This morning's email brought a dramatic, red, Chinese New Year greeting from John Fu in Copenhagen. He was a college student when we met in Xian, China eleven years ago. Determined to get his next degree in the English-speaking world (he was a proficient translator in 2000), he got his MBA in Denmark where he now lives and works as a business consultant. We had hilarious experiences with Chinese government officials he helped me to interview in Xian. I wanted to know how they were dealing with garbage issues. Did they have a problem? Mayo, as they say in Chinese.
As we sat in a cab on our way to Xian officialdom, John asked what was in my backpack. Unzipping the green bag, I pulled out the world's smallest kitchen composter and a red knit worm to explain my kitchen composting mission. "Oh, so this is your religion," was his insightful reply.*
Dedicated capitalist that he is, John will surely be delighted to be headlined with Warren Buffett performing at a charity fund-raiser. If you can read Mandarin, let me know how the translation works. When I went to YouTube for the embed code, I found such ugly, racist comments! Opened another window on why the U.S. is in deep stuff politically and socially. Of course, you already knew everything about that from at weeks of the Republican side-show that dominates every TV news program.
But I digress. Busha Full of Grace raised my consciousness about the Year of the Dragon. Currently this spunky, knitting Grandma is nanny to a Chinese family. To expand her knowledge of the celebration, her search led to the ten important facts she posted. "No sitting in a bedroom" knocked me out; Number 10, "Songbirds are Good," was more expected.
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*To honor my "religion," John Fu had a chop mark made with "compost" in Mandarin. For "This Dirt Museum: The Ladies' Room," my 2001 installation, I enlarged the image, added the word in Spanish. It had a prominent spot in the show and still hangs in our apartment. Shown here with a few of the 150 red worm interpretations I knit for the exhibition. [You too can have a chop; order here.]
Though amused by the idea that my intense practice of transforming kitchen green waste into a useful, earth-enhancing amendment might be considered highly spiritual, perhaps a "religion," John's response has grown on me.
When we moved to our retirement community, a woman in the mail room invited me to join the Green Team. What a vintage designation my NYC self thought. Not that at all I discovered.
We now live in Portland, Oregon, sustainability-intense city where you never forget your reusable grocery bag. [See latest "Portlandia" episode.] Once again we kitchen compost. I am very involved in encouraging neighbors to do likewise. No longer do red wigglers in our living room transform the stuff, but the intention is the same.
Rye breads recently made where I neglected to label recipe source. They were very good. One on right is 1968 New York Times Sourdough via Craig Claiborne.
And what better to go with a slice of homemade bread than my newest political button. Yes, 17% is the stunning percentage of women in Congress. A special election in the quirky district where we live is about to (fingers crossed) give Democrat Suzanne Bonamici a seat in the House of Representatives. She will replace an unsuitable man I wrote about at length HERE.
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MOM MARKETING, is a pro bono effort on behalf of HAPPY CUP ; it is my very own "start-up" for 2012. Timmy Straw, composer and musician, who works at the other wonderful Portland bookstore, Daedalus, in the Northwest, was the first person I tried the idea on.
She listened to my pitch (we are already acquainted).
Three years ago our daughter Rachel (at right) had the idea to open a coffee shop to provide more jobs and more social outlets for her clients with disabilities. Full Life Coffee Shop quickly attracted other programs who bring their clients on outings to socialize--and drink coffee.
In late 2011, through a circumstance that could only occur in Portland, Rachel had an opportunity to develop a coffee roast. Happy Cup joined the lively java scene overtaking America (end of pitch).
Tee-shirt and mug have been added. Of course, proud parents tell the Happy Cup story, distribute this small, informative brochure.
As part of Mom Marketing I give the listener a sample package of coffee. Next month: Happy Cup debuts at Whole Foods in Portland.
Midspring Rachel Bloom, CEO of Full Life, had an urge to start a Flower Farm. Before we knew it, some lovely person in the community near her business offered an odd lot--one that would not work for other development.
Full Life Flower Farm sprung into being. Provided joyful work and outdoor space for her clients. And glorious blossoms. Around the same time, HAPPY CUP was perking around in the development stage.
Rachel talks about the flowers and the coffee on this video from the website.
More details on this local, sustainable business (we are in Portland, Oregon, where sustainability is the most-often repeated word) in a recent Business Journal article.
