Check this out.
If you’ve ever seen me dance, you’ve seen these moves before. Laurel and Hardy, yup. That’s what I was bottle fed on. Invite me to your wedding and you’ll see.
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But, as I discovered with mangoes and peaches – when you move around the planet, what the left hand taketh away, the right hand replaces with something equally good. Peaches are one of my top five favorite fruits and peach pie remains my number one most favored and scrumptious dessert. When we moved to the tropics where there are no peaches, I discovered mangoes and decided early on that they were a suitable substitution. And the green coconut pie. Well, that was something from another world! Back when we were managing Mountain Equestrian Trails in Belize, we were often amused at the short sightedness of some of our guests. One lady asked us point blank, “How do you live without strawberries?” Another sighed at dinner before announcing that “Someday, I’m going to go to the REAL rain forest.” “Real rain forest?” I asked, “What would you find there that you aren’t finding here in this rain forest?” “You know,” she said “where there are orchids hanging from the trees.” Our assitant manager, Rolando was seething, “Step into the forest with me now and I’ll show you all the orchids you want.” he said through his teeth. Never mind the enormous cubic yard of oncidium cascading from the Stinky Toe tree beside the barn.
As a child, I recall my father driving me to Jersey through downtown Manhattan on a nippy fall day and while paused at the light, a vendor walking over to the car window and handing my dad a cone of piping hot roasted chestnuts in exchange for a couple of dollars. In case you don’t know, heaven on earth is a paper cone of hot chestnuts to share with your dad! Now, I love chestnuts and always have. They are fluffy and nutty and sweet – almost like cake. The perfect balance of savory and sweet, protein and carbohydrate. In fact, chestnuts have a very similar taste and texture to breadfruit as it turns out. Every Thanksgiving of my childhood, I would sit at my Nana’s huge dining room table with her other seven grandkids awaiting the arrival of her incredible chestnut dressing. Never mind the turkey. And most years since then, I’ve made a point of bringing chestnut dressing to the Thanksgiving table. Hard pressed to find local chestnuts, I’ve had to buy expensive imported chestnuts, many of which were inedible, having molded from weeks of travel and storage. Alas, local chestnuts were unheard of. The mighty American Chestnut tree, once ubiquitous in North America, all but disappeared after a blight was accidentally introduced and billions of trees died from the foreign disease. Happily, chestnuts are making a come back in our area. A few weeks ago, Jason and Haruka discovered that Esta and Murray of Cohen Farm were selling chestnuts at the Farmer’s Market. They happily picked up a couple of pounds for us which we promptly roasted. Bob and I ate chestnuts to our heart’s content and froze a pound for Thanksgiving. Hoping for more, I asked Haruka to shop for us again but alas, the Cohen crop had all been sold. And then two days ago Lyle and Arlo drove up out of the blue with a beautiful basket of chestnuts from their own tree down the road. I practically cried! “These are for us?!” These are exactly the kind of neighbors one can only hope for. Lyle had thought to plant chestnut trees on his property years ago and now they were bearing fruit. He and Tami are happy to share and willing to plant trees and wait years for the payoff. That’s when I had my moment of clarity. Chestnuts are food from the gods in the same way as breadfruit is. In the same way as strawberries, mangoes and peaches are. Every region has it’s own bliss. It’s up to us to seek it out and embrace it.
