Month: September 2018

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Perfect Peel®

Fellow Maroon and blogger Jerry Coyne has a problem.  I think I can help.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/i-hate-fruit-stickers/

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes:  Besmirched!  I couldn’t agree more, Jerry.  “HATE” is too tame a word for how I feel about those things.  I grew up on an APPLE FARM so I actually have a bit of relevant insight here.  See, back in the day there were no stickers on fruit because there was no technology for it.  After somebody came up with a sticker-application gizmo that made it easy (and cheap) to plaster them all over the place, it became de rigueur to have them on apples and pears and peaches and tomatoes – indeed, on just about everything fruity over the size of a blueberry.   Pretty soon, before we knew what hit us, the lemming instinct took over (at least among fruit farmers):   “Hey, everybody else has these stickers on their fruit. The technology makes it so easy (and cheap) to put them on there.  So, WHY NOT?”

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One small ray of hope:  If enough of us yell loud enough, eventually some enterprising marketer – maybe someone who paid attention during the early stages of the ORGANIC and local-vore craze – will realize there’s a niche for catering to sticker-hating fruit consumers.  Pretty soon he (or she) will begin marketing STICKER-LESS fruit (spoiler alert, this next bit coming up is key) at a higher price point from the regular sticker-bearing varieties.  I am here to tell you, people will gladly pay it.   And not just because we want freedom from those damnable stickers marring the peels of our Granny Smiths.   No, we’ll pay extra because – just like with ORGANIC, and just like with local-vore – it feeds into our inherent, universal, snob instinct. Call it the anti-lemming effect if you wish – but it’s real, it’s powerful, and it’s out there in the free market just waiting to be exploited. I even have a name for this new sticker-free fruit product. It’s a name I’m willing to share with the world free of charge:  Let’s call it “Perfect Peel ®.”  Best of all? There’s no new technology needed this time around.  Just put up a big hand-lettered sign, “ONLY PERFECT PEEL® PRODUCE SOLD HERE.”  Then, sit back and watch the added $$’s roll in.

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C’mon all you anti-sticker peel-snobs.  Our time has come!  Maybe we can’t change the world on any of the truly big-ticket issues of our time.  But here is one place where, together, we can make a difference.  Waddayasay, eh?  Operators are standing by….

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You know, somebody could make a mint here.  I say, it might as well be me.
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Nova Albion

A visit to Drake’s Beach @ Point Reyes yesterday prompted some research.

From Wikipedia:

New Albion as seen from the air. At top is the Pacific Ocean, and the body of water to the left is Drake’s Bay. The inlet off Drake’s Bay and at center below the Pacific is Drakes Estero where Drake careened his ship.

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Nova Albion (or New Albion) was the name given by Sir Francis Drake to the land of Northern California. The bay that now bears his name is located in present-day Marin County 30 miles north of San Francisco. This was land inhabited for centuries by the Miwok people.  Drake sheltered here late in the 16th century before setting off across the Pacific on his ship The Golden Hind (a “hind” is a small deer) as part of a journey circumnavigating the globe.  Another reason for the pit stop may have been to elude the Spanish, whose settlements Drake had raided along the Southern California coast.  Upon his return to the British Isles two years later Drake gave half of the profits from his accumulated trade – and plunder – to Queen Elizabeth. She used it to pay off England’s entire national debt. Little wonder Drake got a knighthood for his efforts.

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That word “careened” set me to thinking.  I normally associate it with a car going too fast around a corner and (almost) tipping over.  Turns out, again from Wikipedia, it’s a specifically nautical term.

These nineteenth-century vessels, near shore and in shallow water, are being careened in a manner similar to Drake’s Golden Hind. The cargo was off-loaded and ballast shifted to careen the ship, enabling sailors to access the sides and keels for repair and maintenance.

