New Year's Eve hike

We went for a hike today, partially in the spirit of the New Year hikes my family has done in the past, but partially in the spirit of nwc's family love of doing crazy hikes.  (As an aside, N wants to go by nwc now to prevent people from calling him "N" in real life, which has been springing up. There you have it.)

We went up to Magic Mountain--the real LA-98 Magic Mountain, not the theme park, and took a look at the ex-nuclear missile silos and testing area.  It was about 6 miles up and 7 back because we took the steep firebreak on the way up and the longer dirt road down. Our feet hurt now, but it was a lovely hike.

There was an inversion, so it was surprisingly warm to start, with lovely cool pockets all through the hike.  It was fairly clear as well, and we got lot of great views.

I also had the chance to try out my new hydration pack, which I've been lusting for ever since we saw our friends using ones in Nepal.  I was a little too enthusiastic, though, and drank the full 3 liters, which is about 12.6 cups for non-metric people.

All-in-all, a beautiful morning.

Enough with the days of the week!

So after Thanksgiving comes the dreaded Black Friday, the less awful but still consumerist Small Business Saturday, the slightly bizarre Cyber Monday, and now Giving Tuesday.  I have no problem with giving, but for some reason the idea of Giving Tuesday bothers me.

It might be the idea of grouping giving with consumption--that it's something you indulge in to feel better about yourself, possibly similar to the way shopping makes you feel good.  It might also be that we shouldn't need a day for giving, that it should be integrated into our lives regularly and not just thought about one day a year.  It might also be that holidays used to be about spending time with family, taking a break, or celebrating an idea, but that framing a day in this way, especially on the heels of these strange pseudo-holidays, has the potential to degrade the underlying concept of giving.

shawl to scarf

I started a red shawl mid-2012, and worked on it when I commuted into the city that summer. I had been a hour from finishing for several months, but today I finally finished it off.

It's looking to be more of a thick scarf, just due to the way the yarn hangs--it curls in on itself, giving a bit of a scroll effect.  Despite this identity crisis, I think it turned out quite well, especially for someone who can never remember the difference between knitting and purling.

With 2014 looming, I'm very far from keeping my craftiganza rules, but at least it's some progress.  I'd forgotten how much I enjoy working with yarn, and I need make it more of a habit.  (Without becoming a yarn hoarder.)

Zeitoun

The world is neither as good nor as just as I would like it to be.

This week, I decided that I could not finish the excellent nonfiction book Zeitoun by Dave Eggers because it was too depressing.  Warning: spoilers ahead, though that feels like a wrong term for nonfiction.

This book described a Muslim man and his family's experience with Hurricane Katrina, and while I don't like to insulate myself from the world, everyone has their limits.  At some point Zeitoun is imprisoned because he was still in New Orleans after the mandatory evacuation.  There is sickening injustice in how he is treated, and nobody is held accountable.

I can often stomach terrible stories if I know the ending in advance--it's the suspense that grates on me, but this book has no real resolution.  The book "ends" with the family together and healing, but midway through reading, I searched for a summary of the history (in order to get through the terrible prison moments), and I discovered that the couple are divorced and she accused him of attacking her.  It's real life and there will be no true end until everyone involved is dead.

Again, I don't like to keep myself in a bubble, but some things are too much for me to manage.  The narrative format of the book makes empathy very natural, to the point of my feeling a nauseating distrust of the government when I read it.  And I just can't handle it.  I need and want to trust the government in order to function as a citizen. Every institution will make mistakes and will even be fundamentally broken in some ways.  Every individual will also make mistakes, either acting on their own or on behalf on an institution.

But there's a powerlessness that I felt when reading this book.  In disastrous situations, it seems as though the government agencies have unlimited discretionary power and then proceed to make substantially flawed decisions.  In the end, the only real lesson I learned was to obey mandatory evacuations.  Keep your head down and follow the rules.

The other thing that was hard is that the emotional strength of the story comes from the family love and unity; this unravelled when I learned about the couple's sad history beyond the book.  It makes me hope that all victims of disasters of this magnitude are getting the support they need.  It's a little ridiculous to talk about how I had a hard time reading a story, when so many people are forced to live similar stories and worse.

cranberry sauce

My family's favorite version of the Thanksgiving classic.  I'll usually can a batch or two around the holiday and use it throughout the year, especially in chicken and turkey lunch sandwiches.

Makes 7 to 8 cups.

Ingredients:
1 orange
2 apples that cook well (I use Gala)
6 cups fresh cranberries
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves

Directions:
Squeeze the juice from the orange and set the juice aside. Remove the orange zest with a flat peeler (some white peel is fine) and then dice finely. Quarter the apples and remove the core; slice the remainder finely, and then chop slices into wedges. Sort the cranberries, discarding any soft ones.

Add everything into a saucepan: orange juice, diced orange zest, apple pieces, cranberries, sugar and spices.  Bring to a boil over high heat, then lower heat and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens, the apple is tender and the cranberries have burst, about 15 minutes. Cover while simmering or stir in a few teaspoons of water or orange juice if it dries out.

