The season of what?

From a United Way promotion for "Giving Tuesday", 

http://www.unitedwaygp.org/project/seasonal-giving-tuesday/

A common set of sensations seems to drape themselves around me at this time of year. I've noticed the pattern for the past decade or so, and more acutely over the past six years. It's a sense of despair, disappointment, disenchantment, and emptiness rolled into a container of grumpiness, stinginess, and guilt. Bells for the Salvation Army are ringing on a multitude of street corners. Non-profits and other charitable entities step up their call for donations. Workplaces put out the plea to co-workers, and retailers urge you to find the best gifts at the best prices at their stores. Coupled with these entreaties to give are holiday parties: RSVPs just when you are about to be buried in student assignments, and requests for a home-baked potluck. Calls to join cookie-baking contests, and to participate in every single imaginable form of holiday cheer. The end result for me is sadness and guilt. I start to feel like a stingy selfish penny pincher, wondering why I am not inclined to give as freely as I do during the rest of the year.

Parsing this out in my brain over the past several days has led me to think that we've developed the wrong ideas about the meaning of Christmas. I don't mean wrong ideas in the sense of holiday commercialization or festivity overload. I also don't mean wrong ideas over whether or not "Christ" is a part of Christmas, or whether it's best to use what appears to be the latest "politically correct" phrases: ie, Happy Hanukkah for those who celebrate it, or Best wishes for whatever you celebrate. What I mean is the constricted space of giving that we've confined to maybe 35 to 40 days, and the resultant pressure that it puts on all of us.

It strikes me as particularly odd that appeals for money, for gifts, for help, for celebrating have been relegated to such a narrow window of time. It also strikes me as a bit incredulous that we as a society would expect that one's capabilities to come through on any of these things would be any different in December than at other times of the year. I still get paid every two weeks -- and my check is no larger in December than it is in July. My bills don't go away. They're still due on what is generally a monthly basis. And in a similar way people who are in need of food, of clothing, of shelter, of assistance with rest or with medical bills don't suddenly lose that need after the season of giving comes to an end.

I give as much as I can of my money, my food, my time, my labor and perhaps most importantly my heart all year long. Why might it not be useful to just continue that pattern in December instead of forcing an intensification of action?

As for celebrating, I enjoy holiday parties -- on a monthly, or maybe bi-monthly basis. Why relegate them all to some time period that vaguely seems to be December 12 through 19, and force me to make choices between two or three parties, getting some work done, and keeping up with my workouts? Wouldn't it be easier and more in the spirit of Christmas (or whatever it is that one wants to call this time period) to sustain the joy of sharing food and fellowship throughout the whole year?

I am human, of course, and I pore through Internet ads, newspaper circulars, and special deals e-mailed to me with longing, perhaps even lust. And in some ways I do hoard up a whole lot of shopping for the last week of November and all of December and some of January in the spirit of snagging the best deals possible on items that are functional and fun. Ladies leather gloves for $6 a pair. I can use those. Running tights or leggings that are winter weight for $5. Bring them on. Snow caps, shovels, roof rakes, tarps, bags of walnuts, tins of roasted cashews -- great items that will not go to waste.

But then I remember. This is the season of "giving". So I should be shopping, not for myself but for others. But which others? Nearly everyone I know -- fortunately -- has what they need, and probably would be perplexed by the sight of me showing up at their doorstep grinning with a gift-wrapped snow cap or red-ribboned blue tarp ($2.99) in hand. And while those are great gifts for my husband and me, I know that we won't treat them as gifts if we buy them for ourselves. We'll regard them as necessities for the farm and our quiet life together in the country.

So what does it mean to have a season of giving? Could we eliminate the season, and just make it a year-round affair? It might glitter less. It might look a little less pretty, and it might not even seem like much of a gift. But perhaps it might be a more worthy, more lasting expression of kindness, generosity, durability, and value if it came not in a flood but in a trickle of sharing throughout the year.

No special plans

It seems like I've been getting asked the question "do you you have any big plans?" a lot lately. Friends, colleagues, people I meet in casual encounters ask this question in a friendly, non-threatening conversational tone, querying me about my weekends, my Thanksgiving festivities, and perhaps soon about the upcoming holidays. I find myself feeling puzzled by the question and a little perplexed as to how to answer it. I'm puzzled because at age fifty-three I thought I had passed the point where I was supposed to have "big plans" (beyond perhaps retirement). I'm perplexed because, well, I do have some plans, but they don't particularly involve anyone other than my husband and me. We celebrate virtually every holiday that exists in the Hindu, Christian, American, Indian, and sometimes Jewish, Muslim, and Pan-African calendar. We carry out these almost weekly festivities to honor abundance, harvests, social justice, and perhaps most importantly the value we seek to build in ourselves.

We began talking about Thanksgiving sometime in September. Actually, we began talking about Thanksgiving sometime last winter when we argued over whether or not to raise ducks, with the goal of having one of the ducks we raised for a festive Thanksgiving dinner. We are in fact having a duck for Thanksgiving, though it is not one of ours, as the project became one we decided to defer to 2016. (We will do it next year!) But, because we arranged to get the duck from another couple who farms, we were unsure as to whether to have it on the actual Thanksgiving Day or on the Sunday before. This is because we thought the duck might arrive fresh -- not frozen -- and would be best roasted and eaten as soon as we received. So we had initially planned to have it tomorrow night, five days before the great turkey day, until we discovered this morning that the duck was coming to us frozen. That caused an alteration in plans, which made me feel grateful that we had not made any "big plans."

The idea of "big plans" calls up a certain level of anxiety for me. As a child growing up in Indiana with immigrant Indian parents, "big plans" didn't really cohere well with the normative American and Christian festivals. Our family did have a Thanksgiving meal, but because my parents were vegetarian it was always embarrassingly devoid of turkey. We did celebrate Christmas, but because we were Hindu, no midnight Mass or celebration of Jesus being born in a creche was part of our yearly ritual. In my teen years, the absence of celebration mounted because my parents -- as the owners of a small hobby and craft shop -- usually were working around the clock during the holidays to ensure that others would get the gifts and the pleasures to make their festivities lovely and memorable. Ours were mostly about taking a day off, a day of rest.

In young adulthood -- namely my twenties and early thirties -- I compensated by creating "big plans": elaborate dinners, sometimes three or four Thanksgiving dinners that would spill out over the four day weeks; holiday parties and gift lists and card lists that would grow more elaborate each year. These were fun years but ultimately tiring ones. There's only so much grog and eggnog that one can ingest before it seems like too much. As my thirties melted into my forties, I often found myself volunteering to work the holiday shifts at various jobs that I held so that others could be with their families and loved ones. I usually was living by myself in these years. I had friends and I had family but usually no one nearby. I never minded this situation, except when I was reminded of its oddity. Being alone over the holidays was simply not perceived as a normal state of occurrence. Hence, the reminders raised more anxieties for me.

At age forty-two, I got engaged to the man who is now my husband of ten years. We have been together for eleven-plus years, and together we are usually alone. I could choose to believe that this is the result of the two of us being social misfits who have no friends or of being itinerants who moved too many times in the early years of our adult lives to put down the kinds of roots that holidays together seem to demand. I prefer to think of it as being the result of simply enjoying the quiet solitude of being alone together and of being able to use a holiday as a day to celebrate the ordinary without added extravagance. Every day, I like to start the day with coffee and writing. Every day, I like to exercise and spend some time in fresh air. Every day, I like to cook and eat very good food. Every day, I like to meditate a little, relax with my cats, check up on the chickens and goats cavorting in the yard. Every day (stop reading if this sounds insane), I actually do like to work a little bit. A holiday seems like an opportunity to do these daily things without the pressure of being someplace on time (I usually am late); without the obligation of doing it all right (I usually mess up somewhere); and without the sometimes tedious tasks of life like meetings (those necessary aspects of professional life that are, well, frankly things in which we partake more out of necessity than joy). It is an opportunity to hit the snooze button on the alarm clock four times instead of three times -- or perhaps just to turn the alarm off entirely. It is an opportunity to make a possible plan -- like the two hour special Thanksgiving yoga session that looks awfully appealing right now but might not feel so appealing when 7 a.m. rolls around next Thursday -- and not carry it through. It's an opportunity to indulge in laziness without feeling guilt, or an opportunity to work without feeling the pressure of what one "should" be doing.

