How to Cook Good Things Good: Salmon

Here's the truth about how I cook: I love recipes, but on weeknights I rarely follow them. Most of the time I just make something naturally tasty and healthy in a very simple way and leave it at that. Jo Robinson's new book, Eating on the Wild Side, is a great resource for foods to focus on. I also like Marion Nestle's What to Eat.

I've got a handful of staples in my wheelhouse, and once I find a way of cooking something that pleases me, I stick to it. A few sweet potatoes, divided into wedges and roasted. A bunch of kale. A beautiful piece of salmon, poached.

This approach makes cooking daily much more approachable-- no directions to follow, no extra ingredients to assemble. All I need to do is master the technique once, and I can use it indefinitely.

Poaching is a great fallback for salmon because it's forgiving, deliciously silky, and takes 10 minutes from the start to finish. You can roast salmon, you can pan sear it, you can make it into burgers. I've done all those things. But this is my fave; I never get tired of it.

Steps:

1. Set a large, shallow pan on the stove, adding  2 C water,  1/2 C white wine and a teaspoon of salt. You don't need to add anything else, but this time I also threw in a twist of lemon rind a sprig of parsley. Peppercorns, cloves, caraway seeds, garlic, orange rind or other fresh herbs would also be great. Up to you.

2.  Bring the liquid to a simmer and place the salmon in the pan. You might have to cut it into two piece to make it fit. It's ok if it's not totally submerged. Cover the pan.

3. Let the salmon cook for five minutes. Remove to a platter (I usually use a pancake flipper).

That's it. Now you can eat. A dollop of yogurt or a drizzle of good olive oil is yummy, but if you've got good fish, it's gonna taste great.

Best Ever: Back to School Haircut Edition

It's the first week of school, ya'll. And that's... a thing that is happening.  I love meeting my new students, love sharing ideas about writing and reading, love my colleagues. But I love summer too. I love my arts and crafts. I love the farmer's market. And I love sleep.

I realized today that Wednesday marked my 23rd First Day of School. As a kid, that meant my best friend Rachel and I got to go to lunch at Red Lobster and order virgin strawberry daiquiris and cheddar bay biscuits and crab alfredo and my mom gave us each a new chapter book. Often we wore matching outfits on this occasion.

These days, I've got my own, grown-person first day of school tricks up my sleeve:

1. When walking to class, fire up Rihanna's seminal album Good Girl Gone Bad. Put the title song on repeat.
2. Eat whatever I want while I get adjusted to a crazy new schedule (two cheeseburgers in one week!).
3. New shoes.
4. New colorful pens and new notebooks.
5. New haircut.

So yesterday, I headed over to my favorite salon, Fiddleheads.

 I like Fiddleheads because it is lovely and airy and full of light, for sure.

And because it's located in my favorite DC neighborhood, beautiful Bloomingdale.

But I'm most excited by the fact that they employ cool people who cut hair like real makers. They approach the task with a sense of purpose, as a way of creating something cool in the world. Erica and I had an awesome time talking about blogs and crafty things and aesthetics and how fun it is to make things with our hands. She even told me about how she bartered a haircut for some beautiful jewelry from La Reunion.  Jealous.

I left thinking about how Makerness, as a category, can apply to anyone, so long as they approach it with care, attention and pride. If the details matter beyond the details themselves. There's a great TED called "We Are All Makers".  It's a great thing to think about at the beginning of a new school year.

Madesmith's great article on branding points out that emotional value is a huge part of how we decide to spend money. Emotional value is also what means that any of us, in anything that we do, can be makers.

I love the atmosphere at Fiddleheads. I love, love, love my haircut. But it's the Makerness of the place that I'm most excited about-- the freshness and possibility that it makes me feel The idea that everything is an act of creation, no matter how small. Even the ritual of crab alfredo and chapter books. Even grading a paper. Even walking to class.

Now that's a good way to start the school year.