Adapted from the Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library Series, Thanksgiving & Christmas, by Chuck Williams (Time-Life Books, 1993).

on zombies (or, why pop-culturalization of folklore sucks)

The undead have a long and glorious history in folklore and mythology, but zombies in particular come from Haitian folklore. In general, they are dead who have been revived and are under control of the person who revived them. [1] That in itself is a creepy concept.

Zombies in modern popular culture, however, have the added wow-factor of cannibalism, and often associated with apocalypse just to round things out. How did this jump happen?  Mostly, it was the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.

So what's my beef?  I find the triple combination cannibalism, apocalypse, and being mindless or controlled post-death to be totally absurd.  Each are creepy in a potentially realistic kind of way, but together they form a trinity of absurdity that respects neither folklore nor science.

Consider: one could conceivably be poisoned into a deathlike state and be brought back to life on a hallucinogenic drug and kept in a listless state as a slave.  It could physically happen, and it seems to have actually occurred; that's a little terrifying. Cannibalism also happens. People get hungry with no other options. This is repulsive and scary to a normal, well-fed human.

Pop-culture zombies, by contrast, are both listless, mindless drones and also lethal, cannibalistic monsters. Frankly, the two just don't add up, since I'd imagine it's very hard to kill anyone when you're in a sluggish state. The hallucinogenic drugs could hypothetically give cannibalistic inclinations, but the victims wouldn't be able to do anything about it that would pose a real threat.  So that's the first absurdity...but wait, there's more!

An apocalypse is also a scary, vaguely realistic thing.  It's entirely possible (though not probable in the short-term) that through mismanaging natural resources, natural disaster, a devastating virus, or nuclear stupidity, civilization could be degraded to a more primitive form.  It's a little silly, but I do worry about personally having the skills necessary to survive in such a situation, even if it was localized and relatively short lived.

But...zombies?  Apocalypse causing cannibalism I could understand, but apocalypse being caused by cannibalism?  Or better yet, being caused by a horde of sluggish, mindless people?  Either (let alone both) would be completely bizarre.

So modern zombies irk me a little; they trivialize real and potential tragedies. They fabricate a fictitious facade over folklore and fact.  These pop-culture figures can be humorous or scary, but regardless, they just don't suspend my disbelief the way other science fiction and fantasy characters do.

A world of zombies has no compelling motivations that could not exist with more resonance without them. These more profound worlds are harder to write, and so zombies provide an easy gimmick. Zombie enthusiasts, I'm sorry, but they just don't do it for me.  Please forgive me.


[1] See Wikipedia and Outside Magazine.  Neither are particularly compelling sources, but were you really expecting a Nature citation?

the guy at the gate: a confession

A week ago, I was driving and took a wrong turn and ended up heading toward the university gates after hours.  I figured it would be easier to go through campus than turn around, and so I showed the guy at the gate my id, and he asked me where I was going.  For some reason, I just lied on the spot and told him I was picking up a friend at the "athletic center."  He gave me a funny look, and was like, the gym?  I told him again that I was a student and rattled off some stuff that only a student would know. Then he says, more or less, Well, that can all be true, but it doesn't seem like you know where you're going.  At that point, I'm mad about being caught in a lie and I turn around.

I'm not the kind of person who lies about stupid stuff like this. I try not to be the kind of person who lies at all. I felt and still feel terrible abut the whole thing. It's hanging with me much longer than I ever thought it would.

What baffles me is that for a while I was mad at the guard for not letting me in.  If I were actually picking up a friend at the gym, I might very well have done the exact same thing because I often forget the proper names of things and turn to descriptions of them instead.  Pass me the writing thingummie. Where did you put the scooper for soup?  If I were actually caught in a situation where they weren't letting me in and I had a reason to be there, I don't know what I would have done differently.  Maybe provide the details of what the friend was doing?

The truth is I made a mistake and instead of dealing with the mistake, I chose to complicate the situation by fabricating a story.  I could have just told the guard that I made a mistake.  The thing is, I know they don't allow through traffic after hours, and there are places to turn around far before the guard house, so I should have just turned around as soon as possible and corrected myself.  This could be a metaphor for life, but I'll leave it up to you to iron out the details.

In an odd way, I'm glad it happened.  It's making me thing about bigger things like honesty, taking responsibility, thinking things through, and correcting mistakes.  I couldn't have asked for a kinder situation for a wake-up call.

there's a reason we do science in this houeshold

I just finished a painting that took forever-epic-long.  At first, I hated it, since it's a little cartoony. Then, it grew on me a little, but it still isn't my favorite.  N doesn't understand why I like to leave so much sky.  The reason is that I like painting skies and I really like how landscapes look with huge skies.

I have no idea what I'll do with it now, but it's safe from N throwing it away at least until it dries. He's been trying to get rid of this particular slab of masonite for probably a year, and I've continually thwarted him by painting it a bit every time he gets almost to the point of action.  See in the upper right the note he left me: You have until Nov 15th to do something me (finish or move).  After that date I will go into the trash.  Sincerely, Unfinished Painting  Ah, complete sentences.  But I guess we shouldn't expect that much from a painting, eh?