Indian Market

Today the temperature has been around 75°F; this time last week it was half that. What a difference a week can make! It’s warm enough to venture out – it certainly wasn’t last weekend (bearing in mind that I have no coat on this trip).

This weekend was the annual Indian Market in the Arlington Convention Center – American Indian, that is. Arlington is an interesting city. It’s considered part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, and is home to the Rangers baseball team, UTA (the University of Texas at Arlington), Six Flags (a theme park), Hurricane Harbor (a huger water park), and, most recently, the Dallas Cowboys (after they stole them from the city of Irving).

At the market, I discovered two bands – well, one performer and one band – that I’ve never heard of before. Arvel Bird’s grandmother was a Paiute Indian; his grandfather was a Scot.  His music is an interesting fusion of Native American rhythm and Celtic melody and lyricism. Brulé are a Native American rock band, who seem to be doing for that culture what Runrig did for theirs.

I bought CDs from both, stood in line for autographs, and after a lunch of Indian Tacos and Dr Pepper, hit the road to listen to the music. The trees are starting to green, and the purple crape myrtle is blossoming – signs that Spring may yet be attainable, after a winter that seems to have been universally unpleasant.

I drove West on I-30 to Weatherford, where I had to stop to take a picture of an interesting mural on the side of an antique store on Main Street; then north to Springtown (home of Shinola’s Texas Café – an excellent diner); and finally east back to the hotel. Just enough time to listen to both CDs.

It’s hard to beat driving Texas country roads on a warm sunny day, listening to inspiring music.

Cheerleaders

It’s weekend again, and the weather in Texas is still dismal. Last month was apparently the coldest January on record. The hotel is full of young girls with names like Britney and Kassandra – apparently  the national championships of the NCA (National Cheerleaders Association) are being held in the Dallas Convention Center. Girls are chasing each other through the corridors, the floor is covered with popcorn, and it’s impossible to find a table at breakfast, even if you didn’t mind sitting amidst the noise. Strangely, they’re mostly chaperoned by seriously obese mothers bulging out of the same t-shirts that their daughters are wearing – living vicariously, I suppose.

But I’ve never been to either the Dallas Convention Center or a cheerleading competition, so I thought I’d check it out. My interest was short-lived – it was $5 to park, and $20 to go in. I’m curious, but not that curious. The trip wasn’t wasted, however, as I found a wonderful sculpture of an old-time cattle drive that I hadn’t seen before.

Crossing the river ...

... and watching the herd

 While in Dallas, I stopped at the Farmers’ Market and bought some tangerines. On the way out, I picked up a medium horchata, to quench my thirst, from a Mexican snack stand.

For a while, I’ve wanted to see Crazy Heart, the movie for which Jeff Bridges has been nominated for an Oscar. The matinee performance was only $5. Excellent value – a great movie, with great music, and some memorable lyrics: “Funny how falling feels like flying … for a little while”. If you liked The Wrestler, you’d like this. But I have to tell you that old people in the movie theater are worse than teenagers. I had to bite my tongue to stop myself asking them to shut up.

Lunch was Chow Mein and Orange Chicken, washed down with Dr Pepper, from the Panda Express, and then back to the hotel to listen to A Prairie Home Companion. If I don’t get out on a good road trip soon, I’ll go stir crazy …

Snow

It’s been an odd week, weather-wise. Yesterday it was reported that 49 of the 50 United States had snow on the ground (I’m sure you can guess the odd one out). And Dallas had 12 inches of snow, which is unprecedented. The pictures are from the 6^th floor window of American Airlines headquarters, on a day when almost 20% of their flights were cancelled due to the weather.

 

So I’m limited to the local area for the weekend, and my thoughts turn to food. I’ve read recently that a new product – “Taste No. 5” – is about to be introduced to Waitrose supermarkets in the UK. It’s apparently been around in Japan for 100 years, and is only now poised to stun British taste buds. When I googled it, I found myself at an online Daily Mail page, with Taste No. 5 advertized on one side of the page, and K-Y Jelly on the other. Now, there’s two products you wouldn’t want to get mixed up …

While confined to my hotel room, I watched what is euphemistically called a cooking program on PBS. They were making roasted tomato salsa, which sounds quite appetizing. “We’ll start with two cans of roasted tomatoes”. Hmmm … if you’re going to do that, why not just start with two cans of roasted tomato salsa? Never mind – they ultimately blended their way to the finished article. And what did they do with it? They added it to “Mac and Cheese”! Now it seems to me that that adding good food to crap is like multiplying by zero – you always finish up with zero.