Today, an email with the latest from Scott, Rachel's spouse, very involved with Happy Cup:
As a social enterprise- Happy Cup will donate 100% of net profits to organizations that create programming for individuals with disabilities.
Of course, we're very proud and drinking delicious coffee. Happy Cup can be ordered online in Dark Roast, Full Potential (Expresso), Papua New Guinea, and El Salvador--even has its own cup and tee-shirt. Just in time for the holidays there's also a Gift Box.
Happy Cup is a socially conscious product in providing excellent ethically traded coffee that is also roasted, packaged and delivered by individuals with disabilities. Full Life has found another way to create jobs for underserved members of our community. Government funding for programs like Full Life are being slashed in the Oregon state budget. Full Life Flower Farm and Happy Cup underwite the lost funding for programs that provide a more meaningful life for "people with potential."
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There are those who believe that Ron and I have many irons in the proverbial fire--knit, spin, weave, etcetera. We are in awe that both our children have taken the model so much further.
This one, co-edited with J. Mark Souther of the Center for Public History at Cleveland State University, features 35 illustrated articles from a group of public historians, travel writers about places transformed into tourist destinations.
Moviemaking...videocasting, what I would like to do.
Have to stop wishing there will be another life in which my writing is as pithy, hilarious as Katha Pollitt-- or my vision of an awakened FEMINISM will reinvigorate the western world.
The latter too utopian. Need goals with less remote chance of possibility in next ten years.
The WOMEN OCCUPY site has several images of occupying women, plus videos. This is one is 12 minutes, worth the visit with Roseanne.
Some of the high points: Roseanne again announces her candidacy for President and repeats her strong (what did we expect) position on bringing back the guillotine. She advocates a return to farming-- organic farming in particular which she has "put my money into"-- and opposition to Monsanto GM activity.
"Stop all that lefty factioning stuff," is one of her asides --though some of us have not forgotten how that was some of the impetus behind the emergence of the second wave of the women's movement. Some of us also are impatient when we note that more women have not pushed to the front of Occupy groups. As Susan Saradon reminds everyone in another video at WOMEN OCCUPY,
"I don't think the powerful have ever given up power unless it's been wrenched from them."
Melissa Bell, Washington Post writer, suggests that the "horizontal heirarchy" practiced by the Occupies, "...will teach us about a new way to debate, sprawling and messy, but also more inclusive." Speaking of inclusivity, Melissa, neglected to include the absence of women of color in OWS. If you can tolerate the ad-heavy site, several of themappear HERE in a video. One points out that being part of the 99% is where they have always known they are.
They came from New Jersey, Harlem, the Bronx and as far away as Seattle. The small, but diverse group of black women we met at Occupy Wall Street this weekend included students, a member of the Board of Ed, community organizers and church elders. Ranging in age from 19 to 62 years old, they gathered in New York's Zuccotti Park ... to lend their voices to the demand for social and economic change.
Continuing my Google search for the presence of women at Occupy, happened on this "nostalgia" piece from St. Louis, Missouri. In January of 1939, more than 70 women demonstrated at City Hall--a sampling of 1,100 women, most of them widows or mothers whose husbands had deserted them. They were protesting that this meagre WPA benefits of $42/month benefit had been were cut off in an economy measure by the state. All they would have to sustain them, if there were two children, would be a $30/monthly welfare payment.
When the photo is enlarged, it seems one black woman is at the right end on the line. Surprise to me. St. Louis, one of the many places my mobile family inhabited, was/is a segregated city more southern than midwestern.
Uncharacteristically, the women were both black and white. Two dozen of them had first spent the night in front of the state welfare office-- keeping a fire in a wash tub--then moved inside St. Louis' City Hall two days later. They vowed to the aldermen they would stay till their demands were met.
According to the article, "City Hall watchmen took a hard line, refusing to pass along a food basket. In the cramped gallery, demonstrators couldn't sleep. They prayed and sang 'Silent Night.'
"Black demonstrators taught the whites traditional spirituals." After three days, the police moved in on the remaining 30 demonstrators. None were arrested. Sit-ins as protest were common in the Depression but one that was only women was unusual. The article ends, "As WPA layoffs continued, their story drifted away."
