Monday, March 21, 2016

Three Beautiful Things 03/20/16: Chicken Stew, 1987 Haunts Me, The Big Listen

1.  I slow cooked a whole chicken and removed the meat from the bones Saturday afternoon/evening and put the broth in the icebox. Today, I turned it all into a tasty chicken stew and the Deke and I took it over to the Diazes with a baguette and the Deke made a cabbage and radish salad and we had a deeply satisfying dinner together.

2. Before leaving our apartment home to go have some beer before going to the Diazes, I listened to a Radiolab episode covering the stunning development that began in late April, 1987, when The Miami Herald decided to investigate rumors that presidential hopeful Gary Hart was guilty of marital infidelity. I was fascinated by the story as it unfolded on this podcast, as Matt Bai, Lesley Stahl, Cokie Roberts, and others offered their insights into the changing landscape of journalistic practices and the whole "character" question. The story also took me back to the chaos of my life in the spring of 1987. I was as lost and confused about where my life could possibly be headed as I was at any point before or after. My academic life was in steep decline and I would never recover. I was failing miserably in my so-called love life with more failure to come.  I had no idea what I'd be doing for work or income after I finished a temporary, part time job I was currently working. I thought Gary Hart must be terribly frightened. I knew I was. It all came back to me this afternoon.

3.  Once we returned from the Diazes, I settled into another episode of the new radio show on WAMU called The Big Listen.  It's a podcast about podcasts and I love listening to the different people interviewed about the podcasts they create, hearing passages from different episodes, and going in search of their websites, expanding my podcast world. Of special interest to me tonight was a Washington Post podcast called, Presidential. Host Lillian Cunningham is doing a weekly podcast, starting with George Washington, of the legacy and character of each president, timed so that the last of the 44 episodes will be aired just before the 2016 election.

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