Not a Crying Shame

Posted on May 5, 2012 by liveoaklinda

I confess to crying.  I (nearly) always feel (at least a little & sometimes alot) better afterwards.  I find it interesting too that, without thinking, I use the word “confess”, as if crying is something to be ashamed of.  Most of time it does seem like we adults can & do make a decision to not cry, depending on the context of our emotional or physical pain; according to the research, though, the human ability to cry is likely to be healthy, to reduce the negative physical consequences of emotional stress, & to contribute to human bonding.

As far as we know, humans are the only mammals who cry emotional tears.  It’s still kind of a mystery why, although there are theories & other sorts of research & informed commentary out there which link emotional crying with hormonal & endorphin release.  We women cry about four times as often as men (although that ratio seems low to me – maybe the guys cry alone & we don’t know about it?).  Women have 60% more of the hormone prolactin, which is indicated in lactation and ability/need of females to cry more often than males.  Females & males cry at about the same rate until we reach school age, and then again when we’re old, which supports the notion of hormonal influence.  Social pressure and responsiveness to crying also influences our tendency to let the tears fall as and when they may (…or not).

Recent research also indicates that tears can cause reduced male sexual arousal (no wonder the guys don’t want to go to those chick flicks with us).  Other recent research links increased levels of prolactin and reduced levels of testosterone with positive male nurturing behaviors.

No doubt, there’s alot to cry about out there – world affairs, being human, grief, anger, hurt & pain, joy even!  I permanently stopped wearing eye make-up & ended up with chronic sinusitis after our younger daughter died eight years ago & I left my job of 19 years.  Ergo, I’ve become very familiar with how my body feels when it needs the release of a good cry, and if circumstances allow (there’s that conscious decision-making process again), I do. Usually, I’m not ashamed of it.  You shouldn’t be either.

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What Is It About Meat??

Posted on April 28, 2012 by liveoaklinda

Husband Rock is in the kitchen cooking three pounds of pork for a stew to deliver to a co-worker who lost her husband unexpectedly.  Sigh.  I suggest that he turn on the stove fan, though, because the delicious smell is overwhelming my meat-craving receptors.  I’m hoping we can keep a little for ourselves, selfish animal that I am.

So what it is about meat?  

Well, it’s probably ‘in our genes’.  I know there are many humans who, via necessity or choice, do not eat meat, or red meat, or pork, or fish, or anything with eyes, or anything produced by anything with eyes, etc…that’s the beauty of human consciousness – sometimes we really do have a choice.  But for most of us, who can & do eat meat, the anticipation of it’s taste can be seductive, cooked-over-the-fire ‘cuts’ are especially delicious, & the more fat the better.  Our hominin ancestors seriously started eating meat about 2.5 million years ago.  Before then, there’s strong evidence that their main diet consisted of fruits, leaves and tubers, maybe small animals as they could catch them, & maybe shellfish if they lived near the sea.

Anthropologists have developed many narratives about the relationship between early humans’ increased meat consumption and a generally concurrent increase in average brain size – some of these theories are in disrepute due to their emphasis on the role of meat, &/or the assumed exclusive role of males in obtaining & controlling the supply of meat, &/or the exclusive role that meat & males played in the development of tools, increasing hominin brain size, & the enhancement of social group behaviors.  For now, let’s just try to separate meat from males (putting aside the allure of barbecue for the guys) & try to picture what access to edible meat offered to our ancestors.

As I understand it, the generally-accepted meat theory goes like this: our primate ancestors of 2.5 million years ago probably first scavenged meat which had been killed & already mostly eaten up by other animals, or meat from animals which had died of natural causes.  This jolt of protein helped increase their daily caloric intake vis a vis the energy it took for them to find & eat it, which helped them live on to keep digging roots & foraging fruit for a few more months.

Over time (many generations), they sought out these opportunities.  They found things lying around (sharp rocks) which could help them scrape raw meat off bones.  They figured out that the stuff lodged in the bones was pretty tasty too.  Females shared this rich protein source with their children (& also kept digging those roots & gathering plants for the daily meal, maybe with the help of discarded animal horns or sticks).  Males may have shared meat with females with whom they wanted to have sex.  The higher protein-to-energy-output ratio helped feed their slowly (over tens of thousands of years) growing brains (the human brain now consumes about 25% of the calories we eat).  They got better at finding & eventually making stone tools to get more meat off & out of those bones.  In time, they figured out ways to kill larger animals, rather than just scavenge them, for the delectable bursts of protein that meat provided.  Life went on with more & more food options for these various kinds of early humans, which helped with their survival & eventually turned them into full-blown omnivores.

