Halloween Spending Expected To Rise

Pumpkins are more expensive this year. What isn't?

Now here's a scary thought. Despite the sorry state of the economy, consumers are expected to spend $5.8 billion celebrating Halloween this year. Is everybody crazy?

For generations, children in a variety of homemade and store-bought costumes have criss-crossed the streets of their neighborhoods on the night of Octobert 31st, begging for treats, and making a generally pro forma promise of tricks if they are denied. When I was young, the treats included apples, home-baked cookies, and homemade popcorn balls, along with many a lollipop and package of chewing gum. In today's more dangerous and litigious times, no homeowner I can think of would offer a trick-or-treater anything not store made and properly sealed. Hundreds of so-called "fun size" Snickers bars and Reese's Peanutbutter Cups, Smarties, Gummi-Worms, and whatever candy may be in fashion, are passed out to eager children jostling each other at the door. The convention in my area is, if the porchlight is on, trick-or-treaters are welcome. If the light is off, pass on to the next lit-up house. For several hours on Halloween night I hear children rushing by on the sidewalks outside, giggling and conversing among themselves. By 8:30pm, those children have disappeared, and after 10pm teenagers in makeshift costumes are making the rounds and making more than their share of noise. By that time, most of the porch lights are off and no one is answering doors. If an unknown adult in costume came to the door on Halloween, most people would call 911.

However, for reasons I will never understand, Halloween has become a big business holiday in recent years. Adults have embraced Halloween with a vengeance. Some speculate that this is because people need to let off steam during the long period without celebrations between the Fourth of July and the Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year holiday period. Whatever the reason, the rise in adult participation in Halloween has had a variety of effects. For one thing, there has been an increase in crime related to Halloween. While children compete to amass candy treats, adults reach for the alcohol. There has also been a marked increase in spending for adult Halloween parties, many in restaurants, nightclubs, and resorts. Adult Halloween costumes are expensive, and many of them are pretty sexy, although celebrity masks have retained their appeal, as well. In fact, celebrity Halloween parties are on the rise, too, many on television. The cost of all this is staggering, nearly $6 billion in spending on what used to be a low-tech kiddie event. Some retailers hope to recover at Halloween some of the profits they used to rake in at Christmas.

I would have expected the bad economy to depress Halloween spending, but the opposite seems to be true. People looking for an escape from stress, and the fact that Halloween falls on a Friday in 2008, has led to more adult interest in Halloween celebrations. Costumes, decorations, cards, candy, party supplies-- Halloween costs consumers a lot, and more consumers than ever are ready to pay the price. I suppose they'll charge it to their credit cards and worry about the consequences tomorrow. Spooky, isn't it?

Historical Mystery Fiction-- Accuracy and Enjoyment

Ellis Peters didn't always maintain strict historical accuracy in her Brother Cadfael series, but she kept close enough to the historical truth to satisfy a large segment of the mystery reading public.

I love historical mystery stories, from Marcus Didius Falco solving crimes in 1st century Rome to Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther chasing down murderers in Hitler's Berlin. Historical mystery fiction is bound to contain inaccuracies and anachronisms, but too many inaccuracies spoil the fun. At least they spoil my fun.

Some historical mystery fiction authors are known for their historical accuracy. If Peter Tremayne's clerical heroine Sister Fidelma lives in a coed convent in 7th century Ireland, you can be sure this is true to the period. If Bernard Knight says that in cold weather his hero, Sir John de Wolfe (Crowner John) sometimes wore a linen coif on his head with a hat on top of it, then that's what noblemen of his position at the end of the 12th century wore. If Margaret Frazer's Dame Frevisse eats pottage because the word soup was not common usage in the 15th century, that is factual.

