Sweet Ol World

Even in this week of religious import, amid rites of deliverance and great promise, things can seem bleak. The anthropologist in me, the one who was trained by cultural ecologists in the 1970’s, sees the millennium in stark and not so promising terms.  In this world view, all of humanity’s goings-on are viewed from a great height and distilled in one way or another to competition for energy and resources.  From up here in the catbird seat, symptoms as various as global warming, the financial collapse, a congress full of tea-baggers, international terrorism, Marcellus shale extraction, brutal despots, the national deficit, grinding poverty, rainforest depletion, HIV, ethnic and religious warfare, water pollution, crooked jurists, and so on are just multiple manifestations of the same illness.  The one nobody at Fox or NPR wants to talk about.

We are too many.

We have too much, and want too much, and waste too much. Those that have little, want. Those with some, want more and those with much would like to double it. This is not a sustainable model.  Resources of all kinds are finite, period.  We will inexorably exhaust what we have and die in the stink of our own waste, because we won’t even talk about it, much less address it. 

And that, friends and neighbors, is that.

So tonight I dragged my sorry and cynical ass into the birthing center at the local hospital, where my niece placed her 6 pound, 12 ounce newborn daughter in my lap.  As I slowly rocked the sleeping infant, I felt something deep and elemental and surprisingly powerful emanating from this little person, something parents feel in every quiet moment.

Yes, I know she will grow to use her full measure of hydrocarbons, raw materials and kilocalories, and will help fill the county dump.  She will likely bring more children into the world too, and make the problem even worse.  I know all that, but still I smile at what is possible. In exchange for what she will take, there is no knowing what she will give.  I may be holding a great peacemaker who will persuade the folks on both sides of the Jordan to lower their weapons and embrace each other.  I may be holding a doctor that cures what is now incurable and brings comfort and hope to the sick and frightened.  I may be holding the brilliant engineer who turns our waste into energy and beats our swords into plowshares. There may be poetry and music and laughter and great ideas fast asleep in the crook of my arm. 

This quiet little thing is no dark symbol of the end of days. She is cause for hope.

Peace to everyone at Easter time and Passover…       

A Couple Not-Too-Subtle Observations

As my e-mail in-box fills with pleas to write my legislators in support of continued funding for many if not every publicly funded undertaking imaginable, I find some common issues and solutions suggest themselves. Rather than write several dozen issue-specific pleas, I thought maybe a single unfocused diatribe might be easier, if less helpful.  Frankly I am just as pissed off as a wet hen, and would like to get a couple things off my chest…to whit:

Our national and state budgets are in the tank, and the current state of American political leadership of every stripe is, I think, incapable of addressing this problem rationally.  At the most simplistic level, the way out of the woods is clear. We set our priorities, compromising among various opinions to satisfy a majority and making sure we don’t destroy the fabric of our communities, then we spend less and increase our income until things come into balance. Everything is on the table, and nothing is beyond consideration. This is how households get themselves out of debt, and at a larger and more complicated level, it’s how countries and states do it too.  

Any politician who says they will never raise taxes or pledges never to cut some portion of public expenditures is either lying or an idiot. Taking any or all tax increases (or “revenue enhancements” for Chrissakes) and any or all public expenditures off the table is irrational. 

Period.

Our current crop of political leaders, who are beholden to contributors of various stripes to finance their campaign war chests and keep their un-term limited butts in their various seats, are not, in my opinion, up to the job.  Let’s face it; these guys can’t even cobble together a compromise that deals with the simple stuff like education, environmental regulation, and transportation. How in the name of merciful heaven could we expect them to deal with stuff like defense and entitlements like Medicare?  Voting for “change” won’t work if the new folks are exposed to the same lobbying money and the same need to get re-elected. 

Until our elected representatives are term limited and until we get all that private money out of DC and the various state capitols, our legislators simply cannot legislate in the interests of their voters, their state, and their country without regard to their long-term electability.

