Love and Guns

Can you remember the first time you felt love?  Not the butterflies associated with your first crush or the day you laid eyes on the one you just knew you would marry.  Can you remember the first time the concept of love as a feeling and an experience entered your world?  I can.

Long before the strangle hold of political correctness and cultural emasculation, little boys played with toy guns. Cops and robbers, good guys and bad guys, war games, and yes even the now taboo cowboys and Indians.  We built and defended back yard forts, ducked and rolled, hid in trees and threw caps, pellets and self made sound effects that would make the hottest beat boxer in the world say “dang”. We “played guns”. 

They looked real.  The classic, silver, simulated six shooter that smelled perpetually of sulfur, the rat tat tat of toy machine guns and everything in between.  There was no red tip on the barrel and the cylinder on my toy revolver worked just like my Dad’s real one. My arsenal was full and my time was my own.

My neighborhood friends and I would do battle non-stop, day in, and day out. Never did we hear anything about it not being “nice” or anyone worrying that we would one day fall into a life of crime.  We were boys. It’s what we did.   Proof of my parent’s support of my firearm obsession was a summer stop at New Hampshire’s Six Gun City.  Here in New England we have some pretty incredible tourist attractions.  Clarks bears, Santa’s Village, Lost river, Story Land and more obscure places like Laconia’s (now defunct) Chief Red Dawn’s Indian Village to name a few. 

My favorite however was always Six Gun City.  In the 70’s it looked like a western ghost town.  There were a few rides and every day they had stuntmen dressed as cowboys putting on shows.  Today there is a waterslide and it has become an ultra modern, old time ghost town.  I don’t know if they host old time gunfights anymore.   But this is not a story about gunfights.  This is a story about love.

We spent the night at a motel, which was also a first and my excitement made it nearly impossible to sleep.  It also made it utterly impossible for me to let my parents sleep in.  They didn’t seem to mind and that is where the love story begins.  I was dressed and ready to go.  On this day being “dressed and ready to go” included a cowboy hat, bandana, gun belt and that shiny silver cap gun that I waxed about earlier. 

Standing in the motel room, a chubby little over excited cowboy I squealed to my mom the questions “are you happy?”  And “are you having fun?”.  “I am happy when I know you’re happy” she replied.

I am happy when I know you’re happy…  I was six or seven at the time and I have never forgotten that moment.   Love is a lot of things to a lot of people.  We understand it in different ways and we see it clearly in some moments more than others.  In all the ways we attempt to show love to others in our lives I am convinced that love is beautifully displayed when we are joyful in the joy of others and when we learn to love what our loved ones love.

Who do you love?  What do they love?  How do you show them love?

Is your love for them tailored to them or to you?

Shubies

Unless your town is my town, then your town doesn’t have this.  Have you ever eaten food?  I have a pretty good sense that you have (what with you being alive and all). We have this much in common. We all eat food.  Alrighty then, do you enjoy really delicious food?  How about kindness?  Do you appreciate community and creativity?  How about one stop shopping?  I hope you do.  (If you don’t let’s talk off line and I will try to help you out). So we have all these things in common and yet as I said in my opening line, unless your town is my town, then it doesn’t have this.  The “this” in question is a place called Shubies.  

Some of you just sighed and thought “ahhh yes”.  You either live here or have been here and if you have, then I don’t even have to tell you where “here” is.  Others of you are thinking that I am talking about a restaurant.  Nope.  To call Shubies a restaurant would be like calling the Beatles a band or Ginger Rogers a dancer.  For those of us who live in Marblehead Massachusetts, Shubies is an institution.

Started in 1948, family owned and operated Shubies has taken over sixty years to develop it’s own brand of culinary prowess blended with community spirit.  The Shube family has also developed a family within a family.  You will always find an authentic Shube family member ready to offer a suggestion or a bit of direction, but the family within the family are the non-Shubes who serve as though it was their own name on the awning. 

What exactly is Shubies??? They do indeed sell delicious food that is prepared fresh and ordered from a menu.  It is therefore, in one sense, a restaurant.  It sells beautiful groceries as well though.  Not the kind of stuff you’ll find at Market Basket or Stop and Shop, mind you.  Shubies has the best versions of familiar staples mixed in with the kind of things you see on the Food Network and wonder about. (I once ate ham that was made from special pigs who roamed the countryside and lived off of acorns… seriously). So Shubies is also a market.  Markets generally don’t sell Le Creuset pots, Wusthof knives or hand-made Vietri Italian pottery, but Shubies does.  I suppose that makes it a kitchen shop as well!  But kitchen shops rarely employ a pastry chef, a sommelier (wine expert) or an executive Chef classified by Esquire magazine, as one of Americas top chefs (Shubies executive chef, Lynne Aronson holds that distinction though she blushes a little when I bring it up to her.)  So do you get where I am going?  