And so my "big plans" for the holidays are perhaps big in their radical state. They are about nothing -- and everything -- all at once.

Temporary Treats

    Dinner for the past two nights has consisted of delicacies that show up in some North American farmers market stands for brief periods of time in early spring: ramps, fiddlehead ferns, and sunchokes (also known as Jerusalem artichokes). These are the kinds of vegetables that rarely show up in food pyramid or other general dietary guideline charts. This is not because they lack nutrition: Both fiddleheads and ramps have high levels of vitamins A and C, while sunchokes deliver high levels of fiber in addition to a fairly robust array of vitamins and minerals. The reason for their obscurity in American nutritional data is their relative absence from commercial markets. While sunchokes like chives are a perennial that spreads, few farmers grow fiddleheads and ramps. These are early spring treats of forest foragers, which means that if you know what to look for, you can obtain them for free.
    I first discovered ramps when I moved to upstate New York about five years ago. Although they are described as a wild leek, I find that their slightly nutty and spicy flavor along with their aromatic scent far exceeds the somewhat bland reliability of a domestically grown leek. Unlike the domestic leeks, recipes encourage use not just of the onion-like root at the base of the ramp but of its long, languid petal-shaped leaves as well. From farmers who sell them, I understand that the task of bringing them to market is somewhat laborious: First, one must locate the ramps, and then one must dig them out -- not from soft, cultivated soil but from a forest floor. They were selling at the farmers market in my town yesterday for about $6 a bunch.
    Fiddleheads also grow in the wild, and were selling yesterday for $8 for a half-pint. On the surface, these prices might seem rather high -- especially for a plant that is not grown but foraged -- but the perspective changes when one considers the work that it takes to get a fiddlehead safely to market and explained well enough to a customer so that it is consumed safely.
    My own experience with fiddleheads has been somewhat mixed. I saw them for the first time at a market in northern India in 1996 and was immediately captivated. My friend and I were renting a small flat for a couple of weeks that had a kitchen so we decided to buy some for dinner. The market vendor told us to peel the raw edges, wash our hands well, and cook the ferns until they changed color, just a few minutes. We followed the instructions assiduously -- or thought that we did -- but had something of a disastrous result. My friend had a reaction to them, and had to be rushed to a local hospital. I went with her and spent the night in her room as she experienced rounds of fever, sweating, and vomiting. We both swore off fiddleheads after that.
    I did try them again around 2009 when I spotted them at a farmers market in Seattle. This time, the instructions for preparing them mainly were about washing my hands after handling them and not eating them raw. They tasted good, but this time I too experienced a bit of an allergic reaction. It didn't hospitalize me, but it was enough to prompt me to treat them and all other wild things with a certain degree of skepticism.
    Moving to New York, buying land that abuts a woods and turning much of that land into a homestead like farm caused me to shift my perspective on fiddleheads once again. Coming off a long winter, with the growing season appearing to be about two or three weeks behind the norm, my husband and I have been craving foods that would evoke the fresh tastes of early spring produce. So when a friend who farms on a much larger scale than we do started talking about fiddleheads my interest was perked. 
    As I procured a bag's worth Saturday, I once again received some fairly detailed instructions on how to handle fiddlehead ferns properly: They should not be red or black when cut, only bright green. If they have a prickly texture, they're past their prime for human consumption. (My thinking is that instructions from other farmers to peel the ferns and to wash your hands after handling them probably were to get ride of the prickliness.) The main sticking point, however, was cleaning them: They should be washed. Their stems should be trimmed to within 1/8 of an inch of the fern head, and all brown papery chaff that tends to protect the foliage should be removed. After this round of prep, the fiddleheads need to be rinsed, then soaked in a bowl of water with lemon juice, then drained dry first in a salad spinner and then with paper towels. And then they should not be eaten raw. They should be cooked for a minimum of five to seven minutes.
    This seemed like an inordinate amount of prep work, but I did it for about half of the bag last night and followed a recipe that called for sauteeing them in butter. They turned out well but seemed a little heavy. So tonight we did it again, this time using just a dollop of olive oil. Combined with the ramps and some roasted turnips in a stir-fry, we had a fabulous flavor explosion. My goal tomorrow is to visit my woods and forage for some of my own.

Explaining one's actions

It seems that lately I devote a great deal of time to trying to understand how I use time. That sometimes seems a little crazy, which leads me to look a little more deeply into the meaning of time. Some of this impetus came from a story that one of the students in a course I teach on Stories and Creative Leadership shared recently. This student identified a core value of leadership as taking the time out to listen to the insights, messages, or other words that people who approached her wanted to say.

    The idea that stopping to listen, that slowing the pace of the day could be a core value of leadership stood out for me. I thought about how so very often the people upon whom we rely the most for important advice that could alter the course of our daily behaviors -- doctors, for instance, but also teachers, repair specialists, and even maybe farmers -- come across as too busy and as in too much of a rush to listen to our concerns. I also found myself training the spotlight back onto the self: What does it mean for me to stop, to take the time out to listen? I realize the importance of this action, and still it is a difficult action for me to adapt.

    Today, in morning pages, I completed an exercise that I had not tried for several years. It is entitled "What do you want?" Here's how it works: Ideally, you start with a blank page in a notebook and you draw a line down the middle, creating two columns. You write the question in the left column, and the very first -- immediate, knee-jerk, no thinking -- response that comes first. Like a lot of free-writing and other stream of consciousness exercises, the idea is to tap what's in the heart, not so much what's in the head. The response might be as simple as "I want a green sweater" or as complex as mine was this morning: "I want to be more organized and systematic in how I work so that I'll be more productive as a writer and scholar and more on top of things as a teacher."

    After "What do you want?", you answer the question, "Why do you want it?" Then, "How are you going to feel when you get what you want?" And then, "What are you going to give up to get what you want?" And, "What will you have lost as a result of gaining what you want?" And, then, once again, "What do you want?"

    Through the exercise, I came to answer the second "What do you want?" as follows: "I want more energizing relationships with people. I think I have a lot of good friends who sometimes drag me down and whom I sometimes drag down. I would like to bring out the best in these relationships so that we are always rejuvenating each other."

    The idea of the exercise is to work through the six questions repeatedly until you reach some sort of a reasonable stopping point. For some people, that point is reached before the six questions are even answered. The first time I did the exercise -- some thirteen years ago -- I went through the cycle of six questions a half-dozen times before the first "what do you want?" (a condo on Diamond Head beach in Honolulu) had evolved into a work plan for sorting through the forty or so tasks, projects, needs, and desires that had comprised my to do and finding a way to get them all done before leaving Honolulu for a week's vacation in the Canadian Rockies. This time, it came mid-way through the second cycle in response to the question "How are you going to get what you want?" -- which I realize is not exactly the question I was supposed to be asking myself, but who's looking? My answer: "I am going to be positive and upbeat myself. I'm going to approach all of my work and all of my play with a sense of good healthy living in mind: How is what I'm going to do today creative? How is it providing a healthy use of my brain and my body? How is it contributing to a greater good?"

    I felt as if that series of litmus test questions could provide a healthy guiding principle for shaping a busy life. Knowing that priorities shift, one might regard one's actions in terms of building relationships that are based on creativity, healthy uses of brain and body, and support for a greater good. Taking the time to listen seems like a viable step in that direction.

    A friend proved the value of such advice just a few hours later. I had brought a self-monitoring blood pressure kit into my office in hopes of finding someone familiar with the kits who could help me understanding how to use it. I had e-mailed a couple of colleagues who work in health care and then thought of another colleague who tends to know quite a bit about self-care. She happened to walk by my office so I asked her if she could help. She had four minutes, so I quickly unpacked the kit and kept my eye on my cell phone clock so as to not make her late. She devoted the full four minutes to showing me how to wrap the cuff properly, where to position it on my arm, and how to do a series of test readings at home -- three at a time was her advice -- to gauge whether I was getting consistent readings. She also encouraged me to do it without a shirt on and at the same time of day every day for a couple of weeks until I was comfortable. Her time was limited, but she helped me a lot, which was something that meant a great deal. So actions built on stopping to listen, stopping help? What might this mean for a life of creativity, good health, and a good society? I suspect that it might mean a lot.