America is astonishingly oblivious to anything that is happening around them, and in their arrogance (appearing to the world, as Guy Forsyth says, like a “spoiled drunk 15-year-old waving a gun in their face”) are destined to go the same way as the Roman Empire (I’m not the first to make this observation – Michael Moore, in “Capitalism” captured the analogy convincingly in the first few minutes).

If you’re planning to visit the US to “find America”, I think you may already be too late.

Avatar

I'm probably going to be all on my own here … but here goes. I've just seen Avatar in IMax 3-D, and thought it was rubbish. That's perhaps a little harsh – as a 3-D spectacular, it definitely succeeded, but had little to offer from any other perspective.

To be fair, I was in an argumentative mood before I went in. The movie is rated PG-13, which I agree with, but in the queue were quite a number of families with 5- or 6-year old children. It's clearly not suitable for that age, and doubly inappropriate because this was the performance that started at 7pm – on a school night – and the movie is two and a half hours long. The couple behind me were discussing the 3-D glasses. She said, "You don't need special glasses – IMax is already in 3-D". I felt like turning round and asking just how she thought that might work, but bit my tongue. So I'm already surrounded by stupid people.

The title is clever, cashing in on the current computer gaming culture. The music is unerringly predictable – something like Pirates of the Caribbean meets Karl Jenkins. I grow weary of blockbusters in which violence is the inevitable solution to conflict – I'd like to think that by 2154 it will no longer be necessary to beat opposition into submission using an unbelievable variety of explosive weaponry (although a friend has reminded me that ‘twas ever thus). The dialogue is uninspiring, and the plot is, as others have pointed out before me (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/04/avatar-pocahontas-in-spac_n_410538.html), Pocohontas in Space. No purpose was served by Sigourney Weaver smoking cigarettes, and unobtainium is just too corny. I can handle suspension of disbelief as well as the next person, but I wonder where our hero managed to lay his hands on several hand grenades during the closing debacle, and how it is that an alien race uses language like, "We're gettin' hammered here". And while we're on heroes, I don't understand why an ex-marine brimming with testosterone should be held up as exemplary, instead of the mindless muscled morons that they are.

Well, that's it. If you like special effects, this movie excels. If you wonder whether female aliens have nipples, this movie answers that question. If you like happy endings, you won't be disappointed. Since the movie is set to outdo Titanic at the box office, I'm clearly in the minority.

Jim Reeves

It might be an old-fashioned word to use, but abundant is the only one I can think of to adequately describe the harvest in England this Fall. Last year was so disappointing that it makes it even more satisfying to see bulging berries of sloe, blackberry, elderberry, hawthorn and rosehip vibrantly punctuating the hedgerows. And so we’ll have sloe gin, blackberry gin, damson gin and elderberry wine for Christmas; and raspberries, and apple and elderberry crumble, when the weather turns colder and we need comfort food to remind us that Spring is not so far away.

The Texas Country Music Hall of Fame

Fall in East Texas is similarly impressive. The grass is green again, and the temperature is pleasantly warm. This year’s pecans, soft and creamy, are on sale at the fruit stands, and gloriously orange pumpkins are everywhere. The smell of fresh-mown grass, wood-smoke, and horses, drifts through the air as I drive down almost empty highways lined with cedar and live oak. Snapping turtles try to grab the last of the sun, crowded on every rock on every pond.

Jim Reeves Memorial

I was in East Texas yesterday to get away from the hotel in Dallas. The Razorbacks (University of Arkansas) played the Aggies (Texas A&M) at the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. The Razorbacks thrashed the Aggies. The difference between the two cultures is easily observed. The parking lot has more than the usual number of beaten-up trucks, mostly with Arkansas plates. The drivers of those trucks (and their passengers) have no idea how to comport themselves in social situations. I can forgive exuberance, but not blatant disregard for the sleep requirements of (albeit temporary) neighbors. They check in to the hotel carrying oversize cooler chests. But when I challenged an Aggie t-shirt wearer at breakfast this morning, commenting on how brave I thought he was, and that (in his situation) I’d probably be keeping my head down, he made reference to a recent magazine article, that stated that “Texas A&M University now ranks No. 1 in Smart Money magazine’s national ratings for “payback ratio” — the earnings levels of an institution’s graduates compared to what they paid in tuition, fees and related costs for their undergraduate educations”. That’s just sour grapes, of course, but he has a point (although, having just seen Michael Moore’s new movie – Capitalism, A Love Story – I’m not at all prepared to agree with it).

