The food issue: diners, taste of Haiti, France

Photo: Wee Willie's still life, CJ Lotz.

Before I left Bloomington, I finished an article about Edie, a diner waitress at the rootsy local Wee Willie's Diner on South Walnut. I spent time sipping coffee, chatting up locals and watching the simple, focused work life that Edie lived, although there were personal surprises that surfaced once I got her to talk about them. She's 75 and can't retire. Here's her story:

Edie

I love diner food. I love the Americana nostalgia of buttered toast, scrambled eggs with onions and way too many cups of coffee. I've spent so many good mornings with people I love just eating food slowly because our mouths were telling stories. When I was 5ish-8ish my favorite place was "Cactus Jack's" in Eureka. Carvings of "CJ" decorated the walls, and I didn't realize that they weren't for me. I always ordered a huge chocolate milk and pancakes that the chef made with Mickey Mouse ears and a whipped cream smile. A healthy breakfast for a growing girl who never liked Mickey Mouse much except in the shape of pancakes.

Then there's Uncle Bill's in St. Louis. After picking golf balls from the field at Tower Tee all night (this is something you do when your dad wants to build your character), there's nothing like a stack of pecan pancakes and an honest cup of joe.

Diner waitresses move fast so their regulars can sit and sip and speak slowly.

Wee Willies is my Bloomington favorite. Thanks, Josh for taking me there.

Today, though not in diners, I tasted two perfect meals:
After church with a few Haitian friends I've made in London, we shared glasses of mango juice and:

1. Haitian lunch.
Diri ak pwa: beans and rice
poul avek sos: chicken and sauce
pwason avek zepis: fish and spices
yam/manioc salad, green salad

Photo: Nick, my Creole professor at IU, enjoying Haitian beans and rice and chicken.

I hobbled to the train station, full after four plates for a mandatory dinner with our internship leader. When I say mandatory I mean amazing.

2. Le Mercury, adorable and affordable French cuisine.

Red wine I don't remember how to spell
Hot goat cheese and bread with pesto sauce and leafy salad
Mussels in cream sauce with thyme and basil
Creme brulee with perfect crunchable top
Calypso coffee + liquor

A needed the long walk home to digest. Happy tummy. Happy day. Bondye se bon.

Dover and Laura Goins' future home

The world from a bus window looks similar across continents. Tree. Tree. Car. Tree. Field...

We drove to Dover and Canterbury today to see castles and other beautiful sites not usually seen from any window of mine:

Dover Castle. The most amazing part was how history was built upon generations of history. I can just imagine the British saying "shoot, we're doing cool stuff, I guess we need another castle," or "shoot, here comes another war. Let's build more secret tunnels. They can wind around the medieval part and up past the WWI lookouts."

Our ancestors shot arrows at our other ancestors from here. Or, they tied ropes to arrows and sent messages in buckets to people bored in other windows.

No words are needed on British signs. It could read: "Don't Fail at Everything."

When we drove to Canterbury, I was thinking about tales and a dear, dear friend of mine, Laura. She'll be studying there for a whole year starting this fall. I thought I'd go ahead and make sure it's a cool place. Laura, there's a sweet army surplus store:


Get those boots and step on crickets.

There's also the main Cathedral of the Anglican Church:


Which featured tracery in overwhelming amounts. We were all reverent, except for this one disrespectful lounging man just chilling in the sanctuary:

Don't worry, I think it's a safe place for Laura to live. But there are a lot of pubs, a lot of old people, and a really good fudge shop that she'll have to deal with.

Sparknotes: British Culture

I learned three important lessons in British culture today:

1. Biscuits are serious.

I brought dark-chocolate/orange filling "biscuits" (you've always known them as "cookies") into work today and we demolished them with four pots of tea. We drink cup after cup after pot. The best part is, when someone offers to make a pot of tea, everyone reacts with surprise, as if it's the most brilliant idea anyone has had in the last eight minutes since the last pot drained.

So biscuits. The British love these cookies. I had this question: What do you call a meal of "biscuits and gravy"? My co-workers were puzzled. So we Google-image searched it. "Is that like...a bread roll?" "Oh! I see..it's like a scone!" This was the conversation my co-workers had while pondering this image:


2. Urban gardening and organic food is "Stuff British White People Like," too.

I attended an exhibit/seminar today about creating more edible landscapes in London. The ideas were cool-- if they could work. One artist rendered this flying contraption that could help you travel while growing wine grapes. It was fascinating, but what about the simple problems we could fix now: getting everyone clean water, enough food?

3. Football players are very, very skillful. And very, very beautiful.

My friends and I went to a locals-only pub to watch the Barcelona-Manchester match. My co-workers told me to cheer for Barcelona, and they won. I was more amazed by how athletic those guys are. No time outs, 45 minute halves. They know they're good, and the camera knows they're good-looking, too. Another plus: no one in the pub stared at us like we were Midwestern college students. We cheered, we watched, we drank Guinness.