Notes from the laundromat

    It's a Saturday afternoon, and once again, I find myself in the laundromat around the corner from where I work. Coming to the 'mat has evolved over the past year into a weekly ritual that had been taking place -- like regular writing -- on an off-and-on basis for a number of years. The ritual became regularized when our washing machine broke for the third time in a year, this time at the end of the extended warranty that my husband Jim and I had purchased initially. Tired of the regular breakdowns and aware that a longer-term fix to our plumbing so that we could create a more reliable and cleaner space in our house for a washer and dryer hookup would cost more than we immediately had to invest, we decided that we could do without these household conveniences for awhile and make do with the laundromat. The weekly ritual is something that is a bit of a pain, but generally something I look forward to.

    Like a flight on a crowded plane, the laundromat is not exactly a comfortable place. It is cold at times, crowded, and a little stressful to get in and out of. But once here, with the clothes in the washer, it provides the same benefit of a short Albany-to-Chicago O'Hare flight -- a quiet space where no one really interrupts you for an hour or so.

    In the past year, I have used my time at the laundromat to grade papers, to catch up on reading, to make telephone calls, to run errands at nearby stores, and to write. I especially appreciate the brevity of space in between the wash and dry cycle for such quick hit activities.

    I find myself thinking a lot about the gap between scarcity and abundance these days, and how perhaps doing one's clothes in the laundromat might speak to that gap. For instance, the laundromat is perceived in some sectors of our so-called civilized society as a forbidden zone. It's a space where you go if you're desperate -- if you cannot afford a washer or dryer; if you're unfortunate -- your home machine broke; or if you're ill -- you cannot hold enough of a steady job or place in society to merit professional cleaning services. Yet, it seems to me that the laundromat really is none of those things. It is instead one of the few communal gathering spots left in domestic life. Over the past year, I have held conversations about folding, sorting, detergents, hikes, sports activities, politics, and horses.

    Eavesdropping yields even richer insight into the world that exists outside of one's comfort zone. During the "track season" that dominates the summer in Saratoga Springs, the demographic at the 'mat changes dramatically from the predominantly English speakers to Spanish speakers. Larger groups arrive with smaller loads per capita. The music is more lilting and happier, as families make the chore into a festival.

    For now, it is still winter. I suspect that the cold temperatures and ongoing snow are wreaking havoc on many people's home facilities. With a new crowd in the laundromat and myself appearing (for some reason or the other) to know what I am doing, I have found myself becoming a consultant on the merits of different machines, the uses of liquid over powder detergent, and the pros and cons of sorting clothes by weight versus color. For the record, I sort by weight -- and somewhat by type -- socks, I have discovered, can be dried and folded much more efficiently if they are not mixed in with the boxers that my husband wears. Towels and jeans take the longest to dry but are the easiest to fold. Therefore, it is not much of an issue if they dry last; it gives one time to get t-shirts and slacks folded and stacked into baskets -- sorted by sex -- in an orderly manner.

    The other day, I was in the laundromat feeling slightly stressed out. I was behind in my classes, behind in my correspondence with students, and fearing that the onslaught of more work would put me still further behind. As I folded, I overheard two young women talking. They were both students at a local community college, and were conversing about the pros and cons of various instructors. I listened to them talk about unanswered e-mails from their instructors, and felt a sense of empathy -- for them as well as their instructors. And then I heard them speak positively about instructors who gave them great feedback, even if it came belatedly. Somehow, their words felt redemptive for me.

    Writing at the laundromat is also a treat. It is dictated today, for instance, by the rhythm of time. That rhythm is set by the wash-rinse-spin cycle spinning dirt out of my clothes. It also is set by the minutes remaining on the free Internet access -- 30 minutes, total.

    And on that note I shall stop for now.

Green tomatoes

   The story of my fondness for fried green tomatoes does not have a lot of depth: On October 31, 2014, a Wednesday, my husband Jim and I were preparing to do our last farm food and cooking demonstration for the year for our ad hoc group, Two Wooden Spoons, at the Franklin Community Center in downtown Saratoga Springs. We had started these demonstrations a few months earlier with a goal of encouraging clients of the center's food pantry and other services to consider shopping at the local farmers markets. We wanted to invite the food pantry clients to come to the farmers market and would talk to them about how the farmers accepted EBT cards and often would offer special prices on seasonal items.

    While many people see the farmers markets as weekend diversions for the wealthy, Jim and I had a personal stake in promoting the economic value of farmers markets. We discovered their value when we ourselves were on food stamps for a few months in 2007 when I was in between adjunct teaching jobs and he was out of work. The fact that we could buy local produce and meat that was literally fresh from a farm and in quantities that would not spoil before we could consume us had convinced us that farmers markets were not only an enjoyable place to shop but an affordable one, as well. After that summer, we began to make a shift in our lives that would move us toward first buying most of what we ate at farmers markets and eventually growing the food ourselves. Like good evangelists, we wanted to share the message.

    Our approach at the Franklin Community Center was relatively low key. We show up with a featured vegetable, some basic cooking implements, and a few additional staple ingredients (oil, lemon juice, pepper, and sometimes a couple of other spices). We prepare the vegetable in three or four different ways and dish up samples. We then walk up and down the line of clients waiting for services inviting them to sample the food and explain how it was prepared with farm-raised local ingredients.

    In the midst of the project, I also began tending a community garden that had been established on the center's lawn. While the garden had good soil and was relatively protected from the elements, it didn't get the kind of sunshine needed to turn tomatoes red. The good news of this dilemma was that at a time when most other tomato plants in the area had shriveled and died from frost, the Franklin Center's plants were still thriving. The bad news was that the plants were producing large numbers of firm, healthy green tomatoes that refused to ripen to red.

    We were scheduled to take a winter break from our food demonstrations, which will resume this coming Wednesday, February 25. We decided that the last round of cooking should not feature foods grown in our garden or purchased at the farmers market but rather the community action center's garden itself.

    Enter fried green tomatoes.

    I had never made them before. I was pretty sure that I had eaten them, but I couldn't understand their allure. I liked tomatoes well enough when they were ripe, but to me they tasted sour and bitter when green. I couldn't fathom why anyone would bother frying something that was not so good fresh.

    But we had dozens of green tomatoes to dispense with so I looked up a recipe and proceeded to prepare them. I prepared a mixture of cornmeal and black pepper, and beat a couple of eggs. I sliced the tomatoes, dipped them in the egg and rolled them in the cornmeal. I then dropped them into a frying pan sizzling with hot oil and cooked them until the cornmeal exterior started to brown. I removed them from the pan and placed them on a paper towel before preparing the sample cups. On an impulse, I tasted one and nearly melted with joy. The sharp, sour taste of the green tomato raw had mellowed to a soft juicy undertone that perfectly complemented the cornmeal covering around it. The flavor melded crunchy and watery, and sour and sweet into a perfect companionship.

    Throughout the winter, I have thought often of fried green tomatoes and -- because we are fortunate in Saratoga to have a farmer who grows tomatoes hydroponically -- have prepared them more than once. The explosion of flavor continues to amaze me, and I have constantly sought to experiment with new methods of preparation.

    Tonight I tried them a little differently. I had obtained a large number of green tomatoes from the hydroponic Shushan Farms around Christmas. I had kept the tomatoes in the refrigerator to prevent them from turning red and rotting, but by mid-February I knew I had gotten to a point where I needed to use them or lose them. I looked up a recipe for pakora, which is a spicy Indian snack consisting of vegetables dipped in a chickpea batter and deep fried. I prepared the batter with chickpea flour, turmeric, and some crushed red pepper, and submerged my green tomatoes which had been sliced into quarters in it. I heated some oil in a deep frying pan and dropped the pieces of tomato into it. The result once again was an explosion of flavor that I can't wait to reproduce -- again.

Things on the brain

  

Not sure what's causing the snow to fall, but hey!

