The Cats Of Piran

We just came back from a trip to Slovenia, which included a couple of nights in Piran on the Adriatic coast. Seems like people aren't the only ones to appreciate life in this sunny, cobblestoned village.

Prague The Way It Used To Be (And Still Is, In Some Places)

I bought this little booklet of panoramic photographs of Prague for 10 CZK in some dusty antikvariat in Prague in the mid-1990s. The photos are from the Czech news agency CTK and appear to date from the mid-1970s, since the packet includes a photo of a bright and clean Nusle Bridge, which opened in 1973. I also love the cover shot of the castle and Charles Bridge because it includes a few branches of the giant weeping willow tree that used to grow on that spot (which was sadly cut down for some reason and has since been replaced by a much smaller tree).

The photographs depict a much quieter city than the Prague of today. There are only a few dozen people scattered across the Charles Bridge on a bright summer’s day, and not a kiosk in sight. Today, the bridge is packed with merchants and musicians and hundreds (if not thousands) of tourists, even on the grayest of days. Ditto Old Town Square.

It’s also fun to see the trams circling Wenceslas Square, before the highway was wedged between the square and the National Museum, also in the mid-1970s, I’m guessing, and all the pastel-colored cars parked in Old Town Square.

I'd say Petřín pretty much looks the same as it does in these photographs. (If you're visiting Prague in the spring, summer or fall, and you don't take a walk on Petřín hill, with its incredible views across the city, and its apple blossoms and lush grass, you're missing a real treat.)

As an accompanying brochure to the photos exhalts:

“Prague is never the same, it changes with the seasons of the year, with each hour of the day. Blossoming streets of Petřín parks in spring, like rosy lace beneath the blue canopy of the sky. Painters are ashamed to paint the scenery, it is trumpery, they say. The transparent air of the summer evenings with neon signs in Wenceslas Square. Warm summer nights on the Vltava banks, old lamps illuminating the Kampa Island.  Thousands of shining windows in the Northern or Southern Town, families, homes, life. Autumn fogs in the morning through which the ruby light of traffic signs blinks on the crossroads: Stop. Yes, let us stop for a while at least, look around and play hid-and-seek with Prague.”

A darker time for Czech life and politics (although some would certainlyi disagree), but oh, to have had the chance to see the Prague of 1975 as a Western tourist.

Have Cigar, Will Pose

A few weeks ago I was asked by my friend Lindsay Taylor at the Prague Film & Theater Center if I'd like to be one of the models for a photo shoot by Belgian-based Fab Longo of GO Photography and his colleague, Vito Motiv, from Luxembourg.

I'd seen some of their rather unusual work before on Facebook and so I jumped at the chance, not knowing exactly what I was getting myself in for. All I knew was that they were using a moody ad for "Boardwalk Empire," featuring an intimidating-looking Steve Buscemi, as their inspiration for the night.

I wore my best suit, brought a few cigars and a pipe as props, and had a blast as Fab and Vito used a green screen, a smoke machine, and a few tricks in post-production to produce the photographs that you see here. I thought you'd get a kick out of them just as much as I did. Funny that I keep getting typecast as the mean, obnoxious, intimidating middle-aged guy, which seems to be about the only part that I'm asked to play in the few film roles I've had the pleasure to be involved in.

I'm also including a few final shots of the other models I was working with that night -- Paul Dean (Bleeding Eyes), Jay DeYonker (the hoodlum), Gayle Roberts (Edith Piaf), and Žéna Lí (um, well, you decide what she is in that crazy shot!).

Anyway, I believe Fab and Vito are planning an exhibition of their work in Prague soon, so I'll keep you posted.

Ischia & Naples, Italy

'The Cocktail Book' -- For Private Use

I bought this small book, "The Cocktail Book: A Sideboard Manual for Gentlemen," in an antique shop in Eugene, Oregon, in 2000. The original copyright is 1900, with this particular edition dating to 1908.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a connoisseur of cocktails -- an (very) amateur bartender, if you will -- and so when I spotted this, I just had to have it. (You can read more of my cocktail posts here and here and here, for example.)

