Celebration of reading

About Sense & Sustainability

     How this blog came to be (or why this introduction is writ old fashioned):

While slouched in a ridiculous antediluvian¹ chair at a time in the evening when my daughter is finally asleep, the puppy long under the bed snoring, and I am usually embroiled in an episode of Chopped, or floating, as if by anti-gravity, in one of Dava Sobel's many books, I instead saw that the movie Julie and Julia was slated...and, being that I had a bit of a grump on, I thought, well:

Bingo.

I felt a tingling in my toes for two simple reasons: A. Meryl Streep simply kills me with joy and B. I'm sweet on almost anything related to homemade food.

A fascination with the culinary was not something I was raised with. I was, like most people of our time, inculcated by an industrialized view seemingly bent on nurturing a distrust of whole foods in place of homogenized potato chips, tv dinners, hot dogs, salads in a bag and high fructose freezies. Considering the prepackaged food culture, I couldn't help but wonder: when did we change the definition of 'gourmet' to mean anything fresher than something from a can, fried potatos or high fructose corn syrup? When we consider the history of food throughout the thousands of years humans have roamed the earth, it seems that when things like fresh herbs, fish or local peppers have become, according to widespread custom, "exotic," a culture may have, as we know now, lost perspective. Couple this food censorship of the last 50 years with my own seemingly clumsy and unnatural ability to assemble food together into any form and I had a sore, competitive ego to deal with.

So, with a sly and sedulous curiousity, I found myself spending inordinate amounts of time contemplating the differences in texture of the maitake and shitake at a nearby market, (breathing heavy, no doubt) when I heard a wiry man with a Rangers hat clearing his throat behind me. To be fair, I was congesting the produce aisle, but, in my defense, those mushrooms were resting so photogenic in their straw baskets with those pulchritudinous gills and silky hats--that, really, how could I not pick them up and stare? I mean, you could tell really who ever arranged them in that basket arranged them with a butt load of pride. I stepped aside, before long, and let him have room to select dinner. "The oyster mushroom is chewy," he whispered in a secretive voice. "You have to be careful how you prepare it." I smiled. He nodded and went back to sifting through the mushrooms, his back to me. The moment over.

I remember, then, on that same day, walking somewhere quickly only to stop on a dime, because I saw one of those beautiful stone grinding bowls in the window of a culinary shop. I didn't mean to alter the flow of foot traffic out on the street standing there looking at the stone bowl, but, I had a sudden, inexplicable need, a physical craving to actually lift it up and savor how heavy it would be against my belly, hands tucked underneath, fingers entwined; sensing the shape, it's roundness. I could see images flash through my mind of ancient people grinding wheat and corn maize by hand. This design in the window was strikingly modern, clean (a minimimalistic curve, cut precisely, with a corpulent middle meant to be filled with grains or herbs or...or pink blocks of Himalayin sea salt).

As for baking, the truth is, it didn't take as long to come around to my specific love of baking and struck me a several years ago when I actually heard myself speaking with hushed (lest anyone hear), yet mushy baby talk to just about everything in a baking aisle including those tiny metal frosting nibs or fluted pie tins. "Oh, aren't you just the sweetest thing? Isn't this the sweetest thing?" It's tragic, the pun in that last line, not to mention the baby talk--but this new found joy of the culinary would make my grandmother blush with pride, bless her petite, 1940's soul. I think it's something innate in all of us when we see the cover of homemade bread cookbooks: the hands covered in flour, the humble brown and tan tones of baguettes, ciabatta, sour dough. The rising, the smell of yeast, the whisking of eggs into cakes or pastries. The truth of the matter is, I just love everything about baking.

So, when I discovered that this culinary movie was going to be on in twenty minutes, I enthusiastically got up from a slightly disaffected stupor to grab a beer² from the fridge and to grab a fleece throw I had in the other room. It was time to settle in with my snuggie socks and watch a good flick.

Julie and Julia is a movie about pulling yourself out of a funk and discovering what makes you feel...well, to feel good...okay, it's a feel good movie (which embarrasses my disaffected, hipster side). Julie is drowning in self doubt and worrying that she never finishes what she starts. As a writer and novelist, she admits to writing half a book before giving it up. The fact that she was the editor for the Amherst Literary Journal in college makes this admission palpable (a point emphasized in the movie). It would be like Tim Tebow admitting that after winning the Heisman Trophy, he gave up football. Amherst Mass has a decadent and classically distinguished literary history. Among its many attractive qualities, it is also the town in which Emily Dickinson resided in a big, rambling yellow house on a hill--Dickinson being a legendary homebody, belletrist and woman afraid of crowds unless they appear to be sensible and wise as Charles Simic once explained to me. Add to the mix Amherst College is an ivy league school whose brick buildings and Victorian houses are right out of Dead Poet's Society, graduating such folks as David Foster Wallace (who I plan on bringing back into the fold a little later in this very introduction), so for Julie to be the literary editor of such a journal cues that she is a writer who set the bar high for accomplishments, post-graduation.

