INDICATORS

The closings of three long-standing and beauty-inspiring magazines from the Conde' Nast stable yesterday reached way down in me and elicited an audible "oh NO!" Modern Bride and Elegant Bride -- I carried them across New York and London looking for colors, textiles, images and inspiration, all woven into our outlandishly complex September 21st 1996 wedding on an island in Maine. These magazines were bricks in volume, and contained streams of eagerness and excitement, as the written page rarely does.

We need nuptial inspiration only a time (or two) in our life. Gourmet, though? Gourmet encourages not just creativity, but it challenged us to take risks, in the kitchen and on the road. The passing of Gourmet may be an indicator of what's not possible anymore. Might some call it entitled, this glossy reflection of the Good Life as embodied in fancy ingredients and far away climes? Perhaps, but the dedicated Gourmet reader wasn't necessarily interested in the Joneses, they might never find a star anise nor even go looking for one. Their Gourmet was about possibility. Glossy, beautifully captured possibility.

I've wondered with frequency if we'll ever be the same after all of this. I've wondered if I'll ever get to Morocco, or if my children will see Venice before it sinks. I've wondered if we'll have another chance to say "What the hell, let's do it" - or if frugality and worry are what our Great Recession will leave, indelibly, in its wake. Somehow, the passing of Gourmet answers that query. It will never be the same.

BROILED STEAK WITH HORSERADISH CREAM

Gourmet Magazine, May 2005

A simple horseradish cream turns broiled steak into a classic

1 (1-inch-thick) sirloin steak (1 1/2 to 2 lb)
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons drained bottled horseradish

Preheat broiler. Oil rack of a broiler pan.

Pat steak dry and sprinkle all over with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper.

Broil steak on rack of broiler pan 3 inches from heat 4 to 5 minutes per side for medium-rare. Transfer to a cutting board and let stand, loosely covered with foil, 5 minutes.

Stir together sour cream, horseradish, and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a small bowl and serve with steak.

THE POWER OF FAILURE

While so many of us are playing the waiting game, walking the thin line between hanging on tight and exploring that worst case scenario, others are business as usual, making the trade, bringing home the bacon. And closer to home, even as our phone sits silent, some among us are even bagging the job and settling in to a new chapter in perhaps a new place, with - finally - a sense of direction.

It's a life lesson. The hard conversations we have with our children when they whine: "but JIMMY has the hyper-multi-band-egon-thruster cell phone..." What do you say? "Is your name JIMMY????"

But it's a lesson we thought we learned ourselves, a long time ago. How funny that here we are, still wrestling with the very same (I guess, as it turns out, human) instinct. Why do good things happen to everyone but me?

I remember walking up 7th Avenue with an old friend who couldn't find a man. I remember saying to her (smugly, I fear) that finding Mr Right is one part luck and the rest a matter of being open and having learned just the right amount about yourself to be ready to share, bla bla blah. Later on, there were many an evening at our house or someone else's, talking over the hard times befalling a distant acquaintance, saying what so many have now said to us: "We all have to deal with it, no one's exempt, it's just a matter of time". Glancing side to side, we'd each retreat to our dark internal closets to count our blessings, noting with a hint of guilt that we were dodging a bullet.

We do all have to deal with it. No one is exempt. Bad things happen to good people. Successful people fail. The book by the same perfect title, "When Smart People Fail" by Linda Gottlieb and Carole Hyatt outlines the process and the road to recovery in brutal detail, delivering the reader, redemptively to the inevitable and only path forward: With our wits about us, be hopeful.

And successful people become more successful in the process. "Failure can teach you compassion and humility. It offers you a new sense of power and a different way to connect with the universe – if you let it", Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen writes in her article "The Positive Power of Failure". She quotes Linda Gottlieb in her article: "Failure is a cleaning of the house. It's an opportunity to reorient your career, to inspect it, to relabel it. You learn to keep all your options in play, be light on your feet. Surviving failure makes you bold… Failure liberates you and gives you the courage to risk in a big enough way to guarantee big success."

But we must see failure for what it is, and be open to its power. We have to practice to really receive its gift.

Perhaps the most profound aspect of the New Now is how we come together, how loose acquaintances, friends of friends, willing enablers, come together to form networks for success. In this way, I've communicated regularly with Nadia, a friend and running partner from our days in Amsterdam, about our fears and our hopes in this dark place. We've traded contacts and connections, and gotten our husbands in touch to build a support network of their own. A few weeks ago, I heard from Nadia that they had landed a great job, had even had the good fortune of choice. After 8 months in the New Now they're moving on. Despite my envy, my intense desire to be where Nadia is, her "head spinning with the details", I am deeply relieved for her, and for us, that there is a light, it does end, here is living proof.