For a couple of days, many of us held our breath, at least those of us who knew why others might see us as a target. Maybe, our leaders would wake up and throttle down our war machine! Perhaps they would finally realize that violence only begets more violence. Slap me, I’ll slap you back – it only ends when someone stops playing the game. Within the week, we had our answer. We heard the rattling of sabers and knew that the Commander-in-chief would soon order up more blood to feed the military-industrial-congressional complex. Ten years later, more than 100,000 innocents are dead and the machine continues to grind on. It’s bigger than us and this is disheartening, but even more distressing is how many of us have bought into war and an astronomical military budget (which, by the way has forced us into debt beyond our nastiest nightmares) as a necessary way of life. It appears there’s no stopping this runaway train! Our economy is a giant ponzi scheme and the word from the top is “It’s unstoppable, there’s no turning back and we’re gonna ride it to the end.” This morning I read the following statement in the New York Times:
 Need we ask why this man is flipping us off? Unbelievable! Apparently our financial system is so totally broken and we consumers (er, I mean citizens) are so totally accepting of this that Bernanke can basically threaten collapse if we try to turn this sinking ship around. And no one is taking him away in a straight jacket! Or handcuffs. As proof of how crazy things have gotten, I am awash in credit card offers so that I can slide ever deeper into debt along with the Federal Government. My email spam filters are doing a pretty good job of filtering out crap but I am battling snail mail spam tooth and nail with little to no progress. I send a letter to direct marketing every couple of months in an attempt to remove our names and address from marketing lists but the junk mail keeps on appearing in our mail box. This used to work. Just a few years ago, the new junk mail was addressed to new forms of our names and address and I was able to routinely fend them off with a new letter. Not so these days. Despite my letters, I continue to receive mail to the very same addresses. Our good friend Shaun on Maui taught us a great trick. Whenever he got a postage free return envelope in his junk mail, he took some of his trash, inserted it into the envelope and mailed it. I’m pretty sure this little trick helped him win the Zero Waste Challenge. Last month, I took some unwanted advertising coupons to the post office window and asked if there was any way to stop this monthly wad of odd sized junk and they said, “No, we’re required to put that in your box.” You probably get the same kind of thing, a loose insert with lots of different sized coupons, envelopes and offers from local and not so local advertisers. It’s so easy to get real mail shuffled in with this pile that I have to look through the whole mess just in case, before I take it to the recycling bin.
Not surprisingly I reached a fully automated line which did not respond to my repeated attempts to reach a human being by pushing “0″. I hung in there, stating and spelling my name and address, listening to the computer repeat what I’d said until they asked for my social security number. “No!” I said into the phone to which the computer replied, “We did not understand your answer, please state your social security number.” I couldn’t help myself. I answered again, “No, I will not give you my social security number!” The computer repeated itself and I hung up. This morning, I googled “chase slate scam” and a few other choice word combinations to see if these bastards have been reported to the Better Business Bureau and/or the Federal Trade Commission. And to find an address for them so that I can report them because, of course the mail itself does not come with any form of return address. While I didn’t find an address nor any hint or mention of a scam, I did find the online version of the automated opt out line I called on Monday. With high hopes, I filled out the online form, skipping the (not required) social security, birthday and phone number fields and opted out of financial offers like the crap I’ve been getting from Chase. On the one hand, I’m kicking myself to daring to hope and on the other I’m looking forward to the day I stop getting credit card offers in my mail. In the meantime, I’m stuffing garbage into their return envelopes and mailing them back. It’s futile, I know but it makes me smile nevertheless.  Jon Voight, hurtling to his death from the 1985 film "Runaway Train" I turned fifty seven on June 4th and my birthday wish was this: to work less and play more. I promised myself I’d continue my transformation from human doing to human being by reducing my To Do list and taking more time for the things I enjoy. In short, I vowed to become a sub-optimizer. More of a ninety percenter than a hundred percenter. The kind of person who knows when to say, “enough!”
Riding is one of those things you don’t realize you need until you do it again. Akin to how good it feels when you stop banging your head against the wall. Sure, my life seemed healthy and balanced, but it was lacking some of the luster. It was only after I joined up with Peg that I knew I had been suffering low level disgruntlement for some time. It isn’t just the riding. It’s the horses, the camaraderie, being out in the woods noticing new plants and animals, telling stories and jokes and sharing tick attacks. It’s about taking time for myself. That smell of dried horse poo on my shoes is proof positive that sometimes I come first.
On that particular day I had abandoned my To Do list. I was going with the flow in a brave departure from the norm. Bob was hosting an all-day board retreat at our house so I packed the car with anything I thought I might need and began looking for something fun to do. I wandered next door to see if Haruka fancied a walk in the woods. I didn’t find Haruka so I called Janice and found that she was of the same mind so I met her at the college walking path.
