Hospital interpretation for two Japanese families.

At St. Vincent’s on 86th, both kids have pneumonia and asthma. The four-year-old boy gets to leave with one inhaled drug. The girl is worse and stays in for several more days. She leaves with two inhaled drugs and an oral steroid. Again and again and for several days I go over the doctors’ instructions about which drug is which, what they do. This family will be okay: the asthma is going to be a pain, but there is the hope that it won’t affect the kids that much in the future; after all, it was only after they had gotten really sick that it was noticed they had the condition.

At Riley closer to Downtown, a fragile-looking eight-week-old baby has jaundice. He also has two holes in his heart, but they aren’t the immediate worry. The parents have just become parents, but their reality is a thick pack of problems, actual and potential, with obscure names. The doctor fears biliary atresia: no path for bile from the liver to the intestine, treatable with a Kasai procedure (a Japanese doctor’s discovery might save the infant), but many thus treated still need a transplant later. The father’s face grows dark from the burdens the future is pressing upon his child, his wife, him. But an ultrasound reveals that a heart hole has closed up, and suddenly the biopsy is saying that atresia seems highly unlikely. Things will probably be okay. Today I am going back to interpret for another test, and I hope the okay-ness progresses.

Japanese people quite often possess a wonderful stoicism, and it’s painful for me to see the pain and fear ready to breach the barrier of strength. I want to do something to help, and I end up being a kind of therapist. I explain that, in the US, doctors feel obligated to describe every risk, to consider every possibility, no matter how slight or remote. I tell them I’m praying for a swift recovery.

Riley Hospital for Children is big. All around me are children whose diseases seek to define them or even take them from the world. I pray, “Let this cup pass them by,” but my intention is so small in comparison to those of the parents, the doctors, the nurses, and the children themselves.

My daughter Ellie is happy and healthy. This is something I have never taken for granted and never will. She’s in Japan and I miss her.

UPDATE (12.18.08)

I interpreted for the family whose baby had the liver problem again yesterday, and the plan was to discharge them today. The doctor thought that the child did not have biliary atresia, liver function had been compromised by a virus, and time would fix the problem. I’m hoping she was right!

As 2008, the year of harrowing, draws to a close, I can feel your approach. There is a stunning naturalness to you that I never thought possible, and a fineness of the code, as if our two sets were sand and water, sand and air, sand and sand and the heat of the sun on us. You exceed all of my expectations in your genuineness, in your ease of being, in your orderliness of spirit, and in your love. Already you challenge me to be more than I am, to grow in worthiness of your greatness.

How long now have friends and spiritual advisers said to me, “Be alone!” At last I have accepted your absence, and in paradox I can sense at last that our time apart shall not be long. The melancholy has lifted; the gods and the world are good!

I can already feel our sharing music, food, philosophies, and everything else that a soul may devour and use for growth in togtherness. I can feel us walking in Indiana’s state parks, looking at art in this city’s museums, rummaging through the resale shops of Broad Ripple, and discovering new indie coffee joints hither and yon. I can feel two souls taking joy in union, surprised at the vastness of the joined terrain even in excess of our biggest hopes.

Thank you, soul mate! I can only suppose that you too have suffered without this connection. But the era of heartbreak and privation has ended. In the few months before our meeting, I shall prepare for you, I shall ready myself for the greatness, call it the excellence, term it now the exuberance that you and I, and we, and the family we create shall bring to this beautiful world!

I hate every audio format. Allow me to explain why. Then allow me to tell you what I really want and what the future holds.

I hate CDs

Monkey see, monkey do. When I was out in New York City in February and later in September, I saw how my buddy Tom had pitched his “jewel cases” and put all his CDs in a big book that holds them in a neat and unitary manner. Of course, people have been doing this for years, but I guess I can be a bit slow to catch on. Pitching all those cases reminded me of how much I really don’t like CDs and inspired me to write this post.

I grew up on vinyl, whose sound quality is not perfect but in many ways better than that of a CD. You’ve read the arguments pro and con elsewhere. It really doesn’t matter because in our hearts we all know that neither vinyl records nor CDs are ideal as far as sound quality goes. If CDs were ideal, no one would ever have come up with audio DVDs, etc. More on vinyl’s sound quality in a moment. A lot of the time, however, CD sound quality is okay. I really only notice a lack, an inadequacy, when I’m listening to classical music. Which I listen to a lot. So CD sound quality does bother me a lot!

