57 Channels and Nothin’ On

From the End of Humanity As We Know It Vault: Bill McKibben is best known for his prophetic and tireless fight to promote climate awareness, but he also explored an area close to my heart: television. Specifically, the toxic nature of the medium, which he and I discussed in 1992 to welcome the publication of his book The Age of Missing Information.

                                                                                          

A CHILLY MIST shrouds the tops of the mountains surrounding Bill McKibben's Warren County home. As is true of most large old rural houses, his has a front door as well as a door that everybody uses. That one’s around the back.

Bill McKibben

Tall and wiry, with close-cropped hair and an high forehead, he looks like any area farmer. Boots, jeans and a plaid flannel shirt added a touch of North Country ease. “Didn’t expect it to be so cold out today,” he says. “I’m sorry you can’t see the mountains. Come on in and have some soup with me.”

McKibben, once a staff writer for The New Yorker who also ran a small homeless shelter in Manhattan, has now spent several years in what might seem like rural seclusion. But it was logical and necessary choice, explained in his books The End of Nature and, just recently, The Age of Missing Information.

“I had to do this experiment,” he explains, “and see what came of it. I was hoping for a book, but I had very few preconceptions, fewer than usual.” The experiment placed him in front of a television set for several months, auditing over a thousand hours of television programming – everything that was available on each of the hundred cable stations in Fairfax, Virginia, during the 24 hours of May 3, 1990.

In the Soup

STUNG WITH AN ATTACK of middle-class guilt, Stephen Henderson sought to expiate by helping to cook meals at a variety of soup kitchens around the world. Bringing a home-gourmet sensibility to these excursions, when placed in charge he designed menus not necessarily conducive to catering or soup-kitchen tastes, so his home-cooking-based efforts tended to throw him into high-pressure on-the-job training. But as his catering-kitchen skills grew, so did his self-awareness. And he tells his stories so endearingly that The 24-Hour Soup Kitchen will win your heart. It’s an entertaining and enlightening book.

The genesis is straightforward enough. Henderson is a travel writer who likes to cook. He’s living well enough to acquire an aging co-op in New York City. It needs a new kitchen. So he buys a new stove, a top-of-the-line Lacanche. He’s too tasteful to mention a price, but those ranges run at least $10,000 today. Henderson visits the manufacturing facility in France, and, while dining with its director, learns about Alexis Soyer, a famous chef during the 19th century, a man renowned both for his lavish way of life and his invention of the soup-kitchen concept.

It’s a concept that seems more necessary than ever, and Soyer’s life (and lingering Lacanche guilt) inspired him to travel around the world to a variety of soup kitchens, large and small, and learn about them by working at them.

Henderson’s odyssey begins at Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, a massive Sikh temple in Delhi that grew from a 17th-century bungalow to the large, ornate structure you’ll find today. He was there to help with langar, a tradition among Sufi Muslims that offers food, served in a communal dining area, to anyone of any religion who wishes to partake. Gurdwara Bangla Sahib feeds about 20,000 people a day, 600 at a time, and those who work or eat there are required to do so barefoot. Biswajit Singh, the only paid employee at the kitchen, organizes the prep and cooking with no foreknowledge of the supplies he’d be working with – they are donations that arrive based on the whim of the benefactor, such as a flatbed truck loaded with cauliflower.

A Bridge Not Far Enough

From the Theater Vault Dept.: After seeing an incredible performance by Michael Fischetti in “Glengarry Glen Ross” at Capital Rep the season before, I was eager to see what he’d do with the challenging lead in “A View from the Bridge.” He did excellently, but the rest of the production seemed a little limp, almost as if the production team wasn’t prepared to fully commit to the play’s place and time. Here’s what I wrote about it, taking us back to a chilly night in 1987.

                                                                                                    

THE BRIDGE IN QUESTION is one of those gloriously metaphorical items that spans the literal and metaphysical: it joins boroughs, countries; it joins aspects of law and aspects of morality.

Arthur Miller wrote “A View from the Bridge” in 1955 as a one-acter and expanded it when it proved successful. As with so much of the playwright's work, there is a strong central character in the process of conflict and self-discovery who nevertheless is doomed.

Michael Fischetti and Sully Boyer

With Eddie Carbone, it is a conflict between loyalty and sexual feeling that brings him down. He is attracted to his just-come-of-age niece; he also is attracted to the man she wants to marry.

This is in Brooklyn of the late '40s, so Eddie, a longshoreman, doesn't have a very sophisticated language with which to express his varied feelings, never mind that he's dealing with such great taboos.

Such subjects are now the stuff of television soap operas, so today there isn’t a lot of shock value in Eddie’s dilemma. What keeps a production of “Bridge” interesting are rich portraits of Eddie, his friends and family.

Jazzing the Menu

From the Food Vault Dept.: It’s difficult to tell what’s going on at Schenectady’s Van Dyck Restaurant these days. It turned into the Mad Jack Brewing Co. a few years ago, and seems to have weathered Covid in that guise, but the only menu offerings on the website are a few pizzas and, even though its Facebook page sports the famous “Great Day in Harlem” photograph, there hasn’t been any significant jazz near the place in many years. Here’s one of five reviews I wrote of the place over the years, this one from 25 years ago. There’s a more current one, from 2009, that I’ll post in the weeks to come.

                                                                                          

BESIDES BEING A CHARMING BUILDING in Schenectady’s Stockade area, the Van Dyck has also hosted appearances by legendary jazz musicians. During my own time in Schenectady, I’ve seen Earl Hines and Red Norvo at the club, among many others. It was sad to see the business close a few years ago, but the decline had been steady and apparent. With a fresh emphasis on food, a new brewery component, and extensive remodeling, the restaurant reopened under new ownership in late March.

One of the shrewdest moves was to lure chef Dimitri Cruz from Siro’s, the seasonal Saratoga gourmet restaurant. Cruz, a Round Lake native, brings a wealth of commendable experience to the job, with a special love of Asian cookery learned during a stint at Manhattan’s Noho Star restaurant.

Other good ideas include a refurbished bar twice the size of the old one, yet still comfortable and intimate, and moving the jazz room to the second floor. The lineup of players, including upcoming appearances by Marian McPartland and Mose Allison, also gives the reassuring message that music is being taken seriously here again.