More thanks to go around

Thanksgiving marks the one year anniversary of my blog. Last year I started things off by giving the menu for our 100-mile meal. That was an ambitious feast, rather too ambitious. (The crab stew really sent things over the top.) By the end of Thanksgiving day, I was exhausted from two solid days of cooking, and I hadn't had time to socialize with the people with whom I shared the meal. I knew that I couldn't do something like that again.

Happily, an alternative appeared: a friend of ours who had been joining us for Thanksgiving for years said she would be interested in co-hosting. And even though I've been putting on Thanksgiving dinners single-handedly for something like 25 years, I agreed to this idea. That's how tired I'd gotten! She and I have been working out the details over this past year. Roughly speaking, we're each making half of the meal, with our guests bringing some extras.

It's been an exercise in letting go. Also, in grabbing back and then letting go all over again. At times, this has felt painful, as though I were losing something precious. At other times, I've been able to relax and see that I am gaining time and space, and maybe other things too.

All this "working well with others" includes the pig. He will definitely be a presence at the table. My co-host and one of the guests have told me that they've talked about the wild boar meal they will be eating for Thanksgiving, and they are getting a positive, even envious, response from their friends. I am really looking forward to sharing the pig.

We're having wild boar pâté along with a seasonal vegetable and fruit plate as appetizers. The main dishes will be wild boar ribs (my contribution) and a roast chicken with stuffing (my co-host's). We are both gardeners, and so from our gardens we'll have chard, cauliflower, and potatoes (mashed). We'll also have sweet potatoes,  a pomegranate relish, and a green salad. For dessert, we'll be having an apple crisp and a pumpkin pie. This year I grew Long Island Cheese Squash for their reputed excellence. (Back in August, I was worried that I wouldn't have enough squash for Thanksgiving pie, but the pollination intervention did the trick!) So, the extra-long table (thanks to Iris's ingenuity!) will groan with bounty, as you can see.

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for so many things, a list that is too long to go into here. But let me simply say that one thing I am deeply thankful for is that I won't be sitting down to the Thanksgiving table all tuckered out.

Giving thanks

When I looked down at the 220 pound boar I had just shot and killed, I was filled with awe and gratitude to this animal that had just given itself over to me. I had brought the pig down with my first shot, one shot directly to his lungs, killing him almost instantly. This is what I had been taught to do and, somehow, although the scene had been chaotic, I managed to do it. I knew it was true, and yet it was hard to believe.

I found instantly that, having killed the boar, I was not afraid of him, or repulsed by him. Instead, I felt somehow close to him. I immediately felt easy about touching his body, which was a good thing, because very soon, I had to help move his body, and then I performed a procedure called "field dressing." This means the removal of the internal organs. It is done in order to cool the body temperature so as to preserve the meat. I had prepared for this, and I had our guide showing me the way.

Even so, cutting through the layers of membranes and then slowly revealing the miraculous beauty of this creature's inner makeup was astonishing. At a certain point, my task was to reach into the chest cavity in order to cut the diaphragm free. I needed to do this with both my arms. It was that kind of experience, and it went on from there.

After the field dressing, the guide and I dragged the body to the 4-wheel drive vehicle, and we drove to the skinning shed. There he and I skinned what I really now started to think of as a carcass. The guide then quartered it. This made it into pieces small enough to get into my cooler.

I came back home that night and the next day started butchering those big pieces into pork chops, tenderloin roasts, ribs, packages of pork shoulder, and so forth. Tomorrow, I'm going to make sausages with the leg meat, because I don't have a smoker to make ham, and wild pigs don't have enough fat to produce the right meat for bacon.

Knowing where this meat came from, where the pig lived and what he ate, informs how I feel about all the meat I have in the freezer now. The pig has changed me.

Thank you pig.

The hunt approaches

I am in the final days before my first hunt. There is certainly the possibility that this will also be my last hunt, because I am open to the possibility that the whole experience of killing a large animal and then gutting and preparing its carcass to be eaten will be more than I want to repeat. This is something I will be discovering.

These last few days are feeling increasingly intense, as I do more physically and mentally demanding practice. The whole thing feels a bit spiritual to me, actually.

• I have a teacher with new and exotic (to me) beliefs.
• Along the way, I have encountered adherents of these beliefs, as well as various splinter groups.
• I will have a special guide for the hunt who is different from my teacher. That is, I am being passed on to a superior expert for the culminating event.
• I have had to pass arduous tests: physical, mental and moral.
• I have made journeys: to pass tests, to engage in learning, and to experience the culminating event.
• If I am successful, I will be working very closely with blood (and guts).
• I will be taking in the flesh of the vanquished.
• I will be wearing special garments that I have prepared with special washing.
• I will wash myself with special care and special materials before the event.
• Knowledge of my own limits will be revealed to me as a result of the event.

From 100 yards away

Not to put too fine a point on it, I expect this is going to affect me in a big way.

My shooting is good enough now to pull down a pig, and I can get into a kneeling, shooting position from walking around in just seconds. I'm as ready as I can be.

I just have a few things left to do, including baking some cookies for my coach and me. Doesn't that sound funny?

Preparations Checklist

Just to give you an idea of all the things involved in preparing for the hunt I am going to undertake on November 8-10, here are the things I've done since I last posted to this blog:

• after the 10-day waiting period, I picked up the rifle that I told you I purchased. 
• I studied for and then passed my hunter's education certificate examination, which enabled me to get...
• my hunting license, along with a pig tag. You have to have a "tag" for every pig you expect to "take."
• I've purchased a whole bunch of things, including:
• a telescopic sight for my rifle
• camouflage clothing (top, bottom, hat, and gloves) designed to make me look like shrubbery
• special "combat" earplugs to protect me from the sounds of the same rifle referred to earlier
• a shoulder pad, to protect me from the impact of that same rifle (noticing a pattern?)
• various cleaning tools to clean, carry, or otherwise treat the rifle under different circumstances
• special laundry soap and personal soap which I'll use to clean all the clothing I'll take on the trip in order to remove all scent. Apparently wild pigs can't see well, but they can smell you from a mile away. Or something like it. So we have to disguise our odors. (This raises the question: why are we trying to look like shrubbery? But, hey, I'm just the student in this enterprise.)
• shooting sticks, which, together, make a bipod support I can use to stabilize myself for shooting from a sitting or kneeling position. This helps a lot, because the rifle weighs 7 pounds, and holding out in front ends up being tiring.
• and, last but not least: ammunition. Bullets. Oh boy. Did you know you can buy bullets on the Internet?
• And then there's all the practicing, and also a rather involved process of working in a new gun and sight.

Phew! So, this is what I've been doing with my spare time. I've been to my coach's Sunol ranch and I've also gone to a new range, the Richmond Rod & Gun Club, which is closer to me than the Chabot range I'd been to before.

It feels like a bit of a sprint, to be honest. I had imagined a slower-paced process. But the opportunity to have my first hunt be one I take with my coach has meant going along with her schedule, and so I accept it. An interesting by product is that my locavore Thanksgiving might feature some wild boar this year.