How to Eat Food: Breakfast Roundup

My Fall semester classes start Wednesday. I have so. Many. Feelings about that. Instead of talking about them, let's just talk about breakfast, shall we? I think that's best.

 I've got an 8 am class this semester, which means I've really got to get my life right in terms of a blood sugar sustaining breakfast or I am going to have a shit-fit tantrum every Monday and Wednesday around 8:15. That would be bad timing.

Among the harder lessons I've learned re: breakfast? Toast is not enough. See above warning about shit-fit tantrum. I tend to feel super happy about toast and jam and coffee for about two hours and then I want to cry. So. I've got four breakfast staples in my wheelhouse right now, and I'm on the hunt for more. Here's the rundown:

-Greek yogurt with granola (I love this Earlybird Foods recipe with the olive oil cut in half) and bananas.

-Soft boiled eggs, following these obsessive directions from Wired. With caraway Finn Crisp crackers. Top with salt, pepper and a teeny knob of butter.

-Chocolate cherry smoothie (made in a high powered blender so everything gets really smooth): two handfuls raw baby spinach, one handful frozen cherries, one frozen banana, two tablespoons cocoa powder, 3/4 cup coconut water, ten whole almonds. Advantage: very car-friendly. Drawback: chocolate mustache is inevitable.

-Steel-cut oats and quinoa cooked with dried apricots, topped with chia seeds, flax seeds, toasted almonds and blueberries. I tend to burn through this a little faster  than I'd like, so I'm usually hungry for a snack by 10 am. Is something the matter with me?

In the coming weeks, I'm planning on adding baked oatmeal! and an eggwhite fritatta to the rotation. Let's keep our fingers crossed for a even-blood-sugared Fall! What do ya'll like to eat for breakfast?

A Few Things I'm Excited About (Beach Week Edition): corn cakes, bonfire perfume, donated ideas, japanese persimmon cloth and a plea for well-cooked babies!

Olo Fragrance's new scent, Palo Santo, is the number one Things I Would Like to Smell today. I do not much like flowery stuff (rose is a notable exception), so this woody blend really appeals.  I found it at the very hip Accident and Artifact in SF. I also love Olo's Victory Wolf, which really does smells like someone's hair after a night around a bonfire. Stop laughing at me.

I'm impressed: rather than donating finite goods, Toyota donated their efficiency system to a Harlem soup kitchen. The resulting changes allowed the charity to help a great many more people. I love the idea of donating ideas rather than materials. It feels less like charity and more like cooperation.

I made these corn cakes for dinner last night and now we can't stop brainstorming different ways to eat them. Current thoughts: with caviar and creme fraiche, with ricotta, maple syrup and berries, with crumbled bacon mixed into the batter (duh).

Fabric obsession: Japenese Kakishubu, dyed with fermented persimmon juice. According to Hickorees, it's antibacterial? Someone please convince to me that I do not have the time or skill to attempt this on my own.

File under Not Surprised: a new peer-reviewed study has established substantive linkage between induced or augmented labor (often through i.v pitocin) and the instance of autism. My doctor parents point out that we really don't understand how the stronger contractions caused by pitocin affect the amount of oxygen baby receives, so this makes intuitive sense. Obviously more research is needed, but this is worth a lot more investigation than the ass-hatted (and failed) attempts to connect autism to vaccines (see jennymccarthybodycount.com). Also worth a read: Jodi the Doula's discussion of why even "natural" induction is usually a bad idea, and we should just let babies cook as long as they want.

The Self Care Series: Caitlin Leffel Ostroy

I've been curious for a long time about the diverse ways that people take good care of themselves. As I finish my twenties, I feel like my huge project of developing an adult self-care practice is coming to a close. I'm thinking a lot about how I take care of my body and my mind, and how I want that to look in the next decade. It's scary and exciting!

In the coming months, some of my amazing friends have agreed to talk in this space about their own self-care routines. I'm so lucky to have them as my teachers in this.

