Okay dear reader, it’s a stream of consciousness rant. Take it or leave it. But man if I’m not I’m not disgusted or maybe just woke to the endless, ridiculous way we use God and Nation to justify the most heinous of acts. How the hell??

Now, well, the carpet bombing of Tehran. Now, well, it’s the panty wetting excitement over the potential second coming of Mr. Loaves and Fishes who would undoubtedly, don’t you know, be so freak’n happy to rise amid the ashes of dead school children. Now, well, the retaliation that will be, itself, inspired by a God of a different flavor but with the same “moral” and religious authority. An eye for an eye. Holy wars. You gotta love em.

Yes, I know, we’re taking aim at the God that allows for the killing of women for showing their hair but, don’t you know, his kissing cousin God (Issac and Ishmael were brothers don’t you know) also expects orthodox women to wear wigs. Maybe Mr. Ten Commandments does not want to stone women for showing their hair but just try and leave with your kids if your Orthodox husband beats you. Oh no. THAT, God would certainly frown on. Sorry if I’m sounding smarmy but I got reason. It’s all so mind numbingly insane. Like how God and nation get’s blended up in a tasty smoothy of stupidity, racism and hate.

Take, for example that twisted Zionist blend of nationalism, religious orthodoxy (not to mention a serious persecution problem) that justifies the razing of Gaza. Yeah, that’s a good one. “Please”….you say. “Haven’t you heard that radical Muslims want all Jews dead?? That it’s in their mission statement?” Well, okay, I hear you but didn’t you chase them out of their homes and land in your return to the Holy Land and aren’t you kinda doing that now in your settler obsession? You know, that same Holiest of Holy Land the Evangelicals are buying real estate in just to have a front seat when Mr. Loaves and Fishes returns? You do know about that don’t you? Oh, sure you do. Just as you know those same Evangelicals think you’ll be toast when he comes given that whole Camel through the Eye of a Needle thing. But besides laughing behind their backs, I know you’re digging all the military might and cash they’re giving you so why bring up the fact that Mr. Loaves and Fishes will likely take a pass on his return. I gotta say, it does make for interesting spectator sport. But should I be surprised by the stupidity or self righteousness of it all??

Well, not really when you consider our history. Not just the stupid “woke be not us” cultural zeitgeist of our time but the one that informed and predated it. The history that had children in elementary schools putting their little hands on their little hearts pledging their allegiance to God and Nation to. That adapted, distorted, denied history rooted in the parable of Manifest Destiny which, don’t you know, allowed for slavery and genocide and all the other things Mr. Loaves and Fishes would definitely have dug. Oh yeah, he was all about genocide. Made his panties wet don’t you know.

Oh but dear reader there’s more. There’s the crusades. Oh let us not forget the crusades and the holiness that inspired it. I mean, what else but the love of God and Nation would allow such righteous atrocities? That is not a rhetorical question. I mean I mean I really, really want to know how watching all the killing in the name of God and Country is not breaking down our sanity. Is not making us rant and rave and send out a post that will have readers feeling sorta bad for me if not, i’m hoping, happy that someone, somewhere, is putting words to the insanity we are all witnessing.

I could stop here. I’m sure I’ve said enough except for the insanity of rebooting nuclear power plants to supply energy for AI processing centers and how much water they will require despite the drying up of the Colorado River and the Great Salt Water Flats of Utah that are nothing but salt now and, well, how we keep mining for precious metals to fuel our toys even, as we know, at the expense of the misbegotten or the wars over oil that keep America energy secure and the capitalist economy chugging along despite the breakdown, total breakdown, of the environment and the security, if not lives, of people all throughout the world.

And so I remember, little hand on little heart….I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of America. And to the republic, for which it stands, one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all. That’s what they had us say when I was a school girl. Adapted, perhaps, when we thought God and Nationalism should not be fused together but still, look around.

It’s enough to make a gal rant.

Which is the end of that story and the beginning of this recipe because who cares that much about my life??? Rhetorical question cause it seems I can’t help but write about it. So here it is….

Whole Wheat Quince Sauce Mace Bread

Preheat oven to 350

In one bowl add:

2 cups All purpose flour

1 Cup Whole Wheat pastry flour (I grind soft white wheat berries and sift it a bit)

1 Tabl baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon mace

In another bowl mix together:

1/2 oil

1 cup quince sauce (can use applesauce)

1/2 butter milk

1 cup brown sugar (if I don’t have I mix white sugar with molasses)

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

Pour liquid ingredients into dry. Mix well. Bake in a loaf pan (i have one from the restaurant that is 12 by 4” but I’m sure a normal size loaf pan would work).

Bake 1 hour and 10 minutes or until knitting needle (what I use) inserted in center comes out clean

I think it is the same for the sciences and academia. The need to understand. But where the arts present as an intuitive, emotional investigation, the sciences seem cerebral, linear and reductive. Perhaps the instinct is the same but given our nature or conditioning, we choose one lane over the other. Sometimes there are crossovers. Where science and art converge. Where the cerebral peppers the intuitive with reference points, with history, with perspective. Which is what I thought, or am thinking now, after a conversation I had with a choreographer in the audience I sat next to at the dance performance.

Somewhere in the conversation we both discovered she knew of my restaurants. Was a loyal patron. Thought I made the “best food” and would always go there to treat herself. She asked what I was doing these days. My answer opened up the thought I am having today.

When I had my restaurants, I said, I just used food as a medium for creation but now I have added another dimension to it. Now I think about the ingredients themselves - where they come from, their history. Now I think about the environmental and economic systems riven in the history of food or cooking or culture. Now I am deconstructing what it means to be a cook or how the expression gains dimension when it is imbued with history, perspective and even science. Now, though I did not say that at the time, I am a cross-over cook.

I’m sure there are those in the business who are doing the same. Cooking with perspective. Celebrating the “terroir” of ingredients; where they are grown and who is growing them. Who have taken the art and science of cooking to ever greater heights. But for me, and in my kitchen, the discovery takes me to ever smaller systems. Or maybe just less demanding ones. Maybe I just don’t have the burden of paying the bills, of hiring and managing staff, of marketing and creating menus that require more ingredients than I am inclined to use these days. Or just, and mostly, when I am not required to think, or act, as if the customer is always right which is something, if truth be told, I was never particularly good at. I consider this a profound privilege and yet the work is no less demanding, or just demanding in another way.

I’m not sure whether it is my cerebral or intuitive instincts that instruct my work, but I am nearly obsessed. I am always in some reductive analysis of ingredient. Less about “terroir” (though that is certainly important) but more like utility. Something like raw functionality. Something like a peasant food system that is at once cerebral (if not a bit high minded) as it is creative. It is about the making do, and making good, with less. How milk can become so many other things given fermentations. How whole grains, in different forms and applications, can, and is, the basis for a thousand meals. How each ingredient, crossed over and combined can become nearly everything else you see on your grocery’s shelf but better. At least if you an obsessed cross-over cook.

I guess this is my “lane” but today there are few people in my audience given I am home. Given I am not in the business anymore. Given I am not ruled by the demands. But as I told the woman I sat next to at the dance performance, I can invite her over sometime for a meal which, she said, would be most welcomed. I’m not sure when that will happen cause the muse happens spontaneously. Happens when i have something in my stores that needs tending to. Needs to find a way to be made good on. Which is why, more often, it is when a friend drops by hoping there is something good happening in the kitchen that I get my audience. And I, spared the demands of running a business, can actually be gracious when serving it forth which, if truth be told, I was never particularly good at.

I once told a lover I wanted to live in a tepee and eat grubs. I was less facetious than reaching for an experience. Something that would transport me to a time before this time. Before this manufactured world, before all the social systems, passed on, added to, morphed into what we generally refer to as civilization. That human endeavor with all its inputs and guide posts. With all its directions for how to live, make a life. I was finding it unreliable, trite, contrived. I was feeling ill at ease.

This, of course, is a fool’s errand. There is no way for me to remove the cloak of my membership in this human endeavor. No way for me to lose my well constructed mind. Not in a way that would destroy sanity if, that is, insanity was a bad thing. There is that you know. People who want to live in tepees and eat grubs could be diagnosed as being a bit off but let’s be honest. What is “off” is the culture we have been inducted into. Everything, and I mean everything, would be different if that was not so.

It’s a challenging to walk around with an ear to the ground. To listen to what was here before you, before us, before this human endeavor. It makes shopping for groceries a mine field. Makes common niceties a performance piece. “How are you doing?”, an innocent question but how shall I answer? I mean I don’t want to be obtuse or smarmy. Maybe saying I’m trying not to “do” would work but that would be annoying so I follow the script. “You know, best as I can given….”

And it is the “givens” that confuse me. It is the givens that I want to shoot full of shot until they lie scattered as refuse amid all the rest of the givens we have been fed. All the givens we, or someone, takes seriously as if they are really substantial. Really important. Really not just destroying how the world could be, would be, if everything and I mean everything was not different.