A big day

I'm appreciating this time out from the rigor of a weekly blogging routine, but I want to sit down and write a few notes about what I just did.

I bought a rifle! The Ruger Hawkeye International. I can't have it until October 5th at 2:00 something in the afternoon, after the 10-day waiting period, but it is mine.

Here's why I bought it: I am too small to borrow any of my coach's guns. It turns out that rifles are very size-specific. It matters how much distance there is between your shoulder and your hand, and also how much distance there is between your thumb and your index finger. My distances are that much smaller than the average man's that I am essentially off the chart for many rifles.

I had to look at a smaller rifle, like this one. My coach is the one who originally found this gun and thought it would suit me, but I had to try out a bunch of other guns first before I could tell what it was I was even looking at. Now I know the difference. With the bigger guns, I can't see out of the scope--the eye piece you look through to find the target. Also, I can't reach the trigger in the way required to press it properly.

Facing this size issue is amazing for me. I have rarely felt this small, and also, I have rarely had such a clear need to state the facts of my condition: "I can't see!" It doesn't do me any good to try to "please" my coach by trying to see (although I'm such an inveterate pleaser, I admit I have done some of that.)

So, this afternoon, I went down to the Old West Gun Room, where I'm becoming increasingly comfortable. Today, it was me and a couple of old guys. Nobody is ever in any kind of hurry down there, and they're all telling stories of their latest exploits. Today, I said it was my big day, buying my first gun, and one of the fellas was happy with me about it. He said there really weren't too many people who took up hunting out of the blue like I was doing. Most people learn it as kids. Anyway, I gotta say, I had a nice time buying my gun. Bob threw in a leather sling too. The gun is handsome, all decked out in leather, with a walnut stock.

So, now I'm a gun owner. Yee-haw!

The Pause Button

This is a quick post just to let you know that I'm going to take a break for a little bit. I have to study for my California Hunter's License, which takes about 10 hours on line, plus a 4-hour class. Here's the online class I'm doing. Since I work full time, I'm going to be squeezing this into the time I usually devote to writing.

I'm doing this because my coach thinks I'll be ready to go on a hunt with her in late November or December, which seems amazing, but I have to take her word for it.

Who knows? Maybe this will go faster than I think. I've gotta say: this is not the kind of material I'm used to absorbing. The closest I've come is my early love of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett.

Maybe we'll have pork sausage by Christmas!

Looking for common ground

I fly and collect flags. I have historic California flags, various peace flags, rainbow flags, flags from Catalan, France, Italy, and so on. Normally, I fly a different flag each month, sometimes based on what I consider to be the major holiday of that particular month. So, June's flag is the New Glory, a rainbow Stars & Stripes. That stays up until July 5th when I switch over to the French Tricolore in preparation for Bastille Day. August is Iris's birthday month, so she gets her pick.

The California Bear Flag

This month, I am flying the California Bear Flag, the flag flown briefly when we were a republic all by ourselves, for 26 days in 1846. Whenever I fly this flag, it reminds me of our state's link with that other state with a true republican past, Texas. I don't often consider my common ground with Texas, so this is an opportunity for me to reach out, as it were. When I do, I remember that we both have Mexican pasts, and we both made very dodgy, even reprehensible moves on our pathways toward statehood.

I'm looking for common ground with a new group of people now, the folks who know about marksmanship and hunting. In this country, that comes bundled with a bunch of other stuff. So, I'm spending time with members of the NRA. On and off, I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. For instance, when I drove into the parking area at the San Leandro Rifle & Pistol Range, it was full of Ford F-150s and other big old trucks, while I was in our little black Prius with the lefty bumper stickers. Gulp.

So how do I go looking for common ground? I've thought about this for a while, since back before we invaded Iraq. I noticed then that I really don't have a whole lot of experience talking with people who don't agree with me. I also noticed that this gap in experience was shared by many of my fellow countrymen and women. It occurred to me that it would be an act of patriotism, and a move toward world peace, for me to get better at this skill.

Now, I have an opportunity to walk the talk. How I'm going about it is by taking it at a slow enough pace that I have time to absorb what I'm doing, more or less. And, I'm disclosing to the people I meet in this new world exactly what I'm trying to do. In other words, I have to be willing to let myself be known, at least to some extent. And when I learn something new about a person or group I've met, I look for an echo within myself, to see if I can find a parallel or a place of intersection. That's one way to find common ground.

Another is that I am open to learning and my coach is open to teaching. That is a real starting place.

Sausage making

A note on all the images in this post: if you want to see them larger, just click on the image.

John Stewart of Black Pig Meat Company gave a terrific demonstration of sausage making at the Eat Real Festival last Sunday in Oakland's Jack London Square. I am eager to learn this skill in advance of bringing home a wild boar, as I've heard that sausage is a common way to prepare boar meat.

Stewart began by sharing his sausage recipe:

• 15 pounds of pork (he uses pork shoulder)
• 100 grams of salt (he uses only kosher)
• 1 T. chili flakes
• 3 T. freshly ground black pepper
• 5-6 cloves garlic
• white wine to cover (though in the demo, he used red)
• and he also added water, which he said released the proteins in pork.
• 1 1/3 c. toased fennel seeds, pulsed in a coffee grinder

Sausage stuffer (l) and meat grinder (r)

For equipment, he used a hand cranked meat grinder and a hand cranked sausage stuffer. Both were home-sized and ordered from www.sausagemaker.com, a vendor he recommended for home cooks. I was glad to hear him advising the use of the two-machine approach, because I have my grandmother's meat grinder, and snap-on sausage stuffer accessories are not available for antique grinders.

Cutting the meat

His first step was to cut the meat away from the bone and into strips the right size to fit into the meat grinder. At this point, I asked if he ever used wild boar. He said yes, adding that wild meat is almost always lean, so you need to add some commercial pork to get the fat content up. He likes about 20% fat for a tasty sausage.

Grinding the meat

Then, he started grinding.

Mixing the meat & spices

After the meat was ground, he took the other ingredients and mixed them with a hand-held mixer. Then, he poured them over the pan of ground meat. He hand mixed it all together, wearing surgical gloves.

At this point he said "If what you want is breakfast patties, this is sausage!" However, if the goal is "true" sausage, the next and final stage is filling casings. For fresh (uncured) sausage, he recommended natural casings. These are also available from sausagemakers.com.

Rinsing the casing

Natural casings are packed in salt and must be rinsed inside and out. I asked if he ever made his own casings (which are pig or sheep intestines). He said no, this was not something he would ever want to do. Processing an animal already takes about 15 hours, and this would add so much (unpleasant) extra work that it just wasn't worth it.

Next, he slipped the casing entirely onto the end of the sausage stuffer, which had been fitted with the proper-sized nozzle (based on the size of sausage he wanted). He twisted the end slightly.

Guiding the sausage into a spiral

He had also filled the container of the sausage stuffer with the ground meat mixture and now started cranking it. Rapidly, sausage started emerging in front of the machine. He guided it into a spiral shape on the table in front.

When he had made all the sausage he wanted, he cut off the casing and twisted the end. He said you can repack the casing with salt and it lasts a long time.