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Can an invigorated women's movement begin to emerge from Occupy Wall Street? What would need to happen for women in the U.S. to understand that all of us are marginalized by patriarchy, that we only imagine equality until we are represented fully by our true numbers--not by the exceptional women who are allowed to speak for us. This is the unfinished work of the second wave. Marianna noted at Hattie's Web:
"We won where we took it on, really confronted the injustices. But we did not fight hard enough for our right to be women, not men."
How to support a movement seen as necessary, important, but beyond one's participation? Since October 7 when Occupy Wall Street began, that question has been on my mind.
It was so close here in Portland, Oregon, yet so far away. Contribute some change to Occupy Portland. Last week Pay Pal notified me that Red Owl Media had returned the money. There has been a problem between those who wanted Occupy Portland to become a non-profit, those opposed. Money collected in two places. Now returned. It is all part of the formlessness of the effort.
Last week I left a canvas bag from the local, longtime Peoples Co-op with a miscellany--bags of millet and garbanzo flour from cooking classes at Bob's Red Mill, jar of Ron's strawberry jam, bedroom slippers I was discarding, toothbrushes from the dentist (have to stop taking these: we use electric), pony tail hair bands purchased for grandchild Zoe. And another bag: Keep Portland radical. Talked with a neighbor who had purchased a blanket from our thrift shop, made the bus trip downtown and left it with someone at the edge of the encampment. Hearing that I'd taken the short walk inside to hand over my stuff to a place about food, she asked, "How was it?"
Smelled awful, even on a sunny day there was an overcast, scruffy feeling--people living outside for a long time, and coughing. What could we expect? Radical political action is not attractive.
[Problem with this report, had to take down] By chance, what is happening in Vancouver, B.C., was broadcast as I was writing this post. The responses to questions by a volunteer medic are worth listening to especially the hard ones about a young woman found dead at this encampment. Is it my imagination or does this Canadian broadcaster seem far more respectful than ones in the U.S.?
Have watched the live streaming from here and NYC. Think how different it might be in New York where people around me would be talking about frequently, arguing its merits. In Portlande, even at Portland State University, there is not a sense in the halls that some of their peers are in tents only 10 blocks away, that what is taking place is work by those who speak for all of us who would never occupy but feel voiceless. But maybe that's the norm in other cities where many have opted out of full engagement with any kind of politics.
Lunch today at Pearl Bakery with Alon, who taught the delightful Sociology of the Bicycle. He has been to GA (general assembly) meetings at Occupy Portland, works with Education and Outreach groups there. It was good to talk with someone who has real time experience with the group. We have been concerned that our unsolved social problems in Occupy cities--homelessness, mental illness-- street people in need of food and a roof might overwhelm the political intentions of those who began the occupations.
He is hopeful; we want to be too. Love this video.
UPDATE Monday, Nov. 7, 2011, 8:15 p.m. (PST), Local TV news:
In an open letter to the Occupy Portland movement, Mayor Sam Adams said the current safety conditions at the encampment were "not sustainable," changing the previous day-by-day approach of the city. Citing specifically increasing arrests, drug use and violent behavior, Adams said the purpose of the letter was to stress the urgency in dealing with these problems...."I have said from the beginning that I believe the Occupy movement would have to evolve in order to realize its full potential."
Earlier this week, I was glad to see this at Marion Nestle's Food Politics blog. Link is to her post about Denmark's experiment with a "fat tax."
But then as the days went by, the message seemed diffuse. "Big Food," yes, but we need to focus on some of the really, really BAD guys. How about the source for GMO badness. And so, with apologies to whoever did the powerful original, here's my online graffiti.
Copy it, take it to your neighborhood OCCUPY site.. May it be raised everywhere.
Life has been a bit challenging for the past couple of weeks. It began mildly enough with my very minor surgery. Out-patient at Legacy Hospital, smiling staff, clean efficient. Yes, the surgeon was swell. That was Friday and the next day kidney stone pains began to re-visit Ron. Sunday night we traveled to our friendly Legacy Emergency Room.
Discovered: a 7.5 kidney stone! Tuesday morning it was now his turn for out-patient surgery far more serious than mine and with a positive outcome. That should have wrapped it up. Never that simple in latelife, however. All of it threw my sleep pattern into chaos. Finally out now and returning to post.
