The Change (2020)

Changes in the seasons, changes in the winds, in old and fussy institutions. 

Changes are afoot.

Seasonal ones - the autumnal arboreal wardrobe change is starting - but otherwise as well...

On one of the otherwise fronts ... the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia was installed to what sounds to be a generally positive review - a response to the times, the heightened awareness of suppressed stories of Black Americans, wrought, ironically, in part, by the hateful rhetoric of the current occupant of the Oval Office and the Pandora's box of bigotry that suddenly feels itself sanctioned in polite society. 

Charlottesville is dear; it was home away from home for three years.  But I had significant trepidation on my first visit - I had not been so far below the Mason-Dixon before then (Florida theme parks and Miami hardly count).  As I took the bus down, we passed fields upon fields hemmed with white timber fences that are so evocative of stills of Civil War battlegrounds in documentaries made in the century after, hence, evocative of slavery and the deep rooted and stereotypical racism of the South - at least to a non-White mind perceiving it with no actual experience.  Surprisingly to me, I found the school to be friendly and welcoming, the grounds open and beautiful, providing ample physical and psychological space to let go of some of the accumulated weight of growing up and living in the density and amid the frenetic pace of New York City.  It was a very much needed, and extraordinarily beneficial, interlude.

And then for three years, the academic bubble shielded me from much of the real town - I only left the bubble for a few stints volunteering at the county courthouse with the Domestic Violence Project.  It was those visits that brought me through the other side of town, and in contact with the other half of Charlottesville. 

But lurking beneath - of course we all knew that Mr. Jefferson's Academical Village had no formal place for Sally Hemings or any of her children.  That the author of the Declaration of Independence withheld same from human beings he owned.  That the vaunted Honor Code of the University existed for decades with a most profoundly dishonorable institution. 

So now, finally, the elephant in the room is acknowledged with the installation of the new Memorial.  And tours of Monticello include discussions of Sally Hemings these days.  At Montpelier, which was open for visitation during my last trip down for a reunion, there was an ongoing archeological excavation of the slave quarters.  Changing times indeed.

And, hopefully, a harbinger for change to come November 3rd.

Final Day of Summer 2020

Last hurrah of the summer season - a fine time for new adventures.

It has come, the last day, and it felt like it.  A little chill and crispness in the air.

More to come.

Beware of Tomato Thieves

 

A cautionary tale of one tomato thief...

... but also of Mother Hens who proclaim your beloved and lovingly shared tomato babies almost too sweet, with not enough of the acid of a balanced tomato - notwithstanding freely popping one after another into her mouth after you have been carefully rationing their consumption so that enough would remain to share.  Well, hmph - this proud mama of city tomatoes likes her sweet tomatoes just as they are, thank you very much.  Happily, there are still some green ones not yet ripened - so maybe there will still be more this season!

For a recent Tomato 🍅 Tuesday Dinner: the last of the ripe tomatoes (all super sweet grape ones this year), with brown rice, chickpeas, cucumbers, all dressed with pesto.  Easy, quick work night meal.  

The grape tomatoes were sweet as sweet can be, living up to their forebears whose sweetness prompted going back to the market for more, then when the last of those were being prepared for a meal, the first round of seed saving.  Before the ones in the photo were added, they, too, were squeezed of their seeds onto a paper towel in hopes next year there will yet be another sweet crop.

See the bee in the tomato blossom?

Notorious

Image from the cover of the book by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnit.

Granted, this image is a bit of a departure from my usual botanical, nature, food selections - but, well, this blog would not exist without Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Without her arguments before the Court on which she would later sit to extend the application of the 14th Amendment to forbid discrimination on the basis of sex, it is possible I would not have been able to attend any of the schools I attended from 7th grade on, or my experience might have been dramatically different - for, at one time, they were all single-sex.  I might not have found a job as a lawyer; she could not when she graduated first in her class from law school.  So, in that "Sliding Doors" different world, no path to BigLaw, no joining the rat race, no need to struggle for that balance, no means to purchase a home of my own, no terrace garden to tend.  Well, maybe my blog posts might have been similar - all plants and food and scenery, maybe that would have comprised my whole universe, confined to those worlds in reliance on the support of a man, rather than seeking refuge in them as the antidote to a whole other world in which I am privileged, even if sometimes worn down, to be a part.  

So, in honor of all she did for women, tonight, a slight departure from the usual subjects - for someone who veered so impactfully from society's set path, and in so doing, led the way and made sure the door stayed open for the rest of us to follow.  

To the Notorious RBG.

Surprise Arrival

Sometimes what you get is not at all what you expect ...

I was anticipating that would be a pink hibiscus with a deep red middle - one of the ones like in the hedge at the Mothership.