Twirling the links

He then took up the length of sausage, decided how long he wanted his sausages to be, and then twirled the "rope" to get the links.

Removing air pockets from links

Then he pricked each one to release any air pockets. He had a little forked tool for that purpose.

He said that, with fresh sausage, the best storage is freezing in as airtight a container as possible, in amounts you would be likely to use. Just cut them apart before freezing.

The finished product

Doesn't this seem like something we could do ourselves?

Memory lane

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education tipped me off about some new research on the middle-aged mind.  The article is a review of Barbara Strauch's book The secret life of the grown-up brain: the surprising talents of the middle-aged mind. (As an aside, the Strauch book apparently defines middle age as stretching from 40 to 68. Are we now expected to live to 136??)

The Chron noted that "The mild forgetfulness associated with middle-age...is real, an artifact of distraction, a surfeit of things worth remembering." So that's it: I just have too many things to remember! No wonder some of them are dropping out of my ears onto the floor.

Apparently, learning new things helps. But, I find this a double-edged sword. Here's why: as regular readers of this blog know, I am now working with a marksmanship coach. She's assigned me some homework this week. It's the memorization kind. Um, actually, I'm noticing that I really rusty in this department.

I've gotten so used to referring to things stored in electronic form on one device or another that I really don't make myself remember much of anything anymore. I do remember things, but this is a happenstance rather than a plan.

It turns out that all my "referring to things" is actually more of a problem than I thought. Recent research conducted at UCSF is showing that excessive uptime is having a detrimental effect on memory: "when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience." Further research, this time at the University of Michigan, found that "people learned significantly better after a walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment."

In other words, we're suffering from overwhelm. At least I am. I used to be one of those people with a fairly deep "general fund" of knowledge, the kind of gal you wanted for a teammate if you were playing Trivial Pursuit. I now know a heck of a lot less than I used to know. At least it sure feels like it.

Maybe it's a good thing I'm doing some memorization tasks, stretching my neurons. Then again, maybe I should just go for a walk up in Tilden.

All Natural

Today I pollinated my pumpkin patch. It's something I've never had to do before. I don't know why, but this year the birds and the bees have fallen down on the job.

It could be the new variety of pumpkin I'm growing.
It could be the weird extra-foggy weather we've been having.
It could be a bad year for bird and bee whoopy.

In desperation, I searched for and found instructions for pollinating pumpkins.

Girl pumpkin flower: see her shapely figure?

It turns out there are boy pumpkin flowers and girl pumpkin flowers. I've only ever noticed the girls. (Is that such a surprise?) Other years, there have always been a few early "lost opportunities." That is to say, a number of those small baby pre-pumpkins just die and fall off. But, by July, I get pumpkins taking hold and growing.

Boy pumpkin flower: a manly profile

This year, here we are at mid-August, and I still don't have any pumpkins growing! This makes me alarmed, because these are baking pumpkins, and I count on having a home-grown pumpkin for my Thanksgiving pie. The clock is ticking.

To intervene on behalf of future pie, I took the boy pumpkin flower and exposed the stamen by peeling off the flower. Then, I rubbed this on the stigma of the girl flower. I did this for as many of the girls as were available--about four or five today.

So what's natural about this? My answer is: what's not? I'm part of nature, after all.

I have a particular horse in this race, which I will now disclose. I belong to what has, since August 4, 2010, been described as a suspect class. (This is a beneficial distinction, it turns out.) For the longest time, what and who I am, including how I managed to become the mother of my best beloved son, has been considered by some (including many voters in my adopted home state of California) to be unnatural. Even though Judge Walker's wonderfully deep and detailed ruling is currently on hold for what feels like forever to me, his words are still on record.

For instance:
"The evidence did not show any historical purpose for excluding same-sex couples from marriage, as states have never required spouses to have an ability or willingness to procreate in order to marry. Rather, the exclusion exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed."

I remember having a big argument with my father in about 1978 on this same point. My father believed homosexuality is a choice--really, an act of perverse willfulness. That's why, even though he was an ACLU member who defended the civil rights of others, on this issue, he wouldn't bend. He's been gone for more than 20 years now, so his time has passed too.

It's my time now, and I say that doing things differently doesn't make them unnatural. It's all natural, because we are all part of the whole.

Coach

Friends, for the first time in my life, I have a coach!

When I last practiced shooting, I realized that my next step would be to move on to the public range at Chabot, which requires owning a gun. But when I looked at the range, I could see that it was the kind of thing I'd prefer to do with someone else. Also, I'm not ready to buy a gun, for the simple reason that I'm not sure which one to buy. And, I know for certain that I need more instruction.

In short, I felt strongly that I wanted a coach, a guide, preferably someone who could improve my shooting and then also teach me hunting. Ultimately, I also want to learn about dressing the carcass.

Back in April, when I visited The Old West Gun Room, I had gotten the business card of a trainer named Denise King. I had written her, but she was unavailable then due to personal issues. I decided to recontact her and see if things had resolved themselves.

Lucky for me, they have, and Denise has agreed to take me on. In fact, she has an entire training regime laid out, starting with more work on the .22. As she says, "Our first goals will be to safely learn how to safely handle, clean, sight in and understand the basic shooting principles for the light rifle." We're going to be working together at the San Leandro Rifle & Pistol Range, and then later on, we will move out to her ranch (!) in Sunol. Out at the ranch, we'll work on "moving targets, longer yardage shots, non-standard shooting positions, the use of shooting sticks, inclination and delineation shots, etc."

I'm going to be taking the NRA Basic Rifle course. Think of it! According to Denise, this covers "the rules of safety, nomenclature, cleaning, sighting in (including how to use a bore sighter), and the fundamentals of shooting; i.e. stance, grip, breath control, sight alignment, and trigger press.  We cover the basic shooting positions of benchrest, standing, kneeling, and sitting.  You get a nice textbook reference with the course."

She's letting me practice with her guns so that I find out what kind of rifle is a good fit for me before I buy one. Apparently (and not surprisingly), only some rifles can be made to fit women's physiques. Because I have been to the Old West Gun Room, and I mentioned that I'd probably buy my gun from Bob there, Denise is giving me a 50% discount on her fee. I guess she really likes Bob.

All this starts on the 22nd of August. I am really excited. Now I know for sure I am on the path toward hunting a boar!

Personal sustainability

A little over three months ago, I had my annual check up. I've been seeing my doctor, Polly Young,  for over twenty years, so she is someone I really trust. I told Polly that one of things bugging me this year was that I'd get aches and pains if I did anything slightly heavier than usual around the house or garden. This didn't used to happen, and it was bumming me out.

Polly immediately recommended this book: Strong Women Stay Young. My first thought was that I couldn't possibly fit weight lifting into my schedule. I already get up at 5:00 am in order to do aerobic exercise (brisk walking) 4 to 5 days a week, also at Polly's suggestion. There was no way I was getting up any earlier!

But Polly said the program described in this book took only 30 minutes, twice a week. I said I would consider it. By the time I got home, I had decided to buy the book.