She, instead, ends up working in a cubicle as a telesecretary in New York City helping people locate the proper insurance plan after the trade centers collapsed on 9/11. Julie is generally yelled at for beauracratic ineptitude or made to cry because of the truly tragic stories people relay of their loved ones affected by the asbestos, smoke, or collapse of the buildings. A touching yet brutal job that leaves her exhausted at the end of the day. All her girl-friends are high powered, successful women with tremendous clout (think power suits sans the shoulder pads). Women who are rising tremendous ladders of success so that after they would all meet for lunch, Julie was stung with her a sense of loss. And so after a series of scenes leading up to it, she finally decides to challenge herself and blog for one entire year from start to finish without giving up. What will she blog about? She is a writer with the degree and some accolades to prove it. She doesn't know. All she really knows for certain is that after a long, brutal day of handling the stress of the city, she wants to come home (ah, the homebody) and make chocolate cream pie (I would like to think with a zest of chili pepper), to soothe her soul. As she discusses her new idea to write a blog with her husband over a plate of toasted baguette sliced in thick pieces, braised in an iron skillet with butter and topped with sauteed red peppers, shallots and garlic, she admits that she doesn't want to write about work or anything that leaves her flat. As he takes a bite of her food, his eyes roll back into his head and says that she is an encridible cook. When everything else feels wrong, bitter or broken, this simple creative act brings her comfort and joy. So, why not blog about food? With the help of her cute spouse, she determines that she will blog for an entire year about cooking. To keep herself on track, she pledges to cook every single recipe in Julie Child’s The Art of Mastering French Cooking. In her tiny kitchen in a burrough outside New York City, she gets started (see the kitchen used by Meryl Streep in the movie--le swoon if you must).

It was getting late as the movie wound to a close and my eyes were sagging with the strain of staying open. But, before I let myself go to bed, I padded over to my own tiny kitchen gazing at that famous quote we're all familiar with by now and which is attributed to the ever vetted, often referenced and still wonderful Ralph Waldo Emerson. As I stood rereading the quote (I have the magnet) and shaking a bean filled canister in my hand like a maraca (I liked the shushing noise) and purusing the internet for some history on the subject, I realized that I could start my own blog this year. I had interests, I was a writer, I was...dealing with my own sense of loss in its various forms.  The movie raised to the surface things I had floating above my head over the last two years and, well, what all these things meant to me was something I had to work out in my own way, just like everyone else.

As an important aside: After some research, I learned that the quote which I just mentioned was not originally written by Emerson at all. Shocking. Bummer. It was, instead, interestingly enough, a poem penned by a woman named Bessie Stanley, who entered it into a contest in 1905 and won $250 for doing so. Ta. Success has many stories, clearly. I can't help but read them side by side. I must admit, I really like both versions. The one attributed to Emerson is clean and simple (like shaker furniture or 1950's salt shakers or the entire stunning aesthetic of Rosemary's Baby~without the creepy undertow), but, Stanley's version has flair, is playful and filled with depth.

So, after watching the movie, reading these quotes, considering all the things that were weighing heavy on me³, I decided I could start a blog. Even better, a blog about three things I love most: Food, Plants and Literature.

With one of my favorite female role models (Meryl), some heart-warming quotes to consider and my recent interest (cooking) as a catalyst, I will challenge myself to really observe people, places and things I love and that I feel make the world more livable, by spending time writing essays for one whole year and having a new one baked up, ready to post every two weeks, or, once a month. Sure, I might take us past Kierkegaard's house (who I read and reviewed on Goodreads in 2009) in an essay about the Danish soil (not good to plant Rose of Sharon in), or mention Astrobiology and the quest toward the stars in an essay about growing cucumber, or describe the Kyoto Protocol while repotting a jade tree, the theory of general relativity while discussing library furniture, South African social mores and ritual while discussing curry, or Kim Parker's painting "Garden with the Blue Tulip" while discussing mood, but, all big ideas, inspiring people and interesting things must stay centered around food, plants, or literature. Ah. Joy.