I mean, take a system, any system. Pull back the givens and you’ll find the man behind the curtain. The man on the mountain sending down commandments. The man on the pulpit. The white wigged man preaching justice and housing slaves. The man staking claim, cutting throats, rapping soil, bodies. The enterprising man fatted by scarcity, emboldened by the word, by progress. Emboldened with the human endeavor. This thing we call civilization. This thing we are born into. The thing that has inculcated my construction, my assumptions, the choices I make or don’t until I don’t even know myself in a way that is not, mostly, a construction of ego.

And so I make sourdough. And so we speak of ferments. And so we go foraging. And so we eat dandelions and make mead, cider. And so we tend the soil and breed backwards, seeds and varieties, heirloom, original. And so we grow food on small lots to feed ourselves and our neighbors. And so we look for rituals. And so we seek our ancestors. And so we watch as land is stolen, always stolen for progress. And so we attempt to find the essence of our pre-human microbial essence and talk of living in tepees and eating grubs in hopes of living outside the givens of this human endeavor.

I love to cook. Have always loved to cook. It started early. Even as a child when my mother would give me room to do so. Today I find cooking a balm to the insanity we are witnessing. Cooking as the sense within the senseless. Cooking as an act of resistance, of logic, of purpose when so much feels purposeless. Cooking as the utilization of this or that to become more than this or that. To become a sum greater than its parts, or great because of its parts. Parts grown in good soil by honest farmers. Parts taken to heart and harmonized by years of practice and intention. Many years. Once “Professionally” and now, gratefully, humbly in my kitchen and free of whatever strictures time and money once put on me. Which is the blessing of the home cook. Or this home cook at this age, at this moment of time, with all the tools and knowledge I have accumulated. The dancer, once trained in method, now free to go wherever the muse takes her. Like yesterday.

it started early in the morning with the beets i had pulled from a soggy winter’s soil the other day on my friend’s farm to take home along with the leeks, kale and last bit of radicchio hearts still tight within their mud-laden mother ship. First the washing off of mud, the separating of beet root from stems from leaf. Then the cooking of beets, in water not baked. The cooked beets peeled, sliced and marinated with onions from the farm and red wine vinegar from my friend’s vineyard. Salt, pepper a few capers and parsley. The broth left over from the beets to become the stock for borsht. I add the stems chopped fine to the broth. I add a bit of vegetable stock made the other day. It simmers. I take the leaves I have pulled from the beet stalks and chiffonade them. Later I will dress them. Later I will serve them topped with the beet salad and a bit of feta. I look forward to that.

Then comes the kale. Washed, I remove the ribs from the leaf. It is winter and while there is sweetness to the kale, it is a bit tougher. I chop the ribs, I chop an onion, I mince a few garlic cloves, some chili I dried this summer. I heat some oil, add everything. I let it cook before adding the kale leaves I have torn into thin sections. The moisture on the leaves works to steam it all but I add a bit of stock. Salt and pepper. I let it cook slowly. It takes a while. I imagine having some with a fried egg later in the morning. It is still early. Not yet 6 am.

Then comes the leeks. I only have a few. I think quiche. I will add the caramelized onions I have in the freezer that I made months back from onions that were sprouting. Onions that were supposed to be keepers but did not hold fast. One must cure storage onions properly. One must buy varieties that keep. I find not all farmers or their helpers at the market know the varieties. I find not all farmers or their helpers cure onions properly. I find I don’t always store them properly. Too warm a storage space. It’s okay. I know what to do with them. So I take the caramelized onions out of the freezer. I then make a crust. I grind soft white winter wheat with the grinder my friend bought me. I grind the grains fine. I sift them to remove a bit of the bran. I can use the bran in muffins. I add a bit of white flour I bought to the wheat flour. One cup each. I add my cold butter and water and make two discs of dough. I let it rest. I will roll it out later.

Now for the radicchio hearts. I have eight or nine. I fill a basin with water. I dunk them in and slowly unfold the hearts. The basin is a sea of pale yellow and rose. I’m not sure the variety but I know they are less bitter. I drain them and put them in a pillow sack I have for the purpose of the spin. I take the sack outside and twirl it round and round like a windmill in the still dark morning to let the water spray out of the pillow sack. My lettuce spinner. The sack is wet. The leaves not fully dry. I place them on a large cotton dish cloth. I fold the cloth over the leaves. I put the bundle in the fridge. They will keep nicely there. I will use them for lots of salads during the week.

I take out the dough, one disc. It has rested, the moisture and butter amalgamated in the flour. I roll it out. Place it in a quiche pan. I partially bake it covered with parchment held down with bean weights. 350 degrees for 20 minutes. I take it out and let it cool. I cover the bottom with gruyere cheese I’ve purchased from Cowbell Cheese. You really must go there. It does the heart good. I sauté the few leeks I sliced thin with some butter and thyme from the garden. I add the caramelized onions. I cook till they are blended. I layer that over the cheese. I mix two eggs with some evaporated milk. I keep cans on hand. I like the thickness of the milk. I would used cream if I had it but I do not. I pour the egg mixture carefully. I put it all back in the oven. It bakes for another 40 minutes. More than I would have suspected but it comes out solid and less like a quiche than a pizza but it is very good. Amazingly good. The crust crisp. All the flavors happy together. It is now 8:00 am.

The borsht broth is done, the kale sautéed, the quiche made, the marinated beets in the fridge along with the beet greens and radicchio. I clean the kitchen. My son will be coming home by 9. He works the night shift as an auditor in a hotel. He gets off at 7 am and then goes to a meeting. Sometimes he eats breakfast with me and sometimes he does not. If he wants to I make buttermilk corn pancakes with corn I grind in the grinder my friend bought me. I serve them with some bacon, two eggs and maple syrup. A hearty breakfast but so good. Other times I make oatmeal from oat kernels I soaked overnight. Oat kernels my friend grew and gifted me. Oak kernels from the oats they grew on their dry farmed patch. Oh my if I am not in love with that. With dry farming. With all farming by honest farmers on good soil. Of all the things I am gifted and am willing and inspired to make good on.

It is now 10:00 and, well, I’m sorta ready for a nap. My morning put to good use. To something that offers some balm and calm to the otherwise insane world all around me. I am ever grateful for the inclination. Grateful for being a home cook who, now, spared the strictures of time and money, can dance to the muse of good soil and honest farmers.

My friends, there is an evil afoot that has never been lost on me but is showing up in ways that mocks my Urban Peasant, Householding, Sowing, Growing and Stowing lifestyle. Not that I am abandoning it but this shit, this evil, this total disregard for humanity is upping the ante of my attempt to “Be Not That” (as I wrote the other day).

So today, as I wait to see where my heart and mind will lead me to, I am going out to the businesses that are suffering. Suffering because their community is not showing up because they are hiding. Because they fear for their lives. Because this administration has turned them into “illegals”, undesirables and not worthy of respect. And that shit is so rubbing me the wrong way if only because my family, my ancestors, my history is pocked with the same sort of disregard. So in addition to protesting in the streets (and in lieu of standing in the face of ICE officers who would not give a damn about clubbing me, shooting me or spraying me off with chemicals), I’m going shopping.

I know it is not an either/or equation; everyone responds as they feel called to. But today my “urban peasant” frugality felt frail in the face of the hit these businesses are experiencing. A hit I have compassion for. Because, unlike the many upscale shops and their consumers who are willfully ignoring the inconvenient truth that we, the planet, really, really, do not need one more damn anything, these folks are doing what immigrants have always done (and what America once offered). They are working long, long hours for a chance to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. For a chance for a better life. And despite knowing that the promise of economic opportunity was always fraught with hypocrisy, I cannot abide the demonization and disregard these small business are dealing with.

Which is to say, if I have been frugal, a refusnik or attempted (and continue) “urban peasant living” I am broadening my net to include those who are suffering under the wrath of this administration. I will shop at their stores, eat in their restaurants, and offer my time and resources to organizations committed to serving this community. Besides, I consider this my high road.

Frankly, I do not know what demon ICE would release should they trigger a memory and reality I have spent mosts my life trying to make sense of, I’m going shopping. I assume that’s what my Mother was afraid of. She knew, when provoked, I would go bat shit of a mother fucker.

Better I go shopping.

You cannot see these things, cannot know these things without feeling rage, despair and utter disgust for something that you know has repeated itself and been experienced by millions of people who, in various times of history, have done the same. You cannot watch these things and not wonder who you should hate, what you should hate or what will ever stop it. And it is in asking that question that you, or I, are left with the sobering conclusion that we are a failed species or at the very least, a brutal and vicious one given to startling indifference and self righteousness. Not exclusively perhaps but certainly enough so to be faced with the truth of humanities failure to learn lessons. To not forget. To not repeat. To not finally and fully refuse the seeds of hate that seem to ever repeat.

I do not know what to do about this knowing. I do not know how to conduct my life. Do I take aim at the most recent expression of this disregard? Do I take my hate and despair out on this administration, this most current expression, out in the streets? Does my unwillingness to stand firm against it suggests I, too, am the indifferent? It is a sobering question. Humbling and conflicting. Were I sure it would end the hate I would gladly stand firm against it but I do not know that. Maybe it does not matter. Maybe it is all we, or I, can do.

