Turning Away

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” -Mark Twain

My initial reaction to the news may resemble Twain's sentiment. That first feeling was followed by some guilt and self-examination of the prospect of being glad to learn of Bin Laden's death. I could rationalize my response as a feeling of relief, a recognition of some measure of future violence removed from the world, or perhaps a satisfaction in justice being served. But those are all secondary responses, and each related concept brings a world of complexity and moral grey terrain.

As a kid I used to climb the cliffs at the edge of my town and gaze out across the low plain that leads up to New York City. Hours of staring at the that skyline and wondering about its inhabitants etched the view into my mind indelibly. I've stood at the top of the towers with my grandparents, marveling at the panorama, feeling tiny in that ocean of people below.

Watching those towers fall on a tiny laptop computer screen, surrounded by speechless colleagues, I could only imagine the horror of the people trapped within. I felt a piece of myself falling with them, still standing on that observation deck with my grandparents, tumbling into a twisted broken darkness.

Blame is always a complicated thing, and ten years of war, politics, and mass-media frenzy has left us standing in a very strange place. I still feel myself standing on that cliff, looking at the skyline, with its gaping hole. I can hear the cheers now, and I have no urge to join them or chide them. All I really want to do now is turn and walk away.

Afterglow

I found profound contentment in washing a kitchen full of dishes, alone in the waning hours of this evening. The music of Melody Gardot and Van Morrsion drifted in from the living room, as sudsy warm water poured over my hands, and I grinned in recollection of a night well-spent. Winter, you've got nothing that a kick-ass pananag curry, a good bottle of wine, and great company can't melt away.

The Convenience of Proximity

There are days when all I want to do after work is plop down on the couch, watch a favorite TV show and eat whatever is convenient. In the past that has usually been pizza or some other fast food, but when you have two huge rib chops from The Piggery lurking temptingly in your fridge and a yard full of fresh garden produce beckoning right outside your back door, convenient can take on a different meaning.

So tonight after coming home, somewhat withered from a relentless heat wave, we treated ourselves to those amazing chops, grilled and slathered in Dinosaur BBQ sauce, paired with roast apples, and accompanied by a garden sald of green-leaf lettuce and sugar snap peas with roast onion and mushrooms. I couldn't have felt more satisfied after, kicking my feet up and watching an episode of Lie to Me with Charlotte. I could definitely get used to this.

Independence Day

This 4th of July had me thinking on what I value most about living in America, and high on that list is the opportunity I've had to lead a self-determined life. I realize that opportunity is not distributed evenly in this country (nor anywhere else), but I won't pretend to resent that I do have it. Of all the choices I have the luxury of making, I believe that those I make about what I eat have some of the most regular and profound effects on my health and well-being and that of the community and environment in which I live.

Planting and nurturing a garden, watching it grow, and learning how to feed myself has become such a rewarding experience. Discovering the intricate connections between the living soil, the plants, pests, and beneficial organisms makes me feel aware of and connected to the natural world in a very fundamental way. Choosing what I grow grants me a huge variety of options for my culinary adventures; ones that are free of pesticide residue, fresher, and more nutritious than anything grown thousands of miles away. Obviously it also consumes a lot less energy.

Purchasing a significant portion of my food from local sources has also become a very fulfilling experience. I'm not a vegetarian, but I do want the animals that provide me with food to be treated as humanely as possible. Knowing the people that raise these animals (even becoming friends with some), I can see that they care deeply about the entire process of animal husbandry, and approach it with thoughtfulness, respect, ingenuity and care. The fact that the food they produce is safer, more nutritious, and tastier goes without saying.

I am very happy to support the local food economy, as I feel that doing so increases the health, security, and prosperity of Ithaca and the surrounding region. It supports the livelihood of people I care about, and helps to foster a robust local food web, which will become essential as energy prices inevitably rise.

With all of this in mind, we celebrated Independence Day with local food.

Breakfast was a delicious combination of scrambled eggs from Daring Drake Farms, bacon from The Piggery, and freshly-picked black raspberries.

