After I retired, I joined the board of the preschool I had founded as a community representative. We were planning our 25th anniversary year celebration, which was to include a video of the founding, history, and philosophy of the school. It was during a discussion about this video that I learned that people in 2017 had an attention span of 3-4 minutes, so that is how long a tribute to the school needed to be. I was shocked to learn from younger board members that people attending this benefit would not be able to pay attention to anything longer.

Luckily, Susan Hope Engel, the videographer who created Cherryness, thought differently and produced a wonderful 19-minute film. Those of us who had worked so hard to create the school and define its vision not only watched it in rapt attention but also re-watched it many times and made generous donations to sustain the preschool.

Until the preschool’s website was redesigned, this video was clickable link for anyone who had the time for and interest in understanding the school’s history and underlying philosophy. Now, that link gone, but there is a 3.16-minute video about the preschool designed for marketing, which is just the right length, according to industry standards, for the attention span of prospective parents. I’m sure very few would have watched the longer video.

And yet, according to MIT marketing researcher Ted Selker, the myth that claims people have the same attention span as a goldfish disrespects people who are capable of understanding complex and intelligent presentations. If you give people something worth paying attention to, they will. Unfortunately, the nature of our Internet and social-media driven world works against our innate ability to pay attention to things that matter to us. Selker states, “… if we spend our time flitting from one thing to another on the web, we can get into a habit of not concentrating.”

It’s easy to forget how recently our world changed to the point we are at now, with 2/3 of the world using the Internet and 1/3 of the world using social media platforms. Especially in America, Millennials and those born after them live very differently from the culture in which I grew up. I still remember listening to radio shows. Television entered my life in the fifties with only three channels and a nightly sign-off. I got my information from reading newspapers, periodicals, and books; looking things up in dictionaries and encyclopedias; researching topics in the library; and listening to lectures by teachers and professors without power point or media accompanying them. Granted, I took copious notes and doodled to maintain my focus, but I trained myself to pay attention to lectures, even those that were less inspired.

Life has changed so radically since my days as a student, teacher, and preschool director. Consider these facts:

• Email became a thing in the late 1990s. Remember “You’ve got mail” and dial-up modems?
  Google started in 1998
  Personal computers were in 50% of homes by 2000
  Texting started to become common around 2000
  Cell phones were connected to the Internet in 2001
  Facebook started in 2004 and was nothing like its current form
  Twitter began in 2006
  The first iPhone came out in 2007
  Instagram was created in 2010
  Snapchat began in 2011
  TikTok, which is so popular with my grandkids, was born in 2019

While I can easily live without most of these things, there is no way I would give up my PC, smart phone, or the Google machine. I’ll admit that the latter can send me down time consuming rabbit holes and my phone, with its constant texts and alerts, is very distracting, as are the hundreds of emails I receive every day. I am a Luddite compared with my kids, and especially my grandkids, but I can appreciate the time these things steal from my ability to stay focused on reading a good book.

I can’t totally blame my wavering attention span on social media, Trumpian politics, or the technologically changing world. If I’m being honest, perhaps it’s my age mixed with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on my life. More time alone to contemplate and write, yet somehow less to say. It’s been so much harder to maintain my focus since life shut down in March 2020. I need to get out more, into the world of relating to people in person. It was supposed to happen this summer, but along came Delta and the frustration of the unvaxxed keeping me from my former life. Still, I think I can pay more attention to the things that matter to me than your average goldfish.

In case you have the interest, attention span, and time to watch that 19-minute video, here it is on YouTube:

*Thank you to Marcia Liss for her wonderful cartoons of me confronting the world of technology.

I invite you to read my book Terribly Strange and Wonderfully Real, join my Facebook community, and visit my website.

Meals were a challenge when I was a resident on hospital rotations.  There were no official breaks, no lunch, dinner, or breakfast hours, just work that had to be done and rounds to attend.  Sure, there were cafeterias with overcooked steam trays of food, but they weren’t open 24/7, and weren’t free.  Finding a moment to hydrate, scarf down a few calories, and use the restroom could succumb to the pressure of the next admission, chasing down labs, writing up notes, or even napping.