I have been silent on all of my blogs for the past several months. The silence was neither intentional nor the the result, really, of something that's often called writer's block. I have been writing, as usual, at least once a day, usually twice a day, and often in three or four stints. What has felt stultifying and has deterred me from blogging has been a sense of rhythmic familiarity. I developed good habits. I settled into rituals. I began to anticipate seasonal events -- like the spring planting, the fall harvest, the frenetic pace of November's National Novel Writing Month, the celebrations of the fall festival season, and the quiet hibernation of winter -- and participated in them with joy. It was fun and enlightening, but there was nothing new to share. So my blogging voice -- remembering its training from the days of journalism -- fell silent. I had thought that I would wait until I had something truly "new" to report on before I began blogging again.

    And well, I still don't feel as if I have anything new to report on. But a new blog established by my friend Pauline Carrico (a former colleague at the college where I teach) convinced me that perhaps it is time to break the silence.

    Pauline's blog is entitled Thoughts on Everything and Nothing. That title led me to think that perhaps for a bit blogging on what's on the brain might be a way to kickstart the habit.

    And, so, it's Friday, February 20, 2015. What's on my brain?

    1. Winter, for sure. I am not fond of cold weather, but to be honest, I am not tired of winter -- yet. I rather like the northeastern New York winters with big dumps of snow, howling winds, and temperatures below zero. Not because I like to venture out in them. I am not the person you will see snow shoeing or cross-country skiing. I like the excuse they give me to slow down and stay in. Lately, I've been thinking of life cycles also as having sets of seasons. Not to get too graphic, but after thirty-nine straight years of monthly menstrual periods, something that my new primary care provider calls "perimenopause" seems to have kicked in. For the moment, that means a seasonal adjustment to my life patterns. My diet is changing, my habits are changing, my body seems to demand more rest. Winter is good time to let those changes sink in and become a normative aspect of life.
    For instance, over the past week, I took over -- perhaps temporarily, perhaps in a more sustained way -- the morning chore of taking fresh water out to the chicken coop at 5 a.m. so that the birds would have unfrozen water to drink as they began to wake up. Realizing that mornings are evolving into incredibly good times for me to get the quiet work of writing, reading student assignments, and prepping for courses done before the day's daily distractions kick in, I've been working to reset my body to fall asleep by 9 p.m. so that I can take advantage of the hours before the 10 a.m. "witching hour" of e-mail deluges, meetings, and appointments. What I have found is that resetting the body clock is really not difficult. My body demands eight hours of sleep, so if I'm up at 5 a.m., it will want to shut down at 9 p.m. What has been challenging has been resetting the rest of my life. For instance, how do you tell a student who works until 8 p.m. and needs to discuss an assignment that it will be very hard to be available at the time that they are?

    2. Overall health and diet. My husband and I decided finally to switch to a different primary care provider after four years of me feeling consistently dissatisfied with the "there's a pill for every ailment" approach that our previous doctor was taking. I did some research and decided to try a doctor with an integrative medical approach. We had our first appointment in late January, and after listening to my list of concerns, she ordered a round of substantial bloodwork, recommended a nutritional supplement for sinus relief, and told me to abstain from dairy products and most sugars for a temporary period of time. After two or three weeks, I can report that I feel better physically, but I am still not sure the regime is attacking the root ailments. I don't feel very hopeful that the bloodwork will reveal anything different, but I am hopeful that this doctor will not just shrug her shoulders and stop.

    3. And finally fitness training, teaching, writing, sleep, and farming. These feel like the biggest activities of my day-to-day life. The elusive search into how to balance them out so they each get the attention they deserve persists. So perhaps that's a theme to develop, as 2015 blogging resumes ...

Aromatics

My husband Jim and I spent today at the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in Saugerties, New York. The trip to Saugerties, according to the fastest route, was about an hour and a half. We decided to take a more scenic route, which made the trip an hour or so longer. That long road trip, coupled with the overwhelmingly heady sensation of sampling about a dozen different varieties of garlic, created a day trip that I will long remember.

I like to think of garlic as an aromatic. It, like onions, is a member of the allium family. This group of plants also includes shallots and leeks. My style of cooking often involves these flavorful vegetables as a base. Fairly typically, I will heat oil, chop up a couple of cloves of garlic and/or some onion and fry it in the hot oil until the air around the cooking pan is fragrant. Then, it is time to add the main element of the dish: whatever meat or vegetable or grain will comprise the key ingredient.

Garlic, as a result, is an important but perhaps under-recognized element of each daily meal. It was a treat, as a result, to spend a few hours hobnobbing with aficionados and to get a sense of what can happen when this base ingredient moves out of the sidelines and takes center stage.

Our entry into the garlic festival began with a stop at the first booth, manned by a garlic entrepreneur known as Jake. The booth, like many others, featured wooden boxes of both loose and bagged bulbs of garlic in several varieties, and small dishes set out in front. In the small dishes were bits of raw, fresh garlic diced into pieces that we perhaps a quarter-inch in diameter. Next to the dishes were toothpicks. Visitors were encouraged to select a toothpick, pierce one of the diced bits, and pop it into the mouth.

My first taste was of a fairly mellow German white variety. It was fresh and sharp. I felt both the freshness and sharpness penetrate my tastebuds, waking them up. In the meantime, my husband was sampling a different variety: a hard neck variety of garlic known as Georgian Fire. "You've got to try this, hun," he exclaimed. "I pierced one of the pieces and felt the fire slip down the back of my throat."

"Wow," I exclaimed.

From Georgian Fire, we moved to sampling what are known as soft-necks: a Chamiskuri variety that came from one of the former Soviet Republics and the famous (or infamous) Elephant Garlic, which is known for its large cloves and its mild flavors.

From each, along with several other types of hard neck garlics, came the sharp freshness over and over again.

To return to an unanswered matter, the difference between a hard necked garlic and a soft necked one has to do in part with the stem. Garlic grows from a clove planted about four inches deep into the ground. From the clove sprouts a green shoot that eventually stretches upward about four feet and thickens and dries into a stalk. If the stalk is firm like a small stick, the variety is a hard-neck. If the stalk is soft and pliable like a piece of twine, you've got a soft neck. Hard necks also produce a scape, which is a long green stem, just as the bulb growing from the clove underneath the ground begins to mature. Growers learn quickly to cut off the scapes -- partly to promote the bulb's growth and partly because the scapes are a delectable savory treat in and of themselves.

Most of the local farmers in our part of New York grow primarily hard neck garlics because soft necks are more vulnerable to cold. However, even if the soft necks are vulnerable, they tend to store better, retaining their aromatic headiness up to a year after their harvest. We wanted to give these soft necks a try, and a consultant with the Garlic Seed Foundation encouraged us to give it a try. A little bit of extra mulch would help protect it through the winter as long as we remembered to start pulling off those layers of mulch once the snow melted in April.

We left the garlic festival with a pound of the Chamiskuri soft necks, a pound of Elephant cloves, and a pound of the peppery Georgian Fire that had first kicked our taste buds alive. We also left feeling the heat of the late September sun baking through our skin and the sharp hot fragrances of the miniature pieces of garlic that we had sampled warming our stomachs.

I rarely eat garlic raw. Like most people, I see it as something that requires roasting, frying, or baking in some form or fashion. I also see it as an enhancement to dishes, not a singular ingredient. But eating it raw and by itself opened up an amazing discovery. Garlic, by itself, smells and tastes good. It is powerful in its strength and its freshness. What I had sampled had awakened my taste buds and kindled my appetite. It had cleansed my palate and made me eager for more.

Finding the Source

My name means Snow, which my mother told me throughout my childhood was Princess of the Snow. I was always embarrassed by the princess reference because it seemed pompous and girly. These days, it's funny when sometimes people call me "princess" -- as a sign of affection, mostly. I like it. I did like the idea that my name meant snow, and as I grew older, I realized that the snow references also were tied to the Himalaya mountain range. I saw the Himalaya briefly in 1973 when our family went to India and took a trip to Simla, where my mother was born. I felt -- or imagined -- some connection to the mountains.

Later still, I learned that the Ganges River, which Hindus refer to as Ganga, had its source high up in the Himalaya mountains and that you could actually trek to the source. I never felt very connected to the Hindu religion -- it was a little too offbeat for the Midwest sensibility all around me -- but I longed to see the source. I think actually I wanted to climb into the mountains, and I felt that seeing the source of Ganga would be an appropriate excuse.