I started at the beginning, a very good place to start. The opening argument is truly compelling: basically once we women hit the age of 35, we are on a steep slope downhill from the perspective of bone loss, up to 1 % per year. After menopause, it goes up another 1 to 2 % per year. That is a lot of bone loss! Photographs show scary blown sugar candy-like structures that are actually some poor woman's bones.

The good news: lifting weights actually reverses the loss. You can build it back up. This is the first age-related downward spiral I've run into that actually has a reverse lever. I was convinced. Iris bought into the logic as well.

We went shopping for hand-held dumbbells and ankle weights, following the guidance in the book. Starting three months ago, on Sundays and Wednesdays, for about 30 minutes, we go through the 8-exercise routine outlined in the book. After about 1 month, I began to feel results: my weekend aches and pains were gone! Now, after 3 months, I have some muscle definition too, which wasn't my goal, but it's kind of a kick in the pants.

I'm calling this post "personal sustainability," and I know that label can cover a lot of territory, but surely skeletal structure is part of the picture. Given that I used to come in from my heavier garden work all beat up and sore, and now I don't, for me there's actually a direct link between weight-lifting and run-of-the-mill sustainability. So, here's to a bunch of dumbbells! They're smarter than you'd think.

Plant disease

When I first started dating Iris she told me about a softball team she once battled named Plant Disease. Great name, really.

She was a college student in those days (it was a UC Berkeley intramural team), so maybe it didn't strike terror into her heart the way it might of, had she been a gardener.

I am a gardener, as you may have gathered. And I have a diseased plant on my hands. Or, rather, I should say, I used to have a diseased plant on my hands. I had to perform euthanasia. Honestly, I can't swear it was a "good death" for the tomato plant in question, and, in fact, I fear it may have been a bad one.

I did a Google search (what else?) on "plant disease" and found a wealth of agricultural extension pages with photographic resources. I was able to identify the culprit: Phytophthora infestans.

It turns out that this evil mold is the very same one that caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840's. It gives me pause to think my dear little garden plants are in an life and death struggle with such a fearsome foe.

Here's the story: "The fungus develops during periods of cool wet weather...[especially] if the crop is being grown near large areas of tomato relatives (Solanaceous weeds, potatoes)." Just so! We've had days and days of chilly, foggy mornings, and the affected plant had been near my front potato bed.

I took a chance this year with heirloom tomato plants instead of getting the hybrids from Berkeley Hort that are especially tuned to our foggy Berkeley summers. Every gray morning, I look out with worry on my two remaining tomato plants. One is the same variety as the ill-fated plant, and all I can think about when I look at it are dire warnings against monoculture. The Cautionary Tale of the Lumper Potato.

So far, my potato crop has remained untouched by this blight. The potatoes are battling their own Berkeley challenge, in form of snails and slugs.

I should clarify that I did not tempt fate by planting the infamous lumpers. The handsome pile to the left are my Purple Vikings.

Needless to say, I am not a subsistence gardener. In fact, I can walk three blocks and be at Monterey Market, one of the Bay Area's best produce markets.

And, Iris and I are both still gainfully employed, despite the condition our State's condition is in. So, with any luck, our garden will not be ground zero for the Berkeley Tomato (or Potato) Famine of 2010.

On doing something new

One of the most striking things about learning to shoot a gun is the sheer newness of this experience. When I was driving to Chabot Gun Club the first time two weeks ago, I was taken by how I was about to do something completely different from anything I'd ever done before. I'd be meeting people I'd never met before, and it was likely that there would be more than several degrees of separation between me and these folks. I'd be rubbing elbows with members of the NRA, and, in fact, I would be allowing one of these these people to be my teacher for the morning.

These places where I go to shoot guns feel miles away from Berkeley. In some ways, they are.

I can feel myself stretching.

Last weekend, I had an unexpected realization. Iris and I went to the movies on Saturday--we saw Inception--and all of a sudden I realized that scenes with guns have changed for me. Gun scenes used to be entirely fantasy scenes for me. I didn't have any kind of connection to them at all. But now I have shot a pistol, and I have shot a rifle. I know what that feels like. When I saw the characters in the movie shooting, I could imagine what they felt like. It has changed my appreciation, or maybe it's my apprehension, just a little bit.

I don't have a big conclusion to this, just a kind of awe that I can be this open to such a wild new thing.

Report from Chabot Gun Club

On Saturday, the 10th, I spent my morning at Chabot Gun Club for the Junior Light Rifle training. This is an open class, with a pre-announced limit of seventeen. On Saturday, they actually took twenty of us. It costs only $7.00, plus $3.00 for eye protection if you don't bring your own. This is much cheaper than any other training or course anywhere else around here, and it's one of the two places where you can get instruction and practice if you don't own your own gun (the other being Target Master, where I went in March).

The Club is located inside Chabot Regional Park, which is part of the East Bay Regional Park system. To get to it, I wound my way back into the park, 6 miles past Skyline Boulevard on Redwood Road. I felt like I was pretty much out in the country by the time I saw the turn off.

What I liked immediately was the mix of people. There were women, men, kids, and teenagers, and people had come from all over the East Bay. I asked the woman who was shooting next to me why she had come, or what her interest was, and she said she was there because she was afraid of guns. She thought the training would help her overcome her fear.

The class started with all us of getting our equipment: a rug to lay on (we would be shooting prone, or laying down), sand bags, our rifles, and ammunition. Then, we put targets on the target stands, which were set up at 25 yards for the first half of the session. Later, we could move them to 50 yards if we wanted to. Here's a photo of what the targets look like on the range.

Then we had a safety briefing. Our guide through all of this was a fellow named Dwight, from El Cerrito. Dwight told us how to hold the rifle safely when walking around, how and where to stand at various times, and so forth. I realized I would need to hear these things several more times before I had them memorized. I just don't memorize things as easily as I used to.

Then we started shooting "rounds." A round is one shot. My first shot missed the target entirely. I pointed this out to Dwight, and he asked me if I had used all 3 of the sights on the gun. I thought there were only 2! Once I learned there was a third, suddenly I was doing pretty well. I began to get all my shots on the targets, closer and closer together.

We were shooting 22s, just like I shot at Target Master, only this time I had a bolt-action rifle. Before I had used a semi-automatic. What this meant was that I had to load my gun each time I wanted to shoot. And, my gun never jammed. (The semi-automatic rifle I used in Milpitas jammed over and over.) I liked this gun much better than the semi-automatic.

Dwight told me to count to 3 before removing my finger from the trigger, and also to try not to close my eyes after I pull the trigger. This is not easy to do, because of the BANG! But when I tried his approach, I saw some improvement. I hit my first bulls-eye. By the way, I found out the black circle is called a "bull."

After a shot, you smell the same smell that fireworks make: gunpowder. I've liked that smell since I was a little girl watching the Fourth of July displays over Lake Ellyn, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

So, I like it. Dwight asked me to come again and I think I will.

Green menace

Last week, I regaled you with the challenges we have in getting along with another mammal. And now comes the beast in a botanic form...

I refer of course to that monster of the raised bed: Zucchini. Does that strike the same summer terror in your hearts as it does in mine?