But instead I carry the despair like a cloak mocking the notion of humanities ultimate goodness. Instead it has sent me in hiding, emotional hiding, licking my wounds, licking my heartbreak and trying, in vain and likely privilege, to create a life that has no connection to the hate, or the conditions that allow for hate. To live simply, to care for the soil, the land, the Mother, her limits, the boundaries of my watershed so others might do the same as if that would make me less a participant in the seeds of greed and indifference that has mocked the notion of humanities ultimate goodness since the beginning of time. To show my son, afflicted with his own beleaguered soul, that there IS beauty despite the misdeeds and corruptions that has pocked his spirit, our spirits, the collective spirit. It is a mighty task. A frail but honest approach. Or rather just my approach.

“Be not that” is what I have told myself. “Be not that” is what I have tried to write about. “Be not that” is what I tell my son. Perhaps it is the best I can do. And yet if feels a sorry and inadequate response to what is happening in the world and, sadly, has always existed in the world.

Yesterday I watched the news as a man, with his bare hands, dug through the rubble of his demolished home in Gaza to find the bones of his pregnant wife and their unborn child so he could give them a proper burial.

My friend lives across the street and we have known each other for some 20 years now, maybe more. Ten while I was married and ten more since I’ve been single. And over these years we have built a friendship though our backgrounds are different. It doesn’t matter. We have found fellowship through our gardens.

At first it was the plum tree that was growing in her backyard. I would ask to glean it. I would dry the plums and share the prunes. I would brings vegetables from my backyard garden to share but now they grow their own. She says I’m the reason. She says I wouldn’t stop bothering her about it. They had a very big yard. I coveted it. I pestered her. So if only to shut me up they (she and her husband) started growing vegetable but it’s a joke between us. A friendly joke because now, along with the vegetables, a genuine caring has grown between us. Likely that’s cause we have stayed the course, stayed rooted and placed in this neighborhood. Me the relative newcomer, and she the longtime resident. Now we are growing older together. We make jokes about that too. Hobbling along keeping it real for as long as we can. Caring like we do now. Like when she hangs a bag of groceries on my front doorknob or I bring big sacks of produce (gifted from my friend’s farm) to her. We are both serious cooks (neither of us have the disposable income or inclination to go out to eat). Or the way she watches over my home when I’m gone and visa versa, or worries about my son or I, her children, when misfortune (and Hurricanes) hit.

We talk about what is happening in the world. Each of us with an ancestral memory that makes us less surprised than despairing about the lessons we cannot help but forget. The long arch of racism or anti-semitism. Germs of hate. But we are grateful for the friendship that has transcended doubt and cultural distinctions. For the conversations we have had over the kitchen table. For feeling connected, watched over and cared for. “If you need anything…” we say to each other. It’s the kind of support that is in high demand these day.

They say in times of crises it’s important to reach out more, be connect, stay aware of what’s happening in your neighborhood. I think that’s so true but sometimes it’s hard for me to feel that way, or rather, feel that way towards those I have not created a strong bond with. At times I am ashamed. Well, maybe not that exactly but it is true that it takes me years to form the type of bond that would get me out of bed at 2:00 am to bail your ass out of jail. That’s a metaphor of sorts but the point being, while I might not remember your birthday, in a crises I’m your gal. But that sort of allegiance takes time. Takes going through a few ups and downs, a few misunderstandings and repair before a friendship gets fully seasoned. At least for me and I think my neighbor. Neither of us jumps into friendship easily. Both of us have a bit of caution to our nature and a strong stink eye. Our trust is not easily gained. But these times are different. These times are making me think about what I’m willing to risk or do for those outside my small circle of friends (reference to a Phil Ouchs’ song). Or (as it is written) to love my neighbor as myself particularly when I don’t know exactly who that neighbor is.

These days we are called to cast a wider net. To hold those we do not know with as much caring as those we do. We are ask to consider what, in the broadest sense, we are loyal to. Not in theory alone but in action. Because in theory I am loyal to justice, equity, respect and love for the all the human and non-human world, but in practice and action my net seems a bit smaller. Much smaller. Which is not something I am proud about but there it is. Before I am willing to risk life and limb for you I want to know, in the way deep seasoned friendships suggest, that you would do the same for me. But that is not something we have the privilege to do these days. These times are different times. Our “neighbors” don’t live across the street or even down the block. They are everywhere all at once and the reality of that is setting my nerves and fickleness on edge.

I’ve struggled with the concept of activism for a long time. What it means. How it is best expressed. I have another friend whose politics have always leaned to demonstrative expressions. These days that means taking to the streets, challenging ICE, standing in solidarity and protection of the most vulnerable. Putting her body on the line. She recently said to me “Not giving a damn is not something I want on my tombstone”. I respect her, it. But I find myself defending my approach. “I’m taking care of the soil and growing food because we will need it". And that is always how it is for me. I’ve given up on politics. Or, rather, see the rot so deeply riven in our political history until I am unclear who, or what, I should shake my finger or fist at. Or, rather, believe the history of the stench has so subtlety and effectively destroyed peoples capacity to see who, or what, has betrayed them, that I am loathe to stand on moral high ground. I do not know what happened to them. What story or legacy they have inherited from their ancestors. I am not able to sit across the kitchen table from them to ask, to listen, to share our stories once the volume of mistrust, doubt and cultural distinctions are lowered. Lowered because we have taken the time to know each other. Lowered because we have slowly become friends, have seen each other’s humanity, have weathered a few ups and downs to become seasoned friends and neighbors.

I don’t know if this is just an alibi for my resistance to put myself in harm’s way. And I do not know what will be on my tombstone when my days are done but hopefully my neighbor will place some of the flowers I planted in her yard because they are beautiful.

I am thinking back this morning to a moment in my youth when my mother, who worked in management for Ma Bell (our local phone company), admonished me for taking one of the little first-aid kits out of our medicine cabinet. It was a small kit, one that telephone installers kept in their bag in case they cut themselves. It seemed handy to take on camping trips but when my mother discovered I took one she was upset. Not because I did not ask first but because someone would find out she had taken them from work. At the time her concern seemed laughable to me. i mean, they were small and seemed an innocent pilfering but what really shocked me was the fear she felt. “They” (whoever she imagined “they” were), would find out. “They” would be coming for her. “They” had eyes in the back of their head. It was the trauma of growing up in Nazi Germany in full display but I did not understand that then, but now I do.

I am thinking back this morning to the subtext in our home. To the way my parents were aggrieved when either my brother or I engaged in protests. When we imagined that the fight for social justice or civil liberties was important. When we took to the streets or harangued against the inequities of the Vietnam War or the continued racism in America. And despite my fathers engagement in the garment worker’s labor movement or participation in the Bund (an labor and civil rights movement begun in Eastern Europe but had found some footing among holocaust survivors in America) he was concerned and worried. He knew, my mother knew, what governments can do, will do - the taking down of names, the rounding up of “radicals”, the disloyalties of friends and neighbors who would happily rat you out if it meant saving their own skins or the breaking down of doors to look for the wrong books, loyalties or, as it was for my mother, contraband. “They” were watching,”

I am thinking back this morning to the way my mother feared my brother going back to Poland to find a home my father once owned before the war. She had burned the deed. Destroyed the evidence. She did not want my brother risking his life. She decried the innocence or faith he had in justice. Mocked the assumption that anyone would return stolen property or would not, if challenged, threaten my brother or worse.

I am thinking back this morning to the time my Mother told my father to be quiet. He was speaking about the way clothes would disappear out the back door of the fashion house he worked in. How the designer looked the other way. How everyone looked the other way. He was speaking of the Mafia but my mother nipped it in the bud. She did not want us to hear of it. Did not want us to have another “injustice” to fight against. Because what she knew, my father knew (or what history had proven to them) was the truth of life, their truth - that one needed to keep their head down unless you wanted it chopped off. That standing up to life’s injustices was a fool’s game. That “they” were watching and would come to your home, knock down your doors and make short work or your idealism, your fight against injustice.

I am thinking about all this in memory of my parents. In memory of the fear and trauma they experienced but, too, about the way they just wanted us to be happy. To spare my brother and i the truth (as they had come to understand it) that people or governments could be rotten, corrupt and worse. I am thinking about this because of what is happening in the world today. Or, rather, what has always happened in the world. I am thinking about this because I know, or believe, if my parents were alive today they would be telling me to keep my head down and try to just live my life as best I could. They would be telling me to try to be happy because history cannot help but repeat itself. Because “Never Forget” is nothing more than a slogan. Because what they would say is: “What had we gone through in our lives if not for you and your brother to be happy and spared the fear of the breaking down of doors?”