Carthage is about a 3-hour drive from the hotel, and is far enough east to be close to Louisiana. It doesn’t have much to recommend it, but it does have a memorial to one of the all-time great country singers, Jim Reeves, and is home to the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame. I should stress that I’m not a fan of Jim Reeves’ music, but I have a great respect for the man, and what he achieved. (Parenthetically (because that’s what parentheses are for) I should add that I also don’t like punk or hip-hop. Nevertheless, they were necessary to throw a wrench into the otherwise complacently boring middle-of-the-road musical desert of their respective eras).

I was the only visitor at the Hall of Fame (apart from an intensely annoying guy from Baltimore that you’ll have to ask me about when I’ve calmed down[1]), and I have to say that I was surprised by the number of artists that I had never heard of, despite listening to quite a variety of country music. Almost everyone, on both sides of the Atlantic, will have heard of Roger Miller and Willie Nelson; if you’re older, you may have heard of Waylon Jennings, Dale Evans (partner to Roy Rogers) and Bob Wills. Most of the others have not made it outside the USA, and, I suspect, in some cases, outside Texas. Texas may be unique among all the states in its view of itself. It is alternately (depending on where you are) sophisticatedly Eastern (like Dallas), or “cowboy country” (like much of West Texas), or South-Western (like the border towns), or infuriatingly different (like Austin, which is often referred to as “California in Texas”). Above all, it regards itself almost as a separate, independent country, and so it is perhaps not surprising that some of its most acclaimed celebrities are not so well known outside the state.

On an entirely different topic, I recently heard that Roman Polanski is apparently the original five-foot Pole with which nobody would touch anything …

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[1] Him: “Oh, you’re from England! Let’s see, what could we talk about … how about the way that country music was received in England versus here, when you were growing up?”

Me (sotto voce): “Bugger off!”

Purple Hull Peas

It’s warmed up again, after a cool-ish week. The daytime temperatures are typically in the 80s at this time of year (that’s around 30 Centigrade). Just as well, since the Texas State Fair started yesterday – it runs through October 18^th. I’ve been before, so I probably won’t be going this year – even though the highlight will be deep fried butter … They try to come up with some innovative new deep fried snack each year – when I went it was deep fried Twinkies!

This morning I went to the Dallas Farmers’ Market to pick up fresh fruits and vegetables. I’ve been on the lookout for fresh purple hull peas since I first encountered them on my way back from New Orleans – and there they were. I bought two pints for $7. They’re just one of a variety of peas grown in Texas, which also include Texas cream peas and black-eyed peas (sometimes called “Texas caviar”). In case you’re not aware, what we typically call “beans” are called “peas” throughout the Caribbean and the southern states of America. We don’t get them (at least, not fresh) in England. Last time I cooked them, it was on the stovetop, but now I have only a microwave and a crockpot. A microwave is not suitable for the long slow cooking that’s required for peas, so I experimented, and it turned out amazingly well.

Here’s the recipe:

There don’t seem to be enough ingredients to make this very appetizing, but the peas soak up the flavour of the salt pork, and it’s actually delicious.

I’m not sure how I’d reproduce this in England, but it would be worth trying with any small, white dried beans that have been pre-soaked.

Charlene Richard

As I was driving back to Dallas from New Orleans, I saw a sign to “the gravesite of Charlene Richard”. I had no idea who she was, but I had plenty of time, and decided to investigate. I followed the signs for about 10 miles, at which point they petered out. A little further along the road, I came across a cemetery, and stopped to see if this could be the place.

A group of people – 3 women and 2 men – were standing just inside the gate, and so I asked them if this was where Charlene Richard was buried. They said it was, and pointed out the grave to me. I asked, somewhat sheepishly, if they knew who she was. They explained that she was a young girl who had died of leukemia in 1959, but bore her suffering bravely and with great faith. To cut a long story short, she is said to be responsible for several miracles, one of which was witnessed by two of the people I was talking to. The mother and daughter had both been diagnosed with cancer on the same day. They sought intercession from Charlene Richard, and are currently both in remission. They are part of a group that is seeking canonization for her, and offered me a “prayer cloth” if it might be useful to anyone I knew.

I’m not really a religious person, but I think that my being there, at that time and in that place, was much more than a coincidence.