Touches of Cuba: a Week with Art Encounter and Hedwig Dances

Habana Vieja

 Scroll to end for slideshow of photos of Cuba with music by Pablo Menendez and Mezcla.

 Art galleries, dance studios, artists' homes and the private restaurants called paladars swirl in my mind a week after my return from Cuba, refusing to locate themselves on the grid of the real. From the moment we landed and climbed into an air-conditioned, Chinese bus, we were bombarded with images, information and impressions. Slowly the din of perceptions filtered my preconceptions and new understandings emerged.

Plaza de San Francisco

1. Cuba is not isolated. We are. The fabled Hotel Nacional, where we stayed, was bursting with tourists from all over the world except the U.S. The hotel's huge and generous breakfast buffet is designed to fit the early-morning habits of every culture: rice and curries; vegetables, potatoes and meat; all kinds of eggs, including some translated as "embezzled;" gorgeous fresh fruit, cereals, and a dozen different sweet breads.

2. Cuban art is not "outside." Visual art ranges from works shown in the world's major exhibitions, like the Venice Biennale, to neighborhood mosaics such as these by Juan Fuster, whose Homenaje a Gaudi (Homage to Gaudi) decorates whole blocks of Jaimanitas, a Havana suburb. The upraised hand you see on the far right of the photo below is a tribute to the five Cubans imprisoned in the U.S. since 2001 for attempting to prevent attacks on Cuba launched from Miami.

 3. Cuban dance goes way beyond the typical Cuban show. It owes its unique fluidity and energy to the state-supported training in ballet, modern and folkloric (Afro-Cuban) techniques that dancers (and other artists) receive from middle-school years through university. You'll be able to see this training in action at Hedwig Dance's upcoming concert June 20-21, 2013,  at Chicago's Atheneum. This company's Cuban dancers move with the spirit of their first home, and Cuban modern company Danzabierta just might make a guest appearance.

Pais Deseado (Desired Country) by artist Tonel at La Factoria 

 4. Cuba is not dangerous. It's safer than most U.S. cities and you can eat and drink everything served in paladars, government restaurants and hotels. While the U.S. office of Foreign Asset Control requires you to follow the itinerary for which your tour group is licensed, no one checks, and in fact you can go where you please. Taxis are cheap and plentiful.

5. Cubans have not given up religion. Though most of Cuba's Catholic churches are no longer used for services, there are temples where members of our group attended lay-led Friday services, and Santeria, the Yoruba-derived religion, is alive and well. A million people attended mass celebrated by Pope John Paul in the Plaza de la Revolucion when he visited in 1998.

Chair art at La Gaurida, a paladar

6. Socialism doesn't have to mean dreary. Our first stop, the monumental Plaza de la Revolution, is dominated by a tower memorializing José Marti, the 19th-century hero of Cuban independence from Spain. Besides the Mass mentioned above, the plaza is used for big social dances and other community events. Signs for CDF's, Centers for Defense of the Revolution, are ubiquitous (see slideshow below) and recall times when these block groups were used for ferreting out anti-revolutionary sentiments, but now people seem to speak freely. There is no free press in Cuba and many lacks: food, medicine, pencils, paper, and books, partly caused by the U.S. embargo. Posters advocating "free the five," symbolized by the upraised hand in the mosaic photo above, are common. Cubans neither own property nor pay rent, but individuals can improve their dwellings, and the artists' homes we visited were gorgeous: thirty-foot ceilings, elaborate tiled floors, art on all the walls.

Click below to see a slideshow of photos of Cuba with music by Pablo Menendez and Mezcla.

Give it plenty of time to load on your computer.

Kyoto—Kaiseki Dinner at Next

Japanese Maple Forest: Appetizers for Four

Burning branch and moon

 According to a scroll curled delicately on the table at Next Restaurant, "Kaiseki layers the literal, hidden, and subconscious representations of nature and humanity in food in order to transport the diner." On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, four of us were transported.The art of the meal was impeccable, with more exquisite cultural references than I could take in or remember.

Named for the warm "bosom stones" Buddhist monks used under their robes to make them feel full, Kaiseki has come to mean a series of small courses served prior to strong, bitter tea. The dining experience is now elaborate and complex but still culminates in rice, soup and pickles, followed by tea. For the first time at Next, Erica and I were joined by friends, Harriet and Lou. The evening began with lighting of a branch, symbolizing autumn,  hung from a sculpted moon.
Our first course was a sweet and smoky cornhusk tea, uniting Japanese tradition with midwestern produce. A sort of tofu made of chestnut and miso carried the aroma of burning hay into the next course.
Japanese Maple Forest (above) was a spectacular assortmant of small appetizers, a sort of autumn, Asian counterpart to the "Winter Woods" course on Next's Childhood menu. Among the delicious morsels were shrimp heads, bodies and legs, each prepared separately, fish roe on fried soy milk skins, and fried, shaved parsnip. Two sashimi courses followed, accompanied by a shiso dipping puree and red sea grapes. A "lidded" course came next: a rich broth, "maple dashi," once again smoky and garnished with tiny shimeji mishrooms.