I am thinking about this because of what we are witnessing. That “They” can and will come to your door, will take your name, will watch your movements, will censor all dissent, will steal you off the streets, will smash your windows, will take you hostage, will disappear you, will call you an enemy of the state and cart you off to prison or concentration camps as the world, the “civilized” world, watches in disbelief or denial. But I am also thinking about this because I have a son. Because at times I feel he is ravaged by the misdirections that caught him. The ones he chose or was chosen for him — the darkness of my parent’s life as it was transferred onto me and then to him. The confusion and despair I felt and have worked so hard to find solace from. I want him to find relief, to find joy, to find peace. I am careful not to speak of the ugly too much because he does not need to hear it. Certainly he knows it well enough. It almost took his life. Instead I want to share the happiness I, myself, did not find until I put my hands in the soil and realized what was worth fighting for. What was worth protecting, loving and caring for. I want him to feel it, know it. I want him to see the beauty of the garden. The wonder of having enough food to eat and the willingness to show gratitude for it. In essence I am sharing my parent’s message. “What have I not gone through if not to offer you some shelter from the storm?”

Which leaves me in some strange moment of the times. On one level I believe what my parents they were trying to say to me and I, now, to my son. That we should just try and be happy and make peace with the world as it has always been. That we should focus on the good we can do in the small ways we can manage it. But on another level I know, or feel, that enjoying the blessings I have been given or, rather, the blessings my parents offered my brother and I, is not enough. That keeping my head down is a cop out, an abdication, a refusal to fight the good fight.

To be honest I’m not sure which instinct will win. To be honest I feel waylaid by what I believe is the resistant gene of hate come to show itself again. Waylaid by the notion we are simply a failed species that is given to forget. Which is why, I tell myself, that if I am to be happy I need to keep my hands in the soil and make beautiful gardens and meals and tell my son, as my parents told me, that to sacrifice one’s “one beautiful life” fighting against windmills is a waste of a life. Is it enough???? Frankly, I do not have the answer. I only know what my parents would say if they were here today.

But deconstructing a nation’s psychology requires sussing out a million threads.

One prevailing thread is our identity as a “nation of immigrants” as a “melting pot”. Her welcoming of the tired and poor. But that thread was predated by centuries of imperial incursions -the Spanish, the French the English. The ruthless infighting, theft of resources and genocides. We don’t like to think of it but we should. It started, or continued, the ethic of filling the coffers of the elite and powerful. It started, or continued, the disregard for native or indigenous cultures. But whatever, let’s not talk about that. Our more comfortable narrative begins with the Puritans and Squanto and the fish. Well, comfortable for some and silly to others but still, It’s one of the threads. But really, the threads of the immigrant experience are so much more complex. Each wave, each landing, each immigrant experience - the bootstrapped, the misbegotten, the power brokers, the Southern slavers, the enslaved, the midwest farmer, the east coast merchant, the oil men, miners, the factory workers, industrialist, revolutionaries, and religious fundamentalist all melding into the zeitgeist of a nation grappling with the ideas of equality, unity and opportunity. A nation struggling to create a “more perfect union” despite a class system that was imported, like the “struggling masses” from Europe. Which is to say, there is a strange psychosis to the formation of the American character. It is split, confused and, dependent on one’s generational inheritance, gilded in either privilege or poverty. Either formed by centuries of brahmin sensibilities or Appalachian pride. But nothing in the formation of the American character can be easily defined only I wonder, now, as a recent second generation immigrant, what I had walked into.

I am thinking about this given conversations I’ve recently had with friends. American friends. Friends whose family, or ancestors, lived in this country for centuries. Friends whose lives or families seemed so different than my own. Whose parents divorced, whose fathers abandoned them, who grew up in foster homes, who experienced abuse, who fell into addiction, and who, by a certain light of day, never picked up the pieces to have a meaningful life. I am not judging. Certainly I was not spared the flavor of my own brokenness. It was just different. It was just less “white” if that is the word or less American.

If, in 1950, my family arrived into this historical pastiche (themselves fleeing the hubris of war and hatred), I doubt any of us understood what we were inheriting. Despite the appreciation of their new found home, there was an underlining confusion that ran subterranean in our lives. For my parents, it was a language, economic and cultural barrier as they worked to create some measure of safety and security for themselves and their children. They were simply in survival mode and toting their fair share of trauma. For me and my brother, however, our arrival presented a wide open invitation into an American culture that was at once exciting and perplexing. With one leg in a European household and another in America’s burgeoning middle class consumer culture of 50’s, we were set adrift as ambassadors or translators for the cultural and language barrier that existed in our home. We were just kids making sense of the new world and if, as time went on, we began to sense something was rotten in Denmark, as it were, it was only after years of “risky behavior” hanging out with friends getting high which was, now that I think about it, a very America in the 60’s thing to do.

I am not suggesting there was something better to my particular deconstruction. Only, in retrospect and in conversations with friends, I wonder if growing up in an European home with old-world values made a difference. Or more to the point, I am wondering if what we are seeing in America today is not a direct result of the mixed, confused narratives coming home to roost.

To say, as we, or our representative often do, the we are ever in the process of creating “A more perfect union” seems a bit trite or at the very least truncated and self serving. Because they know, or the “radical left” knows, that what is rotten in Denmark has been long forming and that the party has forgotten the working class. That their Washington elite “brahmin” sensibilities have put off the Appalachian pride and blue collar workers of America. But what they are actually saying is they have long denied the mixed and split character of this nation’s formation and now when the denied and misbegotten have transferred, from one generation to the next, each rotten betrayal, each hard-scrapple day and life reaching for the crumbs of promise only to become bitter, angry and looking for scapegoats, looking for someone or something to blame with MAGA preaching fodder for their revenge, preaching culprits and thieves, preaching “sycophants” and “rapist” or anything to get the heat off of them, it may be too late. That these lies, long forming, like a festering wound, have deformed or added to the bones of the American character if not our humanity,

I grieve over it all and frankly, see no end. The spoils of conquest are giving out -the planet, our resources, the soil and water - as we fight wars and incursions over the last remaining crumbs. I watch how the poor and indebted are being offered signing bonuses to become the new black shirts of an emerging fascist regime. I listen to the cackled cry of the religious right defending the most inhumane of policies and how the next generation, or this generation, is being seduced by either technology or drugs or both. They, too, cannot follow the cracks and fissures. They have been told not to bother. Loneliness and depression at an all time high as we medicate ourselves out of the lies that have been long forming and denied.

If I have been thinking about this it is at the same time that I have been giving thanks to my parents who, regardless of the trauma and loss they endured, instilled in me a certain memory and tradition spared a full throttle emersion in American culture. I was the first to be born in this country. Yiddish my first language. My community almost entirely Jewish with the traditions and mores decidedly old world. Even as I was not spared the confusion of America in the 60’s I still had, I believe, some foundation that my friends, whose families had been in this country for generations, did not. Which is how I started thinking about the American character. Wondering how the promise landed on them or whether their broken families, the lost traditions, the reaching for success along with the failures had marked them in ways my life was not.

I am an immigrant, a first generation immigrant and, frankly, grateful for it. Maybe it is the memory of traditions or a life before the promise of opportunity (now deformed to become a consumer paradise) became synonymous with the American Character that has made me who I am. I do not know but am grateful for my immigrant experience and understand, or hope, others who have something besides this strange rudderless American Character to grab hold of, do so.

Which is to say, despite all the ugly preaching coming out of the mouth of the ugly in chief, it will be the immigrants coming to this country who will save and make America great again.

We are in the midst, have been in the midst of the disrepair for a long time. You know this and so do I. Why else would we have tried to find another way to live? Why else would we have tried to discover islands of sanity, systems of living that refused the constructs that have allowed for the disrepair? Yes, we have tried, I have tried but these days I’m not sure what it has come to.

I don’t want to bring anyone down. I am yet committed to living this life, this house-holding life. But the war over resources, land, territory and power is coming to a thunderous pitch and telling myself that I am not adding to the problems, am not ignorant of the problems (or causes) does not really help me all that much these days.

You see, the problem is in accepting, with sobering honesty, the very conditions (long forming and woven into our historical narrative), that are more about disregard for the planet and it’s citizens, than they are kindness, love and care. Caulk that up to my innocence, ignorance or “cock-eyed optimism” as my mother would call it, but that, given our times, has become ever more difficult to ignore.

I am not speaking of the showcase of inhumanity that is on display these days, or not solely. Rather it is the grinding down, the burdens, hurdles and restrictions made on the people and planet who are seeking, and living, in the alternatives expressions of care and love (for the soil, water, food and people)— the small scale farmers, seed breeders, house-holders and everyone, really, that has long felt the disregard — that is worrying me, saddening me. They are heroes to me, brave souls fighting against the tide but I see them staring at their bottom lines, their ledgers and wondering how to make a living when up against the machination of a system that makes doing so ever more difficult - financially if not emotionally.

Certainly there are greater atrocities at foot. The brazen and cruel demonizing of a people who, like my own immigrant parents, simply wanted to make a life in this country. There is the bared teeth of hatred that will not let up and is on constant display. Which does not lessen my concerns for the folks within my tribe but it does make my attention and support for them feel somewhat elitist and tone deaf. But what, really, should one do when facing a break down in moral order? In humanity, care and love? Or, rather, to my point, how shall one function when the break down feels so ancient, so entrenched, so unstoppable that it rides heavy on the heart.