Ergo, I accept that I’m an omnivore.  I’m even happy to be an omnivore!  Modern culture & processed food aside (more on that later), our human bodies seem to do best with a variety of foods, cooked & raw.  Do some of us eat too much meat? – no doubt about it.  We eat too much, period.  But imho, meat isn’t the culprit.  Honor those fellow creatures who provide us with meat.

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Don’t Wait ’til Mother’s Day!

Posted on April 26, 2012 by liveoaklinda

The ads are starting to appear.  You may be becoming a little anxious about what you’re going to do to appreciate this woman – this female primate – who birthed you.  Some of us must honor her in absentia…gone from our lives due to un-proximity, death, alienation – so many reasons.  Mine’s gone – she lived 83 years & there are so many questions I still long to ask her.  Ask now, don’t wait.  Even if you know you’ll never get an answer, or maybe not the answer you hope for.

And please don’t wait until Mother’s Day to call or visit her!  This woman – for all of your mixed feelings about your relationship with her and how she raised you, how she lives or lived her life, the mate/s she chose & the other children she bore – this woman held you as the love of her life when you were born.  We humans are born pretty helpless, unlike most mammals.  Our mothers, & fathers if we’re lucky, & siblings & grandmas & other family members if we’re lucky, fed us & loved us & carried us around for a long time before we were able to do much by ourselves.  Then, those first moments of smiling made all the difference in the world – the exhaustion & pain & angst of wondering-if-our-lives-were-ever-going-to-be-the-same (um, no…) faded away when you smiled.

Yes we all know that no mother is perfect – we’re just animals like the rest, doing our best on this journey we happened upon through the randomness of life on earth.  It’s hard though to not feel that we’re responsible for these lives that we spawned (with the input of our mates, of course).  Well, we are & we aren’t…it’s all part of that nature&nurture conundrum.

As hard as it has been (& still is, sometimes) to be a mother, it’s harder to imagine not having been one.  Being a grandmother now feels like a totally unexpected, unbelievably delightful reward.  Being closer now to our 30-something daughter feels like it was so worth all those sleepless nights.  This really is an amazing (sniff, big breath, cute cats, &…uh, Elton John music) Circle of Life.

So, please, call her today if you can.  Send her a love note.  If your mom’s not around, honor someone else’s.  Don’t wait for Mother’s Day.

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Can We Please Rename Homo Erectus?

Posted on April 23, 2012 by liveoaklinda

I hope this won’t be too much of a rant, because I really appreciate the role that those homo erectus folks played in our evolution.  They not only migrated from Africa all the way to eastern Asia and parts of the Middle East nearly 2 million years ago, but, as far as we can tell, they figured out how to effectively use stone tools, they taught their children & others how to use them, they figured out how to keep the fire going, they started preserving & cooking food, & they lived in small, cooperative groups  – all of which enhanced their chances of surviving the unknowns they faced in these new environments. These folks seem alot like us – or at least alot like how humans lived for thousands of years.

I’m using the term homo erectus here as a generalization of a group of now-variously-classified early hominin species which start to appear in the fossil record a little more than 2 mya.  These primates had longer legs than their australopithicine ancestors (see my last post), which significantly increased the efficiency of their two-legged, bipedal mode of walking; they were about our size and stature; and their arms and hands were no longer about swinging through the trees, but rather about dexterity and adaptability.  There’s also evidence that they cared for members of their group who were old &/or weak (yeah, that resonates…).  These various kinds of homo erectus are the longest-living species on the human family tree – their kind lived ten times longer than our human primate species has survived (so far).

So I just wanna ask – where are the homo erectus dolls?  Where are the action figures? Where are the storybooks, games & dvd’s?  OK, I found a National Lampoon movie, a Kinky Friedman song, & a bunch videos which are either informative but dull, in Spanish, or…well, see my point below.  Really, is that all we have to show for our debt to this incredibly successful early homo species from whom we are all – generally speaking – descended?  There’s no shortage of dinosaur paraphernalia & they’re just the ancient ancestors of birds!  It’s shameful.  How can we have been so blind to this problem?