Some of the newest legislative crop appear to espouse a political philosophy that finds all public sector undertakings, all labor unions, and all taxes as inherently “evil” and all private sector doings, all business owners, and all public budget cuts “good”.  A lot of them support term limits, but frankly are too inflexible and simple minded to pour piss out of a boot, much less rationally address a huge and complicated budget crisis. Last week I watched one of the geniuses who helped vote in some of these Einsteins railing against the Wisconsin Public Employee Unions because he didn’t “…have health care or a pension or any guarantee of a job…” apparently missing the point that he deserves these things himself as a basic human right, and could do with some union representation.  People in my parent’s generation stood out on picket lines and got their heads beaten in by goons working for the predecessors of the Koch brothers to win collective bargaining rights. That wasn’t so long ago.

Even in states where the legislative majority and the governor are from the same party, compromise among disparate opinions will be necessary to put together a rational response to fiscal problems. At the federal level where one house is Republican and the other Democratic with a D President holding a veto card, compromise is essential to doing anything at all.  Holding your breath until you turn blue in defense of your “principles” doesn’t even work for kids. 

Before I climb off this soapbox, there is a second related issue that I don’t see anyone reporting on in the media I’d like to raise. Last year, mostly because nobody in the organization I work for noticed (yes, public sector, but the same thing happens at businesses), several of us grunts were able to implement a program that saved our agency a quarter million dollars.  Essentially, for very small projects, we hired a seasonal employee and a couple interns, and replaced contracted services with these young folks, supervising them ourselves.  The projects they worked on wound up costing around 2300 bucks. A cost/benefit analysis employing five years worth of data demonstrated that the same projects, done by consultants, averaged (no shit) 23,000 bucks! 

Now the real money in government is, of course, in the defense budget.  How much money? Have a look at this!

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/02/22/am-the-cost-of-a-soldier-deployed-in-afghanistan/

Two young friends of mine are military truck drivers soon bound for their second deployment in Iraq. When I asked them where all the money is going over there, they laughed, then explained that in a given military convoy, only 30% of the trucks are actually military.  The rest are contractors, and the drivers are pulling down 100K tax free each plus incentives. My young friends aren’t paid anything like that.  They went on to note that the army cooks assigned to their units are not allowed to cook anything. That is done by a contractor. The base they stay at was erected and is maintained by contractors, and some of the showers those contractors have erected have electrocuted a few folks.  These two young soldiers aren’t too surprised by the size of the military budget, and they know what to do to reduce it without undue losses in our security. Not that anyone will ever ask them…

Please understand, I’m not at all down on consultants and contractors (having worked as one).  My point is, there are projects and situations where public employees are the way to go, and other projects and situations where consultants make sense. In general, undertakings that are large in scale and have a limited life span are good candidates for using a contractor (e.g. building a bridge), while smaller projects that happen all the time are best done in-house (e.g. patching potholes on the bridge). Public and private employees and enterprises are neither inherently good nor bad.  They are just different tools that have different uses. A hammer is great for driving nails, not so good for removing bolts.  The decision on whether to use a contractor or a public employee should be based on the demands of the job at hand and on costs to the taxpayers, not on somebody’s half-assed political philosophy nor on who has made the largest political contributions lately.

In government, the people who know how things work are beat cops, the guy that drives the snowplow, the classroom teacher, the administrative assistant, the Private First Class truck driver in Iraq, the pay grade 2 bookkeeper, the firefighter/EMT.  I have worked in government service for many years now. Nobody in upper management of the several agencies I’ve worked for has ever asked me how we could save some money from the operations budget in my division. Ever.

There…I feel much better now having exercised my first amendment rights. I look forward to your reactions!

An Apology

A few days ago, I had an on-line discussion with one of my fellow bleeding-heart’s about the recent election results.  In this discussion I opined that armed revolution was the only way to flush the special interest money out of American politics and to limit terms.  I expressed the view that the path to eliminating the spectacle of professional politicians who walk through the revolving door from decades in office to making some real money as lobbyists is the path of the revolutionary. I felt cocky and self-satisfied; an old commie who still wears a beret and has not lost his proletarian edge.

And then I picked up the Sunday paper, and now I hang my head in shame.

Words matter, and I take it all back.  