I tell myself that supporting those working to bring healthy and beautiful food to the markets is vital. That learning how to make good on all of it by learning the skills and mindset that refuses the expressions of convenience and value added additions (or, rather, subtractions) makes a difference. That paying attention to all the slippery ways modernity has convinced us we deserve all the ease of the replacements - the labor saving technology, the abundance of stuff made by a people who live in deplorable conditions- is required but somehow feels inadequate in keeping the sound of barking dogs at bay.

I’m not sure why my ear and heart is so close to the ground but I know, have known, for a very long time that we are coming to the end days. I am not speaking of the rapture - the religious prophesies of doomsayers. Nor of conspiracist (either of The Matrix or Evil Cabals variety) who assume only by turning to armed resistance or crystals (depending on the flavor of the conspiracy) will we be saved. I find conspiracies little more than an indulgence of magical thinking at best and, at worst, a projection of the evil within. But I am equally tired by the rehashing by political pundits, academics and historians who speak of the disrepair, track the disrepair and join in round-table discussions and lectures highlighting how we got here with few suggestions of how we might bare what we have wrought. Rather, what so many of them know, or feel, or believe is that they, by virtue of their privilege, will outrun the worst of it. Will pack up and leave town. Will secure themselves in Island property or second homes in the country or other countries where, like so many of our well intentioned liberal icons of Hollywood are moving to. They are getting out of dodge as if there is really a way to escape the misery of witness.

And is witness that is breaking my heart Witnessing in full awareness of the hubris. Witnessing without the convenience of prophets, magical thinking or optimism. Witnessing without the cloaks of denial or an escape route. Witnessing bare knuckled and resigned to what we have wrought and why. To the lessons we are loathe to acknowledge or accept and, thereby, will repeat, do repeat, over and over and over again. “Never Forget”? I laugh in the face of such slogans. We are nothing if not a forgetful people. A people who find remembering an inconvenience or, worse, wear their remembrances as justification to inflict the very trauma on others that they are unwilling to forget or understand.

So yes dear ones, I will keep on my path despite witnessing and accepting that the expressions in our collective human development are more about disregard for the planet and it’s citizens than it is kindness, love and care. Which is to say, cock-eyed optimism is taking one in the ass.

I have never written the holiday letter and mostly cause it’s not really a Jew thing. But sending out updates of the year past as we approach the new year seems a fine thing to do when I’m not otherwise inspired to rant. So here it is, year 2025 in review.

First, as you might all know, my son returned from serving his time. He was gone, in one facility or another, for three years, preceded by some 20 odd years crazy. Yep, to folks who do not really know me and who come into my backyard to say “This is paradise” I tell them “Well, you can be tormented in paradise you know.” Yep, no guarantees. Just luck if’n you’re strong enough to stand up to the slings and arrows of life that can’t help showing up from time to time.

But things have definitely turned a lighter shade of, well, whatever the heck that all was about, and he is home and we are finding our rhythm and enjoying sharing space and time together. He has gotten a job, works the night shift, works his NA program, paints, paints, paints and appreciates all the meals that mom makes cause, mom just can’t quit it. Besides, with so much in the storage pantry (I did a good job of putting up this past year) there’s no reason not to. Which is to say, 2025 did not slow my roll in that department. What did put a hitch in my giddy up is what always seems to. Love.

2025 offered the finale of six-year way crazy love affair that I hope will turn into a reasoned and reasonable friendship cause I ain’t one to cry victim nor hold a grudge and cause, well, it takes two to tango and without sounding trite…I learned a whole lot. Mostly, that when I get stuck on a story or vision I’m hard pressed to let go. That the lover in question owned land and was kinda, sorta, a farmer and had vineyards and made wine and was eccentric and cute as heck only made my attachment all the more difficult to cut loose from despite all the many reasons I should have in, well, year one. But I ain’t complaining nor crying victim. I’m just a wanna be farmwife looking for a farmer and THAT has gotten me in love trouble more than once. But each time I pick up my biscuit pan and pride and return (though I never really leave) to my lovely backyard and moon cottage to lick my wounds and continuing being the eccentric, creative and cute as heck woman that I am. No stopping that.

Speaking of my backyard, in 2025 I took up all my raised vegetable beds to put in drought tolerant perennials. I was feeling my age, the heat, the rising temperatures and looming water shortage so I didn’t want to water my raised beds as much as I needed to. Better to plant directly in the soil and better still to practice dry farming. That is definitely what I would have done if I hadn’t opted to build berms (built up by branches and clippings from the annual tree pruning), establish an under ground water catchment system and plant perennials, both evergreen and deciduous. The result has made me happy and I look forward to seeing my new children (and they all feel like my children) grow over the years even as I will sorta miss growing food. But as luck would have it, I was invited to join a group of volunteers who manage an OSALT (Oregon Sustainable Agricultural Land Trust) city garden that is a short distance from my home. So my hands and heart will stay in the soil growing and tending food and flower crops at Ariadne Garden with a bunch of amazing, eccentric and cute as heck humans. Love that. Besides, with all the wonderful and dedicated small scale farmers who need and appreciate our support, there is always access to beautiful and well tended produce.

So my darling friends, along with the rants and all the I-Can’t-Quit-You householding life I live, there were the normal ups and downs of life, the no guarantees, the slings and arrows and the humility and grace that weaves it all together in gratitude. I do look forward to 2026 and, in no small measure, am hoping the ugly of the fat boy and all his henchmen and women get demeaned, defrocked, disposed, dismissed and degraded before a court of law that finally, hopefully, finds its backbone to say “Not on our watch motherfucker”. But I suspect the insanity and spectacle of our Democratic decline will continue for a bit longer if, that it, it is not already buried and in the ground. My oh my, hoping for a revolution in 2026.

Potatoes: I’m learning that storing new potatoes in my upstairs too-warm pantry has made them sprout a bit earlier than I would like. Is that because they are “new” potatoes, those early offerings as opposed to those grown later in the season? Likely. Or the too-warm upstairs pantry environment they are stored in? Also likely. Normally I look for Burbank Russets, those big bakers for my storage potatoes but I was given, or dug up, lots of the earlier varieties which has pus lots of new and too-early sprouting potatoes on the menu these days. No problem really. I just knock those sprouts off (and they are really only just beginning to sprout. I’m not that willing when the sprouts look like grandma’s chin hairs) and either roast, bake, mash, use in soups, stews, casseroles, crostatas, grated for latkes or hash browns. I’ve certainly left things off that list but soon, given my diligence, they will be gone which is a shame considering my long winter storage objective. So off I’ll go to the winter farmers market to restock my supply. Hopefully I’ll find those big Russets to last me till the early spuds show up again in Spring.

Winter Squash: There is a ripening order to winter squash as well. Or so I discovered. Honey Boat Delicatas (on of my favs) should be used first. Cut in half lengthwise, seeded and baked (cut side down) at 350 degrees, the Honey Boats are sweet and delicious and perfect for individual servings. Other varieties, like Butternuts, Sugar Pie pumpkins, Hubbards or Stella Blues will “ripen” later with some holding fast till Spring or later if stored properly. I try to have at least ten winter squashes (of different varieties) on had throughout the winter to use in pies, soups, crostatas, lasagna (sliced or mashed), fillings for ravioli (with grated parm and sage), peeled, diced and roasted.

Onions: Knowing your varieties matters here too cause not all onions are meant for storage. Your farmer should know which ones are for storage if you do not. Onions that sprout earlier than you would like, however, should not be discarded unless they are mushy. I don’t worry about the green sprouts that emerge, it’s just time to use them up. If I happen to have a big supply on hand I caramelize them. Sliced thin, sautéed in a butter oil mixture till amber brown (you will need to keep close watch at the end of cooking) I used them right away or freeze in ice cube trays to drop frozen into stews and soups as a flavor punch. My storage onions (Copras most often but there are other varieties) are used for everything else an onion wants to be used for and I like to have a big supply on hand. Twenty five pounds would be just about right.

Red onions (Bermuda?) hold pretty well and are favorites for making beet salad. Cooked beets (skin will slip off after cooking), sliced onions, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and a bit of oil is all there is. Keeps well in fridge. A week at least. Shallots also hold well. I used them in lots of salad dressings.

Grains: Having wheat or rye berries and whole corn kernels (not popping corn) in dry storage makes for lots of meals particularly if you have a grinder which I do. Variety matters here as well. Real committed bread bakers (which I am not) are very very specific about the berries or flour they buy. I just want soft white wheat berries for lighter baking and hard red berries for coarser breads. Once ground I use the flour in all the ways you use flour. For me that is all the time and in everything but you need not always grind your grains. Whole grains (wheat or rye berries as they are called), cooked in water to soften, can be added to breads, made into hearty salads or for making bulgar which was a revelation.

