Ramsey's Books

Ramsey's Books

Town Meeting Day

Yes, we still have town meetings in Vermont but they have been eviscerated by the state.  What’s new about that? Big government wants all the power all the time.  So, a few years back they—the state legislature—passed an act called Act 60 that took the power of towns to run their own schools away from the towns. It was all about money and power although they put up a good argument that it made education more equal to all in the state.  Good goal; horrible strategy.  State 100, Towns ZIP. 
     But we still get together to argue about the road budget, the municipal buildings budget etc. Whoop dee do!  However, we can now focus on things like conservation and global warming.  The town meeting becomes a focus for group discussion about these important areas; and you would be surprised at the level of sophistication brought to the table. 
     The state might try to kill the power of the towns---meaning people—but they have never figured out that people do count, and that people will like a meandering river find away around the blockages formed by the state.  Yea for us!  One and all.
     Remember, bottom up is more powerful than top down! 
We also had a Primary in Vermont today.  I know that Obama will win.
~Ray

MY VERY FIRST RESTAURANT REVIEW!!!

Shannon and I were in NYC for a press visit to things like Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal and other major forces in The publishing world. But…we have to eat; so, with rain pelting down so that you could barely see outside the cab window, we raced down the East Side Drive, crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, sped along some other highway playing bumper car with everybody else, slid off the I 75 or whatever it was and nosed into the dark, spooky dock area of Red Hook.  Blocks of silent, dark godowns ( Asian term for warehouses), silent brick houses in rows about to be reduced to memories, and big, empty parking or storage lots seemed lifeless.
     We were now at the docks where the QE II and the Queen Mary shelter before taking on human cargoe for glorious trips across the Atlantic to England. I can remember when the West Side of NYC on the Hudson River was a warren of big ocean going liners: The Ile de France, the SS United States, the Italian Lines, the Dutch Line and so forth. Beautiful, graceful monsters that went back and forth to Europe competing with the early days of jet air travel. On Saturday nights for $5.00 (a lot in those days—1960s) vyou could go aboard, bring some friends with you, and pretend you were going to Europe until they piped you off the ship with appropriate warnings and admonitions. Those days are gone, and with them those gallant and marvelous leviathans to be replaced by floating , many storied tubs that ply the waters of the Carribean. Ah, well, so be it.
     On to the restaurant.
THE GOOD FORK

THE GOOD FORK at Van Brunt St in Brooklyn is housed in an old redbrick worker’s row house facing the docks. You open the door and BAM!! you are in the coziest bistro this side of Paris  with a cuisine that competes with not only Bistros but with some one star restaurants in that city on the Seine. No, I’m not kidding.  The food: braised sweetbreads that hint of the Far East, oysters dipped and flash fried so that they seem raw, plump, stingingly sweet, hangar steak with Kimchee couscous, fried egg on top, and spices that only the nerviest chef would try.  That’s just a sample.  The wine list? A delight. Nicely priced, a mélange carefully selected from France, Italy  with a secret white from the Alta Adige), some Oregon and Washington pinot noirs, and some good Spanish riojas.  Deserts are just that.  What a treat. Try the apple tart---holy smoly.  Try them all.
      Ben and Soji Snyder both own and run this gem of a restaurant. Ben is a fine, professional actor with a list of excellent credits, an equally fine furniture maker and the maitre D; and Soji is a trained chef with a love of food and flavors and presentation.  Her kitchen is a dance of three or four other chefs and flashing sauce pans and the sound of chopping and mincing. Garlic is in the air but does not overcome the other smells of green onions, lemon grass, star anise and red wine sauce.
     Don’t miss this place.  I wish it was in Vermont down the dirt road from us instead of in Brooklyn, but, alas it ain't!!!!!  GO THERE.
THE GOOD FORK
www.goodfork.com
391 Van Brunt Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231     
phone 718 643 6636
     fax 718 643 6643
~RAY 

I Keep Bumping Into Those Things I Was Supposed to Have Read, and Understood, In College

“What?” you may ask and “Why?”
Milton’s Paradise Lost, Virgil’s Aneid, Goethe’s Faust, Dante’s Divine Comedy, the Old Testament ( dipping occasionally into the Vulgate), Shikibu’s The Tale of Gengi, and Shakespeare and Chinese novels and on and on into new things and new physics for the layman etc.
Why so busy? Why now and not then?  I guess because the world has never seemed so alive, full of opportunities and promise---and the darker side.
It also begins to make sense. At 4:30 am when I decide that sleep is no longer a possibility, Milton comforts me, Shakespeare’s Henry V and the St. Crispin Day speech invigorate me, and my two favorite cats ( we only have two) purr me into a cat nirvana.
Oh, there are many other books I will dip into ; no need to read every word, every page.  Sometimes looking at the mountains beyond my windows is more than enough; sometimes watching the birds at the ground feeding station at dawn tells me that the world is amazing.  Wouldn’t it be great to fly?
All the mags (The Economist, Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, the NYT) take second place.  Even music need not interfere.  It’s a voyage beyond compare, a trip waiting for all, a treasure house.
Oh, oh!!  Back to my computer and incoming e-mails.
Marcello  (aka Ray)

Amor Ergo Sum

  We went to a 60th birthday party of a dear friend last week. Twenty of us were there, and we were all commissioned to either write a poem celebrating our friendship and love of our friend or tell some story revealing his personality.  It was a wonderful evening and underlined for me the importance of friends as an extended family. We have that connection where age differences from toddlers to septenagerians (viva septenagarianism!!!) are nonexistent and compassion and acceptance are the order of the day every day.  No, it is not a utopia, but we embrace the collective WE.
     Poems were wonderful, stories were great even if you did not know the birthday boy.  Dinner superb. Laughter---life’s cure-all--- sustained and almost ribald.
     Let me leave you with one thing. A quote from Bill Coffin, former chaplain of Yale University.

    “Descartes said Cogito ergo sum --- I think therefore I am.
                         But I prefer
        Amor ergo sum    ---  I love therefore I am.”

                                                          W. S. Coffin
That about says it all.
Ciao, Ray

The North Country

THE RAIN CAME IN LAST NIGHT as stealthy as a cat on the prowl: first the slow motion approach, then the crouch, then the burst of energy.  I heard it on the tin roof of our house towards 2 am, a favorite hour for me to be awake.  It has that low level drum-roll comfort that includes heart beat and inward seeking mood set that begins to signal that winter is on the wane.
Don’t worry, there is plenty to come. But, the overall snow-pack has reached its basic limit; from now on it will not build. It will grow smaller despite big dollops of fresh snow on top of it.  The earth below with its grasses and seeds and voles and deep down frogs are getting the message. 
For us up here in the North country, it will be a good 8 more weeks, but we can live with that.  Spring skiing can be great, and the sunsets will be back as the days lengthen.
Yippee!!!!!  I love the seasons, each and every one, but now will come the special ones.
Bis bald! 
~Ray