As we rode, I told Peg how I had left my To Do list at home because I was becoming a sub-optimizer and that’s about the time I saw a small blob of white fur on the trail. At first I thought it was a dead white cat but when I got closer I saw the telltale pattern of spots. And as we rode past, the tiny critter stood up and wobbled off into the undergrowth. The day continued along that way with me taking advantage of every situation. I called Amy and found she was thinking about driving to the craft store so I jumped in. We enjoyed the drive and bought all kinds of fun things, including a couple of cool plastic zebras which I couldn’t resist. When Bob called to say the retreat was over, he said there was enough leftover food for dinner. “All this, and I don’t even have to cook!” I thought, “Wow!” The image of Albino Bambi will be forever associated with the many precious moments from a special day and a reminder to take time out to play. From now on, when I’m swept up in my To Do list, I’ll picture a white fawn and throttle down. Call it good enough and take time out for myself!
I was on foot, clearing brush while holding onto Haley and we’d been inching along like this for some time when she started going apeshit. Scrambling backwards, eyes wild, Haley was doing everything she could to turn around and run back out of the spot we were in. It was all I could do to hang onto her and about that time I realized I was getting stung all over, too! Yipes! We beat it on out of there and made it to the open trail where I could see what was going on. We both still had angry yellow jackets attached and stinging away. I kept killing them and moving until we were sure we weren’t being followed. It took Peg and Simon a few minutes for them to get around to where we were. Peg wasn’t sure what she’d find after hearing all the ruckus. Happily, we were all in one piece, albeit still trembling a little. Haley was beginning to nibble on the Elaeagnus (Autumn Olive) again which was a good sign. I crushed one last wasp that I found between the saddle and pad showed Peg. Yepper, it was a yellow jacket. It’s amazing that such a tiny critter could cause all that pain! My half a dozen stings are still throbbing two hours later. Although I must say they didn’t hurt as much when I was mounted which is how I’ve always been. Aches and pains disappear when I’m on horseback and despite today’s adventure, I’d still rather go bushwhacking with Peg than just about anything else I can think of!
We also share our moist, green habitat with some thirty species of birds, ranging in size from Blue Heron and Turkey Vulture to Hummingbird and in color from Cardinal to Bluebird to Goldfinch. Our sky is filled with dozens of songs ranging from Chickadee to Wood Thrush to Barred Owl. In the morning, I hear two geese moving into their day and a rooster from a few houses over. In the mammal department, we have deer, fox, possum, rabbit and dogs across the street. We’ve not seen signs of bear, although will swear we spotted bear scat in the woods outside of Oilseed. I once observed a fox calmly scratching fleas on the main path through the woods before it noticed me and ambled off. On another day, a Barred Owl swooped down closer and watched me for a minute. When I took a step forward, it turned and flew back to its original perch. Jason had an encounter with what may have been the same owl a week ago in which they had a dialog, the owl making a clicking sound none of us have ever heard before and both vocalizing the characteristic “You allll”.
The road to Pittsboro from Moncure is a vulture smorgasbord, offering every flavor carcass imaginable. We tootle down this road kill buffet an average of ten times a week and have seen everything from deer to chicken. There’s a chicken plant on up the road and sometimes they lose one to the asphalt god. Until Friday, nothing has been killed on our piece of property by the road; the stretch of grass and asphalt I’m watching Bob mow from the window behind my monitor. Both Bob and I saw the dead squirrel alongside our ditch as we pulled into the driveway after work but we got caught up in potluck preparations and forgot to go out and drag it off. The next morning, while checking my email I saw a Turkey Vulture swoop down closer than I’d ever seen one and land on that squirrel. “We should drag that off.” I said, hoping the ‘we’ part wouldn’t turn out to be me. “No doubt the vultures will carry it off.” was Bob’s sensible answer. And then this morning, Garth told us he saw Ickle Bickle dragging a large, grey carcass, alarming him for a moment when he suspected it might be Kome. Which made our day because Bob didn’t have to mow around a pile of squirrel. I’m always amazed at how everything always seems to get taken care of by one of us around here.  