On the other hand, Ellis Peters did not always observe historical accuracy in her celebrated Brother Cadfael novels, which can reasonably be said to have started the boom in historical mysteries. For example, she didn't concern herself with the average lifespan of people in the 12th century when she made many of her active and vigorous characters people in their 60's and 70's, nor was life in 12th century England and Wales quite as sanitary as she made it seem. But those were choices, not ignorance. If anybody could conjure up the spirit of the early middle ages, it was Ellis Peters, and you don't have to read her novels with a dictionary at your elbow in order to know what is being discussed. If one of her characters wears a cotte or rides by an assart, the context provides the required enlightenment. So, too, Ellis Peters never felt the need to lecture her readers. If she needed to provide information about the latest events in the war between King Stephen and Empress Maud, she wove it seamlessly into her story. A courier would arrive at the Abbey and report to the abbott, or the Sheriff of Shropshire, Hugh Beringar, would have a conversation with Brother Cadfael in which he commented on the latest news of the war to reach Shrewsbury. Ellis Peters was a master storyteller who never let her research take over her narrative.

I think the real issue with historical accuracy in mystery fiction is how much is enough. The more remote the time period in which the story is set, the less you may know about what is appropriate for that time period and the more inaccuracies may slip by. On the other hand, a glaring anachronism, such as a mechanical clock in ancient Rome, sticks out like a sore thumb. However, a story set in the middle of the 19th century in England should be more accurate because the reader may be expected to know more about what did and did not exist at that time. At the moment, I am reading a novel called A Beautiful Blue Death, by Charles Finch, which is set in London in 1865. Unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to know the difference between a hansom cab and a brougham. His hero wears a dinner jacket instead of a black tail coat and white bow tie to a formal dinner and ball, and after the dinner everyone lights up cigarettes. If I can easily find out that men in the Victorian era generally smoked cigars and pipes, not cigarettes, and that upper class women didn't smoke in public at all, why doesn't the author know that? I find that sort of inaccuracy aggravating. I am not supposed to know more than the author does. If I watched the Forsyte Saga on TV (or VHS or DVD), why didn't he? In fact, I'm so annoyed that I don't even care who killed Prudence Smith, upstairs parlormaid. If the author is not willing to observe basic historical accuracy, why should I care about his story?

The Hierarchy of Needs

If you ever studied psychology, or most social science disciplines, for that matter, you had to read about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Psychologist Abraham Maslow theorized that people have a number of needs that are organized in a kind of pyramid, with the most basic needs at the bottom, and the so-called "higher order needs," such as the needs for self-esteem and respect from others, and the need for self-actualization, at the top. In Maslow's view, people could not pursue higher order needs until their basic needs, such as food, clothing, shelter, and safety, were satisfied.

This seems like such a simple idea that it makes you wonder why it took a man with a Ph.D. to tell us about it. Actually, this view of human motivation, called a humanistic view, has always been disputed by some people, but that's not the point. The point is, as more people have difficulties fulfilling these basic needs, even those of us who make charitable contributions are having to readjust our priorities for giving. An article in today's New York Times reports that institutions that address our higher-order needs, such as operas and orchestras, are bracing for a bad time.

A couple of nights ago, I got a call from a fund-raiser at the SUNY at Buffalo Law School (one of my alma maters), and I made a pledge to contribute. After I did this, I found myself wondering if it was the right thing to do. For years, much of my charitable giving went to educational and arts institutions, but during the past few years I have seen my pattern of giving shift. The agency that gets the most of my charitable dollars these days is the Food Bank of Central New York. It's important to me that it's a local agency, and I like the fact that they don't send me 8 1/2 by 11 inch envelopes filled with glossy brochures. This is a poor area, and there are plenty of food pantries that get supplies from the Food Bank of CNY. I could never contribute to all of them, so it's good to know that an agency like this can buy food economically on a bigger scale and help people in several upstate New York counties survive.

I started giving to Habitat for Humanity a long time ago, when I first saw former President Jimmy Carter and his wife swinging hammers at a Habitat project in New York City. If it was good enough for Jimmy Carter, it was good enough for me. Since then, he was won the Nobel Peace Prize, and I am still giving to Habitat. They were very effective at building and rebuilding houses after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. I'm glad to think that my contributions may have helped to get a few people out of FEMA trailers and into a house of their own. I like the fact that people who are chosen to receive Habitat houses work on their own houses and on houses for other people, as well. And I also like the fact that they have to buy the house, even if it's by way of an interest-free mortgage.