Here is my story. When I leave home on these mornings, I very often observe a small squash on the plant, as shown here. In my mind, I am thinking: it looks a little immature. I say to myself, "I'll let it go one more day, and then it will be just right for a stir fry."

My friends, it's as if those giant flowers are actually ears listening in to my thoughts. Zucchini is plotting, is planning, in response to my culinary notions. It puts on the gas, as it were.

Because by the time I get home from work, instead of a summer squash, I am faced with, well, a Zeppelin.

I experience this as a kind of vegetable threat. A woody weapon poised over my head. Act now! After all, who wants to cook an airship? So I'm now pre-emptively harvesting. I spy a small squash and I grab it.

This brings to mind a dinner guest of ours from some years ago. It was another summer, and another year of battling against the onslaught of produce. Our guest happened to be a fellow gardener, and she commiserated with my plight. She asked, memorably, "How can there be world hunger and zucchini?" We all chuckled, but of course we did not have the answer. No signs of intelligent design here...

So, I plod along from summer to summer, idiotically re-planting the source of this problem, because, despite my complaining, I'm hooked on the thrill of a bumper crop. There: I've admitted it.

Pack Animal

Iris and I are the kind of people who boldly live with another species. Most of the time, of course, we don't think of it this way.

But the fact is, we live in close quarters with a non-human. The species we live with is the one that has been camping right along side our crazy mixed up Neanderthal-loving selves for as long as we've been tossing out tidbits beyond the fire circle. That is to say, we have a dog.

Canis lupus familiaris.

The subject in question is pictured to the right. She looks innocent enough, I admit. Hardly big enough to qualify for that wild middle name. But day in and day out, she employs all that cuteness in the service of a hidden agenda.

And that agenda, according to dog experts, is twofold: food and safety. Dogs pursue this agenda by adhering to a military-like code. In their dreams, they run in packs, and in their waking hours, they apparently feel safest when they Live the Dream.

So, they turn any group into a pack. And, they must know who is the pack leader, the Top Dog. They must understand exactly their hierarchical relationship to that dog. And--here's the kicker--if the presumed Top Dog is not behaving Top Doggishly, they will make regime changing moves. They can't help themselves.

Meanwhile, back at our Cave Woman campfire, Iris and I are melting marshmellows and making S'Mores. Our idea of what we want to do with our little lupus is cuddle and play. We are not "into" discipline. That is to say, compared to our dog, Iris and I are pinko commie egalitarians. We think this is all fun and games, but it turns out that, with our every move, we have been confusing and confounding the pack-minded pup in our midst.

This has become abundantly clear to us, because she has been acting out. Making her moves, in other words. I'm going to spare you the details.

So this week, we've been all about asserting our Top Doggitude. We are Up and she is Down. Up and Down. At first, she was bugged. But, now, she's calm and peaceful. Which means we are actually living with a creature that likes being put in her place.

After all, she is a dog. We have to treat her like a dog, indeed, the lowest dog in the pack, in order to make her feel safe. And, of course, we want her to feel safe.

This is just about when I really notice how weird it is to be living with another species. What were we thinking?

A June Wedding

On Friday, Iris and I will be driving up to Oregon for our niece's wedding to a nice young man we met last November when they joined us, with her parents, for Thanksgiving.

Weddings, as I'm sure you know, bring up lots of feelings for many people. Even our 24-year-old son is twitching a bit this summer as he goes to two weddings of people his own age: this cousin now, and, in August, one of his buddies from Berkeley High.

For me, attending a straight wedding always brings up the whole marriage equality batch of thoughts and feelings. I can't help it. Indeed, just getting to this wedding will involve us temporarily losing our legal married status, as we'll be crossing state lines.

This will be, of course, a June wedding. I myself liked the idea of being a June bride, so the first time I married Iris (1992), we too picked a June date. Stonewall Day, actually, the anniversary of the day in 1969 when a bunch of angry New York queens stood up to the cops and said, "We've had enough." As it happens, Iris and I have also been February brides (2004) and September brides (2008).

Our legal right to marry just in our own state is a matter of hot contention right now, and in the fullness of time, it will likely be taken all the way to the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, off to a little town outside of Medford, OR, we go. There, no one will question the right of these two young people to marry, and they will stay married when they cross the line into California where they plan to live.

We will go to this wedding, and we will rejoice for them. We will also be holding our own story inside of us.

I suppose all of the other people witnessing along with us will be doing the same thing with their stories. That's just the way that it is.

The power of the personal; notes from Germany

A trip to a new country leaves one with a great many impressions. The strongest from my recent visit to Germany are connected to personal stories I encountered.

Let me mention first the amazing Holocaust Memorial, more formerly known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The Memorial has two parts: an external sculptural placement of 2,711 giant concrete blocks of varying sizes. You can walk through these blocks from any direction, and so they formed a kind of labyrinth. These are 3 photographs I took to give you some idea of the effect: a sense of overwhelming number and individuality of view and experience at the same time.


The information center complimenting the stones adds to this effect with an overview history of the Holocaust but then, importantly, offers a portrait of horrifying deprivation, cruelty and violence in photographs and diaries from fifteen families, each from a different country.

For me, the specificity of this approach made the information sink deeply inside me. In all cases, the photographs from the pre-oppression period showed healthy, glowing faces at various family gatherings. And these served to bring the photographs from later times into exacting and sharp relief. It made quite a difference in impact that every photograph of an individual was identified by name. There were no walls of nameless victims here. Everyone belonged to a family, to a story.

The second experience I want to describe comes from the business part of this trip. For the first two days in Germany, we were in Hannover, where I attended a work-related conference. In addition to the meetings, I was able to have many personal conversations over lunches and dinners with my colleagues from German and Swiss libraries and research institutions. In the process, I began to establish relationships with them, ones that will, of course, grow as we continue to work together.

In these circumstances, we learned a little bit about each other. For instance, I discovered that German children are taught the American Pilgrim story. I was surprised by this, I have to admit. I still find it puzzling. When I, in turn, explained that Thanksgiving is a good holiday for Americans because it is not tied to any particular religious tradition, this was a new idea for Wolfgang and Anja, who explained that Germany is a Christian country. (There you have it.)

For their part, Wolfgang and Anja asked about the wall between the United States and Mexico. They wanted to know how long it is, and whether it stretches all the way from Texas to California. I realized, as they were talking, that Germans understand about walls. They also wanted to know if we had a trade agreement with Mexico, and, if so, why there wasn't free movement between the two countries as there is in Europe between members of the European Union.  Now, Germany is not a country without immigration issues of its own, of course, but I didn't bring this up. Instead, I was just interested to hear how the United States is seen from the outside.

I was walking back from an evening reception on the first night of the conference with a colleague from Switzerland, Angela, and another German, Stefan. Angela said something along the lines of "What I want to know is, we just love President Obama. Why don't you?" Stefan agreed that, yes, he had this same question. I made a response I don't think really satisfied either of them, though what can you say to something like that, actually?

As a side note, I observed this pro-Obama feeling elsewhere in Germany: at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, there is a President Kennedy Museum and Shop. In the big picture window right now, there is a huge poster of President Obama.

