Mom’s chili, a staple of my childhood. It’s good … but I prefer Pierre Franey’s version.
I was idly cooking up a pot of Pierre Franey’s turkey chili yesterday when some doglike portion of my brain not focused on the task at hand hopped the wall and came back with a bone for me to gnaw.
It was the Fourth of July. I was preparing a meal of Mexican origin that Texas claims as its own (along with a sizable portion of Mexico) using a Frenchman’s recipe in a New Mexican kitchen.
Mom’s recipe. You can see it’s got a lot of miles on it.
This particular recipe was “fairly traditional,” according to Franey, and not so very different from my Iowa-born mother’s take on the dish, which dates back to the O’Grady family’s stint on Randolph AFB at San Antonio, circa 1962-67. But Franey’s version uses turkey instead of beef, with a particular season in mind — not the Fourth of July, but Thanksgiving, which is when his recipe was published in The New York Times in 1992.
Franey’s journey to a quick, simple, and delicious chili recipe certainly took the scenic route, if we use his biography as our map. As a young man he left France to join “an impressive team of cooks” at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. When World War II erupted a few years later, he took another job — with the U.S. Army.
Offered a cushy berth as personal chef to Gen. Douglas McArthur, Franey declined, saying he’d rather help his countrymen fight Nazis in France. Thus, after boot camp at Fort McClellan in Alabama, he shipped out to Europe as a machine gunner, rising to the rank of sergeant and collecting a Purple Heart for his troubles.
After the war, Franey went on to work with Craig Claiborne on recipes and restaurant reviews for the NYT, and in 1975 hung out his own shingle there as “The 60-Minute Gourmet.” A decade later he was cooking on public television, too.
Imagine that.
What might an 18-year-old Pierre Franey encounter upon his arrival in today’s America? An immigrant … and from France? Taking American jobs? Willing, even eager, to fight Nazis rather than serve his betters in the kitchen?
He’d be in a Salvadoran slammer before he could get his apron on. And without machine-gunning any Nazis, more’s the pity. If the kid could channel the Pierre Franey from that other timeline I expect his 1942 self would be astonished that 83 years later we’re fighting brownshirts in America as Lady Liberty hides her face in shame.
Me, I’d still be using Mom’s chili recipe. Which is fine. But it takes a lot more time, and runs light on peppers and long on tomatoes.
Scanning The New York Times today I recalled the words of the late, great George Carlin of Manhattan: “Here’s another pack of jagoffs who ought to be strangled in front of their children.”
First up for a vigorous and final throttling: Whoever coined the abominable “polyworking,” which sounds vaguely sexy, like “polyamory,” but actually describes the need for more than one job to cover the payments on the used Ford Focus in which one sleeps between shifts in the barrel(s).
Erin Hatton, a sociology prof at the State University of New York at Buffalo who studies the labor market, told the NYT that the practice can be “a way to take back ownership of work and one’s career in a meaningful way, pushing back against the sense that you are identified by one job, one employer.”
But Hatton conceded that not being identified “by one job, one employer,” is … not always optional.
“There is an element of gloss to it that minimizes the hardship and economic need that forces them to cobble together a variety of subpar jobs,” she said.
Will this be on the final exam? Doesn’t matter, I’ll be working that day, and all of the others, too.
Next: Come on down, Matt Schulz, chief consumer finance analyst at LendingTree!
Matt told the NYT — in a story about people who have to finance their groceries — ““If you’re living paycheck to paycheck and you’re on a tight budget and you have several of these loans out at one time, it can be very easy to get over your skis here.”
“Over your skis?” You need a short-term loan to buy your Hot Pockets and you’re over the skis you don’t have? I mean, shit, dude, read the room. The room that looks a lot like a Ford Focus without a (duh) rooftop ski rack.
And as George reminds us: “Try to pay attention to the language we’ve all agreed on.” It probably won’t help you understand the kids on TikTok, but at least you’ll be able to read your job(s) application(s) and the fine print on that buy-now-pay-later deal.
Q. Is it not obvious to anyone that the Empire is as strong as it ever was?
A. The appearance of strength is all about you. It would seem to last forever. However, Mr. Advocate, the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm-blast whistles through the branches of the Empire even now. Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking. — Hari Seldon fencing with the prosecutor while on trial for disturbing the peace of the Emperor’s realm, in the first book of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series
Confirmation bias is real, and not always self-inflicted.
Case in point: Last night some of us were gnawing on current events in an email chain when in a fit of grim despair I wrote the following:
• • •
Call me cynical, but I think the idea of reviving manufacturing in the United States is a pipe dream, pure and simple.
Americans crave cheap shit, and they want to be paid top dollar for doing … something fun. Not living in a city-sized factory cranking out the iPhones and watching their bunkmates jump off the roof when it all gets to be too much. Being an “influencer” means you never have to jump off a roof unless you really need the clicks and there’s some drone down there with a net to catch you.
What are Americans qualified to manufacture in the near future that their fellow Americans (or anyone else) want to buy? Who’s gonna risk their capital building factories, arranging supply lines, finding/marketing to customers? The long view meets the short attention span and the minimalist skillset. Hilarity ensues. Or not.