Another one of my favorite charitable institutions is Doctors Without Borders. This international humanitarian organization (consisting of 18 European countries and the USA) provides urgent medical care to people in many countries where there are wars, epidemics, or natural disasters. One thing I especially like about this agency is that it doesn't confine itself to helping people in countries where there is oil or some other natural resource that is of interest to first-world countries. Doctors Without Borders has an international staff that partners with local medical personnel to treat people's injuries and illnesses and try to prevent disease and the health effects of poverty and malnutrition. In 2007, the USA branch of Doctors Without Borders raised over $150 million in contributions, and I'm glad to be a part of that effort.

What I am trying to get at is that I find myself making hard choices these days about where to donate money. Of course, I also have my eye of the list of charitable contributions I can present to the IRS, but, assuming I am going to donate a certain amount in 2008, who's going to get it? How do you choose between, for example, the Metropolitan Opera and Remote Area Medical, a group of volunteer physicians, nurses, and other medical experts who provide free care to a lot of uninsured or underinsured people right in the USA, as well as internationally? More and more, I have been giving to the people who minister to the needs that are at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy, but I feel bad about the other worthy institutions that I have eliminated from my list.

Two important donations that I still have to make before the end of the year are to the local libraries in Fulton and Oswego. I consider the Oswego Public Library to be my "home library." I borrow books from Oswego and also from other libraries in the North Country Library System via inter-library loan. I love the fact that the Oswego library has hours that make it easily accessible to many people in the community and that they provide services that people need and use, including a great children's room and many computers for public use. I give to the Fulton Public Library to honor my mother, who used it faithfully for more than 60 years. In later years, when Mom's sight had deteriorated, we used to look there for large-print books, and now I specify that my contributions be used for that purpose. To me, reading is a basic need, and I think that helping libraries is a humanitarian activity. I'm sure my mother would feel the same way.

Iron Chef America Halloween Challenge

On Iron Chef America's Halloween broadcast on the Food Network, the secret ingredient was offal, which hereabouts we delicately call variety meats. I thought it was pretty sophomoric, but I suppose there was enough of the yuck factor to make it appropriate for Halloween. Personally, I'm sufficiently okay with liver, hearts, gizzards, and kidneys to not be turned off by such foods. The pig's trotters looked wonderful, in fact, and I would have loved to try Iron Chef Michael Symon's sweetbreads dish. However, I could have done without the duck's tongues and testicles and the chicken cockscombs. Besides, I didn't think the Halloween secret ingredient was challenging enough for the chefs (Michael Symon and Chris Cosentino). If I had been the Chairman, the secret ingredient would have been candy corn.

Just think of the challenge of trying to make gourmet dishes with candy corn. That's much more of a trick than making chocolate truffles with duck liver mousse filling. And the point would be to cook with candy corn, not make candy corn. Yes, I know, Martha Stewart has made her own Fig Newtons and Marshmallow Peeps, but that's not the challenge being offered in Kitchen Stadium on this occasion. Herewith, I offer my menu for the Iron Chef candy corn challenge, using products from the picture above:

Roasted candy corn salad with fresh green Jalapeno peppers

Candy corn pumpkin risotto

Chicken and candy corn fritters

Dilled candy corn bread

Chocolate candy corn pudding

I think this would be a wonderful feast (if a bit hard on the teeth), and it would be fun to see what various chefs would do with it. For example, I'm sure Iron Chefs Bobby Flay and Mario Batali would take completely different approaches to this menu. And wouldn't it be fun to see what Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto would come up with? Whose cuisine would reign supreme? Bon appetit!

The Sixpack Gourmet (1): Goldfish

Once upon a time, when I was young, there were no Goldfish. I mean Goldfish crackers, of course. As for the other kind of goldfish, I, like many children before and after me, brought a goldfish home in a plastic bag filled with water and tried to keep it as a pet. It died pretty promptly, as they always did. Of course, if I had had the slightest idea what was really needed to keep a goldfish alive, I might have done better, but I didn't.