It’s all in the name!  I know I know, homo is Latin for ‘man’ & erectus is Latin for ‘upright’, & for some reason scientists feel like its important to hang onto the tradition of naming everything under the sun in that old, not-spoken-by-anyone-anymore European language. But we need to understand the consequences here: no one would give their child or anyone else’s child anything with the name ‘homo erectus’.

So here’s the challenge:  let’s think of a new, common name for these folks (though cave man or The Flintstones probably isn’t what we’re looking for at this point).  Let’s popularize the current general agreement among scientists about what they looked like & how they spent their daily lives.  Maybe someone will then be inspired to make a fun & warmly engaging video (with a cute cat) about their adventures 2 million years ago as they moved north and east along the coast of Africa and Asia, & maybe it will go viral on YouTube!  It could spawn a whole new generation of happy meals.  It’s gotta happen.

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The Walking Primate

Posted on April 17, 2012 by liveoaklinda

I sometimes say that walking saved my life.  That’s not the literal truth, but there were many days when it felt like that.  Conversely, there were days when even walking around the grocery store felt like an impossibly painful chore due to hip osteoarthritis.  My pain-free walks these days are a result of access to good health insurance & the 120+ year history of successful hip replacement surgery.

Most of our ancient primate ancestors didn’t live long enough to experience extreme osteoarthritis, although there’s some evidence that even dinosaurs had this common joint ailment. But walking did possibly save our ancestors’ life.

We are the walking primate.  Scientists pretty much agree that the evolution of bipedalism in our ancestor primates between 4-7 million years ago (mya) set the stage for all the other anatomical changes that eventually led to us. According to Steven Jay Gould, bipedalism was “the prime trigger of human evolution.”  Scientists also generally agree that climate change and a high degree of environmental instability during that time was a key factor which urged more of our tree-loving ancestors to get around more often by walking on their hind legs, in addition to, for a while, continuing to use their long arms for moving through the forest.  Over these 3 or so million years, responding to many varied factors – including the acknowledged energy efficiency of bipedalism – these primates’ hind limbs & feet evolved into the hips, legs, & full-weight-bearing feet of australopithecines, our walking primate ancestors of about 2-4 mya, who differed from their tree-dwelling cousins primarily in their ability to survive & find food from a larger, more varied, & probably challenging territory.

Using those newly-evolved hips & feet, over time our ancient ancestors probably experienced how handy it was to be standing upright – appearing larger to predators, seeing further ahead – & having those other two ‘feet’ freed up to do other things…carry fruit, carry children, pick edible plants along the way…all factors which probably favored their survival into a next generation of walking primates.  According to some, changes to these primates’ anatomy due to walking also may have changed incentives for sex and sharing.  There were a number of different kinds of australopithicines and scientists keep discovering more, which keeps the story interesting! All of these kinds of walking primates eventually became extinct, but some managed to survive long enough to evolve into other species – similar to the fate of many other living creatures.

This very skimpy summary of millions of years of primate evolution would no doubt seem pedestrian to most scientists.  I really appreciate that scientists who spend their lives studying the details of evolutionary biology often construct, based on their analysis of the facts, their particular narrative about the details of human evolution; I enjoy these stories & each one seems plausible.  We’ll probably never know the whole story though, because it was so long ago that these evolutionary changes took place.  But there’s no doubt that walking on two legs was key to how our kind of primate came about.

More to come about our more recent ancestor primates – homo erectus.  They really got into the walking thing…about 2 million years ago some of them walked right out of Africa into ancient Asia & then eventually into Europe!

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Practicing the Everyday

Posted on April 13, 2012 by liveoaklinda

Just in case it isn’t obvious, one of the reasons I’m writing this blog is to share my practice of being present in everyday life.  Like most of us, I’ve spent many years not exactly in this mode – in fact, pretty far from it, except perhaps when I was spending relaxed time with our children when they (& we) were young.

Lucky for me, I have more time now to be able to try to pay attention, to go more deeply into aspects of our everyday lives, & to share some things I’ve loved learning about our old earth and the short life we each have on it.  And I’m incredibly thankful to have a grandchild to help me with this.

Living with the understanding that we humans (for better or worse) are not much more than thinking & walking primates – and, amazingly, genetically connected all life on earth – has been immensely helpful in my ability to feel grounded on this planet.  My life, similar to the lives of many of us, has yielded unfathomable sadness and also tremendous joy.  This is not karma.  This is not what I deserve or don’t deserve.  Life just happens, & the randomness of evolution has meant that as a human primate, I (generally speaking) have more awareness of this life than other creatures.  This is a blessing and a curse…as the saying goes.

