sickly sweet

Freakin' Splenda is haunting me! Twice in one weekend our household shopping was cursed by accidental purchases of products containing Splenda.

We don't buy too much in the way of processed food, so I think I've grown slack in the world of ingredient reading. How else can I explain being pressed to create bright colors of frosting in a pinch, breezing through some nasty chemical ingredient list on a tub of super processed frosting to make sure there was no egg or whey or lard, and realizing, while frosting a bright yellow cupcake with candied lemon peel on top, that the reason the consistency was so gluey was because it was reduced sugar frosting? Gross on top of yuk. It was too late to go back. I figured this is what I get for taking short cuts, even though I'd been asked to bake for a party, and I'm totally not a baker. I had no intention of eating any of the cupcakes, and warned everyone at the party, most of whom didn't care, that the beautiful pastel colors were made of poison.I claim some innoncence: I had been in a daze. The party was a naming ceremony and first birthday party for twins born to dyke moms, and conceived via in-vitro fertilization after years of fertility treatments. When I went on the frosting run, I'd just been at the gym listing to a podcast about Liza Mundy's new book about ethics questions and medical issues when children are created through fertility treatments, surrogacy, and sperm donors. The famous octoplets have given us a peek, but there are a whole lot more issues, many of which these very moms had experience with. It was a terrifying listen, having direct impact on this family I love, and most specifically on the smaller of the twin girls, clearly robbed of nutrition and everything else by the bigger, stronger one, and having just suffered whooping cough and pneumonia. I knew my arguments for adoption for well-founded, even though everyone is sick of hearing them! The party featured lots of cute, happy kids, however, and was so warm and sweet and supportive that my freakout melted.

The frosting was called out by one of the moms, who I'd pressed to stop using Splenda. Since she didn't care much about poisoning herself, I'd used the Huntingdon Life Sciences angle, a convincing one. Splenda was tested on 12,800 animals to "prove" that it's safe. Hello, we already know it's poison! Like how we know jet exhaust and cigarettes are poison, but we're still "testing" that on dogs. HLS exists specifically for crappy products like fake sweeteners, with hundreds of animals suffering every day because of it. All vivisection is grotesque, but nobody, no matter how uninformed, can pretend that product testing is okay. I was thrilled she remembered.So we left the party all warm and fuzzy, shaking the nasty fake sweet. Or so we thought. A person sometimes craves pickles. This sometimes happens when one's own stash of ferments from last summer is gone, and when that person is not on the lower east side of Manhattan with access to Guss' barrels of brine. So we're at the market and decide to splurge on a jar of fancy pickles. At the last minute, we feel guilty about spending the money and run back and swap the expensive pickles for a jar of Vlasic bread & butter pickles. Go home, go to crack them open, and see that they're made with Splenda.Insert string of expletives here.

Here's why I love belonging to a farm. Here's why I'm starting up a winter C.S.A. in my town. Plain old good food. Delightful treats. Good planning instead of shortcuts. No poisons. No animals harmed. Feeling completely spoiled without ever accidently eating shit like Splenda.

tiny tool

On the Norwegian side of my family, I had some gay uncles, brothers, Teddy and Jolmer. They lived by a lake in Minnesota, down the road from their sister Ruth. Teddy played rousing, dramatic songs on the organ and cooked, and Jolmer carved and fixed things. All three of them fished. They are who I think of when I hear Le Tigre's Les and Ray, even though they lived in the country and didn't share walls with anyone.

I guess it's only speculation that they were gay, but they lived together, both single, for their entire lives, two gentle men. I think Ruth had a husband and children at one point, but would have to ask my mom to be sure. She lived alone when I knew her, and mainly just spent time with her brothers.

I only have two tidbits of Jolmer's carving remaining: a tiny basket and a tiny monkey, both carved out of nut shells. For many years, my favorite piece, now lost, was a pair of tiny working pliers. It may be the OCD inside of me that loves so much care put into a tiny nut shell, but I like to think it's just appreciation.

Jolmer's pliers plus my love of hand tools were the reasons I had a little bit of weakness for "tool" jewelry when it became popular. But when I saw these tiny tool carvings by jeweler Laurie Brown, I was way more excited & sentimental.