Shubies, simply put- is an award winning, community minded, restaurant, market, bakery, cooking school, wine and cheese shop, Asian noodle bar, liquor store, prepared food seller, salad bar, kitchen store with a cigar humidor, world-class staff and is run by a family that genuinely cares about their staff, customers, neighbors and each other.  

I am fortunate to be a five-minute walk to my dear Shubies. George & Carol, their great kids (Douggie, pictured above, is the man!) as well as the staff that make up their family within the Shube family, are an important part of why I love this little town.  

Shubies 16 Atlantic Avenue  Marblehead   MA    (781) 631-0149

Right and Wrong - new song

Last year my friend Shyla made me aware of this Rumi quote:

“Out beyond the ideas 

of wrong doing and right doing, 

there is a field. 

I'll meet you there.”

She brought it to me during a season where I was attempting to write a complete song every single day.  As you might imagine a lot of those tunes were total dogs (some even had fleas) but as I look over that batch of songs there are a couple that I am actually proud of.  These are the words to a song I wrote based on this quote.  I think it may even make it’s way onto the new album.  (Spring 2012 hopefully)

Someone once said that we are all trying to be advertisements of better versions of the real us.  I can totally relate.  There is this space between wanting the real Jim to be the best he can be and at the same time extending myself grace to receive grace in the areas where I need it.

“extending myself grace to receive grace”

Man… there is freedom in allowing ourselves to be wrong from time to time.  To admit being wrong and confessing it to whoever is affected by it is such a freeing proposition. 

Anyone you need to call? Go ahead then.... This can wait.

Ok… welcome back.  Hope that went well.  Here is the song.  Working title is I Will Meet You (in between).  Consider it a poem for now.

I will meet you in between

The things you love and the things you’ve seen.

Where condemnation takes a rest

and mercy does what it does best.

And the way we were won’t matter

and we will fail to see

 the counterfeits we really were

instead of who we were to be. 

I will meet you in a far off land

where struggle struggles to even stand

You’ll take my heart

I’ll hold your hand

I’ll meet you in a far off land.

And the way we were won’t matter

and we will fail to see

the counterfeits we really were

instead of who we were to be. 

I’ll meet you at the end of the road

For the part of the story that remains untold

where angels sing and love unfolds

I’ll meet you at the end of the road.

And the way we were won’t matter

and we will fail to see

the counterfeits we really were

instead of who we were to be. 

You’ll be you and I’ll be me.

Cider Glazed Salmon

Fish… not fishing this time.  Just fish…  Not just any fish mind you.  No my friend I am not talking about haddock.  I will not work to entice you with cod or flounder or scrod. (What exactly is scrod???  I digress) I came here to talk to you about the one, the only… beautiful, beautiful salmon.  If you are one of the poor souls that pronounces the “L” in the word salmon, please don’t.  Thank you.  Anyhow, you may think you know how to cook salmon.  You do not.  Sorry.  All the soy sauce, ginger and honey mustard you can muster will not help you.  This salmon dish is both tantalizing and comforting at the same time.  Like an autumn hug from your fat mamma is this salmon recipe.

My friend Christina passed this on to me a couple of years ago and people LOVE it. I love it!  YOU will love it.  My in-laws say it is the best salmon they have ever tasted.  (Keep in mind they are British and that my mother in law does her salmon in a zip loc bag, in the microwave.  No joke)   Seriously, this dish is ridiculously delicious.  I make extra sauce and I serve this fish with basmati rice and grilled asparagus.  Oh man is it good.  Let’s get one thing clear, if you are not going to use the heavy cream stay home.  Fat free half and half???  2%?????  Who are you people anyhow???? It’s a little tiny bit of heavy cream.  You will be fine. (maybe)  You will however NOT be fine using farm raised salmon.  You want that salmon to be as wild as this blogger.  

So here it is, Molly Wizenberg's Cider-Glazed Salmon and I believe it was first published in her book A Homemade Life.  For once in my life I have actually always made it exactly as the recipe says to.  I don’t see or taste any room for improvement.  Go nuts!

Cider-Glazed Salmon

For this recipe, you'll need a large 12-inch skillet with a lid. The pan should be large enough to hold the salmon without crowding and to provide plenty of surface area for boiling down and thickening the sauce.

