A Spoonful of Goobers

Posted on June 16, 2013 by

My father loved peanuts.  Salted in the shell & generous shmears on saltines.  Spanish in the can were a special treat.  Peanut aroma dominates my memories of bedtime hugs, family camping trips to Dinkey Creek, Saturday afternoons around our SoCal pool.  My mother was constantly (with some exasperation) cleaning up random bits of peanut shell & skin from wherever Russell had most recently consumed his frequent legume feast.  This obsession didn’t translate into votes though – my father couldn’t abide Jimmy Carter even though he was the most famous peanut farmer since Thomas Jefferson.

When I was 11, I wrote a report about George Washington Carver.  There’s no doubt this was my father’s idea.  Even at that young age, this project was a revelation to me – both about people who’d survived slavery, & about Mr. GWCarver ‘s ability to be so incredibly dedicated to the potential of the lowly peanut & to the farmers whom he encouraged to grow this versatile little legume.

Arachis hypogaea, suspected to be native to northern South America but with close relatives (Bambara groundnuts) in Western Africa (more evidence of continental drift if you ask me…) is a very interesting kind of plant which starts growing its bean pods above ground then the pods droop down & finish up their seedpod development underground (wow…isn’t evolution fantastic?!…this plant survival strategy is called geocarpy by the way).  These peanut plants pack a lot of protein (about 25% by weight) into their nicely-sized-for-human-consumption seeds (a.k.a goober peas).  China leads the world in goober pea production (42% in 2009) & nearly half of  U.S. peanut production is in Georgia.

The other day I made a West African roasted cauliflower & carrot dish in honor of a Kasese, Uganda Friendship Delegation to our fair city (I know, Uganda’s in East Africa but this recipe looked yummy) – a key feature was a peanut tomato sauce & it was fantastic!  We never ate anything like this when I was 11 – I’m not sure my grilled-hamburger-&-green-beans dad would’ve appreciated using peanuts as a cooking ingredient…you never know though.

& what I really what to know is…do you, sometimes in the late evening, when maybe supper was a nice bowl of homemade soup, maybe you’re on your own & you’re trying to keep it simple & low-carb, do you (sometimes) feel the urge to grab a small, heirloom (just for fun) teaspoon & dip it into that almost empty Adams only-roasted-peanuts-&-salt jar of yummy peanut butter for a slow, satisfying slurp??  Uh huh…I know I’m not the only one.  No doubt, peanut butter (along with maple syrup) could be a gift from the gods (if there were any…but no need to go there at the moment…)

…anyhow!  Peanuts also give us peanut oil, a fundamental ingredient in Asian/Indian cooking, & sadly too, sometimes serious allergies, probably due to fungi.  My daughter Z’s nickname for our grandson is ‘Peanut’, paying homage to that sweet little newborn face peeping out from tightly-wrapped swaddling blankets.

Yeah, peanuts are a big part of my life & memories of my dad.  Enjoy that little spoonful of goober butter &, just this once, please – don’t feel guilty.

Posted in A Changing Planet, Humans Love Food!, Just an Everyday Life | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Dear Universe (Take 2):

Posted on June 10, 2013 by

Well isn’t that the way it is sometimes – you reach out to the universe &…nothing.  Not even an answering machine.  No chirpy message, “Hi there, this is God, sorry I’m not in at the moment but I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m able.”  Nope, just the big unfathomable Void.

(But at least this time the blogcall went through, right?  Take 1 was a test – it’s gratifying to know that some of you out there really read this stuff I post – thank you thank you. Ha, just kidding about the test: what happened is I was trying out the ‘QuickPress’ feature on WordPress, my blog website, & it was a little too quick…I hadn’t yet poured in any content but off it flew…aackk, where’s the undo key??  Too late – it was already making its way into that everyday void of the web.)

So, speaking of voids, I’ve been thinking about prayer.  Technically I guess, prayer involves some variety of god toward whom one directs one’s thoughts or pleas (as in, please god, help me [get better][survive this pain][get the job][etc.]).  Scientists have shown that various parts of our brains become active depending on the kind of prayer we’re engaged in – for example, if your method of prayer is ‘talking with god’, then the parts of your brain associated with language become more active…kind of like a free version of talk therapy.  If, instead, your prayer methodology is visualizing being one with the universe, the parts of your brain associated with vision will become more active – your own cosmic version of YouTube.