The politicians and pundits whose vicious invective inspired an unhinged young man to assault and to murder all those innocent folks in Tucson have blood on their hands now.  The best of those people know it, and they won’t sleep well for a long time.  I don’t ever want to feel like that.  

Thirty odd miles from here is Gettysburg.  The bucolic National Park battlefield is mostly quiet in winter, as are the endless rows of headstones.  The silence and the gentle landscape, and the intervening years all serve to shelter us from the barbaric legacy of insoluble political differences settled with guns.  This is not an experiment that bears repeating; a conclusion any of those poor kids in the cemetery would surely support.

I still think we need to get the money the hell out of Washington and the state capitals so decisions are made based on what’s good for the country, not what’s good for a re-election war chest. . I still think politicians should be term limited; politics should be years sacrificed for public service, not a career. I still think we need single-payer socialized health care. I still think we need more schools and fewer jails, more woods and fewer gas derricks, more tolerance and less anger, more trains and fewer trucks and cars, fewer people and less poverty.  I still think there is a time and place for civil disobedience, but I am not willing to spill blood.  I am hardly Gandhi or Martin Luther King or Mother Theresa, but I will continue to work peaceably for the goals I believe in, and I will sure as hell watch what I say!

Peace!  

The Trouble with Hippies

A couple evenings back I took in some live music in a roadhouse not far from my home.  A good friend of mine moonlights on mandolin with a four piece acoustic roots ensemble, and they’re good.  An interesting side effect of their occasional performances in our area is the attendance of every left winger in this extremely conservative Pennsylvania county.  The heads are often grey, but peasant skirts and tie dye are in evidence, the sweet smell of funny cigarettes is noticeable in the parking lot, and the political talk is pretty lefty, and sometimes pretty far out there. For example…

I was sitting at a small table with two friends, one of them the mandolin player’s wife who is an Emergency Room nurse, enjoying dinner and watching the band sound check, when we were joined by another old friend who’s been visiting from his home in New Hampshire.  He’s my age (mid-50’s), a carpenter and general handyman.  He’s wound up real tight, and pretty fringe, but he’s a really nice guy.  Having recently completed the sad duty many folks my age are called on to perform, and nursed his mom through her final illness, he took some time and completed the Pacific Crest Trail.  Now he’s starting to sniff the wind, and figure out what comes next. We talked about that.

“So what now?”

 “I don’t know, but I’m really feeling like I maybe should think about simplifying even more than I have been, you know? I have no debt, no young kids.  If I sell my place, then I have nothing tying me down, ya know. I can live in my van, and visit with folks, camp and hike, and work on a project when I need a little cash.  Ya know, strip it down to just the important stuff.”

“Health insurance?”

“Well, ya know, I’m thinking I can do just fine without that. I mean, if you hold your income down low enough, they have to treat you for anything catastrophic, right?”

 At this point, our friend the nurse agreed that below the poverty line patients get help from the hospital in applying for public assistance or the hospital just writes the treatment off. Wonderful. His hippy-ass isn’t paying for his trip to the emergency room. I am, and so are you, with higher health insurance costs.  This country is full of people who develop opinions without a lot of facts or consideration for others. I am reminded of the tea-bagger I watched last year shrieking into the face of a legislator that she wanted “…the government to keep its goddamned hands off my Medicare!” 

“Well, what about preventative care?”

“I don’t know, I mean I’m pretty fit and healthy.  I did actually have a physical at a doctor’s office this year, but what a ripoff! I mean he just listened to my chest and asked me a few questions and he was outta there in less than 10 minutes!”

“Really?”

“Well, he did check my prostate, but ya know, it seemed like he was only in there for a second. I mean, what could he possibly learn from that? I don’t think he took enough time.  Actually, I think I could probably check my own prostate with some instruction and do a better job than that!”

At this all ears at the table perked up.

“So how do you suppose you could do that man?”

“Well, there must be a way.”  Turning to my friend across the table he said “You’re a nurse, couldn’t I just check it myself?” 

He’s been staying at her place the last week or so, and she’s probably a little tired of him (as you’ve guessed by now, he’s a large personality), so she just chewed her pasta for awhile and looked at him. Then she said, “I don’t know man. You seem pretty determined though, so maybe.”