Growing up in the Midwest didn't give me a lot of opportunities to be around mountains, but I always felt that I would enjoy them. I remember feeling very excited about being near the mountains when I had an internship in Boise, Idaho, and loving the Cascades and Olympic mountains when I moved in 1988 to Seattle.

I got an opportunity to trek to the source of Ganga in 1999 when I traveled to India as a graduate student, as part of a study abroad group organized by a couple of professors from University of North Carolina. By this point, I knew that the town where one began the trek was known as Gangotri and that it was at about 10,000 feet. I also knew that the source of the river was actually a glacier, with the name of Gaumukh, and that it was all but impossible to get to the source -- the point of origin -- because the size of the glacier would vary with the seasons, which meant that the source was never a fixed point, a point that becomes obvious when one looks at the concept of an origin from the perspective that Michel Foucault offers in his essay Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. This essay teaches that there is no origin, only beginnings, with emphasis on the plural. Still, I was excited to make the trek.

The hike was 18 kilometers (about 12 miles) one way. It was supposed to be a relatively easy walk, but I was out of shape and relatively easy on a mountain trail at 10,000 feet has a meaning of its own. I was in my mid-thirties, and I was with a group of students who were mostly in their teens. I really could not keep up with them, but I wanted to do the trip.

There were tea houses along the way -- which were essentially huts built into the mountain where shepherds and other mountain folk would live. Serving tourists was a big part of their livelihood, and the tea and samosa and hot paratha that we could get at these rest stops were quite nourishing.

Most people walked to the base of the glacier, and stayed overnight in an ashram like guest house at the base of the glacier. We were going to do the same.

Our group of some fifteen to eighteen people kind of split into clumps. There were a few very kind people in the group who walked with me, mostly older men. One of them was the study abroad group leader Afroz. The other was a graduate student like myself, whose name I'm not sure of. I think it was Vinnie. Anyway, I caught up with a group at the last teahouse before the guest house. One of the girls in the group had gotten some altitude sickness and while she wasn't seriously ill, she didn't want to continue. She decided to stay overnight in the tea house at the shepherds' invitation. This made me a bit skeptical, but Afroz queried the men and gave his approval. It worked out okay, from what I could tell.

I then started walking with Afroz. He and I were talking, and he was putting me at my ease. Throughout the trip, I had sort of felt like an older person. I had had a chip on my shoulder because I am Indian and I wasn't particularly pleased at the way that a bunch of college-age kids were handling their first trip outside the country. I also felt like a prude because I didn't approve of smoking or of women drinking in India in public, unless it was some place like a bar. Afroz treated me like an equal. We talked about research, scholarship, and he encouraged me to keep on exploring my roots. He was Muslim so I talked to him a little about how he perceived the place of Muslims in India.

Then, we hit a point on the trail where a rock slide had occurred. What had been a fairly safe and wide mountain trail had become reduced to a narrow treacherous path that could only be crossed single file. Afroz panicked and said we had to go back. I knew, however, that darkness was coming and that we couldn't make it back. I felt that if we were careful we could get across safely. My knowledge of the Ten Essentials from hiking in the Cascade Mountains kicked in. I asked Afroz if I could walk in front of him, and I held his hand so he could cross after we made it. He was shaking like a leaf and worrying about his partner. I told him that if we kept our own thoughts focused on safety, everyone would arrive safely. My prognosis proved to be correct. Everyone arrived safely.

That was one of the most empowering and strengthening moments of my life. Earlier, on our bus ride up to Gangotri, we had passed through the town of Tehri, which was controversial because a dam had been built there in the 1980s, displacing villages of people. Unlike the lively gurgling sparkling Ganga that characterized most of the ten-hour drive between Rishikesh and Gangotri, the river was dead in Tehri. The water was thick and mosquitoes swarmed the air. The air felt hot and humid, and there seemed to be a fetid smell. I realized that this was the impact of the dam. It had killed a civilization. I remember that I thought as we drove out of Tehri and up toward Gangotri that this was a good reason to be religious. One could link the religious values of Hinduism to the environmental activism that would restore land and life. I could get excited about this kind of a politics, a politics of justice, rooted in the land.

There's a lot more to the story of Gangotri. It's amazing that I have never told it. I have thought it over and over since 1999. That was a difficult period of my life, and I was a difficult person to be around. I had a huge chip on my shoulder then. But maybe when the rocks slid on the mountain that is part of the range from which my name is derived that chip began to loosen. The next day, upon reaching Gaumukh and getting to the glacier's current source, I did a little puja for my parents. That was my mother's request. I bought some incense and flowers from a shepherd, and I placed them in the snow. As I spoke to God, the mountains around me seemed to hover around me, offering me a protective quilt. I felt as if I were them and they were me. As the incense flared with a match light, (and the lighter was provided by one of the smokers in the group, which is ironic that yet someone else whom I had looked down upon came to my aid), I heard a noise. Snow was tumbling down a cliff, the result perhaps of an avalanche. Some people shuddered. I knew somehow that we would be safe.

The Joyful Clutter of Abundance

I live these days in chaos. Six cats tromp up and down the stairs of my house, chasing each other and their tails. Two young goats graze in my backyard, and one of the seventeen hens that lives in our chicken coop just gave birth to twins. Five roosters herald the sunrise in a harmonic chorus, and it's not unusual to see wild turkeys tromping across the yard.

With the cavalcade of animals also has come abundance in other forms: our garden is overflowing with fresh produce. Our kitchen is full of vegetables that need to be picked or preserved soon, and tiny jars of seeds I'm saving from this year's harvest to start next year's crops are scattered hither thither. Beyond the garden, our house is also filled with gifts of books, furniture, pots and pans, and kitchen appliances from our parents, and my office now boasts a stunning collection of feminist literature -- thanks to the generous donation of a retiring professor.

I feel blessed with all these gifts, and I know I want them in my life. I'm just not sure how and when and where I'm going to make space for all of them.

Themes of scarcity and abundance run through my life -- and often surface in my writing. I first encountered the pairing of these concepts in 2001 during a seminar at the Esalen retreat center in Big Sur, California, while attending a weeklong Anti-Career Workshop: Creating the Life You Love. In 2001, life felt perhaps as Thomas Hobbes described it: solitary, nasty, brutish, and short. I felt as if there were so much to do, and as if I had no choice but to do it all alone. During the workshop, I began to gain an appreciation for the fact that I had lived -- and was currently living -- in beautiful places, always had been able to do work that I enjoyed, and even when lonely never was entirely alone. Looking back, I see that during that time I was living with the glass half-empty and that the years -- post Esalen -- were about making a shift toward seeing life and its opportunities as, always, the glass half-full.

One story about abundance from Esalen comes back to my mind. The workshop facilitator was describing abundance as always being able to create more, of not running short, of always rejuvenating one's self, of always finding ways to accumulate. I don't think he meant accumulate in a material sense but more in a sense of gaining more joy, more creativity, more fulfillment. Still, I asked the question, "What do you do with all of this abundance? What do you do when you have too much?"

The facilitator's answer was simple: You start giving it away.

That credo also makes enormous sense, and over the years I have given away quite a bit: full wardrobes, box loads of books, enough furniture cumulatively over the decades to furnish a mansion, cars, appliances, and artwork, among other things. Not to mention monetary donations.

These days, I give other things away: food, time, knowledge. I earn a salary as a member of a college faculty, but I have no trouble doing a lot of additional work for free. One 'ism built into the credo of giving is that what one gives comes back ten times greater.

And so I wonder is the wealth of knowledge (from the books), functionality (from the household items), food (from the garden), life (in the form of all the animals and, of course, the garden, too) and future growth (in the form of seeds) the "return" ten times over. It feels like more than ten times. But the new question surfaces: What does one do with it all?

I thought about this point in my office as I looked at the three tall piles of women's studies books collected from the boxes left behind by the retiring professor. I was so grateful to see these books because they included many classic titles that I have yet to read as well as provocative collections of works on activism, social movement theory, black feminists, multiculturalism and gender, and numerous other topics. I began to look forward to the time when I could go through them one-by-one, soaking in their wisdom.

