And while you’re on the job, customers will blame you because the place you work is short-staffed and those who are there have been too often astoundingly under-trained. If a business pays low wages, it’s more likely to suffer high turnover. Training new staff well isn’t cheap, so if the company doesn’t want to pay for it, it must rely on overworked employees to carry the new guy till he gets trained by osmosis. There has to have been a cost-benefit analysis done somewhere that says the cost in the number of disaffected customers isn’t great enough to justify adequate training. But I wonder if the people who did the analysis are the same ones who declared subprime mortgages would never default.

Okay, I'm almost done.

The transition into Labor Day ought to be much less stressful for all of us; we ought to have more time to enjoy it.

It seems the least I can do—and it really is the least I can do—is share a recipe for a homemade treat that is easy, easy, and—did I mention—easy. Maybe you'll get to spend a few more precious minutes in the hammock reading a mystery before the guests arrive.

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Easy Peasy, Fresh and Squeezy Sangria

Two things to keep in mind: One, if you like your red wine really sweet, this recipe is not for you; two, re-read One.

What you’re going to need.
1 pitcher; a bit of clingy plastic wrap to cover the top
1 ounce of brandy. Use the cognac you bought last Christmas when you planned to look sophisticated
4 tablespoons sugar
1 bottle of red wine (750 ml). Please don’t use any wine you wouldn’t drink straight
1 lemon, cut into 4 wedges; leave rind on
1 large orange, cut into 6 wedges; leave rind on
2 cups club soda (added right before serving)

What you’re going to do
Add the brandy to the pitcher
Add the sugar and stir till the sugar is uniformly distributed
Add the bottle of red wine, pouring slowly down the side so you don’t splatter it all over yourself
Stir till wine and sugar mixture are combined
Add lemon and orange wedges. If the fruit is “seedy”, dig out as many seeds as you easily can with your thumbnail
Stir, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate till well chilled, about 4 hours
When time to serve, uncover the pitcher. Squeeze the fruit wedges’ juices into the pitcher. If the fruit was seedy or you have an abiding fear of pulp, squeeze through a strainer. Discard wedges.
Add the club soda, stir and serve (straight or over ice)

This sangria also goes very well with hearty fall and winter dishes, so you can enjoy it as well at Thanksgiving and Christmas when we get Labor Day on steroids.


Copyright 2015 Sheila York

A Spicy End to Summer

On the night table: The Garner Files (James Garner & Jon Winokur)

Ah, August, the last of summer.

Well, unless you live in the part of the country where summer lingers till October. Or the part where it never ends.

As a child, I kept waiting for Tennessee to have summers like the rest of the country. Except that my impression of the “rest of the country” came from the pages of magazines like Seventeen, which were published in New York and generally failed to acknowledge that temperatures and rituals differed south of Manhattan.

Summer started on Memorial Day on those pages. In Clarksville, Tennessee, we’d have already had at least six weeks of 80+ degrees. Summer ended with Labor Day in those magazines, after which the kids went back to school, to campuses bright with autumn-leaf-colored cardigans. In Clarksville, we were back by mid-August. And you didn’t even think about putting wool next to your body till mid-October.

But I see no reason we can’t all agree that August is a turning point. The point at which you turn to a pitcher full of icy refreshment, turn on the AC and turn on a good movie if the front porch is still too hot to walk on barefooted or the mosquitoes have you barricaded indoors.

While searching through back issues of Bon Appétit, David (aka Chef) found a recipe for a curry-spiced Bloody Mary. No horseradish. No Tabasco. And it creates the best one I’ve ever had. 

We've shared the recipe, further below.

The Pairings

Okay, we need something with a lighter touch for summer refreshment. No noir, no horror, no heartbreak. Something with peppery relationships and smoothly blended dialog. And my choices share a theme about the heady attraction and ultimate perils of the search for headlines. One does it with humor.

Comedy: His Girl Friday (1940)

Howard Hawks remade the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur stage play Front Page, turning the male reporter whose boss will do anything to keep him from quitting the newspaper game into a woman.

I've used the cover of my restored-print
DVD. The posters don't do Roz justice.

Wow, did Hollywood get this one right! When you see His Girl Friday, you wonder why the playwrights — and the studio that did the 1931 film version — never thought of it. My hunch is that none of them could imagine the audience accepting an independent woman with a powerful career. How much the country changed in the space of just a decade. You’ll never be able to watch Front Page again. Sorry, but Hildy Johnson just has to be a woman!

Hildy (Rosalind Russell, that spicy tomato, exquisite in the role) has had enough of the rough-and-tumble, rabidly competitive newspaper game where the “scoop” is everything, even if you have to make it up. She wants to get married and this time it’s going to be to a sensible man. But her ex-husband, her editor boss Walter Burns (Cary Grant), is determined to keep her — not only because he’s still head over heels for her, but also because she’s the best reporter he’s got. And so he lures her back for just one last big, great story, and sets about with hilarious results to make sure she never gets on that train to Albany with her hapless beau (Ralph Bellamy).

