Goal-oriented

Dear Friends,

Flow State

“Happiness isn’t on the road to anything. Happiness is the road.” This is the wisdom of Bob Dylan’s beloved grandmother, Florence Sara Stone. My grandmother, Sarah Stern, never mentioned happiness. She got me on the road with a brisk rap on the knuckles. In Flow State, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi concludes that people are happiest when they are progressing toward a well-defined goal, when they are fully immersed and absorbed in an activity. They are suffused with enjoyment and achieve optimal performance. You, dear Reader, help me achieve my flow state, my happiness, by being part of my weekly newsletter team as The Reader. My dinner guests also contribute to my happiness, as a dinner party represents an enjoyable and achievable goal.

Catherine is happy.

Everything Starts With Bacon

“Brown the bacon in salted butter in a large casserole and gently caramelize it with wild honey. For a friko kaol, a Breton cassoulet, the bacon is the most important ingredient. Add smoked sausages, potatoes, onions, and kale from Lorient.” Jean-Luc Bannalec

As I sat making notes, teasing out the elements of a dinner party, Laura Rodormer called. She is nested in a “green home” that she recently had built, and delights in life with her son, Bryce. Laura has not yet hosted guests in her new home. We briefly discussed how to host a dinner party. I invited her to take a break from her life in the Finger Lakes to spend a weekend in San Francisco. When she visits, we will prepare and serve a meal, and will invite guests with good stories to share. Perhaps you?

My thoughts about the elements of a dinner party:

1. Guests – What makes a good guest?

Here is a table of guests at Bistro Catherine (Miró – A Dew Drop Falling From a Bird’s Wing Wakes Rosalie, Who Has Been Asleep in the Shadow of a Spider’s Web, 1939)

2. Menu – ideas and theme, accommodating individual needs, making food special and fun.

3. Ingredients – what is available, interesting, and delicious?

4. Techniques - preparing food and drink.

5. Presentation –setting, service, ambiance, making it a party.

6. The social scene, from cocktails to “Here’s your hat”. “At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.” W. Somerset Maugham.

A dinner party apogee was reached on Friday with Kate S and friend Zia, Erin D, Kevin H, and Margie O’D. Drinks with jazz and hors d’oeuvres were followed by a summer dinner of oven-barbequed chicken, grilled sausages and steak, corn salad, with lots of watermelon, nectarines, tomatoes, and other fruits. It was an evening of exciting stories, questions, and engagement.

Negative Space

“A collection is like a dinner party. It is made up of the people you invite, but also the people you don’t.” Pierre Berge

“Sometimes it’s not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don’t mean.” Bob Dylan

Scotland the Brave

Dagnabbit. Edinburgh Castle on Geary Street is closing. The pub was featured in the classic San Francisco film So I Married an Axe Murderer. I visited a few times, attended a play reading once. Most famous was their weekly Trivia Night. “What is the name of the famous cannon at Edinburgh Castle that fires at 1:00 PM daily?” “It is the One O’clock Gun, allowing sailors in port and in the Firth of Forth to set their clocks,” answered Bob Feldman. Bob was consistently a Trivia Night winner. In a Scottish follow-up, we will soon be screening the terrific 1945 film I Know Where I’m Going, a tale of myth and whimsy. And I have not yet watched Whisky Galore!, also set in the Hebrides, apparently about “rescuing” crates of whisky from a grounded ship.

On a summer week in the late 1960s, I took the Caledonian Sleeper from London to a sunny Glasgow, rode the West Highland Line to Fort William where skies were overcast, climbed Ben Nevis, at 4,413 feet the highest mountain in the British Isles. It was miserably cold and wet. Near the summit, it was snowing.

Language

A current New York’s bookstore/wine bar/cafe trend opens new horizons for sommeliers. What wine would pair with my current read, Mailman? I propose, sir, an indelicate Cabernet Sauvignon, a raw red with notes of Appalachian rutted tarmac and a hint of gunpowder. What to pair with Headshot, which follows the career of a young woman boxer? A Beaujolais Nouveau to slosh around in your mouth and spit out. A Muscadet goes with The Fleur de Sel Murders. While reading the subtitles of the opera Don Giovanni, a robust but sweet Garnacha. (The Mechanics’ Institute Library shelves the DVD of Don Giovanni in the “non-fiction” section.) For kids’ picture books, a 2025 Gravenstein apple juice.

Readers are challenged with an evolving vocabulary. New in this year’s Cambridge Dictionary are the words delulu – delusional; inspo – inspiration; mouse jiggler – someone pretending to labor while working remotely. Spellcheck missed them all, didn’t even get “dagnabbit”.

These cartoons aren’t going to watch themselves.

“If I were invited to a dinner party with my characters, I wouldn’t show up.” Dr. Seuss

Well, it’s time to put on my jim jams and toddle off to Bedfordshire.

See you real soon,

Laurence Kornfield, Scribener

415-307-6707

laurence@kornfield.org