The Casual Blog

January 30, 2010

Green smoothies

For the past few weeks, most mornings I’ve created a green smoothie for breakfast.  A green smoothie consists of a couple of cups of a fresh raw green leafy vegetable, a couple of cups of fresh fruit, and a cup or so of fruit juice mixed for a minute or so in the blender.  This morning I combined spinach, pineapple, blueberries, orange juice, cranberry juice, and soy milk.  It was shockingly green, but delicious.

Making the smoothies has been an adventure.  I’ve focused new attention on the leafy vegetables available at Whole Foods, and tried ones like kale,  collards and dandelion greens that I previously knew almost nothing about.  At the market I’ve sniffed and smelled various exotic fruits and learned how to deal with some of them, like pineapples, mangoes, and papayas.  I intentionally make each one with different proportions of juices and other ingredients, so each one is a little surprising.  My success ratio keeps improving.  Even the ones that turn out less well (sometimes they taste a bit too much like grass) involve some amount of satisfaction in the exercise of creativity and the knowledge that they are incredibly nutritious.

My relationship to food continues to evolve.  It has come a long way since my days as a beginner vegetarian about 15 years ago.  Recently I cut milk and seafood out of my normal rotation.   This is more consistent both with my personal ethics and with what I know of nutrition science.  And so I’ve reached a state that I would have thought of in years gone by as a true health nut.

Is it worth it?  Definitely, but not just for the obvious reason.  I feel very healthy, but after having seen various loved ones, friends, and colleagues battling cancer, I realize that some disease could strike me as well with sudden and brutal force no matter what I’m eating.   It is satisfying to be more consistent with my ethical principles of respect for animals, but I doubt I’ll ever achieve perfection beyond all question.

The most unexpected dividend of my plant based diet has been how much more sensually satisfying eating is.  The tastes and textures of plant food are unendingly varied and complex.  This approach to food leads to trying new foods and new restaurants.  It inspires experimentation and discovery.

Last night, for instance, we ate at Zely and Ritz, one of the most interesting restaurants in Raleigh, which is about two blocks from our place.  I ordered sweet potato gnocchi with rutabaga sauce.  I’ve never cared for sweet potatoes or rutabagas, but it was the dish they offered that was most consistent with my rules.  And it turned out to be very tasty.  I had no room left for dessert.

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January 16, 2010

The crucible of a massive earthquake in Haiti

Last week an earthquake hit Haiti with devastating force.  The destruction was so massive.  Airports, ports, roads, bridges, utilities, and communication networks were all shut down or disabled, and rescuers, aid workers, and journalists still cannot even see much of the area affected.  We know that the scale of death is huge, and the scale of suffering is enormous.  Reports yesterday said there had been 40,000 bodies recovered so far, and without food, water, or medical care, people will continue to die.

Disasters are natural crucibles.  They can reveal unexpected kindness and generosity.  At Red Hat, the population that insists on broadcasting company wide emails on their personal concerns is on an average day a minor but continual annoyance.  After the Haiti earthquake, though, there were many of those emails concerning how to contribute to charitable efforts effectively.  Many people everywhere pity the Haitians and wish they could help. For most Americans most of the time, if they think of Haiti at all, it is as a far away place of unfathomable poverty.  Some may be discovering, as I am, an unexpected feeling of solidarity, kinship, and shared sorrow with Haitians.

But disasters also expose character flaws and crazy ideas.  Pat Robertson, a well known religious TV personality, had this take on the Haitian earthquake:  that the Haitian people made a “pact with the devil.”  He was referring to Haitian slaves’ successful revolt at the end of the eighteenth century against their French rulers.  Robertson thus suggested that Haitian slavery was God’s will and that struggle against it was the work of Satin.  He implied that God personally gave the OK last week to kill tens of thousands of Haitians.  And God was justified in undertaking this slaughter based on the sins of ancestors several generations back.

To judge from press reports ridiculing Robertson, a great many people appreciate that such a view is morally demented.  But it does bring up in a starker-than-usual form difficult issue for religious people who are also concerned with ethics.  If  God is all knowing and all powerful, why would He trigger, or even permit, an earthquake to kill tens of thousands of innocent people?  Indeed, what possible justification could He have for the violent death of one innocent child?  Or for any of the other atrocities that we all see in the ordinary course of  life?  This line of questioning was really valuable to me in finding the courage to step off the path of conventional religious thinking.