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It wasn’t known until relatively recently exactly where Drake’s “New Albion” was located. It turns out, analysis of pottery shards washed ashore provide the telltale evidence. Again, from Wikipedia:

Nearly one hundred pieces of sixteenth-century Chinese porcelains have been found in the vicinity of the Drake’s Cove site which “must fairly be attributed to Francis Drake’s Golden Hind visit of 1579.” These ceramic samples, found at Point Reyes, are the earliest date-able archaeological specimens of Chinese porcelains transported across the Pacific in Manilla galleons…. These porcelain shards were abandoned by Drake at Point Reyes after he took porcelain dishes from a Spanish treasure ship during his venture into the Pacific.

As I am often prompted to say in these pages, “Who knew?

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A San Francisco Chronicle piece from a few years back summarizes the history of the area and includes a first hand account of the beach walk we did this weekend.  If interested, you can read all about it here.

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Most of the land on Pt. Reyes today is divided up into “Historic Ranches.” These are designated simply by letter.  Here are some happy cows from “Historic Ranch D.” Or maybe it was “E?”

And of course, shore birds dominate the beach.

Photo credits: Anne Wolf

 

 

 

 

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Imagine Dragonflies

Imagine Dragonflies

 

Inspired by this guy on the balcony this morning, we went to Farmers’ Market and picked up this piece of hammered Haitian metal art from Laurie at Global Good Fair Trade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, just for fun, added a  cool woven basket from Ghana.

All in all, an inspiring Saturday morning.

My inspiration, above.

More Farmers’ market, below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Eggs, Popes, Treason

Today’s offering from This Day in History takes us back to 1780 and the American Revolution. But first, a more pleasant diversion to Gastro Obscura for an exhaustive examination of the the origins of the eponymous egg dish, along with some great Gilded Age photos of Delmonico’s in New York, including one of their menu:  “Beluga caviar, only $1.75” – wow!  You can read all about it here.

And for those whose appetite has now been whetted for finding out the fate of America’s foremost traitor, you can read it here.

Benedict Arnold | Phactual   Benedict Arnold

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Last but not least, the following, from Wikipedia.

Historians have identified many possible factors contributing to Arnold’s treason, while some debate their relative importance. According to W. D. Wetherell, he was:

among the hardest human beings to understand in American history. Did he become a traitor because of all the injustice he suffered, real and imagined, at the hands of the Continental Congress and his jealous fellow generals? Because of the constant agony of two battlefield wounds in an already gout-ridden leg? From psychological wounds received in his Connecticut childhood when his alcoholic father squandered the family’s fortunes? Or was it a kind of extreme midlife crisis, swerving from radical political beliefs to reactionary ones, a change accelerated by his (second) marriage to the very young, very pretty, very Tory Peggy Shippen?

Wetherell says that the shortest explanation for his treason is that he “married the wrong person.”

   Peggy Shippen

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Or, as the FBI agent who interviewed me for my security clearance before I started working for the U.S. Department of Interior told me: “This process will take about half a day – unless of course you’ve got big debts or a second marriage. In those cases, the background check will take considerably longer.”

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High & Hot

The current issue of the New Yorker has an interesting piece on the history of Christian rock. You can read it here.

Closer to home….

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Back in the summer before my senior year of high school, a bunch of us who called ourselves the Fellowship of Friends (FoF) set off for a music festival in the Allegheny Mountains, not far off the Pennsylvania Turnpike east of Pittsburgh.  Dubbed “Jesus ’75,” it was an event for the Woodstock-wannabe Jesus Freak crowd.  In short, it was perfect for FoF.

At the time American Evangelicalism as we know it today was still a work in progress. Jimmy Carter hadn’t yet been elected president – that came a year later. And the so-called Christian music industry was still in its infancy.  Amy Grant and U2 and praise music on overhead projectors in mega-churches were all just getting off the ground.

At Jesus ’75 there was a pianist and singer named Keith Green who was a big draw for us in FoF.  His style was mostly pop, with plenty of bouncy tunes and show-offy piano riffs. We all lapped it up like the sticky sweet mess of manna it was.

