Wrapping things up

About a month ago, I got a call from Bob to say that my gun had sold, and I could come down for the money he owed me. He paid me in one hundred dollar bills. It felt funny to have that much cash in my wallet, because of the bigness of it, but also knowing it represented the end of something. I stuck it in the bank right away.

Bob told me that the new owner was a game warden, that the gun had "found a good home."

Meanwhile, the pig is still with us. I'm making pulled pork sandwiches tomorrow, and I still have enough shoulder meat for another meal of carnitas. I have sausages and liver left too. In case you're wondering, yes, we do have a freezer.

Another part of the pig has been in the freezer all this time: his pelt. When I came back home from the hunt, I had all the butchering and sausage-making to do, so I just salted and froze the pelt, with the plan that I would figure out what to do about a tanner later.

Later has arrived. Tomorrow, I am driving to a tannery in San Leandro with the frozen pelt. Most wild boar are solid black, but as you see, mine was dappled, so I want to get it tanned with the fur on.

When I wrote earlier that the pig is still with us, and then proceeded to list the meat that I still have, I was only accounting for one aspect of the pig's impact on me. I need also to mention the following:

• Before my hunt, I was eating only fish, and I had problems with borderline anemia. My iron level has returned to normal thanks to eating the meat that the pig gave me, so the pig has changed my physical self as I have taken him in.
• I feel connected to the pig every time I begin preparing a meal that includes some of the pig in it. I remember holding and handling the pig, and the meal becomes an extension of the promise I made to the pig to take care of and responsibility for him. So the pig has changed my spiritual and emotional self as I have taken him in.

The pig changed and is changing me. I will never be the same. I think that, once we have eaten all the meat that the pig gave us, the tanned pelt will be a wonderful reminder of this most generous creature.

Gun for Sale

Today I contacted Bob over at the Old West Gun Room and asked about how to sell my gun. It means the end to my hunting adventure.

I've been thinking about it for a while. At first, I thought I might try to find someone else who shared my perspective on responsible meat-eating and who might also want to go hunting with me. But, meanwhile, I couldn't help thinking about the fractured arguments that my Hunter Education instructors had used to justify hunting. The role of hunting in wildlife conservation, they said, is the "harvest of surplus animals" (my emphasis). In other words, any animal population that is under management can be allowed to increase in order to create a role for hunting.

It made me wonder if the ranchers who rent out their land for pig hunts are encouraging the pigs so that the pig hunters will be attracted to their ranches. They claim to hate the pigs, but have they created a "hunting surplus?" If so, maybe that's the kind of hunt I went on.

People who have heard about my pig hunting ask me whether or when I'm going to go hunting again. As the months have gone by since that November day when I brought down the pig, it's become clearer to me that I don't want to spend any more time with guns or with hunters.

I had a very deep experience with that pig, and actually, it continues to unfold every time we sit down to a meal made with some of the pig's flesh. I don't regret what I did. I know I was mindful and respectful, but I think when this pig is gone, the most respectful thing for me to do is to find an ethical pork farmer and buy a farm-raised pig from her or him.

So, if you know anyone who wants to buy a nice, well-kept rifle, tell them to see Bob.

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.