If these topics intimidate you, well, they shouldn't. Let's be sneaky and make them fun. Hopefully I can write about them in ways that show how vital, interesting and common any topic is to us. I have faith, though it does waver like a candle flame, that in enough time, with enough writing and practice, all the best flavors (salty, modern, earthy, funny, provacative, smart) will come through and set correctly--inner critic be damned.

I have decided to call this blog Sense and Sustainability (hence the ornate style of writing for this introduction) a great name provided to me about two years ago when I first mentioned keeping a blog by a colleague whose noteworthy book was coming to life as a member of The Seacoast Writers Circle. Ultimately, inspired by the stylings of David Foster Wallace's "Considering The Lobster," and in a similar vein (with my own feminine twist), for one whole year I will post essays about life, history, science, technology, and philosophy but centered around one of the three activities that I love most: food (mostly local, mostly free-trade, mostly organic, with literary and philosophical perspectives baked in including recipes you may find mouth watering) plants (including ingenious gardening tips, handling flowering bushes and planting trees, feeding soil and using compost), and literature (including comments about style, themes, some assumptions and opinion--of which you must find occassion to pardon my fiery side in review, as I can be (knuckle-bitingly) vocal and disturbingly uncooth at times--having spent much of my childhood barefoot in the woods building forts, my late teens watching friends perform music, and my early twenties at local pubs or music stores and art rooms where kids were testing out theories of social resistance or maybe just designing a future where they would eventually fit in).

I have no delusions about my talents. I am not the greatest artist or photographer who ever lived; not even close. I am not an accomplished literary critic, I am certainly not the most amazing gardener (just ask my last boss, bless 'im, at the greenhouse), and I am definitely not a culinary wiz (I just learned how to make a creamy rue....what's that? Exactly, I'm still not quite sure).

Seriously, I’m just me. I like to read, garden and eat. I also love and have always loved to write. Because these are things I love about life, I want to celebrate them. I am one person, a mother, a writer, a befuddled partner, and a klutz, with one mission, one goal to post an essay every 2 weeks or once a month for a year about living as fully and meaningfully as possible. Feel free to contact me at anytime. I would love to hear comments, annonymous or otherwise. Of course, feel free to send me your own essays related to food, plants or books, I promise to post them or offer feedback to help you get them polished. I was the director of The Seacoast Writers' Circle in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for three years and founder of a writing studio called The Workshop which ran for about a year, so, I have experience working intimately with other writers. The truth is, I am not convinced that this blog will even be read. I am not good at social networking and, like Dickinson when it comes to writing (not music or friendship) often prefer the simplicity of solitude to audience.

Alas, my dad once told me—well, actually told me a few weeks ago after I called him—that every person feels the need to discover a signature and to leave their mark whether it be through a child, a career, a work of art. How similar an idea to Emerson and Stanley. He said: whether one person is affected by what you leave behind or ten, leaving it is what really counts. So, here goes.



~

1. I borrowed this word antedilivian (ancient and outmoded, from the period of the great biblical flood) from a study guide I used a few years ago because, from what I remembered, it would be a funny way to describe an old chair. I should maybe put the word back, though, because after confirming the meaning, the chair, while definitely "ancient and outmoded" was definitely made long after the flood, say, circa 1972, and this technical oversite may chafe our more literal literati who could, after interpreting my usage, feel uncomfortable by my grossly inexact use of the word antediluvian and therefore argue, intelligently, that "it's my belief that everything is best described in its most literal way, otherwise how do we get to know the true nature of things?" and I would have to consider their view, rightly so, while also taking them up on the debate, both of us slouched in our chairs, while we hash out whether or not metaphors are relative to all things, which is why they illuminate disparate things so well, or if they should be used exactingly. But, for now, take it or leave it. But, I'm going to leave it, because, dear reader, I really like the metaphor of calling an old chair antediluvian. I rest my case.

2. Let me recommend this micro-batch if you can get your hands on it brewed by the non-local, but, classic brewing company who makes a summer brew to rival most. This particular flavor was found in a package store and is brewed with both cinnamon and dark chocolate with a provacative title that reminds me of some wild western saloon or swashbuckling pirate's adventure {oh my}.

3. I recently lost my house to the economy and gave up a career in radio for the more practical science. As a newly minted science student, I love my classes, but, feel the sting (nostalgia?) for my deeper loves. While I am spending most of my time learning calculus for scientists and engineers (gulp) or atomic structures to gaze at the universe in wonder, this blog may be what I need to nurture my literary roots.