I’m not into religiosity.  But among many humans who have been helpful for me on this path, I feel deep appreciation for Pema Chödrön.  Even though she’s a Buddhist, I’ve found her wisdom to be right on target with my world view.  My favorite book of hers is Comfortable With Uncertainty, which I like much more that When Things Fall Apart, even though the later is more well known.

Here’s a quote from the former, in the reading “The Heart of Everyday Life”:

“Bodhichitta [the awakened heart of loving-kindness and compassion] is available in moments of caring for things, when we clean our glasses or brush our hair.  It’s available in moments of appreciation, when we notice the blue sky or pause and listen to the rain.  It’s available in moments of gratitude, when we recall a kindness or recognize another person’s courage.  It’s available in music and dance, in art, and in poetry.  Whenever we let go of holding on to ourselves and look at the world around us, whenever we connect with sorrow, whenever we connect with joy, whenever we drop our resentment and complaint, in those moments bodhichitta is here.”

In spite of it all, I’m thankful to be a human primate.

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Soup Afternoons, Soup Nites

Posted on April 10, 2012 by liveoaklinda

There are some afternoons I just have to make soup.  Like today’s drippy afternoon – the grandson still napping, the hen & I cooped up (no no, not together!), last week’s CSA roots in the fridge.  & turnips…how can I work that huge turnip into a soup?

 This is the fun part: going onto the web & searching ingredients I have on hand.  I know, everyone (who uses computers & cooks) does this – thank you Web!  I don’t usually end up using any one recipe, but rather gather ideas about what works together, and with what herbs & spices, etc.  There are so many terrific cooks out there & I always learn something new from them – thanks gals (& a few guys).

General concepts in hand, I then get to work. I’m lucky to have a partner who invariably appreciates my culinary efforts, because sometimes this approach is wildly successful, and, as all cooks know, sometimes – uh well, hopefully the leftovers aren’t too voluminous. Today, the soup ended up being roots, including that turnip, & white beans with prepared Ethiopian berbere seasoning, which I’d tried to make in past but which I today luckily had on hand, having discovered a package recently at Shopper’s Corner.

Human primates have been making soup for about 8,000 years…ever since they/we figured out how to make containers which could hold & heat water, roots, leafy stuff, leftover meat bones, etc.  It probably didn’t take them too long to figure out that soup is Mmm Mmm good.  One thing I’ve noticed about soup though is that it often doesn’t look very appetizing; ergo, I’m not showing you a photo of today’s creation even though it turned out to be pretty flavorful (in spite of the turnip? because of the turnip?).  This visual shortcoming of soup is one reason I always appreciated the efforts of my in-laws around the weekly Pfoty Pfamily Soup Nite, a regular Tuesday evening family supper at the ancestral home in Soquel, California.

Week after week, year after year, Jean & Paul made at least two kinds of lovely-looking soup each Tuesday night for their hard-working middle-aged children and spouses, teenage grandchildren, random neighbors, & any friends we might want to bring along.  Show up when you can, eat & chat or eat & run (I admit to mostly doing the latter) – it was a gift of soup-love for this large, somewhat amorphous family of nine, many of whom still live in the central coast area.  Our own family very gratefully enjoyed this tradition throughout its nearly two-decade run.

The great-grandPfolks are now in their mid-80’s & son Pete is the Soquel soup-maker; some of us are retired (well, me & the firefighter), most are still working (all the rest), there’s one great-grandchild (our grandson Dante), & family soup nites are understandably less often. It was a worthy and grounding tradition, & I highly recommend it for families who are able, wherever you may be.

Thanks Jean & Paul – maybe someday I can figure out how to make those soups look as wonderfully fresh & appetizing as your Soup Nite versions.

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Mighty Dust & Dusty Mites

Posted on April 8, 2012 by liveoaklinda

Scientific American is my favored bedtime reading.  The only drawback to this habit is when articles about climate change cause insomnia.  This is not an infrequent occurrence, as SA is very diligent about beating the climate change drum & I’m listening carefully.

dust storms over baja california. photo courtesy of nasa

A recent article by Jeffrey Bartholet about dust was one of these occasions. I’d read Timothy Egan’s book The Worst Hard Time & heard about the debilitating ‘haboob‘ dust storms in Arizona last summer, but the idea that dust from Africa “is responsible for 75-80% of the dust that falls over Florida” and for the “fertility of the Amazon”   was a new concept for me.