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January 10, 2010

Frontiers of Terrorist Sociology

Why do individuals agree to strap on a bomb and blow themselves and others up?   The rhetoric of the “War on Terror” suggests that individual terrorists are soldiers, but such calculated self-destruction is not typical military behavior.  Indeed, it is so far outside the norms of any behavior I’ve encountered that it seems completely insane.  Yet it also seems increasingly commonplace.  A piece by Sarah Kershaw in today’s NY Times takes a quick survey of the state of research on this question.  http://tiny.cc/awmDM

No matter how much hatred an individual feels, it is difficult to explain the decision to kill unknown strangers and oneself.  The most intriguing perspective, I thought, was thinking of the terrorist less as an individual and more as part of a radical group.  The group’s self isolation allows for increasing radicalization.  The individual feels social pressure to conform to the group consensus.  Being part of the group allays feelings of loneliness and worthlessness.  A prospective bomber gains status once the decision made.  At the same time, the prospect of loss of face discourages changing one’s mind.

It was encouraging to learn that some radical terrorist recruits leave their organizations when they find the reality of  life in the groups is harsh and boring.  What can we do to stop creating more terrorists and get more of them to leave?

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January 10, 2010

Reading the Confessions of Nat Turner

One of the rewarding things about travel is the flip side of downtime:   having substantial chunks of time to read.   Once I’ve made it to my gate and found a spot to stow my roll, I look forward to the part of the journey when there is nothing physical that needs to be done, no problems that immediately need to be solved, and no talking that is strictly necessary.  For lovers of books, it’s an oasis.  And reading makes the time valuable.  I really don’t know how non-readers can stand airplanes.

During our travels over the holidays, I managed to finish William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, which gave a shot in the arm to my sometimes shaky faith in the importance of the novel.  Sally read the book long ago and kept it, and it has sat on our various bookshelves as long as we’ve been together (27+ now!).  During all that time, I had no idea it was such a great book.  It turns out Sally always thought it was a great book, but we never got around to discussing it.

The book is based on an actual person (Turner), a slave who led a bloody revolt in Virginia in 1831.  Styron explains in “afterword” essay that the historical record of Turner is slim, and that he consciously made a character different in important respects from what he believed about the historical Turner.  (The real Turner was apparently a psychotic religious fanatic, whereas Styron’s is a religiously inspired poetic and practical genius.)  Styron’s aim was to illuminate slavery and race relations during that period, and his own.  He succeeded brilliantly in bringing to light multiple dimensions and paradoxes of the Peculiar Institution.

It is certainly a beautiful book in its details and its sweep, but also a deeply painful.  There is, of course, the sickening cruelty of some individual slave owners.  (The narrator Turner concedes that there was a wide range of behavior among slave owners, and some of them were thoughtful and relatively kind.)  There is the pain of Turner and millions of others who endured forced servitude.  There’s also the deep pain is that our forefathers with knowledge and intent supported and defended slavery for generations.  The anti-black racism that continues to plague us is proof that this legacy is still with us.

The book is a powerful example of how a work of fiction can bring to light certain truths that cannot be illuminated any other way.  History in its conventional form is distrustful of imagination, which means that undocumented feelings and behaviors can be completely lost.  But combining historical research with imagination and literary skill, as Styron did, opens doors to the past.

Styron’s essay recounts the strange history of the book itself, which was initially a critical and popular success.  It then became the target of fierce attack by a number of prominent black scholars.   By Styron’s account (which is obviously self-interested), most of the attacks missed the larger points of his work.  In any case, the attacks effectively marginalized the book by discouraging the attention of black readers.  It is a sad irony that this great book that could easily have been an inspiration for more great historical and imaginative work and another bridge over a racial divide became a point of division.

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January 3, 2010

Skiing at Telluride with love and fear

We went to Telluride, CO lasts week in part because of it jagged mountainous beauty,in part to be together with Gabe and Jocelyn, and in no small part to ski.  The town is a repurposed Western mining town with squared-off storefronts and Queen Ann style houses, and has part of the vibe of  a college town, with a wholesome, natural charm.

The ski resort is famous for its rocky alpine beauty and high level of challenge.  The stats are impressive:  4,425 of vertical (3,845 served by lifts), base elevation 8,725, lift served elevation 12,570, maximum elevation 13,150, longest run 4.6 miles, 2,000 skiable acres.  The significant percentage slopes are classified as double black diamond, and a few double black slopes have the further warning EX, which stands for extreme.   The place gets about 300 inches of snow a year, and we had about 17 inches arrive in the middle of our stay.  It was extremely light — snow champagne.