To read more about lessons learned from all students working in London, check out our blog posts at the J-school Web site. I wrote under the work section about my job at Mute.

Media insecurities

There is so much to read. I swear to conquer a huge list of classics every summer. My Google Reader has thousands of unread stories from hundreds of blogs and news agencies. The links my friends send me on facebook, gmail, gchat pour in every day. Then there's my friends' blogs, my Kreyol textbook, the Bible, the nonfiction and fiction books I always try to read, trading off between days.

Right now it's A Confederacy of Dunces, Ann Pale Kreyol, Psalms, The Guardian and the back of my shampoo bottle in the shower.

There's always this voice screaming at me that if I want to make writing a career, I better be gorging myself on the best, hoping that one day some style will rub off. I think I need a rest, a little hope that some of the most creative writers weren't the media gluttons we expect our "most informed" citizens to be.

Tonight, I'm only going to read one thing. I'm going to take a break...I'm going to look at my favorite new web site:

Awkward Family Photos

When Al Jazeera brings you hope.

Mondays are class days, but that doesn't mean sore legs crammed in a lecture hall. Today, our class visited Al Jazeera. Yeah – the London broadcast office of the news organization that is widely watched in the Middle East, Africa and Europe but has been made the target of fear and group-think criticism in the United States. Fox News once reported that Al Jazeera broadcast beheadings, which was untrue.

The staff members we met were journalists tired of working for ABC, BBC and other mainstream media. They wanted to travel, rethink the model of storytelling and were frightened that after the Iraq War started, news agencies started cutting back on their Middle East reporting.

One program we learned about, the Listening Post, was most fascinating to me, as it analyzes media coverage throughout the world:

The Listening Post

After the depressing news we're all hearing about newspapers and careers in journalism, it was uplifting to see a news agency that was still dedicated to accurate storytelling, and still excited by hiring new journalists and brainstorming new coverage ideas.

In the evening we saw "39 Steps" at the Criterion Theater. It was a glorious romp of theatrical agility. Only four actors pulled off something like 100 roles, switching hats, costumes and voices. It was a humorous interpretation of the Hitchcock film, and more than anything I was impressed by the choreography that juggled props, set and characters.

Haiti, opals and dinos

For lunch I ate a delicious avocado, cheese and tomato crepe while talking about the state of Haiti with my new Haitian friend, Nancy. A few ideas we tossed around:

1. Do micro-lending organizations help or hurt communities? Is spreading capitalism the best way to bring struggling countries out of their poverty? One organization we talked about was:
fonkoze.org

2. The perception that Creole is less than a full language is an attempt to simplify a beautiful history. Creole has evolved like all language and is just as capable of expressing ideas as any other language.

A fulfilling lunch. Then I saw the Natural History Museum. There were real dinosaur bones, eggs and skin. Whoa. There was also a beautiful display of opals, my favourite (see that British spelling?) stone.

Whoa, there British Empire.

Today was a walking day. No work, no classes, just trekking through the crowds of fanny-packed mamas and ice cream vendors to take pictures and play the role of tourist. We saw St. Paul's Cathedral, Covent Garden/Market, the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace.... Instead of pictures of the places you've perhaps already seen, here are some of my favorite sights of today:

Flowers, soap at Covent Garden market. CJ Lotz.

Puppets for my mom. CJ Lotz.

Unicorn protecting Buckingham Palace. Vicious. CJ Lotz.

Roaming in the trail of the Ripper

I studied Jack the Ripper for a year in this cool research class in high school. Perhaps I got a little too into it: I made figures out of GI Joe dolls to represent the suspects, recorded my voice as a prostitute on tape, and served the panel of judges (they watched my speech) little red cupcakes with arms pushing through the top like severed limbs. My parents were glad when it was all over. Oh, but it isn't.

I'm working at Mute Magazine in Whitechapel, Jack the Ripper's killing ground. I'm two streets east of where his third victim, Lizzie, was found mutilated.

Look for Commercial Road on the right. I work on a street just north of the picture of Elizabeth .

So on my lunch break yesterday, I went rambling with my wonderful co-worker Raquel. We found out the spot of that murder is now inhabited by four-square playing children on recess at school.













Photo by CJ Lotz

Her body was found just beyond the sunny flowered wall.

My actual building is far away from creepy. It's gorgeous:

Photo by CJ Lotz

It's funny how things come back to haunt us.

London

London has been a beautiful home for the past week and three days. I spent my birthday here, met Londoners, felt out of place with my accent, and tried to buy groceries cheaply. I've been working at Mute Magazine, a crazy awesome blend of commentary and funk. Here are two articles I wrote:

This is about records sent as post cards. I had no clue these things existed:

Photo by CJ Lotz

http://www.metamute.org/en/commu_tunes_music_by_mail

This is about an amazing hip hop group from Poland, Fisz
http://www.metamute.org/en/fertile_sounds_of_ripe_polish_hip_hop

London is rainy, but it's not a problem when everything else is so sunny.