“Well, I mean how hard could it be? Women do self examinations of their breasts, right?”

In unison the rest of us at the table blurted out “It’s different than that.”

One of us observed that access might be difficult, but he was undeterred.

“Well, I wipe my backside each morning, how different could it be from that?”

Several of us again responded “It’s probably different from that too.”

We brought up the issues of professional experience, diagnosis and interpretation of results, and useful recommendations, but he went away undeterred.  I assume that, as of this writing, he has probably made at least one attempt…maybe more. Good for him.

Believe it or not, I kind of understand.  I spent 6 months living out of a backpack on the Appalachian Trail in 1981.  The experience left me with the secure and rock-solid understanding of what is important and what is not important in this world.  Clean water is important. A warm dry place to sleep is important. A healthy and fit body is important. Sufficient and wholesome food is important. The affection of other people is important. Everything else is not that big a deal.  My thinking has of course evolved to allow for the significance of civic life, for my profession, for the appreciation of creature comforts and good books and music, but I haven’t forgotten. You can do without a lot, and still be happy in this world.

I’ve always treated this as the great epiphany that has guided my adult life, but maybe not. I am reminded of a conversation I had with an editor friend of mine the previous week in which he opined “Sometimes when you see a bright flash of light and hear a loud ‘pop’ it’s not an epiphany. Sometimes it’s just you pulling your head out of your own ass.”

.   

Urge for Going

When I was in my twenties I worked what seemed like an endless string of seasonal jobs with various government  agencies that saw me laid off in the Autumn with money in my pockets.  Thus began a lifelong custom of running around in the woods in the Fall.  Backpacking, fishing, travel, big mountains and rivers, bottles and other things passed around campfires on the first cold nights: the ceremonial and often raucous wake for the recently expired Summer.  

The early trips were to New England, then the Northern Rockies, lately the Adirondacks.  There have been a few one-time-only locations too, but mostly I’ve flown North in the Fall.   I seem to need the sting of the first cold nights, the fire of the Maple leaves, and especially the sweet smell of Balsam and Spruce.  I have had a long string of companions on these trips, fell in with others along the way, and have done some of them solo.  I’ve been gone on some of them as long as a month.  Since I’ve been employed year-round (something that thankfully didn’t happen to me until I was in my thirties) these trips have also given me one of my most pleasurable annual exchanges with management.

 

I explain to them that in my absence, should they require my advice or assistance with absolutely anything, at any time, I’d be happy to oblige.  The only caveat is this: Since I won’t be anywhere with cell service, you’ll have to find me. Start by asking around in the bars in, say, Pinedale Wyoming, Gardiner Montana, or Saranac New York.

Good luck with that.

By now this annual hajj is instinctual.    In August I start to become restless without clearly knowing why. The next thing you know, my living room is littered with books and maps.  The pulse of my year is most palpable as Fall begins, and is best taken along a steep brook or on a trail in the forest.

Right now I’m waiting out a storm in a hotel somewhere in the Adirondacks.  More photos and observations to follow…  

Bread

The culinary interests of my mom’s family to some extent dictated that I would become a serious home brewer, vintner and baker as an adult. My mom made the best pizza crust imaginable, and used to feed the entire neighborhood at times. When I was a little kid, my grandfather made 25 gallons of red wine every September. I would peer over the lip of the barrel and listen to the cake of skins and stems hiss and fizzle with the working of the yeast, then close my eyes and inhale deeply the giddy perfume that overwhelmed the entire house. Fermentation still seems miraculous to me, a continuous wonder.

As a college kid I brought a loaf of home-made bread to my dear Aunt Nicky’s for a holiday dinner. I was bashful about placing it on the table in front of the whole family. She broke off a piece of crust and tasted it. She said “This is good! Slice it and put it on the table.” I remained reticent, and she finally put her hand on her hip as she did when she was a little put out and said “Honeybunch! You know what good food is! Cook to your own taste! For God’s sake don’t worry about THEM!” Here she pointedly indicated most of my male relative ensconced in front of a football game in the living room and pretty well down in their cups. “THEY’LL eat nails!”

