Thursday, March 31, 2011

Haiku - Bottles

I gather glass shards
not to recreate, but to
assemble the new.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Haiku - Veils

Veils obfuscate faces,
make unknown the known only
to numb and occult.

...

I want to write on this more. It is also still rough, but reflects a great deal of my colleague's and my frustrations of late.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Haiku - Halos

and they walk in with
halos, like everyday saints;
each voice is hymnal.

...

Studying at Macy's, the sunset smeared across the sky through the ambiguous clouds, I was struck when an acquaintance entered and greeted me. I knew her through her voice, the light blinding me to her appearance. I thought of the ways we see one another, the ways we see the world. The light, as it was, and the silhouette - voiced but unknown - heartened me mysteriously. I cannot say exactly how. The scene, the act, it left space for magic, for the divine. Macy's is explicitly Bahai'i and the space is inflected by that. Also, I recently recounted a scene from The Plague by Albert Camus in which the various protagonists converse in the quarantined city. One man says he has been trying to be a saint without God, while the other remarks he has been trying to be a man, to be human, whatever that is. Of course, I am not Camus nor am I stranded in a pestilent city. I wonder if Camus saw saints coming through coffeeshop doorways, or heard the music of their voices when he could not discern friends' faces. I have been interested in returning to church; of course, it is for the community of belief, not the belief itself that draws me. Church opens up space for the divine, for magic to permeate our lives and, though I try to witness that everywhere, sacred spaces are often more permeable than our everyday. Or so I believe. Oh, and one final thing; this is a mild attempt at self-parody given my tendency to enumerate in haiku form; to counter that, I began "in the middle" with "and," left intentionally lower case.

[Note: This entry, minus the haiku itself, was reconstructed from one written in Macy's Coffee House. Internet woes prevented its immediate publication.]

Friday, March 25, 2011

Haiku - Dream

Green dreams, green places;
opening space for strangers
and loved ones and selves.

...

I dreamed a wonderfully simple dream last night. I was in the backyard showing houseguests the backyard, the compost bin, the rich earth that was blessing the house. The place felt distinctly warm and spiritual, but was a home. Sometimes I fall in love in dreams, and I think I fell in love with that place in that dream, smiling drunkenly at the sloping grassy hill as much as I have to the enamored faces of other dreams.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Haiku - Possibility

Impossible &
possible, words on lips, held
airborne between us.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Haiku - Peaks & Walking

I
The Peaks wear cloud crowns,
snow cloaks and ice gowns, alive
with royal blessings.

II
Starless skies gather,
like raindrops in a lake, or
fruit bursting with seed.

...

I would like to explain these (the former is a few weeks old already), but it is late and I must sleep. I will try to post haiku more regularly. It is important to me to commit to these. Taking time for thoughtful repose, concision, care, linguistic tenderness; these, I believe, are part of a good life, actions of good character.

Reflections on Perpetual Catastrophe

In Ethics of International Development my junior year at Gustavus we read Peter Singer's Famine, Affluence, and Morality on famine in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Singer calls for living as frugally as possible - second-hand clothes, simple food, only basic travel, etc. - in order to fund the basic needs of others whose lives are stricken with poverty, malnutrition, and disease. His point is that a child drowning in a lake requires us to save her/him to the same degree that a child across the globe who is starving requires us to act appropriately. Distance is not an argument against ethical treatment.

One criticism that arose in that class is, given our potential to respond to a greater degree if we are financially successful through investing that money - in stocks, business, education - then we may use it to greater end by postponing our ethically motivated charitable expenditures. The issue with this argument is that in the case of crisis - such as the Bangladeshi famine, but by no means the only one - action is required immediately to save lives. That is, we live in a world of perpetual crisis to which we must respond ethically if we are to be good people. In some ways how we ended up in a world of perpetual crisis is beside the point, only that if we are to make good actions, we ought to save lives.

