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More Adventures of a Slapdash Cook: Turkey Surprise

Patricia Lee Sharpe

I’ve spent the whole week rassling pixels, which means my brain is frazzled, so I’m going to serve up some turkey this weekend, as we teeter between Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

This morning I collected my Christmas turkey from the Farmers’ Market.  A heritage bird, raised on the range by some very nice people at Pollo Real in Socorro, New Mexico, it’s in no way a fowl that fits a food stamp budget, but it’s well worth the investment otherwise.  Can you say flavorful—even the lovely white breast?  Can you say succulent?  Especially those nice fat thighs.  (Hummm!  This could verge on poultry porn.)  Of course, the modest turkey pictured here looks more like a kicked-to-death football.  It’s still frozen, and it must go into the freezer.  Next week a family council will decide what to do with it.  Will we have turkey on Christmas Day? Or will we have roast beef?  If the latter,  when to roast the turkey? 

Whenever, the prep will be easy!  No soaking in brine!  No saline injections.  Just defrost it, stuff it, truss it, anoint it with butter and pop it in the baking pan over a layer of chopped up onions, carrots and celery, whose function is to flavor the drippings that so that the ensuing gravy (add water, a soupçon of red wine, a couple of shakes of salt; thicken with a bit of flour; strain; skim off excess fat) will be all that’s needed to puddle on the mashed potatoes and dressing.  As for the turkey, assuming I pay attention to the thermometer, which isn’t guaranteed, it will emerge so sweetly moist  the swallowing process won’t call for the lubrication-by-gravy that’s de rigeur for  every bite of a turkzila from the supermarket. 

Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: How the West Won (Part II)

By Yale Richmond, Guest Contributor

Yale Richmond, a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer and author of 11 books on intercultural communication, worked on U.S.-Soviet cultural and other exchanges for more than 20 years.  He delivered the following speech at the Aleksanteri Institute’s 9th Annual Conference “Cold War Interactions Reconsidered” 29-31 October 2009, University of Helsinki, Finland.

This is the second of a two part series.  The first part appeared on Thursday, December 3.

Exhibits:  Better to See Once . . .

And now to exhibitions. As an old Russian proverb tells us, it is better to see once than to hear a hundred times.  The Cultural Agreement also provided for month-long showings of exhibitions in the two countries to show the latest developments in various fields. Prepared by the U.S. Information Agency, the American exhibitions were on such subjects as medicine, architecture, hand tools, education, outdoor recreation, technology for the home, and agriculture. Each exhibition had some 20 Russian-speaking American guides who responded to questions from the Soviet visitors. For most Russians who saw the exhibitions, it was their first and only opportunity to talk with an American. 

Despite harassment by the KGB, the exhibitions drew huge crowds with long lines awaiting admittance, and they were seen, on average, by some 250,000 visitors in each city. All together, more than 20 million Soviet citizens saw the 23 U.S. exhibitions over a 32-year period.

Those exhibits brought a whole generation of Soviets into contact with the West. They were one of the best investments we made. And the Soviet authorities would probably agree with that. In every renegotiation of the Cultural Agreement, the Soviets sought to eliminate the exhibitions, or failing in that, to reduce the number of cities in which the exhibitions were shown. In one renegotiation of the cultural agreement in the early 1970s, when the Soviet negotiators held firm on completely deleting the exhibitions, our Ambassador in Moscow, acting on instructions from Washington, informed Foreign Minister Gromyko that without the exhibitions there would be no Cultural Agreement. The Soviets understood that, and the exhibitions continued. 

The Very Visible Performing Arts

The performing arts were one of the most visible of U.S.-Soviet exchanges. In the United States, few of the cognoscenti (those who know) failed to see the Soviet dance groups, symphony orchestras, operas, ice shows, circuses, as well as the many outstanding individual artists who visited the United States each year, often on extensive coast-to-coast tours. American ensembles and soloists that went to the Soviet Union in exchange invariably played to full houses and were likewise appreciated by both the intelligentsia and the general public. For Duke Ellington’s Moscow performances in 1971, tickets were sold on the black market for as much as 80 rubles, when the usual price for a theater ticket was seldom higher than four.

Pianist Emil Gilels was the first Soviet artist to appear in the United States in decades when he performed to rave reviews on a month-long tour in 1955. Violinist David Oistrakh followed with a similarly successful tour that same year, as did renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich in 1956.
Under the US-Soviet cultural agreement, performing-arts exchanges became a recurring feature in U.S.-Soviet relations. Soviet favorites in the United States included the Moiseyev Folk Dance Ensemble and the Bolshoi and Kirov Ballets whose repeated tours received glowing press reviews as well as handsome fees. Tours across the United States were also an eye opener for Soviet artists. As described by Galina Ulanova, star of the Bolshoi Ballet and one of the greatest Russian ballerinas of modern times, after her first visit to the United States in 1959:

The US and the World: as Americans See It - 2009

By Patricia H. Kushlis

The Pew Charitable Trusts has been releasing its most recent public opinion polls on how the world sees the United States and, conversely, how Americans see the world and the US role in it over the past few weeks.