To make bulgar, cook off your whole wheat berries. Drain and dry them (in oven or dehydrator just till dry) and then grind or crack them (as the term is used) to the desired grind. Course for heartier salads, finer for others. I did not understand this until I went to a Middle Eastern grocery store where several different grinds of bulgar were offered. Coarsely ground bulgar for things like Kibbi (a kind of ground vegetable or meat patty) or finer for falafels (along with chick pea flour). And of course, a bulgar salad with parsley, tomatoes, cucumbers, green onions and mint in summer.

Beans: A bit of advice on buying beans. If possible get this year’s supply or just know that older beans (and they’ll keep for years and years) take a bit longer to cook. Think about that when buying bulk beans on sale at the grocery store. It’s usually a way to make room for the fall stock. No problem. Just be prepared. Unfortunately local beans, grown organically and recently harvested and dried, can be very very expensive - up to $7.00 a pound so not for everyone.

Root vegetables: Root vegetables should fill your pantry. Particularly when shopping in fall and early winter when they are showing up at the markets. The only problem being (if it is a problem) is that these gnarly darlings of the underworld were once affordably priced. Buying them locally and organic, however, generally means you’ll pay top dollar for a celeriac root, parsnip, carrot, turnips et. al. unless you catch one of those last-in-the season farmer’s markets when farmers are hoping to get rid of their supply. Even then, and with winter CSA shares ever more popular, it’s hard to catch a break. The good news though, is that these root vegetables will keep and keep, can be used sparingly and are just right for those hearty winter stews.

Cabbage: Those big late winter cabbage are perfect for fermenting into kraut. Yes you can do that anytime but winter fermenting is best given the cooler temperatures in your home and the variety of cabbages that are available in winter. I make a big crock full (takes about 4-6 weeks to fully ferment) to eat on its own or in sandwiches (Reubens of course) and or served with mashed potatoes, pork chops and applesauce for a hearty winter meal.

All the rest: By winter I have all the rest stocked in my pantry. The canned tomatoes, salsas, pickled green beans, cucumber pickles, canned pears, peaches, jams, chutneys, dried fruit, herbs and on and on. Purchases I make at the market in winter are generally limited to dairy items, eggs, coffee and cooking oils. Meats and fish, if I have not purchased as a share, are also on my list as are those household products -T.P. et.al, that I do not make. If I am very careful I can get by on less then $50 a week on groceries or $100 every two weeks. I can use my SNAP cash card for that. But one thing is clear, eating out will bust the bank so besides wanting to make good on all the stuff I’ve worked hard to put up and store (no sense having it if you don’t use it) I just can’t afford it.

So there is the news from the householding kitchen spared the rants that I normally serve up. Can’t always help it. The world outside is definitely worthy of the occasional rant. Frankly, I wouldn’t want (or could) have it any other way.

Excuse me. I know some folks really, really believed he was going to fix the economy but that’s likely cause they had no idea how an economy or a global economy or this out-of-control, debt-ridden, take-no-prisoners economy works. Or what endless growth actually means and how that will lead, is leading, to the destructions of the planet. At least that’s why I think those struggling to afford ground beef or Pampers at the grocery store, voted him in. No, the hurt is real despite their trust and participation in what can only be called a Ponzi scheme. Sorry to say, they’re getting a snout full along with a pink slip but I don’t really blame them. Who has the time to decipher all the machinations of global economic systems??? I mean, even the willing have no idea what economist are talking about. Try listening the Paul Klugman - who I love by the way - and you’ll soon realize how clueless you are.

Who I am blaming, however, and why I’m calling the the Presidential dumbass our Projection Holder in Chief, are those who, for their own self interest and beliefs - be it religious, racist, supremacist, misogynist or just old fashioned greed - held their noses and closed their ears and voted this sorry example of a human in. No, they freak’n knew and the result is a not only something we are dealing with today but an example of how, when we refuse to own or acknowledge our ugly, the universe will call on the monster, the dark side and/or the ugly in spades, to open up a can of whoop ass on us.

Which is to say, there is a deep soul sickness in this country and throughout the world. It is unbearable to watch. The killing and maiming of children. The invasions, the destructions, the lives lost and displaced. The hideous disregard and smarmy grin of a fat, reckless moron who has access to the nuclear button. The endless, disgusting, tweets. The sheer buffoonery. The bloated narcissistic ego of a man that has nothing in his lens but himself. THAT, all of THAT, is who we have become or what we have allowed. At least some have and I really wonder how they are sleeping at night.

What I assume is there is a strange conversation going on in Washington these days. Conservatives and Republicans are likely meeting in dark corners (away from the prying eye and ears of the goon squad) to ask themselves what the hell is to be done. I assume evangelical Christians (and here I am not speaking of those who attempt to live by the gospels and but those who think wearing a cross around their neck so the media can see is the same as loving the neighbor as thyself), are asking themselves what they have unleashed. I even think certain members of the MAGA base (even as I will always doubt their capacity to think straight) are beginning to whisper impeachment if only to make room for the next wave of crazy. Mostly, however, I’m wondering if any of them, all of them, will get a spine and stand up to the ugly in themselves and thereby, with the Projection Holder in Chief.

Of course THAT is a tall order given that the ugly I am really talking about started about -Oooooooh I don’t know-about the moment we landed on this continent and started slaughtering native American, enslaving the stolen and indebted and living by the rules of privilege, hierarchy and manifest destiny (in one form or another), that has allowed for every crime against humanity since the beginning of time. Yeah, that ugly. Long and entrenched. Makes the head spin. Yep, we didn’t start the fire but we sure are burning up from it. Which reminds me, the Ruglach need to come out of the oven.

Sooooo, my darlings (or whomever is reading this) I have no answers. I’m just a wondering. Just trying to live a life that is not THAT. Attempting to live as far away from THAT as I can. Will the life of a householder come to anything? Does it change anything? Does ranting serve anything? Is it a cop out? Maybe. And yet, just for today, and as I roll out the thin dough to spread with home-made wild cherry jam (rich and heady from cherries I gleaned on my friend’s farm), finely chopped walnuts (which I buy in bulk every year in cracked shells from a farmer and his progeny out in Hillsdale)), and a bit of cinnamon sugar, I am thinking just how ugly the ugly has become and wondering if thems that are mostly responsible for his reign will finally ask themselves- My God, what have I done.

Peace out.

There is a generosity to this principle that I find difficult to uphold even as I believe it. Which, I suppose, is the reason for the path and Dharma teachings. They supply the bridge between conceptual understanding and actualization. The way to fuse one’s mind with one’s heart. It is also why i spend hours talking to my tooth and claw primal nature in an effort to uphold the secret sauce of human consciousness that has evolved to conceptualize selfless love.

Then again, perhaps selfless love is not an evolved state. Maybe it is primal. Maybe that is why motherhood or mothers are seen as the bellwether of compassion. Mother Mary, Mother Teresa, Mother Nature. A mother’s love fierce and unrelenting. A mother’s love that will sacrifice all things for their child. That will take on all missteps. That will hold endless compassion. Maybe, too, it is why we are shocked when mothers fail in this expression. Mothers who reject, disregard or abandon their children. It is against, we feel, our primal nature.

I understand this nature. Feel this nature. It is woven in-penetrably through my mind and heart. Inseparable, fused, undenied. Challenge my son’s well being and you will see my tooth and claw. Tiger mom, fierce and unrelenting. I suggest you do not challenge it. But can I extend this selfless love to others? That’s a Hell to the N to the O. Which is why I talk to myself. Everyone deserves happiness and who am I to decide what that means? Who am I to judge? That anyone can find a moment of peace and ease in this world is a miracle. The trenches are deep, muddy, flooded with the blood of human folly and, well, self righteousness. To each their own and best of luck.

And yet I am given to climbing the perch of moral high ground. “One just does not do such things” and “There is a right way and a wrong way”. I want to kick some ass. Yeah, tooth and claw. I want to get all primal on their ass.

I used to call this the Bronx in me. The “You talking to me” in me. Some got that attitude more than others. Some cultures more willing to indulge it. Some willing to speak their truth regardless of others in the room. Truth’s relativity respectfully acknowledged but dismissed as ‘cute” if not off base. We can be boorish guests taking over the room. Opinionated, off putting and taken off the xmas party list (as if we care by the way).

But this attitude does not serve us or me. Not really. It can and does cause the 2:00 am cold sweats of a troubled sleep. The counting and re-counting of crimes against humanity if not, more likely, against me. Can cause the sort of bitterness and self righteousness that holds vigil at the door of peace and ease. No access allowed.

Joined in this round robin of instincts is the notion that women have been silenced. That rage is cleansing, reasonable and about freak’n time. That being nice is sorely overrated and likely causes ulcers if not depression. That centuries of dismissal and marginalization has caused, finally, some fur to fly. Some “You talking to me?” some “Men tell me things” some “Not on my watch mother fucker”.

