Radical kindness

We recently saw A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the new Tom Hanks movie inspired by Tom Junod's famous article "Can You Say ... Hero?" from the November 1998 issue of Esquire magazine. I discovered the piece years ago thanks to a long-running series called Why's This So Good? at Nieman Storyboard, which is a publication of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and a great way to find outstanding longform articles if you're interested. When I re-read the 1998 article, there were two moments that really struck me, one funny and one profound. The first occurred when Mister Rogers was going to film an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in Penn Station on Thirty-fourth Street in New York. The car he was in stopped

in front of the escalators leading down to the station, and when the doors opened—"Holy shit! It's Mister Fucking Rogers!"—he turned into Mister Fucking Rogers. This was not a bad thing, however, because he was in New York, and in New York it's not an insult to be called Mister Fucking Anything. In fact, it's an honorific. An honorific is what people call you when they respect you, and the moment Mister Rogers got out of the car, people wouldn't stay the fuck away from him, they respected him so much.

I have long since purged my Noo Yawk accent, but my inclination to use the New York honorific remains. So, for example, if you ask me who is the best soccer player I've ever seen, my first thought, before I catch myself, will probably be "Andrea Fucking Pirlo."

The second vignette that stood out for me concerned Mister Rogers' decision that

he wanted to live in heaven. Heaven is the place where good people go when they die, but this man, Fred Rogers, didn't want to go to heaven; he wanted to live in heaven, here, now, in this world, and so one day, when he was talking about all the people he had loved in this life, he looked at me and said, “The connections we make in the course of a life—maybe that's what heaven is, Tom. We make so many connections here on earth. Look at us—I've just met you, but I'm investing in who you are and who you will be, and I can't help it.

As Junod explains in a follow-up article in the December 2019 issue of The Atlantic ("What Would Mister Rogers Do?"), Mister Rogers took making real and lasting connections so seriously that he kept notes and files on his friendships, including the names of his friends' loved ones and printouts of their email correspondence. This, too, rings true to me in light of recent reading I've done on evolutionary psychology, which explains the importance of forming social attachments to our hunter-gatherer brains. How to make and then maintain those connections? Start by following Mister Rogers' first, second, and third ways to ultimate success in this world: "Be kind." And while you're working on being kind to others, be kind to yourself, too, because "[s]ome days, doing 'the best we can' may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect on any front — and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else." Mister Rogers was a wise man.

*********

I have some favorite ways to make beans on the stovetop, which is nice in summer when you don't want to turn the oven on. But on a cold fall or winter evening, it can feel good to warm your kitchen up by cooking something in a hot oven. I've made a different version of these beans (Roasted Sesame Green Beans) that go well with Cassie's favorite Salmon with Asian Barbecue Glaze, but this is a good variation that pairs well with lots of other main dishes.

Roasted Green Beans with Red Onion and Walnuts

Adapted from The Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook (2011)

Time: 35 minutes

Beans
1 pound green beans, stem ends trimmed
½ of a medium red onion, cut into ½-inch thick wedges
~1 tablespoon olive oil
½ teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper

Glaze
1 tablespoon (15 grams) balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon (7 grams) honey
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme leaves; or ¼ teaspoon dried thyme
2 medium garlic cloves, sliced thin

⅓ cup (35 grams) chopped walnuts, toasted

    1. Place a rack in the center of the oven, and heat to 450 degrees. Line an 18-by-13-inch baking sheet with aluminum foil. Place the beans and onions on the foil. Drizzle with oil and toss to coat, using tongs. Sprinkle with the salt and a few grinds of pepper, toss again, and spread evenly over the foil. Roast for 10 minutes.
    2. Meanwhile, stir the vinegar, honey, thyme, and garlic together in a small bowl. Using the tongs, toss the beans and onions with the glaze. Spread evenly over the foil again. Roast until the beans have started to shrivel and the beans and onions are dark brown in spots, about 10 to 12 more minutes.
    3. Taste for salt and pepper. Transfer to a serving platter. Sprinkle with the walnuts. Serve promptly. Serves 4 as a side.