For lunch, we enjoyed one of The Piggery's new items: hot dogs! They were perfect for the occasion, and accompanied by a fresh-picked garden salad with merlot lettuce, arugula, and snap peas, toped in a lemon-balsamic vinaigrette with basil and cilantro. Fresh-squeezed lemonade washed it down perfectly.

Dinner was a savory combination of Autumn Harvest Farms chicken roasted with fresh garden herbs (rosemary, tarragon, sage, and basil) and another wonderful garden salad. Choice never tasted so good.

In the Thicket of It

Our black raspberry thicket is peaking right about now. We've already harvested about two quarts of berries, and expect at least that much more. I've been browsing them by the handful for breakfast, munching on them as I wander around the garden before getting ready for work.

Fresh black raspberries make a perfect summer dessert all on their own, but you haven't lived until you've tried black raspberry crumble. If I get a chance while the bushes are still bearing, I'm also going to try my hand at black raspberry ice cream.

There's No Place Like Home

We're back home again after a very entertaining weekend in Boston. We celebrated a good friend's 30th birthday in style: ballooning over the verdant hills of Vermont at sunset on Friday, chasing people around with squirt guns in Harvard square as part of an elaborate and hilarious scavenger hunt Saturday morning, riding horses through the woods at a local ranch in the afternoon, and wrapping up with a huge party and pig roast that evening. What a whirlwind!

Sunday was more relaxed, spent lounging among the good company of friends, wandering through shops in Cambridge, and enjoying a tasty dinner at East Coast Grill & Raw Bar. We drove back on Monday, headed over to Northstar for Jamaican night, then returned home for a much-needed quiet evening on the couch.

It's always comforting to return home after a trip, and for me it's also exciting, because I get to see just how much the garden has grown in my absence. It did very well in the four days we were gone. Infused by an inch of rain over the weekend, basil has bounded upward, peas have burgeoned from their flowers, beans have wound up trellises, squash leaves have fanned out like umbrellas, and green tomatoes have fattened up almost as much as I did in the gastronomical revelry of the past four days.

With a beautiful balmy evening as a backdrop, we prepared a delicious summer meal anchored by Brad's (of Piggery fame) pulled pork. An easy walk through the garden produced a variety of vegetables to sauté and compliment the pork: salad turnips and turnip greens, radishes, garlic scapes, and snow peas, mixed with young garlic, onion, and basil. Braised shredded cabbage leaves with apples and pomegranate rounded out the meal. It's good to be home!

14th Anniversary Breakfast

So this weekend was our 14th wedding anniversary! Breakfast included delicious fresh scrambled duck eggs from Daring Drake Farm, mouth-watering crispy bacon from The Piggery, and freshly-picked strawberries from Red Jacket Orchards.

Duck eggs are are similar in flavor and texture to chicken eggs, though they are a bit more rich. The richness especially lends itself to scrambled eggs, in that you don't need to add any milk or cream.

The bacon was part of our weekly CSA share with The Piggery. The share also contained two amazing pork rib chops, which we grilled out at Taughannock Falls State Park earlier this week. We forgot BBQ sauce and herbs for our picnic, but those chops, simply grilled and browned in their own fat, were amazingly juicy and flavorful. I'd dare say they were the best pork chops I've ever tasted.

The strawberries were part of our fruit CSA share through The Full Plate Farm Collective. We received two perfectly ripe quarts of them, plus some fresh rhubarb in this week's share.

The bananas were obviously not so local, though we did plant two paw-paw trees earlier this spring. Paw paws are sort of like a banana that can grow in northern climates.

More on Paw Paws from Wikipedia:

"The fruit is a large edible berry, 5–16 cm long and 3–7 cm broad, weighing from 20–500g, with numerous seeds; it is green when unripe, maturing to yellow or brown. It has a flavor somewhat similar to both banana and mango, varying significantly by cultivar, and has more protein than most fruits."

The Unfair Season

It's hot, like a snot in my nose, or a hose in the sun, it's no fun. 

Blazing orb, circles higher, bakes the ground, ceaseless fire.

Lumber we, through the haze, spirits dampened, in a daze.

Afternoon, cicadas sing, tiny heralds, sun, their king.

We just cower in the shade, humble vassals August made.

Fiery dusk, distant drums, cruel deception, no rain comes.