Grilled Barracuda

Substantial chunks of grilled, skewered barracuda provided more substantial food, served with a delicate wasabi leaf dip and an egg-yolk-soy sauce.

Matsutake Chawanmushi, Pine Needle

The delicate, savory custard called chawanmushi came next, while pine needles on a hot stone in the center of the table added aroma. The tiniest tempura imaginable were made of fried chrysanthemum, shiso leaf and eggplant, perfectly crisp. Sakes of increasing complexity accompanied each course, with a specially brewed Haptera Ale from Chicago's Half Acre for the barracuda. The last savory course was the soup, rice and pickles that once were added to the kaiseki stones as prelude to matcha tea. For the second time in the meal, I felt that I was eating sustaining food, in addition to absorbing art and culture. But the art was still there, in the form of gorgeously arranged vegetables in the pot over which a broth was poured. Sticky rice and shochu "kakushigura," a barley whiskey, accompanied.

Preparation for Soup, Rice, Pickles

"First Snowfall"

"First Snowfall" was sweet, with an edible maple leaf, a fuyu persimmon half stuffed with persimmon mousse, a fried soy milk skin, soy ice cream and a deeply caramelized carrot. The long-anticipated tea and a gelatinous "warabi mochi", eaten in blobs speared with a stick, finished the meal.

Though autumn had ended, the moon made a farewell appearance at the end, and I felt the season had never been so closely observed or deeply celebrated. But I confess I ate a piece of squash pie when I got home.

Turkey Trot Redux—Asian-Tinged Thanksgiving

Erica after the Turkey Trot

Erica making stuffing

Erica ran it again this year and finished ecstatic, free of the shin splits that had plagued her. Gloria Zager and I awaited her at the finish line, where cold wind whipped our hair.

 Back home we continued a two-day cook-a-thon, in which each traditional Thanksgiving dish was flavored in some Asian way: star anise in the stock; green beans dry-fried with ginger, garlic and salted, fermented black bean; kale salad with fish sauce in the dressing; ginger in the cranberry sauce. Erica had discovered the colorful kale salad, which combined fine-sliced, marinated leaves with crisp baked ones. She also aced a sesame-bacon brittle that garnished miso-flavored sweet potatoes.

Cranberry sauce, bacon-sesame brittle, kale salad

Kale salad close-up

  Caveny Farm provided a Bourbon Red, free-range, heritage turkey, and dry brining assured a tasty, moist bird. I tried once again for perfectly crisp Brussels sprouts, but all agreed I'd have to start again next year to raise that Sisyphean rock. Tired of watching the Kabocha Squash pie disappear every year at the holiday party before the cooks have had a taste, we made it for this smaller group. The recipe is by Pichet Ong, and it's the best of kind.

Kabocha Squash Pie

Joan Kast, having just quit a horrible job, sat poised on the brink of

Joan Kast

 an open-ended future, looking happy and relaxed as you can see.

Endangered Island—Martha's Vineyard

Winged creature on Lambert's Cove cottage door

Ferry to Martha's Vineyard

 I take a deep breath of salt-laden sea air on the ferry from Wood's Hole to Martha's Vineyard and catch a whiff of the island's stories: its first Wampanoag people, Puritan settlement, vanished culture of sign language and persistent Portuguese language, sweet bread and other traditions. The smell fills me with peaceful anticipation and piques a hunger to learn those stories, to help preserve the island from modern exploitation and mainland uniformity. This time perhaps I'll explore the endlessly complex ancient ways or paths, a labyrinth that underlies the choke of modern traffic the way the funky fish smell and tacky stick of salt thicken the ocean breeze.

Dr. Fisher Road

I came here first as a child during World War II and returned five years ago for the first of five reunions of the children, grands, partners, spouses (and now a possible great-grandchild) of Eric C. Kast, my late husband.

Carter on Lambert Cove Beach

Erica in Ice House Pond

This year I planned a first, writing week for myself with Carter Frank and Erica Kast, and we stayed in Hidden Village on West Tisbury's Lambert Cove Road. Nearby we came upon Dr. Fisher, a dirt road whose buckles rival ocean waves. Our house was deep in woods and gave me a room with desk where I worked on my novel manuscript for several hours each day, while Carter and Erica swam long distances at Lambert Cove Beach. Nearby we discovered Ice House Pond, a fresh water kettle pond preserved by the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank, one of many organizations that strives to save land from over development.
An afternoon trip to Aquinnah (formerly Gay Head) gave us gorgeous views of the bright, clay cliffs and a glimpse of Wampanoag jewelry made form wampum, quohog shells. A winding path down to an ocean beach offers surf and a walk below the cliffs. There traditional nude bathing persists. I remember this from childhood visits to the island and was delighted to see that natural simplicity still lives, just slightly tucked away from T-shirt shops and chain store fudge.

