What We Need Is Here

Sweet fruit of the vine, and of our sandy soil. Hallelujah.

Just when my patience with summer heat was about to dry up completely, I walked in to the local market and saw the first of the summer muscadines. Oh yes. Their sweet, cool particularity (they are unlike any other fruit, including other grapes) - combined in a snack with the salty warmth of fresh boiled peanuts - may get me through this near record-breaking heat. 

Here's more on why you, too, should love muscadines, and how you can boil your own peanuts. These are both best eaten from a bowl balanced on your belly while you are floating in an innter tube in a cold spring. 

Happy Dog Days of Summer! 

Magic Moringa

Thanks to a gift from our friend Iris, who brought us a tiny tree she got on her trip to the Echo Farm in Ft. Myers, we are growing moringa! 

While most everything else is shriveling in the heat, the little moringa tree is now six times its size, and seems very happy in our little front yard garden of questionable soil. Last spring, we added its leaves to salad where they were eaten largely unnoticed. This summer, although I have been shriveling in the heat myself and not much in the mood for cooking, I've added it to rice like you might add parsley. It's pretty, and it packs quite a nutrient-punch - especially vitamin A, iron, calcium, and protein. This Discovery Channel piece was so effusive about the benefits of moringa that it began to sound like an infomercial (but they weren't selling anything, just genuinely impressed with the plant and its benefits, especially for malnourished people).

According to a lot of experts, we in the U.S. are becoming a seriously malnourished people. That fact, combined with the growing concern that our food system, reliant on transportation (the average vegetable still travels over 1600 miles to arrive on our plate) is going to be seriously impacted as the price of oil rises, motivates me to learn more about nutrition-dense food like moringa that can be grown here. 

Plus it's kind of fun to eat leaves off a tree.

"Rustic" Blueberry Pie

This was a great year for blueberries! We harvested some from the new bushes in the front yard garden, and have been buying local ones non-stop since early June. I love them so much raw, I rarely cook with them, preferring mixing them up with chopped watermelon, stirring them into yogurt, or just popping them in my mouth at regular intervals. 

We had a special occasion last night though - welcoming back a friend who had been away - so the time was ripe, so to speak. I love making pies and blueberries lend themselves to the traditional lattice-type. But I was in a hurry so I did the pastry the quick way or, you might say, the "rustic" way - or even the French way - as in gallettes. Regardless, it tasted good. 

It's by no means healthy though - definitely a celebration food! About the time I finally mastered my family's famous pie crust recipe, substituting shortening for lard, it became clear that shortening was no improvement health-wise. So, now I'm using good old butter. You still have to fiddle with the amount of ice water (yes, it must be iced) before rolling it out, and be careful about the dough sticking, but the rest is easy. And, ahhhh, it is good - if a bit on the fat/caloric side.

Ingredients for Pastry

• 1/4 cups white flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, cold from the fridge
• 1/8-1/4 cup ice water

Mix and Roll Out the Pastry
Mix together dry ingredients. Grate butter with a cheese grater into the mixture. Cut butter into flour with two knives or a pastry cutter (if you're going to make more than one pie in your life, this tool is essential). When the butter is so well combined with the flour mixture that the whole thing looks like cornmeal or sand, then slowly add the ice water. Mix together with a fork until mixture begins to hold together. Pat together into a ball. Flour your surface (table, counter, board) and gently roll out crust so that it is two inches larger than your pie plate. Gently place in the pie plate. Put the whole thing in the fridge while you mix the filling.

Blueberry (or any berry) Filling

• Approximately 2 cups of berries (for average pie pan, but more may be needed if you have a larger pan)
• granulated sugar to taste - most recipe books suggest 1/4-1/2 cup sugar per pint (2 cups) of berries, but taste it first.
• 1 or 2 tablespoons white flour - to help thicken it; adjust for the amount of berries you have.
• A squeeze of lemon.