A Bit More Serious: The Bronx Is Burning (2007)

The story of the Yankees’ summer of 1977 plays out in one of the worst summers for New York City, suffering from stifling 100+ temperatures, on the brink of bankruptcy and scarred by crime and urban decay. There are harrowing moments in the portrayal of the killing spree of the .45 Caliber Killer (later called Son of Sam) and the desperate police search for him.

But mostly this 8-episode mini-series is about the men in the most dysfunctional relationship in the history of sports: George Steinbrenner, principal owner of the Yankees (Oliver Platt); Billy Martin, his manager (John Turturro); and Reggie Jackson, his slugger (Daniel Sunjata), and the collateral damage that was the Yankees’ clubhouse. 

Their insecurities are like fresh wounds, every touch too deeply felt. None of them is capable of reasoned restraint and all are easily baited by the sports media. The rest of the team is roiled in their wake. 

You’ll find yourself yelling at the screen: “Don’t say it; just this once, keep your mouth shut!” But they can’t stop themselves. And the inevitability is irresistible: you feel sorry for them and want to smack them, in the same moment.  

You just can’t stop drinking it in.

Now, let's get the pitcher up!

Curry-spiced Bloody Mary (Bon Appétit, April 2010)

Makes 8 

10 cups tomato juice (preferably organic)

1 2/3  cups vodka (a good one; don't get the cheapest on the shelf)

1/2  cup fresh lemon juice

1/2  cup fresh lime juice

1/2  cup balsamic vinegar

2 TBS + 2 tsp  Madras curry powder

2 tsp (or more)  fine sea salt

1 tsp  freshly ground black pepper

Ice (crushed or cubes cracked into smaller pieces)

Celery sticks (for garnish)

Combine first 6 ingredients in a large pitcher. Whisk in the 2 tsp sea salt and the pepper. Season with more salt, if desired. Cover; chill. (Can be made 8 hours ahead. Keep chilled; whisk before serving.)

Fill tall glasses with ice. Pour in Bloody Mary mixture. Garnish with celery sticks.

The mixture keeps well in a sealed container in the fridge.  Give it a whisk before re-serving.

Sheila York

Copyright 2014

The Writer Prepares (A Nice, Cool Cocktail)

It’s been a brutal summer. Normally, my part of the Northeast — northern New Jersey — rarely gets above the low-80s, and then only for a few weeks late in the season. When I moved up here from Houston years ago, I thought I’d left behind the feeling of breathing through a hot, wet blanket — and the palmetto bugs the size of container ships. The bugs didn’t follow me north, but we've had mid-90s heat and smothering humidity since late June. 

So what does a writer do when she doesn’t have air conditioning in her office? 

What any self-respecting writer does: She drinks.

Okay, not while working. I’ve never believed all those stories about storied writers who were blasted while turning out top-notch prose. So many of them carry the implication that drinking somehow made the writing better, rather than the writing being excellent despite the alcoholism. I know for damned sure alcohol does not improve my writing.

A refreshing summer cocktail, however, can be the perfect end to a sweltering workday. And as we head into August, I thought I’d share a few of my favorites. Among the recipes I had available, I looked for three important characteristics: They had to be intended to be iced; relatively easy to make; and have flavor that popped. No bland or cloying drinks for us. Cool, easy, bracing, refreshing, those are the cocktails for a long, slow, sultry summer evening.

For my final choices, I consulted my über-cool neighbors across the street, who are cocktail enthusiasts (and one is a forensic anthropologist, so I have him on speed-dial for two reasons). They are the ones who introduced me to the work of Tom Richter, a bartender at The Beagle in New York City. My new personal favorite summer cocktail (Saints & Sinners) was passed along from him. [Tom also sells his own tasty tonic for a new twist on that summer staple, the gin & tonic, called Tomr’s Tonic.]   

Before we get started, a note on measurement. Most shot glasses are 2 oz (not 1 oz). You can test that by filling your shot glass with water and pouring the water into a 1/4 measuring cup. If the water fills the cup, it's 2 oz. 

Here are the cocktails my friends and I settled on:

The Dark & Stormy

A writer just has to start here, with that name. This is a Bermudan cocktail created in the early 1900s. Relax and stop worrying about that opening sentence for your book.

Pour over ice in a chilled glass:

3 oz chilled ginger beer (or more if you want to reduce the alcohol ratio)

1 oz dark rum

Stir; garnish with a slice of lime

[Ginger beer is non-alcoholic and available in larger liquor stores and supermarkets.]

The Negroni

Created in the days of silent films (this one's for Kate), this is extra easy to make for more than one person: The proportions are 1-1-1. The shaker also provides a bit of theater if you make this for guests.

The basic recipe for one cocktail (add more ice if you're making a shaker-full):

Place a half-dozen ice cubes in a cocktail shaker. Add:

1 oz good gin

1 oz Campari

1 oz sweet vermouth

Make sure the shaker lid is secure and shake until your hands get icy cold. When they start to hurt, that’s when it’s ready.