Gabe led us on some substantial journeys down the double blacks.  We did one “hike to” — Genevieve — and felt we earned our turns.  In the deep fresh snow of our  last two days there , we did, among other runs, Dynamo (“EX”), Electra (“EX”), Genevieve again, the Rose, Apex Glade (3 times), Northern Chute, and Locals, the last of which is a fairly tight glade run that does not appear on the official trail map.  Sal and I also had memorably challenging runs down Allai’s Alley, Kant-Make-M, Mammoth, and Lower Plunge.

As we followed Gabe, I hoped he had not overestimated our experience level.    Hiking up Genevieve, Sal was heard to say “Holy God,” which appeared to relate not only to the beauty of the sheer walls around us, and the rigors of the hike, but also to the question whether the very steep and  narrow way down was going to kill us.  Skiing with Gabe, I was reminded that I was not 25 years old, but I also noted that I was skiing fantastic deep powder with new authority, which made me cheerier.  Sally also raised her game to a new level, taking on more mountain at higher speeds.

One afternoon we met up with Jocelyn and her friend Britt for lunch yesterday in Mountain Village.  At 1:00 pm every eatery was jammed, and there was no possibility of a seat inside.  Although it was too cold to take off hats and gloves, we ended up eating deli sandwiches at a table outside while it was snowing.  At least we had food.

We skied one run with Jocelyn after lunch, after which she said she was calling it a day for reasons of tiredness.  At dinner that night, she acknowledged that fear was a significant issue for her skiing.  I said that this is true for most people.  Those that end up loving it are those who overcome some of their fears.  But as Gabe noted, good skiers are continually seeking a new level of challenge, which means a new confrontations with fear.

It is one of the satisfactions of skiing to confront and overcome personal fears, but there’s much more to it than that.  At times it’s hard —  cold fingers and toes, weary thighs, fogged goggles, wind blowing snow.  But at times the struggles fade, and there is something pure and clean remaining.  On demanding slopes, there is no faking.  It’s time for truth.  Everything is in sharp focus.  There is kinetic harmony, turns perfectly suited for a particular stretch of rock and the snow, the human body synchronized with the moment, the season, and geologic time.

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December 31, 2009

Jocelyn’s latest epic journey

Last Saturday with much of the mid-section of the U.S. still in the grips of a devastating storm, Jocelyn, a new graduate of NCSU, loaded up the car with all her indefensible possessions and headed for Telluride, Colorado to start the next phase of her life.  She’d made the 30-plus hour drive to Telluride twice before, but never in the face of a storm.  We conferred on how to evaluate the danger and contingency planning, and then, with trepidation, I wished her good luck.  Sally and I left for our flight to Telluride a couple of hours before Jocelyn left, with our own travel anxieties, and no great confidence that our flight would either get into or out of Chicago.

Chicago was snowy, and the de-icing procedure was prolonged, but our flight made it, as did all of our luggage except for my skis.  Jocelyn and her friend Britt reported in every few hours that skies and roads were clear and they were steaming ahead. I tried to convey confidence and good cheer, and not to think of the many hazards of the road.  At about the halfway point, she reported that she’d arranged for a place to live located near the gondola in Telluride.

It was of course a sweet relief when she finally arrived Monday afternoon.  She and Britt, after little sleep and minimal food, were amazingly cheerful.  We went to a Mexican place for dinner and had margaritas, burritos, and a few too many corn chips.  Jocelyn said she would be seeing friends, renting skis, and starting the job hunt the next day.  My beautiful daughter is on her way.

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December 25, 2009

An Xmas Carol

As a nonbeliever, I feel a deep ambivalence about Christmas.  The customs and traditions are strongly evocative of a many happy episodes in my childhood — longed-for toys, rich food, friendship and love.  But it also evokes memories and feeling of sadness and loss for loved ones now gone, who were integral to those early years.