This is a pretty straightforward argument: If you can save a life with little to no harm to yourself (you may get your shoes ruined by leaping into the lake to save the drowning child just as you may not be able to purchase a new pair by feeding one half a world away) then you damn well ought to. Failure to do so means that you are not concerned with good actions and that your absence to deprive yourself of something essentially petty (a new pair of shoes) means you are performing bad actions through inaction. This distinctions Singer from earlier consequentialists (ethicists concerned with outcomes of actions) by incorporating inaction as something we are just as liable for as action.

Now more than ever we seem to be witnessing a world of perpetual crisis. Whether it is in the American heartland where conservatives are putting workers' rights in time capsules and sealing them away for distant generations, or the partial meltdowns (don't let the news tell you otherwise, what is going on is some scale of nuclear meltdown that will leave the facilities irreparable and nonfunctional) in Japan in the midst of a national humanitarian catastrophe, or the madness on more than one front in Libya and elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East, humanity is showing just how good it is in causing problems. I concede that these are different types and different scales of crises, with different sources and locations and solutions (where solutions exist, at least), but that is why I lump them so. By recognizing the relationships between these crises, we can appreciate the depth and breadth of the problems in which we find ourselves.

What to do with that knowledge? In the first place, we can recognize whatever level of fiscal well-being we enjoy, most of us are able to alleviate some of the suffering in the world by small or large monetary sacrifices. If we understand the ethical premises of Singer, then these are not, though, sacrifices so much as recognizing the basic dignity of persons with whom we share this planet and our own humanity. Deeper appreciation for these crises suggest a larger scope for capacity-building, organizing, and political maneuvering to resolve the conditions that make these crises so, well, perpetual. One way I have attempted to do this, which connects with the first statement, is through lending through Kiva microloans. Microfinance is the providing of small loans to entrepreneurs in the Global South (including the South of the North) to bring them and their communities out of poverty. In addition, these loans can be refunded into a PayPal account or, more easily, reinvested in further homegrown businesses.

Such financing, I hope, builds strong households, strong citizens, and strong communities that can then engage in larger political participation and calls for justice in their municipal, regional, and national governments. In a very different way, unrelated to Kiva, this has been the call in the protests and revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. These challenges of and changes to government arise from the often latent integrity of oppressed communities rising up, bound in their simultaneous calls for justice, health, participation, and more. How one can participate in such movements from outside is difficult, except in showing solidarity and pressing our own governments to express the same. Secretary Hillary Clinton was recently called out by youth in Egypt for America failing to do just this, while Egyptian protesters voiced their solidarity with Midwest protesters attempting to preserve union and workers' rights. In a way, I would hope this is enough, but I know that it is not.

What lies beneath empowered citizens and communities is the way in which that new potency can precipitate social and policy change. Some of this is through transparency and education. I am deeply appreciative for Julian Assange's public statement of Wikileaks that, "We are not pacifists. We are transparency activists." Why are citizens barred from knowing the activities of their own governments? If governments are "of the people" - a tenant of Western Constitutionalism - then how can we be left in the dark about their activities? I do not consider this lightly, but wish to comment ask, how are we to determine, establish, and maintain a fair and just government if we are unaware of its acts?

It is of little use to ask these questions when people live in poverty and hunger. Colonialism; globalization; ethnic, sexual, and religious marginalization; and, on occasion, natural disasters are some sources for inequality and oppression. Our planet, politics, and places are rife with these problems. To resolve them, I cannot see a better out than responding to the immediate crises of emergency need - water, food, shelter, medicine, sanitation, environmental protection - with the other hand supporting the community-based, grassroots political and economic work needed to built community security. Such security takes many forms - water, energy, food, economic - and helping any, if it is effective, helps all. These are not different crises, they share roots deep beneath us. As we disentangle them and uproot these crises, we must start our cultivars of peace, justice, participation, respect, education, and security to replace it. These roots of crisis are deep, the plant hearty; if we wait too long, it will only take hold again. Start digging and start growing, every moment is precious.