Strain into a chilled martini or highball glass (I like mine in a highball glass with ice, but a martini glass — or as in the picture, an old-fashioned champagne "coupe" — makes a nice presentation). Garnish with a twist of lemon or orange. If making a twist is too much trouble (and it can be), forget the garnish. 

Note: You could also muddle (crush) some slices of peeled orange in the shaker before adding the ice for a bit of extra flavor and some light (tasty) pulp in the drink. And a rationalization that you're drinking healthy. 

Saints & Sinners (or Saint & Cynar)

This delectable concoction requires sparkling wine (which won’t keep long in the fridge after opening), so it’s probably best for when you have friends over.

To a tall mixing glass (or a pitcher) with ice cubes, add:

2 oz St. Germaine (which is an elderflower liqueur)

1 oz Cynar

4 oz chilled dry sparkling wine (I recommend Freixenet Cordon Negro Brut; it’s inexpensive and tastes just fine)

Stir to chill well; pour only the liquid into a chilled highball glass with ice cubes in it; garnish with orange slice or orange twist.

Safety Note: Never use a shaker for this drink. We’re talking about a carbonated beverage here, which can explode if shaken in a closed container. (Think about what happens when you shake a carbonated soft drink.)

Enjoy!  Have a refreshing August!

Sheila York

Settling in for the Summer

Harold and I have been back for a week or so now from our trip to the southland. We are expecting visitors, beloved family members, at the end of June and again at the end of July, so my plan for the summer is to hang around the house, entertain friends and feel swell about things generally. I do plan to put in an appearance at Deadly Ink, but since that's the weekend our son John will be visiting, I won't be staying overnight in New Brunswick.


Summers are great here, in spite of heat and humidity to rival that of Mississippi. The joys of summer in Lambertville include a ten-minute fireworks show every Friday, a delivery of organic vegetables every Saturday (at least for those of us who belong to the Honeybrook Organic Farm), and the opening of the Marshall House to visitors every Saturday and Sunday afternoon. This year it will also involve a senatorial campaign by Rush Holt, right now the smartest man in Congress (okay, the field of comparison is nothing special but he really is an extraordinary person). I would love to see him in the Senate. So maybe he will win the Democratic primary and it will be a totally wonderful summer.

In the meantime I bought some new porch furniture. It was reasonably priced and it's very nice; I got it online from the Wicker Warehouse. The old furniture had seen its day. The plastic wicker was rotting off, it was intractably dirty, and the chair had little spiders in it that used to creep out and bite Harold on his arms and legs while he was trying to read. After I finish cleaning the attic I plan to spend a lot of time lounging in the new rocking chair and catching up on my reading. On June 26 I might take a break and go to New York City, there to dance the tango at four o'clock in Dag Hammarsjold Plaza with Annamaria Alfieri and her flash mob.

Kate Gallison

Dancing into Autumn

As Louis Armstrong sang, “I dig summer; that’s my time of year.”  I love the bright days, the soft fruits, the big moons, the blooming gardens.  I even love the thunder storms.  But for this year, summer’s days are numbered.  This gorgeous early September is, I remind you, not fall yet but still part of my favorite season.  But autumn nears.  It will be gorgeous, no doubt, but it is the wrong side of winter for me.  The trees now so vibrantly alive will soon show us their true colors and then drop their leaves.  The skies above will turn the same shade as the sidewalks below our feet, and worst of all the dark will descend.  Dusk will come long before supper time.  And there is nothing we can do to stop it.

We can, however, look to brighten up our hearts and souls.  I say we watch a little dancing in the movies.  Try these clips and see if they don’t cheer you up.

You are undoubted familiar with John Travolta’s marvelous turn in “Saturday Night Fever.”  Take another look:

You knew John could do that, but did you know Christopher Walken could do this:

If you have not seen “Pennies from Heaven,” get it.  It could keep you smiling until apple blossom time.

Our finale is the BEST ever.  I quote Frank Sinatra when I say, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Winter is coming to chill us.  I say we stand up to it, face the music, and DANCE!

Annamaria Alfieri

  

Summer Slump

Recently I have been overcome with lethargy. At first I blamed it on the heat, but it got cooler and I am still a sloth. All I want to do is lie around, read mysteries, and take naps. Occasionally I eat or drink something to keep going, but nothing that requires any effort or imagination. Soup and a sandwich, iced tea (the powdered kind) or lemonade (the bottle kind). And ice cream. Plenty of that.

This is no way to live. Nothing gets accomplished. You fall behind in everything—paying bills, writing thank you notes, cleaning, blogging… and you know you will suffer the consequences of having to catch up later. You get fat. (Fatter?) and an unfinished manuscript languishes on my desk.

I long for fall. I love those brisk autumn breezes and pungent scents that wake me up and act like a cattle prod to get me going. But autumn is more than two months away! Meanwhile, how can I motivate myself? Any suggestions are welcome.

Robin Hathaway