Make it and Bake it
Pour the berry mixture into the crust and fold the crust over it, creasing it as you go (see photo). Moisten the folds to insure it doesn't unfold itself as it bakes, spilling the content. I've suggested baking it in the pie pan to prevent that, but you can still get blueberries swimming around the outside of the crust if you're not careful. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, then check its progress. If the berries are not bubbling, turn it down to 350 and bake for another 15 minutes or so until they are. If you let it cool, you can slip it out of the pan and serve it "rustically" on a pretty plate. Or not. We ate it so fast, no one really noticed the pan. But I thought it was pretty - especially with a little powdered sugar.

Enjoy! It's July and those berries are running out fast!

 

Perhaps the World Ends Here

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what,
we must eat to live.
the gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the
table so it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe
at its corners,they scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what
it is to be human. We make men at it,
we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts
of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms
around our children. They laugh with us at our poor
falling-down selves as we put ourselves back
together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella
in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place
to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate
the terrible victory.
We have given birth at this table, and have prepared
our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow.
We pray of suffering and remorse.
We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table,
while we are laughing and crying,
eating of the last sweet bite.

- Joy Harjo, from Reinventing the Enemy's Language, 1998

Gone to seed

It's hard not to look at the garden right now as simply wreckage. After weeks of 90 degree heat, sporadic rain, and a certain amount of neglect, it has truly "declined in use, status, and utility due to lack of care." This is the actual definition of the phrase "to go to seed," when used as an idiom - as in "the house has gone to seed and will be condemned." Or "He really went to seed after the break-up." 

But in the actual case of living things, this is not necessarily the end of the story. For one thing, I could care for the annuals in the garden till the cows come home and sooner or later they would move along the life cycle and go to seed, having fulfilled their function and bequeathing their life-force to the next generation. I think it's safe to say that new life often springs from human wreckage as well. The process has given birth to well-worn metaphors about the darkness and the dawn, rock bottom and recovery, phoenixes and ashes. It's a fact of life, and it's going to happen regardless of how much one cares.

It's also a fact of death. Children may be our seeds, biologically speaking - but there are also all the people profoundly touched by a human life well-lived, or even not so well-lived. Some our life stories may end up being mainly cautionary tales, but if we live them honestly, that's not such a bad thing either. Our deaths end our personal story, but our part in the Big Story goes on. 

Having a front yard garden - or a parking lot garden - in North Florida is a little like living your life out loud. Your hopes and dreams are out there on the curb in April, apparently triumphant around late May, and publicly falling apart by July. So it goes. One hopes that some of those dried-up and dead-looking seeds may find fertile ground and take root next season, and that we might learn a little something - that things fall apart, for instance, and that there's hope. 

   

St. Francis and the Sow

The bud 

stands for all things,

even for those things that don't flower, 

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as St. Francis 

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curve of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats to the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath

them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

- Galway Kinnell

[photo: front garden spiderwort. Some call these "weeds."]

DIY

Following my trip to Madison, I spent a few days in Chicago and loved visiting the neighborhoods there. So much diversity! The Loop, Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, Oak Park…  Again, a manageable city due in part to great public transportation and safe pedestrian areas within neighborhoods.

While in Wicker Park, I stopped in Handmade Renegade, a shop a lot like Anthology in Madison – although this one limited itself to handmade item while Anthology also sold recycled things. I love these shops! They remind me how important creativity is to the human spirit – such expressive “goods” for sale! And both shops were full of people happily browsing, talking to one another and to the owner.

I’m not sure what the difference actually is between “art” and “craft” except in seems craft is often made in quantity while art tends to be one of a kind. But what about a print of a piece of “art?” It’s a little slippery. In addition, craft tends to have a political connotation. It can be a harkening back to the day when people made things themselves, putting  time, care, and “craftsmanship” into their work.  Or it can a kind of rebellion against “the man,” as Andrew Wagner of American Craft Magazine puts it, as he describes its “inherent otherness – that is, its unique ability to set its practitioners outside of mainstream industrial society.”  No wonder I am drawn to craft.