Friday, March 18, 2011

What ever happened to...: Considering Neurons, Social Networking, Bodies & Selves

So, what happened to me? I guess I have been out since the recipe post a week and a half ago. Even without midterms, I seemed to have made last week stressful and this week has been nice, but still full of homework. Friends, music, drink and so on were definitely part of the past week or so, but it wasn't exactly Cancun around here. So I vanished for a spell and now I have returned.

A comrade from camp, Miss Stephanie, came across some update on her newsfeed on the Facebook and "looked me up," so to speak. Not really, she simply posted on my own wall. I have not heard from her in years and in a way, it is satisfying to hear that sort of echo come out of the past and catch up to me. As a well-loved album ends, "We were always coming back." Social networking allows space for this, but it also suggests that - which is what I said to Miss Stephanie - we can pass one another by so easily we often don't see them at all. (I posted a recent Cat and Girl comic on the tumblr which speaks to this.)

Meanwhile, I am reading Iacoboni, a neuropsychologist, describe how we copy one another, and Hannah Arendt describe action and word as the claiming of the self in the world. (These are excellent reads for one of my core classes.) What connects this? Well, if we can appreciate that speech is significant, that voice is about positing the self into the political (read: socially human) world, then does social media affirm or degrade this? We live in a world burdened by so many people speaking at once, but how do we encourage speech that is also action?

This touches on what I will likely write about for my class, and that is: Are speech and action distinct, or are they of one "body"? In a significant way, they are clearly distinct: One can speak an idea or tell a story without committing to it an any embodied way. But only recently has storytelling been divorced from action. Stories have traditionally been an embodied, lived act. This is still the case in theatre, but oral storytelling is such a rich experience because it is not simply oral in the telling. It is embodied and lived and, well, theatrical and dramatic.

Storytelling in this way incorporates ceremony, mysticism, and good old fashioned magic. It does so by incorporating the audience in the experience of the narrator-actor through, as Iacoboni explains, mirror neurons. The embodied act and the explicit detail of the story (narrative and intention are made explicit through embodiment) allows the audience to be with and in the story itself. They are not far from the story as one often is when reading a book, but one is close or even taken into a particular character of the story.

The written word is successful when, through language, the reader is incorporated in this way. This may happen through the seduction of diction and style, or through rich and identifiable characters, or through the dynamic and engrossing plot or scheme of the story. Each of these is a matter of reconnecting to the embodied tradition. The connection of language is inevitably a connection with voice, a teller of tales who we want to accept and explore; but we are taken in by the visceral, sensual power of that voice because in its clarity the narrator of the person is made clear to us. Characters allow us to embody others within the story, to not just connect but to place ourselves within the skins of others. (Iacoboni argues that this capacity makes empathy and ethical thinking possible, referencing Merleau-Ponty among others.) And the successful spinning of yarns, of rich plots are almost necessarily about world-creation and world-explanation in a mythical capacity, even if it is limited to the explanation of a particular person.

I speak in grander terms than I am prone to first because I think that these are generally the case, and second because I want to emphasize the transformative potential that results from this sort of thinking. This sort of thinking also problematizes social networking just as it empowers it. How do we contain or recreate identities behind the internet identities we craft and that are shown to us? One success of the Facebook, unlike MySpace, was that real college friends were expected to hold one another accountable for their claims on their profiles. That is, the value was on an authentic recreation of your word and action in digital space. This authenticity is voluntary and often extraordinarily superficial. The latter is also the common gripe against Twitter, though I have heard strong counterarguments as that digital space matures.

I am not one to read through my newsfeed, check in on all my friends, or see all their new photos on the Facebook. Most of the time it is superficial and other times it is inauthentic or strictly boring. (Trey Graham of NPR Monkey See and Pop Culture Happy Hour has remarked that photos on the Facebook are essentially the new slideshows families used to subject one another to.) That said, there is a way - one that is not always positive - in which the timeline of one's life is flattened into the realm of the digital through social networking; that is, one can no longer really leave anyone behind. Despite my own preferences - and I am not wasting time on the groups and visibility on the Facebook besides changing to protect my privacy from strangers - a classmate from elementary school is somehow on par with an old coworker, my best friends, my sister-in-law, and the new acquaintances that work with my roommate I hardly know.

