Something’s cooking in the South

Sustainable (organic) agriculture tends to be an all-white, upper middle class movement, but that’s not what I found when I went to the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Conference in Chattanooga, Tenn. The South(east) might be a little slower than the rest of the country, but they are way ahead in terms of the racial integration of the natural/organic/local food movements. The conference was about half black.

Also, sustainable agriculture in the south means social justice and poor helping poor. Most of the attendees of this 1000+ conference were ‘dirt’ poor, but in the best sense. They do not have much money, but they eat (and live) well.

I did a farm tour to visit a fully integrated biodynamic operation in rural eastern Tennessee. 300 acres, 3 in veggies, 100+ in woods, 150 in pasture. They had chickens, cattle, and pigs. They tried turkeys. There was a lot of talk about how unfair the state rules are for on-farm meat processing. Basically, if you want to process your own animals in Tennessee, its illegal to sell the meat to anyone, anywhere. Other states have exemptions for small numbers of animals.

But the real highlight of the conference was the keynote speaker who ended the conference. John E Ikerd fired up the crowd with his talk about the ideal of the family farm and the ways that conventional economics has it wrong. Ikerd had a long and successful career as an ag economist, but has concluded with great intellectual force that the practice of economics overvalues the short term to the detriment of future generations. Ikerd is author of several books that I have not read, but Sustainable Capitalism appears to be getting positive reviews.

al Sur para la Navidad

My family is a bit odd in that we don’t celebrate a traditional Christmas. We agreed years ago to forgo the gifts and all spend our money on travel instead. For the past eight years, we have rented a house in the tropics for the week between Christmas and New Years. We don’t do the holiday rituals at all. Mom was a little hard to convince at first, but now we are on the same page about it.

Our familial tradition continued this year with a gringo palace in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. San Juan del Sur is a beach town that has become a stop on the tourist trail through Central America. Popular with the Euro-backpacker and surfer crowds for years, now the place is a magnet for foreign real estate developers.

In the last 10 years, the town has gone from sleepy Central American beach community to a home to hundreds of Americans and others who have built large concrete houses on the water or in the hills just outside of town. The spike in land values has probably forced more than a few families away from the bay and the ones that have stayed appear just as poor as before.

Nicaraguans are generous and gracious hosts, though. They are an outgoing people and they love to talk about politics and history. They are proud of their minor socialist feats. And they appear to not want to dwell on the darker points of their past, perhaps out of fear of embarrassing or shaming their guests. Certainly, they are not unaware of the role our government played in their prolonged civil war throughout the 80s.

5:22 am, notes from a dream

The scene starts in a hospital room with the OMRI staff around Cindy in a bed. She will have to spend the night. Megan K and I stay to clean up the room and hang out. Magen tells me that she read my blog entry about the “Tribute” story. I cannot…

I turn on the TV and play with the channels. Cindy goes to sleep. Scene shifts and I feel as though I might have entered one of the shows or movies on the TV. I’m with a group of three men who I don’t know. I think that they might be actors from the movie or show. We are at a dock next to a broken sail boat. It was dark. There’s a large hole in the hull. Two of the men explain that the boat’s condition. There’s discussion about what to do with it. The group makes a quick decision to ride it out to the middle of the body of water and sink it. One of the men is older than the rest and he follows behind in the shallow water with a walking stick. We made it to the middle of the body of water. We enter the cabin on board and crush the plastic milk jugs that seem to keep it a float. Suddenly I am the last person on board and I can feel the boat sinking underneath me. The water’s deep and I feel a stray line wrapped around my waist. I struggle to quickly free my arm from the line, but not before I feel the pull of the sinking boat. I loosen the line and eventually free myself. I am only below the water line for a moment, but when I wake, my heart is racing and I feel hot, scared.

Thanksgiving in the Redwoods

Just across the street from Pelican Bay State Prison is a ordinary RV park. Mom and I decided to meet there for our Thanksgiving dinner and long weekend. We got a rented cabin because we don’t do RVs and the weather was too unpredictable at the end of November. The Northern California Redwoods are about half way from each of our places. Given that and the fact that neither of us had been there before, we decide this year was the time. We were blessed (and thankful) for the amazingly clear weather. We toured both Jebediah Smith and Prairie Creek State Parks. Here’s a couple of my favorite images from the trip. The rest are posted to my google photo page.

New Spanish Cinema in Eugene!?

Yep, we have a bit of culture here, sometimes, mostly thanks to the U of O. In this case, the Romance Languages Department sponsored the event along with the Spanish government. The director, Félix Viscarret, welcomed us personally to this free showing. He spoke slowly at first in his rusty English, perhaps a little nervous before the film. Then, afterward, he skillfully fielded tough questions from the mostly university crowd. It was quite an event. We all agreed that we appreciated the flick a lot more by having the director explain some stuff.

Plus, the festival deserves a plug. Check out the rest of the movies showing this week for free in Eugene.