I learned that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs must be obeyed—I was not a functional person without attention to a few basic self-care principles.  It seems that training programs have evolved a bit in recent years, but back in the 70’s, being tough and putting up with physical deprivation was integral to becoming a physician, and women felt even more pressure to prove they could do it.

In any case, enter the lunch box.  I got a kid’s soft-sided thermal one with planets on the cover, and brought it with me every day.  For days “on call”, that meant packing it to cover lunch, dinner, breakfast the next day, and lunch again.  It was stuffed with granola bars, yogurt cups, fruit, maybe a sandwich or miscellaneous leftovers, until the  sides were bulging and straining the zipper.  But it kept me fed and became my lifeline, averting too many “hangry” meltdowns.

it worked so well that I carried a lunch box to work ever since, and became known for the whimsical version of the day. But I could invent a mealtime whenever I needed it, and believe everyone I worked with was happier with a less stressed-out me.

 

 

 

My mom was a wonderful mother in many ways – patient, modest, innately kind — but she was not a particularly good cook.

“Oh, I was a boring cook,” she admitted once when she was in her 70s and taking her meals in the dining room at Leisure World, the retirement facility where she and my dad spent their last years. “I made the same things over and over and never tried anything new.”

So true.

And yet, mealtimes were special in our household, in the sense that they were reliable and punctual and, though I didn’t appreciate this at the time, a source of comfort and constancy. I say this even though our family wasn’t very happy during my high school years. My brother Dan and I were sworn enemies, my dad was a tyrant who was usually grumpy after a long day at work, and my mother was left to walk a thin tightrope between pleasing Dad and simultaneously nurturing my brothers and me in ways that didn’t appear to him to be overly indulgent.

Older brother Dan and I sat at the heads of the table, far apart to deter our squabbling. Mom sat to my left, with younger brother Dave at her left. Dad sat opposite Dave, with Grandma at his side during the winter months when she visited from Chicago. I still remember the woven cotton place mats, off-white and salmon-pink. Fork on the left, knife and spoon on the right, Paper napkins, not cloth. A glass of milk at each setting. Never wine or beer for either parent. You weren’t allowed to put your elbows on the table, to sing or to hum, and if you finished early and had something to do you were expected to politely ask, “May I be excused?”

What Mom served for dinner, I’m sure, was largely subject to Dad’s approval. “I don’t want you boys eating highly seasoned foods,” he announced once with dour authority. “Why?” I asked. “Because I said so,” he answered. I never found out why — maybe because spicy foods lead to digestive problems and to colitis, gastritis and stomach ulcers? Beats me.

Consequently, the bill of fare at the Guthmann table was bland and overcooked. Mom’s hamburgers, a weekly occurrence, weren’t flavorful, juicy or plump, but flat and dry and requiring lots of ketchup. On the side we’d have French fries, deep-fried on the stove top, that were three times the size of restaurant fries.

Tuna casserole was another standby. That recipe, which I still have on a faded 3×5 file card, calls for 1-½ cups of broken raw noodles (the word “pasta” was never used in our household, just “noodles”); a family-size can of tuna; a can of cream of mushroom soup; 2/3 cup of evaporated milk; 1/3 cup of minced onion; and half a cup of grated American cheese. Mix together lightly, sprinkle a crumble of potato chips on top, and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

I’m tempted to make it again. Who knows what kind of Proustian memories might be aroused?

I made Mom’s tuna casserole in college, and for a brief time after I moved to San Francisco. I once served it in my tiny kitchen on Oak Street to Billy West, a Francophile and devoted foodie who later opened the now-legendary Zuni Café. I swear I had no idea at the time that tuna casserole was an embarrassingly down-market entrée – not to be served to sophisticates. Apparently I was forgiven, because Billy invited me to dinner, too. It was so long ago that I don’t know what he served. Poached salmon with haricots verte, perhaps? Persimmon pudding? I just remember being stunned by the rich, surprising and subtle flavors. Things I’d never tasted. I didn’t know that people could eat that elegantly in their own home! I thought you had to go to a fancy restaurant for food like that.