We are all in this together. But are we closer or are we further apart?

My answer is that to be further apart, we can do the bland, the inauthentic, and the superficial. But if we are to continue to be embody in digital spaces, then we ought to expect I higher caliber from one another in terms of projecting that voice. I do not mean out-speaking (for which there is a time and a place) so much as harmonizing or creative discord with one another. We have greater questions than ever about ourselves, our voice, and our actions. How do we produce and act honestly? How do we project that and protect ourselves?

I have been thoroughly entertained by The Moth for the past several months. I think that, even in the audio podcasts, The Moth provides a vibrant example of honest and authentic projection of personal voice. Similarly, my work with writing haiku has been a practice in succinct clarity, in tempering my own voice in, hopefully, rich and entertaining ways. As far as action, I see a great many people using the Facebook as a means to project action; I receive invitation to house shows and senior recitals, to protests (not just e-signatures or virtual "days of action") and teach-ins, to community meals and awareness raising events. That said, events that happen "anywhere" or "everywhere" are not, in any honest way, events. If we are to project our voices, we have to compliment that with our bodies; without that, who and what have we become?

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Various Recipes

Blue Cornmeal Pizza Crust

Made this yesterday afternoon for the potluck and party for Achieving Sustainable Communities at Emily's. Julia got all flustered when I tried to explain the recipe off the top of my head (and slightly off my head). So here is a more structured go. This is a rough translation of what I made:

Starter
4 cups warm water
2 cups white flour
2 cups cornmeal (blue, or any color, really)
about 1 Tbsp sugar

Stir up thoroughly and allow to rest at least one hour.

Dough
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup cornmeal
1-2 cups whole wheat or white flour
1 Tbsp salt

Stir in, adding wheat/white flour as needed. You may need to add more than this, but you want a soft, sticky dough to make the dough workable into a crust. Turn out on floured counter - feel free to use plenty of flour, white has the most flexibility - and need until even, 5-10 minutes. Pour a few tablespoons of olive oil into the bowl and spread around, toss in dough and coat. Cover bowl and allow to rest at least an hour or until ready to use

Turn out on lightly floured counter, sprinkle with further flour, and press or roll out as much as preferred. The crust bakes well as a thick, crunchy crust, but you can allow to proof before dressing and baking. Pizza will bake in 20-25 minutes on 425 F, but is sensitive to placement and other contents.

~~~

Walnut Pasta Sauce

This is a semi-regular dish, though I define it and spiff it up a little for Zoey who asked for recipes.

1/4 c olive oil
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1/2 an onion, diced
1/2 c halved or coarsely chopped walnuts
1 small tomato, chopped coarsely (easiest with a bread knife, in my experience)
--- Can sub with half a can of tomatoes
About 1/2 c fresh or 2 Tbsp dried herbs (oregano, parsley, rosemary, thyme are recommended)
pinch of coarse salt and pepper
Cooked pasta (I always eye how much pasta I want, this would probably be enough for three normal people or two Calebs.)
Romano cheese

Heat oil in a pot, saute garlic and onions for about 30 seconds, toss in walnuts and saute for another minute. Add tomato, herbs, salt, and pepper simultaneously and allow to warm up and the herbs to saturate. Optionally, allow to simmer to saturate dry herbs and cook down (especially with canned tomatoes). Throw in pasta and allow to heat thoroughly, but not to cook anymore. When it is warm and steaming, serve and enjoy. Romano is one of my favorite cheeses and I recommend grating it over top.

~~~

Easy Canned Black Bean Salsa

Salsa is expensive. Canned veggies are pretty cheap. For parties or lazy dinners, I like to make a little salsa to be enjoyed on chips or burritos.