We have two stores in town that are somewhat similar in spirit to the two in Madison and Chicago: Alternatives and the Artisans Guild.  They’re right next to each other in the little strip mall in front of Publix at the Millhopper on 16^th Ave.  Alternatives, owned by a former museum curator who became fascinated by the work done by the women’s co-ops she encountered during her travels, features art/crafts from around the world, fairly traded.  The Artisans Guild is owned and staffed by area artists who take turns shop-keeping at this store featuring their work – all kinds of work, from notecards to canvas paintings to pottery to wooden bowls to jewelry.  They seem to be doing well, and I think that’s in part due to the community’s growing awareness surrounding fair trade, and the desire to support workers directly and artists in particular.

Another side of craft is the “do it yourself” part or “DIY.” This doesn’t have to necessarily spring from nostalgia for the days when things weren’t made on assembly lines by underpaid children or even from Luddite sensibilities about the dehumanization of the industrial revolution. It can just be that you like doing it, or making it. This is sometimes, but not always spurred by lack of money.

My German step-granfather, whom we all adored, had the reputation in my family for “jerry-rigging” things that ought to have been repaired or built professionally, according to the nay-sayers in  my family.  Others were inspired by his ingenuity and gall. He retreaded old wooden wagon wheels with garden hose, built an amazing – and crazy-looking - devise for assisting him in installing large panels of sheetrock on the ceiling by himself, built storage sheds that would have offended the neighbors if he had any, but lasted a half-century, and insisted on fixing whatever broke himself (back when things were actually fixable). All of this was inspired by frugality which was the highest of virtues for him.

I am inspired a bit by that myself, and I imagine more and more people will be in the future. This makes me wonder what kinds of practical things we might be able to create, whether inspired by DIY or by tightened belts. I love this website - Ready Made - which has some amazing projects on it that seem doable by a beginner. This 2X4 chair looks doable, practical, and beautiful.  

I think more and more people are being drawn to these simple, human-infused ways of taking care of their needs – aesthetic and practical - and there is a growing appreciation for those who do this work. Another good idea whose time has come. 

[photo from Handmade Renegade's website]

The way of the future - maybe

I was in Madison, Wisconsin last weekend. Oh my. I had heard great things about it but was still surprised at just how good it is. We stayed right on State Street which runs past the Capitol building on one end and the University of Wisconsin on the other. A little closer to the university than our downtown, it's a lively, diverse, and beautiful area of the city. There are grocery stores, clothing stores, shoe stores, doctors offices, pharmacies, and other basics, as well as galleries, museums, book stores, and my favorite - a lovely store selling locally handcrafted and recycled goods. It's classic "mixed-use" with homes above the shops and dotted among the adjacent streets. Walking and cycling downtown are a healthy mix of elders, families, and students. This is partly because State Street is closed to through traffic which makes it immeasurably safer and more pleasant for these activities. 

Why is State Street like this? Or rather, why is Gainesville not? While we've had some visionary city commissioners in the past who have encouraged more mixed use of the downtown area, it's still predominated by bars and restaurants. Businesses are constantly coming and going - local bookstores being the saddest case; in the last five years nearly all of our local booksellers around town have closed down, while Madison is dotted with them.  Unlike other areas of town, downtown Gainesville is a terrible place to bicycle through due to the lack of bike lanes. And the noise from the bars is so outrageous at 2am Thursday through Saturday night, that few families (or anyone who has to wake up before 10 in the morning) are likely to want to live in the area. 

A friend who has been involved in city politics says this about what makes Madison different  - and what is holding Gainesville back:

"Fundamentally it's about getting people on the street, which comes from a multiplicity of factors:

• Infrastructure design - wide sidewalks, building density and design up to the sidewalk, public transit, bicycles and calm auto traffic, proper lighting, street trees, all integrated.
• Housing and employment centers mixed into the urban content (mixed-use design) 
• Many people of all ages and demographics living within the area, therefore apartments and condos above ground-floor retail business
• Entertainment, art, culture - and excitement and energy from alternative culture. 