But back to Goldfish crackers. The dictionary definition of a cracker is "a thin crisp wafer made of flour and water with or without leavening or shortening; unsweetened or semisweet." That covers a lot of territory, from your basic bland soda crackers, to hearty crispbread (Knäckebröd) made with whole grains, to sweetened, like graham crackers, to flavored, like Cheezits. Every cuisine has some kind of crackers, and American cuisine certainly has many, including the notorious Crown Pilot cracker used in chowder for decades in New England. Nabisco, the manufacturer of the Crown Pilot cracker, has tried to discontinue its production, only to be met with a huge uproar and a segment on Sixty Minutes. So the Crown Pilot lived on for a while, but it appears it has been discontinued again. I don't know what those poor Down-Easters are supposed to eat with their chowder, but that's their problem. I'm trying to get back to Goldfish.

The ancestor of the Goldfish is, in my opinion, the humble oyster cracker, which is a kind of soda cracker used in soup. I have fond memories of these crackers from my childhood. At any rate, the original Goldfish, made by Pepperidge Farm, tastes like an oyster cracker, but it is shaped like a tiny fish and baked. By this time, a couple of generations of little children have snacked on Goldfish, which now come in a variety of flavors, such as pizza, cheddar, and parmesan, and they can be tiny, small, or large, and even come in colors. I only like two flavors of Goldfish, original and pretzel. I mostly buy original, because Peterkin, my dog, doesn't like the pretzel flavored ones. He finds them too difficult to chew, and it's very disheartening to see him juggle one around in his mouth, spit it out, sniff it suspiciously, then sigh and turn away. Goldfish are my bedtime snack, and it is particularly upsetting to have Peterkin sighing when I'm trying to relax and get to sleep, so we only eat original Goldfish these days.

I suspect that a sociologist could discover interesting things about the United States by researching who eats what kinds and brands of crackers in which part of the country. Do you and your neighbors eat Ritz or Town House crackers? Do you eat Saltines or Zestas? Cheezits or Cheese Nips? Maybe I could interest you in a Triscuit? Do you want your crackers salted or unsalted? Are you into whole grain? Or maybe gluten-free is your preference. Whatever you want, you'll probably find a cracker to suit you, because this is America, the land of choice. Unless you want Crown Pilots, of course, in which case you're out of luck. But my favorites are Goldfish, which are eaten in their millions all over the country. Does that make me a Joe Sixpack? If so, I'll just have to plead guilty.

My Struggle With Scones

Cream tea, anyone?

I love scones, but I have no luck at all at making them. No matter which recipe I try, there comes a point when the dough is sticking to my hands and anything else in sight, and I can't seem to get them rolled out and onto a baking sheet. The other day, I was watching Ina Garten make scones on the Food Network, and I thought it was interesting that there was a convenient film splice between the lump of sticky dough and the nice, patted out disk of dough that she cut into pieces. Somewhere in that splice is my struggle with scones.

Scones are a type of quick bread, which basically means you use something other than yeast as a leavening agent, such as baking powder. The Scots are generally given credit for the scone, although the word itself may come from Dutch, or it may come from Gaelic; no one is quite sure. Early scones were probably made with oat flour and baked on a griddle, but there are dozens of basic scone recipes available, including many flavor variations. If you want to travel to San Francisco, you can participate in a Irish scone-making workshop. Whether the origin of the scone is Scottish or Irish, I would probably benefit from the workshop, because I might finally discover how to get that gooey dough off my hands and into the oven.

What better way is there to enjoy scones than a cream tea? A cream tea is a Devonshire variation on afternoon tea featuring, tea, scones, jam, and clotted cream, also known as Devonshire cream, which certainly sounds nicer. As far as I can tell, it is very similar to creme fraiche, which you can buy in the USA if you don't want to make it. Anyway, I wouldn't turn down a cream tea for any reason I can think of, but I'll probably have to buy the scones, unless I finally figure out how to make them myself without suffering grievous bodily injury. If I succeed, I'll let you know.