I don’t pray.  Or rather, I haven’t consciously prayed since I was a child.  NowIlaymedown tosleep praythelordmysoultokeep ifIdiebeforeIwake praythelordmysoultotake.  ”If I die before I wake”?! Whoa, that was some serious praying our Lutheran parents taught us.  But it was the subsequent godbless part that I paid attention to as I grew older (& didn’t have to say my prayers out loud): godblessmommy&daddy&linda&nancy& sandy&john&skipper[the dog] eventually evolved to include girlfriends who were mad at me (pleasegod make Gloria like me again), boys I had crushes on (these innocents will go unnamed), objects I coveted (pleasegod I really want a Mickey Mouse watch for Christmas), etc.  Did I expect God to answer my prayers & fulfill my desires?  Not really – as a general rule it seems those Lutherans had low expectations about God’s availability for their particular problems.  Was it helpful for me as a child to have this daily bedtime ritual? You bet.  Maybe I can figure out a way for my grandson to pray to the planets each night…hey, our ancestors already did that, didn’t they?  Maybe a prayer to Black Holes? (hmmm, not sure about that…)  Or maybe we can think about reinventing the term prayer to mean something other than human<->God communication?

As I moved into adolescence, it wasn’t the prayers that led me astray, it was just good old fashioned science (& we didn’t even know about bonobos & plate tectonics back then.) Also, I was increasingly disturbed by the apparent chasm between church & daily life.  Uh, still disturbed about that aspect of religion – any religion – & although my prayers have turned into meditation (with the objective of emptying the mind, not engaging it), I don’t regret hanging up on God.

To this day though, I do regret refusing to take my mother to church when she lived nearby – not even once while she was alive did I relent (- she drove herself & a two friends there every Sunday until the day she died).  At 83, she refused surgery for an unexpectedly severe heart attack & as she left us, she knew in her heart she was going to be with my father & with God.

I went to my mother’s church for the funeral.  I didn’t pray.

Posted in Just an Everyday Life, Our Primate Nature | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Gardening in Pajamas

Posted on June 4, 2013 by

Here in Santa Cruz – & in most of the west, actually – we’re in another drought year: we can water our garden before 10 am or after 5 pm.  I don’t have a drip system in the yard, so on many mornings these days, on my way to or from retrieving the newspapers in the driveway (yes we’re of that generation), I might pause to pull a few weeds or turn on the hose so my blossoming plants can have a little drink.

I’m usually in my pajamas (& no, I’m not making a fashion statement like some young gals in the neighborhood.)  You need to know that this is one of the benefits of not having to get up & go into the office for work…you can hang out as long as you want in your pj’s.  I know this isn’t only a benefit of being ‘retired’ – people who work at home can enjoy morning pj time too.  (Also, just so you know, I try to be in street clothes by at least 10:30…in case there’s an earthquake or something….)

Our front yard is screened from the street by seven ancient junipers which were here when we moved in 25 years ago.  Then, junipers grew all around the house – over the years, we’ve taken most of them out, but kept the ones in front for privacy.   It looks like a dark green wall.  I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, I’d prefer to have the front garden feel more open to the neighborhood, but on the other, our end of Live Oak Avenue functions as a parking lot for the apartments across the nearby street; those old junipers make them feel OK about parking in front of our home, & they make me feel OK about poking around the yard in my pj’s.

But you know – some days, I’d rather forgo the pj’s for work.  Not my days with Dante, of course, but on some of those other days when none of my myriad volunteer commitments is pressing, when the yard is looking overly groomed & friends are busy working, when I’ve already tried a (usually calming) walk & I just don’t want to sit around & read.  There’s something about that common sense of purpose & teamwork & feeling valued for it all that, some days, feels like a little hole in my life.  Just a little one.

In the meantime, there’s the draft EIR for the proposed desalination plant to read, leaky faucets to repair, Beatle songs to practice, wine to be bottled, Live Oak Neighbors walks to organize, low-cost trips to plan, laundry to fold, recipes to try, blogposts to write, primate evolution news to read, mah jongg to play, emails to respond to, sparkling sunny days & achingly beautiful sunsets to appreciate…life could be a lot worse, my dear.

Yeah, just another day in the life…(always) with a little help from the timeless Fab Four. Thank you, White Album Ensemble & Santa Cruz County Symphony, for a fantastic Strawberry Fields concert last Saturday.

Note to self: more dancing!

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Bonobos & Apatheists

Posted on May 27, 2013 by

I just finished Frans de Waal’s book “The Bonobo & the Atheist”.  The premise is that we derive our ‘community concern’, empathetic, altruistic & cooperative nature from our mammal & primate heritage, not from human-imagined religion.  Uh, duh.

An enthusiastic storyteller (‘My Life as a Toilet Frog’ is one chapter title), accomplished primatologist, artist, & Hieronymus Bosch aficionado, de Waal’s most recent, rambling take on the where-does-altruism-come-from/science v. religion debate reminds us that science is the new kid on the block, & that human belief systems have had much longer to take root & flourish, providing a key role in social cohesion along the way.  His bonobo stories are by far the best arguments for his point of view.