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 medium shallot, peeled and halved lengthwise

2 cups fresh unfiltered apple cider

4 (6-ounce) salmon fillets

Salt

1/2 cup heavy cream

In a large, heavy skillet, combine the butter, shallot, and cider. Place over medium-high heat, and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 5 minutes, then remove and discard the shallot.

Place the fillets gently in the pan, adjusting the heat so that the liquid just trembles. Spoon a bit of the liquid over them, so that their tops begin to cook. Cover and simmer very gently. The fillets will cook for 8 to 10 minutes per inch of thickness. To test for doneness, make a small slit with a paring knife in the thickest part of the fillet: all but the very center of each piece should be opaque. (It will keep cooking after you pull it from the heat). Transfer the cooked salmon to a platter, and cover loosely with aluminum foil to keep warm.

To prepare the glaze, raise the heat under the pan to medium-high, add a pinch of salt, and simmer, stirring frequently, until the liquid is reduced by about two-thirds. It should be slightly thickened and should just cover the bottom of the pan. Reduce the heat to medium, and add the cream. Stir well to combine. Return the heat to medium-high and boil, stirring frequently, for a few minutes, until the mixture darkens to a pale golden caramel--like those Brach's Milk Maid caramel candies, if that helps--and is reduced by one-third to one-half.

Place the salmon fillets on 4 plates and top each with a spoonful of sauce. It should coat them like a thin, loose glaze. Serve immediately.

Note: If you'd like to make this for only 2 people, halve the amount of salmon, but not the sauce quantities.

Les Miserables and Jesus

The thing about modern Christianity is that so many people will only ever get to see the bad examples.  This may be true for historical Christianity as well. The nut jobs, the pushy, the obnoxious, the judgmental, you don’t have to look too far for them.  They are however not even a caricature of what Jesus intended his followers to be like.   Many of my readers are right wing evangelical, born again Christians.  Some are ardent atheists. For those two camps and everyone in between I offer this video clip from Les Miserables.   

For those who love Jesus I hope it will inspire us to be more accepting, compassionate and sacrificially generous.  For the other extreme my hope is that you will know that there are so many who believe the story of Jesus who do in fact want to avoid hypocrisy and spread love in a way that is meaningful.  Believers, let's long to be more like the one we claim to believe in.  Critics balance your criticism with the knowledge that all Christians are not sign carrying, megaphone screaming freaks. 

Out of curiosity which character in this video do you relate most to? 

New Glasses!

This is what I am rocking as of three days ago.  Indeed I needed another set of black eyeglasses about as much as I need another chin.  That aside, this frame is made by Persol.  They have been around since 1917 and are still hand made in Italy.  Persol started out making glasses for pilots and racecar drivers.  I am neither of those things but they have also been worn by James Bond and if I had to choose between being a racecar driver, a pilot, or James Bond I would choose James Bond every time.  You?

My First Steelhead

I wrote this four years ago.  Still gets my heart pumping!

My First Steelhead

I had not seen my cousin Adam in 15 years.  The last time we were together he came up to about my shoulder.  When he found out that I was going to be visiting with his father / my uncle, this Fall, he immediately dropped what he was doing so that we could reconnect at my uncle’s camp in the Adirondack mountains of NY.  My uncle is an avid hunter and fly fisherman and he raised his sons to be the same.  In fact, it was Adam and his younger brother Richard who gave me my first fly casting lesson when I was about 22 years old.   Thus Adam would have been around 13 at the time.  I will be 37 next month.  In the 15 years that I did not see Adam he became a man.  A very large and very strong man, to boot!  When he and his best friend Todd rolled into camp I immediately jumped up and ran out to greet them.  Adam leapt from the truck and the bear hugs and wolf howls started instantly.

The conversation flowed from how many fish we were going to catch to how happy we were to be together after all these years.  Those two topics weaved continually into  the catching up conversation.  We laughed, sang, toasted and even shed a couple of tears.  This lasted into the wee hours of the morning.  Every time one of us threatened to go to bed the chat would take another inescapable turn.  Knowing that Adam (because he is insane when it comes to fly fishing) wanted to be up at 3:00AM Tod, Adam and I finally crawled into our beds at about 1:45AM.  My wife was happy to see me but unhappy about the hour!  Sure enough we were up at three.  We pulled our waders on in the camp dining room, Uncle Dick got up and made us a pot of hot coffee and sent us on our way. 