Cuba: go if you dare

A friend wrote to ask me about my trip to Cuba several years ago. He’s planning his own trip and wanted advice. I offered what I could, while remembering that I did not enjoy my trip very much while there. Only afterward, I heard myself saying positive things about the trip to friends and family. I was my own revisionist historian and I tended to believe my new positive self. This illusion would have continued unchecked had it not been for the journal that I kept during my three week trip.

My father was born in Cuba and spent his formative years there, before attending boarding school in Rhode Island and university in Philadelphia, where he met my mom. He had 30 plus cousins to play with as a boy on the farm outside of La Habana. Of all of the 30 plus cousins, only his cousin Fichú stayed and raised a family there.

I met Fichú and her daughter and grand daughters at their house in La Habana. They remained in the same house they had always lived in, since she was a little girl. My father’s parents house had been next door, but when they left for Spain in the wake of regime change, the state assumed possession of the property and made it into a government office of some sort.

Anyway, I recently reread my journal from Cuba. It was pretty intense. I was not happy. In spite of the fact that I was meeting new people, I did not connect with most of the Cubans who I met. I tended to think that most of the Cubans I met wanted something from me. Therefore, I did not trust them. I felt lonely for this reason.

Indeed, most of my interactions with Cubans were because they would approach me and try to sell me something or someone. In my journal, I had a couple pages on los jiniteros and jiniteras. Basically, they are street hustlers and hookers. At first, with my campesino perspective from two years in the Peace Corps, I was gullible and ended up a little poorer, but mostly my trust and my pride were what suffered.

I’ve been meaning to transcript some of my journal onto my blog. So, here it goes:

Oct 31, 2001:

I have had a couple experiences with average Cubans in the street that have really bothered me. On my first day walking through La Habana Vieja, I followed my ears to a bar where a group played traditional Cuban son. I found a table by myself and sat to enjoy. I ordered a Guanapo or fresh cane juice with ron. The place was full so I did not think about it when a young guy asked to share the table. They were two. They ordered beers and opened a dialogue. The one across the table was more talkative and slightly effeminate. He struggled to pull the conversation along over the volume of the music. I learned he was a dancer and spoke French, Italian and three basic phases in German. He treated me to a beer and they had another. Javier, my new friend got up and paid the bill, my part and his. I thought that was odd, but nice and we departed to do a tour of the old city which he had proposed.

The tour consisted of a walk to the Cathedral—”there’s the Cathedral”—and then to the nearest bar for mojitos. You see, it was Javier’s birthday and he was out of money. After a little pushing, I said I would invite—the magic word. After two more rounds of mojitos, Javier decided it would be a good idea to eat something. He never ordered without asking me first, but I felt I could not say no. Perhaps, it was the two mojitos and the other assorted drinks talking. Still, this bothered me. But it was my treat and it was my decision, though alcohol influenced.

It was the fuzzy math when the check came that made me think that they had pulled a scam. There was no paper bill. Javier said he was getting a deal from a friend in the kitchen. I paid $21 for the food and another $20 for the drinks.

Not a big deal, but what hurt was the feeling as though a trick had been played on me and I could not figure it out.

Stuff to remember for the GMAT

While studying for the GMAT earlier this week, I went from feeling so anxious that I was physically nauseated to giddy from joy for having finished the stupid thing.  I studied algebra, percentages, factions, quadratic equations, and geometry for 10 days each evening after work. It was a review of everything I learned in high school and middle school math classes. The kicker was that the stuff was hard, where I remember that it was once easy. If I had taken the math part of the test 15 years ago, I would have done much better. On the other hand, I had no idea I would ever want to go to b-school 15 years ago. Also, the results of a test that I would have taken back then would not be valid now. So I would have to do it again.

The real thorn in the soft fleshy part of my backside was that I still really like geometry. I was actually happy figuring out how the area of a triangle relates to the parameter of the rectangle partially inscribed in it. But the quantitative section of the GMAT only includes a handful of geometry questions. The bulk of the math questions were algebra, percentages, or probability. Of course, every GMAT exam is slightly different because they use a computer program to give you questions of varing ability. The better you do, the harder the questions become, and the more you can score on them. But enough about standardize testing. Its behind me now. If you are still interested in what I went through preparing for the test, then view my notes.

Now I have to return to the things that I have been neglecting in my life, such as moving to my new home. This weekend I will be moving to my friends’ Rich and Jackie’s place. They live out in the River Road of town, which is a bit further from the center of town. The good news for me is that the route to down town is on along the river bike path instead of on the streets.

Beyond Medical Springs (and into the wilderness)

We passed right through Medical Springs, Oregon before realizing that there was a town. Its really just an intersection. Twenty miles east of Union, this is where we turned off the pavement. We entered at night so we missed the scenery, but not the washboard on the roads. We drove about 20 miles to the campground where Neil, Nora and I would meet Susan, Eric, and Jax, Susan’s dog.

After a cold night in the campground, we woke to start the packing for real. We were going to be away from civilization for five nights and six days; we needed a serious amount of peanut M&Ms.