Maggie and Carter on Senge Pond

The Mass Audobon Society offers great kayak tours of Sengekontacket Pond, an excellent way to see  the birds, crabs, plants and animals of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary as well as to support one more necessary effort to save the island from clogged roads and urban sprawl.

Carter with spider crab, Sengekontacket Pond

Elijjah (Aza) and Emma on East Chop Beach

 Our second week on East Chop in Oak Bluffs brought together some family members who had never or almost never met: Anton, Emma, Elijjah (Aza), Lola.

Anton and Emma on the porch

Lola in the water

We reveled in the West Tisbury Farmer's Market, cooked and ate communally (10-13 peeps each night), and played games from Bananagrams to Settlers of Cataan to Ticket to Ride. We sunned and swam and played paddle ball on the East Chop Beach and indulged in Mad Martha's ice cream, Moon Magick fudge and Back-Door Donuts.

West Tisbury Farmer's Market

Five years is a long time, and people grow up, as the quantity of beer bottles we recycled attests. Some of the young people grew restless without bikes or car and a limited bus system, so Erica and I resolved to develop a survey to assess each person's priorities for location and activities. Her arts management studies come in handy!

Final night dinner

The results will affect the reunion's future, but I'll always return to the Vineyard. There is so much to learn for an off-island, seasonal visitor, so many paths to wander, so much history to explore. As I contemplate the island's future, my sense of satiation returns to hunger, and I fear that the island I love cannot endure.

The Martha's Vineyard Donors Collaborative is a consortium of island non-profits that aims to use their collective strength to sustain the Vineyard. Understanding the problem is a first step, and their excellent (downloadable) pamphlet addresses the problem with a clear, severe, but humorous and well-written warning: do something now or forget a future for the island. If you've ever lived there, visited the island or wanted to, download the pamphlet, watch a video, and choose your mode of action. There's something for everyone to do.

Lola, Elijjah (Aza) and Joan blowing bubbles.

Sicily at Next

One of many gorgeous plates. To see them all, go to Next's Facebook banner photo.

The German poet Goethe, shivering in his somber Lutheran land, longed for Italy. "Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen blühn?" he asked in "Mignon's Song." Do you know the land where the lemons bloom? I've always shared Goethe's "Italienische Sehnsucht," the longing for Italy, and now Next has brought me Sicily, introducing the evening with a line from Goethe's Italian Journals: "To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all.

Grilled Artichokes

Next's menus each capture the spirit of various times and place, but each one also explores a specific aspect of the culture. Paris 1906 was haut cuisine, the pinnacle of an art form. Taste of Thailand contrasted a fancy form with street food, served on Thai newspaper. Childhood was Chef Achatz's reincarnation of a Michigan childhood, from lunchbox to campfire, with an edible  walk in the woods in between. El Bulli was an homage to one man, Ferran Adriá, and his thirty-year practice, again the pinnacle of an art form, but a contemporary one.
With Sicily, you are in the home of your Italian grandmother, if she's the mother of all cooking Sicilian grandmothers. Her food seems particularly well suited to the uniquely casual but educated and expert style of service that Next has developed and refined.
Our four antipasti: arancini, grilled artichokes, chick pea fritters and caponata could have made a meal. "Each household has its own version of caponata," explained the water. Our grandmother's was intensely sweet with tomato but had none of the condensed "red sauce" flavor that migrated to the U.S. Celery, capers, pine  nuts and other vegetables joined the mix, each one still crisp. The artichokes had a soft center you dig out with a spoon. 

Gemelli with fresh anchovy, bread drumbs and dill

Arancini, rice balls stuffed with lamb

Swordfish with mint pesto

Chickpeas fried and mashed with romanesco broccoli

 Two pasta dishes followed, fortunatly small but still filling: Thick, chewy bucatini with butter and the dried fish roe called bottarga; and gemelli with a sauce of fresh anchovy, tomato and fried bread crumbs. Swordfish cooked perfectly, just rare in the center, was served family style with the chick pea dish to the left. I could eat this heavenly combination daily for the rest of my life. Although subtle in flavor and garnish, it tasted like what it was: fish, mint, chick peas, garlic. Grandma knew ingredient-driven way back.

Pork shoulder with tomato sauce

And she roasted pork shoulder in tomato suace until you could cut it with a fork and spoon, and we did. How does this tomato sauce manage to taste as much of meat as of tomato? Only Grandma knows.
We were unable to do justice to either fish or meat courses and resorted to taking home leftovers, which Next generously accommodated. We greeted with pleasure and relief the sight of a small coupe of blood orange granita, the texture like snow, the flavor pure fruit. 