And I realized, well, fact of the matter is this: I probably will not get through even a quarter of them. I read fast but not as much as I would like. The academic life is one of solitude, reading and contemplative writing in theory. In reality, it is a long, busy day of sound bite style activities: prepping classes that one teaches, responding to e-mails, attending meetings, applying for conferences, grants, papers, and other projects; household tasks, financial responsibilities, and, oh yes, your scholarship sandwiched in there somewhere. The great boon and bane of this frantic life is that it is largely one that one creates one's self. It is full, it is rich, it abounds with clutter.

Ice Buckets

I've been trying to get my head around the latest Facebook fad to engulf the universe. This is something called the Ice Bucket Challenge, which as I understand it, requires someone who receives the challenge to either donate $100 to a favorite charity or pour a bucket of ice over the head. For quite awhile, I dismissed the challenge as something of a celebrity spoof. If people who could spare $100 or more would do so to benefit a cause such as research on Lou Gehrig's Disease, all the better. And, I figured that since most of my circle of friends knows -- hopefully at least -- that my current condition of life is one of being cash poor and food rich, I wouldn't be challenged in the first place.

My hackles rose, however, when I learned from a close friend -- okay, my sister -- that the Ice Bucket Challenge was evolving into a bit of a popularity contest, particularly among teens, such as her children. Only the more exciting and risqué aspect of the challenge wasn't about donating the $100; it was about the brain-numbing thrill of dousing yourself with ice. My close friend -- okay, my sister, sorry, sister, that I am divulging the source -- has decided to respond to the challenge her daughters are receiving by donating the money for them and letting them indulge in the ice pouring exercise. That raised some questions for me: What are we, as a society, learning through this experience?

All right, before we go any further, I should issue a preachy alert. Anytime one starts talking about giving, some sense of moral piety is bound to emerge. And, so if it surfaces in the words that follow, my apologies in advance.

My flip answer to my sister was that I didn't have $100 to give to anyone right now (except National Grid, Time Warner Cable, Verizon Wireless and the countless other monthly providers of services whom I must satisfy with cash every month), and that if anyone challenged me, they were probably going to get a piece of my mind.

And, in a sense, that was the challenge: How to make the "piece of my mind" meaningful to someone other than myself.

I have given money to charitable causes -- and less charitable ones -- quite freely in the past. These days, because I lack money, I try to give time, food, and knowledge about various life skills that I happen to possess by virtue of living as long as I have. As the small food-growing operation in our backyard garden/farm/homestead continues to expand, I find myself feeling that it is important to remember not to sell the bounty of our harvests before: first, making sure that the nutritional needs of my husband and myself and all the residing animals on our land are met; and second, ensuring that we're donating at least 10 percent of what we raise to local food pantries. Anything that's surplus after that, in my view, can be gifted or sold. A piece I read by Garrison Keillor on "wisdoms" seemed to echo this point. He says that the credo of generosity says to give all you've got, but that if you do that, you'll have nothing and others will have to give to you. So don't give everything you've got, he advises. At the same time he notes that most people can give 10 percent.

But what is 10 percent? How is it measured? What if your wealth is not in the form of cash? What if you are a six-figure income earner with nothing left over after paying the bills that are helping you amass your wealth? What if the most valuable asset you've got is a skill you can teach, a practice you can promulgate? Why, I wonder, are these forms of wealth not figured into the traditional 10 percent figure of tithing or the $100 versus a bucket of ice over the head? Could an ice bucket challenge allow for these kinds of giving?

As some of you know, I have been a supporter of President Obama, and volunteered for his campaigns for the presidency in both 2008 and 2012. I will come clean now and acknowledge that the reason I did this had less to do with his politics and more to do with the value he placed on the $1 and $5 donations he sought particularly in 2008. The value of contributors was measured less in terms of the amount of money they could give and more in terms of the number of people they could mobilize for his campaign. Reading this logic in an Atlantic magazine article in June 2008 suddenly opened up a whole new scenario of political change in my mind. If all the poor of the country and the world gave $1 and urged their friends, neighbors, and family members to also give $1 and to tell everyone else, the insensitive 1 percenters would have no match. The tables of power would be reversed in an instant.

Reality has not quite followed this vision, but I do feel that politics in America at least has gained a certain dimension of egalitarianism through application of this logic. With the ice bucket challenge, however, there seems to be a push back. You are valued if you have $100 to give. You are punished if not because the bucket of ice symbolizes the quality of your heart. I don't oppose giving or ice, but I wonder if there is a way to revise the language so that we all are giving the best that we've got without worrying about how the dollars and cents measure up.

Writing Process Blog Tour

I decided to join the Writing Process Blog Tour after receiving a request from another writer last week. The idea behind this tour is to share some views about one's writing process, and to tag three other writers to join the tour by posting next week. I have not had a chance to circulate a request so I'm hoping three readers of this blog might be inspired enough to contact me and let me tag them. We have been asked to consider the following questions:

1. What am I working on?
2. How does my writing differ from others of its genre?
3. Why do you write what you do?
4. How does your writing process work?

So here goes:

1. What am I working on?
Currently, I am working on trying to get inspired. I mean that in more than a flippant way. I have been working on a book project over the past several years that, if all continues to go well, will be published in the fall of 2015. The project began as a doctoral dissertation, which earned me my PhD in 2007. It evolved into a strong and highly readable book manuscript from 2011 to 2013, after I floundered with trying to decide what to do with it for a few years. I was fortunate to have been able to make contact with an excellent university press, and the support of their editors and two external reviewers have made the manuscript stronger and stronger. I just received some comments and am working on a final set of revisions, and am looking forward to seeing the book in print.

I am proud of the work, and I do feel that it will receive a warm reception when it is finally released. But the book has taken a very long time to develop, and as you might guess I am feeling the fatigue. I do have a second book project in waiting, and an idea for a third project. I also have several short articles and contributions to edited compilations that are in progress. But the past year has been a hard one emotionally and financially, and I am feeling a bit burned out. I am looking for ways to reconnect with my writer-self, so that I can seek some new energy and intellectual stimulation that hopefully will start to reinvigorate me.

2. How does my writing differ from others of its genre?

I would describe my writing as a hybrid of narrative non-fiction and academic auto-ethnography. I integrate an interdisciplinary mindset into my research and my writing, but my writing is not ponderous or dull. Before I entered academia, I worked as a daily newspaper journalist. That training made me into a storyteller, and when I was able to release myself from the constraints of journalistic writing, I found that many of its sensibilities -- organizational styles, short paragraphs, measured uses of quotes -- had become organic to me. The style persisted through a master's program and a doctoral program, to the point that when I would try and mimic more conventional ways of writing academically, my advisors would tell me to stick with what I do best. I do my best to do.

On the narrative non-fiction end, my writing differs because it is scholarly. I hesitate to say academic because it is not writing that seeks acceptance within academic constraints but rather writing that uses the skills that scholars acquire to theorize, pose curious questions, investigate particular situations, and come to personal and sometimes forceful conclusions.

Overall, I write to be read and I would be quite disappointed if someone refused to read my work because it was either "not academic enough" or "too academic".

3. Why do you write what you do?

This is a rather difficult question. I would offer two answers. The first is that I like to share with the world the things that I do. While I have worked to get inspired, I have blogged about growing food, about researching and teaching hip-hop, about the politics of sustainability, and about my quests to maintain a sense of health and fitness for life through moving my body. These are daily pursuits. Lately, I have been interested in writing more about teaching practices because a large part of how I earn my living comes through teaching. I experiment and innovate, and it is this freedom to experiment and innovate that I enjoy most about teaching. Grading papers -- not my favorite part. I feel like I have created some interesting activities in classrooms that I would like to narrate to others.

The second answer is that I want readers to have an opportunity to know about the world I have experienced, and to consider that world from the lens that I offer them, at least provisionally. I grew up as the eldest daughter of immigrants from India in the 1960s in the Midwest at a time when immigrants from India were few and far between. I was born in the United States, which made me American. But my identity and my place in the U.S. has always been ambiguous. I am a permanent "no fit" person, and it was only when I hit the half-century mark that I began to feel comfortable in that role. Being a no-fit offers a way to see the world differently, and an obligation (dare I say moral obligation) to tell the stories of what one sees.