Let me quote from the book's introduction:

This book is not placed before the public as a "bar-tender's guide," nor is it a list of all the fancy combinations of various liquors invented to advertise certain establishments, or for imposing on the ignorant. It is a recipe book compiled for private use. By following the directions given, it is hoped that any gentleman will be able to provide his friends with most of the standard beverages, mixed in an acceptable manner.

Imposing on the ignorant? Indeed!

Anyway, it's a fascinating little volume, for a variety of reasons.

I love old books with notations in the margins or inscriptions or old notes and cards and clippings tucked away in the pages. This book has them all.

The flyleaf has a lovely little dedication:

Greetings!!
to John (alias Jack, "Duke" etc.)
from his ban[c]kers & friends
Johnny Pratt
Waldo C. Hodgdon
Christmas 1909
N.B. "Here's looking at you";
hoping you may say the
same to us, after you have
got to know this books [sic].

On the back cover the owner of the book has glued little clippings of cocktail recipes that appear to have been snipped from the pages of "The New Yorker" magazine. So charming.

In addition, a yellowed clipping roughly ripped from a newspaper and pressed between the pages contains a variety of eggnog recipes ("General Harrison's Eggnog," "William's Eggnog," and "Hot Eggnog" among them) and seems to have been published in December 1936, from what I can deduce from clues on the reverse. Which could mean that the same owner kept this little volume close at hand for almost 30 years. Incredible.

Plus, I really love that this guideboook contains recipes for cocktails using absinthe, which was banned in the United States in 1912. As many are, I'm fascinated by absinthe, and I have a bottle at home, but I've yet to make either of the absinthe recipes contained herein. I must admit, it's not my favorite tipple, but I've vowed to whip up an Absinthe Frappe one of these days.

It's also fascinating to leaf through this book and see how the recipes have changed over the years.

In this book, the standard recipe for a Manhattan, which we drink more than any other cocktail in our house, calls for gum syrup, what we would call simple syrup today, I guess, but with the addition of gum arabic, an emulsifier; Boker's bitters, a predecessor of Angostura bitters that went out of business during Prohibition; Italian vermouth (doesn't specify sweet or dry), and whiskey. Of course, today's recipe for Manhattans do not call for simple syrup or any kind of sweetener. At least none that I've seen.

Even the recipe for a Martini Cocktail calls for three dashes of orange bitters, in addition to the gin and vermouth (again, it doesn't specify), while the recipe for Martini Cocktail -- No. 2 includes, intriguingly, half a teaspoonful of sherry.

Anyway, inspired by a chance encounter with the wonderful blog 901 Very Good Cocktails: A Practical Guide, by cocktail historian Stew Ellington, I thought I'd share this tiny gem with the world.

King Oscar

We've lost one cool cat.

Oscar, the outdoor cat who we fed and cared for four years at our old house in Černý Vůl, and who we continued to visit and feed even after we left, died this week.

We buried him this morning with the kind help of our former landlord, who was just as attached to Oscar as we were. We truly thank him for all he did for Oscar. We even found out that the people who moved into the house after us had taken Oscar to the vet a couple of times for that recurring cough of his.

Oscar had a lot of people in his life who loved him.

As Daisy said, Oscar was as sweet a soul as you could find, and the only cat she ever met who actively looked out for the other strays in the yard. Oscar was truly one of the greats.

I wrote about Oscar quite a bit on this blog, especially when he was very sick in 2009 with pneumonia. You can read more about him here: The Funny Thing Is, I'm Really A Dog Person; Godspeed, Oscar; Oscar Update; Farewell, Little Friend; Pussy Galore; What To Do About Oscar?; and The Černý Vůl Cat House.

Rest in peace, Oscar.

An Afghanistan Photograph

This is a photograph from Afghanistan that I've always been proud of.

Believe it or not, it's the kitchen at Kabul University in November 2002, shortly after deadly riots by students upset over their poor living conditions.

I visited the university to talk to the students, to see first-hand how they were surviving, how they were living, what they were eating. It was shocking.

But I do love the steam rising from these huge kettles of beans (if I remember correctly) being cooked over open wood fires and the sunlight streaking down on this rather medieval-looking setting.