Moreover, going through my CDs, I realized how much I hate them as physical objects. I hate the packaging, the wretchedly fragile cases with their too-small art. I hate fooling around with them, organizing them, managing them. Too many of them have only a few songs I need. So I have a huge pile of CDs I’m going to sell after ripping the tunes I want to a hard drive or iTunes or whatever. But wait–that’s illegal! Oh no, may lightning strike me dead!

I hate vinyl records–sort of

Vinyl is both great and a huge pain. If a classical music record is in perfect condition, the sound quality pretty much blows that of a CD out of the water. The trouble is that most of the time the condition is not perfect, and you hear all the pops and clicks that made classical music fans aching for CDs in the early 1980s.

Like my best friend Tom, I have a semi-huge vinyl collection, several thousand records, and I do like the physical objects, the covers, the liner notes, the crazy fact that sound can come from a spinning plastic disc. I like the fact that I can play 1940s and 2000s albums on the same machine, the continuity of it.

I have a soft spot in my soul for records, but I can only romanticize them so much. The pops and clicks really are atrocious, and records are a huge pain to transport and organize (I have mine in alphabetical order, but Heaven forbid you put one back in the wrong place! Those thin little sides make searching a chore, people!).

I hate MP3s

MP3 is crapola audio format that is a severe, inarguable devolution from the CD format. It’s just totally unacceptable. Plus, the iTunes store is going to “lock” songs so that I can only play them here–or there? Step off!

I hate everything else–and so does everyone else

The aforementioned audio DVDs–a total flop! And–what are they called?–super ultra-value high-quality CDs? Not beloved by the masses, people!

What I want, and what the future holds

I want a super-realistic format whose flaws are imperceptible to the human ear. I know that some people claim this for CDs (or say that CDs are close enough to be good enough), but don’t believe it, and I don’t think most genuine audiophiles do either (I’m a semi-genuine audiophile). This format may already exist–perhaps just digital audio with a high enough sampling rate is fine. Heck if I know. But I don’t want to compromise.

Then, I want a no-bother delivery system. I don’t want to own anything. I want to go to my computer, stick “Haydn string quartets” in the search and have a list pop up of every recording ever made. I want to be able to pull up the album covers and liner notes for the albums (presumably under such a system album covers would not be made for new recordings, but I would like to access those of the past). I would be willing to pay a substantial amount for such a system–a subscription fee or whatever.

I fully recognize that systems like this already exist: my mom and stepdad have whatever-it’s-called in their condo, and it’s pretty amazing. Clearly, things are only going to keep moving in this direction. We’ll have to keep fighting the record companies and the RIAA and all the other “stakeholders” delaying progress; we’ll have to choose the audio format and iron out the tech; but within no great span of time we’ll have perfect audio on demand without the limitations of physical media, iTunes, and all that claptrap!

MATT ROUGE

PHYTALMIOS.

In the past, I can feel his progeny,
pullers of transport and the plow
through and across his captured moisture,
but the black buggies and sun-white pickets
train them minorly. His bounty is the same,
I see, the maize and soy mirror the expanse
he rules best beyond the coast, deep with octopi,
as if these waves could cover anything he knows:

pearl on stalk and drop on leaf, from rain
and things like rain, lulling me awake
at five thirty in the shudder of his rule:
even here that structure, mantle and molecule,
even here within me, tightened by him,
straightened, for strength in trial and tide.

I work in the automotive industry in a marketing capacity: about 60% of the writing I’ve done over the past four years has been for two major Japanese automakers, and that figure for this year would be about 95%. I care about the industry, so here is my take on the plight of the American Big Three.

As the MSM and blogosphere have noted, the problem isn’t that the Big Three make poor cars any more: quality is as good as or better than what Europe makes, and about as good as what Japan makes. Nor is the problem sales per se: regardless of the fact that the Big Three have lost market share bigtime to foreign brands since, well, a long time ago, their combined and separate market shares are still huge. Nevertheless, the numbers don’t add up and they are bleeding cash.

And that’s really the essence of the problem: there is no one thing that needs fixing, no two things, nor any group of things that one could change to make things right. Operations, marketing, finances. Nothing particularly stellar, yet nothing standing out as fixable for salvation. This state of holistic malaise is what makes the future of these companies look so grim.