One last snapshot: every time we opened a map on the streets of Berlin, someone stepped forward and asked if we wanted help. Most notably, on our first afternoon, as we walked down Welserstrasse with a map, a woman stopped to help us. When she found out it was our first visit and first day, she asked us what we were interested in seeing and gave us what ended up being the outline for our full 3 days.

I'll remember her a long time.

Happy Gay Pride Month!

There's a real thrill for me when I come up out of any downtown San Francisco BART station in June. All along Market Street, the big rainbow flags are flying, and it is a site to see.

For many years, my family marched up Market Street on the last Sunday in June, especially when our son was a little boy. We marched with the LGBT Parenting contingent, and it was an absolute balm to get all those cheers! When Nathan was little, the kids' groups were lined up right after the groups for people with HIV-AIDS, and in the late eighties and early nineties, those groups were pretty grim looking. By the time the children came along, I suspect that the crowds were really looking for a sign that life was going to carry on.

At the time, I really needed the boost too. I often felt like I was holding it together all year long as a lesbian mom, more or less in conflict with my family of origin, and so for this one day in June to have tens of thousands of people cheering for me was truly wonderful.

The rainbow flags remind me of all of this.

I saw them this week as when I went into San Francisco to get euros for our trip to Germany. We're leaving on Saturday the 5th and returning late on Saturday the 11th, so there will be an interruption in my posting next week.

It's a business trip to Hanover with a pleasure trip to Berlin added onto the end. Amazingly, when we get to Berlin, we will land smack dab into the middle of Europe's biggest Gay Pride Week!

So, we'll celebrate in a whole new way this year. I've already learned something new, which is that lesbian in German is lesbisch. How about that!

Reunions

I'm going to make use of my poetic license (acquired along with my first Master's Degree--in Poetry, SF State, 1983) and give you a collection of thoughts. See what the combination evokes for you.

A phone call

It came a week and a half ago. We have caller ID, so I could read his name on the display. It seemed improbable to me that a cousin I barely knew and hadn't spoken to in 40 years would be calling out of the blue, but who else could it be? I decided to pick up.

A deep voice asked if I was me. And, if I was who I used to be. I asked, "Are you my cousin?" He agreed that he was. We proceeded to talk for the next 10 minutes about ourselves. He had called my brother earlier that day, and that's how he'd gotten my married name and phone number. He said it had been a long time since he had spoken to us, and he didn't want it to go on any longer.

The funny thing is that, when we were kids, we barely knew each other. I have probably seen him less than five times in my life. His mother was my dad's sister, and my dad didn't try to see his family often. It's hard to make any sense of those old complex feelings now, but it's also not easy to feel strong pulls of family bond at this late date. In their place, I feel a simple openness.

A tent at Maker Faire

I noticed, while walking past, an open-air tent where leaders were teaching eager people how to solder. Adults, kids, men, women, boys, girls, all bent themselves over small objects of metal they were joining together with a metal alloy. This was a very popular activity. There were only a few empty seats.

Joans

On Monday, I will be getting together with another Joan, a Joan from my past. When I was in college (before I got my poetic license), I had a roommate named Joan. We Joans had a third roommate, a woman named Shari. Shari now lives 2 blocks down the street from me, here in Berkeley.

The other Joan had been "lost" to us, living all this time, it seems, in Vancouver, Washington. Shari and I just "found" her--or, rather, she found us--thanks to Facebook.

Shari is making a big brunch for us, offering for my opinion, this list of tasty options:

• Fruit Salad
• Lox, bagels, cream cheese, cucumber
• Blintzes
• White Fish Salad (maybe)
• Frittata
• OJ
• Coffee/Tea/Milk

I'll note that blintzes are Shari's specialty, and that I'd been hoping she would make them! I've been imagining our old threesome, which featured funny, articulate, and deep discussions that carried us hither and yon to the tune of old Simon and Garfunkle, Jethro Tull, and Randy Newman albums. Admittedly, we won't be, as we once were, magic-enabled, but still, I figured we have something like 33 years of catching up to do. We could just hit the high points, and it would get pretty high all by itself.

However, in the last few days, as we've been getting closer and Shari has made attempts to nail down dates and times, it's become clear that our long lost Joan has decided to bring her husband and her sister to this brunch, which suggests she has a very different idea about this brunch get-together than I had had. Ah well, time, as they say, has gone by.

Concluding couplet

I can't resist leaving you with this:

We like putting things together
Do we like putting things together?

Our visit to the Maker Faire

This weekend we went to the Maker Faire. The event is 1 part county fair, 2 parts inventors' workshop. It is sponsored by Make Magazine. A clue to understanding the mission of Make Magazine ("technology on your time") is one of the projects on its current home page: "Hack a hoodie to turn off TVs with the tug of a zipper."

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan and adherent of the DIY approach. I've written about making catnip cigars, holiday wreaths, gift bags, cheese, and rag placemats. But, I cannot hold a candle--or rather--a miniature LED flashlight to the technological wonders that abound at the Maker Faire.

For example, last year Iris and I saw a dress woven from ordinary fibers blended with electronic fibers. The woman working on the design aimed to create a garment that would enable a visually impaired person to detect information about the immediate environment, such as proximity to objects. This year, her comrade in threads was showing a wired shirt that lights up in reaction to the wearer's body temperature and activity. It's made for dancing, in other words.

Our companions for this year's visit were our 12-year-old friends Ben, Hannah, and Jessie. The visit was our birthday present to them...the kind of gift that is at least as much fun for the givers as we hope it was for the receivers.

I'm going to give you a small tour of the Faire, so if you are looking at this post via the email feed and you don't get the images, you may want to follow the link to the web version to see what you're missing.

This is the "Raygun Gothic Rocket" on the Midway, visible from either entrance when you first arrive at the fair. Quite a climbing structure, don't you think?

This is a floor shot in the "Maker Shed," a warehouse filled with kits, books, demos, and, well, inspiration. Oh, and also, crowds.




Introducing Shovel Man, a DIY musician. He is appearing on the Human-Powered Stage, where the power for the amps is provided by members of the crowd pedaling bicycles. Ben took a turn.

A captivating metal and fire sculpture in the Fire Arts area. The kids were able to use a controller to cause "synapses" to fire.

One of my favorites: The Egg-Writer and the computer program running it. It's multi-purpose: it also writes on ping pong balls, light bulbs, why, think of all the things it might be good for!

What Faire would be without Robot Wars? At this point in the action, the crowd roared, "Death to the Barbie Car!"

The kids made soap, drove virtual cars, played a version of electronic pong, ate both good and bad food, and got tired enough that they hit the sack several hours earlier than the night before. In short, it was a Faire to remember.

Fast means slow

As I write this week's post, I am fasting. And I'd like to say for the record that this practice really needs a makeover. The new name: Slowing.

My argument is based on my experience that time seems to have slowed down considerably since I did not have breakfast this morning.

It's a long slog until I go to bed tonight. I know it's just one day, goddammit, but it's one loooooong day!