Meanwhile the world continues to turn in strange, sometimes wonderful ways. Watching Occupy Wall Street has offered remarkable words and images. Thoughtful thinking from observers--like many of us--from Zuccotti Square: Naomi Klein's reflections (here in text), the Amy Goodman's program, Democracy Now include many thoughtful interviews at the Square espescially this one with Katrina van den Heuvel of the Nation magazine in the midst of the high activity. Think it was this one where I saw my friend in peace, Joan Wile of Grandmothrs against the War, sitting quietly next to her sign. Joan on her own blog describes what she was experiencing that day.
That's Joan in the middle on an October 7 demonstration marking the 10th anniversary of the U.S. war/conflict in Afghanistan.
Here she is again on Michael Moore's blog. On October 18, a contingent of 60 Grannies appeared at Lincoln Center to protest the way private/public spaces attempt to squelch those with political agendas. And the police backed off! Busy month for Joan and October has another eight days.
Late summer has brought the tomato bounty from the roof of our retirement community. Ron's plant (every resident who puts up five dollars gets one of these) prospered this year. Small tomatoes to the many bloggers with house gardens. No match for the over-large crop he would plant behind our house in Baltimore. This, however, is a good addition to our Portland urban life in a 12-story retirement community.
But can other gardeners in suburban Maryland or upstate New York find a portrait tomato like this one? Do you recall the delightful Nixon eggplant?
Some even ask, "Where is he now?" Speculate that he looks pretty good compared to today's Republican candidates.
But let's return to my challenge: a name for Ron's tomato. Two other views--from above, from below-- may inspire further.
"Early Girl" was the variety he chose this year, so you might want to think of this particular tomato's personality as female.
When I fail, it may be an opportunity for ART...or HUMOR...anything to delay the moment of discard. Vollkornbrot was destined to be too much of a reach for my sourdough ambitions and my teeny-tiny oven.
1996 was Year One of our First Retirement in New York City. At Fairway perhaps, I saw a local bread labeled "Bread Alone." Nice title, good to eat. In a way similiar to restless, educated 20th century Manhattanites of a certain class--some money saved up (stockbroker, ad exec,) post-hippie (don't you like that better than "boomer"?), Daniel Leader left the City for upstate--the Catskills.
He opened an organic, European-style bakery in Boice, N.Y. Ten years later he wrote the book, "Bread Alone: bold fresh loaves fom your own hands" with Judith Blahnik. I bought it in the energetic early retirement, do-everything mode, and because I loved the cover illustration. "Began sourdough rye starters, potato & caraway seed, 2/29/96--whew!" a red pen notes inside the cover. Have no memory of this nor what happened next. All I recall is being put off by the heroics of Leader's techniques.
All these years later in Second Retirement, I'm prepared for all kinds of bread challenges--and less distracted by life in the Big Apple.
Using my own rye starter, in May, I returned to Leader's book for "Sourdough Rye with Potato." Challenged to fit three loaves in the oven, I used a medium-sized cast iron skillet and two black metal bread pans. (Have to reduce recipe next time.) Thought it was a terrific loaf though labor intensive with huge amont of very wet dough. Ron lent a hand on kneading. Quite tasty with pieces of potato which can be seen in the slices.
Last month, emboldened further, I took on Vollkornbrot, the doorstop pictured above. "The name means 'whole kernel bread'...a tradition in Germany and Scandanavia" Leader writes. It uses whole rye berries (soaked overnight), an ingredient that intrigued me, pumpernickel flour/rye meal that I substituted for cracked rye.
The detail in this book includes activities I ignore: getting the correct temperature of your kitchen, flour, etc., taking the temperature of the dough after mixing. Baked 2 1/2 hours in a 300-degree oven, as per instructions and "...rest at least 24 (or even 36) hours before eating." Never got there. As if to punish my girlish, do-it-my-way approach, the goddess of bread gave me the inedible result pictured at the beginning of this post.
But there are others to try! I am aided in my obessessive pursuit by an especially cool "summer" in Portland, Oregon. I enjoy taking pictures of my production to keep track of what I've done. It's a habit that takes me back to young parenting, particularly our intensely documented first child.
You're wondering, I suppose, what two old people trying to watch their girth do with all this largesse? Invite us to dinner, we bring a loaf with us. Neighbors where we live are always glad to share and the freezer holds slices for non-baking weeks.
An important goal now is to find a way or ways to give a loaf to someone I do not know, someone who might truly need it. Been talking to people about how that might happen; that is where I hope my Kneading to Know idea will travel forward.
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