[Sca-cooks] Re: [Servicenet] A passing of a foodie giant

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Susan Fox-Davis:
>James Fox-Davis wrote:
>
>>I just heard over the news that Julia Child, the primal TV-chef and 
>>Mistress of French Cuisine for Americans, has died.
>>
>>Everyone doff your tocque for a minute in respect.
>>
>>Jared
>
>This is a very bad year for noted Cookbook Authors.  Alan Davidson, 
>Jeff Smith, Myra Waldo and now Julia Child. 
>I may have to reconsider my plans for writing cookbooks.  Hoo boy.!
>
>Selene

Um... don't get me wrong... this is going to sound harsh, maybe... 
but yes, you might want to reconsider your plans for writing 
cookbooks if you don't want to eat well, drink, if not like a fish, 
at least moderately well, get paid to do something you love and pack 
it in at a sprightly and juvenile 90-ish...

With the recent passing of a [locally] influential and beloved sports 
broadcaster, I'm beginning to get a new perspective on what had 
previously been, at times, just a meaningless expression: the 
celebration of the life of the person we lost instead of the grieving 
for the loss. I listened to the Mets game on the radio after the 
passing of Bob Murphy and was almost astonished to find myself 
listening to a rather rollicking series of stories tucked between 
bits of play-by-play. The sense of it seemed to be that Murph had 
been playing an elaborate practical joke on his listeners for 
40-some-odd years, carefully hiding behind a business-like exterior 
what an extraordinary (and somewhat bizarre) person he had been, and 
on that night we got to hear about Murphy's claim to have been one of 
the first people in the US to have animal tissue implanted in his 
body (he said his left elbow joint was actually a goat's knee after 
surgery on a shattered elbow in his childhood in the 30's), how he 
used to go to school on a blind mare when he was a kid, and a 
plethora of tantalizing little snippets about a guy who was a born 
raconteur and tall-tale teller in the Mark Twain mode, but who felt 
professionally obliged to wear the narrow tie, the button-down 
collar, and hide this side of himself (except when he slipped and 
yelled, on one occasion, "They win it! The Mets win the g----mned 
ballgame!" But throughout all this, the atmosphere was somewhere in 
between a [presumably] booze-free Irish wake (interestingly, I'm been 
to quite a few Irish wakes and never seen booze at any of them), and 
the play of a Dixie-land jazz band on the way out of the cemetery. It 
really _was_ a celebration of Murphy's life, and the fact that we got 
to share some of that life was less important than the circumstances 
of its end or the end itself.

I'm hoping, for the sake of those personally affected by Julia 
Child's passing, that they can weigh their love for her and the joy 
she gave them and her inspiration that they still carry, and find 
that it outweighs the grief. For myself, I remember her best from my 
childhood, dealing with very early Muppets in glorious 
back-and-white, and I always wondered how she did that trick with the 
multiple, time-accelerating ovens... ;-)

And then, one has to really wonder what the world would be like if 
she had become a spy ;-) ...

Adamantius

-- 
  "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04