And I’m deeply ambivalent at the sweet and absurd idea of Santa Claus.  The red felt suit, the jolliness, the limitless generosity are all great ideas.  But even now, I feel a slight bitterness and chagrin that my normally reliable and credible parents, when I put the “Is he really real?” question  to them squarely, gave some type of yes and set me up to make a fool of myself in defending the existence of Santa to the neighborhood kids.  I trusted them to tell the truth!  There may be, as recent studies suggest, some value in Santa for developing children’s imaginative powers.  But for me, even years later, there was a cost in terms of injured trust.  My Mom’s solution was to let me read the old chestnut Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, which proposes to escape the problem of no Santa by redefining Santa as the Christmas spirit.  Really?

I know I’m not the only one with complicated feelings about Christmas.  Some love the shopping and the happy surprises, some love the story of the baby Jesus, some love being with family.  With all the pain and confusion in the world, I have no wish to add to the store without good reason.  I usually keep a low profile about my own irreligion, and especially so at Christmas time, when it seems that Christian beliefs are  for many on balance a source of joy.  But I don’t like flying under false colors, and I feel less than forthright when I say Merry Christmas.  There’s no problem with “merry,” but I don’t care to suggest I’m on board with the Christ part.  I usually go with “happy holidays” or something like that, but really, that just doesn’t sound as happy.  Yet another problem with no good solution.

Still, yesterday, after playing some really rich and beautiful music of Debussy, I found myself digging through the bottom of the music pile for my rarely used Xmas sheet music, and without any particular internal discussion I was soon playing through some favorite carols of my youth:  Angels We have Heard on High, Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Joy to the World, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and the Chipmunk Song.  It was a bit like Proust’s madeleine:  memories of family gatherings caroling, happy shopping, beginner band concerts, presents, vacations from schoolwork, trips to see grandparents, fresh smelling decorated trees, wrapping presents, and houses smelling of fresh-baked cookies hit me all at once.  I felt the pure childlike joy of Christmas.

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December 24, 2009

A scuba voyage of discovery

Sally and I got back late last night from a four-day trip to Ambergris Caye, Belize.  We accomplished our primary objective of scuba diving the beautiful coral reefs, and had several unexpected pleasures in addition.

Travel consumes a lot of physical and emotional resources.  Even when things are going well, they may at any moment suddenly stop going well and require swift and decisive action.  There are many ups and downs. I’ve gradually refined by baseline holiday travel model, so I usually remember to bring the essentials, anticipate the common annoyances, avoid the greatest risk of infectious diseases, and leave reasonable space for some relaxation and reflection.  Especially when travelling, I love my iPod and noise-canceling headphones.  Lately on the road, I’ve been listening to Mozart operas, which I find at once nourishing, comforting, and exhilarating, and I’m happy to have the time to listen.  I always carry at least a couple of books, and appreciate a chunk of uninterrupted time for reading.  But it isn’t completely relaxing; there’s always some residual vigilance.  I generally notice if the plane, or another passenger, starts making strange noises.  I always note the location of the nearest exit.

We flew from Belize City to Ambergris Caye in a single-engine plane in which I was able to read the pilot’s instruments (we flew at 2100 feet).  We stayed at the Mayan Princess, a clean, unfancy, and convenient hotel in San Pedro, a bustling little town with hotels, restaurants and bars along a narrow beach.  San Pedro has an interesting stew of cultures — Hispanic, English, Indian, West Indian, creole, and of course tourists from all over.  At first, I thought that everyone who greeted us in a friendly manner was hustling to sell something, but I soon figured out that that many people were just being friendly (though others were hustling).  The streets were narrow with few sidewalks, and at times we had to dodge heavy traffic of golf carts and minivan cabs.  We saw more people who seemed to be working for a living than we did tourists.  As Sally observed, the local vibe was very casual.  All the men’s shirt  tails were out.  The buildings were bright but many could have used a new coat of paint.  Over all, it seemed a little down at the heels, but full of life.

We did all our diving with Amigos del Mar, which was located about 50 yards from our room.  On the first and last diving days, we did short boat trips to local reef hot spots.  They did not disappoint.  The coral was abundant and varied, and the wall and canyon topography was fascinating.  We saw several nurse sharks at close hand, and at one point were in the midst of a dozen of them in a feeding frenzy.  Like many people, from long socialization I’ve inherited some fear of sharks, but very quickly I felt comfortable with the sharks swimming close enough to touch.  They seemed curious about us.  I suspect part of the explanation is that some dive operators feed them.   At least these particular sharks seemed a lot like our cats, except much bigger and with more teeth.  We also saw swimming green moray eels, sting rays, barricudas, a scorpion fish, and many gorgeous smaller species.  We also encountered a couple of lionfish, which are poisonous and highly destructive, and which our guide captured.

