A Spork in the Road

It’s the weekend. Just because I work a 7-day week doesn’t mean you should. Here are some notes from my leisure reading this week…

Wine Spectator: Sake

The current Wine Spectator features a section on sake, which is on the rise in America even as it declines commercially in its native Japan.

The cheap sakes that are so often served (hot, to disguise poor quality) at Japanese restaurants in the US are apparently not indicative of superlative Japanese sakes, which are as varied and interesting as wine. Their delicate flavor, which doesn’t compete with food but rather “underlines” flavors, make them perfect pairings for light fare like seafood and vegetarian dishes.

I’m hoping to track down the highly recommended Dewazakura sake (a “daiginjo” sake), which is described as having “beatuiful aromas and flavors of orange blossom, honeydew and almond.”

And of course, many of the sakes had beautiful identifiers, such as “Moon on the Water,” “Bride of the Fox,” and “Star-Filled Sky” junmai ginjo varieties, and “Dreamy Clouds” Tokubetsu junmai nigori. How can a word-lover not want to taste those?

Elle: Beyond “Girl Friday”

The April Elle had a charming interview with rising star Rachel McAdams — you gotta love an interview that ends with: “Then she vanished quite slowly, ending with a grin, which remained some time after the rest of her was gone.”

But the highlight of this issue for me was Andrew Goldman’s article “Sign of the Times,” an in-depth piece on New York Times managing editor Jill Abramson, who may be in line to be the first woman ever to helm the paper. Goldman built a thorough, and thoroughly fascinating, picture of Abramson’s life in journalism and her refusal to bend to internal or external political pressures in her reporting. It also traced the Times’ rocky recent history and the strides being made at the Times by Abramson and others against institutionalized patriarchy.

For me, the article was a push-me-pull-you of optimism and dread, with the encouraging prospects of women continuing to equalize the gender power imbalance contrasting against sobering reminders of the tenuous position of legitimate journalism in our country.

Perhaps next week I’ll have finished Michael Chabon’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (which is being made into a film this year) and can file a book report!