I’ll never forget the moment after he came on stage and played the first upbeat number – received with wild applause – and he just stood there, shaggy-haired, gazing down at us, pensive.   And we all stood there looking back up at him, rapt.  After what seemed like an eternity but probably in reality only lasted 5 seconds, he said in a small, tired voice, “You are all… just… so… SELFISH!”

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Stunned silence? That would be an understatement.

He went on to relate how several in our number from the crowd were currently in a nearby medical tent being treated for drug overdose. He invited us to pray for their recovery.  I have no earthly idea whether what he said was true.  Was this was some kind of Christian rock festival gimmick planted by our parents to keep us in line?  But looking around at all those scruffy teen-aged faces framed with big 70’s hair and an utter lack of impulse control, I could pretty well imagine it went down exactly like he said.

In any case, the show went on.  Rains came later that night and turned the fields where we camped into a quagmire. But our spirits remained buoyant, either with, or without, chemical assistance, I do not recall. And if asked to testify, I will not speak.  In the end, FoF survived the weekend intact, and we all went home, muddy, exhausted, and exuberant.

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A few years later on a hot July day, a light plane went down shortly after take-off from a small airstrip in Texas. All 12 people aboard were killed – including Keith Green and 2 of his 4 young children. The NTSB said the plane was dangerously overloaded and blamed pilot error – along with an aviation condition known as “hot and high” – for the crash.

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Although only 28 when he died, Keith Green was possessed of a wisdom beyond his years when he wrote these lyrics:

My eyes are dry
My faith is old
My heart is hard
My prayers are cold
And I know how I ought to be
Alive to You and dead to me.

But what can be done
For an old heart like mine
Soften it up
With oil and wine
The oil is You, Your Spirit of love
Please wash me anew
With the wine of Your Blood.

Album cover:  “For Him Who Has Ears to Hear”

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Tania

70s-child: Patty Hearst:

People of a certain age will recognize the woman in this security photo right away. For those who were living in a cave in 1975, or those who’ve forgotten Patty Hearst’s nom-de-guerre, there’s always This Day in History.

Bonus link on the Father of Yellow Journalism at Wikipedia.

Worth a visit if you’re ever in the neighborhood:

Hearst Castle, San Simeon

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Fernandomania

On this day in History, 1981.

Fernando Valenzuela

Fernandomania struck early:  In 1981 he became the first and only man to win Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young Award in the same year. But Valenzuela pitched 17 big league seasons (1980-97). That included the year we moved to LA and saw him pitch at Chavez Ravine (1985). It also included the year the Dodgers beat the hated Yankees to win the World Series (1988). He threw a no-hitter in 1990 as he was entering the twilight of a brilliant career. Besides his longevity, upbeat personality, and confounding screwball, the thing that set him apart was his plate prowess. Wikipedia tells us:

“Valenzuela was considered an atypically good hitter for a pitcher. His best year at the plate was 1990, his last year with the Dodgers, when he hit .304 with five doubles, one home run, and 11 RBI in 69 at-bats. That gave him a 101 OPS+, meaning Valenzuela ranked just above average among all National League hitters that year, including non-pitchers. In 936 career at-bats — roughly two full seasons worth of at-bats for a full-time position player — his career batting average was .200, with 10 home runs, 26 doubles, and 84 RBI. Valenzuela was even used on occasion as a pinch-hitter, batting .368 (7-for-19). Twice while with the Dodgers, Valenzuela was called upon to play outfield and first base in  games in which he did not pitch. He won the Silver Slugger award for pitchers in 1981 and 1983.”

But tonight when the Dodgers play, we will be rooting against them. They’ll be playing our new home town team, the Colorado Rockies. It’s the first of an important series that may well determine who wins the NL West this season.

Go Rockies!

<But, Fernando, we still love you.>