August 21, 2014 Lunch with Peter Eller at East Ocean Dinner, Grilled Salmon Steaks, fresh corn on the cob and steamed asparagus and Caprese salad

Peter Eller called today and we went to lunch at East Ocean (3601 Carlisle NE) because he said he was happy to eat seafood and I wanted to introduce him to what I consider the most delicious, least expensive seafood lunch in Albuquerque.  I ordered my favorite lunch dish, Scallops in Lobster Sauce with sweet and sour chicken ($5.50 or $6.50, depending upon who your waitress is).  Basically I select No. 8, which is Shrimp in Lobster Sauce, and I then substitute scallops for the shrimp and substitute sweet and sour chicken for the eggroll.  Perhaps I should call this a, “Bob’s No. 8”.  The scallops are always fresh deep sea scallops that have been each sliced into three or four rounds.  My favorite preparation is when the scallop slices are put in at the end of cooking and cook in the sauce releasing a puddle of scallop juice around each slice that I then mix with the.  Heaven.    

We were talking about Peter’s recent selection to serve on the Board of the Holocaust Museum and he mentioned that one of its board members was a child in the Kindertransport, which I had never heard of before.  Peter explained the Kindertransport briefly and I looked it up in Wikipedia later when I went home.  

That led me to more extensive musings in the middle of the night in a series of emails to members of my family. 

Here they are:   

On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 11:46 PM, <rsimon7@aol.com> wrote:

Sometimes horrific events create a major movement in response, like the beheading of an American Journalist in Syria.

Here is an example from before WWII that Peter Eller mentioned to me today at lunch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertransport

Love, Dad 

-----Original Message-----
From: Luke Simon <lukeprakash@gmail.com>
To: Robert Simon <rsimon7@aol.com>
Cc: Willy <wsimon8136@gmail.com>; Suzette Lindemuth <suzette@nmagelessliving.com>
Sent: Thu, Aug 21, 2014 9:49 pm
Subject: Re: Kindertransport

Wow, heartbreaking, but always beautiful how Love shimmers through war. ;(
Thanks for sharing.

Later in the middle of the night I wrote,

I think I can tie the reactions to Kristalnacht in Germany before WWII, the Ferguson, Mo. demonstrations and the beheading of the American in Syria together.  

It may seem slightly different to compare the massive international reaction to blind religious and ethnic violence (Kristalnacht and ISIL beheadings) to the dynamics in an internal revolution (Fergusson, Mo. or the Arab Spring), but I think I see a commonality in both.

I recall what I heard on the radio recently when the author of a recent study of violent revolutions was interviewed.  She said that when the success of violent revolutions is compared to the success of peaceful revolutions, peaceful revolutions win out by a factor of 10 to 1.  She said that in her opinion, the reason for that is that in successful peaceful revolutions, more and larger segments of the populace (such as the military, the judiciary, religious and ethnic groups, etc.) are committed to changing the perceived oppressive political leadership.  The example she gave of peaceful revolution was the essentially peaceful over throw of Milasovic in Serbia.  I guess you could now add the recent revolution in the Ukraine.  She said that the army was ordered to shoot to kill to disburse the peaceful demonstrators, but it stood silently, rather than fire.  When asked why they did not fire on the crowd several of the soldiers said, "Because my children may have been in the crowd" she said.  

I think the basic human response is similar in both situations.  It is like Obama said when he spoke about Trevon Martin's killing in Florida, "If I had a son, he would have looked like Trevon."

It seems to me that the unifying factor is that at some level, we put ourselves in the position of the persons for and against the actions we observe and judge and react based upon how we would be affected by their actions on us and our loved ones.

That is why I am hopeful that some of the great divide between the attitudes of conservatives and liberals on the issue of police violence and possibly gun violence may change soon, just as it has on gay marriage.

More people are touched by mindless indiscriminant violent behavior, especially when it is targeted indiscriminately at specific groups of people, like Jews or Christians or Americans or Europeans or blacks, and willingly accept a peaceful change writ large away from such behavior. 

I think that that common reaction toward indiscriminate violence is one of the forces that moves society toward becoming more inclusive and liberal or homogenized.   Just as mobs lynching blacks or beheading Europeans is no longer considered socially acceptable and society takes peaceful action to stop it as it did in the Civil Rights movement of the 60's, what we are seeing in Ferguson, Mo. now is peaceful action to stop unfettered violence of police against blacks and Huffington Post reporters and I predict that soon we will see that such actions will be deemed socially unacceptable.  

ISIL in Syria and the police in Ferguson, Mo. have exposed a cancer in our midst that will start a revolutionary change in societal standards to rid our society of such behavior.  I think that peaceful societal reaction is a peaceful revolution and that change in social norms is pretty much the same as change in political revolutions.  

That is why the Arab Spring will succeed in overthrowing oppressive dictators in the Middle East, as it already has in Tunisia and Libya and is starting to in Syria, thanks to ISIL.  Although the peaceful demonstrations in Cairo are quantitatively different than the reaction of the world society to ISIL's oppression of diverse religious populations in Syria and Iraq, they are the same at their core.  Just as international tribunals and laws were passed to legislate against genocide after the Nazi destruction of European Jewry after WWII. I see the change as the same.  