I'm obsessed with craft that is useful, but apparently I can be excited by fragile work that only hints at usefulness!tools from aesthetic outburst.
sporks from andothersuchthings.

feelin' it

Spring is finally happening. Thank drag queens! (I can't walk around saying "thank god" anymore. Occasionally "thank the goddesses" works, but an unbeliever really needs to expand their repertoire.)

When I went outside this morning, it was foggy and rainy and warm. All sorts of springy things are finally starting to happen, and that was the exact recipe for an insanely happy me. My morning coffee wander included expanses of sprouts, vibrant green moss, a pileated red headed woodpecker, elderberry buds that look like animal paws, the first forsythia blossoms, a groundhog just emerging from her hole, and the discovery that the radishes I planted-too-early-but just-couldn't-stop-myself had sprouted under their protective victorian bells.

Tonight, thunder and heavy rain and crrraaazzzy lightning. Welcome to delicious, dramatic weather and amazing plants and animals. Welcome spring!

humanure mainstreamed

Humanure hits the NYTimes! If you're unfamiliar with the concept of using your own poop to fertilize your food, begin your education here, then continue here. The Humanure Handbook is a must-have for your outhouse reading rack.

naked pictures

I can't call myself anti porn. I know that sex and sexuality in our society are often messed up and dangerous. I also don't think "sheltering" everyone from that mess protects us. When I don't like something, or think it's hurtful, that doesn't automatically translate to illegality. (Should I have that woman in the gym locker room with all her pubes shaved off arrested?)

Take the case of the kids arrested for making and distributing child porn for taking pictures of themselves. Under laws made to protect children from sexual predators, we are now criminalizing kids who are exploring their own sexuality.

Is it stupid to send a naked cell phone picture of yourself to a kid in your class (now called "sexting")? Yep. Can it have disastrous results? Yes, like the young woman who killed herself after her ex-boyfriend shared her naked photo with others. She was a victim of bullying. But what if that picture had been forwarded in a world where people weren't such prudes? Where we addressed kids' sexuality, instead of pretending it didn't exist? Where she knew her sex life was a part of her, not shameful, and not the sum of her. There's part of it that's impressive. She felt great about her body, her sexuality, her attractiveness. It went sour, later, but there was a moment there of bold pride that I can't imagine having had as a teen.

Don't get me wrong—I'm terrified for kids. A friend's nine year old is so pretty that it's causing her problems at school, with too much unwanted attention from boys, and strains on her friendships. A sixteen year old girl on the St. Patrick's Day train wearing strap-on prosthetic boobs that doubled as beer bongs broke my heart some.

But poor judgement and an obsession with one's own sexuality are standard teenage fare. Standard human fare. One that arresting kids and posting their names on sex offender registries will never change.

As someone who got a Catholic version of sex "education", and so had a lot of messed up ideas about sex and desire and my body, I really believe that educators, parents, other kids have an enormous responsibility to talk with children honestly about all aspects of sexuality. It's impossible, probably, for kids to completely understand the concept of consequences, but an introduction to the idea is not a terrible thing.

femme queens against macho crap

Or, not everyone loves a parade.So I've been standing with Irish Queers for a good number of the eighteen years that they and ILGO (the Irish Lesbian & Gay Organization) have protested the NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade. Let me quickly answer the questions this automatically inspires:
1) No, queer Irish people can't march in the NYC St. Patrick's Day parade. They can march in Dublin, in Cork, and in Queens, but not New York. (Chris Quinn, the second most powerful politician in NYC can march with a group of politicians, but cannot identify herself as queer while doing so. She avoids the parade because it brings her worlds together in a way that just doesn't look good for the camera.)
2) Because I don't actually want to march. (Yeah, you guessed it, the question is "Why not go the Queens parade then, or 'your own' parade in the summer?") I don't actually want to march in the parade, but still bother to protest the fact that people can't because:
a) It is a parade thrown by the religious right. See the Ancient Order of Hibernians for more information.
b) City and state politicians march, pretending that it's not a bigoted, Catholic parade.
c) Police officers, fire fighters, and military personnel by the thousands are required to march in uniform, if they are not on duty, and get paid to do so.
d) All this means the city and state are endorsing the exclusive event. Either money or pleasing powerful people are motivators.
New Yorkers wouldn't let the same thing happen if people of color weren't allowed to participate, or people in wheelchairs.
Now, all this said, the St. Patrick's Day Parade is one of my least favorite events of the year. The city is also supporting a whole lot of public drunkenness, groping, and property destruction (for no reason beside drunkenness). It doesn't seem to be called out or punished like it does with the Puerto Rican Day Parade, because, shucks, these folks are so white and rosy cheeked.