It turns out that atmospheric dust -how & where it moves from & to – is a key factor in the earth’s climate, but one that scientists are just beginning to understand.  Dust affects how clouds form, & clouds in turn affect precipitation & regulation of earth’s temperature due to their reflective properties.  Huge clouds of dust are moving around the earth all the time – one region’s desert is another’s fertile soil.  It’s not at all clear what the relationship is between periods of more or less dust and climate change.  What does seem clear, though, is that our awareness of the nature and role of airborne dust will become more important into the future.

Which brings me to a footnote about household dust mites – another cause of insomnia, but this time from the opposite end of the dust spectrum.  The results of the digestive processes of these charming creatures are a common cause of rhinitis & other allergic symptoms, of which I am a long-time sufferer.  They live in human abodes everywhere in the world, and are particularly well adapted to a meal of shed flakes of human skin. Yum.  Better get used to it…seems like we humans are in a long-term relationship with household dust mites.

So – dust.  It’s not just one of those annoying things we need to wipe off our window blinds. Like most things, its more complicated than that.  As Robert J. Swap, co-author of early thinking about African dust, noted, “We need to honor the complexity of nature.”

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Eating Mexican Food on St. Patrick’s Day

Posted on April 5, 2012 by liveoaklinda

…Frozen Mexican food even – Amy’s organic cheese enchiladas, to be specific (highly embarrassing, I agree).  And it’s a Saturday night to boot.  Of course, I have visions that everyone else in the world (well at least in the neighborhood) is out partying & laughing & drinking too much Guinness.  My husband (yes, I have one) is up in Boulder Creek tonight babysitting our 2-1/2 year old grandson (& yes, isn’t that great!) so that our daughter & partner can get out to enjoy their holiday beer together with the other social animals.  I’m sitting here at the computer seeing what it might be like to write a blog post.  I did have a very nice lunch out with a girlfriend today so I’m not feeling that deprived.  Still.

Being a California mongrel, I’m sure there’s some Irish “blood” in me somewhere.  I don’t really seem to have the beer lover gene, although there’s strong evidence many of us do. Humans started making beer at the same time as we started growing wheat grain – about 10,000 years ago in the Middle East.  Beer is the human primate’s third most popular beverage of choice – only water & tea are swallowed more often.  As the #1 rated alcoholic drink, beer doesn’t take too long to make & the alcohol content is relatively low (4-6%) so you can drink a lot of it before feeling inebriated (depending on your height/weight ratio of course).

Here are some great beer facts.  Maybe I’ll see you at Rosie McCann’s next year!

[ps., This was my first, test post, written on – you guess it – St. Patrick’s Day (March 17, 2012).  I like the photo (by defekto, 2005) & the link, so decided to post belatedly, in honor of beer lovers worldwide.]

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Fish on the Ceiling, Fish on the Plate

Posted on April 2, 2012 by liveoaklinda

I love that we are related to fish.

Fish are kind of an art theme in our home.  Years ago, I made a random online bid for a trio of ceramic fish as part of a fundraiser for the Planning & Conservation League.  I ended up with three wonderful, large art fish which I somewhat dubiously installed outside on the backyard garden fence, on the wall in our bathroom, & on the ceiling in our living room.  I know, the ceiling idea was pretty random, but now I can’t imagine our home without it. Let’s put more art on the ceiling!  As they were growing up, we were known among our daughters’ buddies as ‘the house with the fish on the ceiling’.  I guess there are worse associations for your kids’ friends.

These days we’re part of a ‘Community Supported Seafood’ group which provides us with yummy sustainably-caught fish every week (for the plate, not the ceiling). I found this excellent 2011 editorial “Let Us Eat Fish” & a subsequent (as-remarked-upon-as-remarkably) ‘civil’ discussion between an amazing group of marine scientists about sustainable fishing in the U.S. & worldwide.  The main themes of these links are how ocean-caught fish rates as sustainable vis a vis eating other kinds of protein – meats, chicken, beans, etc., and then moves into the larger themes of how does eating fish fit into worldwide concerns about being able to feed everyone into the future with earth’s finite resources.  Because I love fish, I’ve decided it makes sense to side with those whose research has shown that eating sustainably-caught fish is good for us (..not that that’s a 100% scientific reason, but I’m a hungry primate).

Love, and enjoy, our ancestors!

Image by Yuko Shimizu via the New York Times

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