We were going to fish the salmon river in Pulaski, NY.  This river is known for its world class steelhead fishing.  It is interesting to note that in NY one must wait until first light to fish, otherwise it is illegal.  Adam had us at the river approximately one hour and forty-five minutes before first light.  We walked along a path that lead to a stretch of river that runs along route 81.  We hiked down a slate waterfall to a path that ran along the rivers edge.  Adam was so thrilled that we were the first ones there.  Tod and I just laughed.  No one, and I mean no one would show up on this river nearly two hours before they could start fishing.  But I’m so glad we did.

There had been a good dusting of snow and as we walked the path the sound of  our wading boots cracking the brittle crust of ice that had formed in the tiny inlets coupled with the crunch of snow were the only sound.  With head lamps in place and our rods rigged we found our way through the pitch dark until we reached the spot.  Each of us 25 feet apart sat in total silence.  Praying, nodding off, strategizing in our minds what approach we would each take to be the first to hook a fish and considering the utter peace and solitude of the moment turned our two hour wait for the sun into one of my best memories from this Fall.

The light arrived and the three of us stood in unison almost ceremonially.  We made our way into the current and began to cast.  This was only my second time steelhead fishing and the technique we started with is a little bit tricky.  I don’t particularly care for it but I was filing the “chuck and duck” tactic under the category of “when in Rome do as the Romans do”.  For those of you who don’t know what chuck and duck is, someone found that you could make your fly cast longer, deeper and with less likelihood of getting tangled on a rock if you rigged your leader with a small packet of split shot contained in a length of parachute chord.  The call it a “slinky” and it is a very controversial method amongst fly fishers.  It lacks any of the grace and beauty typically found in fly fishing.  My fly fishing mentor, Al Seavey does not use the slinky system but consistently takes large fish using a system of fixed weight about 3 feet up from his fly.  It still looks like the chuck n duck but gives the fisher more control over the amount of weight.  Then enters the philosophy of  the boys of Eldredge Bothers.  Young Tom, Old Tom and Jim run a fly shop in Cape Neddick, Maine.  Part of what makes their shop so great is that they offer premium gear and wisdom without any of the pretense often found at such shops. 

On my way from Massachusetts to New York I called Jim to have him re-explain their tactic for taking steelhead on the Salmon river.  It involves a float, a small piece of tube lead and a swivel.  It looks a lot more like fly fishing than the slinky approach and as Tod, Adam and I made our way to our second stretch of river I could hear Jim’s words like a mantra echoing in my brain.  “Chuck the chuck n duck….. chuck the chuck n duck…..” 

We hiked down into what is known as the Paper Mill Pool.  Gorgeous open water with an even gravel bottom and dotted with beautiful riffles, runs and pools.  As I waded out I  thought to myself that this water was just begging for a more classic approach.  It is difficult to break from the group.  Tod and Adam are master fly fishermen who have been doing this their entire lives and yet each of them were using very different approaches.  I am a beginner compared to these fellows.  Yet Jim’s words to chuck the chuck n duck were still ringing in my ears.  I removed my level line slinky rig spool from my reel and replaced it with the #7 weight forward spool I had tucked away in my vest.  I rigged as old Tom at the fly shop had instructed and began to cast.  It felt like fly fishing and if well timed I was even able to  false cast this system.  I began to dead drift my sparkle  egg pattern just like I would for rainbows and browns on my home rivers.  About ten casts in my indicator twitched, I raised my rod tip and was instantly reminded of one of the beautiful truths of fly fishing which is ; rocks do not take line.

 “There he is!”  I exclaimed joyfully.  “Hold on Jimmy!  Hold on!  I’m coming down” shouted Adam who was clearly as excited for me as I was for myself.  I played that fish under the helpful supervision of my younger cousin and dear friend.  Every time he told me to let him take line the fish would tear off a couple of yards.    When Adam instructed me to put a little more pressure on him I would tighten up and carefully reel.  When we netted the 9lb 30” steelhead we noticed by his dark color that he had been in the river for quite a while.  We made our way to the bank and I held my fish in proud fashion while Adam snapped a picture.

We released my first steelhead back into the icy current of the great Salmon River.  A bear hug and a couple of whacks on the shoulder and clear communication that we were so thankful to have had this time together.  He was not the biggest fish in the water but he fought hard.  I was not the most seasoned fisherman on the water but as I landed my first steelhead I was taken by the number of faces and voices in my mind that have contributed to my fishing and how I am seeing the result of being blessed by the company I keep.  I called Al Seavey from the river and shared every detail of my catch.  He ended the call by telling me to go catch another.  Who is helping you to become the _____________ you long to be?