These, then, are at least a few of the voices I face off with in the morning on the cushion. Yeah, Buddha baby, try being a woman. Try knowing what you know and sticking that knowing back up your ass if only cause its a little untoward to say it. A little off putting And yet bitterness does me no good. It unsettles the very peace of mind and happiness I seek. Which makes this life, this peace, this responsibility to live well in the one beautiful life I have been given a sample box of chocolates. Some favorite selections while others a noxious mix of gooey undefined filling that would make a saint gag.

Which is where, I suppose, discernment comes in. Where knowing what to pick, what to avoid, what to see and call for what it is to say, triumphantly and without rancor, “No thank you, I think I’ll pass”. Where grace comes in. Where experience and wisdom comes in.

So like Mother or the Buddha might say (had he grown up in the Bronx that is) “Anybody can put a plate of shit in front of you but only you pick up the fork.”

Discernment, by hook, crook, tooth, claw and a bit of special sauce.

it reads:

“At the deepest level, my concern over the conditions of our global economy feels linked to that single-cell instinct towards adaptation. It feels connected to an ancient code instructing me to access the full functionality of my environment and make corrections where necessary. This is a primal pursuit; something borne of instinct. Our primal and instinctual selves are powerful. Had they not been we would have climbed out of the primordial soup onto a hot rock and perished. We would have stayed there, in hunger and heat, and never grown legs. We would have accepted the status quo and died. But the instinct to survive was, and is, strong. That is why the hot rock was not our final resting place and why our species flourished.”

Whether we have “flourished” as a species is open to debate but the chap book goes on to suggest that functional systems were synonymous with those that sustained life. And further, that sustainable systems (as we tend to speak of it these days) is less a human construct than a primal one with our failure to adhere to them our undoing. The culprit, as I posited it then, and now, are the competing agendas of human-designed systems. Systems that have challenged not only our planetary health but our happiness.

The pursuit of happiness was written in our Declaration of Independence and yet, at the time of its writing, we had already gone far afield from living with an eye towards environmental sustainability. Perhaps, as an evolutionary species, we had expanded our primal leanings. We became primates whose survival and “happiness” expanded to include hunting grounds, foraging fields and access to mating selection. I understand those markers as the force behind our ensuing territorial claims along with the threats, perceived or otherwise, of competing primates. We became tribes then armies supporting the formation of fiefdoms, monarchies, hierarchies and class systems. But most confounding to our collective “happiness” was the creation of religious origin stories in support of those claims.

When I am at my most generous I consider religion a psychological need. A bulwark against the transitory, relative and unknowable meaning of life. We are confounded by death. In fact, it has been suggested that the first sign of a religious ritual was found at a grave site. Primates grieving or just marking a passage. Here today, gone tomorrow. The existential drama.

When I am less generous I consider religion an outmoded and dangerous justification for primate indulgences. For territorial conquest despite the harm it does to anyone standing in our way. Manifest Destiny as the rallying cry long after the Declaration suggested all people’s rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Frankly, “in God we trust” could well be the most dangerous tag line there is. Consider the history and harm that has come with that trust. Consider it as it still exists today or is worn, as crosses on the necks of the inhumane, to justify acts of disregard. It is sheer hubris to cling to a narrative that belies the most defining rule of our successful primal evolution - environmental sustainability.

We have become a people so far removed from our primordial origins that today, in some backward glance, we happen upon sustainability again. We understand, now, what has become of the primordial soup. The poisons we have ladled into the mix. The poisons we are breathing, eating, drinking. We are once again on the Hot Rock and it is anyone’s guess if we have enough sense or primal instinct to grow legs or, as the case may be, a backbone. It is anyone’s guess if we can divert the environmental undoing that smarter minds than mine suggest is coming.

So yes, maybe it would be easier if I could believe or trust in a God but I do not. Will not. It appears as an abdication of my primal coding, my instinct to assess what the hell has happened to us and why. Which was the question I posed all those many years ago when I first wrote In Search of the Seamless. And it is the question I still wrestle with today even as i attempt to find some measure of responsibility for the territory I have inherited by hook or by crook.

It is a meager consolation attached, as it is, to centuries of ruthless invasions and primate indulgences. My “territory” and home a small blessing for which I am both gladdened and tormented by. Tormented by the cost so many have paid and the opportunity so many are yet denied. And yet there is nothing to do but hold on to the knowledge that to sustain life, to nurture and support it, is, and will always be, the key to our survival and that of the planet. Maybe even the path to our happiness and the Seamless I have been Searching for all these many years.

Ken Burns documentary on the American Revolution got my mind a spinning. I am not sure who the “we” in “We hold these truths to be self evident” was or, rather, if the self evident truths of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness was more about the pursuit than its actualization. Maybe the Declaration was simply an attempt to manage one person’s pursuit of happiness with another’s.

The challenge of course is with the concept of happiness itself. It is way too vague a concept to standardize. What serves my happiness may not serve another’s. It is the rare human who will put other people’s happiness before their own. Scowling will not do it. Better they come to it by themselves. Which was, as I considered the moral of the Burn’s documentary, what the Declaration of Independence hoped to do.

The Declaration was a sweeping edifice of our highest human values. A clarion call, an inspirational codex. But it ignored who humans really are or mainly are.

Humans are, at root, primates and as such seek what primates have always sought, access to territory, hunting grounds, foraging fields, shelter and mating selections. Each one protected by tooth and claw from invaders. Did those things suggest happiness to our primal selves? I’m not sure. The larger point is, no matter the cultural or social adaptations, we are still, mostly, driven by primal needs and desires. Deny them and you will still see tooth and claw. This is perhaps a reductionist perspective but worth considering no less.

If the better part of our DNA is defined by our primate genes it occurred to me that the only way the “founding father’s” could hem in our teeth baring primate selves was to A) acknowledge our inalienable right to be primates, (i.e. access to territory et al) while, B) rallying the primates to consider something greater than themselves. Something like the commons, the “we” and our higher instincts. Life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

If we are honest, however, all the high mindedness of the Declaration of Independence never allayed our primal instincts. It did not keep us from invading Native territory. Did not offer liberty for African Americans nor considered women deserving of independent rights. What it did do was rally the poor and misbegotten to give their lives for a new nation that would forget them in the end. To suggest, as we do, that creating a “more perfect union” is an ongoing task feels, mostly, like a cop out. Like a justification for our inability to confront our primal instincts.

It is not the offense of critical race theory that many on the Right object to but the suggestion that they might better face off with themselves or a history that shines a light on our pocked efforts to hem in our primal instincts. Instead they, and perhaps all of us, put the problem as something outside ourselves. There seems to be a smorgasbord of choices on that account.

Christians put the problem on original sin or the seven deadly ones. Jews on the failure to follow the laws of Moses. Moslems on a failure to adhere to Allah. Buddhist (my personal favorite) on the Ignorance of Emptiness and the notion that “we” or “I” does not really exist in the concrete way the ego suggests. Politicians put the problem on party affiliation. Republicans on Federal overreach, welfare moms and immigrants. Democrats on Republicans. Academics on the failure of our education system. Economist on an errors of fiscal management (at least those that opposes their own). Philosophers on ideological misalignments. Psychologist on early childhood trauma. Conspiracist on the deep state. Metaphysicians on, well, who the fuck knows - Aliens, lizard people, Ancient sea scrolls breaking down the truth of what’s really happening. Your guess is as good as mine. But everyone is looking for reasons why we have not been able to create a More Perfect Union.

While I am generally perplexed my sense is we are simply overcrowded primates going fucking crazy cause somewhere in our primal coding is the instinct to find “territory” and all that comes with it but are given, instead, high minded declarations.

Frankly I tire of all the political posturing. All the MAGA or Socialist posturing that imagines we can go back to a time of Greatness or when there was land enough for primates to settle on to, to hunt their territory, raise their crops, secure their shelter and care for their families and communities. A time before all the wars, incursions, refugees, migrations, displacements and hemming in. It will not happen and it would do us all good to acknowledge what has come in its stead (fill in the blanks). But the questions remains. Where is our territory, what is our territory and how shall we override our primal instincts in a way that holds everyone’s pursuit of happiness to heart?

This then is the nut of the matter. To harken back to the founding fathers and the Declaration of Independence as a way forward presents itself as frail to me. Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass about the founding fathers. They were, on whole, as disingenuous as today’s politicians. Slave holders, land speculators on Indian territory, betrayers of promises to those who fought for their cause. Better we consider how we will choose to live on this ever dwindling land mass and how we might make room for those who seek a bit of shelter from the coming storm. Cause if the wars that are raging today suggest anything it is that we will still fight tooth and claw (with all manner of modern weaponry) to either invade or defend territory.

Did I promise you a solution? I’m sorry. There is none, not really. Only, as i see it, to live gracefully and gratefully on the small bit of land you have taken to heart. That’s my pursuit of happiness but I won’t tell you want to do. Not this time at least. Better you come to it by yourself.

The challenge of course is with the concept of happiness itself. It is way too vague a concept to standardize. What serves my happiness may not serve another’s. And besides, folks hate moralizers. They hate being told what to think or do.