"It takes a population sophisticated enough to know how to nurture all these factors over time. It can be done here in Gainesville, but we don't have the critical mass at this time from our residents. Interstate 75 and open space to the west continue to draw development into the patterns of past decades. There's money to be made and, well, it's a safe distance from 'them'." 

This sounds sadly true and makes me wonder again at how racism continues to influence our southern cities. But we're part of the mass that needs to get critical. And things are happening. I am so encouraged by the development going on down South Main Street - a visionary park, a food co-op, the hopes of a kitchen incubator, and other rehab projects - all very close to and inclusive of some of our poorer neighborhoods. How wonderful if this could be the leap that will finally drag Gainesville into being what it can be - an inspirational town that energizes and motivates the best in all its residents. 

[Photo: from a restaurant window along State Street]

What do you want to remember?

 Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

what scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry it into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life --

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around? 

- William Stafford, "You Reading This, Be Ready"

Stay away from screens

I love this poem by Wendell Berry which includes this line: "Live a three-dimensional life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in."

Every other article I read lately seems to be about the frantic pace and over-connected lives we are leading due to electronics - cell phones, e-mails, Facebook. Is all this connection good or is it bad? Is our frazzlement due solely to electronics or are there other, inherently human forces at play? 

I recently read two articles in Utne Reader that address the issue. In A Nation Distracted, Maggie Jackson is concerned that we are becoming so shaped by electronic distraction that "we are redefining 'smart' to mostly mean twitch speed, multitasking, and bullet points."  In The Focused Life, Winifred Gallagher's experience of a serious illness motivated her to focus on life and to explore the idea of focus in general - and our choice to choose what we focus on in our own lives. Both made me think.

When my older children were little, we decided to put the tv in the closet. It was too tempting for me to let them watch it for one thing, which they were very happy to do for seemingly any length of time. We didn't have a VCR (much less a computer) so this made us screen-free. Once in a while, if there was something worth the trouble of hauling the thing out of the closet, we would do so, but in general, my kids were encouraged by the lack of screen entertainment to play with each other, their friends, and outside. These days (I am old!), I find it troubling to hear parents proudly say their kids don't watch tv at all and yet don't count the time they are watching DVDs or playing video games - or consider it particularly problematic. I'm shocked at the amount of time eight to eighteen-year olds spend in front of a screen on average - 7.5 hours, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study.  Recent research indicates - surprise, surprise! - that for each hour a child spends in front of a screen each day, the risk of developing attention related problems later increases by ten percent. But I think Wendell Berry really gets to the heart of the issue. A human being spending nearly half their waking hours this way is living a life mediated by a screen, obscured by a screen, and virtually dominated by a screen. What a huge experiment we are performing on our children. 

And on ourselves. I am troubled, too, by the amount of time I spend in front of a computer screen. I am writing a blog, but I keep checking tabs that show I have a new email or Facebook comment. I am surprised by how quickly time passes while I flit from one idea to another: "Hmmm. looking for a recipe for blueberry pie. . . wait a minute! here's one for green beans... on a blog that links to another blog of someone living in the south... who makes all her own clothes out of recycled material... who purchases patterns from a French shop... turn on my online dictionary... go to her blog, oh, what a cute little kid, and... wedding photos of people I don't even know and won't ever meet! . . . wait, what am I doing here and how long have I spent doing this?" This is me, the wise adult aware of my choices, solidly in the middle-age recognition that my time is running out. What about our kids?!

Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensional life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

This is the life I want to live, fully aware of the sacredness that is actually - not virtually - present around me. To "be here, now," as the saying goes. Oy. 

[Photo: Yup, this is our own little Riley, earbudded and mesmerized by the screen version of bulldozers digging a hole!]