We hit the trail at the crack of 2:30 pm, after a couple false starts, some last minute beers, and lunch. We made our way almost three miles before clapsing in the first suitably flat spot with evidence of a previous fire pit. We knew that our next day would be our hardest with a 3000 ft elevation gain and nine miles. We would have to get our an earlier start.

With bad feet, hamstings, knees, backs, heads, necks, and paws, we put our heads down and climbed for most of the day, stopping frequently for chocolate, sesame-cheese sticks, carrots, salami, dog food, and various other unmentionable foods. But it was all worth it. We topped Horton Pass, 8400+ feet, at about 5 pm and headed down the last mile to Upper Lake.

We walked into our camp site with the swagger of a cowboy who just got laid. Yes, we had the finest damn site this side of the Horton Pass. We decided to stay there for an extra night and recover, while enjoying the Lakes Basin without our packs.

Next, we woke to breakfast and coffee while looking at the granite peaks in the center of the Wallowas. To the west, we saw the East Lostine valley, four miles long with the East Fork of the Lostine River taking its sweet time through the valley’s grassy meadows. To the south, Upper Lake received the runoff from the last of winter’s snow melting off a 500 foot wall of granite scree and boulders.

We headed out to explore the Lakes Basin and climb Glacier Pass to Glacier Lake, described as the “second most beautiful lake in Oregon after Crater.” (Ah, guide books: what would life be like without them?) But by lunch, Neil was predicting that we only had 20 minutes of sun left before the dark gray clouds would cover it. He was wrong: we only had 15 minutes before the clouds arrived to stay for a while.

We continued our climb to the top of Glacier Pass, though. When we arrived, the wind was blowing a steady 30 mph and throwing the rain at us in various sizes and forms. It was sometime around then that Neil reminded me about closing the rain flap on our tent. I had forgotten to close my side of the tent. We were about 3 miles from there and there was nothing that I could do but hope that it was not raining as hard there.

I got lucky. We got back to camp to discover that the rain was only just beginning there. I changed, put on all of my gear and went out to pump water at the lake’s edge. I got wet. But there was hot tea and a tarp back at the camp. We ate and played lair’s dice in the fading light.

We woke the next day to clear blue skies and ice on the tent. The time had come to leave the best little campsite this side of Horton Pass. We climbed slowly out of the valley over the next pass—I cannot remember the name. We had an easy day. We only hiked three miles to the next lake and most of it was down. There, our camp site luck held out and we managed to find the mother of all campsites: Firehenge.

It was at Firehenge that we discovered the amazing power of Hink Pink, a game of random rhymes and their ridiculous made up definitions. We would be haunted by the uncontrollable urge to call out “Hink Pink!” every few miles on the trail.

It was also at Firehenge where we formulated our BrillantPlan™. We would walk out early on our last day and stop at the first place we saw that had burgers and shakes. As luck would have it: we found Gravy Dave’s in Union. Damn good burgers and shakes.

Eric posted a bunch of his photos here.

The strength to return

I might argue that the reason my blog has come to a complete halt recently is due to the weather. That would even have a bit of truth to it. But I would not let myself off the hook so easily.  The blog has taken back seat to real life recently. Movies, ultimate, weekends in Portland, old friends, and of course, camping.

I emerged from six days in the wilderness of eastern Oregon on August 28. I felt fully renewed and I knew that the most important things in life were not the computer and work. Yet, I was okay with returning and managed to recover quickly from my usual case of post-vacation working blues. I did not feel cheated out of my vacation. I felt as though I really used it all very well. I stung together a work trip to Portland and the first day of

Hiking up East Eagle River with Susan, Jax, and friends. Photo by Eric.

my vacation to make the time away from the office even longer. Then, I had a pleasant surprise at the end of the trip when I was reminded of the fact that there was a three day weekend only a day after I returned to the office.

Yep, I returned to OMRI late on Friday morning and left that evening knowing that I would not have to return to the place for another four days, the following Tuesday morning.

I should have a separate post just to describe this wonderful trip. But now, here are some photos that Eric took while on the trip.

La prisión en la isla

This just makes me angry.

I can ignore more or less most of the Bush bullshit, but the human rights disaster at the US Military base on the communist island boils my blood. I am only heartened by the fact that the Supreme Court is returning some justice slowly to the prisoners of war, aka ‘enemy combatants.’ Anyway, if you don’t already know the torturous news about the military techniques practiced there, then go read up on the case of Al Qahtani v. Bush.

This image is from a t-shirt. The shirt is literally composting while I wear it. Its got holes in the back and the cuffs are frayed. I got it about 10 years ago from my sister, who did not want it anymore because it did not fit her. Plus, I think that it might have been a little too political for her tastes.

She said she got it from a cousin of ours in Miami. This always confused me because I thought there was only one kind of Cuban in Florida and that was the Republican kind. The kind that supports policies of isolation and covert operations to kill. But I digress.

I would like to see whether anyone would buy a bummer sticker made from this image to support the Center for Constitutional Rights’ work defending the men, women, and children held in indefinite hell by our government. I am thinking of doing a small run of them. $5 each? 10 for $50?