Our biggest adventure was a trip to the Blue Hole, a circular reef formation that is about 60 miles from Ambergris Caye.  On the trip out, it was drizzly and windy, and the seas were very choppy.  It was even choppier coming back, and we were wet.  All told, we had around 8 tough hours on the water.   We did not get sick, though others were not so fortunate.

The main draw of the Blue Hole is stalactite formations, which are about 130 feet down.  There was not much except the divers swimming at that depth.  We had better luck seeing fish at 60-80 feet at Half Moon Caye and West Point Wall at Long Caye.  At lunch time, we also visited an observation deck at tree top level where there were hundreds of roosting magnificent frigatebird pairs, with males displaying enormous bright red inflatable throats.  There were also many roosting red-footed boobies.

At dinner after the Blue Hole trip, I asked Sally to explain how it is possible that some people do not care for scuba diving.  Her theory was that it does not suffice simply to have a love of nature, the absence of certain phobias, and a modicum of courage.  As she said, you have to be a trooper.  Put another way, you must have some fortitude.  I suddenly realized that fortitude is a necessary but seldom discussed virtue that makes scuba, and other adventures, possible, and makes them richer.  WIthout fortitude, a significant part of the experience could be counted as unfun.  But developing and exercising fortitude is part of the satisfaction of the thing.

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December 12, 2009

Christmas gifts and losses

Shopping is not something I do for fun.  But with the hard deadline of Christmas looming, today I finally faced up to the inevitable:  I needed to focus on buying some presents.  It is hard to think that anyone in my present-buying orbit really needs any material thing that I might give, but tradition is powerful.  I braved the traffic, the lines, and the bewildering cornucopia of goods, and found some things at last.  Whew.

One thing I like about the fall and winter holidays is childhood memories.  How wonderful it was to look forward to a visit from Santa Claus!  What fun to see relatives and friends!   Ah, the sweets and smells of baking cookies!  It is hard, though, to think of those I loved who are gone.

As I slowly made my way through mall-oriented traffic, I heard an unusual radio story on NPR’s This American Life.   A man explained how his mother committed suicide at age 79 with the knowledge of her friends and family and with his support.  She was not depressed or terminally ill, though she was conscious of struggling with dementia.  She read Final Exit and composed a plan involving an overdose of sleeping pills and a plastic bag.  Then she practiced the technique repeatedly, with her son’s supervision.  The composing and carrying out of the plan took place over many years.

When she finally picked a day, she let those close to her know, and had final visits.  The last person she saw was her son.  She was concerned that he not be exposed to legal risk, and so he left her for some period while she carried out the plan.  He said that he was worried, when he returned, that she might have taken the pills but been unsuccessful.  She was, however, dead.  In recounting this, he was clearly moved and sorry she was gone, but he was neither critical nor admiring of her decision.  It was her decision, he said.  She lived life on her own terms.

The interviewer observed that it was highly unusual for people to be able to talk about death freely and deal with it with such directness.  The son noted that his mother spent time working on it, and it got easier.  They also discussed how unfortunate it was that our legal system makes it impossible for persons who choose the terms of their death to be with family at the end.

I found all this both unsettling and encouraging.  It would be good to be as comfortable with death as with other fundamental facts of human existence.  I’m certainly not there yet.  But it sounded like the mother, and to some extent the son, made it.

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December 6, 2009

The China Study Shows Why We Should Eat Plants

Anyone who is interested in health and nutrition should read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell.  http://tiny.cc/rnQye The Campbells bring good news and bad news.  The good news is that by changing our diet, we can dramatically improve our risk profile for the deadliest diseases in the developed world.  The bad news is that if we continue eating a normal American diet, we will continue to increase our risk of cancer, heart disease, obesity, and other killers.

The basic message of The China Study is simple:  a plant-based diet is much healthier than an animal-based diet.  The book backs up this claim with abundant scientific research.  The China study of the title was a huge epidemiological study of diet and health, but a number of other studies cited.  What is striking is the coherence of the results over time and different populations.  There is massive support for the proposition that eating animals and their products as food is bad for us.

Admittedly, as a vegetarian I was particularly open to this message, but my reasons for adopting this diet were primarily ethical rather than nutritional.  If the Campbells are right about the science, and we want to take reasonably good care of our health, we need to find a way to quit eating animal-based food.

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