VERYWHERE I GO I FIND A PAL

Sauerkraut is worthless. Just read the label on a can of the fermented cabbage.

The shreds of off-white vegetable matter are free of nutritional value. It provides zero percent of a person’s need for fat, carbohydrate, dietary fiber, sugar or protein. The company that makes the product boasts that it is “gluten free.” That’s easy to believe. It’s free of nearly everything. A serving of plain sauerkraut has five calories. That’s enough to power a human being for 3.6 minutes.

But sauerkraut, while worthless, is beyond compare. Served nestled within the curve of a pork sausage, sauerkraut provides a needed salty crunch. The sauerkraut picks up plenty of the fatty juices from the sausage. It’s, as they say, wunderbar.

There was never a pork sausage made that didn’t have too many calories. The low-calorie sauerkraut is, then, a great companion. Together, sausage and sauerkraut are a dynamic duo. It provides both fat and lean, sweet and saltiness. Sauerkraut is nothing. Sauerkraut is everything. Enjoy sauerkraut.

I am impressed with the bravery of the Ukrainians.

Surrounded by 150,000 Russian troops massed on three sides of their border, the Ukrainians, as interviewed by the Western press, are remarkably stoic, unmoved. Many citizens have picked up small arms. They train in quarries and old buildings. Others refuse to worry. They go ice fishing instead.

I compare that grim determination with what happens these days in the United States. Everything is an existential threat. Climate change. The national debt. The southern border. Our democracy.

Everywhere we look, we no longer see a future. Drug and alcohol use is up. Suicide is now the tenth leading cause of death in the United States.

Many Americans refuse to change, hanging onto old ways. They feel no obligation for the next generation. They see themselves as the end of history.

It is quite odd, of course, that the United States should obsess over its existence. Ours is not an existentialist nation. We are not going to create a new federal holiday to celebrate some chain-smoking French philosopher. Congress is not going to erect a bronze statue of John Paul Sartre on the National Mall.

Maybe a little existentialism might help, however.

Think of how French philosopher Albert Camus summarized existentialism within the Greek myth of Sisyphus. This is the man Zeus punished by making him roll a huge boulder to the top of a hill where, endlessly, it rolls back to the hill’s bottom.

The Ukrainians seem to understand this myth in their bones. They do not flinch from the chore of endless struggle. Instead, they accept it as the way of the world. They shoulder the burden of history.

I wish the Ukrainians well. I am jealous of what seems to be their national resolve and courage in the face of what really is an existential threat.

E VERYWHERE I GO I FIND A PAL

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W EINSCHENK RECORD REVIEW