As Attorney General Holder said, "Change is on the way."

I bet the Kurds in Irbil and the moderate revolutionaries in Syria are saying the same thing right now, just as the politicians in many Western capitals are.

What I think we are seeing in both instances is the action of massive peaceful revolution/change overpowering indiscriminate oppression and violent revolution.  I like to think that the result of such action and reaction, is the evolutionary action of society moving toward a healthier, more inclusive and liberal society, whether at the national or international level, by destroying or changing a harmful diseased part of its body politic.       

Love,

Robert

Suzette has started a big project at the house, converting our side yard into an orchard by tearing down the existing fence and building a new fence 3 feet from the sidewalk which will enclose another 2000 to 3000 square feet of yard within our back yard.

I am also struggling to get the Candy store finished and trying to get a federal action commenced in the LRG water case, so we are very busy.  At around 6:00 I asked Suzette what she wanted to do for dinner and she said she wanted weed the garden. I said I wanted to go to Sprouts Farm Market to get some corn (on sale at 4 ears for $1.00), but I would pick up a pizza on the way home and we could eat pizza and a salad, which she agreed to.

When I arrived at Sprouts Farm Market it was crowded.  I made my usual circuit, fresh meats, vegetables and bulk goods.  Tonight turned out to present an exceptional array of high quality items.  At the meat counter I saw beautiful fresh salmon steaks on sale for $5.99/lb.  I bought two large 12 oz. belly steaks. 

Then I rolled to the vegetable section and saw that the corn special had been picked over.  I asked the produce assistant if there was more corn and he took off to the back of the store for more corn, I hoped.  

Next to the corn was fresh lovely asparagus at $1.98/lb. so I got a bunch of it.  I looked around a bit at other vegetables and saw medium avocados at $.98 each and picked up one of them.  In a couple of minutes, the produce guy returned with four boxes of fresh corn and began by cleaning up the debris in the corn section and putting the fresh corn out.  I bagged 12 ears from one of the boxes and the display as a pesky woman said I could go ahead of her, as if she had some special priority.  I almost told her I had asked for the fresh corn and had been waiting for it for several minutes longer than she had, but I held my tongue and continued to select ears of corn as she patiently or not so patiently waited for me to finish.

I then rolled over to the bulk section and hit pay dirt again; natural granola (I hope that means less sugar) for $1.98/lb. I took a 1.33 lb. bag of it.  Then I rolled to another side of the section and found chocolate covered raisins on sale for $3.99/lb.  I bought a bag of mixed dark and milk chocolate covered raisins.  Is the reason they call them raisins, because they are sinful to eat if you are on a lowered sugar diet?  I guess I became a little giddy from all of my great purchases.

When I got back to the car I called Suzette and told her I had bought fresh salmon steaks and would like to prepare dinner at home.  She graciously agreed to make a meal at home, so I drove directly home.

She liked the look of all the produce and fish. We quickly decided to steam the asparagus, boil ears of corn, grill the salmon steaks and make a caprese salad with slices of fresh mozzarella (Costco), two species of yellow tomatoes and basil leaves from our garden drizzled with a balsamic and olive oil dressing.  The meal seemed to be a perfect California Cuisine meal, so I suggested that we drink a good California Sauvignon Blanc.  Suzette agreed and I went to the basement and fetched a bottle of Dry Creek Sauvignon Blanc; my favorite moderately priced California Sauvignon Blanc ($10.99 at Costco).  

I then broke the tough ends off the asparagus and put the tips into the steamer, while Suzette made the Caprese Salad and shucked four ears of corn and started a pot of water boiling for the corn.  Then Suzette put the salmon steaks on the grill on slices of lemon and said, “We have lovely cilantro in the garden, how about a cilantro and lime butter sauce on the fish?  I said, “Yes, great”. So off she went to make the sauce.

It seemed like in about twenty to thirty minutes we had made a beautiful meal. 

We enjoyed the meal beside the pond under our gazebo watching and listening to the fountain that Suzette recently remodeled.  After our hard day’s work, we ravenously devoured our dinner.   The salmon seemed really fresh, almost as fresh and succulent as the salmon steaks we bought at the Philo Market in Anderson Valley in Mendocino County, California, fresh caught on their own boat. Suzette grilled the fish to just the point where there is a warmed center and the rest of the fish is cooked to the point that it contains its maximum moisture and still is fully grilled.  Delicious.

I then fetched the rest of the bottle of Dry Creek Sauvignon Blanc and we enjoyed sipping it as we discussed our plans for plantings in the new orchard area, such as the possibility of adding two more gazebo frames to create grape arbors.  Suzette loves having sitting and dining areas in the garden area.  We are up to four or five depending upon whether you count the bench we made along the side of the raised beds that can seat about 45 people.  As a result of the new orchard construction we could add an additional three more areas.  

Then we can have some awesome garden parties.

   

Bon Appétit