What follows is a recipe and some general observations on making bread. It is also a response to a highly automated, frenetic, and demanding pace of life that, I think, kills people and robs them of some pleasures they don’t even know they’re missing.

Making bread at home takes some time. The most common excuse people give for buying their bread is how long it takes and how complicated it is. But think about it: isn’t most of the time required to make even the most complicated artisan breads simply spent waiting for something to happen? Your active participation is not required for yeast to proof, for dough to rise or for loaves to bake. You can be doing something else, and keeping half an eye on the clock, can’t you? In other words, any self-respecting 21st century multi-tasker ought to be able to juggle the elements of even a busy modern life around making real, honest bread.

Baking also requires some simple tools. None are more important than those protruding from your shirt sleeves. No machine has ever been invented that can adequately substitute for the grace, sensitivity, warmth and precise strength of human hands. Wheat breads have to be kneaded to break down the gluten and provide durability and strength to the rising dough. How long does this kneading take? Until you can feel the building resistance in the dough. This can be 3 minutes or 30; it all depends. Your hands can be taught to distinguish among very fine increments of resistance, the difference between a very light, crusty baguette and a dense and chewy rye. My point is; your hands and only your hands will tell you when you are done. Throw the damned bread machine away.

There are other benefits to hand kneading. There is an old Italian folk tale that involves the strong warm hands of the village baker and the wives of some frequently absent and inattentive merchants. I think the title was Un Pane Francese…

But I digress…

A solid ceramic bowl, a heavy wooden spoon, a bread board and pin, and some measuring cups and spoons make up the rudiments of your tool kit. I would also lobby for a few other items.

A baker’s peel is essential for Pizze and Foccacie, and damned handy as a place for loaves to rise. They come in wood and metal. I like wood.

A baking stone is one of the real secrets to great crusty bread. The best stones are large 5/8 thick rectangles of fire brick that cover most of a rack in a standard oven. They run about 50 bucks. The only thing better is a real brick lined oven. They start at 3 grand, last time I checked, so I’d stick with the stone.

Some metal racks to cool loaves on are a good investment, as is a small spritzer bottle to help generate some steam in the oven, and a metal scraper to clean your bread board.

I’m sure there’s lots of other stuff out there that’s fun to use and helpful, but I don’t own any of it.

Flour, water and leavening with a few minor ingredients make bread.

Only wheat flour possesses sufficient gluten to rise to double its volume. These days they sell high gluten flour just for making bread, but I find it unnecessary. I’ll use any decent unbleached white flour and/or whole grain flour for my baking. I have my favorite brands, but there are many good ones. Watch that it’s not too old. Whole grain flour can go rancid after awhile, and all flour will eventually get weevils if it’s not stored in the fridge. In general, white flour responds to kneading more quickly and rises more quickly than whole grain.

Water is water, but watch out for too much chlorine; it’s hard on yeast!

While active dry yeast works well and is best for sweet breads, sourdough is certainly the best and the oldest leavening. Sourdough is a living colony of yeasts and bacteria that form a symbiotic relationship with each other. Certain sourdoughs are endemic to certain parts of the world and have highly distinctive characteristics. It is unruly, not terribly predictable, and not terribly fast. It also produces bread with indescribably good flavor and character. King Arthur flour has a great procedure for making your own starter!

There’s much more to say, but this dissertation is close to a thousand words already. Here’s the recipe. Mangiare bene!

Pane della Campagna (Country Bread)

Note: This is my basic pizza and bread recipe. A great many friends and family seem to enjoy it! I will give the dry yeast version here with some end notes on the sourdough version.

For two loaves or two pizze

2 cups warm (about 105 degrees Fahrenheit) water
1 cup whole wheat flour
Approximately five cups of unbleached white flour
Two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Two teaspoons of seasalt
One tablespoon of raw unfiltered honey
Coarse cornmeal
Two tablespoons of dry yeast or
¼ cup of sourdough starter

Proof the yeast for about ten minutes by blending it with the warm water, honey, and a couple tablespoons of the whole wheat flour and setting it aside in a warm place. It is ready when it is foamy.