We'll start with my friend Caitlin Leffel Ostroy, who lives in NYC with her husband, Alex. Caitlin is an editor at Rizzoli, a wonderful essayist and a very enthusiastic eater. I once spent a blissful, snowy afternoon in Chicago with Caitlin at Rick Bayless' Xoco, eating ALL THE VEGETARIAN THINGS and swapping recipes for soup. I'm really excited to share Caitlin's self-care philosophy with you because she's remarkably thoughtful and determined. An avid runner, Caitlin decided after the NYC Marathon was cancelled in the wake of Hurricane Sandy that she wanted to RUN IT ANYWAY. Just because. So she did. Here's Caitlin!

On the meaning of self-care

I’ve lived in New York City for most of my life, and there’s such a culture of competitive denial, at least in the milieu I live in: can you live on less, can you sleep fewer hours, can you give more of yourself to work. I’ve definitely gone in the opposite direction in my adult life. I consider it my responsibility and privilege as a grown-up to invest in caring for myself.

My husband and I are both freelancers, and that means we are responsible for purchasing our health insurance, and since we buy our own, the plans we are eligible for are very expensive and not very extensive. As a result of this, I’m cautious about what I do to and put into my body. Knowing that we will be hit with a bill for hundreds of dollars every time we step foot in a doctor’s office or try to fill a perscription has been a very strong incentive for us to take good care of ourselves. It’s also encouraged me to be open therapies and practices, such as shiatsu massage and more recently, acupuncture, which are either alternatives to western medicine, or preventatives for it. At the root, my focus on self-care is about keeping myself healthy and energized in the absence of a safety net like employer-sponsored health care.

On grooming

I’m very focused on skincare. My hair is a battleground, and I never learned to put on makeup, but skincare is my thing. My mother died right when I was coming out of adolescence, so I’ve held on to the few “adult” lessons I have from her. One of the things she told me was to take care of my skin when I was young. (The other one was not to tweeze my eyebrows too thin!) I use a cleanser and a moisturizer in the morning, then the same cleanser with a serum at night. I have a number of skin allergies (metal, salt, chemicals), so I have a pleasant excuse to explore organic and higher-end skincare lines.  One I like a lot is REN; they use very high quality ingredients in their products, but they are also very effective, which I feel like some of the more “natural” lines are not. For my birthday last year, I asked for an eye cream from Eve Lom, which is too expensive for me to buy on my own, but man, it was like putting caviar under my eyes.

Honestly, I don’t feel that I’m attached at all any longer to the idea of “improving” my looks. I’m 32, and somewhere along the way, I just fell into completely accepting the way I look. My practices of self-care are more about exploring ways that I can feel stronger, happier, and more at peace with the world. All of that said, I’d still love it if I woke up one day with nice straight hair.

On physicality and exercise

I was terrible at sports and gym class when I was a kid. Then, I went to college, and I found the gym and a world of physical activity beyond competitive teams sports. I began running five years ago—a type of exercise I’d avoided in the past because I thought I was “bad” at it—and realized that there’s this whole other dimension to exercise as an adult that has nothing to do with comparing yourself to other performers in your peer group. Because I’m a writer and editor, I find the purity of an exercise like running a welcome and necessary balance to the fraught interior world inside my head.

On emotional health

I practice Jivamukti yoga, which is a very spiritual practice, and also one that emphasizes looking inward. We meditate and practice breathing exercises, and think about life from the micro to the macro. One of the things that we do at Jivamukti that I love—though I understand it’s not for everyone—is that we talk a lot about mortality and death. I’ve found it incredibly calming to have a place that brings mortality to the forefront, and I like working on understanding myself as a transient being.

I’ve been working on mindfulness this year—which to me means a practice of being present in my waking interactions. It’s been a big challenge because I’m somewhat dreamy anyway (my husband says I’m the least observant person he’s ever met), and frankly, it’s been a little horrifying to realize how often my head is a million miles away from what my self is doing. I try to prevent myself from multi-tasking, and engage in fewer pleasant distractions (like listening to my podcasts while I walk).