I’ll be giving a talk here in Albuquerque next week entitled “From ‘The War on Terror’ to 'Global Engagement.'" Pew's latest polling results and the analyses that accompany them appeared just in the nick of time to substantiate what I had planned to say anyway based on my reading of earlier spot polls of foreign perceptions of the US as well as personal observations and conversations that I had when I was in Asia.  My upcoming talk, however, will focus more on how the world sees us and whether the Obama administration’s change in rhetoric has made a difference rather than the other way around which is the focus in this post today. 

It seems to me that “US Seen as Less Important, China as More Powerful: Isolationist Sentiment Surges to Four-Decade High” is one of the most interesting of the recent press release cum survey analyses issued by Pew.  The seven page media release is intriguing, but it fails to do justice to the report "America's Place in the World 2009" upon which it is based.  So let me make a suggestion – at a minimum read the report’s opening chapter and scan the data yourself.

Read the Report - Or at least the First Chapter

A warning: The analysis includes two different data sets – one a survey of the American public’s attitudes – based on 1,500 telephone and 500 cell phone interviews in English and Spanish of people - plus a second: 642 telephone and on-line surveys of members of the Council on Foreign Relations, a middle of the road, non-partisan organization and foreign affairs think tank with offices in New York and Washington, DC.  CFR was founded in 1921 and the Pew Charitable Trusts considers it to contain America’s foreign policy opinion makers. Yet the discrepancies I found between the two groups surveyed makes me wonder exactly how influential CFR members really are on the US public’s views of international affairs in today’s America.

The surveys on which Pew’s “America’s Place in the World 2009” is based were published December 3, 2009 just five days before President Obama spoke to the nation – and the world - to announce his new Afghanistan policies. The surveys were conducted during October and early November and the information on how they were conducted is found on Pew’s People and the Press website.  Because of the timing, none of the polling data, therefore, took into account the public’s reaction to Obama’s December 8 speech with his controversial decision to send 30, 000 more US troops to Afghanistan in a surge type endeavor to stem the Taliban's resurgence.  

With that caveat, let me plunge ahead.

Made (and Unmade) in Pakistan—and Elsewhere

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I’ve just seen a very engaging documentary about energetic, enterprising young professionals in Lahore, Pakistan, and for over an hour I felt I was happily back in a milieu it’s been my pleasure and  privilege to be part of.  The film is called Made in Pakistan.  It’s a wonderful reminder that most people in most countries, Pakistan included, are focused on living dynamic, responsible, constructive, even creative lives.   So here they are, two women, two men: Waleed, a young lawyer passionately devoted to the rule of law; Rabia, a young writer and mother struggling to put a savvy  new magazine into the black; Tara, a fashionista and event planner whose go-go-go business is expanding into an all-Pakistan operation; Mohsin, a young politician running the family-business which  happens to center on elections.

Law, politics, journalism, fashion—these are four essential professions that, believe it or not, thrive in urban Pakistan, and Made in Pakistan shows us how four very appealing practitioners manage lives as fascinating and complex as those of their counterparts in New York or London.  Producer Ayesha Khan wants us to understand this, not from grim statistics but by sharing moments with people whose unscripted authenticity is insidiously appealing.  She wanted us to see that there is more to Pakistan than narrow religiosity and violence.  And she has succeeded.

So check it out, when you can.  Made in Pakistan was one of the favorites at the just closed Santa Fe Film Festival.  You’ll see why.

First They Razed the Minarets—

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

 Can you believe it? A bunch of foreign fanatics wants to desecrate our traditional skyline with toothpick towers they call minarets from which they’ll yodel I don't know how many times a day, and we’re supposed to sit by, mum as mice, while Switzerland becomes Switzerlost.  Minarets!  Impaling clouds!  Making a Swiss cheese of the heavens.  No way! No new minarets! As for those built already, down with every one of them!   If these terrorists-in-the-making don’t like it, well! we’ll sic the Swiss Guard on them.  A good Swiss pike can repel any raghead—and aren’t those puffy pants cute?

Wouldn't you know it!  The United Nations is in a snit, as if we were discriminating, not merely asserting our right to be Swiss.  So we’ll have to level the playing ground, it seems.  All steeples and bell towers will also have to go, which may be just as well.  Their upkeep, so to speak, is murder.  What’s sauce for the Muslim goose is sauce for the Christian gander, it seems.  Of course, the carillons and bell ringing are done for, too, which may not be so bad.  We’ll be able to sleep in on Sundays.  Anyhow no one needs bells or calls to prayer, for that matter, in the modern world.  We have watches.  Swiss watches.

Speaking of watches, the clock towers are doomed.  The economic levelers say it’s not fair to put timepieces on a pedestal if you can’t erect Swiss Army knife towers and that won’t do, according to the environmentalists.  A tall, sleek, gleaming blade, evidently, would have a genocidal impact on migrating geese and ganders.  Ditto the scissors and the corkscrew.  I’m tempted to use the tweezers to tweak certain noses, but there we are.

Ah, skyscrapers!  With all other towers razed, they make a grand silhouette against the sky.  But the Jungians are whining about the baleful psychological impact of all those Freudian phallic symbols.  Either we en-womb Basel, Geneva, Zürich and every cow-ridden village geodesically or they’ll be googling explosive formulas from Islamist websites.  Once upon a time—sigh!—we’d have dome-sticated fast.  But the U.S. has declared war on tax evaders, kleptocracy is under attack and the banks can’t mint money in the good old Swiss way. So ker-boom!  It’s cheaper to destroy than to build.

Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: How the West Won

By Yale Richmond, Guest Contributor

Yale Richmond, a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer and author of 11 books on intercultural communication, worked on U.S.-Soviet cultural and other exchanges for more than 20 years.  He delivered the following speech at the Aleksanteri Institute’s 9^th Annual Conference “Cold War Interactions Reconsidered” 29-31 October 2009, University of Helsinki, Finland.

This is the first of a two part series.  The second part will appear on Thursday, December 10.

I want to thank the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki for this opportunity to speak to you. It is an honor to be asked to address such a well-informed audience.                              

First a disclaimer. Although I worked for the US Government for more than 35 years, and many of those years on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, I do not speak for the State Department today. The views I present here today are my own.

There are many theories of why communism collapsed and the Cold War ended, as you will likely be hearing in this conference.   

There are a few grains of truth in some of those explanations, and more than a few in others, but I will provide today many grains of another explanation—that the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism were consequences of Soviet contacts and cultural exchanges with the West, and with the United States in particular, over the years that followed the death of Stalin in 1953.

When cultural exchange with the Soviets is mentioned, most people think of Soviet dancers, symphony orchestras, ice shows, and circuses that came to the West and filled our halls with admiring spectators. But cultural exchange consisted of much more--exhibitions, motion pictures, and most important, exchanges of people.

The Iron Curtain was almost impenetrable. Information about the West was closely controlled. There was no free press and no internet. Foreign travel for Russians was very limited, and few visitors came to the Soviet Union. Moreover, most of Soviet territory was closed to travel by foreigners, except for a few large cities. Most Russians thought they were better off than people in the capitalist West.

However, over a 30-year period (1958-1988), more than 50,000 Soviet citizens came to the United States under various exchanges of the US-Soviet Cultural Agreement, and tens of thousands more came to countries in Western Europe. And those are conservative estimates. They came as scholars and students, scientists and engineers, writers and journalists, government and party leaders, musicians and athletes, and they were all cleared by the KGB for foreign travel. But they came, they saw, they were conquered, and the Soviet Union would never again be the same. Those exchanges changed the Soviet Union and prepared the way for Gorbachev’s glasnost, perestroika, and the end of the Cold War.

I will speak here about United States exchanges with the Soviet Union because we had the largest exchanges with the Soviets, but much of what I say can also apply to exchanges other countries had with the Soviet Union.

What were our objectives?

A System in Need of a Large Broom: Buyer Beware

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Every so often I write a post on the internal workings or non-workings of the State Department. I haven’t done so for awhile – but I guess it’s that time again – especially since the Department is set to expand the number of Foreign Service Officers by 1,000 over the coming year. Let’s face it, State, the executive branch’s oldest department, has often attracted top talent – but its personnel system and the way it treats too many of its officers has been its weakest link. It remains so.

This, in a nut shell, means State continues to fail to make use of the talent it has so assiduously recruited nearly as well as it could. Or should. A Human Resources Bureau that has been allowed to run amok with little or no outside oversight over the past decade remains a major obstacle. This is most visible at the senior levels where financial and assignments stakes are highest, but the problems have also trickled down the ranks in deleterious and mysterious ways.

Here are a few of the most recent examples:

The bonus pay fiasco

Over the past several years, lists of senior officers eligible for bonus pay were secretly winnowed in size by employees in Human Resources. When a group of eligible FSOs stumbled upon this, the Director General  wrote them a letter giving an explanation that was either deliberately false or the product of gross incompetence by HR staff. As a consequence, the Department has been ordered by the Foreign Service Grievance Board to reconvene several years of those boards to rectify what are at best irregularities -- if not cronyism or worse.