The reason why it has gotten to this point, I surmise, is the same reason why Nissan was nearly bankrupt a decade or so ago: there are too many “stakeholders” with incentives not to change. The parasitic execs and deadwood middle management just want to hold onto their jobs, the union is playing its own game, the dealers want things to be as easy as they were in the good old days, and so on. The change that is required to make any these companies viable will be not pleasant for the majority of people in them. How much easier, then, to cross one’s fingers, beg the government for bailout money, and pray that the same system can produce different results.

I don’t know how easy it would be to implement either legally or culturally, but my plan is, indeed, to change everything:

1. Put all three companies into whatever kind of receivership is legally possible so that the execs no longer have control. My general impression of “public” companies in the United States (and Japan, for that matter), is that management runs the company for itself, not the shareholders. The cuts must be deep: symbolically canning a few C-levelers will only invite new parasites to take their place.
2. Give the workers a fair contract paying them what the Japanese companies pay their employees. Use this opportunity to axe mercilessly any deadwood here, too.
3. Send in the ops people to make manufacturing perfect. Shut down every facility and get rid of every asset that is not performing as needed.
4. Cut out every brand and every model that is not doing well in the market and does not show potential for success. If this causes dealers to fold, do something for them that is fair.
5. Let the government enact universal health care and assume the pension debt of the automakers. Let them start from scratch, without excuses.
6. Let the government subsidize and otherwise support every intelligent green technology the companies are working on.
7. Install new management from the ground up that is incentivized to make cars of revolutionary greatness.

I’m not talking about cleaning house here; I’m talking about gutting the building.

If this were done, the American auto industry really would have a chance to compete with Europe, Japan, and Korea. I say this because I have seen the Japanese auto industry from the inside: I know the language, I know the culture, I know the thought patterns. Japan does a pretty good job of creating good cars, but the vast majority of its cars are (like those of the Europe and US) boring and uninspired. US companies light on their feet and ready to make bold moves could leave the ponderous Japanese business culture in the dust if they so chose.

The American auto industry is, of course, a lot, lot more than Ford, GM, and Chrysler. It’s the huge RV industry, it’s Mack and Peterbilt and other truck and specialty automotive companies, it’s Harley-Davidson, it’s all the American suppliers to the foreign and domestic automakers producing here, and, yes, it’s also the foreign automakers and their many US plants employing many US workers. That said, automobile design and brands born and bred in the US have an important role to play both here and around the world, so my hope is that the Big Three (or some surviving subset thereof) can get their act together and create a purposeful and exciting future for themselves.

1. Looking looks back.
2. The fear is gone, especially of the future.
3. The free and easy chance to snap, dig, cut, one up, or smack down is not taken.
4. 2/3 of the way.
5. You feel a hand on your shoulder when you sit and think.
6. Four lungs make sleep easier.
7. Iron loyalty, lapidary trust.
8. You don’t have to sell.
9. Dreams written down overlap much and conflict little.
10. ∞

You can’t really make anybody do anything–including yourself. I have been meaning to write a whole post on this, but the one sentence suffices, I think.

One thing I always wonder when the GOP is chanting, “Lower taxes, lower taxes,” is just what tax rates they think would serve the country best? You can’t assume that taxes should always be lower than what they are, and basic math tells us there is a rate than which nothing lower is possible.

I am in love with Brahms’ second string sextet. The tonality reminds me of Debussy. In the second movement, the scherzo, Brahms delivers one of those sinuous dances with tears in its eyes. Brahms, Brahms, Brahms–how much you have taught me in the past five months, I cannot even begin to relate. Thank you, dear friend!

I continue my relationship with Beethoven’s 8th Symphony; for more than a year now it has been a shot in my spiritual arm, so to speak. Four movements, four melodic tours de force. It’s Beethoven, so of course you are getting brilliant instrumentation, but this has special appeal to me. This symphony is short (Beethoven’s shortest, in fact), punchy, upbeat, and unforgettable. I am curious why it is not more well known.

I have this two-CD set as well, “The Best of Boccherini.” He is, in a word, great. I really need to explore his work more, as does the world, for he has been overly ignored.

A truism of blogging is that you never know what posts are going to get the most hits. Searches on “Punjab choley” have landed me more hits than just about anything other than “matt rouge.”

So today I’m writing a new post, this time complete with recipe and a more appetizing photograph of my most recent choley adventure. I cannot promise that my choley is exactly as it is made in the Punjab region; rather, I suspect that, in terms of spices, it probably isn’t. I do believe, however, that most Indians and Pakistanis would enjoy it! Note: I do not use use any butter in my Indian cooking, nor meat, so this receipt is perfect for vegans. In fact, it is an incredibly satisfying dish; you will not miss the animal products in this one!

