• In this Story... with Joanne Greene

  • 著者: Joanne Greene
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In this Story... with Joanne Greene

著者: Joanne Greene
  • サマリー

  • Joanne Greene shares her flash nonfiction, each essay with custom music, showcasing tales and observations from her animated life. Her book, "By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go" is now available as a paperback, e-book, and audiobook from Amazon, Audible, Barnes & Noble, and your local independent book seller.
    GreeneCreative
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Joanne Greene shares her flash nonfiction, each essay with custom music, showcasing tales and observations from her animated life. Her book, "By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go" is now available as a paperback, e-book, and audiobook from Amazon, Audible, Barnes & Noble, and your local independent book seller.
GreeneCreative
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  • Tribute to Fried Clams
    2024/10/19
    Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!


    I know they’re not kosher, but I didn’t know that as a kid. Lobster isn’t kosher either; go figure. Some Jewish people in New England make exceptions; that’s all I can say on the subject. Fried clams are deep fried, which means they might clog my arteries, and perhaps even give me indigestion, given that once I get started, I can’t stop until every last clam is dipped in tartar sauce..or perhaps cocktail sauce if it’s provided as a second option, and ingested, eyes closed, in a state of bliss that can only be described as foodgasmic. A soft moan might be heard emanating from deep inside my memory banks as I’m drawn into the best of my childhood by the smell of salt water and the warm recollection of tiptoeing between rocks on Nantasket, Crane’s, or Wingaersheek Beach during hot, humid Boston summers. When a grain of sand lodges in my back teeth, I smile, knowing that these clams are authentic. As if there was any other kind. Ew, even the thought of a faux clam is chilling.
    Clam bellies were an acquired taste I developed post childhood as I’d only eaten clam strips – the neck of the clam – up until then. For many Wednesday suppers, as we called them, my parents took me to the All You Can Eat Fish Fry at Howard Johnson’s. My mom would chide my dad for ordering a second helping, which was perplexing as isn’t that the point of the All You Can Eat Fish Fry? While they were grousing about French fries and fried fish, such alliteration, I would chow down on clam strips, fries and cole slaw. Now that I know that “whole bellies” as these soft- shelled clams are known, include the clam’s gastrointestinal tract, I understand why they’re so tasty. I also can’t unknow that and the image is somewhat disturbing.
    Fried clams, for the uninitiated, are Ipswich clams soaked in evaporated milk, dipped in some combination of regular, corn and pastry flour, and then deep-fried in canola oil, soybean oil, or lard. They’re as iconic to New Englanders as barbeque is to Texas, Poutine is to Montreal, and tacos are to Mexico. The earliest mention of fried clams on a menu can be traced back to 1865. It was the menu of the Parker House hotel, now the pet-friendly Omni Parker House on School Street in Boston. The hotel and dining hall opened in 1855 and on that very first menu was an original creation – the Parker House Chocolate Cream Pie, now known as Boston Cream Pie. And, while I’m digressing from the topic of clams, allow me to share that in 1958 –I was just four – Boston Cream Pie became a Betty Crocker boxed mix. In 1996, longer after I’d abandoned my state roots, Boston Cream Pie was proclaimed the official Massachusetts State Dessert. And it wasn’t a slam dunk with competition from the Toll House Cookie, the Fig Newton, and Indian Pudding. You’ve never heard of Indian Pudding? It's a centuries old dessert, perhaps our nation’s very first, made by colonists with cornmeal they’d been gifted by Native Americans and molasses.
    You’re welcome for the suggestion of a great Thanksgiving dessert!
    But back to my beloved fried clams. It’s sad yet quite special that they are both seasonal and regional. Wanting what we cannot have on the west coast… and, everywhere, throughout the winter months….makes the fried Ipswich clam taste even sweeter.
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    4 分
  • Things That Fascinate Me
    2024/10/11
    Joanne’s book, “By Accident: A Memoir of Letting Go” is now available from your favorite online book seller. Stay tuned to hear if Joanne will be speaking at a bookstore near you. If you’re interested in having her come to your local bookstore, contact her directly at joannergreene@gmail.com or get updates on her website at joanne-greene.com and make sure to sign up for her newsletter!