I just sort of fiddle-fart and shamble around a notion, eyeballing it, speculating on it, and then cough up some sort or musing -- mostly mental phlegm – onto the keyboard and hit the send button. Sometimes without even showing the common courtesy of using spell check or even rereading it. Which makes me either an arrogant old prick or just a slob. Probably both. Joe Bageant, author of “Deer Hunting With Jesus” and newly released “Rainbow Pie” and pundit extraordinaire, died Saturday March 26 after a four month bout with cancer. I feel like my voice is gone. All my life I’ve been an idealist, quick to spot the wrongs in our world and strive to set them right. In the 60′s the most blatant sin was the Vietnam War. I threw myself wholeheartedly into the throng of protesters, hoping our collective voices would put an end to the carnage. Thirty years later, the spread of easily shared information via the world wide web including endless venues for online protest, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the many wrongs in our world today. There isn’t just one cause, there are dozens. Which one will I pick this week and how much difference will it make when we are all are railing about separate issues? I once asked my idealistic cousin Tommy who is ten years older than I, “Where in the world do we (idealists) go to fit in?” His answer: “There is no place in the world for idealists.” My father was an idealist. He lost his shot at tenure at Monmouth College in 1969 when he helped stage a protest in which his students pelted a General onstage with marshmallows. He was asked to turn in his resignation and soon found that no other college in either New Jersey or New York would hire him after what he’d done. Dad ultimately moved my mother and us six kids to a place he described as the “Armpit of the Universe” and even though I suffered at the hands of my new school mates who didn’t understand my clothes and accent, I was beamingly proud of what he’d done. My husband, Bob has always followed his heart on political matters, quitting a lucrative job after being admonished by his superior for joining a protest rally. He was working at Tecnetics, a company that made power supplies for cruise missiles, and had gotten his picture in the newspaper marching in protest of Gulf War I. Bob is now an educator who isn’t afraid to bring the truth to light for his students and show them where to go to express their indignation. It’s been said that you marry either your mother or your father and I see that I married a man who isn’t afraid to stand up for his ideals. Of late, social networking has brought to light a bizillion causes, all clamoring for my involvement. Pretty much everything is either corrupt or broken; from GMO’s to War, to Wall Street, to our justice system, to Corporate Rights, to Election Reform, to Food Bills, to Education and Health Care. So many causes, so little time to protest. Confused and dis-empowered I look back on the Viet Nam protests with nostalgia. I find myself missing the focus of that movement, mourning our collective lack of focus and pissed off that things have gotten much worse. That’s where pundits like Bageant stepped in and gave voice to my outrage. Bob and I have read the copy of “Deer Hunting With Jesus” that lives at our local library and our copy of “Rainbow Pie” is on order. Meanwhile, I’ll be mining Bageant’s many splendid essays for great quotes like these.
I hate to say that things haven’t changed much since the Democrats got back in office. We still have Afghanistan, Iraq, GMO’s, the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and mountaintop removal. Oil, Coal, and Big Ag are still heavily subsidized. The small farmers are struggling, the renewable energy sector is hanging on by their fingernails, the middle class has all but disappeared, health care is a joke and there’s talk of doing away with social security.
To me, it looked like a clear choice between vanilla and vanilla. Bob and I knew that whichever guy got to sit in the oval office, things weren’t going to change much. We voted for Ralph Nader and left the country to prevent our tax dollars from going to war. In 2008, the voting public was led to believe that this time their choice would matter. For the first time in American history, a black man was running for president. And a well-spoken man he was, wooing liberals with promises of change and hope they could believe in. A groundswell of euphoric support ensued and Barak Obama took office. Two years later, that change has not happened. The new administration left Guantanamo untouched and sent another 30,000 troops to Afhanistan. Under Obama’s watch, the FDA has approved genetically modified salmon, sugar beets and alfalfa. With HR 3200, the 50 million citizens without health insurance were handed to the for profit health insurance companies on a silver platter after the public option was removed. And he signed a Patriot Act extension with no reforms. At this point in the political evolution of the United States of America, the country is run by the money makers, the CEO’s of corporations. Politicians, especially those at the top, are not much more than figureheads. It’s a two party system in which both parties support the 10% who control 80% of the wealth in this country. Many of us thought a vote for Obama would be a vote for change. Come to find out it was really just a vote for chocolate over vanilla, breeding a whole new generation of disenfranchised voters.
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Copyright © 2012 Plastic Farm Animals - All Rights Reserved |
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In 2004, the presidential race involved two white guys who went to the same privileged university. Some of us thought we had a choice even if it looked like a choice between bad and worst. Voters were led to believe that Bush and Kerry stood on fundamentally different platforms when in fact, they were both committed to supporting the best interests of the rich.