(Now Not So) Novel C - Throwback

Back in the early days of March, when we worried about what was coming but did not know for sure, Sissy and I took a trip out to the Mothership to help the family prepare, and to prepare ourselves, for hunkering down to get past the peak.  It happened to coincide with dates midway between my and Sissy's birthdays.  On the last of three days of epic grocery shopping, we picked up Indian food from a highly recommended storefront that happened to be in the Mothership neighborhood.  It would be our last takeout for two months; that visit out would similarly be the last family gathering for 2.5 months.  Governor Cuomo imposed the stay at home order the following weekend.  At the time, I started this post to process the changes - but never wrapped it because I could not muster the energy to make the last - the carrot cake - for many weeks yet.  Finally did it.  So, interesting to look back now a half year later into this....

Festivities in the time of the novel coronavirus call for novel candle blowing care, novel chutney uses, and a novel carrot cake for a kind of novel celebration - novel compromises....

Normally for a shared dessert, there would be two candles, over which Sissy and I would lean and blow out simultaneously.  Sissy insisted that instead the flan be cut into individual pieces and our respective candles be planted into our separate ones, so we would not be breathing over the whole flan.  Fine.

Novel cuisine: Left the Mothership laden with pandemic provisions and the remains of the prior days’ Usha Foods meal - the last of the takeout before mandatory isolation - and at the end were left a green chutney with some sort of pickled vegetables (pepper? onion?) and a yogurt sauce (slightly sweet) that were originally accompaniments to the chickpeas.  So, how to extend mere sauces?  Spiced lentils and brown rice, of course!  Quite a tasty extension it was.

And then on my actual birthday, by myself, I craved cake.  Apparently there is no shortage of microwaveable mug cake recipes suitable for a solo celebration - including for carrot, my favorite, with the bonus of using long-lasting carrots, too.  I started the preparations on the right day, but then my energy flagged ... it was some time before I actually completed it.  I would not say it was a "cake."  It was interesting.  Under the circumstances, really, it was fine.

Novel times, novel criteria.

Ancient Wisdom

First, I love PBS - support your local public television stations!; yes, spoken like a true member.  After working about 30 hours straight, including most of the night, on a client project, on what was still technically my vacation (the weekend bookending my vacation week), I needed a zone out this early evening - I numb my brain, and fire it up at the same time, with television.  It started with The Great British Baking Show, then continued ...

...To a documentary on Native Americans reclaiming their ancient foodways, including one of the better known experiments, the Pueblo Food Experience - it, in particular, advocates a cold turkey return to traditional Native American foods to combat modern health issues.  But the reclamation of the ancient foodways also encompasses saving and growing heirloom seeds, foraging, returning to traditional agricultural methods, hunting game that was available before the European settlers arrived with foreign wheat and sugar and other inflammation-inducing foodstuffs - basically, a movement toward returning to pre-colonial foods.  The interesting corrollary theory to explain the high incidence of diabetes, among other ailments, in the Native American community, and the alleviation and reversal of those by returning to a traditional diet, is that certain body types, based on ethnicity, are more suited to certain areas and lands and foods indigenous to those lands, that the ancestors of these indigenous groups had already solved for those health issues by basing their diet around foods that were then available to them - so, in the Native American community, the holy trinity of squash (that provides vitamins and antioxidants), beans (protein), and corn (carbs), supplemented by meat from hunting and fishing and fruits and greens from foraging.  Of course, the converse of that is that certain other groups don't belong here; now THAT sentiment could get controversial in these global times.  But that last is just application of a logic extension in my head - it was not articulated in the documentary or book.  What WAS articulated was pride of place and space, how the departed ancestors paid a dear price and fought for the current generations to be able to live on that land.

So then that was followed by a documentary on the Barefoot College of India, which offers night school in rural areas to children who might otherwise grow up illiterate due to local poverty and the tradition of putting children to work in the fields or in the familial domestic setting.  The schools teach to all ages through pragmatic curricula imparting knowledge that is relevant to ordinary rural villagers - helping them to improve on the problem solving in which they already engage and building on what they already know from techniques passed on from one generation to the next, emphasizing that that "plebeian" rural knowledge IS knowledge and has value, and is sometimes superior to the new ways.  Also, that the ordinary problems are deserving of enhanced solutions. 

The themes of these two documentaries dovetails nicely with the current movements that question Eurocentric systems and assumptions and hierarchies.  And calls out the harm inflicted.  Those, of course, are the big theoretical and political issues requiring attention - the macro of it all.  Whereas the foodways reclamation movement and Barefoot College efforts advance solutions to some portion of that macro level harm on a micro level to micro problems.