De Waal’s 1997 book “Bonobo, The Forgotten Ape“, produced together with amazing photography by de Waal’s countryman & Santa Cruz local Frans Lanting, re-invigorated my interest in primate evolution.  At that time, amidst a gathering storm in my work life, learning that there’s another chimp species out there (kinda like learning that you have a sibling or a cousin that you didn’t know about, & there are only three of you altogether) was both fantastic & shocking: how is it possible we hadn’t learned about these bonobos in anthropology class?  Why wasn’t this front page news??  It was another reminder that what we think we know changes every minute, just like the rest of life.

The endangered bonobos, who I’ve posted about earlier here & here, are our cousins as much as the more familiar chimpanzees; you can’t look at these photos of bonobos without feeling the kinship.  Some anthropologists think that bonobos are more representative of our ancestral primate species than chimpanzees; their homeland was separated from the rest of central tropical Africa (as well as from other chimp species & gorillas) by rivers less than 1 million years ago, essentially creating an ‘island’ species. While there doesn’t, yet, seem to be much evidence to back up that assertion, knowing bonobos are there – at least for now – sure helps me feel more magnanimous toward our own primate species.

So, back to the book.  While tending too much to blame the science defenders – whom he characterizes as ‘evangelical’ & ‘neo’ atheists - de Waal notes that mammal moms’ way of caring for their babies is ‘the most altruistic act of all’ & a ‘template for all the rest,’ – ‘almost too obvious for theoreticians to consider’.  Hard to argue with that.  He made me laugh though when he says ‘we barely notice the daily efforts on behalf of our progeny’…spoken like a true male primate!

& I learned a new word which I actually kind of like: ‘apatheist’ – a label for those of us who feel most comfortable understanding the world through the lens of science but who also acknowledge that what we think we know at this point in our evolution is not, uh, scripture.  E.g., I don’t feel the need any more to spend energy debating whether the Earth is 4.5 billion or 6000 years old.  On the other hand, we know we’re really just beginning our understanding of this home planet & (home?) universe we share with unimaginable suns; the deep satisfaction of this discovery process is what feeds me these days (…well, along with spending time with my family – mammal mom & grandmom that I am).

Anyhow, thank you, de Frans’s, for your deep empathy toward our bonobo & chimp cousins, & toward the challenges of understanding our human primate selves.  Empathy rules!

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Believing in Gravity

Posted on April 15, 2013 by

My latest meditation image is of the Sun viewed from about the location of Jupiter.  In my imagination-meditation, I see our home star as a bright speck, brighter than the other stars but clearly one of them, not owned or governed by us or anyone else.  I imagine Earth & the other inner planets as mere dust motes circling the Sun, barely visible (really, not at all visible, but hey, this is my imagination!), & definitely not in charge.  It’s only gravity that binds us to this star.

Gravity binds us to our planet, too.  Debates about evolution & morality & climate change aside, is there anyone out there who doesn’t ‘believe’ in gravity?  Please raise your hand…& please also notice the effort it takes to do that.  Gravity is one of the fundamental forces in the universe.  As with many of these forces of nature, we human primates take it for granted, but don’t have much of a grasp of why or how.  Mostly, we understand it metaphorically.

As in, the gravity of our current situation.  Random explosions in the east. Drought in the west.  Sunless days in the north.  Leaderless nights in the south.  The embracing weight of our (still admittedly limited) understanding of Life on this little dust mote of a planet circling our relatively small star in this vast & unimaginably complex universe…ah yes, a few moments of meditation can be helpful for humans.  & always, music…thank you John Mayer.

So here we are…near & distant starlight, familiar but mysterious gravity, known & imagined planets, fragile bits of life, love & suffering here on earth, unknown kin out there in the vastness…what’s a human primate to do but breathe?

“Just keep me where the light is…”

Posted in A Changing Planet, Just an Everyday Life, Our Primate Nature | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Poppy’s Playlist

Posted on March 19, 2013 by

I took a piano class last Friday night – R was out of town & I actually got myself out of the house & over to our beloved local community college for Todd Walker‘s famous workshop Piano Your Teachers Never Taught You.  Why did I do it?  I have a goal: to play When I’m 64 when I’m 64.

Like many boomers, I’d had a few piano lessons on the upright in the kitchen corner (way back when 64 seemed very far away), but it hadn’t stuck…couldn’t stand that metronome. In the 60′s I joined the throngs who gravitated to the guitar, visions of Peter, Paul & of course Mary dancing in our heads (& maybe Jimi Hendrix if you were of the male persuasion).  I love listening (& moving) to music (& singing out loud when I’m by myself or with the grandson), but those strings on my old guitar are rigid from disuse, & the cheap Casio keyboard sits sadly untouched.  I’d long ago given up on being a music-maker.