Read Nadia's elation in this paragraph. As the network finds roots, so will we.

Charlotte, after reading your email, both Lorne and I want you and John to know that we are incredibly supportive and understand your situation very well. It is a very difficult time to find a job but John has fantastic credentials, experience and personality and will find a great job!!! Just be patient and keep positive. There is a really low point that comes at 6 months but you have to push it into the far away corner and keep going!!! Because something good will happen. What worked for us was throwing a party in our kitchen every Friday. People would bring food and wine and we laughed and cried and danced and it was great or a real great distraction! I know it sounds wacky but we will have wonderful memories. Lorne had many low points, in the last 6 months he interviewed with 9 companies and some interviews consisted 5-6 interviews per one job, including all the telephone and in-person interviews. The two offers actually came from the places he started talking to in February and March and this is how long it took but as you said, it can also take just one phone call...

THE END OF THE LINE FOR SUV'S

Front page of the New York Times today, the leading photo was of a bundled up worker waving an American flag at what is presumably the last of a line of SUVs parading out from a closing plant in Wisconsin. The city-sized plant facility off in the background, the image illicits remorse and pity, a little bit of grief even, as the black, 17 ft long Chevy Tahoe mumurs by under the windy banner, the stars and stripes.

Plant closes, people lose their jobs, town loses its identity, its motor. It is tragic, sad, life will not be the same for thousands of people in these kinds of towns. But SUVs, they’re a ranch on wheels, have surely seen their day. 1999: John wanted one, so badly. Two kids, two dogs, more kids predicted - more, more, more. I always scoffed, the shape those cars take on the road to me is just gross, over-consumptive, everything non-European about us reflected in a car. So American. Now, with our new awareness of gas and its tolls, that grossness takes the shape of needless expense even to those who a little bit shamefully still drive them; the car in the category of fleets of roaring snowmobiles and plates so full of food they edge the salt, pepper and white vase of carnations off the table.

Explain my definition of ”gross” to the people who live in Janesville Wisconsin and I’ll wager they’d throw back a few more examples to make me avert my eyes, here in my suburban east coast kitchen. I love a Prius, they laugh at Priuses, no traction in the snow, nowhere to put the garbage barrel when you have to get to the dump. I was in line for a souped-up Highlander hybrid before John lost his job. Now, $600 a month for a car? We put snowtires on my 2000 station wagon for $542 and agree that it navigates the weather just fine. Our economic decisions not only don’t help the environment, they don’t help the folks out in Motor City either. But we’re taking steps that bring us closer to the other. Snow tires resonate for all of us, neither a Prius nor a bevy of snowmobiles ever will.

It’s almost the end of the year and my strange American survival mechanism, the one led by Hope, says that it’ll all be different once we have a 9 at the end of our xx/xx/xxxx. Obama and his dream team are on the way, and just the Hope factor will change everything for the better. I pray it will.

But - What what about me and my dream of a hybrid? What will become of the snowmobile driver in Janesville? What’s in store for that town, that vast and eery facility once vibrating with vast and eery motor cars? We will continue speaking a different language. We want sophisticated, high level answers to this global problem, I’m picturing a Janesvillean will want answers that put parts and pieces back in their hands. How will we take care of eachother, who will get the attention, who will get the jobs? When?

TALKING TO YOU FROM THE NO JOB VACUUM

Here we are. No matter how it happens, when you or your Partner loses a job, the ground disappears from underneath and the one and only thing you know for certain is this: YOU ARE STILL BREATHING.

This blog is a call-out to help come to terms with it. It’ll be one step at a time, and we’ll go all over the process map to cope through it all.

Look for music and food (even though I know songs sound dissonant and food tastes horrible); look for parenting and family coping skills (raise your hand if you’re feeling like the grim reaper in work-out clothes); listen for a little humor in the darkest of moments.

I’m doing this because I’m here with you. I think we can find hope and community in these tough times. During the long nights right after John lost his awesome job I’d lie awake and talk to myself, I’d plead with whoever helps us through endless nights to “meet me where I am”.

Through it all came the idea of this blog. I’m meeting you where you are. You’re not alone, so GO, tell your friends!
Charlotte