When I lived in the city I made the dash to the demo, and then got the hell out of midtown as quickly as possible to not have to deal with one more drunk saying "Lighten up, it's St. Patty's Day!" Now that I live in the Hudson Valley, there's the added pleasure of the Metro North trip. A lot of Irish Americans live here, and that means a train ride of being touched way too much by (drunk) strangers, getting showered with beer regularly, being "treated" to bagpipe music being played in the closed train car, and ducking while things are thrown and the train is torn apart. At least it's a free ride, since no ticket-taker can get through.

I wonder which parade I hate more, St. Pat's, or the Israeli Day Parade. The Israeli Day Parade definitely hosts more outward hatred, hurled at anti-occupation demonstrators. The things said there can knock a person flat. When my friend's mother, holding a anti-occupation placard, identified herself as a Jew to someone screaming at her to "Go back to Jordan," they told her the wrong Jews had been killed in the war. (Of course, she had barely escaped being murdered in the holocaust.)

Then there's the rodeo parades of my youth, though these were mainly about fashion. The animal abuse was saved for the main event. If only all of these parades were really only about an opportunity to wear fancy hats and beaded belts...

a show of strength

Ah yes, I complain about Chronogram, but it did introduce me to the river photographer Carolyn Marks Blackwood. I love a good political print, but have also become obsessed with the river, the river fog, and the sounds the river ice makes when the tide rises and falls. It's terrifying, amazing. Good for humbling a person.

I met a woman in Hudson who used to walk across the frozen river to work making handbags on the other side. Really, she said, they ran, because the cracking terrified them. She didn't ever hear of any of "the girls" falling through.

sky. light.

My new car is just over a decade old, and it's the newest car I've ever had. I'm still adjusting to strange phenomena like levers for moving side mirrors. I'm used to shouting instructions to passengers with their arms out the (crank) window: in just a bit, up a touch, down half that.

The very best thing about this new-fangled vehicle is the sunroof. I get to feel like I'm outside when I'm having to drive.
I've always driven with windows open, ridden a bike without a helmet (gasp!), left the doors and windows of my house hanging open. The more light and air the better. For some reason, it improves things exponentially to have that light and air above you.

This, I realized belatedly, is what I like about Dia:Beacon. I can do without the bulk of the artwork. It comes as no surprise that I believe the best parts of the museum are the gardens and the bookstore. AND the skylights. It is a lovely building. But any spacious industrial building would look lovely bathed in tons of natural light. It feels good.

The entire main floor is lit by daylight. The artwork is lit by daylight. When the skylights are buried in snow, Dia:Beacon is dark, and closed. This bit of information makes me appreciate the museum much more.
Then, the artwork. I can be really grouchy about modern art, especially massive, macho, public sculptures. There is a lovely response to that kind of work in the museum, and that is the holes, or negative space sculptures of Michael Heizer. They're still lined with steel, lest he be too femme about it. Let's re-line those suckers with some nice cotton canvas for a good lesbo aesthetic, shall we? Or just go upstairs and visit all those artists' removed testicles in the Louise Bourgeois room.

*Cloud fabric from Repro Depot Fabrics

mountain mama

It's deliciously warm and I'm sitting on my porch looking at the mountains. It'd be devastating to the area if these mountains were developed (which is always in discussion). Worse, of course, much worse, would be if these mountains were mined. There is a depressing little drive along the back of them where cement factories have already scarred the landscape dramatically.