4. How does your writing process work?

I have two daily practices: I write three pages of longhand in the morning, and I write at least 750 words electronically at night. Followers of Julia Cameron might recognize both of these practices as versions of morning pages. I began the longhand habit in 1998, and I joined 750words.com in late 2012. The idea is to use the morning stretch to outline and hash out ideas, and the evening stint to generate sharable prose. The writings in these practices often do not dovetail with each other, which is okay with me for now. Years of morning pages have helped me draft essays, write course syllabi, outline books and book chapters, and generally take care of my life. The work that I began in earnest with 750words.com in April 2013 has led to a fairly vigorous blogging practice, and some good work. I do feel that I need to add a third daily practice, which is to go to a library or a coffeeshop for a couple of hours each day to do some quiet reading and writing. I feel that that practice will help tap the wells of inspiration so that they start flowing again.

Farmer or gardener?

Gardener or farmer?

I've been stumbling over how to articulate the meaning of these two terms over the past couple of years as our family's emotional, financial, and physical investments in growing vegetables and fruits and raising chickens and small livestock has increased. I think about these categories as I walk through my yard to gather food for an evening dinner or to pull weeds or amass a big basket of tomatoes for canning. And, I wonder, am I walking through a yard? Or am I walking through a farm?

Out of curiosity, I googled the definition of farmer tonight. I came up with a fairly broad range of hits, all of which seemed to unite, oddly, around a singular and somewhat capitalistic theme. A farm is a source of income. A farmer is one who works on a farm. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is even more specific. Its website on Farm Household Well-being provides a glossary that states: "A farm is defined as any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the year. " In short, if you're growing food but not selling it, you are technically not a farmer. You are ... well, what are you? 

That seems to be an interesting question. We will have farm income this year -- about $200 from the weekly sale of a dozen eggs that my husband makes to a colleague at the local food pantry where we both volunteer. So, I suppose that's a start. We also receive inquiries from friends and colleagues occasionally as to whether we sell at the local farmers markets or whether we might have some particular product for sale. I tend to see these inquiries as not particularly serious. Everyone's curious about what other people are doing, and asking such questions such as whether we'd sell some turnips seems like a good way to open up a conversation. 

More to the point, however, is our own motivation. We put a lot of work into our food-growing endeavors. But we have no large aspirations to create a market for our produce. We mostly want to enjoy the food that we raise for our own consumption, share it with friends when opportunities arise to do so, and make some regular donations to food banks that always are in need of fresh produce. The last thing I want to do is to try and put a value on this endeavor in the form of retail purchases.

So does this make us gardeners? According to Wikipedia, "Gardening is the practice of growing and cultivating plants as part of horticulture. In gardens, ornamental plants are often grown for their flowers, foliage, or overall appearance; useful plants, such as root vegetables, leaf vegetables, fruits, and herbs, are grown for consumption, for use as dyes, or for medicinal or cosmetic use. Gardening is considered to be a relaxing activity for many people." Without the immediate link to bringing the food to market, it does seem that "gardener" is an appropriate way to describe my husband and myself. But relaxing activity? I find myself puzzling over that point. 

Recently, I arrived late at a party. I attributed my lateness to the fact that I had been working in the gardens and needed to change clothes and scrub the dirt out of my fingernails. I was not expecting any particular reaction. Yet, I was surprised when people started exclaiming, "Oh, fun!" "Good times!" "My garden is so far behind this year." Gardening for this group of people was clearly a pleasurable pastime, as it is for us. But I couldn't help wondering: "Do they realize that we live off this garden?" "Do they know that if the tomatoes or peppers or kale doesn't get planted, we probably won't eat peppers, tomatoes, or kale through the winter?" "Do they understand that this is our food?" 

The linkage that I make between "growing and cultivating plants" and food to subsist on seems to straddle a line between "relaxing activity" and "$1,000 or more of agricultural products produced and sold during the year." I have always felt that growing food is a source of income in an indirect way: When one grows one's own food, one lessens the reliance upon other food growers. Hence, money is earned through not being spent on the capitalist market. I find the question to be of deeper interest as I recall how some "real farmers" -- those who definitely earn more than the requisite $1,000 a year from the production and sale of agricultural products -- responded when I asked once whether customers of farmers markets who get inspired by the farm produce around them to grow their own end up hurting the very farmers who were their prime suppliers at a particular point in time. My question drew several laughs and one fairly insightful response. "Are you kidding? The more people grow their own food, the less we have to grow it for them. You can't believe how excited we get when we see others doing what you're trying to do." 

One last definition comes up in discussions among farmers and gardeners. The term is "homesteading" and it refers, according again to Wikipedia and numerous other online sources, to "a lifestyle of self-sufficiency." Homesteading, according to Wikipedia, "is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of foodstuffs, and it may or may not also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craftwork for household use or sale."

What does it mean, then, to be a homesteader? Is this the way of the future, of life after capitalism, when farmers cease to exist because all people are dedicated to becoming self-sufficient, a lifestyle that erodes the necessity of buying and selling produce via the market? 

Frugal Feasts

The month of August seems to offer an interesting paradox: On one hand, I walk through my gardens every evening and marvel at the fact that I have so much food that I cannot decide what to eat. On the other hand, I open my bank account in the morning and look at the diminished rate of return. I shake my head and sigh as I realize that this paycheck cycle will not be the one that will leave over enough money for such desirable trifles as running shoes, car repairs, greenhouse sheeting and lumber, or a much needed break from cooking for a dinner out. It seems that the paradox is perhaps instead a parable, a less on how to feel rich and poor all at once.

There's got to be a capitalist theory of money out there that explains the imbalance: an almost over-abundance food, a scarcity of cash. August (and July) also are difficult months for food pantries and providers of social services because the demand for assistance goes up. "School's out," one individual who works at a local food pantry explained. "More bodies at home, more mouths to feed."

And more people on vacations, and less likely to give.

A year ago, I had a hard time seeing the abundance even as the gardens were exploding with their harvest. All I could think about -- and, for good reason, worry about -- was whether or not the bills would get paid. Some grim realities were staring me in the face: a cut to the paycheck as the result of what the State of New York (which is my ultimate employer) described as the "deficit reduction program" was going to slice about $140 off my after-tax monthly income; an increase in health care premiums as the result of a new union contract was going to swipe an additional $100. On top of that, I had income taxes I owed the IRS as the result of receiving several generous (and unfortunately in the long run untaxed) grants in 2012.

In the face of this dire scenario, my husband and I made what seemed to be an audacious decision. We reconfigured the direct deposit plan for my paycheck so that a modest amount -- $50 a month -- would go into a money market and investment account we had with Charles Schwab brokerage. I didn't see how this diversion could be possible; for the past three years, we had been withdrawing money from the account in order to live. It was nearly tapped out, and my paycheck was diminishing. So how could we possibly put money back?

Somehow, we did. And a year later the modest amount that had accumulated provided enough to expand our small farm to accommodate two goats. We acquired the goats -- two boys -- along with their mother on loan as they had not quite been weaned off of her on the first day of August. They live a good happy life on the farm eating weed-ridden swathes of grassland that we hope eventually to turn into cultivated land, and generating a fair amount of what I've come to call "black gold" -- manure that contains only vegetable matter and therefore can immediately be put back into the land as a natural fertilizer and nutrient rich booster of soil.

The goats will go to a butcher in November. While that might seem crass to a vegetarian, it is another way of building abundance for those who eat meat. For now, they are part of a growing family of animals that live on our farm: six cats, five roosters, and seventeen hens. Like the goats, these animals too create wealth for the land. The hens lay an average of four dozen eggs a week, a figure that probably will come close to doubling when the birds that were babies in March begin to mature enough to lay eggs consistently sometime later this month. The hens and the roosters also generate a form of black gold, and they keep the incessant insects that dominate the Adirondacks somewhat at bay.

The cats, too, build abundance in ways that transcend their innate cuddly qualities. Despite their cute, sweet purring demeanors, they are among the planet's best hunters. For us, that has meant rodents that dominate farms and can wreak havoc in gardens are relatively under control. Without getting too graphic, I would also note that the spoils of the hunt also contribute ultimately to the creation of black gold.

When I consider how we managed to save $50 a month during a time when the net monthly
income went down by about $200, I am reminded of the paradoxical parable that August unveils. One year later, our bills have not diminished nor grown less urgent. My bank account doesn't look a whole lot better than it did in August a year ago. But we have food in the gardens, and in the chicken coop. There's plenty to eat and plenty to share. A little bit of frugality can indeed lead to a bountiful feast.