2 Tbsp oil
1 small onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced or thoroughly chopped

Saute together until tender.

1 large can tomatoes
1/2 can green chiles or jalapeƱos (to your own taste!)
cayenne pepper (to preference, I use 1/2-1 teaspoons, probably. I just shake it till it looks good)
1 Tbsp paprika
2 Tbsp oregano, dry
2 Tbsp parsley, dry
1 can black beans, drained

Add all the tomatoes and peppers (the peppers you may want to cook for a while for a different taste), allow to cook down somewhat. Add in the spices, which can be modified as needed (once again, this is more something I throw together) and the drained beans. Stir regularly while it simmers for about ten minutes. This freezes just fine, but three bowls at about this recipe were taken care of at the housewarming party. I have had fun adding a few more veggies here and there and, if you can, use fresh herbs; fresh herbs make everything better. Usually, the canned goods have enough salt so I don't bother with any.

~~~

Egg & Potato Skillet

I made this just the other morning and Tim kept oohing and awing, so it might be worthwhile

1.5 Tbsp butter
1 potato, diced
2 eggs (Go for cage-free local if possible! This is an ethical recommendation.)
1.5 Tbsp dried herbs
Dash of salt
1/4 cup salsa
Shredded cheese added to preference

Saute potato in a pan until beginning to brown. Add eggs and scramble them together before adding salt, herbs and salsa. Allow the salsa to cook down a little, 3-5 minutes. When the potatoes are tender, serve. Dress with cheese as you like.

~~~

The focaccia is a repost, but it is a pretty reliable recipe and thought it might appreciate some more attention. This can be baked as breadsticks or rounds.

Garlic Herb Focaccia

2 cups warm water
2 cups white flour
1-2 Tbsp honey
2+ Tbsp dry yeast

Blend in a large bowl and allow to rest about 30 minutes.

1 & 1/2 cups cornmeal
2 cups wheat flour (I'm using fresh hard red wheat)
1 cup white flour
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4-1/3 cup dried herbs (thyme, oregano, basil, parsley, black pepper)
four cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp salt

Add ingredients--begin with olive oil and garlic for ease, end with salt to preserve the yeast--and stir until slightly firm. Turn out on floured counter and knead together. The olive oil takes time to absorb, so it ought to remain sticky. Return to the bowl, cover, and allow to rest for at least one hour.

Flour for dusting
Olive oil for greasing
about 1 tsp course salt (optional)

Turn out on floured counter and knead, gradually adding just enough flour to prevent it from sticking. (You can use whichever flour you'd prefer; white for sweeter, wheat for heartier, cornmeal for sweet and slightly textured.) Divide into pieces (three or four loaves, probably), knead further and flatten into white circles or rectangles. Lightly grease baking sheets or pans (I've used round cake pans pretty successfully before), place loaves on sheets, then flip to grease both sides, and allow to rest. After thirty to forty-five minutes, indent the dough slightly and sprinkle in some salt. Let it rest about ten more minutes before baking at 400 F until golden brown, which is something like 30 minutes. Enjoy!

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Haiku - Prairie Fire

Scents of airborne ash
on the prairie winds, usher
in resurgent life.

~~~

I wrote this during class last night. We sweep ourselves up in the conversation of, theory about, plans for, and history concerning environmentalism and justice. Rom really took it away near the end of class with a description of regenerative cycles activism and community-building. What I inevitably returned to was the image of prairie fire. Prairie fire has been a somewhat affectionate term for Midwest populism in the past, which has its own contemporary counterparts these days, and has a fantastic sense of regrowth and beauty. The prairie fire sweeps out the grasses, but they are firmly rooted and many have seeds that require the fire to germinate. In a way, this is also in response to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine because the fire seems to function as an initial catastrophe, clearing the land for cultivation or development. What the fire actually does, though, is allow for the space needed by the nascent growth to rise up out of the recovered soil. The life is not new or immature, it is resurgent and comes out of the dirt because its acclimation to the biome, fortitude, and particular character.