But that's just what's going to happen to the mountain that my father grew up on in West Virginia. It's been chosen for a mountaintop removal site. They'll be mining coal, as has always been the case in poor, incredibly beautiful West Virginia.
MTR, mountaintop removal mining, is an extreme form of mining, causing dramatic and irreversible topographical and ecological changes. The top 1,000 feet of a mountain is removed to expose veins of coal. The "waste" is dumped in the nearest valley, creating flat land where mountains were. No vegetation survives, but a lot of waste does, and this sludge is stored in open dams. A "benefit" (besides energy) that is touted for MTR is the creation of flat land where none was before.

If anyone talked to the hill people living there, they'd know that "flatlanders" is a mocking term, not a compliment. But no one is asking the residents. They don't think they have to, because these people are poor. Very poor. They'll be grateful for a temporary mine job, right?
With all the garbage about clean coal" floating around the news these days, people who know nothing of the Appalachians might actually believe it is something that exists. People who've lived near mines and have worked in mines know better. Mortality rates are already higher than the rest of the country in rural West Virginia, but studies show that the rate is due as much to coal mining as to smoking and lack of access to health care. This week's big D.C. demo tried to bring the facts to light.

Rural, mountainous West Virginia may be poor, but it is incredibly lush. When I visited Clay Country as a pre-teen, I tried to declare the whole area a national park. The people who live there have a fierce loyalty to the land, their home, their way of life, and the mountains. My father moved away more than fifty years ago, and still gets the county newspaper. He visited the site of his childhood home this past summer, knowing it might be the last time he saw his mountain intact.
Outsiders like to think that these poor, mountain people are backwards. But they sure do like to look at pictures of them, read about their troubles, listen to their banjo music, and romanticize what it would be like to live in the deep country.

Among my grad school regrets are that I didn't take a colleague up on the offer to join her on a trip to visit with various W.V. artists she worked with. I may never see my father's mountain again, either.

Clay Country newspaper from my dad.
"Three generation of Holcombs" photo by Shelby Lee Adams.
Demonstration photo from Coal River Mountain Watch.
Bird house by Charley Wise.

scruples

(and a merit badge for community building)

I'd intended a while back to give Lagusta an abovegroundpool merit badge for being a sharp, funny, kickass, feminist, vegan, local chef extraordinaire, and sharing that experience with the rest of us. But hadn't gotten around to it.

I've been distracted from writing the entry by the fact that my friend is being beaten up, and from figuring out steps to take to prevent things from escalating. I don't want her to be murdered, I don't want her to continue suffering through beatings, and I don't want this guy to hurt anyone else. What I've learned talking to the lovely people at domestic hotlines is that I can't be the one to end it.

Years ago I had a horrible weekend with friends in CT. The whole setting was confusing to me. I was both attracted to and repulsed by the plush lifestyle I was experiencing, where it was okay (and even encouraged) for a pack of adult friends to raid the house, eat and drink and use everything in it, do nothing more important than play badminton and swim in the private lake, and run the well dry. I was meeting one of my friends' little sister for the first time. This fourteen year old girl (again rich, not underprivileged) lived on a diet of morning-after pills, wore pants that were so tight and low that her pubic hair always showed (the tiny bit that hadn't been shaved), and had no interest at all in engaging with any of the [queer] women or gay boys assembled. She only wanted to talk to [straight] boys that were attracted to her and she kept inviting over, but didn't even seem interested in them. I didn't learn much about why she was dour and self-destructive, but it really set a vibe for the weekend. I remember this was the first time I ever saw an episode of Sex in the City, and in this setting, sitting next to this poor girl, who, by the way, I didn't like, but did empathize with, was completely unable to find any humor in the show. I'm sooo not anti-sex, nor anti clothing that someone thinks they might look sexy in. I don't pretend kids aren't sexual. But it messed me up to see this kid so bitter about [clearly unsatisfying] sex already, so defined by it. She isn't alone, of course, but meeting her set the stage for the rest of the weekend.

Toward the end, we played the game Scruples. Round after round, I learned things I wished I'd never had about these people I thought were smart, I thought I liked. The guy I knew best of this crowd ended the game by admitting he hadn't intervened, or called anyone else to intervene, when he once overheard a woman being brutally attacked. After a futile argument that bewildered me, (It wouldn't change anything. I didn't even know her.) I had to leave. It's very possible that screaming woman was raped, beaten, or killed. I've never hung out with any of these people ever again.

Intervening, calling the cops, getting help quick, somehow, is the right thing to do in an emergency like the one my "friend" didn't respond to. From a domestic violence hotline I learned that when physical or sexual abuse is happening (to an adult), and it is not an immediate emergency, it is dangerous to call for intervention unless the victim is on board. If the victim is still seeing the perp, letting the perp into her* space, and he's* angered about being reported, he'll often hurt her worse than usual, or kill her. They recommend that, until she's ready to end the situation, to 1) Set up a code for emergencies; and 2) Keep a journal of incidents with times, dates, and details of the attacks, ideally with pictures of the visible injuries. Because of course the bulk of the injuries aren't visible.

I also recently read about pets in domestic violence situations. Like the people who stayed in their homes with their animals to try and weather Hurricane Katrina, people who are being abused often don't want to leave their animals behind, delaying getting help, most for months. Indeed, those animals often suffer at the hands of the same perps. There are some experimental domestic violence shelters that offer animals shelter as well. The animals have proven to be of great comfort to the women in the shelter where interviews took place. We all know the statistics showing that animal abusers often turn out to be abusive toward other people, too. Now we see that fear of animal abuse (like child abuse) often stops people from getting themselves out of dangerous situations.

And what does this have to do with a New Paltz blogger?

Well, I recently read her writing about the murder of a friend of hers, and that is part of what galvanized me to seek out professional help in dealing with my friend who is suffering. It's important, and also not the first time that Lagusta's writing has been inspiring to me. From discussions of how and why to make your own tempeh to making a bicycle-driven clothes washer, and this morning's reflection on the middle class environmentalist's failings when it comes to development discussions. It is really nice to know there's someone sane and passionate and articulate in the hood, sharing her experiences and thoughts in hopes of making her community/ies stronger.

I'm grateful for her generosity, her anger, her irreverence, and all the times I've cracked up reading her blog. Cuz we all really need that. (Oh yeah, she runs a vegan home meal delivery service and a vegan truffle business. But it's her writing I'm into at the moment.) So the repurposed "My Community" merit badge goes to Lagusta and her blog, Resistance is Fertile. Thanks for bringing your vegan eco feminist chef fury to the Hudson Valley and to the web!

*Obviously, these pronouns are interchangeable. Men hurt men and boys and girls, women hurt other women and girls and boys and men, trannies get hurt by men and women, etc., etc.

happy bit today

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the real cost of prisons

It's fascinating watching the Rockefeller Drug Laws be knocked back a bunch of steps. Drug arrests and arrests of vendors or homeless people in public space are so much of what the NYPD is about. The entire Hudson Valley is covered in prisons, many of which are filled with people being held for absurdly long sentences on drug charges. The bulk of the arrests were made just for possession. Of course those people should be freed.

It has an interesting edge, though, because for the first time in decades, prison populations may shrink, and some prisons may close. Of the three prisons near my home, at least one is filled primarily with drug offenders. Maybe two. (Different people give different reports, and prison websites are useless.) One expert on Democracy Now said whole upstate towns would be closing down when their prison closed. It feels really strange to live in a town that may see collapse because its evil main industry is being challenged.

Reading an entirely different article about Queens County Farm Museum (agriculture in the city, we like that), they make reference to sending animals to slaughter at a slaughterhouse on Long Island that uses prisoners as workers for "job training." More like training your free workers, a.k.a. slaves, to be killers. Crazy!

Things like this shouldn't surprise me. After all, we live in a country where people couldn't figure out where Timothy McVeigh got his killer instinct. Duh, the military! There's nothing quite as brilliant as locking up innocent people and training them to be killers.

Image from the book The Real Cost of Prisons, from PM Press.

sugar sugar

I tried to be grouchy about the weather today, thinking, "More of this!" But then I kind of enjoyed it, trying out snowshoes for the first time (more on this later), getting them tangled up in each other and falling face first into deep snow, eventually wandering where I would otherwise not go in 19 degree weather, discovering trees tapped to make syrup, and dreaming, dreaming of learning how to tap maple trees and make syrup myself.

I absolutely plan to go to the mini maple introduction at the Sharpe Reservation on March 21st, and in the meantime, am satisfying my curiosity by reading about other people's first experiences with it.