Never Forget - 19 Years Later

From the terrace looking southward, the view of the Tribute in Light yesterday was obscured, but it pierces the night with such strength and beams so high into the sky that it is visible and unmistakable, even all the way up here in Yorkville.  This has always been the most comforting of the remembrance traditions for me - it echoes the memory of the Towers throughout my childhood and into my early adulthood, so tall they were.

Every kid who grew up in the city had an obligatory field trip to the observatory; out of town friends who visited my family were ushered down there to see what were the tallest buildings in the world for a good bit of time.  As a high schooler in the East Village, my friends and I would meander farther downtown and over west, but once I got out of the numbered streets, I became disoriented (still do), despite having a pretty good sense of direction; the Towers reoriented me - I just had to look up and I knew which way was southwest, and from there could figure out how to get to the next destination.  My second summer of law school, I worked at a firm in the financial district, and the nearest Petite Sophicate - the only shop at the time that carried suits and separates that consistently fit me - was in the lower levels of the Trade Center; I used my first significant earnings that left me with spare change to get a few more suits from there (that still hang in my closet, despite no longer fitting and being pretty hopelessly out of fashion - I keep thinking I might learn to tailor them some day, repurpose old relics).  The last time I was at the Towers was late that summer of 2000.  A friend/former colleague had interned at The Hague and had Dutch friends visiting, and asked me to come out, because “they have never met an Asian person before, and I told them about you, and they are so interested to meet you.”  So I put on my ambassador hat and suggested we meet nearby at the base of the Towers, so the Dutch friends could gawk at me and at the Towers in one fell swoop during their limited time in the city.

And then 19 years ago, after being away much of the prior year finishing my last year of law school and the summer to study for the Bar Exam, and then traipsing off for an extended jaunt through Asia on my post-Bar trip, as I was flying back to return home permanently, they were attacked and fell. I saw them 6 hours later on CNN, burning, then gone, and smoldering, absorbing and trying to grasp it all alone, as I was waiting to be processed through Canadian immigrations in Vancouver, where my plane had been rerouted when the airspace closed.  Only upon seeing the television images did the enormity and completeness of the loss sink in.

19 years.  So long ago, and yet, not.

An Excursion With No Essential Purpose

The fam and I had our first outing just for fun since the mandatory stick to home orders - 5 1/2 months with no fun is a very long time.  It was so very needed, and such a relief.  Toes now dipped in, maybe there can be more....

All of our outings up to now have been for groceries, for medical appointments, to get hardware - all deemed to have an essential purpose.  Finally, today's outing to Jones Beach was just to stretch our legs for the fun of a different setting in which to walk.  As safe a place as any, with the natural ocean breezes to disperse any lingering aerosols - even if only half the walkers were masked as they were supposed to be.  Less than optimal, but within acceptable risk tolerances.

The outing was a psychological boon far more than it was a physical one.  In these times, I will take what I can get.

Summer Slipping (2020)

The light is changing on the terrace, the sunniness getting pushed more to the edge near the northern parapet - a sure sign we are tilting away and the angle is getting lower, the shadows cast by the building growing longer.  The long days are starting noticeably now to slip away.  It was all barely detectable in the run up - the monotony of COVID-19 isolation makes each day so similar to the others that when the calendar switched into September, it was almost startling.

The usual markers of accomplishment, or simply of passage of time, weren't so evident this season - no vacations; trips to the market with its changing produce were few; walks in the park with its cycles of bloom and and fade were rare.

But in the Jardin the rhythms continue - albeit at a delayed pace in some cases.  That hibiscus bud up top only just opened, and budded well after others were cutting and displaying vases of full blooms.  But, whatever, I will accept what I am given; I thought I might have to wait until next year.  Under the maple trio in the corner, the portulaca were quite slow to bloom, and were nowhere near abundant as last year.  Seems they didn't seed so prolifically.  But finally some have, and they are double petaled and a brilliant shade of saffron.

Then there are the ongoing ones, chugging along or back for a repeat burst of energy.

Some of the plants are moving to the next stage of life - flowering, setting seed. Sure signs of Autumn's approach.

...A reminder to plant for Fall and look ahead even to next Spring.

And on a rare trip out into the neighborhood to run errands and pick up some takeout poke bowl, a chance to check on one of the adopted sidewalk tree pits echoes the reaffirming plant life cycles with the progress of the once scrawny public maple trio.

Long days grow shorter.  Further to the last post, little to show for the season but the life and growth of the plants - I just need to switch to a plant metric of accomplishment, it seems, to have anything to show for my efforts this year.  But maybe that's for the better.  As many have commented, maybe we were all overdue for a pause in order to come back into some kind of balance.