In the dark no dogs bark, howl they can't as they pant.

And I toss in my bed, sleep elusive, fevered head. 

Dreams of autumn, chilling breezes, frost once cursed, now she pleases.

Fickle things, my desires, cold when heat, ice when fires.

So for now I'll abide, knowing preference shifts like tide,

in a season when the air is quite anything but fair.

A Bit of Shouting About My Wet Feet

A friend of mine recently found me on Facebook and was somewhat surprised to see me label myself as "liberal". Being someone who generally despises being labeled in any way, here's a bit of expansion on that theme:

In terms of civil liberty, I'm technically on the libertarian side, meaning government should have little or no role in saying what consenting adults can do to/with each other. Therefore, my opinions in this area may qualify as "liberal" but may not resemble the liberal status quo. For example, I don't think the government has ANY worthwhile role in conducting or certifying marriages, of ANY type. However, if they are going to be involved in any type, they shouldn't be discriminating, in any way.

In relation to that thought, I think religion, in any form, needs to be kept far away from government policy. Some of us don't even believe in god, so it's pretty alarming when believers start to try to legislate their nonsecular morality on us. I believe secular humanism provides a pretty good framework for how people should treat each other, without getting god involved.

In terms of the environment, I fall soundly on the green side of things. Government has to protect natural resources because it is rarely in any individual's apparent short-term interest to do so. I happen to believe in protecting species, ecosystems, and environments for their own sake, but I don't think one needs to hold such views to support environmental protection. We're living in a closed system with finite resources, and preemptive protective legislation is a whole lot more desirable than massive population crashes (i.e. nature's way).

As for fiscal policy, I think we have been and are spending way to much money on just about everything. You have to balance budgets, sooner than later in my opinion, or you're just handing all of the problems to your children. This doesn't mean I'm a libertarian. It just means I don't want to bankrupt the country, collapse our currency, or create hyper-inflation. If you're going to have a government funded program, it needs to be FUNDED.

In terms of fiscal priority, I feel the welfare of the individual is much more important than that of the corporation. Corporations shouldn't have rights like individuals, and they should play absolutely no financial role in influencing policy decisions. I believe we should spend less money on killing people, and more money on helping them. Yeah, I think my hair is longer than it used to be.

I think that capitalism needs serious checks and balances the same way government does, or you get a series of rather dramatic financial bubbles, which tend to screw over the little guy, ultimately. Thoughtful regulation would work, with the emphasis on thoughtful. Throwing money at problems accompanied by knee-jerk grandstanding on CSPAN isn't doing anyone any good, regardless of the side of the aisle the bullshit is flying from.

I think that in the end, the most valuable role government can play is one that encourages the highest quality secular education for as many people as possible. It's a big world, with way too many of us, and the problems we're going face are enormous and complex. I want individuals who can think trying to navigate around these problems, instead of people who can shout in reaction to them while the ship is already sinking.


P.S. I've gone back and changed my political views to "complicated".

I Have a Scar or Two

In the spirit of one of my favorite scenes in "Jaws", a listing of my significant scars, and how they happened:

1. Under my chin. Age five. Split it open on Thanksgiving day, after taking a swan dive off of the coat pile on my parent's bed. 14 stitches, no novacaine. The term "papoose board" still makes me wince.

2. Right shin. Age ten. Fell on a bowhead garden rake hidden in the grass while playing wiffle ball, creating two deep puncture wounds. Six stitches in each puncture.

3. Left foot's second toe. Age Twelve. Accidentally dropped a 25-pound weight plate on my foot, smashing the toe. No doctor. The toe still looks a little...odd.

4. Left eardrum. Age thirteen. Severe perforation due to an unlikely combination of a beetle, bridge jumping, and an inevitable abscess. Wost pain in my life, by far, until they gave me morphine. If you're wondering why I keep asking you to repeat yourself when we're in a noisy room, now you know.

5. Right cheek and forehead. Chicken pox. Don't scratch them, really!

6. Left wrist. Age 21. No matter how drunk you are and how annoying the sorority girls may be, I still advise against putting your clove cigarette out on your wrist after they tell you it smells bad.


What about yours?