When I think about it, all of my self-care habits are taken to some degree with the underlying goal of making me feel calm, so that I can make good choices, and experience life in the present. 

 


On spirituality

I think part of any self-care regimen that has a spiritual component is mindful of how the practice of it can help the practitioner help others. That said, there’s kind of an inherent self-centeredness in all of this that can shut out, to some degree, the outside the practice or the ritual. I didn’t start any of these things—skincare, running, yoga, diet, practices of mindfulness—with the goal of “acting” a different way. But I’ve noticed some subtle changes in my behavior: I consider my spoken words more, and answer questions more slowly in conversation. I can more easily define what I want and what I need. Going forward, I’d like to use these skills to make clearer, more mindful choices in every area of my life.


On eating

I’m not the biggest Michael Pollan fan, but I picked up Food Rules in the bookstore when it came out and opened to a page with this on it: Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients in it. This made instant sense to me, and that one line has dictated my diet since then. I don’t take it literally, as in, I won’t eat a homemade dish with more than five ingredients in it, but in the sense that I’m sure it was meant to be taken in: pay attention to what you’re putting inside you, especially if it’s in a package, and make sure you know what those things are.

I also just started going to acupuncture, and my therapist recommended that I eat fish twice a week. I’ve been a vegetarian (ovo-lacto) since I was ten, so this is going to be an interesting experiment. So far, I’m liking shellfish and anything white that just tastes like olive oil, garlic, or whatever it’s cooked in. Can’t do the tuna, the salmon, or anything truly fishy. Other than that, I try to eat when and only when I’m hungry, and to eat whatever my body tells me it wants.

On supportive community

I have a wonderful husband, a great family, rich circles of friends—no shortage of people who care about me, and in some cases, care for me as well. That said, I’m in a better position than anyone in the planet to understand what makes me tick, and tick well. Engaging in practices that help my mind work in a better, calmer way, or moving my body in a way that supports, in contrast, the rest of my work is something only I can do, and for me, I like making those choices privately.

What other activities are crucial to your self-care?

Reading. Being involved in another narrative (whether fiction, nonfiction, historical, lyrical), in addition to being a great pleasure, helps my brain rest and my whole self recharge. It’s like changing to a different frequency and has an effect similar, in some ways, to meditation.

I believe that adults need to be their caregivers, and that however one defines that, caring for oneself has the same benefits are caring for another: it’s giving a certain amount of love, attention, or devotion to needs that enriches, improves, protects, and makes better. I could certainly get along with the things I mentioned above, but I think I would feel less like myself, so I guess the purpose for me in some ways is to stay “close” to my self and to prevent me from covering the core of my person with too many outside influences.

Thanks so much, Caitlin! 

Self Care: The Magic! Of! Phytonutrients! and why we are actually smart enough to understand them

I'm a sucker for food geekery. I'm a sucker for literature that makes me feel smart and in-control. Hey guess what? The magic! Of! Phytonutrients!

 Driving down to the beach this weekend, I flipped out over a Splendid Table interview with Jo Robinson, an investigative journalist who focuses on food and recent wrote the book Eating on the Wild Side. I've been at the beach with my family for three days now and I've already been informed that I am no longer allowed to discuss phytonutrients at dinnertime. Whatever.

Here's the idea behind Robinson's project: plants create phytonutrients to protect their cells from damage, and when we eat those plants we ABSORB THEIR POWER, and the phytonutrients protect our cells in turn. The best moment of the broadcast?

LRK: Antioxidants do what?

JR: They keep us alive.

LRK: That's basic.

Oh, Lynn.

Robinson goes on to explain that, over time, humans have increasingly bred plants high in sugar and low in phytonutrients. What a surprise.  BUT! There are plenty of plants in the produce aisle that still have what we need. As a doula, I tend to tell clients to just eat foods that are naturally bright in color, as many different colors as possible per day, but the science behind it has been hard for me to explain. This is the book I'll recommend to clients who want to understand more.

What I really appreciate about Robinson's approach is that she has taken 6,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies and aggregated their results to produced a single volume with clear instructions about how to eat AND WHY. These are not her own conclusions-- this is what the nutritional discipline has concluded. She's made dense science something that laypeople like me can really understand and implement.

For example! A few cool ideas:

--Don't cook garlic immediately after crushing or chopping it. Instead, allow it to sit for ten minutes. It will develop a compound called alicin, the major source of garlic's health benefits.

--In order to retain the phytonutrients in frozen blueberries, defrost them quickly in the microwave rather than slowly on the counter.

--Eat plants that have lead a rough life. The plants with the greatest amount of phytonutrients are those that have been exposed to a little hardship, and therefor have needed to produce chemical defenses. That's why plants bred to be pest-repellent or those treated with chemicals or grown in greenhouses contain fewer phytonutrients than organically grown or heirloom plants.

I find these specifics really cool because they push beyond the basics of low glycemic index and bright color. The premise of Robinson's book is that people are smart enough to understand the science behind all the nutritional advice they're given. It's a different approach from many nutrition books, which just offer lists of foods to eat and foods to avoid. I'm suspicious of that stuff. I mean, what if it's all bullshit? There's a lot of nutritional psuedoscience floating around and it often makes people feel more mystified and afraid. Robinson's research separates the wheat from the chaff, and presents it in a way that puts the reader in control. What a novel idea: to privilege our ability to care for our bodies by appealing to our brains.

Consumership and Style: Lifetime Brands: Everlane (and my favorite shirt)

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Children, it is a red-letter day for t-shirts. Everlane has restocked one of my absolute favorites in the world, the Ryan, with an updated fabric and cut. Soft and floaty and lovely! Twenty-five bucks! Made in LA! I am so excited I cannot.

I've had to wait months get my hands on this shirt because Everlane purposely under-manufactures, a practice they explain thusly on their tumblr:

In traditional retail, brands always overbuy. They produce more inventory than they need, knowing 30 percent of it will be put on sale. These sales have been so effective, that brands now create    cheaper versions of full-price products to sell alongside the legitimate sale items. In other words, if you buy something on sale, it could be an original or something created at a lower quality to simulate a sale item. The entire ecosystem is borderline deceptive.

Our approach is simpler: we underbuy. That means, we predict what we’ll sell, and we buy a little less. Our goal is to never have overstock and never have sales. The tradeoff is that we often buy too little. (We’re getting better over time, but it’s a bit of an art.) As Everlane grows, and we accumulate historical data, we’ll become better at these predictions. But we won’t change our approach. We will always underbuy so that we can keep things simple and avoid the games. It’s a long term decision we’ve made that we hope you support.

This indeed makes sense to me. Almost all the stores that I shopped at in Honduras carried overstock goods from US manufacturers who exported their undesirable surplus. It was a visual reminder of the way that some people are expected to subsist on the 'leftovers' of the others.

As I've said before, I'm on the lookout right now for lifetime brands: manufacturers that I can comfortably support with my money and would like to patronize again and again. All of the products I've purchased from Everlane fit the bill so far: they are well designed, durable and really good looking. The company does not manufacture ALL of their goods in the US, but they brand themselves based on a policy of "radical transparency": they choose carefully (and document) their factories, materials and cost breakdowns.

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I found out about Everlane in December when I was hunting for a Very Special Tie to give my bestie, Jordy. I wanted something super rad and full of good vibes that he could wear to his dissertation defense and job interviews. I wanted something hipster-cool and US made, but I couldn't afford anything from The Hillside. Check out this blue selvedge tie, made in NYC, that I found for Jordy through Everlane!  See how rad he looks? See the look of triumph on his face? He passed! YOU ARE SO WELCOME, BRO!

Because of Everlane's manufacturing structure, that tie has come and gone. It's not even on the website anymore. Maybe it will be back this winter. Maybe not. Now I've got my eye on this silk blouse in a fall-y mustard color:

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Like other products I've mentioned, the prices at Everlane are comparable to (or sometimes lower than) prices at mall stores like J. Crew. The cotton tee shirts are an especially good deal at fifteen bucks a pop (they are crazy soft and also made in LA). Everlane keeps prices low by selling only through their website-- no retail, even a pop-up stores.

Plus, the company recently launched a really cool project called Everlane Explores China, sending a camera crew to Donguaan and Shenzhen (the factory city made famous by Mike Daisy's controversial Apple expose) to document the factories they use. The photos are beautiful and compelling, but because Everlane controls the footage that we see, I wouldn't call it totally transparent. Still, it's a great start.

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Ideally, I would really like for Everlane to take things a step further and disclose the wage breakdowns in all the factories they use. Unlikely, to be sure, but I can dream. 

As it is, I feel better about buying internationally manufactured goods from Everlane than from anywhere else-- they are hitting the sweet spot between great style, reasonable social responsibility and the value-added proposition of good-karma products. Psychically, that makes their silk blouse just about as light on the shoulders as any new, internationally made garment gets.

Pictures: Ziva: Yoga in Motion

You know a kid is cool when the best way to get them to come over for a closeup is to yell OH MY GOD LOOK IT'S A REALLY GIANT BUG!

My friend Amelia's daughter, Ziva, is a flurry of activity, and her shenanigans stop for no one. I love toddlerhood because it's an age of total authenticity-- if they hang out with you it's because they want to, not because they are trying to be polite. Otherwise, they go off and do their own thing.

They don't smile on command. If they smile, it's because they think something is awesome.

And if you want to hang with them, it's best to cut the bullshit and go hunting for rad insects.

If you are lucky and you can catch them in moment of stillness, you can see them working to absorb and assimilate everything they've just learned.

Then they shake it off and get back in the game. It's a lot like the cycle of yogic breathing. On the inhale we nourish ourselves. aAt the top of the breath we pause to digest. Then we exhale to eliminate what we don't need. Toddler are very yogic creatures in general, and not just because they are quite bendy.

They are masters at just being here. Hanging out. And moving forward on impulse.

We benefit so much from being near them, but they aren't here to be our teachers. They are here to find rad insects.

Respect.

A Few Things I'm Excited About: tiny entrepreneurs and photographers, coldbrew coffee, pictures of people making out, a rad sweater, and coconut oil

My friend Ros and I spent a few great hours at The Big Bear on Wednesday, drinking coldbrew coffee and teaching a ten-year-old about depth of field and how to use a DSLR camera to take pictures of something other than feet. Did you know that coldbrew has three times the caffeine of regs? Devastating and thrilling. Go make your own!

Alert! Tiniest Makers of all! Madesmith interviews Pop Bros, the Fort Green Farmer's Market's newest artisan food startup. Their speciality is the coconut pop:

          Madesmith: How long have you been an entrepreneur?
          August: 1 hour
          Santiago: No, 10 years
          Madesmith: How old are you?
          Santiago: 5.

Let's talk about Orange is the New Black. Ehn, nevermind. Let's not.

James Friedman took pictures of people making out for his series, The Pleasures and Terrors of Kissing. I can't stop looking at them.

Pendleton, of scratchy blanket fame, is now making US-manufactured clothes in Oregon. I want this sweater. I also want a cabin.

Is the coconut oil as beauty product hype legit? I'm buying a jar to take to the beach. On the other hand...

Places: The Detroit Institute of Art and Rivera Court

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In 1932,  twenty-four-year-old Frida Kahlo suffered a miscarriage at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, an event which further devastated her relationship to her body, and which she depicted in her painting, Henry Ford Hospital, 1932. Around the same time, my grandmother was born healthy at Hutzel Women's hospital, two miles away.

In 1933, Diego Rivera unveiled the Detroit Industry Murals, a twenty-seven-panel fresco in a huge, sunlit atrium at the Detroit Institute of Art.  The fresco depicts the union of natural magic and human potential-- the earth gods creating iron ore, the growth of crops, the muscular fabrication of auto parts, the vaccination of a small child.

Fifty-one years later, I was born to a twenty-four-year-old mother via crash C-section, also at Hutzel women's. My mother took me to the DIA while I was still in a stroller. I ran as a toddler across the huge tiled expanse of Rivera Court.

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As a teenager, struggling to master my own mind and to conquer the unremarkable and devastating chaos of adolescent identify, I found in the Detroit Industry Murals a way of seeing the world that helped me stand still. Beauty in the order of things.  The tying together of the earth in paint. The binding of time with art.

Lots of people with much more knowledge than I are making well-reasoned and researched arguments regarding why it's a terrible idea to sell off the Detroit Institute of Art's collection to deal with the city's worsening economic problems.  I really, really hope they don't do it.

Rivera painted his frescos as a tribute to the vitality of Detroit's workers and the genius of the auto factory. These days, in the press, Detroit seems like the poster child for the death of American industry. Kahlo experienced a surge of artistic growth in Detroit, but she lost her baby, and her mother died far away in Mexico. To her, Detroit was a "shabby little town".

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If Rivera's fresco are built into the very walls of the DIA building, can the be auctioned off as well? Will they take hacksaws to the walls of Rivera Court and send the panels off in 27 different directions? I don't have a grand argument for why the DIA is worth saving. I just have this series of connections, and some shadowy ideas about their importance in my life. It's not enough on its own, but it's part of the story.

My favorite picture of Rivera and Kahlo shows them high up on the scaffolding surrounding a half-finished Rivera Court, wrapped in passionate kiss. The huge red hands which for Rivera represented the union of God and Nature reach up behind them to cup the sky. I'll spend the rest of my life figuring out why I love that photo so much. Perhaps the ties that bind me to that image are yet to be spun-- thread that will spool out over decades. I only know what I see now: these places, those people, the raw materials, and the potential it all ever holds, which might carry us forward through time.

Places: Great Cape Herbs, Brewster MA

This June, when I turned 29, I was on Cape Cod with some of my favorite people, so I shocked even myself when I asked to spend the morning alone. On purpose. Just hanging out. 

I went to the beach and put my feet in water. I took a yoga class. And I stumbled on Great Cape Herbs.

The owner, Stephan, made me great Americano and showed me around the shop. Herbs drying! Baby chicks hatching in an incubator! While I was wondering around, people kept passing through, some tourists and some locals. They all had questions, and Stephen answered them. Sometimes, he didn't have the answer to their question, so he told them that.

As a doula, I have a touchy relationship with herbs-- I get really worried when my pregnant clients start talking about taking them will-nilly because that shit is powerful. That's why I'm so glad that there are people like Stephan who are both super knowledgeable and extremely cautious. 

One of Stephan's big projects is WORLD WAR LYME: combatting and treating Lyme Disease-- a big health issue in that part of Massachusetts. He grows his own Japanese Knotweed and processes it into tinctures that make a big different in the health of people afflicted with Lyme, but he also encourages his clients to seek help from medical doctors. 

Stephan made me a tincture for my digestion that I now put in my water each morning. It's just for me, based on what I need. Also it has a hand written label on it that says "Anna's Tummy" which pleases me very much. When I left, Stephan was already surrounded by new customers. He's got a calm air about him that feels perennially unruffled and unrushed. Like, that each person he talks to is important, but that very little of what they have to say is a surprise. It's nice.

I left Great Cape Herbs thinking a lot about the way that people take care of themselves. I thought about the way that I take care of myself based on my instincts, and the parts I leave up to experts.

This is the last year I'll spend in my 20s. Everyone keeps telling me how much happier I'll be in my 30s-- apparently I'll be more self-assured. I'll know myself and what I want. That sounds great! I'm always up for more happiness! But I feel pretty good about what I accomplished with this decade.

Discerning how to best keep myself going has been the main project of my twenties, I think. Learning how to work my body and mind. I might be happier in my thirties-- I'll take it for sure-- but I think my twenties will be the decade I learned how to take care of myself. When to take herbs and when to take medicine. When to call the doctor. When to be with friends and when to be alone.

 Or, rather, I think I'll always be learning how to take care of myself. In my twenties, I learned that it's worth my effort to get it right. I'll take that, too.

Roots and Radicals: North Carolina and Beyond

As my home state of North Carolina settles in for a fight over heinous new restrictions on voter rights and abortion rights, I keep wondering what I’d be doing if I were in college at this time. Based on my activity during the 2002 beginning of the Iraq War, I’m guessing I’d be awaiting trial for an arrest at one of the Moral Monday demonstrations.

Everything was very clear-cut at that time in my life: if something was wrong, I spoke out against it, often using my body as well as my voice. My relationships suffered. My grades dropped. I felt sure that I was doing the right thing. I didn’t know what I wanted my life to look like, but I was sure I was willing to give it up for a cause.

In 2013, It’s less clear to me how I should respond to the domestic atrocities now sweeping my home state. My politics haven’t changed. My life has. I have a job I love. Students. I make jam and pickles and stack the jars on my kitchen shelves. I guess I put down roots.

I found myself re-listening this morning to an old episode of The Story interviewing Norm Stamper, the former Seattle Police chief who called the shots during 1999’s violent WTO protests. Stamper says he now regrets the way that his department handled the protests (he resigned in the aftermath), and derides police violence at Occupy camps in New York and California.

What impresses me most is Stamper’s willingness to alter his analysis without shifting his allegiances. He has changed his mind about the use of police force in response to peaceful protest, but he hasn’t been radicalized in a direction opposite to the police perspective.

I was radical, once. Or, I thought I was. I used to love reminding people that the word’s etymology can be traced back to the idea of physical roots, the sturdiest part of something, the base of it, and also its beginning. I suppose in this sense, Stamper’s change of heart is impressively radical not because it appeals to any political leftism, but because he has managed to integrate new insight into his identity without uprooting it entirely.

As a college radical I was taught by older mentors to regard the “Battle of Seattle” as a watershed moment in leftist history. Protesters’ violent clashes with police, complete with home-made riot gear, were to be studied and celebrated. What are "old timers" like me telling college students today about the protests at start of the Iraq War?

As someone ten years out of college with first-year composition students of my own, I would never, ever encourage college student to risk their bodies or their futures by seeking arrest. But I also can’t bring myself to regret the decisions I made at age eighteen.

Each Monday, the lawn outside the NC legislature fills up with people determined to change the terrifying direction in which our state is headed. My sisters have been out there. My former students have. It surely isn’t my choice, but I don’t want them to be the same kind of radical that I was.

I’m tired of talking about protesting. I want to talk about rights. I want to talk about the people who are being denied their rights, and how their voices might still be heard. Those who wished to vote and now cannot. Those who will risk their lives seeking unsafe abortions because safe options are no longer available. They are roots of the cause. Or rather, their freedom is. Their words are being lost. Their bodies are being jeopardized. But I can’t stop talking about what radicalism means to me.

What is the most radical part of us? What are the roots? I hope, for my students, the roots are the urge to speak, not the words that come at one moment or another. Issues change. Minds change. The question of risk shifts.  I have a fuller life now, and I am less sure what I am willing to risk. I can't bring myself to regret that, either.

I'm so tired of talking about this. I can't stop. If I could choose a way to talk about this with my students, it wouldn't be with words. I would want all of us fly away from the issues for a while, and rest up high in a struggle for possibility: the possibility of voting, not the candidate. The possibility of a free body, not a pregnancy or an abortion. No protestors. No police. A different part of the tree, where light blends the leaves with the sky.

Up there, in the space of possibility, where we know are allowed to change, maybe we could breathe, for a moment, and then we could look down, and see, clearly for the first time, our actual roots.