    In this story I zoom in on things that fascinate me. I’m Joanne Greene.
    Walking slowly, or standing still, in a forest allows me to see, hear and feel things I miss when hiking, chatting with a friend, focusing on where I’m going rather than where I am. There’s movement, even in the absence of wind. Leaves drifting and silently falling from branches; insects building, feeding, mating; birds planning for their future, hiding acorns in tree trunks.
    Dried leaves remind me of the aging process. Like aging leaves, human skin and hair dry out, skin wrinkles and sags, joints stiffen, and then we fall to the ground. I feel for the leaves; we are all alive and in some phase of deterioration. Nothing living lasts forever. Even the Redwoods.
    Yet we can connect with the living through invisible dotted lines, by absorbing chemicals from the trees, gazing into the eyes of any animal, communicating more deeply over time with our pets. When my dog does exactly what I ask her to do is she learning English words or is she learning to read me? Is our growing codependence and interspecies love a good thing? Is this even a question worth asking?
    She loves cheese and bread like every dog, and so do I. My childhood featured cream cheese (for shmearing on bagels), cottage cheese (that only my mother liked) and American cheese, individually wrapped, for cutting in fourths and placing on Ritz crackers for an afternoon snack with tomato, or possibly, V8 juice. The smell of Kraft Parmesan cheese made me gag, yet today I inhale the fragrance of Parmesano Reggiano and my mouth waters. I discovered the seeming endless world of cheese while working at Papillon, a wine and cheese café one summer during college - Port Salut, Camembert, Burrata, Emmentaler. In Amsterdam, I learned that Gouda is pronounced Gouda (Chouda.) And my education is just beginning.
    Some of us love the cuisine with which we were raised- comfort food, a taste of home. Others of us moved on, in my case from iceberg lettuce, canned vegetables, London Broil, and chopped liver. I’m fascinated by Ethnic foods of all varieties and even though the grandfather for whom I’m named was a kosher butcher, I can live without meat. Give me spices like zaatar, garam masala, curry and ramen and pho. I’m always game to try a new place, eat with my hands, sit on the floor.
    And while on the floor, I might turn upside down or sit in a lotus position. Yoga has been my savior since 1974 when I sang “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine” at the Theosophical Society in Boston and calmed the f down. Slowing down my breathing is at the center of the miracle. Over the years I’ve learned to count my inhalations and exhalations, to focus on one Drishti or point at which to stare, to send blessings to my loved ones, my neighbors, the guy who annoyingly beeped his horn at me when I didn’t leave the intersection fast enough for him. I’m captivated by the ancient knowledge that stretching and strengthening our bodies in certain ways would improve our health – both physical and mental. And they weren’t necessarily overstimulated by cell phones and social media, traffic and multiple competing demands on their time and thoughts. Technology has so many answers, making our lives easier and more efficient, but ancient wisdom, like mother, often knows best. It’s the emphasis on balance, on interconnectedness, that I need, now more than ever, that I believe our world needs now. We have so much to learn from simply observing nature.
    Take the spider, for instance. Can you even imagine what it takes to design and create a web that is not only magnificent in its structure but durable, flexible, and can trap live prey? It’s an engineering feat beyond comprehension. As a young girl I knew that I was supposed to fear spiders but, after reading Charlotte’s Web, I simply saw these inventive, delicate, yet dogged creatures as my friends. I’ll coax an indoor spider onto a piece of paper and gently place her outside, rather than squish her like a bug as, admittedly, I’ll do to flies, ants, and other uninvited guests. To me spiders are royalty…and I will remain in awe of their artistry and practicality, the way a lack of light hides their webbing and a beam of sunshine reveals their glistening, symmetrical creativity.
    I am endlessly fascinated by the worlds I’ve yet to uncover….
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    6 分
  • October 7. One Year Later.
    2024/09/20