Being the primates that we are (my apologies to those who hold other origin stories), humans want dominion over their lives. Initially, perhaps, that meant access to territory, hunting grounds, foraging fields, shelter and mating selections. Did those things suggest happiness to our primal selves? I’m not sure. But no matter how obscure or relative “happiness” has become is less important than realizing humans don’t like being denied our right to its pursuit. Nope, that definitely does not make us happy. Rather it makes us bare our teeth and show our claws.

The problem is, as i see it, we human primates have run out of territory and despite centuries of social engineering and adaptation, it is still the matter at hand. This is perhaps a reductionist perspective but worth considering no less.

If the better part of our DNA is defined by our primate genes it occurred to me that the only way the “founding father’s” could hem in our teeth baring primate selves was to A) acknowledge our inalienable right to be primates, (i.e. access to territory et al) while, B) rallying the primates to consider something greater then themselves. Something like the commons, the “we” and our higher instincts. Life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

If we are honest, however, all the high mindedness of the Declaration of Independence never allayed our primal instincts. It did not keep us from invading Native territory. Did not offer liberty for African Americans nor consider women deserving of independent rights. What it did do was rally the poor and misbegotten to give their lives for a new nation that would forget them in the end. To suggest, as we do, that creating a “more perfect union” is an ongoing task feels, mostly, like a cop out. Like a justification for our inability to confront our primal instincts.

It is not the offense of critical race theory that many on the Right object to but the suggestion that they might better face off with themselves or a history that shines a light on our pocked efforts to hem in our primal instincts. Instead they, and perhaps all of us, put the problem as something outside ourselves. There seems to be a smorgasbord of choices on that account.

Christians put the problem on original sin or the seven deadly ones. Jews on the failure to follow the laws of Moses. Moslems on a failure to adhere to Allah. Buddhist (my personal favorite) on the Ignorance of Emptiness and the notion that “we” really exist in the concrete way ego allows. Politicians on party affiliation. Republicans on Federal overreach and welfare moms. Democrats on Republicans. Academics on the failure of our education system. Economist on an error of fiscal management. Philosophers on ideological misalignments. Psychologist on early childhood trauma. Conspiracist on the deep state. Metaphysicians on, well, who the fuck knows - Aliens, lizard people, Ancient sea scrolls breaking down the truth of what’s really happening. Your guess is as good as mine. But everyone is looking for reasons why we have not been able to create a More Perfect Union.

While I am generally perplexed my sense is we are simply overcrowded primates going fucking crazy cause somewhere in our primal coding is the instinct to find “territory” and all that comes with it but are given, instead, high minded declarations.

Frankly I tire of all the political posturing. All the MAGA or Socialist messaging that imagines we can go back to a time of Greatness or when there was land enough for primates to settle into, to hunt their territory, raise their crops, secure their shelter and care for their families and communities. A time before the all displacements and hemming in. It will not happen and it would do us all good to acknowledge that all that has come in its stead, (fill in the blanks) will do little to allay the conundrum facing us today.

But the questions remains. Where is our territory, what is our territory and what the hell is happiness?

What you think?

Maybe the decades of doing and making and caring for the people and places of one’s world requires staying light on your feet, requires staying attentive to the shoes that drop, the unexpected turns, the needs and concerns of those you have chosen or were born into. Maybe that is the price of engagement and love.

I am not complaining, I’ve had a full and amazing life. But these days I long for sunrises and sunsets. Big skies, startling stars and crystal clear waters. For mountains and pastures and wild flowers in bloom. To walk amid the breathless beauty of the Mother and to rest quiet in her embrace. In short, to turn down the volume on the human enterprise.

I have said this before. I’m not impressed. Maybe I’ve expected too much. Maybe I thought lessons should have been learnt. Maybe I thought one genocide was enough. But oh no. If we not a failed species exactly we are most certainly entrenched and stubborn. Maybe just stupid. Im not sure.

Yes, there are always the good ones, the inspired, the enlightened. Always the ones that speak truth to power and fight the good fight. Always the ones whose words cheer you on. But really, really, in taking the inventory, I think we humans come up short. Centuries of “love thy neighbor as thy self” has done little to put food on all our neighbors’ table or a roof over their head. Has done little to keep the waters from flooding their homes or fires from burning down the village. Has done little to keep the merciless bombings, ravaging, raping, maiming, hate, racism or forgetting at bay. Yeah, sure, Never Forget. I’m sick of the hypocrisy.

So now the question is where. Where exactly does one go? Where is that last unspoiled place where beauty and goodness reigns? Where can I rest by calm waters? Where I can turn in my membership to become ever more feral? Become deer or bird or moss on a stone?

Then again, will there be good coffee there? Will I enjoy the comfort of eider down on a cold morning? Will I walk out into tended gardens with budding flowers, fruit trees and hammocks for resting in the heat of the day? Will I have kitchens for cooking meals or putting up stores for the winter? Will I have books to read or talks with the ones I’ve chosen in life or were born into? Will I have someone to make me a cup of tea when I feel poorly or an ear when I am dismayed? Will I have the human and non-human community to grow old along side of? To be engaged with and to love? Will I miss them, it, all of it?

Yesterday I turned 72 and I am wondering.

I have been thinking a lot about intrinsic nature. The one that dwells within and the one that dwells without.

As a nascent Buddhist I am given to discovering my inner intrinsic nature but I’ve also got a clickity clack brain given to deconstructing this clickity clack Western culture of obstructions and illusions which can lead to some noisy mental wanderings. I do manage, on occasion, to quiet that runaway train but these days the clickty clack has been focusing on the intrinsic nature of nature without and/or what that might mean to the one within. There is reason enough to consider it.

Standing before my pantry I see all the bottles of product I’ve created over the years gathering dust. Things like lemon verbena plum jam, green nectarine pickle, spiced fig butter, green tomato chutney and so much more. My intention was good. It inspired a lifestyle, a path. Householding as a way of living. So trying to make good on the harvest deserves respect. But what do I really need or, rather, what does nature really want to offer me? What is the intrinsic nature of nature without and how does it relate to the one within?

These questions present themselves as I walk amid the splendiforous display of the harvest in the fields or on farmer’s market day. It’s a beautiful thing but like a Black Friday shopper, I reach for everything, want everything. Once home from field or market I unpack the booty and start what feels like my war plan. These berries (oh the many varieties) to become jam, juice, syrup or fresh eating. These cherries for pie; peaches for canning or freezing, corn to eat fresh or blanch for freezing, beans for fresh eating or pickling, cucumbers (later for fermenting), lettuce, eggplant, herbs, potatoes (new and later storage varieties) , onions, garlic (scapes and bulbs) cabbage for slaw and later for kraut and on and on and on. Of course written in the war plan is all the prepping. Peaches will not hop into the jar themselves. Ditto for all the rest. And yes, I’m an old war dog and know how to do it all but as it is with aging, I’m slowing down and picking my battles and, well, wondering if the tail is not wagging the dog. If, that is, the bounty is not turning me into a trick pony.

Even though I’ve written, taught and generally follow something I call the 45 ( a system for stocking your pantry and stores with a limited number of items inspired, in part, by indigenous and peasant food systems), I always forget or get drawn into the frenzy of the harvest which can feel like the “stirred waters” of a restless mind. Which is why I’ve been thinking about the relationship between the intrinsic inner and outer nature and how they either support or obstruct each other.

How does the multiplicity of the harvest mirror the multiplicity of this busy Western culture? How has it followed the edict of the marketplace with its dependence on consumerism? How has competition, economies of scale and all the special events farms depend on to make a living (if not a life), woven themselves into, or obscured, the intrinsic nature of nature? Woven themselves into me?

Which is why, when I should be meditating, I think about heirloom or ancient varieties of apples or wild cherries or dandelions or whatever, before agriculture (small, local or industrial) started tricking out and hybridizing nature and in the process removing a good portion of it’s intrinsic nature.

The motivation was not entirely false. Creating varieties sweeter or sturdier or better for storage, shipping and trade all came into play but those instincts were subtly woven into the culture at large. Building a better mousetrap became a modern mantra of the modern Western mind and today it is so complete, so ‘logical’ and accepted that imaging we can sit on the cushion and embrace the intrinsic nature within while the world is going hog wild removing the intrinsic nature of nature without is a bit challenging. At least to this clickty clack mind of mine.

My darling readers, I understand this is an esoteric consideration but do not fool yourself to imagine it is irrelevant. At least understand that attempting any Eastern practice in a Western culture is like mixing water and oil. It’s why every time we get off the cushion the noise starts pummeling us. Subtly, discreetly, invasively, everywhere. Politically, socially, personally, economically, spiritually and all points in between. Even when we cannot see or feel what is muddying the waters, the waters are still full of mud. Which is not to say I do not try to find those still moment only I am advised to leave Black Friday shopping to others and keep with my 45 as best as I am able. Particularly on these splendoriffic and sublime days of Summer when the riot of the harvest is in full bloom.

In other words….keep it simple.