Linda with Flowers

I don't know much about this photograph, but I can tell that it was taken at the old house at Kirkland Drive. That house will be the subject of at least one article in the future. For now, though, just enjoy the photograph. I know that it isn't the best technically, but it really is beautiful, all the same.

Sylvia - 4

More from that wonderful email from Sylvia:

On another occasion, Alan ordered mussels, another food neither of us had any experience with. The only thing she knew is that one shouldn’t cook dead ones. She poured the paper bag of live mussels into the bathroom sink and stationed me on the toilet seat with the job of culling out dead ones by poking them with the tip of a paring knife. If they didn’t close up they must be dead, and I was to discard them. Linge cooked the remainder of live ones. Of course, she didn’t know how to cook them, but had heard, perhaps from Alan, that they should be cooked quickly. She put them on a cookie sheet, popped them in the oven, and just as quickly popped them back out. She then put some of these barely dead and completely unadorned mussels on plates. I don’t think I could even eat one with their disgusting shiny, wiggly yellow sacks, particularly following my recent life and death encounters with them. I think she gamely ate two. The remainder met a more immediate dispatch than the tongue.

All of these stories are hilarious, considering that mom was a fantastic cook (except for the chicken, but that is another story).

Mom's Annual Performance Review

Today was the day my boss sat down with me to talk about my annual performance review. I was pleasantly surprised that I was given an "Exceeded Expectations" rating that was given to "less than a handful" of my colleagues, to quote my boss. Among the comments in the written report are:

Expertise: Jake's knowledge of the Middle [East], its culture, religion, history, politics and related security issues is exceptional. He is an excellent Arabic linguist with native capability in a variety of dialects as well as an excellent analyst, who has demonstrated that he can identify connections among entities and events to derive deeper meaning from data.

Communication skills: Jake receives universally high marks for his communication skills. Jake consistently produces quality reports, briefs, and other communications for a variety of projects and customers...he is a solid writer whose drafts require minimal editing. Jake applies his extensive knowledge of Middle Eastern issues and explains them in a way that leaves no doubt in the reader's mind about the meaning of some piece of information.

Flexibility: Jake adapts quickly to changing project requirements and performs well and consistently with minimal supervision. He responds rapidly to short-notice requests for information, and adjusts his priorities to assist with others' duties when necessary.

Innovation: Jake looks for ways to improve processes and products, and demonstrates creativity in his approach to solving the issues faced by [the customers].

Yes, I am blowing my own horn. There is, however, a point to all of this other than my ego. Throughout the meeting with my boss, as she was praising me, I kept thinking that the characteristics and skills I was being commended for were ones that mom almost effortlessly possessed throughout her personal and professional life. What Alexa and my peer reviewers find praiseworthy are the values that mom instilled in me. In essence, even though they knew it not, Alexa and my peers were praising my mother, Linda Kay Oldham, not me.

My mother died penniless, but she still left me an inheritance that is not only valuable in a moral and sentimental sense, but in a real income-earning and difference-making sense.

Thank you, Mom. For everything. I wish you knew how proud I am of you.

More from Sylvia Luppert

Dear Jake,

Thank you for your emails. I, too, cannot believe that we have not spoken, at least since you were four years old. When I visited Linge in Chapel Hill, you were first in Egypt and then in Iraq. I hope we'll have the opportunity to meet again in the next few months or years. I do plan to telephone as soon as I have the chance. From your blog and emails I can see that you are as interesting and talented as your mother said you are.

I, too, was fearful for Linge's health. The last time I saw her, two years ago at Thanksgiving, she was very thin. I assumed she had simply dieted. But she insisted that she was the same size she had always been, even though she clearly wasn't. And you know, better than I, that once she asserted a fact as a fact, there was no point in pursuing one's disagreement. The last time we spoke, shortly after her birthday this summer, she sounded awful. And I knew she was depressed. I didn't know, however, how serious her situation was. For example, I didn't know she couldn't travel alone. I am so regretful that I didn't call her more often.

I am sure that even though she must have been acutely distressed about her inability to work, she would have clung to her life for your sake, and for the sake of her other children and grandchildren. She was not emotive, as you know, but I was. and am, convinced that the primary center of her life was all of you.

I thought, when I first went to your blog, the same thing you expressed. That is, she would be outwardly disdainful of the fuss over her, but would be secretly extremely pleased. Certainly as her friend, I am extremely pleased by it.

I have attached a photograph taken at my wedding. Linge came from Chapel Hill to Chicago. She was pregnant with you. On the morning of the wedding she had a pregnancy disaster. Her belly button popped out and her dress was a very light weight fabric, through which her popped out belly button showed. I'm not sure whether she even knew that such a thing could happen. I didn't. We tried taping it down with band-aids, and must have succeeded. As you can see, she was radiantly beautiful.

Sylvia

Note from Jake: This is not the full email, but I removed a very little of it.

Alan Lomax and Sauteed Tongue

Another installment from Sylvia Luppert's first email:

During our time in New York, Linge worked for Alan Lomax, the great American musicologist. He was engaged by Columbia University to study the connections between culture and music. She was his office manager. She met many of the luminaries of folk music during that period. Also during this period, she embarked on a weird crusade to learn to cook. She admired Alan Lomax’s sophisticated tastes in food and knowledge of cuisines. We both had meat and potatoes upbringings, but Alan Lomax took her to lunch frequently, and these lunches frequently inspired her cooking. Although we didn’t own a cookbook, she was unafraid to try the most exotic dish (at least exotic to us.) At one lunch, Alan had tongue. Our mothers never cooked tongue and we had never tasted tongue.

She brought home a big ugly cows tongue that made me, at least, nauseous to behold it. It had taste buds all over it! Not having previous experience with cooking or eating tongue, she sliced it and sauteed it. (Tongue, properly cooked, must be boiled for hours.) The tongue she served was as tough as you could imagine, and it was covered with - yuck - taste buds. I probably had no more than a couple of bites. She gamely ate the entire slice. The uncooked part of the tongue went in the freezer for the remainder of our time in that apartment.

Those are NOT Guys

Ragia and Farah just told me that Rachael Ray* annoyed mom by calling food items "guys," as in "and I'll just sprinkle some salt on these guys (indicating her vegetables)." She also disliked Paula Deen's habit of calling all meats "him" (or maybe that's just me).

She really liked Emeril, though.

* For those who are fortunate enough to live in homes not addicted to US Cable TV channel the Food Network, Rachael Ray, Paula Deen, and Emeril LeGasse are TV celebrity chefs.