While I am on this topic, I recently read Eat Your Dreams, in the monthly magazine The Sun. The author, a man named Sparrow, writes about going to sleep hungry and dreaming (repeatedly) about food and eating. He makes this into a new form of dieting, by dream-eating and waking up fulfilled. Sparrow fasts on a weekly basis, and also twice a month, according to the lunar calendar. He says, "When I fast, I am more likely to eat in my subsequent dream."  No kidding.

Now, The Sun is, overall, a particularly worthy publication, ad free, and on point in its mission to "evoke the the splendor and heartache of being human." We can only hope that this particular message stays off the radar of developing girls and boys, vulnerable as they are to the siren call of anorexia.

Just so you know, I am not making a regular habit of this fasting/slowing business. I only do it when my doctor makes me! Here's why I'm doing it today.

Initials here please

Remember when BP was British Petroleum? The name change occured in 2000, and we were encouraged to think of the acronym as standing for "better people, better products, beyond petroleum."

It's just that pesky petroleum problems kept popping up. BP can't seem to get beyond petroleum!

• 2005...Texas Refinery Explosion, 15 deaths, over 170 injuries.
• 2006 to 2009...Prudhoe Bay toxic spills and leaks, several over this period due primarily to poor maintenance of pipes (often as a result of cost-cutting measures).
• 2010: Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion and oil spill, 11 people missing and presumed dead. 

Today, it looks like the top executives of BP are unsure as to whether the real problem is an uncontrolled oil spill or uncontrolled damage to BP's reputation.

The NY Times reported that BP CEO Tony Hayward asked his work buddies, "What the hell did we do to deserve this?" Stock prices have fallen by some 8%, which is a real bummer for Mr. Hayward. He has come up with a great strategy, though. He is blaming the company that owns and operates the oil rig, Transocean. BP is just a renter, it turns out. So, like typical renters who--oops!--broke the toilet or tried to flush a few too many foreign objects down the drain, BP is now blaming the landlord for the fact that there is one hell of a plumbing mess working its way toward Louisiana and Mississippi.

Let me just say that I do understand Mr. Hayward and BP's strategy. Who hasn't tried to deflect attention from one's darker side by a slight of hand, a little redirection of attention? So, if a simple name change and a cute new logo with a pretty flower could help bring a brighter day to the minds of investors and potential investors, then why not try it?

Accordingly, in an effort to erase any memories you may have of my past transgressions, you may all start referring to me simply as JS, which might bring to mind...
jello savvy, jolly sweetheart, joyful searching...  you get the picture!

Invasive species

This is my ode to the garden snail, a creature that is a current constant in my life, due to the fact that we are still having spring rains here in Berkeley. In fact, we've had 131% our normal rainfall this year so far (source: Weather Underground), and I am bound by my drought-training to utter a hallelujah.  But, even so, it's tough to embrace the joy when I walk outdoors in the morning and see these intrepid mollusks gliding across my garden making their slimy ways to my tender plants.

According to UC's Agriculture and Natural Resources Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program, "The brown garden snail, Cornu aspersum (formerly Helix aspersa), is the most common snail causing problems in California gardens. It was introduced from France during the 1850s for use as food." In other words, these puppies are escargots!

For citrus growers, ANR recommends these approaches:
a) pruning "tree shirts"
b) copper foil
c) predatory decollate snails and
d) ducks (!)

The vision of a flock of ducks in amongst the orange or lemon trees is really quite delightful, don't you think? On the other hand, introducing a new batch of decollate snails (these ones are from Egypt) to deal with the old batch of snails just sounds just plain goofy. Oh, and, if they aren't getting enough escargots, they will eat your plants too.

So, the ANR has an alternative set of instructions for the hapless home gardener.
a) handpicking
b) trapping (in beer, especially)
c) copper foil
d) poisonous bait (yuck!)

This hapless home gardener does two things: first, I put cocoa-hull compost around all my vegetable plants. Snails and slugs don't like to crawl across the scratchy surface. As a bonus, when the compost begins to degrade, it forms a crust, which tends to dissuade the neighborhood cats from using my raised beds as kitty litter boxes.

My second plan of action is the recommended handpicking. It is slightly gross, I have to admit--better with gloves. I tend to toss the buggers into the street where they are crushed by passing cars and bikes. Like I said, it's gross.

Now, I started this rant with the claim that it was an ode to the garden snail. It's time to offer the following meditation:

What is an invasive species, really? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an "invasive species" is defined as a species that is

1) non-native (or alien) to the ecosystem under consideration and
2) whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health. (Executive Order 13112)." The definition goes on to say, "Human actions are the primary means of invasive species introductions."

So, humans introduce a new species to an environment, and if it causes environmental or human harm, it is invasive. Let's see... As I mentioned once before, my brother and I participated in a genetic testing project revealing that our ancient forbears had traveled from Africa to Asia and then Europe, like most Caucasians. In fact, the march of early humans out of Africa involved them introducing themselves to new environments, causing environmental damage and damage to each other over and over again. Indeed, we continue to do it today, don't we?

I need a new bumper sticker: Invasive species: it takes one to know one!

The Old West Gun Room

I've just returned from my (first) visit to the Old West Gun Room just on the border into El Cerrito, CA.

I've eyed this place for years, wishing they sold something I wanted to buy, just so I had a reason to go in. I mean--look how cute it is!

Well...the day had dawned. As I explained in a earlier posts, I'm learning to shoot a rifle so I can hunt wild boar. After practicing at the range in Milpitis, I've been thinking that I'd probably benefit from having a coach or trainer, both for learning how to shoot and  how to hunt boar. In addition, no shooting ranges closer than Milpitis will rent a rifle, meaning that sooner or later I'm going to need my own gun.

So, off I went to the Gun Room. I was nervous. Who would be there? A bunch of NRA types? Who are these NRA types, anyway? To calm the butterflies, I decided to make things simple and just ask for advice.

When I walked in, there were two men at the counter talking to the owner, Bob Weaver. I recognized him from his photo on the website. Bob and the other two guys looked like regular people. If you saw them in the grocery store, you would not be able to distinguish them from anybody else--you would not know that these guys were gun owners, or, and the website says, "firearm enthusiasts."

While they completed their conversation, I walked around the store. Aesthetically, the Old Gun Room is to Target Master West, where I'd practiced shooting, like a locally owned boutique is to a fast food franchise.

Once I had Bob to myself, he was extremely helpful. I explained my interest in boar hunting and my lack of experience. He gave me the card for a woman who is a firearms instructor and also provides wild board guide services. I also asked him about rifles--the type I would need and the cost range. He rattled off a baffling list of numbers, and I asked to see some examples, because I really didn't know what he was talking about.

He showed me three rifles and told me that "any basic deer hunting rifle will work fine for boar." The budget for this kind of thing is $400 to $500. Then, in a good salesmanship move, he added, "you know, every boy and girl should have a 22." That was the kind of rifle I shot down in Milpitas, the one that felt like a bb gun.

I think I can live without a 22. But, I did tell him I'd be back. My next step is to contact Denise King, the woman who may become my coach.