Add the oil and salt, and the rest of the whole wheat flour, to the proofed liquid and blend with a heavy spoon. Start adding white flour and continue blending. At some point, maybe around four or five cups, the dough will get too stiff to stir with the spoon. At that point turn it on to a heavily floured breadboard, and start kneading. Push your hands into the dough, fold it over on itself, and push in again with the heels of your palms. Add flour whenever it seems sticky, and keep kneading. Eventually (five to 10 minutes max) you will feel the dough becoming more and more resistant yet still elastic (a chef friend describes it as the feeling of the dough “fighting back”). At this point the dough should be very smooth and springy. Roll it in a ball and place it in a bowl well greased with good olive oil. Use your fingertips to make the sign of a cross on the fresh dough. Whether you are religious or not, it’s a great little trick my mom used: when the indentation is invisible (about an hour), the dough has doubled!

Punch the dough down and knead again for about a minute. If you are making bread, divide it in half, and roll each half into a smooth ball. Place them on a wooden peel liberally dusted with cornmeal. After they double (about 40 minutes) score the top with a razor blade, and transfer them to a preheated 375 oven on top of a well preheated baking stone. The oven should preheat for at least a half hour. Just before you close the oven door, spritz the loaves, oven walls and stone with the spray bottle of water and quickly close the oven door. The steam will ensure a real crust. The loaves will be ready in about 40 minutes.

Per Pizze: If you are making pizze, divide the risen dough in half. Dust a breadboard heavily with cornmeal. Flatten, dust the top of each half with flour and roll out to a roughly 18 inch pie. Bake about 10 minutes on the stone PRIOR to adding toppings (or cooling and freezing for later).

Sourdough: Combine the room temperature starter with the warm water, honey, and a quarter cup of the whole wheat flour and setting it aside in a warm place. It should proof in an hour or two, at which point it will have a very foamy appearance and sharp smell. It may take several hours, or it might be ready in 15 minutes…it’s funny stuff. After it proofs, mix and knead as above, and set aside to double. I frequently allow the dough to rise overnight in a coolish place. Allowing sourdough to rise slowly is the key to a real sour flavor. If you like a milder flavor, accelerate the rise by placing the dough in a warmer location. Punch down, but don’t do a lot of secondary kneading (makes for a nice irregular crumb with lots of big holes) and form into two round loaves as above. Proceed with the second rise and baking as above.

Enjoy!

A Note to Charlie

Lotta water under the bridge since the funeral. I was only 13, and it was a huge punch in the gut. But time passed, and I cobbled a life together with the usual mix of good and bad. I am now about the age you were when you left us, and I can’t say I don’t have any regrets. I’m like everyone else Charlie, I have lots of them. But I have arrived at a place where I am beginning to understand them, and they don’t burden me as much as they used to.

So this is a thank you note. When I reach back 40-odd years, I find a man who loved his wife and kids unconditionally and took great joy in them, even when they weren’t so loveable. I remember a guy who worked his ass off to provide for his family, then volunteered his free time to help people he didn’t even know. I smile at a great laugh and sparkling eyes and a fully functional sense of humor, a person whose reaction to trouble would always begin with an explosive string of expletives and end with a rueful chuckle and a deep appreciation of irony. I see a guy in a dark bar, nursing his 2 beer limit and telling stories and surrounded by other men who respected him and valued his friendship. I remember bear hugs that lifted me into the air and left no doubt about how deeply and profoundly I was cared for.

So you were the model I had for what a man is; my guide for what to become. I’m sure there was a lot more to learn, and I know you weren’t a saint, but while I might have asked for more, I simply could not have asked for better. We are very different men Charlie, but in ways large and small, you remain the standard I hold myself to.

Muddy Waters threw his head back, closed his eyes, and shouted “I’m a MAN!” a deep roaring howl into the night. I sometimes feel that howl way down, a declaration that I am here vital and alive, shoving death and darkness in the chest. I owe you Charlie. I will see to it that your great-grandkids know who you were.

A short life can still be a great big life, a life that rings loud for years and decades and even centuries, a deep roaring howl into the night.

Happy Fathers Day.