    Early the morning of October 7th, 2023, I took a call from my daughter in law Marie who, unbeknownst to me, was in the process of becoming Jewish.She said, “My mom called to tell me how upset she was about the attack on Israel.” I held my breath. Her mom lives in France. I’d been awake for all of 20 minutes, blissfully unaware. When we hung up, I turned on CNN and began to grasp the magnitude of the still unfolding catastrophe. In the moments and weeks that followed, I understood that Hamas had unleashed the worst assault against the Jewish people that had taken place in my lifetime. The pain and confusion were just beginning.I felt personally attacked – the first time I’d questioned my safety as a proud Jewish American. From the start, people on the left, my people, or so I’d always thought, were justifying Hamas’s actions, couching the unbelievably gruesome assault in the larger context of the occupation, as though there was any way to justify the slaughter of peace loving concert goers, as if there could be an excuse for attacking the very Israelis who lived close to Gaza in hopes of building bridges, of helping people whose own government put them in danger.I read a post that my young Muslim friend posted - the friend who, on behalf of her mosque, sent flowers to the JCC after a bomb threat forced our evacuation. She’s the partner with whom I planned interfaith activities to bring Muslims and Jews together – an Iftar, an art exhibit – as part of the Salaam, Shalom, Speaking of Peace initiative. Her post, like so many, condemned the actions of the Israeli military, the killing of innocent Palestinians. Her tone stung and I reached out, asking if we could meet to discuss our collective pain. She responded with an emoji – a tiny symbol that may have meant we were okay, the two of us, but that was it. Our people, I feared, were no longer okay with one another.I felt betrayed by the left, by the very people with whom I’d spend decades marching for justice, reproductive rights, voting rights, affordable housing, against racism and Islamophobia. I watched what was happening on college campuses, wondering where I would have stood as an eighteen-year-old. Would I, too, have seen Israel as the all-powerful occupier, the military giant, a puppet of the United States? Would my sympathies have gone to the thousands of Palestinians abandoned by their leaders yet killed by Jewish bombs? Why is no one on the left talking about the Israeli women who were raped, whose bodies were mutilated?During the first intifada, as a radio talk show host, I felt pressure from the Jewish community to speak out publicly. “You have a platform,” they said. But I was a journalist. I hosted debates giving both sides a chance to make their case. I asked questions, like my people have done for centuries. We learn by asking questions. With age comes perspective and, knowing so much more now about the history, it’s hard to listen to people who haven’t taken the time to learn. “From the river to sea,” they’re chanting but, when asked, too few knew which river and which sea were being referenced, not to mention the fact that their chant was calling for the end of Israel. Too few of those sacrificing sleep in encampments, feeling solidarity with the oppressed, had knowledge of all the attempts that have been made to make peace with Palestinians while ensuring the security of Israelis. As Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir famously said, “You cannot negotiate peace with somebody who has come to kill you.” On October 7th, 2023, Hamas came to kill, rape, torture, and kidnap Jews, as many as they possibly could. Hamas denies Israel’s right to exist, therefore a peace treaty with Hamas will never be attainable.It’s human nature to try to fix things, to come up with solutions, to reduce conflict to good and evil, us and them, the occupiers and the occupied. But most conflict is filled with complexity and nuance and, as such, demands empathy. We are meant to struggle. We make a grave mistake when we tell ourselves that we are totally in the right and not at fault at all. Our tradition offers us an opportunity to make teshuvah, to accept our human frailty, to look, to see, to acknowledge, to turn, and to try harder next time.My heart feels the pain of the hostages and their families, the displacement of families from Israel’s northern border, the trauma of Israeli soldiers who put themselves at risk every day, and the worry that plagues all Israelis and all people who fear for their safety. And my heart cannot grow cold to the suffering of innocent Palestinians, people displaced from their homes time and again, people used as human shields by their terrorist government. They didn’t ask for this and the hatred they’ve come to feel for Israelis, for Jews, for me, is understandable. May this war end. May something good come from all this horror and loss. May there be answers.
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    6 分

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