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.