Boom da boom da boom da boom boom

Everyone has their own wierd little theories about how things work or what they mean. Sometimes you tell others, sometimes you don't. One of my theories is that rock and roll has its roots not just in blues and jazz and rockabilly but all the way back to that Native American drumbeat. I don't think I ever told anyone. I guess I thought I would be laughed out of the room. So imagine my pleasure when I heard an interview with Bo Diddley (alive and well and still playing) and he said of his famous beat "that was basically an Indian chant." To paraphrase Judith Viorst: I felt so happy I wanted to throw my shoes over the People's Bank Building.

Splendid Table

Anyone who hasn't heard "The Splendid Table" on American Public Radio, tune in. I just discovered it although it's been around for awhile. The host is Lynne Rossetto Kasper and she is a real pleasure to listen to: a friendly voice that invites you along with her, curiosity and charm and, of course, a great knowledge of food. Her cookbook, "The Splendid Table" is the only cookbook to win both the Julia Child/IACP and the James Beard award. In the first show I heard, she is wandering in and out of bakeries, butcher shops and markets in a little known region of Italy called Emilia-Romagna and you can feel her pleasure in the food, in the people and the countryside. I tried one of her recipes, Penne with Roasted Peppers, Olives and Greens, and it was a hit not only for its wonderful taste but it was fun to make. You can listen to the shows on the website at http://splendidtable.publicradio.org/, find recipes and book reviews, and a weekly newsletter with recipes is available. Something this good had to be shared.

Hear that lonesome whistle blow

"I'd seen and heard trains from my earliest childhood days and the sight and sound of them always made me feel secure. The big boxcars, the iron ore cars, freight cars, passenger trains, Pullman cars. There was no place you could go in my hometown without at least some part of the day having to stop at intersections and wait for the long trains to pass. Tracks crossed the rural roads and ran alongside them as well. The sound of trains off in the distance more or less made me feel at home, like nothing was missing, like I was at some level place, never in any significant danger and that everything was fitting together."

Once in a great while you run across a piece of writing that expresses perfectly the way that you feel, like the above from a book called "Chronicles" by Bob Dylan. It's a very good book, by the way. The man can write and this book really moves. What he says about trains was true for me as well, in my small home town. We are both from the Midwest, after all. Every night around 9:30 the train whistle would blow, long and low with just a little cry at the beginning of it. Then the train would go rumbling by, almost in my back yard. I always fell asleep to the sound of that. In the afternoon, when I was walking home from school, I almost always had to stop for the train to go by. Chesapeake and Ohio with the sleeping cat, Chicago and Northwestern, Great Northern, Burlington and the Rock Island Line are some of the names I remember. I would stand back a little past where I thought the train might land if it fell over and look for the marks that the hoboes made. If I was really lucky, there would be a passenger train. I waved to the conductor and to the guys in the red caboose. On Saturdays, we would take long walks on the tracks, looking for who knows what and see who could run barefoot the farthest on the rails, warm from the summer sun.

Deep River Blues

This river is a bull snake making its muscular, muddy and powerful way down to the sea. The Indians named it Mississippi and it makes its hip-shaking way through the heart of America carving out the boundaries of other Indian-named states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi. Wetlands disappearing, birds and fish dying, water filled with chemicals and sewage and junk with terrible consequences, the worst being, of course, Katrina. There are big problems in the world. The only way to not be overwhelmed by them is to ignore them or to focus on small things that are dear to your heart, that you don't want to see disappear and do something.