The developing world is busy making and selling us shit in hopes of becoming us someday so their kids don’t have to work as hard as their folks did.
I can see small-scale stuff happening here. High-priced bespoke artisanal products (Moots comes to mind).
But most of what I see right now, day to day, is white collar and service industries, and a big, big gap between the two.
Also, consider A.I. and the increasing use of robotics in everything from package delivery to surgical procedures. Any domestic manufacturing developing in the next few decades might need humans only to troubleshoot/reboot the System from time to time and calibrate/lubricate the machinery. Until It figures out how to service Itself without the expense and hassle of the dwindling, unreliable and tiresome human element.
• • •
Well. How d’ye like them apples? Mighty pleased with myself I was, too. Especially after I read this analysis by Binyamin Appelbaum this morning in The New York Times. (The link is a gift; no need to subscribe.)
Appelbaum, the lead writer on economics and business for the NYT’s editorial board, did the heavy lifting to confirm my shoot-from-the-lip bias. Well done indeed, Binjy old scout.
He cites French historian Fernand Braudel, who examined the rise and fall of titans like Amsterdam, London, and yes, New York, taking the long view “because he didn’t want to make too much of short-term pain or setbacks.” Appelbaum explains: “It was an approach that he said he developed to maintain his equanimity during the five years that he spent in German prisoner-of-war camps during World War II, refusing to make too much of ‘daily misery’ or the latest scraps of news.”
Back in the Day™, according to Braudel, finance replaced manufacturing and merchants became bankers — ““a society of rentier investors on the lookout for anything that would guarantee a quiet and privileged life” — moving hither and yon in search of return on investment, regardless of whichever Napoleon of the moment sat squawking on his papier-mâché throne.
And they didn’t bring everyone along for the ride.
Appelbaum gives a light backhand to the latest monarch who wants the rubes to think he can turn back time with a wave of his scepter: “Expanding manufacturing is a goal increasingly shared by elected officials across the political spectrum, but Trump is trying to overhaul the rules of global trade with all the finesse of a do-it-yourselfer living in a house while renovating it, and the disruptions are shaking the global economy. “
And then from beyond the grave Braudel steps forward to give Beelzebozo the coup de grâce, patting him on that ridiculous combover, shaking his head with a smile, and murmuring, “Putz.”
Again, Appelbaum:
“Braudel, who died in 1985, probably would have regarded the president as nothing more than a cork bobbing on the currents of history. If he was right, no matter the president or policies, America’s era of economic domination is ending and its political hegemony is unsustainable. If he was right, it’s time to accept that our second-rate status is inevitable and irreversible.”
Thus we recall another wise fellow, George Santayana, who in “The Life of Reason” wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Headlined “The Church of the Open Road” — perhaps a riff on “The Church of the Rotating Mass,” which may be a Maurice “Dirt Rag” Tierney creation — it’s McCann’s recollection of a bike tour some four decades ago. On the road to nowhere, or so he thought when he set out.
A Catholic when he began, he encountered tiny Louisiana chapels and Texas megachurches, Southern Baptists and holy rollers (no pun intended). Slept in a pew, worked in a church camp. Inclined to listening, open to revelation, he collected stories as he went.
I won’t spoil this story by summarizing it. Give it a read.
Also, cast not your eyes upon the illustration. There may be some hidden meaning in there, but if so, it is obscured by a lack of historical verisimilitude. Forty years ago bicycles had neither integrated brake/shift levers nor disc brakes (especially not on the drive side). They did, however, have chainrings (and chains), freewheels, pedals, and external cables.
A journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single pedal stroke. But for Christ’s’ sake, you gotta have the pedals.
Whew. Looks like I picked a good week to go on a news fast. These pendejos are pitching fastballs. At this pace there won’t be a wall without shit running down it before Valentine’s Day. A lot of it won’t stick, but it’s gonna pile up. The forecast calls for deep doo.
My news fast coincided with a cold snap that kept me off the bike. I don’t object to cycling in the 30s if the sun’s out, but when Tōnatiuh abdicates in favor of Ehecatl, it’s time to go for a run.
Thing is, I’m not a runner. Not really. A runner certainly wouldn’t call me one. Especially if s/he’d caught me at it.
I can pretend for 45 minutes but that’s about it. And that doesn’t burn a lot of daylight for a fella trying to avoid the doomscrolling.
Still, I managed. For about four days. Who can avert his or her eyes while passing a domestic disturbance in daylight or an unshaded window at night? This is like driving past a five-car crash without checking the gutters for rolling heads.
So I eased back in, slowly. A little Kevin Drum. Then a bit of Charlie Pierce. This is akin to reading the police report, if Joseph Wambaugh wrote it. The Atlantic, for a soupçon of button-down viewing with alarm.
Finally, I hit the hard stuff. The New York Times. Holy shit, etc.
I hope the rubes who elected this bozo are enjoying the shitshow. Looks like it’ll be a good long while before he gets those egg prices down.
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