Those three hours with Mr. Walker happily got the concept of me-&-music-making moving to a different beat.

Here’s the basic concept: cultivate playing chords with the left hand.  Doing this apparently accomplishes the the most important work in music: it keeps the beat & defines the style & mood of the piece.  Wow.  I knew the role of chords from my girl scout guitar days, but – duh – I’d never thought to apply that to my keyboard in the corner.  (Apologies to all you musicians out there who already know about fake books & all of that…but better late than never, as they say…).

Music is something shared by all human primates & is seen by some as ‘one of the most primal & fundamental aspects of human culture‘.  Some scientists hypothesize that we sang before we talked, & that shared song & dance around the fire were part of our early bonding experience as humans.  The idea that only some of us are ‘music-makers’ is relatively recent – part of the continuing stratification of human culture.  Uh, not really our best foot forward, imho.

I’ve been awed though by my amazing ability to remember the words & tune of a song from some long ago era while other no-doubt-much-more-significant memories remain curiously buried…no doubt you’ve been amazed by yourself too!  This memory lock that music has on our brain can bring solace & comfort in old age.  At a memorial recently I was given a CD of favorite songs of the departed one…music can evoke deep emotions in life, & even from beyond the grave.

So call me morbid, but I’m already compiling my playlist.  Actually, playlistS: upbeat (for enthusiastic cooking, laundry, & party time); easy listening (for working, mah jongg & dinnertime); morning fog (for walking in same); & of course, quiet (for, well, all those other times).  When I’m old (hopefully older than 64), please load ‘em into my iPhone (or whatever it is called by then), hook me up with some good headphones (don’t forget the hearing aid), & put on your dancin’ shoes or get out of the way – I plan to be rocking my way into old age!

& just so you know, I even practiced a few left handed piano chords today, voluntarily, with my free metronome app.  Flexing fingers feels fabulous.

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Skyfall Happens

Posted on March 7, 2013 by

I happened to glance skyward during dinner on the outside deck @ Paradise Grill a few weeks ago & noticed a brilliant dropping blue flare in the western sky, thinking it was some kind of failed fireworks.  Turns out it was our very own Bay Area meteor, appearing on the same day as expected asteroid fly-by 2012 DA14, & real skyfall newsmaker: the dramatic & unexpected Chelyabinsk, Russia meteor.

Friday Feb. 15th seemed to be a major asteroid/meteor day on the home planet.  By now we all know that meteors are asteroids which enter the earth’s atmosphere.  Shooting stars – very small meteors – are what we see most often, & meteorites are skyfall that survives

This picture, captured a 1 a.m. on Dec. 14 in Saukeville, Wisconsin, was posted by Twitter user Susan Kim.

photo by Susan Kim

the searing trip through earth’s atmosphere, eventually laying around near meteor impact sites for excited humans to discover.  Scientists assure us there’s no connection between these three February 15th events, & that earth is constantly being bombarded by asteroids, most of which are tiny, burn-up during entry, &/or fall unobserved into the ocean (…71% of the earth’s surface being ocean, after all).

Asteroid contact with Earth is random & unavoidable.  It causes major extinctions (the most recent being Chicxulub, pronounced chick-zuh’-lub, 65 mya) & leaves huge holes in our landscape.  It happened unexpectedly last month & it will happen again.

If you count deaths, we were lucky this time – no humans died on February 15th due to these three asteroids.  But many people and other living creatures did die that day, and days before & after, in random & unpredictable circumstances that, with human hindsight, we will try to understand & explain.  We will ask ‘what-if’ and ‘why’ thousands of times, & we will move through the days attempting to craft our stories of what we saw & heard, what we think we know, what we thought we knew, how it has changed us, & if & how we can change anything to feel safer & more secure into the future.

I’d originally, a few weeks ago, entitled the draft of this post “Why I love Jupiter”, in appreciation of Jupiter’s huge role in encouraging asteroids to hang around their own neighborhood in the Asteroid Belt, just beyond Mars, rather than heading out on an 

independent journey around the Sun (& maybe someday, into a potentially disastrous - for us -rendezvous with Earth).  But then, mid-sentence it seemed, more randomness showered down, crises multiplied, daily life became heavier than usual, & now, here we are, again on a path of recovery & accommodation.

It seems to me that in light of these greater forces in the universe, safety & security are illusory.  Skyfall happens.  Nevertheless, human primates highly value the embrace of love & security, & we’re righteously thankful for those in our lives who help us feel that way.

- in honor of Jupiter, & of those whom we embrace and who embrace us in this circle of life.

Posted in A Changing Planet, Just an Everyday Life, Our Primate Nature | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments