PEARLS & AMBER

POPE BENEDICT XVl

Pope Benedict is coming to visit the United States.  He'll be here on his birthday, April 16.

I feel that it is useful information to know that Pope Benedict is an--

                               ARIES.

Can you believe it?

Aries are hot tempered and quick to leap.  I never would have guessed this of a pope, but Pope Benedict is therefore capable of flying off the handle at any given moment.

This would be worrisome EXCEPT--

His moon is in LIBRA.  We all know Libras are famous for being so worried about fairness that they need to see all sides and hear all sides.  Therefore they are unable to make up their minds without a huge amount of soul searching.  This often takes years.

So, we can relax. This Aries, who has become a pope, has that nice Libra fairness thing balancing out the impetuous Aries energy thing. 

I have felt the need to comment because frankly I can't picture an Aries sitting still long enough to become a  Pope, let alone making it through seminary school.

If this offends any Aries out there aiming for the Vatican, well, I apologize. 

SURFING IN IRELAND

I'm sitting here in Southern California feeling desperate for winter.  It hits, now and then, this feeling of loss.  Somewhere deep within there rumbles the need for snow, sleet, icy roads.  That haze of frost at dawn.  Praying desperately for the heat to kick in, in the car--

I'm not kidding. 

So that when I read an article about surfing in the frigid winter waters of northwest Ireland, I thought, hey, how about a little trip to Bundoran, Ireland.

"Bands of black clouds sailed ominously across the sky.  Rain bucketed down in freezing torrents.  Icy winds pummeled and churned the ocean."  Ohmigod.  Doesn't that sound beautiful? 

Wild weather.  Frigid, bleak, insane.  This winter gigantic waves came in, waves up to 45 feet tall.

Surfing in Ireland.  In the winter, the prime season for the huge waves.  I have to go before it's all ruined.  I used to want to ride the mail boat up the coast of Norway.   The boat was small and rough around the edges.  The real thing.  On the day my kids grew up I ran to book the mail boat--

It had turned into a huge cruise ship, behind my back.  It had turned into Club Med.

One surfer said blissfully that last year in Bundoran, it had been snowing in the mountains and hailing on the beach, when he was there.  He lives in Southern California--

"Now that the word is out," says this article in the New York Times, "Bundoran and nearby towns, with their unusual masochistic appeal and promise of huge, storm tossed swells, have become international surfing destinations."

Outside my door the sky is blue and the palm trees wave in the warm breeze.  I'd better book Bundoran right now.

BUDDHISM AT $12,000

And here I was fretting about maybe paying $600 to take a ten week meditation course over at the local university.  I was thinking, god, what kind of fanatic yogini am I that I have to actually pay someone bucks to teach me how to meditate. 

And along comes this line of jewelry called Shamballa Jewels that are billed as "enlightened baubles".  They are a "harmonious blending of the spiritual and opulent."

Mongolian rose-cut diamonds meet Buddhism for the really big bucks. The Buddhism part apparently is the wood and raw leather (raw leather?) that hold all the jewels together.

Well, it certainly isn't the price.

The creators are Danish, so maybe this is some kind of leg pulling that is Northern European in flavor?  I mean, when I think of Danes, I don't think of them as the sort who slap $12,000 price tags on bracelets made out of that raw leather, claiming they look like prayer beads, and calling the whole thing...organic.

When did organic, Buddhism and er, raw leather, cost the price of half a year of private kindergarten in New York City?

I'm forgetting about those rose cut diamonds? 

No I'm not.

THE PERFECT DIMPLES

So there I was walking down the aisle in the grocery store.

I needed only cookies (very specific ones) and cat food.

(Yes, I buy my cat her food in the grocery store.  Sheba.  She loves it.  I am not one to argue with a ten year old Siamese.)

Anyway, one of the clerks was unpacking boxes at the cookies.  He smiled as I passed by and said, "Finding everything all right?"

I skidded to a halt.  Had I seen something fabulous out of the corner of my eye?

"Finding everything all right?"  he said again.  He grinned.

And I beheld the most perfect set of dimples I have ever seen.  They were the kind of dimples his mother adored, his teachers gave him 'A's for, his  bosses gave him raises and never knew why.  God knows how it helped with the girl situation, but help these dimples certainly did.  They were the kind of dimples one could see in the dark.  The kind that could collect rain, cast shadows, sparkle at Christmas.

"Those are fabulous dimples," I said.  He grinned again, at ease with the cult of dimple lovers.  His destiny.  Gifted with the perfect set of dimples.

"Thanks," he said.  "I got 'em at Costco."

PUSH UPS R IT

Push ups are good for the health.  Jack La Lanne says so.  Since he is now 93 yeas old, and doing advanced push ups, well, I'm prepared to take his word for it.

Push ups are cheap.  No fancy accoutrements needed to execute them to their most effective.  Just one's own body weight, set firmly between toes and palms of the hands (please see illustration).  Lower body down as close to the floor as you can get, and push back up.  Exhale going down, inhale going up, if that sort of thing works for you.  Elbows held close to the sides.  Shoulders NOT hiked up by the ears.  And of course, no sagging in the middle.  You are emulating a board...ironing board, surf board, floor board...whatever board you want.  Right?  You know this all, right?

Free, cheap, can be done anywhere, five seconds tops.  What's not to love?

The article I was reading in the New York Times went on to say that, based on national averages, women of 40 should be able to do 16 push-ups, men 27.  Those numbers seem a little low, but that may be because I hang out with yoga fanatics.  Sun salutations are de rigueur, so doing eight thousand sun salutations a day makes for a lot of push-ups.

The article went on to say that women of 60 only need to do 6 push ups to feel good about themselves, and men 17. 

Those numbers are ludicrous.  

A word of advice to 60 year old women--being lulled into thinking 6 measly push-ups a day is all it takes to do the trick, is a conspiracy to keep you barefoot and cooking dinner for the rest of your life.

Now excuse me while I attempt to emulate my hero Jack Palance.  If this is confusing, please rent Bagdhad Cafe.

YOU HAD ME AT GOOEY

There's a new cookbook out called

STICKY, CHEWY, MESSY, GOOEY

I'm in love, and I can't stand it.  I gave up sugar for Lent. 

But lest that totally knock your socks off, it's really nothing.  I'm surrounded here in Southern California, by certifiable saints who've given up sugar forever.  Yes, that's right.  FOREVER.  "Oh, maybe a grape or something, now and then," they say, bliss emanating from their pure, sugar free faces.

What good is life without gooey, I want to know--

No wait.  I don't want to know.  I don't want to feel even remotely convinced that I too, Ruth Yunker, should give up gooey and sticky, FOREVER.

For Lent has been too much, and I won't do it again.

But in the meantime, there are recipes in this book that if I even ate the page they are printed on, I just know it'd be as good as the real thing....

No wait.  Maybe I'd just better cave in early, go quickly to the nearest grocery store, buy items such as heavy whipping cream, dark chocolate baking bars, vanilla beans, eggs, Irish butter, powdered sugar, brown sugar, white sugar, honey, apricots, pink dye?...no, not pink dye...oh, and baking soda and baking powder and gelatin and all those chemistry oriented baking ingredients-

Fire up the new oven--

And promise never to give up sugar again.

GRAND CANYON GREEN WASH

Another magnificent natural wonder--

Another fight between those who wish to preserve it, and those who wish to preserve it, and also those who wish to preserve it.

Questions surrounding the Grand Canyon Green Wash:

Will flooding the Grand Canyon help protect it from further erosion?

Isn't the Grand Canyon itself the result of erosion?

Hasn't this been tried before, in the early 1990's, and the results 'hotly debated'?

It sounds superb on paper.  Green Wash.  I'm an American. Therefore I am all for any plan to save anything.  Particularly Mother Nature's creations.

So that reading about the plan to help our incredible Grand Canyon continue to be its awe inspiring self, I commenced to read about it enthusiastically.

And was immediately reminded that in America everyone gets their say, in however many words they want, so that the information, unintelligible to me the layman, knew no limits.

I think I gleaned that the plan serves little long term good in aiding the preservation of the Grand Canyon, because it needs to be done more often.  There was something about the endangered humpback chub fish that worried me.  And something about sand bars used by rafters, that didn't.

But in the end, I understood very little, and only in the vaguest sense possible.  Therefore I was unable to formulate an opinion worth more than a burnt piece of pie.

When I lived in Northern Florida, I fell ferociously in love with the endangered Everglades, and thought I might...you know, help.  I started by trying to read up on it.  Only to be met by a concrete barrier, miles high and incomprehensible, of conflicting and finger pointing information.

In the end, I will have to rely on those who know more than me. Those with degrees in engineering and cloud formation, and the loudest voices.

LOVE AND...ER UH...CONSEQUENCES

So for three years an editor, who shall be nameless because I'd have to look her name up (although I remember her father's name well enough), in order to get it right, and god forbid I choose this blog to make a mistake with the facts--

For three years this editor, working closely with the author on an important project, never bothered to meet the author in person.  Was it that this East Coast editor simply could not fathom the idea of dragging her tail all the way to a place called Eugene, Oregon?  Wherever the hell that is, right?

Three long years she had, to arrange a meeting with the author.  That is 1,095 days.  This editor must have one incredible work ethic.  I'll bet she didn't even have time to get to India or Paris, or even Southampton or Montauk, or even Cancun, she was so busy working with this author.  A trip to...oh yeah, Eugene, Oregon, was simply out of the question.

  Sadly, the editor made a big mistake.  Probably right now she is cloistered with beloved family members who support her no matter what.  They are assuring her, while bringing her tea and her childhood teddy bear, that they would have been duped too.  That fun little details like the first thing the street kid did with the first big money she made, was to buy herself a burial plot.  I mean how incredible was that?  She didn't buy drugs or shoes or even a day at a spa.  No.  This incredible kid, so aware of the dangers of her awful awful life, got herself to a burial plot sales office and did the deal.  Picked out the location and all.  Paid cash.

Aah well, we live and learn, don't we?

Dear sweet editor, may I direct you to a fairly recent movie called 'The Hoax'?  It starred Richard Gere and it was about--

Oh shoot.  It's time you did some of the work.  You go look it up yourself...if you can bear to take the time.  I think you might feel better.  You will see that you are not alone.  Your kind is beginning to have a long, dare I say, colorful history.

REAL HAMBURGERS

I am just about as sure as I can be that every single American I know, and just about every single American I don't know, will recognize what this concoction of food is.

A HAMBURGER.  Yes.  A good ole American hamburger.

Please note the bun. 

A bun is part of a hamburger.  So when one is speaking of eating a hamburger, one should be aware of the fact that eating the bun is part of the ritual of eating a hamburger.

A ritual which in many parts of the American population has lost favor as the perfect meal.  People like  vegetarians, those watching their weight, those who don't 'do red meat', those who have given up fun food for Lent...they no longer eat hamburgers.  These people are not the problem, however.

There are those who persist in saying, rubbing their hands with glee, at a restaurant, in my kitchen, or even, dare I say, at some roadside stand (Tommy's on Rampart and Vine or wherever, springs to mind) "I'll have a hamburger."  And then they say "But leave off the bun."

LEAVE OFF THE BUN?

Reading about some famous hairdresser's diet in Bazaar or Elle or Vogue or Glamour or Marie-Claire (I have to get a grip here--)this person said "Oh I have a hamburger for lunch, but I don't eat the bun."  Then even as I was clutching my heart, she said it again  "I leave off the bun of my hamburger."

Okay, the point I am making is you ARE NOT eating a hamburger if you leave off the bun, okay?  You are eating a meat pattie.  Yes.  A boring, flat, gray (because you are probably also the sort who is afraid of rare beef), ugly, meat pattie.

I know it's all about weight.  God, tell me about it.  Okay?  But I just want you out there who are trying to be one of the guys by ordering a hamburger, a calorie ridden hamburger, and then slyly pulling the meat pattie off the bun, and eating said meat...with a fork...stop kidding yourself.

You have not just eaten a hamburger.  A hamburger is eaten with the hands.  Both hands holding the luscious concoction aloft, grease and ketchup and mustard running down to your elbows with each bite.  It is an item that needs you to open your mouth wide.  A hamburger is NOT a prissy little piece of meat pattie eaten dry, with a fork.

I know I am in the minority here.  Even In-and-Out, which used to make THE BEST hamburgers in the whole of America, now make one that is wrapped in lettuce--

Let me pause here to hang onto the wall while I steady myself--

And they no longer drip.

I'm afraid to see if Tommy's has slipped.

Thank god I can still catch a fabulous, overstuffed, juicy, taste blaster of a hamburger.  Where? you might ask, shriveling up with envy.  Why honey, in my very own kitchen. 

Served WITH BUN.