The basic ingredients

The essence of Punjab choley is

1) Chickpeas (aka, garbanzo beans). Imagine cupping your two hands and filling them with dried chickpeas; that’s about how much I used, soaking them for over a day. They filled your basic steel mixing bowl (I never measure these things out, as you can tell). You can used canned chickpeas, too, but I love the texture of the dried after you’ve cooked the heck out of them; they retain a delightful springy texture to them. And if there is a more economical food than dried chickpeas, then, well, I haven’t found it yet.

2) Tomatoes. I used two cans of diced tomatoes; canned tomatoes are ideal in texture for this dish.

3) Onions and ginger and garlic. I used two large yellow onions (chopped not too fine) and ton of ginger, probably about a quarter of a pound. I julienne the ginger quite fine instead of grating it; it retains a bit of crunch within the dish even after lengthy cooking that pleases the palate. I did not use garlic this time because I didn’t have any, but use as much as you like, chopped or not chopped as you please.

The seasoning

1) Salt to taste. It really doesn’t need much.

2) Hing (asafoetida resin–they’ll have it at your local Indian food store. Important hint: store the opened container in your freezer; otherwise, it will totally stink up a cabinet!). I use a lot of hing in this, but you can completely leave it out if you wish.

3) Dried hot peppers. I threw in a bunch of those little round Indian peppers, but other types will do. You can also leave them out to keep the spice level down: totally a matter of personal preference.

4) Spice blend. You will not go wrong if you just put in a bunch of regular curry powder and a few extra cardamom pods. I typically will use a bunch of G&S curry powder as a base (this may not sound very gourmet, but it is hard to grind certain spices to a fine powder, and this gets in a good base of these upon which to build creatively), add in additional coriander, cumin, fenugreek, ajowan seeds, and cloves that I grind myself. I then throw in cardamom pods and a cinnamon stick whole into the slow cooker. Again, all this is a matter of personal preference, and you can spice it lightly or heavily.

5) Sweetener. You don’t need much, but there should be a bit of sweetness to the dish–just a hint. I use 100% maple syrup; maybe about 1/4 cup.

6) Curry leaves. A few of these can go in at the end of the cooking process (otherwise the flavor disappears; note, however, that the flavor is very strong, so don’t put in too many). These can be hard to find fresh (and that is the only way they come), but they had them Saraga market one day and I bought some. Hint: They freeze very well. They are optional in the dish.

The cooking process

Fry the onion, ginger, and garlic in vegatable oil on low to medium heat until brown and slightly mushy. Put this and everything else into the slow cooker with adequate water (which is to say, you fill it up with water and let it cook down and keep adding water as necessary; the end product, however, should be moist but not soupy) and cook on “high” for about six hours. Check the choley-in-progress from time to time to make sure that you are not burning the dish; not all slow cookers cook at the same rate. At some point you will want to turn the heat down to “low” and cook for an additional period of time: maybe four to six hours, but so long as you are not burning the dish you are not really hurting it, either. If you used canned chick peas, cooking time will be much reduced.

I like to cook the dish until it’s “destroyed,” as I put it. The chickpeas get some mush to them and the color of the spices has completely penetrated them. The tomatoes and onions and ginger and whatnot have all been converted to a tangy sauce for the beans.

Serve over brown rice or a grain mixture of your choice, and I really don’t think there is a healthier, more flavorful, more satisfying, or for that matter more economical meal on the planet. Make a ton, eat heartily, and freeze some portions in those Glad containers for later consumption, and your life will be perfect!

My last name, “Rouge”

In case you didn’t know, rouge means “red” in French, but my ancestors did not come from France. My great-grandfather, Charles A. Rouge, came from Geneva, Switzerland, to New York City in the early 1900s. I don’t know much about him. His son, Charles F. Rouge, ran an art supply store in Manhattan until his death in the mid-1950s. My father, Lawrence Rouge, entered the military soon after he got out of college and married my mother, who is originally from Southern Indiana. They settled in Indianapolis in the early 1970s, and thus begins the story of my Hoosierhood (actually, I am adopted, so four people established my Hoosierhood, for which I am extremely grateful).

I am the last of the male Rouges in my family, and there are only three other persons currently of the tribe who have borne this august appelation from birth: my unmarried sister, my unmarried aunt, and my three-year-old daughter. It’s a rare name, and a good one I think, so it would be a shame if I did not combine DNA with a suitable partner and have some sons to carry on the tradition (the first of which will definitely be named “Charles”).