Erica Kast and granita

Slice of cassata, candied fruits

Cannoli, sweet fried ravioli, cookie

Slices of cassata filled with sweet ricotta were served with whipped cream flavored with nocino, a walnut liqueur. Candied fruits, miniature cannoli and tiny, chewy sesame cookies were the icing on the cake.
Next's non-alcoholic pairings are well worth trying, and we had one of these and one wine pairing, sharing both. Most interesting was a green-tomato-celery-garlic-white pepper drink served with the fish. If only I could do it all over again!

Remembering Everything on Memorial Day

 "The History of Everything," a performance piece by the Belgian group, Ontroerend Goed, co-created by the Sydney Theater Company, compresses the history of the world into ninety minutes. I saw it with theatre scholar Natalie Schmitt on Memorial Day weekend, upstairs at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and it fascinated me by its combination of text, action and prop, working together or at odds to tell a story. The piece begins with a young woman addressing the audience and explaining that the expanding universe will one day contract, ending the world as a black hole. She's not afraid, she says. As the universe contracts, she anticipates living each moment in her life again, but in reverse order. Then, with a new big bang, she'll start all over again.

Scene of The Enlightenment from The History of Everything

Following this monologue, the cast of six begins enacting a speeded-up history of the world in reverse, beginning with the day and place of performance. For us it was Chicago, May 27, 2012. The stage floor, as you see in the video, is a Mercator projection of planet earth, and the style is taken from Chinese opera. Assasination is accomplished with small flags reading "Bang." Toy airplanes bomb cities or run into towers; sprinkled flakes bring on Ice Ages; spray bottles squirt out hurricanes. Wars, political upheavals, natural disasters and pop culture events receive equal and sometimes satiric attention, as when colonial powers discover Africa and compete to see who can snatch up which parts, planting their flags and uprooting those of others. The performance ends with the big bang, but before that a performer reflects on whether he would like to come back as a horse and another contemplates gratitude. Both of these led Natalie and me to wonder what the director had in mind with the piece as a whole.

7 am sky on Memorial Day

According to a program note, director Alexander Devriendt starting by contemplating the small part humans play in the overall history of the universe. Agreed. Searching for a phrase to express his insight, he writes: "And if we fuck up, we weren't that important." Next he turned to Richard Dawkins and quoted from Dawkins' book Unweaving the Rainbow: "We are granted the opportunity to understand why our eyes are open, and why they see what they do, in the short time before they close forever." I've not read Dawkins, but I would substitute "how" for "why" in that quote. Science shows us how things work to ever-increasing degrees, but sages, mystics and philosophers of all traditions have been pondering the "why" for as long as humans have been sitting around the campfire, telling stories. I think Devriendt realizes this in his final paragraph, where he says, "A show about history is always a story. . . the beauty lies in how you deal with it." Perhaps he was trying to soften Dawkins' reductionist view with the monologue about the horse (was he contemplating reincarnation?) and the one about gratitude, one of the most pervasive human wellsprings of religious feeling.
Considering the director's tagline for the show, Natalie said: "And if we manage to make everything so radioactive or so hot that earth is uninhabitable?  Or, if we use up all the resources? Our ability to fuck up is very important.  And, for that matter, why not make it as good as can be? So, my life has no meaning. I'm so small a part of time that no timeline can show me.  So what?  I can try to make it good for myself and other living things nonetheless."
Near the end the woman who spoke the opening monologue, making the whole show in a sense her story, said "We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones." It didn't make much sense to me at  the time, but research showed this to be a quote from Dawkins. In context he seems to be saying that many lives are physically possible but only a few actually get lived. Our death shows we had the luck to live. Now we're back to the "why." Whether it's luck or providence or something yet to be understood that's responsible for our existence, we'll go on telling stories about it, just as Devriendt has done. To quote Lawrence Weschler, "The thing that's scarier than the scariest story is that there is no story." We continue to tell them, using text, action and prop.

Nine-year-old granddaughter Lola's story about urban chickens

And we'll continue. Here is my granddaughter Lola's story about urban chickens published in the Valencia Bayfarer, put out by Dave Eggers' free writing workshop for kids, 826 Valencia.

Penguin from unspun wool by 12-year-old granddaughter, Iris

Props? Granddaughter Iris made the penguin below from unspun wool, using a technique she learned at a Maker's Faire.

Reading From My Novel, Tuesday Funk at Hopleaf

A scene in which Henriette, my protagonist, performs as the Spirit of Haymarket at a May Day rally at Haymarket Square. She gets stage fright, panics, and then resolves to embark on a seriously dangerous journey.