Which brings me back to my mother and her modest culinary skills. Pork chops and meat loaf were other staples. Fried chicken with Uncle Ben’s rice on the side – not bad. Steak, which I always smothered in A-1 Steak Sauce. Veal parmesan with enough cheese to choke a Clydesdale. Macaroni and cheese. Spaghetti prepared with tomato sauce, ground beef and a packet of Lawry’s seasoning.

On the side, there’d be a baked potato or more often Tater Tots. Frequently a salad of iceberg lettuce, chopped carrots and those tough, mealy tomatoes from Alpha Beta or Von’s supermarket. Oil and vinegar dressing was a favorite. Or “1000 Island,” which Mom improvised by mixing ketchup with mayonnaise. She had a thing for mayonnaise.

Years ago I read food critic Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone, in which she describes with horror a dinner at her ex-mother-in-law’s home. On the side was a pear salad. One half of a syrupy canned pear sat on a iceberg lettuce leaf, with a fat dollop of mayonnaise in the scooped-out hole in the center. As I read Reichl’s book, I remembered with a cringe that my mother served that exact same salad. I suspect she culled it from Betty Crocker, or another quick-and-easy cookbook from the frugal Fifties.

Mom never served avocados or artichokes, even though we lived in California where they grew abundantly. All our vegetables were frozen or canned, corn on the cob being the exception. Until I was grown, I didn’t know how fresh spinach, peas, broccoli or Brussels sprouts tasted. White bread only, never wheat or rye. And, since Mom had an aversion to shellfish, never lobster, shrimp, scallops or mussels, which were probably out of her budget anyway.

Even at Thanksgiving and Christmas, thrift and ease were Mom’s culinary guiding principles. Our turkey stuffing came from a package and turned soggy when cooked. Sweet potatoes were served; a relish dish of pitted olives, sliced carrots and celery. The cranberry sauce was canned – I remember the bright red cylinder slipping out and shimmying slightly on the plate, the ribbing from the tin still visible on the jellied hunk of “sauce.”

Desserts varied little throughout the year. Ice cream cake roll from Baskin Robbins was a huge favorite. More often Mom served rice pudding or Ish Kabibble (chocolate pudding with Nilla wafers), or Jell-O with sliced bananas and chunks of Libby’s fruit cocktail inside — plus a scoop of mayonnaise on top. Other nights dessert it was two Oreo cookies each, which was tricky since I loved to split Oreos in half and scrape the frosting off with my top front teeth. If Mom caught me in the act, she’d say, “That counts as two cookies, you don’t get the second.”

That makes her sound mean and stingy, which she wasn’t. She just hated to see me playing with food.

I feel a tad guilty discussing my mother’s culinary limitations, but in her defense she was never taught how to cook by her own mother. I know from talking to dozens of people over the years that she was typical of housewives from the 1950s and ‘60s, an era when the prudent budgeting of time and grocery bills was paramount. The exceptions I find are Jewish or Italian friends, whose grandmothers came from the Old Country and made delicious, fragrant meals and passed their artistry down to later generations. The rest of us, limited by experience and underdeveloped palates, had a long learning curve ahead.

But here’s what I want to emphasize: Although my mother wasn’t an accomplished or passionate cook, she was utterly faithful, dependable and the true emotional center of our family. She made it all work, and tried to keep the peace. She always had supper ready when Dad came home from work at 6:15 or 6:30, always greeted him sweetly and asked how his day went — knowing his mood might be foul — and rarely complained about her lot in life, the amount of work she exerted in having dinner ready each night, or the level of appreciation she received or didn’t receive.

I don’t know how she did it, but I am forever grateful.

One meal, though, stands out because I took pictures.
Read More