Favorite Lieder (2): Franz Schubert's "Im Frühling"

This lovely song by Franz Schubert was written in 1826 and published in 1828 (D 882).

If I had to choose my favorite Schubert song, this would most likely be it. There are so many beautiful songs by Schubert, but the text and music of Im Frühling have made a deep impression on me since I was a teenager.

The mood of the song is somewhat ambiguous. It is not a happy song, nor is it a sad song. The song embodies the emotion of Sehnsucht, which is the German word for longing, a key emotion of romanticism. The singer recalls a beautiful springtime experience and would like to have it back. The final stanza is not hopeful, but there is a kind of wistfulness and a bittersweet pleasure in the memory.

The music starts out simple and innocent, as the singer describes his springtime love encounter, then, at the end of the second stanza, the piano flows into a rippling, ecstatic interlude that then becomes the background for the singer's next two stanzas. There is a major change in music in mood with the fifth stanza, which recalls the changes wrought by time and conflict, then the rippling melody returns for the final stanza, a little damped down but as gentle and sweet as the memory. Some singers try to give the song a "happy ending" by raising their volume on the repetition of "Den ganzen Sommer lang," the final line of the singer's text. This does not correspond to the mood of the song. Just watch Fischer-Dieskau's facial expression and notice the little breath pause between "Und säng ein süsses Lied von ihr" and "Den ganzen Sommer lang." He knows it isn't going to happen, but the memory is beautiful.

You can see and hear baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and pianist Gerald Moore perform Im Frühling here.

Im Frühling

Still sitz' ich an des Hügels Hang,
Der Himmel ist so klar,
Das Lüftchen spielt im grünen Tal.
Wo ich beim ersten Frühlingsstrahl
Einst, ach so glücklich war.

Wo ich an ihrer Seite ging

So traulich und so nah,

Und tief im dunklen Felsenquell

Den schönen Himmel blau und hell

Und sie im Himmel sah.

Sieh, wie der bunte Frühling schon

Aus Knosp' und Blüte blickt!

Nicht alle Blüten sind mir gleich,

Am liebsten pflückt ich von dem Zweig,

Von welchem sie gepflückt!

Denn alles ist wie damals noch,

Die Blumen, das Gefild;

Die Sonne scheint nicht minder hell,

Nicht minder freundlich schwimmt im Quell

Das blaue Himmelsbild.

Es wandeln nur sich Will und Wahn,

Es wechseln Lust und Streit,

Vorüber flieht der Liebe Glück,

Und nur die Liebe bleibt zurück,

Die Lieb und ach, das Leid.

O wär ich doch ein Vöglein nur

Dort an dem Wiesenhang

Dann blieb ich auf den Zweigen hier,

Und säng ein süßes Lied von ihr,

Den ganzen Sommer lang.

(Ernst Konrad Friedrich Schulze [1789-1817])

German text with thanks from Emily Ezust's Lied and Art Songs Texts Page.

In the Springtime

I sit quietly on the hillside,
The sky is so clear,
A little breeze stirs in the green valley,
Where, once by the first ray of spring,
I was, alas, so happy.

Where I walked at her side
So intimate and so close,
And deep in the dark rocky pool
I saw the lovely sky so blue and bright
And saw her in the sky.

Look how the many-colored spring already
Peeps out of every bud and blossom!
Not every blossom is the same to me,
I want to pick from the twig
From which she picked!

For everything is the way it was then,
The flowers, the meadows;
The sun doesn’t shine any less brightly,
No less pleasantly swims in the pool
The blue reflection of the sky.

Only will and illusion shift,
Desire and conflict change,
The happiness of love goes away
And only love remains,
Love and, alas, the pain.

Oh, if I were only a little bird
There on the meadow slope,
Then I’d stay here in the branches
And sing a sweet song of her
The whole summer long.

(English translation © 2008 by Celia A. Sgroi)