In English, “rouge” is a word not so rarely used (a woman rouges her cheeks with a bit of rouge). Despite this fact, throughout my life people have mispronounced my name egregiously, calling me “rogue” or “roogie.” I finally discovered a way to get people both to say it correctly and remember it for the long term: when introducing myself, I say, “I’m Matt Rouge–like ‘Baton Rouge’ without the ‘baton.’”

Should I ever run for president of the United States, my campaign slogan will be, Rouge, White & Blue. Were I not to do so, I am quite certain that the GOP would accuse me of being an effete Frenchman a la Kerry and “red” like a communist.

My first name, “Matt”

To be sure, there is nothing unusual about the name Matt. I did have an issue with it, however. I used to go by “Matthew” in a halfhearted way:

New Person: Hi, what’s your name?
Me: Matthew.
New Person: ¡Mucho gusto! Is that “Matthew” or “Matt”?
Me: Either, I guess.
New Person: Well, which do you prefer?
Me: Gosh. Let’s go with “Matt.”

When I lived in Japan I was always “Matto.” When I came back to Indy in 2004, I decided just to go with “Matt”: simpler, easier, and with no confusion about whether “Matthew” or “Matt” is desired by moi (not French, Swiss!).

For what it’s worth, I never use my middle name.

UPDATE

My sister Emily wrote this on my Facebook wall:

Hey Matt, actually our ancestors did come from France – our great grandfather’s wife – Josephine Piquet was from St. Pierre, France

So I guess I am an effete Frenchman after all.

Three months ago you made my heart sing: you told me we were getting back together after a seven-month hiatus. Within a week you found out you were pregnant. I made a trip to Nebraska to help you, yet within six weeks we were no longer on speaking terms; my last email to you was on September 22, 2008.

It has been a torment to reach into the ether and feel you out there and know how much you’re suffering. But two days ago or so ago I reached out and all I perceived was cold and mean. This is not how I wanted, or expected, to see you, but this is how I saw you. It was not, to be sure, all of you, the whole you, but it was a part of you; is; and I saw it very clearly and felt it most deeply.

Yesterday and today I have been dealing with a person whom, like you, I love deeply and want to see succeed in life, but who, reminiscent of you, has been using and taking and not fulfilling promises. I got angry. I got frustrated. And I thought, “I’m done with this.” And I really was done, and I’m not going back.

Being done with her means being done with you: I thought, “If I get rid of promise-breaker B, then I am emotionally done with promise-breaker A.” And so it was: I became emotionally done with you, not merely by dint of the logic of the situation: I wasn’t convinced that you were not someone desirable, not someone to clutch within the white corpuscles of my spiritual heart; rather, in elegant extension of the negative emotion I felt for this other person–to wit, frustration, anger, and resignation–I finally rejected you, threw you out of my heart as someone undesirable, as someone who fails to meet the standard and feels like someone who so fails.

That’s not all that has caused this; there are other bits and pieces. I saw a woman the other day who just looked so beautiful and cuddly and kind; I just felt such a warmth in my heart toward her, and, after a long time of not finding anyone toward whom I could feel such emotion–even in such an admittedly low-information, fantasy-based manner–that feeling was like a shot in the arm: it reminded of me of my ideals, of why I loved you so much and gave so much of my heart to you in the first place.

I also did the Reiki Level 2 class with you-know-who yesterday. It’s sad, in a way, that such a class would (if I perceive my own experience correctly) catalyze not beneficence, not magnanimity, but instead a pissed-off desire to take out the garbage of the soul; but that, apparently, is one of the things it did for me, and I do think it to be something that will lead to greater health in me.

No, I had never expected the emotional transition described above to be the method by which I finally got over you, but I am happy that I have. That’s not the whole story, however. I still love both of you; I still want both of you to succeed. I also perceive, however, that your success at this point is up to you. I gave what I could; I shall not give any more, I shall send myself into the ether toward you no more.

That does not change the fact that you are most intelligent and intellectually gifted woman I have ever met. You are stunningly brilliant. You have powers and gifts about which the average person can only dream. You have beauty and charm. In this blog post I offer my final prayer for you; I send out my final increment of energy toward you: I pray, Great Spirit, to all the powers of goodness and wisdom in the Universe, that you become a light to yourself and your child and the world and fulfill the potential of your gifts and your magnificient soul and achieve happiness in your journey. I love you forever. Buona fortuna!