Celebrating sobriety

I broke my fast from alcohol earlier this week, ending 600-plus days of dryness with a glass of a crisp white wine. It was a beautiful summer day, and my husband Jim and I were celebrating the Hindu festival of Rakhi with our friend Caitlin. I was cooking a nine-dish vegan meal featuring the vast breadth of our summer harvest. Caitlin arrived with chocolates, some beer, and two bottles of a crisp-looking white wine. I saw the bottles cooling in the refrigerator and announced, "I think I'll have a glass of wine tonight."

I promised my husband it would only be one glass and that the glass would come deep into dinner. He in turn promised that he would not let me drink more than the one glass and would make sure that I was keeping myself well hydrated throughout the meal with apple cider and seltzer. A little before sunset, I had the one drink. And, well, what can I say? It was anti-climatic.

So what does a crisp white wine taste like after one has been dry for nearly two years? To be honest, it tasted like alcohol. Rubbing alcohol. I felt no intoxicating effect and I tasted none of the tangy sweet crispness that I had remembered with wines. I continued to sip water in between sips of the wine, partly because the wine seemed a bit difficult to swallow. I did finish the glass and at that point pretty much felt as if I were done.

What does this say about the allure of wine in our society? How much is the "fine taste of wine" a real sensation and how much of it is a story we make up in our heads?

Before I began abstaining from alcohol, I was a pretty consistent daily drinker. I would have two or three (or four or five) glasses of wine through an evening, usually beginning the sips while preparing dinner and continuing until I was ready for bed, though often I would switch from wine to whiskey or vodka on ice after the meal. It amazed me even in those days that this was widely regarded as a socially accepted practice. It seemed to me that it was something else -- an addiction, perhaps a disease? I was afraid to name the practice. I didn't want to call myself out as complicit.

Going cold turkey as I did on December 13, 2012, has been one of the greatest cleansings of my life. Without alcohol affecting my taste buds, my senses, my moods, and my brain, I have felt strong, clear-headed, direct, and fairly confident in all of my words and deeds.

But abstention, as you might guess, hasn't been easy. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I gave up alcohol, I also gave up participation in a social milieu. I no longer would meet people at bars, or feel comfortable at parties. I opted out of a pre-graduation reception that the college where I teach was hosting because one of the advertised events was a champagne toast to the new graduates. I found myself feeling guilty at large athletic events, where free beer to all finishers of such endurance events as marathons were the rewards for a job well done. In settings where I could not avoid being in the presence of people drinking (such as my cousin's wedding reception last year), I would find myself feeling chilled and unsettled. It's hard to explain that physical sensation. It was almost as if abstention was giving me a fever.

Over time, I began to relax into abstention. I can successfully sit at a bar in a pub and have a bowl full of pasta or a small pizza with a ginger ale or a root beer. I made through a friend's wedding shower at a wine bar on water alone. I can joke now about being a tee-totaler because saying I don't drink no longer feels awkward. At the same time, however, I have begun to wonder whether it would be okay to try drinking again. Moderately? A single drink on a special occasion?

I feel like the answer came through fairly clearly with those few tentative sips of what tasted like rubbing alcohol earlier this week. If there's no pleasure in the flavor of alcoholic beverages, stick with the seltzer. It's cleaner, cheaper, and healthier any time. But I also feel that there needs to be a shift in how we imagine ourselves as social creatures. We need to understand that celebrations need not be made toxic with intoxicating drinks. We need to look at those crisp lovely bottles of wine for what they are: bottles of sugar-laden, full-fat poison that will ultimately kill us if we continue to treat them as delicacies.

From raw to royal

I wrote a few weeks ago about a six-week series of food demonstrations and tastings that my husband Jim and I had begun offering at a local food pantry as part of a goal to encourage people who live on the tightest of budgets to incorporate more fresh locally produced vegetables into their diets. We just finished our fourth session today, and so far have featured preparations of kale, Hakurei turnips, summer squash, and green beans. While we have not yet been able to encourage very many people to watch the actual cooking process, our samples and recipes have been gaining a warmer and warmer reception.

The series is teaching me quite a few things and leading to a range of thoughts about politics, health, and food security. It also is motivating me to make changes in how I cook on a nightly basis and how I value certain vegetables and fruits. It also is encouraging me to look a little more deeply into how one can create a well-stocked kitchen while subsisting on a low income.

So step-by-step, let's start with politics. Well before the seeds for this project were sown, Jim and I were trying to dispel presumptions that shopping at the farmers market and/or eating organic, fresh-from-the-farm food were privileges of the affluent. Our stake in this fight was fairly personal -- as most political battles tend to be. We discovered the value of farmers markets ourselves in the summer of 2007 when both of us were unemployed for a brief period of time and had applied and were receiving food aid in the form of an EBT card. Going to farmers markets and buying local produce not only was a healthier chance but an economically feasible one because we could buy exactly what we thought we would consume in a week. Nothing would go to waste.

A year or so later, I was working several part-time and/or temporary contract jobs, one of which was as a fitness coach at a local Curves. My work shift on some days coincided with the farmers market, but understanding the budgetary and health value of purchasing produce at such markets, the Curves manager would cover for me for about forty-five minutes so I could get down to the market. And another year later, as I was still working several contract jobs, I found myself researching environmental justice and coming to a realization that there was a direct link between economically underprivileged neighborhoods and obesity. One study in Seattle, where I was living at the time, had found that people who lived in the generally poorer, more inner city neighborhoods south of the Lake Washington ship canal were generally about fifteen pounds heavier than those who lived in the more affluent northern neighborhoods. That insight was staggering to me for both personal and political reasons: I was a resident of a south of the ship canal neighborhood, and despite my high level of education and deep commitment to physical fitness and health, I was about twenty-five to thirty pounds overweight. These insights led me to theorize what is perhaps obvious: If people can find fresh, local affordable options for food (or even better yet, grow it themselves), rates of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and obesity would drop significantly.

That memory rang itself back into my consciousness this morning as I handed clients of the local food pantry dixie cups filled with green beans that I had gathered from my garden the previous night. I prepared the beans in four different ways, starting with simply washing them, snapping them into bite-size pieces with my hands, and serving them raw.

"Wow," said one woman who was waiting in line, "what a treat. I don't usually eat healthy things like this."

She then shook her head and looked me in the eye. "You probably can tell by the way I look."

"We're trying to get you to eat healthy," I responded.

I went on to explain that a pint of green beans cost between $3 and $5 at the farmers market. Unlike the cheaper versions that could be purchased at grocery stores, however, the beans that were fresh from the soil would last considerably longer. "You know that they're fresh when you can snap them into pieces like these ones."

For the second preparation, I emphasized the simplicity of raw with one added touch: I steamed the beans in a bit of water. "You know that they're ready when their skin turns a bright green," I explained, noting that the $3 pint of green beans probably would make at least two or three meals.

"What did you put in them to make them taste so good?" one person asked.

"Water," I replied. "Just a little bit of water."

The third preparation emphasized a medley of flavors. I added oil, fresh onion, cabbage and cherry tomatoes that I quartered to the basic green beans. "This meal would cost about $2 to prepare," I explained. "There's nothing in it but fresh vegetables."

For the fourth and final preparation, I made the same mix of vegetables as I had for the third preparation. I added a simple twist: spices from India. I started with about one-eighth of a teaspoon of turmeric, which I added to the oil and allowed to froth as the oil heated up. I then sautéed the onions, added the beans and cabbage, and then two more spices: one-eighth of a teaspoon of ground cumin and the same amount (more or less) of coriander. I finished the dish by tossing in cherry tomatoes, once again chopped into quarters.

"Wow," said the intake officer at the food pantry's front desk, "You went from raw to royal."

"You know what this would go good with?" added one woman, a client of the food pantry?

"What?"

"Brown rice."

I couldn't agree more. Before making the final dish, I had given some thought about how to present it. My fear was that the spices would add too much complexity to the dish and put it out of the price range of the food pantry clients. After thinking the issue through, however, I realized that most of the spices I use cost about $3 per jar and that a little bit of spice can go a long way.