Talking trash

I read in the New York Times last week that "Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags." It seems that, in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, especially, garbage is now viewed "as a clean alternative fuel rather than a smelly, unsightly problem." This is due to large energy plants that burn household and industrial waste. "Their use has not only reduced the country’s energy costs and reliance on oil and gas, but also benefited the environment, diminishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration."

Europe has some 400 such plants, with more under construction. Denmark alone has 98, serving a country of only 5.5 million people. By contrast, the United States, with more than 300 million people (as you know, we're still counting), has only 87 plants, almost all 15 or more years old.

Where does our garbage go, then? In New York, the answer is landfills. "New York City alone sends 10,500 tons of residential waste each day to landfills in places like Ohio and South Carolina." (italics mine) New York has a population of 8,008,278 (2000 census).

In Alameda County, like San Francisco to the west, we're taking a two-fold approach. We want to reduce the amount of solid waste we produce, but what we do produce, we put in...landfills! Berkeley's solid waste "production" was 91,008 tons in 2008, or 249 tons per day, from a population of 102,743 (2000 census) That amount represents a decline according to the 2008 Alameda County Waste Characterization Study. "Overall annual solid waste quantities within [Alameda] County have decreased by approximately 24 percent since 2000, with the greatest decrease (based on weight) represented by the City of Oakland and the greatest percentage decrease represented by Emeryville and Albany."

Even so, we generate more trash per person than our East Coast counterparts. New Yorkers make some .13 tons per person per day, and we Berkeley folks churn out some .24 tons per person per day. Oakland does better at .18 tons per person per day.

Returning to the resistence to waste-to-energy conversion plants, aka trash-burning, the article in the Times identifies American popular antagonism as having three causes: "relative abundance of cheap landfills in a large country, opposition from state officials who fear the plants could undercut recycling programs and a 'negative public perception.'"

What really amazes me about the "negative public perception" is this: when I was a little girl, trash burning in the back yard was an ordinary thing. You grew a hedge at the back of your yard to hide the brick or stone rubbish bin, and once a week or so, someone went out there and set the garbage on fire. It smelled bad and made black smoke, but virtually everybody did it.

Not everything burned, of course. I can remember poking through the ashes and finding charred wads of tinfoil. It looked ancient, transformed into an artifact, something I could pretend had a secret story to tell, not simply the leftover covering from a meatloaf or maybe a jiffypop top. You might say that, when it came to trash burning, we Americans had an In-My-Back-Yard approach right up until the Clean Air Act was passed in 1963, putting a stop to those backyard hijinks.

Seven years later, in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency opened its doors, and today the EPA actually has a Backyard Trash Burning website! This page explains all the problems with trash burning--for example: it turns out kids like to poke around in those ashes, and they're toxic, gosh darnnit! As a bonus, the site features a link to Bernie the Burn Barrel--don't you just love public service mascots?

In other words, today, we find ourselves in the situation of having gone through a societal IMBY-to-NIMBY conversion. Remarkable!

Besides apparent distaste, the other opposition to the fancy new trash burners is Big Environmentalism. The argument goes like this: the energy plants create a market for trash when our goal should be zero waste. That's what I call making Perfect be the Enemy of Good! Nearly every week, I have to consign to the trash (aka "landfill destination bin") the containers that the City of Berkeley will not collect for recycling, because they claim they can't find a buyer for those types. These include any and all plastics that aren't classed #1 or #2. I try to buy strategically to avoid these plastics, but it simply is not always possible.

Here's my question: Why not be making energy from this stuff? Let's put one of these new burners in Berkeley. Looks like we have the tonnage to spare.

Sprung!

Having grown up in a place with "real" winter (Chicago), and having made a recent visit to New York, I've been reminded this year that March and April are a transition months. In the Chicago of my childhood, March especially, was quite unreliable, and featured dirty, salty snow banks. Walking to school was a messy, wet operation.

In early April, you would look almost desperately for signs of bright colors. I wrote last week about a "dark unclear space" and I am thinking this week that the bursts that renewed life makes onto winter's scene are just as mysterious and magical.

On one of my days in New York, I took the wrong subway to met Nathan at Columbia, meaning that I had a longish walk to campus. It was a good thing, because it meant I passed by a churchyard with this lone forsythia in bloom, blazing yellow against the dark stone walls.
 
This is the first year I've heard Nathan, a native Californian, ever express joy at seeing trees bud and bloom. He is seeing them with new eyes, having slogged through his first winter of chill and snow. He is going through his own blooming.
 

Practically as soon as I got back in town, my sister visited me here in Berkeley. She still lives outside Chicago, and to her, it is wildly green here right now. My yard is looking good right now, with the wisteria and California poppies in bloom. What I was most happy for her to see were the blooms on the Western Redbud tree I have in the backyard, shown here on the right. I planted this little native sweetheart after my mother died, and I put a locket of her hair in the earth underneath it. My mother was a big treehugger from way back, and I know that many trees have been planted in her honor, by her children and all her friends.

In my front yard right now, next to my garlic, I have brave new Dragon Carrot sprouts. I ordered the seeds from the Seed Savers catalog. They are supposed to be red when they are all grown up. We'll see!

All this growth is plain wonder and mystery! And to top it all off, across the street, a baby boy was just born! Little Philo. How about that?

Life just takes the cake. Or pie, depending on your point of view.

Human sacrifice

On my recent trip to New York, I had a spiritual experience of a particular sort. It happened on Friday when I was visiting the campus of New York University. April 2, 2010, was the second-to-last day of an art show at the Grey Art Gallery. The show was Downtown Pix: Mining the Fales Archives, 1961-1991.

Earlier in the day, I'd had the opportunity to meet the Director of the Fales Library and Special Collection, Marvin J. Taylor, as my colleague and friend Jennifer Vinopal was giving me a tour of NYU's Library. I'd made a mental note to come back to the show after Jennifer and I went our separate ways. Taylor has been collecting the work of artists, playwrights, choreographers, photographers, and activists of New York's downtown scene since 1994. The show "reveal(ed) the vital intersections of experimental theater, performance and installation art, graffiti, punk rock, and sexual liberation." (I'm quoting the show brochure.)

As I walked downstairs to the lower level, I encountered the moving work of Fred McDarrah who covered New York's Gay Pride Parade every year from its inception for the Village Voice.

And then, suddenly, I came upon David Wojnarowicz's photographs and silent films. He worked in the late 1980's and early 1990's at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. The installation included a film running in a loop of Wojnarowicz's lover's last moments and then his prone body, draped in a sheet, and carried by four or five men from a table to a dark, unclear space.

I stood still, watching this, aware that the hour approached 3:00 p.m. on Good Friday, and I wondered: what turns a death into a sacrifice? Did Wojnarowicz's lover die for a purpose, as I was taught to believe about the Nazarene carpenter?

And what about all those other young men who died so young? After all this time, I must say I have not discerned any meaning.

I remember the late '80s and early 90's well. We lost Iris's brother Jon and our friend Kevin Lally in 1993. Indeed, everybody we knew lost someone or many someones. Even though there is a great temptation to make some sense of death, it looks to me now very much as Wojnarowicz depicted it: simply a dark unclear space we are left to ponder.